Because it's a math problem that seems to turn on whether you're talking about the mean or the median. Booooring.
The message here is that there is an elite corps of women who are having sex with virtually everyone they know in order to keep the ladies' average up.
It's not a math problem. They just ignored the gay sex.
Really, the relevant questions are these: is there an elite corp of female sexxors, and if so, does anyone have a number?
We are trained from a young age at The Academy. Our mission is simple. We often have russian accents and dresses with long slits up the leg.
Men inflate their number; women deflate it. (Flaccid l'il numbers.)
Men inflate their member; women deflate it.
I thought you were supposed to double the number given by women.
there is an elite corps of women who are having sex with virtually everyone they know
The few. The proud. The sluts.
The NYT should also run a correction to/article on this idea that single men live on the West Coast and single women live on the East Coast. Those numbers simply don't account for 1) the large populations of gay men on the West Coast, which inflates the number of eligible bachelors, and 2) the large populations of incarcerated black men on the East Coast, which decreases the pool of eligible bachelors.
1: Well, the 'logically impossible' bit turns on the difference between the mean and the median. If they're the same, as they would be if number of sex partners formed a bell curve, then it's impossible either way.
Randomly extrapolating from personal experience -- among people I know, there seem to be more men who've had very few sex partners than women. Say, for a man in his thirties, I'd find fewer than five lifetime sex partners not all that surprising, while I would be surprised for a woman (limited, of course, by the socioeconomic factors that determine the sort of person I'm likely to know.)
You'll know the elite corps of women by their Members Only jackets.
Oh god, that dot over Western Pa is depressing.
College years don't count in your tally, right?
It looks like one of the studies was using the median, and at least one study was using the mean, so the mean-median distinction doesn't entirely explain things.
Now we've got to decide who is lying more.
LB, you realize there's no way that "number of sex partners" forms a bell curve, right? It's bounded on one side, a side not all that far away from the median. This is very like the dead-Iraqi problem. The mean very likely could be higher.
While it is certainly plausible that men overstate their numbers and women understate theirs, the NYT write-up is hardly conclusive proof of that proposition.
Without having reviewed the research methodology, the casual dismissal of the prostitution angle seemed a little too cavalier to me. Are the researchers really certain that prostitutes are not underrepresented in the sample data? Because the addition or subtraction of a single industrious prostitute could make an enormous difference in the sample mean.
Also, could such a person be reasonably expected to know or accurately report her total number of sex partners if that number were, say, in the thousands?
Or the simple explanation. There is a population of women looking askance at these men and asking, "Really? You called that sex?"
Well, LB, all a oman has to do is pass out drunk, and voila! -- instant sex partner. Guys have to work at it.
Oh, true, it's not going to form a real bell curve, but it's possible for it to be symmetrical enough for the median not to be too far off the mean. I'm not saying there's any strong reason to think that this is true, but it could be, and it would be obvious one way or the other from the original data.
20: I don't know about how much work the 'prostitution effect' is going to do for you. While I'm sure there are more johns than prostitutes, I'd also expect the population of men who have ever had sex with a prostitute is a reasonably small percentage of the population, and that it largely consists of men who've had sex with a number of prostitutes. If we're talking medians, then, (and this is all pulled out of my ass), johns are going to predominantly be in the right-hand, more sex partners part of the graph, and won't move the median number of sex partners up significantly, because the median guy hasn't ever patronized a prostitute. (Patronizing a prostitute: "Really, on you, the vinyl miniskirt is very flattering.")
"No, I don't think your a slut. Of course not. Now give it here."
27: "That's a big word for a nine-year-old."
People who patronize can't spell "you're".
"Here, I bought us popcorn to share during the movie."
21: Taking this idea seriously, I wonder if women might be more likely than men (or vice versa) to use a clintonian definition of sex for purposes of reporting the number of partners.
I don't know about how much work the 'prostitution effect' is going to do for you.
Until you're willing to cough up more dough.
31: Well, first, what definition of "sex partner" were the studies using?
FWIW, here's Wikipedia
According to the paper "Estimating the prevalence and career longevity of prostitute women" (Potterat et al., 1990), the number of full-time equivalent prostitutes in a typical area in the United States (Colorado Springs, CO, during 1970-1988) is estimated at 23 per 100,000 population (0.023%), of which fraction some 4% were under 18. The length of these prostitutes' working careers was estimated at a mean of 5 years. A follow-up paper entitled "Prostitution and the sex discrepancy in reported number of sexual partners" (Brewer et al., 2000) goes on to estimate a mean number of 868 male sexual partners per prostitute per year of active sex work, and offers the conclusion that men's self-reporting of prostitutes as sexual partners is seriously under-reported.A 1994 study found that 16 percent of 18 to 59-year-old men in a U.S. survey group had paid for sex (Gagnon, Laumann, and Kolata 1994).
