I have seen Slate writers refer to #slatepitch. They know their reputation.
Don't read Slate, don't follow Slate writers on twitter. I've found the Slate-free life both rewarding and easy to achieve.
Is linking to a google search for an article now the preferred etiquette when discussing an article to which one prefers not to link? (Whether because the article itself is linkbait or otherwise.) I'd not seen that before, but it seems like a good enough solution.
I gave up on Slate years ago. For a while Dahlia Lithwick's column kept me checking in every now and then, but eventually it wasn't enough.
Slate's problem now is that The Atlantic is trying to move into their niche of high end trolling.
I think The Atlantic started doing that with Caitlin Flanagan's first long article in January 2003.
I check in every now and then to read Dana Stevens and listen to Spoiler Specials about movies that I know I'm not going to see but that everyone else will talk about.
Recently, I've had a series of interesting conversations with a friend about sex in which one or the other of us makes some kind of provisionally sexist claim and then we end up realizing that (1) it applies equally well to the other person's experience of the opposite sex, and (2) it's also usually a behavior that could be addressed fairly clearly and non-neurotically in a relationship if one stopped assuming it was "natural" or part of some larger system of problematic behaviors.
...and probably that my experiences of homosexual sex don't map onto my male friend's heterosexual experience because heterosexuality invokes a whole complicated system of stereotypes and norms that homosexuality doesn't.
9: Slate totally pwned you on that -- they checked with a real lesbian and she thought women are passive about sex as well.
Lesbians all just sit around in gay bars going "I dunno. I mean, like, if you really wanted to?" "Ew, gross!"
Have you looked at the Slate article at all, AWB?
I have, and that's not a bad summary. Oh, the lesbian who wrote in said that she's not passive, but other lesbians all are.
Yep. I don't see how anything gets addressed clearly and non-neurotically, regardless of assumptions about nature.
And honestly, how much fun would that be? Neurotic ambiguity is where my premarital love-life got whatever minimal interest it had.
The setup 12/14 is not how things work for lesbians in the gay bars here, but there's also the whole quick-relationship-and-eventual-lesbian-bed-death stereotype that is also not totally false in the community and passivity of a sort seems to be one of the factors there.
15: My friend was complaining that women only seem to enjoy sex acts if you pretend that you're not doing it *for* them, but that that your own desires just happen to be precisely the thing that happens to get them off. He started to rhapsodize about how femininity dictates this kind of passive-aggressive manipulation and yadda yadda.
I countered that I thought everyone enjoyed sex acts that aren't posed as distasteful favors. We discussed whether getting one's cock sucked feels nicer when the giver is in an attitude of "I don't really like this, but I'll do it as long as it makes you come" or when the giver is in an attitude of "Jesus Christ, I love sucking your cock." So too with cunnilingus...
Hope that makes sense? Have to go attend to something.
That makes sense. I was just having trouble with the general version.
Yeah, I think examples help. There have been several, and assumptions made on both sides that need correcting. My common complaint about men counting coup--leading a woman on until she basically begs for sex, and then suddenly disappearing or revealing a hidden life-partner--turns out to be very similar to complaints my friend has about women he's flirting with. I don't tend to have the same problem with women unless they're straight.
Also 20.3 made me laugh, coming on the heels* of 20.2 as it did.
*novel sexual act?
20: there seems to be a middle ground between "this disgusts me but I'll do it anyway, for you" and "I get off like nobody's business doing this".
Hee. Have to drive someone to the airport, because I am the only person in town who can do favors for anyone. Catsitting, plumber-waiting, mowing, chauffeuring...
24: Oh sure. But on the spectrum, I'd say the right end is more appealing to me.
I don't have a well-informed position on this subject, but this is another Slate piece that strikes me as misguided.
The author asks that people drop the phrase "sexual preference" in favor of "sexual orientation." Specifically:
That's because the very construct of a preference, or the verb "to prefer," implies that the individual has a choice, that there are options available and yet, all else being equal and as a matter of taste, really, the person would rather "this one" over "that one." Think how bizarre it would sound if we were to apply the same language to any other unalterable biological trait. "Suit yourself, and to each his own," we might reason, "but my preference is to have hands this size, not that size."
