May 12, 2023 - 7:00am
Pornography drips with misogyny. Teenage boys can easily find scenes of rape and sexual torture on their phones, changing the very idea of what constitutes “normal” sexual practices. It’s so nasty that you’d imagine prestigious institutions would run a mile from anyone who publicly enthuses about it. Not any more, evidently.
All a porn enthusiast has to do is link their habit with the magic word “transgender” and it is instantly transformed into something radical and progressive. It’s a form of cultural blindness so widespread that an author and academic who claims that violent porn persuaded him to “change” his sex has this week been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism. “Sissy porn did make me trans,” Andrea Long Chu, formerly Andrew, once wrote.
Chu writes book reviews for the publications New York and Vulture. Whatever ideas there are about being female appear to come from pornography and popular culture, including an admission that transition was “for gossip and compliments, lipstick and mascara, for crying at the movies, for being someone’s girlfriend…”
Chu clearly has a very distorted idea of what being a woman is, conflating the idea with being passive and victimised in language so extreme that it’s distasteful to quote. The writer describes being a “sad, pretentious boy, furious about rape, hopelessly addicted to pornography”, which he would look at for hours in the bathroom while his girlfriend was asleep. Apologies to sensitive readers, but what Chu learned from this experience is that “getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is”.
Vulture describes Chu as having a “one-of-a-kind mind”, as well as “prose that swoops and soars like an Olympian”. Were they thinking of “Pornography is what it feels like when you think you have an object, but really the object has you. It is therefore a quintessential expression of femaleness.” Or perhaps it was when Chu described the anus as “a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed”?
Whatever is going on here, and it owes a great deal to the sub-genre known as “sissy porn”, it has nothing to do with actual women. Porn is a huge commercial operation that makes money by defining and controlling women’s bodies. It offers not just arousal but an ideology which integrates violence into sex, so much so that young women increasingly report demands for so-called “rough sex”, including strangulation.
It’s a perfect fit for the most extreme excesses of gender ideology, whose philosophy, like that of porn, is based on the idea of womanhood as performance. What they have in common is the idea that being female involves high heels, lipstick — and passivity. It exists in a universe far removed from the concerns of most women, including the threat of sexual and domestic violence that is a feature of many women’s everyday lives.
At one level, the awarding of a Pulitzer to a minor academic with a back catalogue of cringe-inducing utterances about women is just another example of an institution destroying its own reputation. But it also demonstrates the way in which gender ideology is destroying critical faculties, allowing misogyny into the mainstream in a prettified new costume.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She has been Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board since 2013. Her book Homegrown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists was published in 2019.
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Subscribe“allowing misogyny into the mainstream in a prettified new costume”…
It’s hardly ‘pretty’ though, and neither are these grotesques. The nastiness of some of this stuff is genuinely baffling and I’m trying to understand it.
How’s this: the trans identifying male idealises/fetishises the feminine; they try to become their fantasy, but they fail. They then resent the ‘femaleness’ embodied by women, particularly that it is effortless.
The gulf between even the most ‘feminised’ male and the least ‘feminine’ female is both subtle and stark. Like chronological age, our sex is written onto every aspect of our appearance and demeanour.
Voice, gait, skin, hair, hands, feet; the young and beautiful can sometimes seem more androgynous, but age and sex are normally signalled very strongly (for obvious evolutionary reasons).
Trying to become other than what one is (in any sphere) is doomed to failure. That failure must be difficult to bear, especially if the person concerned has managed to persuade themselves that their transformation is more convincing than is the case.
Perhaps another source of anger and frustration for trans identifying males is that the majority are fully intact heterosexuals who hope to pursue sexual relationships with women. And women, whether heterosexual or lesbian, are not interested.
And don’t they all tend to look unhappy and angry? I wonder if a general trend towards hatred of the good (or perhaps hatred of everything) is at play.
And I won’t limit that to trans-identifying men—there’s a certain young author who, despite being extremely successful, seems perpetually miserable in every photo I’ve seen of her.
Interesting that Andrew Marr wrote a good essay about modern Britain in the last issue of The New Statesman. It was good until he came to the last couple of paras concerning ‘woke’. He just dismissed the whole thing as that everyone should be . more tolerant of everybody else. The older generation was, therefore, particularly nasty but the young people were leading the way.
Must be true then because Andrew Marr has a BBC pedigree.
Joan Smith is justifyingly very angry, and so am I. As a New Statesman subscriber I too am very disappointed with Andrew Marr and as he’s the editor see little chance for brave truthful pieces on the behalf of women who Cassandra like can see the dangers to their sex too fully. NS is shamefully staying on the thoughtless safe side like the beeb and the guardian. Thank goodness for Unherd.
It’s just cowardice.
What ‘woke’ has taught us more than anything is just how pusillanimous our governing class is.
Andew Marr calling for more tolerance is laughable. He was one of the least tolerant and least polite interviewers on the BBC – which is quite some achievement.
Joan Smith is justifyingly very angry, and so am I. As a New Statesman subscriber I too am very disappointed with Andrew Marr and as he’s the editor see little chance for brave truthful pieces on the behalf of women who Cassandra like can see the dangers to their sex too fully. NS is shamefully staying on the thoughtless safe side like the beeb and the guardian. Thank goodness for Unherd.
It’s just cowardice.
What ‘woke’ has taught us more than anything is just how pusillanimous our governing class is.
Andew Marr calling for more tolerance is laughable. He was one of the least tolerant and least polite interviewers on the BBC – which is quite some achievement.
‘there’s a certain young author who, despite being extremely successful, seems perpetually miserable in every photo I’ve seen of her.’
She’s also a Marxist, which I think probably explains it
And there I was trying so hard to be vague. 😉
And there I was trying so hard to be vague. 😉
Interesting that Andrew Marr wrote a good essay about modern Britain in the last issue of The New Statesman. It was good until he came to the last couple of paras concerning ‘woke’. He just dismissed the whole thing as that everyone should be . more tolerant of everybody else. The older generation was, therefore, particularly nasty but the young people were leading the way.