I don't know if LB considers 16% to be "a reasonably small percentage of the population" or not.
How do you calculate a prostitution FTE? Are the FTEs the ones with full fringe benefits and a pension plan?
what definition of "sex partner" were the studies using?
I knew a girl who claimed to be a virgin. When everyone pointed out the bed thumping noises coming from her room, she said "but he always pulls out!"
I would expect that unless the study were done by idiots, they put some work into defining 'sex' unambigiously and symmetrically. Doesn't mean there isn't some such confusion going on, but it shouldn't be huge.
Backtracking on my earlier comment, if the numbers that Wikipedia cites are close to correct, then the prostitution effect would only raise the women's mean by 1 or so partner. So I guess LB has a point.
Colorado Springs? That choice doesn't surprise me.
I'm reluctant to generalize from my own culture and age-cohort, but it seems there must be a systematic reporting bias, and that the averages for both men and women seem suspiciously low for mine.
"The prostitution effect" s/b "the domestic prostitution effect", because it still wouldn't account for the sex-holiday-in-Thailand/business-meeting-in-Amsterdam type situation.
Hoping to deflect away from the boring questions about distributions, lying, and outlier individuals: Do men and women forget former partners differently? That is, consider the partner just barely worth remembering. Does such a marginal partner differ for men and for women? Is shame or indifference or maybe something else the primary driver of forgetting? Please include a topic sentence in your response.
For whatever it's worth, I find that changes in how I feel about memories are one of the most surprising things about aging. I'm beginning to see the outlines of a trajectory to befuddled oldster who occasionally confuses present and past; this disturbs the reasoning parts of me, but it is not frightening for some reason. Paying attention to other people in the present is an obvious remedy, an exogenous benefit of love. I would expect there to be good poetry about this, but nothing in Shakespeare or Donne. Does Montaigne have any memory essays? Aside from love, sometimes hard to come by, a habit of lying, which forces one to remember what was said to whom, might also serve as an anchor.
34: For the purposes of my point, I think it is. I need to assume that the vast majority of that 16% goes to enough different prostitutes to insure that they have more than the male median number of sex partners, but I think that's a reasonable assumption. (Maybe I'm wrong, and that 16% is 80% guys who've been to one prostitute, once, and 20% habitual patronizers of prostitutes. If so, the argument fails.) Under that assumption, then, the presence of johns won't move the male median much, because there aren't any significant number of johns under the median.
The message here is that there is an elite corps of women who are having sex with virtually everyone they know in order to keep the ladies' average up.
I know a few people like that.
The median/mean thing is all very well but I do think it's the straightforward 'men tend to round up/women tend to round down' thing, much of the time.
Whenever I've had these conversations with friends in real life I am always struck by the widespread egregious lying. With people I know to have only recently had sex for the first time confidently claiming a dozen partners or more, for example, and vice versa. I called someone on it once; that's apparently not something people take kindly to.
There is a population of women looking askance at these men and asking, "Really? You called that sex?"
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
estimate a mean number of 868 male sexual partners per prostitute per year of active sex work
Jesus Christ, that's the mean??
I think 42 is really interesting.
What's the underlying issue here? We all pretty much agree, I think, that
* men have incentives to overreport
* women have incentives to underreport
* men are, for one reason or another, more comfortable with random sex than women
* women have an easier time finding a sex partner than men.
So doesn't it make a certain sense that there are probably a larger proportion of women who put up big numbers and a larger proportion of women who put up small numbers, as well as some lying in the relevant direction by each? And couldn't that be the circumstance be described by the numbers here?
re: 42
Certainly whenever I've tried to count my number of partners I always get to some number and then begin remembering people I've forgotten and each time I try there's someone else I've either remembered this time or failed to remember that I didn't before, etc.
I don't know if that's gendered, though. I've read a column by a female journalist describing exactly the same phenomena.
46: Kind of sheds a new light on the discussion of prostitution as possibly a reasonably humane way of earning a living, as demonstrated by cheerful and personally fulfilled professionals like the English Courtesan. Of course, maybe the median is much lower, and the mean is being dragged up by a few women with tens of thousands of partners in a year. But at some point you're going to run into time constraints.
* women have an easier time finding a sex partner than men.
Doesn't this have the same asymmetry problem as the original study?
* men are, for one reason or another, more comfortable with random sex than women
And this one too?
49: Sounds familiar. And I wouldn't be surprised if this does explain the discrepancy in terms of more men being invested in 'getting credit for' each distinct partner, and more women feeling more comfortable glossing over partners that weren't memorable or important, as lw suggested in 42.
The underlying issues seems to be whether it's plausible that people continued to lie in an anonymous survey. I am a little skeptical, because people seem to tell a lot under anonymity (or Presidential pseudonymity) that they wouldn't otherwise. I can see believing that people would lie to their friends, or fudge if 'sex partner' was ambiguous in polite conversation, but I'm having a harder time believing that in a survey.