I don't think it matters whether a person's sexual orientation is a matter of preference or hard-wiring - and I suspect sometimes it's either/both. And I think that Slate would be well-served by an analogy ban. Behavioral traits don't have the same attributes as those of physical biology.
But I may have this wrong, and I'm interested in the opinion of the Unfoggetariat.
plumber-waiting
Maybe the documentary I saw was right about plumbers.
there seems to be a middle ground between "this disgusts me but I'll do it anyway, for you" and "I get off like nobody's business doing this".
That would be "I don't inherently enjoy doing this, but I get off on how much you enjoy it."
I don't think that using "prefer" implies that the subject has a choice, in the way the author thinks it does. "I prefer having sex with foos rather than with bars" may imply that there's a choice between sexing foos and sexing bars and that I plump for the former. And that seems … accurate, in that there are people who identify as gay who have had sex with persons of the opposite sex and people who identify as straight who've had sex with persons of the same sex.
What the author wants to, or ought to want to, deny is that the preference itself is a matter of choice. But simply stating the existence of the preference doesn't imply that the preference is chosen or not.
(The exact same argument could be mounted regarding "orientation", after all. Couldn't you face in a different direction?)
30: I love it when you make things explicit.
Sexual orientation means liking sex with people from east of you. This leaves me only Long Island.
32: I earned my NC-17 rating the hard way, IYKNWIM, AITTYD.
24: Oh sure. But on the spectrum, I'd say the right end is more appealing to me.
The important distinction is between people who feel this way and conclude, "Hey, let's only do the things I like that you can actually enjoy doing," and those who feel this way and conclude, "Hey, let's definitely do this, but it's not good enough for you to do it, you also have to convince me that you adore it. TRY HARDER."
Whether or not it's true, I think most people do agree with the author's assessment of preference vs. orientation, and that that's why "preference" lost out ages ago. So not exactly a quixotic stand.
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Great Chicago + weather phenomenon pic.
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I've said this before, but I think there's a lot to be gained from disaggregating at least three components of sexual orientation/preference: behavior/history, desire, and identity (and even here you have multiple dimensions--public/private, different audiences, &c). They don't always match up cleanly, and the last in particular is much more straightforwardly a matter of contingent and historical social construction than the others. (Although the others have obvious elements of this--on the veldt, fantasizes about vinyl were, what?)
on the veldt, fantasizes about vinyl were, what?
Forward looking.
I think there'd be a lot to be gained from assigning sexual partners by random lot.
Not every kink is possible at all times.
this is another Slate piece that strikes me as misguided.
If we're going down that rabbit hole, this thread could easily go to 1,000.
42: There's already a political institution well designed to support this. If we gave it a dual purpose, maybe more people would show up for jury duty.
40: x.trapnel is very right. The reductiveness of so much of the discourse on sexuality is extremely annoying.
20: This is really well said -- that the same behavior can look anywhere from passive to controlling depending on your pre-existing beliefs about the actor.
"Jesus Christ, I love sucking your cock."
So much for AWB's discretion!
49 suggest a new way to interpret "Christ, what an asshole!"
Can you blame her? That dude is hung like this. [Stretches out arms crucifix-style]
Serious social-science research on asexuality (the 1992 NHSLS study, say) does make the distinction in 40 - desire, behavior, identity, in what turn out to be decreasing measures of same-sex orientation.
Bah, just "sexuality" there. DYAC.
Ah, I thought that seemed a bit unusual.
I had "I see now" somehow end up us as "Oswego" today (of course, God--and someone at the NSA--only knows what I actually typed).
19: Hmm, I seem to feel a parody coming on...
56: That's rough. I didn't get 69 until 25.
In high school I asked why it was 69 and not equally 96 because the rotational symmetry is the same, I wasn't thinking about the location of the parts. I guess 96 is when you've been married for many years and just want to go to sleep.