Must be true then because Andrew Marr has a BBC pedigree.
‘there’s a certain young author who, despite being extremely successful, seems perpetually miserable in every photo I’ve seen of her.’
She’s also a Marxist, which I think probably explains it
Somewhere on YouTube yesterday there was a video of a pro-choice man in a Texas courtroom screaming and ranting just like a toddler that the government has no right to tell him what he can do with his vagina and vulva.
It’s the first I’ve been absolutely convinced that we are in the grip of some kind of extreme collective madness. Is it the chemicals in the water supply? What is it?
It’s called evil.
I’ve concluded the same.
It was started by a generation who do not understand the word “no”. They want, they have to have. Now. Nobody has the right to stop them. It was then picked up by middle aged men who are dissatisfied by their relationships with wives if they still have them, ex wives if they got fed up of their menfolk or who had always lived with their parents but wanted the ideal relationship with their ideal woman,even if they had to be that ideal woman (which they can never be!). The intersnake has not helped as the ball just keeps rolling and collecting mainly men who want to be vocal about how nobody takes them as seriously as they take themselves. There are plenty young girls trying very hard to turn themselves into men but they are trying do hard, they don’t generally have time to shout about it. Thank goodness!
I’ve concluded the same.
It was started by a generation who do not understand the word “no”. They want, they have to have. Now. Nobody has the right to stop them. It was then picked up by middle aged men who are dissatisfied by their relationships with wives if they still have them, ex wives if they got fed up of their menfolk or who had always lived with their parents but wanted the ideal relationship with their ideal woman,even if they had to be that ideal woman (which they can never be!). The intersnake has not helped as the ball just keeps rolling and collecting mainly men who want to be vocal about how nobody takes them as seriously as they take themselves. There are plenty young girls trying very hard to turn themselves into men but they are trying do hard, they don’t generally have time to shout about it. Thank goodness!
It’s called evil.
Yes, fully intact freaks claiming to be female should be given two bricks treatment to send them on painful but joyous road to womanhood….
Tried to reply, but censored. So denigrating women is OK but posting stuff against that is not allowed.
What sort of sickos run this website?
We only ever hear about male-to-female trans individuals because women have a problem with them and complain. We rarely if ever hear complaints about female-to-male trans from men. Consequently, what is often overlooked or ignored is that the overwhelming majority of trans-sexuals are female to male… in the years before it was shut down, Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service case load increased significantly, with girls comprising 76 per cent of cases.
Or, put in different terms:
In the ten years before it closed the number of teenage girls treated by the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service increased by 5,000%.
But I’m sure you appreciate that female to male transsexuals are of no threat to anyone but themselves?
It is certainly a tragic development, because the damage wrought on girls and young women by Testosterone alone is gruesome. It is also irreversible.
A majority of these young women will either be on the autism spectrum or have a history of trauma or abuse.
How any medic was ever persuaded that it was ethical to treat psychological pain with bodily mutilation is incomprehensible.
Perhaps not a threat per se, but I’ve heard from plenty of gay men that they have no interest in including women in their dating pool.
And trans-identifying females are bothered by that just as much as trans-identifying males are bothered by lesbians who don’t want to sleep with them.
Probably, but again the difference is that trans-identifying men have a hard time intimidating or raping gay cis men. So no problem.
Probably, but again the difference is that trans-identifying men have a hard time intimidating or raping gay cis men. So no problem.
Your last paragraph is spot on, I just can’t fathom it.
Men are not intimidated by women undressing in front of them in changing rooms, being raped by them in their men only hospital wards or competing against them in sports. That’s why we have not heard much about it.
Perhaps not a threat per se, but I’ve heard from plenty of gay men that they have no interest in including women in their dating pool.
And trans-identifying females are bothered by that just as much as trans-identifying males are bothered by lesbians who don’t want to sleep with them.
Your last paragraph is spot on, I just can’t fathom it.
Men are not intimidated by women undressing in front of them in changing rooms, being raped by them in their men only hospital wards or competing against them in sports. That’s why we have not heard much about it.
The discussion on this is perennially hampered by the suggestion that humans can actually change sex, encapsulated in the phrases “female to male” and “male to female “ Every nucleated cell in the body carries XX or XY sex chromosomes, apart from the gametes which are how sex is determined in mammals and birds.
Transwomen are men, and transmen are women however much they wish it were not so.
But I’m sure you appreciate that female to male transsexuals are of no threat to anyone but themselves?
It is certainly a tragic development, because the damage wrought on girls and young women by Testosterone alone is gruesome. It is also irreversible.
A majority of these young women will either be on the autism spectrum or have a history of trauma or abuse.
How any medic was ever persuaded that it was ethical to treat psychological pain with bodily mutilation is incomprehensible.
The discussion on this is perennially hampered by the suggestion that humans can actually change sex, encapsulated in the phrases “female to male” and “male to female “ Every nucleated cell in the body carries XX or XY sex chromosomes, apart from the gametes which are how sex is determined in mammals and birds.
Transwomen are men, and transmen are women however much they wish it were not so.
And don’t they all tend to look unhappy and angry? I wonder if a general trend towards hatred of the good (or perhaps hatred of everything) is at play.
And I won’t limit that to trans-identifying men—there’s a certain young author who, despite being extremely successful, seems perpetually miserable in every photo I’ve seen of her.
Somewhere on YouTube yesterday there was a video of a pro-choice man in a Texas courtroom screaming and ranting just like a toddler that the government has no right to tell him what he can do with his vagina and vulva.
It’s the first I’ve been absolutely convinced that we are in the grip of some kind of extreme collective madness. Is it the chemicals in the water supply? What is it?