43. Maybe I'm wrong, and that 16% is 80% guys who've been to one prostitute, once, and 20% habitual patronizers of prostitutes.
I shouldn't be at all surprised, actually. There are or were, at least over here, delightful male cultures where it's considered amusing to buy your mate a woman on his 21st birthday or his stag night or whatever. I'd like to think this sort of thing was dying out, but if you're going up to age 59, it would certainly be reflected in the numbers.
offers the conclusion that men's self-reporting of prostitutes as sexual partners is seriously under-reported
Does this mean not reporting them at all, which means the men's score should be higher, or not reporting them as prostitutes, while nonetheless counting them, do you think?
51: I don't think it does, if you mess around with assumptions like 'reasonably attractive women' that can grow or shrink the relevant population as you need to to avoid asymmetry.
The question is, why are these people lying to SCIENCE? If some guy I'm dating asks me in that Now, honey, how many? way (no one ever has, but I can imagine it), I might shave a few off the top. But for science, I'll do a recount.
I hate to say it, but I do agree with the elite corps theory, for both sexes, which can really skew things in surprising ways. Most men and women have not had a great huge number of partners because they're busy being in relationships that last year upon miserable year. Then you have a small percentage on both sides who are getting their groove on, some to an alarming degree. Is it not possible that this messes with the math?
54: that's true enough, but the problem is the numbers are clearly wrong, and given that, lying seems the most likely--indeed, the only plausible--explanation. (Using "lying" generously to include forgetting, miscounting, etc.)
There are or were, at least over here, delightful male cultures where it's considered amusing to buy your mate a woman on his 21st birthday or his stag night or whatever.
That's not unknown here, but I have the (vague, unsupported, I really have no idea) impression that it's the sort of thing that happens among guys who do that sort of thing, if you see what I mean on a non-tautological level. Someone whose buddies are hiring him a hooker for a special occasion, is probably someone in a social group where hooker-hiring isn't unusual, so probably not the 'under the median number of sex partners' guy. But I'm really making this up here, I just don't know. You could be absolutely right.
The question is, why are these people lying to SCIENCE? If some guy I'm dating asks me in that Now, honey, how many? way (no one ever has, but I can imagine it), I might shave a few off the top. But for science, I'll do a recount.
I think people lie in surveys all the time, to paint themselves rosier.
Most men and women have not had a great huge number of partners because they're busy being in relationships that last year upon miserable year. Then you have a small percentage on both sides who are getting their groove on, some to an alarming degree.
And the large swathe of people who alternate between lengthy periods of monogamy and shorter periods of busy shagging.
51: I suppose it would, assuming equivalent feelings of horniness, permissability of promiscuity, etc. among both genders. The typical explanation, I believe, is that since men want more sex partners, more often, while women are societally or naturally predisposed to sleeping with new guys less often, the men will feel that it is difficult to find a willing partner when they go out seeking sex while women do not, because men do so more often (all in relative senses and allowing for far greater intra-gender variance than inter-gender variance).
So it's not a difference in the number of willing partners, it's a difference in the success rate of seeking new partners, or at least that's the perception.
Is it not possible that this messes with the math?
It is not possible that this messes with the mean, no.
men want more sex partners, more often, while women are societally or naturally predisposed to sleeping with new guys less often
The older I get the more convinced I am that particular stereotype is a crock of shit.
64: Assuming perfect sampling. If the elite corps is pretty small, then slightly over or under sampling them could mess with the stats. (See The Prostitute Effect.)
Isn't this all because of Wilt Chamberlain?
Fine, I'm kind of in with the lying theory. Or, more specifically, that the men with super-high numbers count lovers in their credit, while women with super-high numbers tend to forget forgettables.
Those dots are weird. There are a lot of single people in places, including where I'm from, where I would have assumed the majority of people were all paired up nice like.
Sexual math wise, I'd just like to point out that if a man is unwilling to commit, he's probably a serial non-committer who has not-committed with several or many women, whereas a man who is willing to commit commits to one woman and is taken out of the pool. So single women vastly overestimate the proportion of men who are unwilling to commit.
If you lie to Science, only God knows. And God hates science. Fact.
65: Generally, I'd agree that it's a crock of shit. In practice, I'd guess that safety considerations cut down on most women's promiscuity. (That is, very promiscuous guys I've known would screw pretty much anyone, with very little screening. Promiscuous women I've known, on the other hand, seem (I believe for safety reasons) much more likely to restrict themselves to acquaintances, or at least people they've interacted with enough to get a strong personal impression of. This is going to cut down on your rate of partner acquisition.)
Also, could such a person be reasonably expected to know or accurately report her total number of sex partners if that number were, say, in the thousands?
Simple, just require all the responses to be to only two significant figures.
