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erika moen, glossa hellenica, ozy blog post, rationality, sex positivity, world's worst vegan, writing
[Thanks to Cliff Pervocracy and Adelene Dawner for giving me books!]
[I have written an essay for the Foundational Research Institute about whether wild-animal suffering advocates should start campaigning for the euthanasia of elderly elephants. Answer: no.]
[Multiheaded1793, a bisexual neurodivergent trans woman in Russia, has been on a years-long quest to get anywhere except fucking Russia. If you would like, please contribute to her quest to be somewhere that isn’t Russia.]
The Humanities, Higher Education, and Academic Freedom: Three Necessary Arguments. This book is mostly an excellent defense of the humanities as a field of inquiry and discussion about how to protect academic freedom from the adjunctification of professors (for instance, through creating separate tenure-track teaching and research positions). However, in the first chapter, the author went on this utterly random rant about cognitive ableism in philosophy departments. It was delightful and I loved it (sample: “So for some years now, I’ve been in the position of saying to my colleagues in philosophy, “your silence with regard to cognitive disability is most dismaying,” followed in short order by “actually, your undervaluation of the lives of people with cognitive disabilities is even more dismaying. I liked you all better when you were silent.””) However, it seemed pretty unrelated to the topic of the book. Someday I want to be a famous nonfiction writer and get to include random twenty-page tangents about how much I dislike cognitive ableism in the middle of my books.
Oh Joy Sex Toy, Volume 1. I feel very weird about this comic. On one hand, I’m always in favor of people who sneak social justice messages into works that mostly aren’t about social justice. And surely it wouldn’t be an improvement if the sex toy reviews didn’t depict a wide variety of body types using the toys and include educational comics interspersed with the reviews. But still it feels very much like commodification and commercialization of sex positivity. To a certain degree, it feels like it’s saying “want to be a good sex-positive person? Well, here are the toys you should spend hundreds of dollars on! Here are the strip clubs and porn sites you should visit (you can tell they’re feminist because all the women have tattoos!) Be sure to visit the queer feminist sex toy stores– they’re super-awesome because they have more products aimed at bi women’s cis straight partners than they do at gay men!” It seems to be blurring the line between “these are sex toy reviews, and as someone who cares about sex positivity and body positivity I am of course approaching it from a sex-positive and body-positive perspective” and “the proper way to bring about a sex-positive revolution is buying shit.” Leslie Feinberg must be rolling over in his grave. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Zen in the Art of Writing. A lot of writing books seem to be written by people who can’t write. Ray Bradbury’s Zen In The Art of Writing does not have this problem; I regularly found myself rereading a page simply to savor the beauty of his prose. Zen In The Art of Writing comes down firmly on the side of authorial self-indulgence: don’t write for the money, don’t write for the critical acclaim, write because something makes your id sit up and shout and you have to write it. Write about the things that you care about, even if it feels like no one else would care about it. I am glad I have no lesser a light than Ray Bradbury to justify my belief that this is the best strategy.
Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible. Not any new content for anyone who’s been around the New Atheist wars for long enough. It hits the basic points: trusting reason and evidence over faith and authority, the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea of separate magisteria, blah blah I could have written this book when I was nineteen. A pretty good summary for people who want to know why atheists dislike religion so much. I was also pleased to note Coyne’s statement that most American Christians not believing the Eucharist is the literal body and blood of Christ is proof most Christians don’t know much about Christianity. Checkmate, Protestants!
All Your Worth. Elizabeth Warren’s book about personal finance. In a weird sense, it’s a sequel to the Two-Income Trap: All Your Worth is basically a book about how to avoid the two-income trap. She recommends using half your income for must-haves (rent, car payments, utilities, etc.), thirty percent of your income for wants, and twenty percent of your income for savings and paying off debts. She also covers a lot of other financial issues many people are confused about, such as where to invest your money (index funds), whether it’s a good idea to get a home equity loan (no), and whether you should trust mortgage brokers to not give you a mortgage that’s bigger than you can afford (no). I appreciate Warren’s commitment to plain language throughout the book: she uses simple sentence structure and vocabulary and clear phrases like “steal-from-tomorrow debt.” It’s important that there be a personal finance book everyday people can understand and that isn’t full of jargon and acronyms that make people’s heads spin.
Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens. If you get one book about classical Athens, make it this one; I have loved it for years. Courtesans and Fishcakes focuses on the Athenians’ attitude to pleasure– mostly food, wine and heterosexuality. Davidson is wonderful and right about everything. In some parts of the book, you can almost see him writing and deleting snarky sentences about the previous consensus of scholarship about Athenians. “Kinaedos is an insult referring to the passive partner in intercourse, which the Athenians found very shameful! Of course, there’s no actual evidence for this claim, beyond ‘being the passive partner is shameful in some other cultures.’ I mean, kinaedoi are effeminate, and of course passive partners are effeminate– never mind that men who were overly interested in women were considered to be effeminate, which might suggest that maybe Greek gender roles are a little tiny bit different than modern gender roles. And kinaedoi are referenced sometimes in comedies as having a lot of anal sex, including with the vivid term ‘cistern-ass’– never mind that they’re referenced just as often as being active sexual partners. Of course, kinaedoi probably evolved to be a general term of abuse, which we can tell, because kinaedoi was used as an insult for animals who don’t have anal sex at all. Only the ones who have lots of sex, though. What a weird coincidence. But kinaedoi definitely definitely means a passive partner in homosexual intercourse. History!”
The ‘fishcakes’ of the title refer to the Athenian passion for fish. Opsophagoi, or fish-eaters, sometimes spent their entire inheritances on fish; there are stories of men who trained themselves to eat the fish hot, so they could get it before anyone else, and of men who wished for necks like seagulls so they could swallow the fish for longer. Davidson points out the historical context of opsophagoi: for instance, the Mediterranean is naturally low on fish, making them more expensive; most meat in Athens was sacrificed and thus shared by lot among the people and cut with more attention to fairness than taste– making fish one of the few kinds of meat where people cared about taste. My favorite historical tidbit about opsophagoi is Plato interpreting the absence of fish in the Iliad as a sign of the virtue of the men in the Iliad, when it was probably actually just that to Homer eating fish was low-status.
Courtesans and Fishcakes provides a fair amount of information about Phryne, a hetaira (Companion, in the Firefly sense) who is one of the coolest women in history. Phryne, upon being prosecuted for blasphemy, defended herself via doing a striptease and saying “you who call the good beautiful surely must also believe the beautiful is good?” (She was found innocent.) Phryne offered to pay to repair Thebes’s wall, which was knocked down by Alexander the Great, on the condition that it was given the inscription “Alexander may have knocked it down but Phryne the hetaira built it up again.” Phryne once told a man that she would have sex with him for a hundred drachma (a drachma is about a day’s pay for a laborer), and then he said “but you had sex with another guy last night for two drachma!” and she responded “Well, then, the same applies to you. Wait until I want sex, and it will be two drachma.”
Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction. I still don’t understand critical theory, but now I don’t understand critical theory and I hate Adorno with a passion, so I guess this is progress. (“Only elite culture can be revolutionary, popular culture is corrupted by capitalism”? What fucking kind of Marxist are you?)
[Content warning: factory farming.]
Eating Animals. I want to give a copy of this book to everyone I know who’s not on board with anti-speciesism. If the horrifying descriptions of the living conditions of chickens don’t get you (chickens are so overcrowded that some of them go insane and become cannibalistic; to prevent this, their beaks are removed without anesthetic, a procedure which may cause them chronic pain), perhaps the descriptions of slaughterhouses will (did you know that, by U.S. law, chicken may be composed of up to eleven percent feces-filled water? It’s true!).