Yes, fully intact freaks claiming to be female should be given two bricks treatment to send them on painful but joyous road to womanhood….
Tried to reply, but censored. So denigrating women is OK but posting stuff against that is not allowed.
What sort of sickos run this website?
We only ever hear about male-to-female trans individuals because women have a problem with them and complain. We rarely if ever hear complaints about female-to-male trans from men. Consequently, what is often overlooked or ignored is that the overwhelming majority of trans-sexuals are female to male… in the years before it was shut down, Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service case load increased significantly, with girls comprising 76 per cent of cases.
Or, put in different terms:
In the ten years before it closed the number of teenage girls treated by the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service increased by 5,000%.
“allowing misogyny into the mainstream in a prettified new costume”…
It’s hardly ‘pretty’ though, and neither are these grotesques. The nastiness of some of this stuff is genuinely baffling and I’m trying to understand it.
How’s this: the trans identifying male idealises/fetishises the feminine; they try to become their fantasy, but they fail. They then resent the ‘femaleness’ embodied by women, particularly that it is effortless.
The gulf between even the most ‘feminised’ male and the least ‘feminine’ female is both subtle and stark. Like chronological age, our sex is written onto every aspect of our appearance and demeanour.
Voice, gait, skin, hair, hands, feet; the young and beautiful can sometimes seem more androgynous, but age and sex are normally signalled very strongly (for obvious evolutionary reasons).
Trying to become other than what one is (in any sphere) is doomed to failure. That failure must be difficult to bear, especially if the person concerned has managed to persuade themselves that their transformation is more convincing than is the case.
Perhaps another source of anger and frustration for trans identifying males is that the majority are fully intact heterosexuals who hope to pursue sexual relationships with women. And women, whether heterosexual or lesbian, are not interested.
The issue is the autogynephile portion of the trans group.
There are some trans who are truly gender dysphoric from a very young, pre-pubescent, age, like toddler age, and never change from that. They have gender dysphoria for whatever reason (likely mix of nature and nurture). This is, however, a small portion of the current “T” in LGBT.
The larger portion, on the male to female side (the female to male side is different and has to do with social contagion it seems), arises from autogynephilia, something which existed prior to the rise of porn, but whose incidence has grown dramatically with the rise of internet and smartphone porn because porn genres that specifically encourage or lead viewers down a path towards the kind of thinking that can develop into autogynephilia is much more widespread now due to the technology. Autogynephiles basically envy the sexual allure of women, and want to appropriate it for themselves — both to be the object of their own arousal (very odd, yes, but there it is), and to be the object of the arousal of others. When you see someone writing like the person who is being discussed in this article, it’s an autogynephile, and, yes, it’s very different from someone who has “gender dysphoria” from the time they are 3 years old. Throwing them into the same bucket muddies the water irretrievably, because it uses the 3-year old dysphorics to “launder” the much less publicly acceptable autogynephiles, who try to claim they are the same thing … they are rather obviously not. Most people would not be in favor of granting autogynephile fetishists any particular rights at all, full stop.
There is also a third group — very feminine gay males who decide to completely feminize themselves (not drag queens, but people who decide to actually become trans women). That’s an entirely different group, and much less of the issue because they tend not to want to crowd out biological women in the same ways that autogynephiles do. Largely because they are gay. Autogynephiles are mostly straight or straight leaning bisexuals, hence the cotton ceiling nonsense and so on.
More discussion needs to be given in the public square about the actual taxonomy here, but anytime you try to do so you are shouted down immediately by a massive chorus of gender ideologues and “allies” who are everywhere and loud, and determined to make sure that the taxonomy outlined above is NOT understood by many people.
That was a very clear and logical explanation
Good to highlight the AGP side of the many men who ‘identify as’ women. You are right that the highly fetishistic AGP phenomenon is widely ignored or disguised.
And many LGBs, lesbians in particular, do not want to be linked with the Ts, especially the Ts who claim to be lesbians, completely ignoring the fact that they were indeed ‘born in the wrong body’.
All very interesting and well explained.
But I still think that mentally ill people should have no place in public discourse.
And definitely should not be allowed to force huge majority to accept their perspectives and language.
Thank you for articulating that so well. These are points I’ve felt instinctively, but haven’t had the vocabulary to articulate myself.
That was a very clear and logical explanation
Good to highlight the AGP side of the many men who ‘identify as’ women. You are right that the highly fetishistic AGP phenomenon is widely ignored or disguised.
And many LGBs, lesbians in particular, do not want to be linked with the Ts, especially the Ts who claim to be lesbians, completely ignoring the fact that they were indeed ‘born in the wrong body’.
All very interesting and well explained.
But I still think that mentally ill people should have no place in public discourse.
And definitely should not be allowed to force huge majority to accept their perspectives and language.
Thank you for articulating that so well. These are points I’ve felt instinctively, but haven’t had the vocabulary to articulate myself.
The issue is the autogynephile portion of the trans group.
There are some trans who are truly gender dysphoric from a very young, pre-pubescent, age, like toddler age, and never change from that. They have gender dysphoria for whatever reason (likely mix of nature and nurture). This is, however, a small portion of the current “T” in LGBT.
The larger portion, on the male to female side (the female to male side is different and has to do with social contagion it seems), arises from autogynephilia, something which existed prior to the rise of porn, but whose incidence has grown dramatically with the rise of internet and smartphone porn because porn genres that specifically encourage or lead viewers down a path towards the kind of thinking that can develop into autogynephilia is much more widespread now due to the technology. Autogynephiles basically envy the sexual allure of women, and want to appropriate it for themselves — both to be the object of their own arousal (very odd, yes, but there it is), and to be the object of the arousal of others. When you see someone writing like the person who is being discussed in this article, it’s an autogynephile, and, yes, it’s very different from someone who has “gender dysphoria” from the time they are 3 years old. Throwing them into the same bucket muddies the water irretrievably, because it uses the 3-year old dysphorics to “launder” the much less publicly acceptable autogynephiles, who try to claim they are the same thing … they are rather obviously not. Most people would not be in favor of granting autogynephile fetishists any particular rights at all, full stop.