I too believe it's a case of "men round up, women round down".
men want more sex partners, more often, while women are societally or naturally predisposed to sleeping with new guys less oftenThe older I get the more convinced I am that particular stereotype is a crock of shit.
Maybe it's more likely to be a crock of shit for thirtysomethings than teens and twentysomethings.
I get that people could lie to make themselves look good, but I don't see that sort of explanation being trotted out for other survey-based discrepancies. We normally take these things as reasonably reliable, don't we? It's not usually a trump to postulate that people are lying.
Does w-lfs-n have a rule about parentheses within parentheses?
The question is, why are these people lying to SCIENCE?
I'm sure Heebie's right at 61, but also I think a lot of people would lie to God about sex. It's an area where irrational behaviour isn't restricted to the core activities.
I get that people could lie to make themselves look good, but I don't see that sort of explanation being trotted out for other survey-based discrepancies. We normally take these things as reasonably reliable, don't we? It's not usually a trump to postulate that people are lying.
It's common knowledge that any survey that asks people whether they voted in the past election will end up with a vastly inflated number, like 60% when the real number is 40%.
The older I get the more convinced I am that particular stereotype is a crock of shit.
1) The truth of this stereotype could be changing with the age of your peers, as I've heard it does especially in the 30s.
2) I was explaining why SCMT may have made the statement
3) I hedged the hell out of everything, as I always do on these subjects because I know it's a delicate subject where pretty much everyone lies and all the research tends to be biased either in intent or by the nature of their data sets
Grrr... stick in synonyms for "subject" where appropriate to make me sound like less of an illiterate
Maybe it's more likely to be a crock of shit for thirtysomethings than teens and twentysomethings.
It's particularly my experiences in my teens and twenties that lead me to that belief. With the getting older part being about contextualising and confirming the relative common-place nature of said experiences.
re: 74
It's not necessarily just about lying to others, it's about lying to oneself, I think. In the sense that the person counting every possible past partner in order to inflate their numbers and the person dismissing some might both be giving what seem like truthful answers to them, in the sense that those answers bolster their self-image and sense of self.
72: That's interesting. Most of the promiscuous women I know have had, by the age of 30, not more than like four partners a year on average since age 18, so about 50 partners. I'm nowhere near that number, but I tend to describe myself as a pretty promiscuous person (evidence, apparently, notwithstanding). A man who considers himself very promiscuous, by the age of 30, can get a great deal more done by that point. It's not really that he has a freer attitude toward sex; it's that he's not thinking things like "Oh, god, if I turn up pregnant, I'm going to want to know who I have to call."
I also have to note that the 'girlfriend in Canada' thing cracks me up. Honest! I do have a husband!
72: But there's the countertendency, as observed by Werdna and JM, in her explanation of Roomate's partners' likely motivation, to find a different kind of "safety" in men they were unlikely to become entangled with.
I think it's fair to say that the guys I've known in the past who have been sexual 'high-achievers' [the ones with girls/women literally throwing themselves at them] have not, generally, been people one would automatically describe as 'safe'.
I think we also have to remember that the numbers all these researchers are dealing with are very very small. 12? 6? 4? Given what the range of the data would be, I'm guessing these differences are not terribly statistically significant.
63: Another way of thinking about this might be (if I could get an analogy ban waiver for a moment) by comparing it to the housing market. In a buyers' market where supply exceeds demand, it average buyer can easily find a house to buy, but the average seller will have a harder time finding a willing seller. Nevertheless, the number of buyers is always equal to the number of sellers.
This analogy breaks down, of course, because you can't sell your house to five different buyers over the course of spring break. Thus demonstrating the wisdom of the analogy ban.
51, 52: I don't think so. Isn't the symmetry we demand only that the total number of sex partners on each side be equal? Couldn't you have 10 guys with four partners each, four women with 10 partners each (those ten guys), and six women with no partners each? So forty on each side, mean of four, median of 4 for the men, zero for the women. And you might explain it by saying that every man asks/says yes to every woman he runs into, and only four women ask/say yes to every man who she runs into.
I'm totally willing and happy to be corrected on this.
82: Yeah. Using your number, whigh seems like a fair guess, I'd say that there are a fair number of women who'd come off as reasonably 'promiscuous' with lifetime numbers under 50, but very few much over 50. For 'promiscuous' men, I'd guess that there might be fewer overall, but more with numbers getting into triple digits.
In 87 "willing seller" s/b "willing buyer". Thus demonstrating the wisdom of hitting "Preview" before hitting "Post".
66: yes, it could theoretically mess with the sample mean. I was thinking of the population mean. The fact that there's so much room for potential divergence between the two is another good indicator that we're not dealing with a normal distributon, right?
"Werdna" wouldn't be a bad name to name a kid. It sounds like a girl's name though.
I get that people could lie to make themselves look good, but I don't see that sort of explanation being trotted out for other survey-based discrepancies.
