In which CW defends herself, probably badly.
Edit: This page was part of a massive cluster fuck on my part. To find out how I reacted to the cluster fuck, please visit this page
Okay. Time to be a big girl.
I fucked up. I will study more. I expect people not to trigger me, I will learn now not to trigger other people.
I can admit when I was wrong. I hesitated before using the word "bitch" before I used it, which should have been my clue. I decided to use it anyway because I felt Anita Blake's fucked up lack of morality and the author's decision to make Anita's rape alright due to orgasm justified calling the character a dessicated waste of skin and moral fiber, and I felt that "bitch" was a good short hand for it.
I see now that was a mistake. I understand why it was wrong. I will try not to do it in the future.
It would have nice to have had this explained to me the first ninty times I used the word bitch, rather than having other people blow their shit at me, but apparently that is the only way for me to learn.
I am sorry for anyone I offended. I will learn not to do it in the future.
The rant from before is below, in tiny text.
Go Here. Read that.
Come back here. That is the page they're talking about.
First off, let me state that I don't think LKH was raped, because if she was, she wouldn't be writing this shit. I'm saying that she fantasizes about other people being raped. I want that out for the masses, because if somebody's going to call bullshit on me, I want it to be on the right bullshit. I didn't want to say it out loud because it is ugly, but here it is in plain english: She wrote a completely accurate rape scene and intended it to be sexually stimulating for the reader. You don't do that if you've been raped, because that would require imagining yourself back in the event. You imagine somebody else in that position. That way you get your sexy fun-times without having to deal with the nasty fallout.
Now, for the out of context shit. I posted this over on the other blog, but I have no way of knowing if that will show up. So I'm ruining all our fun and posting it here.
I called Anita a bitch because her response to someone trying to protect her from one of the two creatures that raped her less than an hour ago is to attack them verbally using the most damaging emotional ammunition she has. She flat out accuses the cop's wife of sleeping with a vampire so that Anita herself doesn't have to deal with the idea that maybe, just maybe, she's in an abusive relationship. Is it mysogynistic? They say yes. I say no. Anita is supposed to be this glorious empowered woman, and instead of realizing that one or more of her lovers is treating her as less than a worthy human being, she's pulling low blows so she doesn't have to face the idea that maybe she's in a bad relationship. I'm calling Anita out less on being a woman and more on being a terrible cacurature of a human being. And I'm calling her that because Anita is not real.
Anita is LKH's vehicle for the ultimate female. Anita is as much of a strawchick as John Norman's Elinor Brinton, and not in a polar opposite way. They are the same kind of stupid, just a little less magnified in Anita's case. Strawchick was a punching bag. Anita is LKH's Virgin Queen.
Huh? You say? Anita is no virgin. Right. But Queen Elizabeth was.
To be a monarch in England, Elizabeth had to be a virgin. She had to deny her femininity and sexuality and conform to male expectations of morality. She had to refuse to have any relationships at all because to do so would be to undermine her own power. She had to accept male definitions of value to avoid being devalued herself. She had to chose to be a Queen or to have a life as a human being, and because being a woman in her era sucked, she chose to be a Queen.
Anita, virginity aside, is the same damn thing. I criticise her clothing choice because she dresses like a hooker when she goes to crime scenes. This results in scenes where she gets her spike heels stuck in the chest of her opponant, and while doing the inadvertant splits, lets the whole room full of cops know that she isn't wearing underwear. That happened in Kiss the Dead, in a VERY early chapter. Women should get to dress however they want to, but I don't know any woman who would dress in a mini-skirt, midrift shirt and thigh-high boots when she's going into enemy territory to rescue a friend. It's not empowering. It's impractical. It makes Anita look stupid for not taking five minutes to put on new shoes, and maybe check the rest of her costume to make sure it's work approprete. And it happened because her author thought it would look good, not because Anita thought it would look good. Her author wanted a fight with heels, and didn't care that IRL that's a good way to break an ankle. Her author basically treats Anita like she's freaking Power Girl, and if you say the superheroine with the steadily inflating boobs is a respectful deception of costuming for women I will punch you, I swear to God. Anita gets into stupid pissing contests with male authority figures, trying to prove that she is just as good as them, even when the pissing context damages the cause she is fighting for, because surrendering the point would be denying that she's got a bigger penis. Anita constantly belittles blonds and "feminine" women because they are not masculine she-monsters like her and thus could not survive the terrible things that she's seen, when she has no clue what the blond bubble-head's true character is. For all she knows, the bubbly girl has just a big kill count as Anita does, has survived the same terrible history that Anita has, and is just secure enough in her person-hood to not assume the persona someone ELSE thinks she should have. Micah, the POS that raped Anita is viewed as a good guy because he gives her an orgasm, and he has a big penis. Dolph, the cop that Anita verbally abused, is a bad guy for telling Anita that she might be an abuse victim and MIGHT want to go get help. Because showcasing your masculinity is a good thing, and being soft and respectful towards others is bad in this bizzaro "men's world" Anita's author has created.