There is also a third group — very feminine gay males who decide to completely feminize themselves (not drag queens, but people who decide to actually become trans women). That’s an entirely different group, and much less of the issue because they tend not to want to crowd out biological women in the same ways that autogynephiles do. Largely because they are gay. Autogynephiles are mostly straight or straight leaning bisexuals, hence the cotton ceiling nonsense and so on.
More discussion needs to be given in the public square about the actual taxonomy here, but anytime you try to do so you are shouted down immediately by a massive chorus of gender ideologues and “allies” who are everywhere and loud, and determined to make sure that the taxonomy outlined above is NOT understood by many people.
Much of pornography is indeed about the control and monetization of women’s bodies for men who are willing to spend money on it. Transgenderism, then, is the political expression of this transactional thinking. Anyone who’s been closely following the transgender debate knows that it is not really about mainstream acceptance or ‘live and let live’, but about men’s sexual access to women and children.
And the worst thing about all this is that it is supported and funded by massively wealthy interest groups. Check out the list of organizations that fund the Movement Advancement Project (MAP): https://www.lgbtmap.org/about-map/our-major-funders
From there you can click on the funder’s websites to see who’s funding and supporting them. If you check out the Proteus Fund (https://www.proteusfund.org/funding-partners/) you will see big names like Soros’ Open Society and the Rockefeller Foundation appear there. It’s a whole labyrinth of groups who seek to radically alter and subvert the meaning of family and democracies.
It’s no wonder that countries like Poland and Hungary detest LGBQT ideology: https://web.archive.org/web/20191028192839id_/https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/D2FF3A537FB39E4A11B00F593B8F945B/S1743923X19000576a.pdf/div-class-title-and-if-the-opponents-of-gender-ideology-are-right-gender-politics-europeanization-and-the-democratic-deficit-div.pdf.
Hungary even went so far as to get rid of Soros-funded universities (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54433398) and by doing so made his country a target for angry EU officials.
I hesitate to use words like ‘evil’, but I can’t think of any other word to describe a movement with so much money to spend on telling children it is perfectly natural to want to undergo expensive life-altering surgery and that those who tell them otherwise are to be dismissed as bigots and transphobes.
Far cry from the old values society used to teach children. When one girl in my class got highlights in her hair, I, of course, wanted that, too. My Mom said, “God created you exactly as you are meant to be. You are perfect as you are.” No amount of whining moved her a smidgeon.
At the time, I was angry, but she was more right than she was wrong, I think.
Far cry from the old values society used to teach children. When one girl in my class got highlights in her hair, I, of course, wanted that, too. My Mom said, “God created you exactly as you are meant to be. You are perfect as you are.” No amount of whining moved her a smidgeon.
At the time, I was angry, but she was more right than she was wrong, I think.
Much of pornography is indeed about the control and monetization of women’s bodies for men who are willing to spend money on it. Transgenderism, then, is the political expression of this transactional thinking. Anyone who’s been closely following the transgender debate knows that it is not really about mainstream acceptance or ‘live and let live’, but about men’s sexual access to women and children.
And the worst thing about all this is that it is supported and funded by massively wealthy interest groups. Check out the list of organizations that fund the Movement Advancement Project (MAP): https://www.lgbtmap.org/about-map/our-major-funders
From there you can click on the funder’s websites to see who’s funding and supporting them. If you check out the Proteus Fund (https://www.proteusfund.org/funding-partners/) you will see big names like Soros’ Open Society and the Rockefeller Foundation appear there. It’s a whole labyrinth of groups who seek to radically alter and subvert the meaning of family and democracies.
It’s no wonder that countries like Poland and Hungary detest LGBQT ideology: https://web.archive.org/web/20191028192839id_/https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/D2FF3A537FB39E4A11B00F593B8F945B/S1743923X19000576a.pdf/div-class-title-and-if-the-opponents-of-gender-ideology-are-right-gender-politics-europeanization-and-the-democratic-deficit-div.pdf.
Hungary even went so far as to get rid of Soros-funded universities (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54433398) and by doing so made his country a target for angry EU officials.
I hesitate to use words like ‘evil’, but I can’t think of any other word to describe a movement with so much money to spend on telling children it is perfectly natural to want to undergo expensive life-altering surgery and that those who tell them otherwise are to be dismissed as bigots and transphobes.
This is just another example of institutional ties with corporate entities trying to destroy the social fabric of society! These people are self deprecating/loathing humans – we need to ignore them!
Indeed. I said only yesterday that these men all seem to share the common trait of rock-bottom self-esteem. They loathe themselves, they consider women inferior, and therefore find some perverse satisfaction in pretending to be women.
It’s a sickening commentary on how much rubbish our society will tolerate—let alone celebrate.
On the contrary, we need to push back hard if we don’t want our wives and daughters to become second class citizens.
We very much need to push back (and many are doing so). But make no mistake—this goes far beyond a male-female issue. This is about everyone’s right to not bow to the altar of someone else’s delusion.
We very much need to push back (and many are doing so). But make no mistake—this goes far beyond a male-female issue. This is about everyone’s right to not bow to the altar of someone else’s delusion.
Indeed. I said only yesterday that these men all seem to share the common trait of rock-bottom self-esteem. They loathe themselves, they consider women inferior, and therefore find some perverse satisfaction in pretending to be women.
It’s a sickening commentary on how much rubbish our society will tolerate—let alone celebrate.
On the contrary, we need to push back hard if we don’t want our wives and daughters to become second class citizens.
This is just another example of institutional ties with corporate entities trying to destroy the social fabric of society! These people are self deprecating/loathing humans – we need to ignore them!