There are claims that people lie to surveyors about voting for black candidates. It's not clear, I gather, how well supported those claims are.
I've just performed a self-inventory, naming names, and find my number is half what I would have thought, and what I thought I remembered counting. "Forgettables" may swim back into view, but I doubt it. If I'd been answering a multiple-choice survey, without the opportunity or inclination to perform this introspection, I'd have over-reported by a factor of 2.
So, wait - the # of willing buyers is always the same as willing sellers? Or just the number of actual buuyers is the same as actual sellers? The latter makes perfect sense, but I can't wrap my head around the former at all.
95: That's odd. Can you figure out why?
re: 95
Every time I count I get a number that varies by a margin of error above/below a rough central point. However, if being surveyed I'd probably report the higher rather than lower figure. Not as much of a margin of error as a factor of 2, but certainly, the odds are I'd over-report by a bit.
96: Yes, the latter, definitely not the former. My brain is not firing on all cylinders today.
That sounds wrong -- wouldn't the most accurate number be the highest one you remember, assuming you don't have difficulty with the actual counting bit? That is, I can see wrongly remembering a number that's too low, because you forgot someone. The possibility of mistakenly inventing a sex partner seems less likely. (Although, there's IDP, so maybe I'm wrong.)
Enough with the formalities, people: it's time to cough up numbers. The other day LB claimed to be the official harlot of unfogged and it's time to see if she can back that up.
How are we counting partners? Kissing? Groping? Genital contact? Penetration?
(The Catholic schoolgirl exemption.)
Forgettables" may swim back into view, but I doubt it. If I'd been answering a multiple-choice survey, without the opportunity or inclination to perform this introspection...
I've done many, many qualitative interviews, on personal topics less touchy than public health or sexual history. I have routinely found that the off-the-top-of-your-head answer to questions like "How many jobs have you had?" and "How many addresses have you had in the past five years?" is X, but once I start tracing the actual path of activities, it becomes X+ something. ("So you started that job in the wintertime...was it before or after your baby was born? Did you stop working after that? OK, how old was the baby when you went back to work? etc.)
but very few much over 50
I'll bet the number of women with 50+ sexual partners is quite a bit higher than most people would guess. Particularly if you're not restricting it to actual vaginal intercourse.
not dealing with a normal distributon,
Likely choices are Poisson (distribution of counts of low-frequency events, say clicks per minute of a Geiger counter), power-law (often a consequence of scaling laws in the underlying dynamics; cube of the height divided by the square of the reticence sort of thing), and lognormal (product not sum of randomly distributed variables with finite variance; human wealth and turbulent dissipation are mostly distributed this way, wealth exception likely due to the ability to hire people smarter than you to make decisions). My bet is lognormal, but resolving will be possible only in the surveillance future.
97: Considering the tenor of our past exchanges, you may be gratified to learn that "residual competitiveness"/"self-image" is all I can come up with.
I think I'm holding at a round dozen.
My policy is of long standing, with a very low number plus one "maybe".
85: the ones with girls/women literally throwing themselves at them
Literally, hmm? Do they throw themselves off a building onto him? Or do they get a running start and sort of fling themselves, Ã la pro wrestling?
(Look, someone's got to be pedantic while w-lfs-n's in class.)
I have very deft manipulation control of my own memory, if the objectivity of outside parties is to be trusted. I don't know that I coudl trust that my highest # was my most accurate.
re: 100
Well, sort of. But I've never come up with the same figure. And I remember at some point in the past counting n so I go with n [on the grounds you give], but at other times I've remembered that named individual p and 'that girl at B's party' were actually one and the same person, and that I've double counted, etc.
So I'm fairly sure that the largest n is wrong and over-counts by a margin of error.
This implies that the n is gigantic, which it's not. I'm just forgetful.
There's some not-all-that-old thread in which people gave numbers.
54: It's not that I'd expect more lying on a survey than in real life, but I don't find it hard to believe either. Sure, that nice person with the clipboard in the mall says this is confidential, but they'd still turn it over to the police if you confessed to doing something really horrible, wouldn't they? What if this is actually some "Punk'd" thing, or a prank your asshole friend is playing on you? (Are you sure it's not?) And if this is all confidential and won't affect anything, then why not round in your favor and stuff? If you think about it as sex or not-really-sex in your own mental tally -- a woman might not count having been raped, a man might be as excited by having got a blowjob as actually having had intercourse -- then why bother parsing out what "really" happened just for the sake of some study?
113: Then that's not lying, that's a need for a better-designed study.
right, I remember this in a thread recently. I think there was some quiz involved, where one got point for all the "bad" things she had done, including having a high # ....
112: yeah, I remember that.
For official statistics, I think anyone who's slept with me ought to count that one as a double.
109 was me.
That right, thanks. I was totally blanking on 109!
117: For official statistics, I think anyone who's slept with me ought to count that one as a double.