The problem I have with Anita dressing like a hooker, verbally abusing the people who try to help her and criticising other women is that it is re-enforcing male values, rather than trying to alter them. In effect, Anita has decided that she has to fit into a man's world, and that to fit into the man's world she has to both deny her femininity (something devalued by the male world) and showcase her sexuality (something valued by the male world) in order to prove that she is worthy of working a job that is steriotypically male. She has to prove she has value to men to do her job, rather than saying "Fuck that shit" and accepting that she has value without male approval, and going about her business.
That. is. WRONG.
I'm not saying that it's wrong for a sex worker to dress how she needs to dress to do their job. Nor am I saying that there is anything wrong with a sex worker DOING their job. You make more money than I do, you deserve respect for being a human being in an industry that chews human beings up and spits them out like bubble gum. What I am saying is why the fuck would anyone wear five inch heels and a mini skirt to a crime scene? No one would. So why is it okay for an author to objectify her characters in ways that are offensively stupid?
In short, when I called her a bitch, and said she was everything that men hate about women, I fucking meant it. A friend flat out told her that her relationship was abusive, and she responded by going for his jugular and accusing his wife of having an affair. That is not how a good person behaves. That is how a terrible waste of a human being behaves. She is every non-feminine character trait men have ever belittled, magnified to the extreme and showcased as something that women ought to become because it is "empowering". It is "Empowering" to display your sex appeal to men to earn their approval. It is "empowering" to belittle women who would rather have a designer dress than a Sig-Saur. It is "empowering" to ignore consent and have sex when you don't want to just because you'll have an orgasm at the end. Gag me. I'll be over here with my devalued "feminine" hobbies and my "feminine" love of clothes and makeup and my respect for other human beings, which is obviously another devalued "feminine" trait because it's one Anita doesn't fucking have.
Yes. I called Anita a bitch. Because "terrible, horrible waste of human skin" takes too many words, and it isn't half as funny. If using the word bitch offended you, I am sorry I used one of your trigger words. But I'm going to stand by it. Anita was a fantastic character for nine books, she turned into a horrible excuse for a human being in this one, and she stayed that way for the next ten plus novels because her author thinks Anita is exactly what a free, empowered woman should be like.
That thought alone should make you want to take a fucking shower.
Okay. Time to be a big girl.
I fucked up. I will study more. I expect people not to trigger me, I will learn now not to trigger other people.
I can admit when I was wrong. I hesitated before using the word "bitch" before I used it, which should have been my clue. I decided to use it anyway because I felt Anita Blake's fucked up lack of morality and the author's decision to make Anita's rape alright due to orgasm justified calling the character a dessicated waste of skin and moral fiber, and I felt that "bitch" was a good short hand for it.
I see now that was a mistake. I understand why it was wrong. I will try not to do it in the future.
It would have nice to have had this explained to me the first ninty times I used the word bitch, rather than having other people blow their shit at me, but apparently that is the only way for me to learn.
I am sorry for anyone I offended. I will learn not to do it in the future.
The rant from before is below, in tiny text.
Go Here. Read that.
Come back here. That is the page they're talking about.
First off, let me state that I don't think LKH was raped, because if she was, she wouldn't be writing this shit. I'm saying that she fantasizes about other people being raped. I want that out for the masses, because if somebody's going to call bullshit on me, I want it to be on the right bullshit. I didn't want to say it out loud because it is ugly, but here it is in plain english: She wrote a completely accurate rape scene and intended it to be sexually stimulating for the reader. You don't do that if you've been raped, because that would require imagining yourself back in the event. You imagine somebody else in that position. That way you get your sexy fun-times without having to deal with the nasty fallout.
Now, for the out of context shit. I posted this over on the other blog, but I have no way of knowing if that will show up. So I'm ruining all our fun and posting it here.
I called Anita a bitch because her response to someone trying to protect her from one of the two creatures that raped her less than an hour ago is to attack them verbally using the most damaging emotional ammunition she has. She flat out accuses the cop's wife of sleeping with a vampire so that Anita herself doesn't have to deal with the idea that maybe, just maybe, she's in an abusive relationship. Is it mysogynistic? They say yes. I say no. Anita is supposed to be this glorious empowered woman, and instead of realizing that one or more of her lovers is treating her as less than a worthy human being, she's pulling low blows so she doesn't have to face the idea that maybe she's in a bad relationship. I'm calling Anita out less on being a woman and more on being a terrible cacurature of a human being. And I'm calling her that because Anita is not real.