To be honest, I still think giving Nicole Hannah-Jones a Pultizer for the 1619 Project is by far more embarrassing. Not that it’s a competition of course!
It’s a sad commentary that many industry ‘awards’ have become corrupted by commercial or political pressures. I no longer pay any attention to such things. And it’s Eurovision time again.
Eurovision is where it all started and this time its coming from that beacon of truth and social justice, Scousepool
Eurovision is where it all started and this time its coming from that beacon of truth and social justice, Scousepool
It’s a sad commentary that many industry ‘awards’ have become corrupted by commercial or political pressures. I no longer pay any attention to such things. And it’s Eurovision time again.
To be honest, I still think giving Nicole Hannah-Jones a Pultizer for the 1619 Project is by far more embarrassing. Not that it’s a competition of course!
Joan Smith’s articles are amongst the most admirable on Unherd.
She certainly doesn’t pull any punches, which is a term associated with maleness but in her writing takes the discussion beyond the issue of gender into simple humanity.
In bringing to our attention this ‘prize’ winner, the false impression of womanhood that pervades the transactivist community has a searing light shone upon it. In doing so, it also helps explain why that community has such little regard for women in terms of their specific need for privacy and in particular, their private spaces. This is simply because those spaces are being misunderstood from a non-biological perspective.
What is also admirable in Joan’s writing is the lack of self pity, a trait with which those who create such noise around their gender transition is almost a defining characteristic. Those who quietly transition should be able to lead the lives they wish to do, without an accompanying cacaphony.
Having been with UnHerd for two years, I am starting to see a down side. The medium for discussion is, of course, words. I am starting to doubt whether bad and aggressive things are really bad or is it just that bad and extreme words are chosen.
Yesterday Adam Price resigned as leader of Plaid Cymru. (I know – it can’t be important because it’s only Wales but please bear with me).
A couple of years ago there was a big fight in Plaid Cymru because the (trans) mayor of Bangor wanted to stand for the Senedd. In a meeting the mayor was denounced by a woman member for Plaid as ‘not being a proper woman’. The woman was sacked and the mayor gave up. The leader, Price, was denounced as a bully by the woman and a transphobe by the mayor. But all that Price did was try to be a leader.
He has more recently been accused of being a bully and a transphobe and has now resigned.
Imagine the next UK election. The Tories scrape in and Sunak chooses his cabinet. If he chooses the team by quota – 1 black person, 1 muslim, several women, several transisters, two gay men, etc, he will not be accused of anything. But will he have the best team?
My point here is that words like ‘bully’ would be used against a leader who stood his ground and acted like leader. It is not the actions but the words.
Having been with UnHerd for two years, I am starting to see a down side. The medium for discussion is, of course, words. I am starting to doubt whether bad and aggressive things are really bad or is it just that bad and extreme words are chosen.
Yesterday Adam Price resigned as leader of Plaid Cymru. (I know – it can’t be important because it’s only Wales but please bear with me).
A couple of years ago there was a big fight in Plaid Cymru because the (trans) mayor of Bangor wanted to stand for the Senedd. In a meeting the mayor was denounced by a woman member for Plaid as ‘not being a proper woman’. The woman was sacked and the mayor gave up. The leader, Price, was denounced as a bully by the woman and a transphobe by the mayor. But all that Price did was try to be a leader.
He has more recently been accused of being a bully and a transphobe and has now resigned.
Imagine the next UK election. The Tories scrape in and Sunak chooses his cabinet. If he chooses the team by quota – 1 black person, 1 muslim, several women, several transisters, two gay men, etc, he will not be accused of anything. But will he have the best team?
My point here is that words like ‘bully’ would be used against a leader who stood his ground and acted like leader. It is not the actions but the words.
Joan Smith’s articles are amongst the most admirable on Unherd.
She certainly doesn’t pull any punches, which is a term associated with maleness but in her writing takes the discussion beyond the issue of gender into simple humanity.
In bringing to our attention this ‘prize’ winner, the false impression of womanhood that pervades the transactivist community has a searing light shone upon it. In doing so, it also helps explain why that community has such little regard for women in terms of their specific need for privacy and in particular, their private spaces. This is simply because those spaces are being misunderstood from a non-biological perspective.
What is also admirable in Joan’s writing is the lack of self pity, a trait with which those who create such noise around their gender transition is almost a defining characteristic. Those who quietly transition should be able to lead the lives they wish to do, without an accompanying cacaphony.
Reading this piece made me immediately think of the current kerfuffle in the US over Bud Light and its use of trans “model” Dylan Mulvaney.
I wonder if Mulvaney’s particular brand of self presentation (he refers to “girlhood”, as opposed to “womanhood”, for example) was simply too much of a passive caricature of “femaleness” for the “silent majority” of the American public to bear. His prancing and mugging style is so OTT that it actually serves to differentiate him from real women.
The brand has now lost billions of dollars in value, and may never recover. I can only hope that this is the thin edge of the wedge, but in 2023, it’s hard to believe that we would be that lucky (or sensible).
Reading this piece made me immediately think of the current kerfuffle in the US over Bud Light and its use of trans “model” Dylan Mulvaney.
I wonder if Mulvaney’s particular brand of self presentation (he refers to “girlhood”, as opposed to “womanhood”, for example) was simply too much of a passive caricature of “femaleness” for the “silent majority” of the American public to bear. His prancing and mugging style is so OTT that it actually serves to differentiate him from real women.
The brand has now lost billions of dollars in value, and may never recover. I can only hope that this is the thin edge of the wedge, but in 2023, it’s hard to believe that we would be that lucky (or sensible).
All you need to do is look at the photo. Nothing in this world is going to make that face anything other than a bloke’s. Everything else is redundant, including anything he writes.
All you need to do is look at the photo. Nothing in this world is going to make that face anything other than a bloke’s. Everything else is redundant, including anything he writes.