Dude, you've been married for years and you still haven't made it to home plate?
112: Did I give a number, and was it the same as the one I just gave? I don't remember the thread at all.
I don't know what this is evidence for, but it takes great strains of memory to remember a good number of the people I've slept with.
101:Dead average for Kolata's American mean, defined restrictively. Perhaps half again as many if defined expansively.
I add, it's not very many, but they were apparently not memorable.
113: MIGHT not count rape? I can't imagine that a woman (or man) would. (As survivors, I mean; god knows rapists probably would.) For the 4,000th time, let me re-issue the official bulletin: Rape is not sex. It is not about sex. It is about power, domination, violence, etc.
I am not at liberty to look this up, but this is all making me think of the funny Andie MacDowell monologue listing each of her partners by number in Four Weddings and a Funeral, as well as Eddie Izzard's bit on arguing with a girlfriend over whether he had lost his virginity.
great strains of memory
This is interesting; likewise. How old are you? Is the strain the same as 5 years ago? I'm 41, and am not sure about the rate of strain increase.
I think we also have to remember that the numbers all these researchers are dealing with are very very small. 12? 6? 4?
A) Maybe small by your standards!
B) It all depends on how many numbers there are. An average of 4.2 can be significantly different than an average of 4.0 if n=10000.
In the US study, the reported data on number of sexual partners was consistently very different between men and women, in every age group, every race, poverty level, et cetera. With n=6,237. Here's the data, especially charts 7 and 9. These are extremely significant differences.
Some of the numbers are interesting. The # of sex partners is similar in all three of the income categories.
Also, note that they do have a category for how many men/women report themselves as being promiscuous. "15 or more sexual partners in lifetime".
28.9% of all men put themselves in this category! And only 9.4% of women. Whoa, those few sluts must be working doubletime.
The white population reflects the overall numbers for "15 or more sexual partners in lifetime". For the black population, 46.2% of all men put themselves in this category, and only 12.5% of all women.
I really do think that this discrepancy is almost entirely the result of lies.
127: I'm 27. I am positive my number is not higher than my age. I think it's around 20. I know it's more than 15.
>15 partners = promiscuous???
My benchmarks in the realm of sexual propriety must be seriously skewed.
I'm 24. I've had 2. 1 was a mistake. I'm now engaged to be married.
Expand it to any sort of interpersonal genital contact and the number becomes 6.
When I was in Taiwan everyone was watching "Three's Company" and making wild assumptions about American sexual behavior. One female teacher was asked by a student whether she knew who the father(s) of her children was (were). He wasn't trying to be rude, as far as I can tell, but just cheeky; he thought that that was a normal question to ask an American woman. (In Chinese that would have been unspeakably rude, much worse than in English, and he did enormously enjoy breaking the Chinese rule).
Oh, fine, after I post that, I go back to read two years ago when everyone was a prude. I'm just not good in relationships, y'all!
I am 35, my number, and margin of error, is roughly in line with AWB's plus a bit.
However, I had had well over half my lifetime partners before I was 21. So when I first went to college I was probably at one end of the bell curve, and as I've gotten older and had longer relationships lasting over years it's slid towards the median.
I don't know what this is evidence for, but it takes great strains of memory for a good number of the people I've slept with to recall having done so.
Yeah, being single for long periods of time as an adult is going to affect numbers a lot without any particular change in sexual ethics. I've been in the same relationship since I was 24.
re: 136
Yeah, I've had 3 relationships lasting over 3 years each. So, I've been single for less than one year in the past 14 years. That drastically changes the lifetime number of partners.
It would take an enormous effort to get my number of partners up to my age. 3 or 4 women's soccer teams would have to take me up as a charity case.
The most interesting thing in the stats is that for any of the "how many partners have you had" categories -- either "0-1", "2-6", "7-14", or "15 or more" -- the number of people putting themselves in that category hardly changes at all whether you are looking at 20-, 30-, 40-, or 50-somethings.
So, virtually everyone racks up all their conquests in their early 20s? Is this because a huge number of the people in the study were married? They don't say what percentage of the sample was from each demographic category.
I would have liked to see the age-based numbers broken down by marital status.
Finally, in the question about "ever had sex" and "age of first sex", sex includes oral sex. It doesn't say whether that applies to the questions about "number of sexual partners". The actual study design is probably somewhere on the CDC website along with the actual database of data.
Since my number is 1, I play other memory games, like thinking of all the states/countries where it's happened.
I don't know what my number is, but seven is clearly the best answer. Few enough that you can remember each one, and perhaps even warmly; not so few that your confidence or desirability is in question.
I was just waiting for a president to chime in to boast/lament.
I don't know what my number is
Bullshit.
139, see 136, 137. I'd bet that ttaM's and my pattern is pretty common, and among people who remain not coupled up past their twenties, lots of them aren't having much sex at all. The Sex and the City demographic -- grownups engaged in a steady stream of short term relationships, isn't a big one. (Again, data pulled out of my ass.)