I think there's a lot to be gained from disaggregating at least three components of sexual orientation/preference
Definitely. I think there's a lot of room for figuring out what those components are--I (being a boringly reductionist person) like thisalthough it doesn't map exactly onto your dimensions--but the usual presentation as a duality causes a lot of pain, both obvious and non-obvious, for what doesn't seem like a lot of gain beyond status quo preservation.
I was wondering when this was going to come up here. I'm usually something of a Slate apologist, but I hate this sexual passivity stuff with a passion.
Also AWB's 20 is really interesting.
65: Because it's tritely essentializing or what?
Sexual orientation means liking sex with people from east of you. This leaves me only Long Island.
Smearcase doesn't even see Europe.
68: I think he does and is just being polite rather than explaining the real reason for his move to the West Coast.
I think my quick complaint about the Slate stuff would be that it strikes me that not wanting to make the first move in a lesbian bar, not feeling able to communicate sexual needs/desire with an ongoing partner, and being turned on by being the submissive(ish) object of a partner's intense sexual attention can all be different issues that don't need to be lumped in as "passivity" so that stories about them prove that women are always passive. But linkbait is always going to go for brash headlines over nuance.
Is there, like, anything so very wrong with being "passive?" Scarey quotes. I mean, do we really all have to demonstrative assertive aggressive predatory cannibalistic werewolves? All of us? Difference, folks. And umm hybridity or something.
And "passive" is so umm passive. Just cause I sit like a mushroom not speaking or moving for weeks on end doesn't mean I don't have agency. It's Buddha-nature, outreaching to nothing and nowhere in particular. Not giving a fuck is hard work, dammit, and should be respected.
And I forget what this "sex" thing is anyway. Something messy that makes parents I think.
Mushrooms! Get your mushrooms here! Freshly picked by squirrels!
Mushrooms have agency, just not in any way you can understand.
Whenever Slate runs one of their "You're Doing It Wrong" headlines, I fantasize about punching their editors in the face over and over, shouting "Now I'm doing it left!"
While punching them in the face with your right, just to fuck them up.
74: "What's the wavelength, Kenneth?" #slatepitch
77: For the full #slatepitch, you'll need the "(Hint: It's not what you think it is!)".
(Btw, it's "frequency", not "wavelength." </SALB>)
Not giving a fuck is hard work, dammit, and should be respected.
It's a full-time occupation, leaving well enough alone
Letting sleeping dogs lie and not answering the phone.
(Btw, it's "frequency", not "wavelength." )
That was the (attempted) joke!
80: I specialize in ruining jokes by making the implicit explicit.
It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.
I think there probably is some eggs expensive/sperm cheap factor driving an on-average difference in how discriminating men and women are sexually -- that is, the typical woman seems to be sexually attracted to a smaller fraction of men than the fraction of women the typical man is attracted to. That's not at all the same as aggressiveness, though -- women could be equally aggressive when attracted. But it could easily be mistaken for aggressiveness, particularly since it implies that women will naturally get more approaches than men do and therefore will have less need to be aggressive.
Slate's comparative advantage is wit and intelligence, so we often make our biggest gains from our smartest stories.
That's the issue right there, they mistake contrarianism for wit and intelligence.
That's the issue right there, they mistake contrarianism for wit and intelligence.
And it's not just Slate. The widespread conflation of "contrarian" with "smart" is one of the more pernicious (or maybe just plain annoying) trends of our time.
84: Very smart of you to buck that trend.
There must be a third option that splits the difference!
It's interesting how this thread has largely resisted taking the bait about the substance of the piece in the OP.
It's just too stupid. Maybe I can't understand "men go like *this*, and women go like *that*" just-so stories because I have zero friends who fit into neat mainstream sitcom-plot gender categories. I would like to believe that sitcom gender does not actually exist in real life and is just a thing that happens on television and can be ignored, but I'm willing to accept that if you spend your life with outliers, statistical analysis of gender just isn't going to apply to anyone you know or would consider sleeping with.
Passive or not, women enjoy it more.