The world has gone mad – that is all I have to say on this issue.
The world has gone mad – that is all I have to say on this issue.
The Pulitzer Prizes and other cultural honors have become a way for the left to own the right the way the right tries to own the libs by attacking Disney World. So much time is wasted in a political discourse centered on getting each other’s goat. Mr. Chu is clearly not worth the time it takes to point out how insignificant he is.
I think it’s dangerous to suggest that trans activists are leftist. It’s increasingly evident they have more in common with the alt right in terms of narrow minded and misogynist ideology that brooks no debate and lacks any kind of empathy with others.
I think it’s dangerous to suggest that trans activists are leftist. It’s increasingly evident they have more in common with the alt right in terms of narrow minded and misogynist ideology that brooks no debate and lacks any kind of empathy with others.
The Pulitzer Prizes and other cultural honors have become a way for the left to own the right the way the right tries to own the libs by attacking Disney World. So much time is wasted in a political discourse centered on getting each other’s goat. Mr. Chu is clearly not worth the time it takes to point out how insignificant he is.
.
You make it sound like only teenage boys watch porn.
But it’s also the case that women watch porn too. If you are interested in balanced reporting… both males and females watch porn.
The Daily Mail reports that “Over half of women (55 per cent) watch pornographic content on their own at least once a month – with 40 per cent watching weekly.”
Here’s the link if you care:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2507752/Over-half-women-regularly-watch-porn-daring-40-admit-making-own.html
“More frequently thought of as a naughty pleasure for men – or obsession for adolescent boys – porn has traditionally been a taboo subject for women.
However it seems that behind closed doors more women than expected are indulging in pornography.
A new survey reveals that over half of women (55 per cent) watch videos with sexual content on their own at least once a month – with a further 40 per cent admitting to switching it on weekly.”
If so, this phenomenon is new. I was the only young woman I new who ever read romance novels with more smut. Most girls I knew were somewhat frightened by it.
As to hardcore porn, I never saw any until after college with a boyfriend who wanted me to watch. I was not terribly into it. It is demeaning to women. Very. And reduces us.
If the article and stats you cite are true, the world has greatly changed. And we know it has. And our girls are being taught to think of themselves in quite horrific ways. IMO. We should be worried.
Despite the downvotes, William, you make a useful point. To that, I would add the following.
Consider the functional equivalent of porn. I refer to the vast industry that produces romance novels and their adaptations for film and television (“soap operas”). No one calls it “porn,” because it looks very different and is addressed to women instead of men. I call it porn for women. It looks formulaic, sentimental or kitschy, sure, but not vulgar, grotesque or overtly sinister. In one important way, though, these two kinds of porn are not so very different. Porn for men “objectifies” women by turning them into sexual objects that men can use for their own gratification and then discard. Porn for women can do the same thing by turning men into status or financial objects that women can use for their own gratification and then discard. The fantasy that sells so well to women is characteristically about an attractive but poor, marginal and diffident woman who is romantically attracted to a man who is handsome, rich or powerful (often titled) and confident but also remote or even vaguely sinister; after a series of improbable events, she discovers his “chivalric” side, marries him and lives happily ever after with him.
In real life, of course, things are much more complicated for both men and women–that is, men and women who do not suffer from unusually neurotic or psychotic conditions. Even “shipboard romances” sometimes end in divorce, after all, or worse. But fantasy is not about real life. It’s about emotionally and culturally laden symbols that interact (not always in predictable ways) with natural urges.
Every sexual act, even in the context of cultures that consider sexual relations the potential venue of holiness, involves objectification; no “action” would be possible, after all, without it. That much is pure biology and applies to both straight and gay sex. In fact, though, every relationship of any kind involves some degree of objectification. Martin Buber’s “I-thou” ideal notwithstanding, most human relationships are not, and cannot be, more than instrumental. We don’t have profound personal encounters with sales clerks, for example, or even with physicians. We reserve profound personal encounters for our close friends and families (and are lucky to succeed even with them). Sex introduces an additional level of complexity, however, because it can (but doesn’t always) provide us with both generic physical pleasure and emotional depth. That becomes problematic, to say the least, when people see their partners not as real people but as conventional abstractions: women as “sex objects” (or toys) for men and men as “success objects” (or wallets) for women.
But things change. Society does. So can porn. More women than ever, as you say, now enjoy sexual porn. And more men than ever now enjoy romantic porn. And, as everyone knows, technological change per se has introduced considerably more danger than ever.
And for the women who don’t read romances or what you call porn for women, we actually enjoy good books where neither men nor women are treated like objects and a large glass of good gin, little tonic, lots of ice! If we are having sex, it is with real men or women, not with an image on a page or on a screen. Maybe it is an age thing! As we women get older, we are so much more discerning…
And for the women who don’t read romances or what you call porn for women, we actually enjoy good books where neither men nor women are treated like objects and a large glass of good gin, little tonic, lots of ice! If we are having sex, it is with real men or women, not with an image on a page or on a screen. Maybe it is an age thing! As we women get older, we are so much more discerning…
Was this an academic survey or one done by the Daily Mail? Reason for asking… One could be believed, the other needs a shovel of salt. I recently did a straw poll of female friends and only 2 out of 15 watch porn. As the majority said, “would rather have a good book and a large gin”. Maybe it’s an age thing as most of us are over 60!
I’m going to sound like a snob here (actually I’m ok with that) but you have to ask yourself who the Daily Mail’s sample group is. In my half a century I know only two women who watch porn. Having said that, I do believe it’s on the increase amongst young women and I find it so sad that it’s yet another way society is hoodwinking women into devaluing themselves through the specious guise of “empowerment”. And no, I’m not a prude – the dirtier the better with the right person.
If so, this phenomenon is new. I was the only young woman I new who ever read romance novels with more smut. Most girls I knew were somewhat frightened by it.