Thomas Jefferson's number was at least 2.
I suspect that divorced people from 35-45 rack up big numbers as well.
143: Likewise. "I'm not saying" is fine, but "I don't remember," is nonsense.
Really? You called that sex?
I am utterly and completely terrified.
Bullshit
I could count, given the relevant parameters, I just haven't this morning, Bobala.
re: 146
Yes, I have an older male relative [exact identity redacted] who says that getting divorced in his late 30s presented him with near unlimited opportunities for shagging around. Certainly more than he'd had when he was in his teens.
No, Ogged, I will not put you on my mailing list of recently separated women.
Don't numbers go way up in retirement communities (fasted growing HIV+ population)?
149- No, I was only counting Sally as the 1.
I don't know what my number is
Bullshit.
Not at all. I tried to figure this out recently and I couldn't, at least not with any confidence.
Also, I think Cala's 4 has been unduly overlooked. I know there are public-health people here -- can anyone confirm that the self-report problems that Tim cited (with regard to social attitudes like voting for a black candidate) are magnified 100x for men who are having sex with men but do not identify as gay?
I really can't honestly count fumbling around in a college dorm bed as sex, especially if there was no penetration. Far too unsatisfying to count.
157- You had trouble figuring out Ogged's number? That is surprising.
great strains of memory
This is interesting; likewise. How old are you? Is the strain the same as 5 years ago? I'm 41, and am not sure about the rate of strain increase.
Do people not keep a list? I'm well aware of memory fade, or the forgettables, what have you, and not unlike the keeping of photographs, I want someday, when reminiscence becomes important, to be able to remember these people.
I vacillated on whether to post this presidentially, but...
My number is 19. Interestingly for the present debate, I am near certain that two of them would not count me in their number, for although the encounter involved vaginal penetration and ejaculation, the act was...er...exceedingly brief.
One of those two subsequently insisted to her roommates that she was a virgin, and the roommates found that hard to square with the fact that she had used emergency contraception.
158: What about women underreporting teh gay sex?
Seriously?! Er, yeah man. It was great.
I suspect that divorced people from 35-45 rack up big numbers as well.
So heartening.
I really can't honestly count fumbling around in a college dorm bed as sex, especially if there was no penetration. Far too unsatisfying to count.
Well sure, if there was no penetration.
139: Ex recto, but I suspect that the general pattern is like LB and Matt. Series of partners (one-night stands or short relationships) that turn into longer monogamous relationships, that turn into a marriage. Even if there's a lot of infidelity, it could still correlate pretty well with everyone's number being pretty much fixed by the time they marry.
159: Is it wrong that my mental definition of 'sex' turns heavily on nudity? Genital-genital or oral-genital contact culminating in orgasm is sex (penetration is sex even if no one comes), and anything else culminating in orgasm is sex if you're mostly naked, not if you're not. I don't think this is logically consistent or anything, but on inspection of my beliefs, I'm pretty committed to this definition.
But there is a post-Clintonian pattern of insisting that oral sex is sex. In some cases, I can see it, but in others, it just doesn't count.
Do people not keep a list?
I'm finding this hilarious. I've never heard of people keeping a list, and the image of someone getting out The List when it's time for an addition is making me laugh. Do you ever subtract someone from the the list?
158: Remember that infamous Oprah episode where that guy was like "yeah, I have sex with men, but I'm not gay. I'm on the DL" and Oprah couldn't wrap her mind around it?
A dating pattern I've found out about recently is sober, needy women joining AA to pick up needy, recovering guys.
157: It's hard to know exactly how many people are on the other side of the knothole.
163: I confess to complete ignorance of the literature (informal or otherwise) on how likely women are to lie and/or not interpret gay sex as "real" sex. So I dunno. I brought up the other because there is such a wealth of primary and secondary data showing that, well, men lie about this topic. To themselves and others.
168: Yeah, see, this definition stuff could really affect my number. Maybe I've been doing better than I thought...
Not at all. I tried to figure this out recently and I couldn't, at least not with any confidence.
I could kind of see that. People are weird about sex, even to themselves, and I think that probably effects the extent of your memory of sexual partners.
168:
Elaine: Hey, when do you consider sex is taking place?
Jerry: I would say, when the nipple makes its first appearance.
161: I have to admit that I've got one partner who I probably remember only because of earlier attempts to come up with a number -- I was trying to count years ago, and forgot this guy, and felt terribly bad about it when I remembered.
168: remember when LB tried to justify all those bathroom trysts as not really cheating because she had her clothes on?
Dammit, I knew catching up with unfogged would make me want to post on a thread. So I'm just ducking in here, because something bugs me about this subject.
re AWB's 129. I think my number has been higher than my age since I was 15 or 16. 17 at the latest. Sometimes not very much, and it might have briefly dipped below once or twice.