Flak Maniak said:
What does “they’re super-awesome because they have more products aimed at bi women’s cis straight partners than they do at gay men!” mean? Why would a person think that was good? Can you go into more detail in general about why you didn’t like the comic? I read them for a while and they seemed pretty good; I like that they have pretty diverse characters, and it doesn’t feel forced, even if it does feel like a very intentional decision. I am almost turned off by the bubbly, almost too-saccharine style, but… It’s not too hard for me to get past that.
I didn’t really get the vibe (no pun intended) that we were supposed to Solve Injustice by buying high-end dildos from feminist porn shops; it seemed to be basically what it claimed, which was mere sex toy reviews. So if you wanted a high-end dildo from a feminist porn shop, they’d recommend you one.
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MugaSofer said:
I’m pretty sure this was a joke to the effect that they’re not all that awesome, since they cater to cis men more than actual queer people. (Although, in their defence, there are a lot of cis men.)
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Martha O'Keeffe said:
The idea of wild-elephant euthanasia shows how sentimentality leads on to cruelty: oh the lovely elephants! leads to oh the poor old elephants! leads to let’s kill the poor old elephants!
I don’t know how much that has to do with elephant suffering and how much it has to do with “I am sentimental about cute animals, I can’t bear the thought of cute animals in pain, in order to avoid my mental pain I want to kill the animals so I won’t have to think about them in pain”.
I do think a lot of this also applies to humans; instead of changing attitudes and behaviours in society, it’s easier to kill the poor/sick/non-typical in order to prevent them “suffering”. Hey, instead of saying “it’s awful to end up in a hell-hole of a state-run nursing home* when you’re old and feeble, so let’s give people the option of euthanasia before they get too old and feeble”, how about paying decent wages to trained staff and having enough people on staff to look after the old and feeble? or giving families help and support to look after the elderly and sick in their own homes? Oh but that might raise taxes or cost money or involve regulating the free market somehow!
*For-profit private homes often aren’t too much better, if some of the cases I’m reading are accurate. The almighty dollar/pound/euro means if you can cut costs by hiring unqualified staff, paying them buttons, and not hiring enough people, owners of such homes will do so.
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ozymandias said:
I was proposing euthanasia of elephants who are starving to death because of their lack of teeth; this is stated clearly in the summary. They’re going to die anyway. The only difference would be whether they die before slowly and painfully starving to death or after. I think if there was a human disease where you slowly starved to death (and couldn’t use a feeding tube or anything), it would also be reasonable to offer people the option of euthanasia. (Anyway, it doesn’t work, elephants don’t live long enough to die of molar loss.)
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MugaSofer said:
In defence of euthanasia – something I don’t normally end up doing, given the obvious risks euthanasia advocates blindly and wilfully ignore – it’s extremely common for people to prefer a quick and painless death to a slow and painful one, but in revealed and explicitly stated preferences.
Also, I don’t see any reason to assume that this particular proposal wasn’t inspired by some sort of elephant-QALY model of utility, wherein death has no disutility at all – which is, admittedly, bloody stupid, but extremely common among euthanasia advocates.
Jumping immediately to disparaging people for “sentimentality”, and drawing sweeping conclusions about sentimentality from it (!), seems like less a logical leap and more logically standing at the top of a cliff while talking loudly about how skilfully you totally climbed it from the ground, and acting conspicuously nervous about the height.
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Evan Þ said:
“I was also pleased to note Coyne’s statement that most American Christians not believing the Eucharist is the literal body and blood of Christ is proof most Christians don’t know much about Christianity. Checkmate, Protestants!”
I’m a Protestant who’s familiar with several different Catholic arguments for this position, and found them very unconvincing, and I’d rather not read that book just to find out if he’s got a new one. Do you (or someone else who’s read the book) mind giving a brief summary?
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ozymandias said:
He doesn’t have an argument, he appears to just be ignorant.