As to hardcore porn, I never saw any until after college with a boyfriend who wanted me to watch. I was not terribly into it. It is demeaning to women. Very. And reduces us.
If the article and stats you cite are true, the world has greatly changed. And we know it has. And our girls are being taught to think of themselves in quite horrific ways. IMO. We should be worried.
Despite the downvotes, William, you make a useful point. To that, I would add the following.
Consider the functional equivalent of porn. I refer to the vast industry that produces romance novels and their adaptations for film and television (“soap operas”). No one calls it “porn,” because it looks very different and is addressed to women instead of men. I call it porn for women. It looks formulaic, sentimental or kitschy, sure, but not vulgar, grotesque or overtly sinister. In one important way, though, these two kinds of porn are not so very different. Porn for men “objectifies” women by turning them into sexual objects that men can use for their own gratification and then discard. Porn for women can do the same thing by turning men into status or financial objects that women can use for their own gratification and then discard. The fantasy that sells so well to women is characteristically about an attractive but poor, marginal and diffident woman who is romantically attracted to a man who is handsome, rich or powerful (often titled) and confident but also remote or even vaguely sinister; after a series of improbable events, she discovers his “chivalric” side, marries him and lives happily ever after with him.
In real life, of course, things are much more complicated for both men and women–that is, men and women who do not suffer from unusually neurotic or psychotic conditions. Even “shipboard romances” sometimes end in divorce, after all, or worse. But fantasy is not about real life. It’s about emotionally and culturally laden symbols that interact (not always in predictable ways) with natural urges.
Every sexual act, even in the context of cultures that consider sexual relations the potential venue of holiness, involves objectification; no “action” would be possible, after all, without it. That much is pure biology and applies to both straight and gay sex. In fact, though, every relationship of any kind involves some degree of objectification. Martin Buber’s “I-thou” ideal notwithstanding, most human relationships are not, and cannot be, more than instrumental. We don’t have profound personal encounters with sales clerks, for example, or even with physicians. We reserve profound personal encounters for our close friends and families (and are lucky to succeed even with them). Sex introduces an additional level of complexity, however, because it can (but doesn’t always) provide us with both generic physical pleasure and emotional depth. That becomes problematic, to say the least, when people see their partners not as real people but as conventional abstractions: women as “sex objects” (or toys) for men and men as “success objects” (or wallets) for women.
But things change. Society does. So can porn. More women than ever, as you say, now enjoy sexual porn. And more men than ever now enjoy romantic porn. And, as everyone knows, technological change per se has introduced considerably more danger than ever.
Was this an academic survey or one done by the Daily Mail? Reason for asking… One could be believed, the other needs a shovel of salt. I recently did a straw poll of female friends and only 2 out of 15 watch porn. As the majority said, “would rather have a good book and a large gin”. Maybe it’s an age thing as most of us are over 60!
I’m going to sound like a snob here (actually I’m ok with that) but you have to ask yourself who the Daily Mail’s sample group is. In my half a century I know only two women who watch porn. Having said that, I do believe it’s on the increase amongst young women and I find it so sad that it’s yet another way society is hoodwinking women into devaluing themselves through the specious guise of “empowerment”. And no, I’m not a prude – the dirtier the better with the right person.
You make it sound like only teenage boys watch porn.
But it’s also the case that women watch porn too. If you are interested in balanced reporting… both males and females watch porn.
The Daily Mail reports that “Over half of women (55 per cent) watch pornographic content on their own at least once a month – with 40 per cent watching weekly.”
Here’s the link if you care:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2507752/Over-half-women-regularly-watch-porn-daring-40-admit-making-own.html
“More frequently thought of as a naughty pleasure for men – or obsession for adolescent boys – porn has traditionally been a taboo subject for women.
However it seems that behind closed doors more women than expected are indulging in pornography.
A new survey reveals that over half of women (55 per cent) watch videos with sexual content on their own at least once a month – with a further 40 per cent admitting to switching it on weekly.”
“Porn is a huge commercial operation that makes money by defining and controlling women’s bodies.”
But apparently many women are making porn and many more are watching it and enjoying it.
So what’s your point?
Many women, the world over, engage in prostitution. Do you imagine they enjoy their trade? It was actually a surprise to me when I discovered that some men actually believe this.
Try discussing this with a mixed sex group of intelligent adults. You may see the male/female divide writ large (but you may also fall out with each other).
Of course women make porn. They monetise their youth and beauty in the way models do; they may even feel ‘empowered’ by the attention and financial rewards. But the costs are very high and often only appreciated in retrospect.
Why do you suppose women bring suits against abusers ten and twenty years later? Because they know now what they didn’t know then, that they were young and gullible and the men involved were consciously taking advantage of their vulnerability.
There are many videos online of young women talking about how they are empowered by their ability to make a very lucrative living displaying their bodies. Their body, their choice they say and they are proud of it. And why not. Selling sex is legal in the UK and many other countries plus it was women who campaigned to make selling sex legal. Women have their own ATM cash dispenser. It’s a treasure that women are born with. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they use it.
So women’s bodies are cash dispensers? Yikes. And you wonder why we sometimes despair about some men when you can say that, in all sincerity, to a civilised audience. You may not have daughters, but you surely had a mother?
Young women. Who will mature and have regrets. Anyone who ever tuned into the Bunny Ranch, a reality show about a sex ranch in Nevada, could not possibly walk away thinking the women felt, or were, truly empowered.
The show was meant to show the ranch as a great thing. The women were supposed to make this all acceptable, but the show proved the opposite truth.
Yes, the empowerment argument is delusional. For women it’s comparable to Stockholm Syndrome. For men, it’s just a handy argument to justify their arrested emotional development.
Yes, the empowerment argument is delusional. For women it’s comparable to Stockholm Syndrome. For men, it’s just a handy argument to justify their arrested emotional development.