87: If women were passive when it comes to sex I'd have missed out on over half my sexual partners, including the the best ones.
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Something went wrong. Fifteen years ago I had some beautiful software and they took it over, I don't know what they did but it was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute to do my taxes while I fucked my accountant.
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That's not at all the same as aggressiveness, though -- women could be equally aggressive when attracted.
Well, it's better than "demonstrative" or "assertive" but we're talkin' about sex here. S-E-X
Predatory, cannibalistic, voracious, nature tooth claw and more dangerous organs, vulturine is good, marauding, ravening, pleonectic (?), insubmissive, martial, emulous, rapacious, devouring, zealous, what is that japanese word for berzerker, oooh corybantic, like-frank-gorshin-and-lou-antonio-grappling-into-eternity
Strindbergian!
Sometimes I think y'all have ignored Emerson and I about relationships.
Somehow at the dawn of internet time I had a choice whether to become a Slate reader or a Salon reader and since then I have always been utterly at home reading Slate, no matter how insistently stupid their stories get, and strongly put off reading Salon, no matter how lively and liberal they get. (Josh Eidelson, for god's sake?) It's... more of an orientation than a preference.
95: Slate readers do it like this; Salon readers do it like this.
...and that has made all the difference.
I really like Eidelson's reporting but find him kind of annoying on his new podcast; prefer co-host Sarah Jaffe.
I think I used to read Salon more than Slate. Now I'm wondering whether to unfollow Yggles on Twitter. He just gets worse and worse.
98: Yeah, those were the days. Suck.com, feedmag.com, even a little plastic.com -- my old pseud got its start there.
The widespread conflation of "contrarian" with "smart" is one of the more pernicious (or maybe just plain annoying) trends of our time.
It happens like this:
It does not take great brains to make an obvious (and correct) argument for X. "We should put money into cancer research, because cancer is bad." It does take great brains to make a non-obvious or even counterintuitive (and yet correct) argument for X. "We should take patrol officers off the streets, because research shows that they're actually doing more to cut crime if they're concentrating on a few hotspots."
So if someone's making obvious arguments for X, we can't draw any conclusions about their intelligence or otherwise from that fact.
The logical slip happens here, so pay attention:
People making obvious arguments about X are not necessarily intelligent;
Therefore
People making non-obvious arguments about X are necessarily intelligent.
The school system doesn't help. You spend primary school learning obvious common-sense explanations for stuff. Then at secondary school and university you get told "actually, that really obvious intuitive explanation isn't really the correct one; the correct one is this". We're predisposed to believe that non-obvious explanations are really correct, and obvious ones are just for kids.
As it started, I was really expecting the video in 92 to be, I dunno, cool? But then it turns out to be mostly pathetic. He overdoes everything (the swearing, the attitude to women, the weapons), and at first you think he's having a joke at his own expense, but then the more you watch the more it seems like he really would like that joke to be true. Which is kinda sad.
104: Yes, the video kind of was his life writ small.
I think 102 and 103 nail it. Many of the #slatepitch ideas are basically A- undergrad essays, and it's a cheap and easy way to seem kinda smart and say something about something if its your job to seem kinda smart and say something about something.
84, 102, 103, 106: I think you guys are falling for the conventional wisdom. If you step back and look at it, you realize that #slatepitch ideas are in fact a conscious attempt to appeal to what they perceive as the stupidity of their audience. It's an exercise in contempt.
106, 107: I'm tempted to blame Econ101 for encouraging a generation of Yggles types to think that shallow contrarianism is actually deep bucking-the-conventional-wisdom-of-the-sheeple insight.
But maybe that impression is just a product of too much time on the internet.
That said, some #slatepitches are so blatant that I think 107 might be right.
98: I got an email to suck.com published once. I thought their response was kinda weak, but I was still chuffed.
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Huh. Apparently they now play advertisements over the PA of Port Authority (of Allegheny County) buses. When did that start?
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I haven't noticed it yet and I've been on them probably five times this week. Of course, when I ride the crowds are such that it would be hard to tell.