Anita is LKH's vehicle for the ultimate female. Anita is as much of a strawchick as John Norman's Elinor Brinton, and not in a polar opposite way. They are the same kind of stupid, just a little less magnified in Anita's case. Strawchick was a punching bag. Anita is LKH's Virgin Queen.
Huh? You say? Anita is no virgin. Right. But Queen Elizabeth was.
To be a monarch in England, Elizabeth had to be a virgin. She had to deny her femininity and sexuality and conform to male expectations of morality. She had to refuse to have any relationships at all because to do so would be to undermine her own power. She had to accept male definitions of value to avoid being devalued herself. She had to chose to be a Queen or to have a life as a human being, and because being a woman in her era sucked, she chose to be a Queen.
Anita, virginity aside, is the same damn thing. I criticise her clothing choice because she dresses like a hooker when she goes to crime scenes. This results in scenes where she gets her spike heels stuck in the chest of her opponant, and while doing the inadvertant splits, lets the whole room full of cops know that she isn't wearing underwear. That happened in Kiss the Dead, in a VERY early chapter. Women should get to dress however they want to, but I don't know any woman who would dress in a mini-skirt, midrift shirt and thigh-high boots when she's going into enemy territory to rescue a friend. It's not empowering. It's impractical. It makes Anita look stupid for not taking five minutes to put on new shoes, and maybe check the rest of her costume to make sure it's work approprete. And it happened because her author thought it would look good, not because Anita thought it would look good. Her author wanted a fight with heels, and didn't care that IRL that's a good way to break an ankle. Her author basically treats Anita like she's freaking Power Girl, and if you say the superheroine with the steadily inflating boobs is a respectful deception of costuming for women I will punch you, I swear to God. Anita gets into stupid pissing contests with male authority figures, trying to prove that she is just as good as them, even when the pissing context damages the cause she is fighting for, because surrendering the point would be denying that she's got a bigger penis. Anita constantly belittles blonds and "feminine" women because they are not masculine she-monsters like her and thus could not survive the terrible things that she's seen, when she has no clue what the blond bubble-head's true character is. For all she knows, the bubbly girl has just a big kill count as Anita does, has survived the same terrible history that Anita has, and is just secure enough in her person-hood to not assume the persona someone ELSE thinks she should have. Micah, the POS that raped Anita is viewed as a good guy because he gives her an orgasm, and he has a big penis. Dolph, the cop that Anita verbally abused, is a bad guy for telling Anita that she might be an abuse victim and MIGHT want to go get help. Because showcasing your masculinity is a good thing, and being soft and respectful towards others is bad in this bizzaro "men's world" Anita's author has created.
The problem I have with Anita dressing like a hooker, verbally abusing the people who try to help her and criticising other women is that it is re-enforcing male values, rather than trying to alter them. In effect, Anita has decided that she has to fit into a man's world, and that to fit into the man's world she has to both deny her femininity (something devalued by the male world) and showcase her sexuality (something valued by the male world) in order to prove that she is worthy of working a job that is steriotypically male. She has to prove she has value to men to do her job, rather than saying "Fuck that shit" and accepting that she has value without male approval, and going about her business.
That. is. WRONG.
I'm not saying that it's wrong for a sex worker to dress how she needs to dress to do their job. Nor am I saying that there is anything wrong with a sex worker DOING their job. You make more money than I do, you deserve respect for being a human being in an industry that chews human beings up and spits them out like bubble gum. What I am saying is why the fuck would anyone wear five inch heels and a mini skirt to a crime scene? No one would. So why is it okay for an author to objectify her characters in ways that are offensively stupid?
In short, when I called her a bitch, and said she was everything that men hate about women, I fucking meant it. A friend flat out told her that her relationship was abusive, and she responded by going for his jugular and accusing his wife of having an affair. That is not how a good person behaves. That is how a terrible waste of a human being behaves. She is every non-feminine character trait men have ever belittled, magnified to the extreme and showcased as something that women ought to become because it is "empowering". It is "Empowering" to display your sex appeal to men to earn their approval. It is "empowering" to belittle women who would rather have a designer dress than a Sig-Saur. It is "empowering" to ignore consent and have sex when you don't want to just because you'll have an orgasm at the end. Gag me. I'll be over here with my devalued "feminine" hobbies and my "feminine" love of clothes and makeup and my respect for other human beings, which is obviously another devalued "feminine" trait because it's one Anita doesn't fucking have.
Yes. I called Anita a bitch. Because "terrible, horrible waste of human skin" takes too many words, and it isn't half as funny. If using the word bitch offended you, I am sorry I used one of your trigger words. But I'm going to stand by it. Anita was a fantastic character for nine books, she turned into a horrible excuse for a human being in this one, and she stayed that way for the next ten plus novels because her author thinks Anita is exactly what a free, empowered woman should be like.
That thought alone should make you want to take a fucking shower.
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