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Patrick said:
What page of the book are you referring to?
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Evan Þ said:
Ah, misunderstood your joke.
To Coyne’s (very) partial credit, I’ve read in a couple places that a lot of Roman Catholics have never heard that it’s the literal body and blood of Christ, either…
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Sniffnoy said:
OK, I’m having untangling what’s sarcastic and what’s seriously intended (and what’s simple known fact) in the passage about kinaedoi. Would you mind explaining? Thank you!
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Sniffnoy said:
Err. That should say “having trouble untangling”. Blech.
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ozymandias said:
Known facts: kinaedoi are considering effeminate; effeminancy is linked to being overly into sex with women; several species of animal are referred to as kinaedoi, usually in a context of them being promiscuous; kinaedoi are referenced in comedies as being both passive and active partners in sex (including the beautiful phrase “cistern-ass”). The previous consensus was that kinaedoi was an insult referencing being a passive homosexual partner which expanded to be more general; Davidson argues that it’s more like our “slut”.
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Sniffnoy said:
I see, thanks!
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ilzolende said:
I’m not on board with anti-speciesism, do you want to give me a book?
(Note: I’m vegetarian and have already read other books describing factory farming, such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I also already dislike factory farming of meat animals, because I like the existence of working antibiotics.)
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Ampersand said:
I don’t agree with the review of “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” I mean, is there anyplace where OJST actually says anything that amounts to “the proper way to bring about a sex-positive revolution is buying shit”? If not, I’m not sure it’s fair to say that the comic has that attitude (or is tending towards it).
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caryatis said:
The book can imply consumerist ideas without actually saying them. I think Ozy is totally right here. You often run across the idea that women ought to (or need to!) have a vibrator in order to enjoy sex. Good sex does not require gadgets.
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raemon777 said:
I mean, I agree with this sentiment – but is there a way that a comic about reviewing sex toys could have been that would *not* have given that impression?
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Ampersand said:
The genre of “reviews of items that people can buy” is inherently consumerist, so I’m with you as far as that goes.
But I’m not sure that the stretch from that to “women ought to (or need to!) have a vibrator in order to enjoy sex” is fair. I agree that a comic can imply ideas without really saying them – but I still think it’s reasonable to ask how and where those ideas were implied. It’s hard to see how the message of an OJST strip like this, for example, could be “good sex requires gadgets.”
(Also, FWIW, OJST reviews sex toys for people with penises, too. Although there are fewer of those reviews.)
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itsabeast said:
Don’t some women actually need a vibrator to orgasm?
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MugaSofer said:
>commercialization of sex positivity
It’s very … interesting … to compare OJST’s “reviews” of James Deen’s work – filled with crossings-out and retractions, of course – with Tailsteak’s retrospective “review” of him, which links to theirs. (Or at least, it was interesting to me.)
Link to Tailsteak, since I don’t trust my grasp of the URL formatting here without an edit button to experiment: http://leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=849
>I was also pleased to note Coyne’s statement that most American Christians not believing the Eucharist is the literal body and blood of Christ is proof most Christians don’t know much about Christianity. Checkmate, Protestants!
There is no emoticon I can find that adequately expresses my desire to track this guy down and throttle him with his keyboard, which is honestly disappointing – if there’s one thing our digital culture is good at, it’s evoking that emotion in people.
>My favorite historical tidbit about opsophagoi is Plato interpreting the absence of fish in the Iliad as a sign of the virtue of the men in the Iliad, when it was probably actually just that to Homer eating fish was low-status.
This is my new favourite historical tidbit.
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Merkava said:
That critical theory book seems to have misstated Adorno’s argument, which was that culture industry corrupts both elite and popular culture, albeit in different ways taking the enjoyment and the subversive qualities, that both used have in their own right, out of them to turn them into commodified propaganda. Now, he did believe that in order to regain autonomy, the artist would have to break with aesthetic cliches, but is avant-garde the same as elite?
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