It was for Megabus, which at least seems like a complementary service.
Also, I think if you say Port Authority, every one knows you mean the Port Authority of Allegheny County. It's not like any place else of equal significance has a "Port Authority."
I couldn't recall if that lesser Port Authority also manages buses and light rail, the natural realm of Authorities of Port, or merely boats and watery things.
115 speaks to an enviable unfamiliarity with one of NYC's grimmest landmarks.
It has a bus terminal, but I don't know if it runs any buses.
The local port authority rebranded itself in some brevity-enamored era so people don't actually call it the port authority.
110 sounds incredibly irritating. The PA commercials at the gas station make me want to punch someone.
Here, let us pass the time by all looking together at a list of United States port authorities.
121: It's much easier to find someone to punch on a bus.
120: Interesting that they're doing it at set locations. I think it was at 5th and Atwood at the time. I guess it could be helpful for developing a wake-up-at-my-stop intuition.
121: I'm sure I'll grow to hate it. On the other hand, I'm almost completely dependent upon public transportation and the administration of The Port Authority Whose Identity Is Understood Without Context has historically been rather bad at managing money, so I'll take almost any minor inconvenience or commercialization so long as bus service continues.
124.2: I was surprised at the number of cities in Ohio that have done this -- nothing like that here in Cbus.
108: That said, some #slatepitches are so blatant that I think 107 might be right.
Ah, I guess I left the #slatepitch hashtag off of 107...
122: Hmph. Typically, they did not include the St. Paul Port Authority. Mpls. doesn't actually seem to have one as such, and of course there has been a lot of mumbling about completely shutting down the Port of Minneapolis for some time, but I don't think it is quite dead yet. There are literally only 2 or 3 users right now, as you can only get a couple of barges up the Mississippi that far.
116: I like the bus terminal. Sure, it's a little grim but it's extraordinarily efficient, and functionality has its own inherent beauty.
Or so my slatepitch says.
124.2: and the administration of The Port Authority Whose Identity Is Understood Without Context has historically been rather bad at managing money
And whose board the state (and some other folks than the county exec) will now take a hand in appointing. I believe this is a compromise with some who wanted the state to become significantly involved in its operation.
|| Big win for corporate america in the SC today in the arbitration case.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-133_19m1.pdf
The dissent by Justice Kagan is worth reading. |>
129: The original plan seemed pretty bad, but the compromise seems better than letting the County Exec appoint the whole thing.
129: I don't have a good sense at all as to whether that's an improvement. Local management has lead to a significant reduction in both routes and frequency, but e.g. the Turnpike Authority is famously corrupt.
And the new county exec's first move on the Port Authority was to appoint someone from the Turnpike Authority to run the Port Authority. That guy got indicted before he could even be approved.
130 -- what a great dissent, what a horrible decision. Kagan has turned out very well.
130, 134: Man, she's clear. If more judges wrote like that, I'd be better about keeping myself abreast of recent developments in the law. I could do with fewer rhetorical questions, but it's generally a pleasure to read something written in English like that.
And, of course, she's right, which she might have been even with a badly written decision.
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Winner of the unofficial "most gendered congratulations for the birth of Zardoz" card contest in the flickr pool.
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Oh bro you have no idea just how gendered things will become, and I say that as a man who just purchased a copy of a book called "Stories of Magic Ponies."
We will fight back with quadcopters.
137: I knew you were a Brony. The Crossfit was a give-away.
It's true. I wear this shirt.
There's also this, which is truly the greatest T-Shirt ever.
The unicorn thing is pretty 2002, no?
If it is, I'll have to repaint the living room.
If 2002 would kill you, maybe.
I'm in the process of repainting on bedroom now, so I need to know before I go buy roller covers.
I feel like 2002 was willing to kill, yeah.
Noting my own comment is pathetic beyond belief, but I must say that I was subtly pleased beyond reason with 107 as an exercise in old school trolling before punks like Serdar Argic pushed that term in a different direction.
130: thanks, I would never have read that on my own.