Women campaigned to legalise sex work so they could secure a modicum of safety from enforcement agencies. A largely vain hope, but it has helped in some ways.
AGP detected!
I don’t quite understand why my previous comment was deleted – but this is clearly the very mindset of the autogynephile?!
A man who cannot understand that women doing sex work might feel like this is their only choice? That their empowerment is short lived and entirely dependent upon their commodity value. Compared to the true self esteem that is the result of pursuing a real career, or raising a family in a state of mutual respect?!
Women and their “cash dispenser” bodies are objects to be used, desired, and possesed. “A treasure that women are born with” that William Shaw was not. And he’s jealous!
So women’s bodies are cash dispensers? Yikes. And you wonder why we sometimes despair about some men when you can say that, in all sincerity, to a civilised audience. You may not have daughters, but you surely had a mother?
Young women. Who will mature and have regrets. Anyone who ever tuned into the Bunny Ranch, a reality show about a sex ranch in Nevada, could not possibly walk away thinking the women felt, or were, truly empowered.
The show was meant to show the ranch as a great thing. The women were supposed to make this all acceptable, but the show proved the opposite truth.
Women campaigned to legalise sex work so they could secure a modicum of safety from enforcement agencies. A largely vain hope, but it has helped in some ways.
AGP detected!
I don’t quite understand why my previous comment was deleted – but this is clearly the very mindset of the autogynephile?!
A man who cannot understand that women doing sex work might feel like this is their only choice? That their empowerment is short lived and entirely dependent upon their commodity value. Compared to the true self esteem that is the result of pursuing a real career, or raising a family in a state of mutual respect?!
Women and their “cash dispenser” bodies are objects to be used, desired, and possesed. “A treasure that women are born with” that William Shaw was not. And he’s jealous!
I imagine they bring suits, like most people, because there is money in it.
Also some women make the choice to make porn just like the make the choice to marry a wealth older ugly men because the calculate that it is better than working for a living.
Down votes but no wants to take the challenge
Down votes but no wants to take the challenge
It should be a surprise to anyone. There are plenty of videos on YouTube where women talk about how much they enjoy what they do, be it acting in porn films, physical prostitution, sugar baby contracts or online OnlyFans. They talk of financial independence and the power it gives them in their lives. For these women at least it’s their body and their decision, and isn’t that what feminism is all about? After all, it was women who campaigned to make selling sex legal.
I, like every sane person, totally oppose forced prostitution, but at the same time I fully support legalised prostitution in controlled, safe and healthy settings.
Some of us continue to fight to have those who buy sex prosecuted as it should be. The majority of women selling sex are still exited and are not in it for themselves per se. They are trafficked or have an addiction or are hooked up with wrong male. One of the few ways to help these women is to prosecute those who buy them and their time. Democratic countries should see this as a win-win for those involved if they value their womenfolk…
Some of us continue to fight to have those who buy sex prosecuted as it should be. The majority of women selling sex are still exited and are not in it for themselves per se. They are trafficked or have an addiction or are hooked up with wrong male. One of the few ways to help these women is to prosecute those who buy them and their time. Democratic countries should see this as a win-win for those involved if they value their womenfolk…
I don’t see what “enjoyment” has to do with pornography, prostitution or any other way of earning money. Most people by far, throughout history, have detested what they’ve had to suffer in order to survive. How many peasants or serfs “enjoyed” dragging iron ploughs through the fields from sunrise to sunset? How many men or women feel “empowered” by selling merchandise or working at tedious jobs in offices in order to make other people rich? If you’re going to argue about the legal or even moral legitimacy of pornography and prostitution, I think that you should at least try to keep psychological speculation out of it.
There are many videos online of young women talking about how they are empowered by their ability to make a very lucrative living displaying their bodies. Their body, their choice they say and they are proud of it. And why not. Selling sex is legal in the UK and many other countries plus it was women who campaigned to make selling sex legal. Women have their own ATM cash dispenser. It’s a treasure that women are born with. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they use it.
I imagine they bring suits, like most people, because there is money in it.
Also some women make the choice to make porn just like the make the choice to marry a wealth older ugly men because the calculate that it is better than working for a living.
It should be a surprise to anyone. There are plenty of videos on YouTube where women talk about how much they enjoy what they do, be it acting in porn films, physical prostitution, sugar baby contracts or online OnlyFans. They talk of financial independence and the power it gives them in their lives. For these women at least it’s their body and their decision, and isn’t that what feminism is all about? After all, it was women who campaigned to make selling sex legal.
I, like every sane person, totally oppose forced prostitution, but at the same time I fully support legalised prostitution in controlled, safe and healthy settings.
I don’t see what “enjoyment” has to do with pornography, prostitution or any other way of earning money. Most people by far, throughout history, have detested what they’ve had to suffer in order to survive. How many peasants or serfs “enjoyed” dragging iron ploughs through the fields from sunrise to sunset? How many men or women feel “empowered” by selling merchandise or working at tedious jobs in offices in order to make other people rich? If you’re going to argue about the legal or even moral legitimacy of pornography and prostitution, I think that you should at least try to keep psychological speculation out of it.
Many women, the world over, engage in prostitution. Do you imagine they enjoy their trade? It was actually a surprise to me when I discovered that some men actually believe this.
Try discussing this with a mixed sex group of intelligent adults. You may see the male/female divide writ large (but you may also fall out with each other).
Of course women make porn. They monetise their youth and beauty in the way models do; they may even feel ‘empowered’ by the attention and financial rewards. But the costs are very high and often only appreciated in retrospect.
Why do you suppose women bring suits against abusers ten and twenty years later? Because they know now what they didn’t know then, that they were young and gullible and the men involved were consciously taking advantage of their vulnerability.
“Porn is a huge commercial operation that makes money by defining and controlling women’s bodies.”
But apparently many women are making porn and many more are watching it and enjoying it.
So what’s your point?