I honestly can't remember the total. I lost track somewhere around 35. I don't think I'm double that now, but I might be (and I guess if I am, I'm unlikely to ever get under my age again) By all this I mean unambigously `having sex', I have absolutely no idea what the number would be if you start counting other things.
I've never thought of myself as being promiscuous. I wasn't ever particularly popular, and it seem I've always known people who were far more active than I (if you start counting gay men, I've known a few for which that 35 would constitute a really quiet year. For one in particular, a good month). I guess I'm in the `forget the forgettables' class which above conversation suggests would be typical for women, atypical for men?
Which leads me to the thing that bugs me about all this. I've been with a few women who had a lot of trouble with either the raw numbers, or the fact that I couldn't be sure about them. I mean they had really, really strong feelings about this that made me question my self-image in this aspect. I don't understand this. They weren't worried about risk per se (we had seperate conversations about that, and were of course tested) , or my ability to commit to monogamy (if that was an issue). They just couldn't accept that this was ok, somehow. Does this make sense to anyone?
Oh, and if you can't infer who it is hiding behind this thin veil of anonymity, I'm male & heterosexual fwiw.
Genital-genital or oral-genital contact culminating in orgasm is sex (penetration is sex even if no one comes), and anything else culminating in orgasm is sex if you're mostly naked, not if you're not.
Isn't this one of the major themes of Clerks? Remember how she'd only slept with four people, until he asked her how many blowjobs she'd given? This pattern was super, super common when I was in college.
I don't have a list, as it were, but a few months ago I did write out a series of limericks about the ones I could recall.
I've never thought of myself as being promiscuous
Butcha are, Blanche, butcha are.
re: 182
This pattern was super, super common when I was in college.
That's sort of a US cliché, isn't it? At least every conversation I've ever had with an American suggests it is.
That's sort of a US cliché, isn't it?
Hey! It's meaningful to us!
185: It's...not a UK cliché as well?
182 makes me want to know if anyone has studied rates of reciprocation.
It's funny, I know it as a cliche, but not from people I know personally. Women whose sexual histories I know much about don't have a lot of 'just short of sex', or 'oral only' partners. I don't know if this is a self-selected social group thing, or what.
re: 188
No. Not at all, in my experience.
Cultural differences, etc.
Further to 191, in fact, I am pretty sure the cliché when I was in my teens was almost entirely the other way round.
I never got into the random-blowjob world of college, and barely knew about it, but my roommate, who had been, for two years, a dedicated member of a pseudo-Christian cult of extremely controlling morals, gave it up to suck cock while eating pizza in the local fraternity house. It was quite the spectacle, I'm told.
I am pretty sure the cliché when I was in my teens was almost entirely the other way round.
Guys I know who've dated Europeans have noted this.
De nada, Di. Go for the gusto!
By Jesus' / Jimmy Carter's standard (looking at a woman with lust in my heart) my number is in the 4 figures at least.
Cultural differences, etc.
Um, not to be mundane about it, but do you think healthcare differences at least as much as cultural ones? I have the vague impression that regular reproductive health care (incl. birth control prescriptions, shots, etc.) is cheaper, easier, and more common in the UK than the US.
190: It's a cliche (how do I make the little accent marks and whatnot in Vista?), but one that holds in my experience... there's a few everything-but boyfriends prior to actual first-time sex.
suck cock while eating pizza... quite the spectacle
It certainly sounds like it. Drinking a smoothie at the same time I could see, but eating pizza is a virtuouso move.
Random blow jobs are very rarely for reproductive health reasons.
I don't understand what "the other way round" means. It applies to men instead of women? Women consider oral sex but not intercourse to be sex?
189/190: ok, one more thing and I'm off again.
I've talked to several (4-5 at least) women at different times who have said they are more comfortable with letting a man have intercourse with them than letting him perform oral on them. They also said that giving oral was even less problematic. So this might affect rates of reciprocation, as 189 puts it.
I've never heard anything equivalent from men.
198: Your choice of "smoothie" here is cracking me up.
Random blow jobs are very rarely for reproductive health reasons.
WHAT?
I THOUGHT BEING INOCULATED WITH SPERM WOULD ACT AS A VACCINE AGAINST PREGNANCY.
ALSO, 200!
Nedster, it means that American girls will blow you before they'll fuck you, and European girls will fuck you before they'll blow you. Pardon my French.
I don't understand what "the other way round" means.
With the hoo-ha instead of the pee-pee.
171:
the image of someone getting out The List when it's time for an addition is making me laugh. Do you ever subtract someone from the the list?
You lack imagination on this. No, you look for the list every couple of years for whatever reason, can't find it, decide maybe you'll attempt to write it again. Put it away somewhere. Some other time find the past version of the list, have a conversation with yourself about how it really should be kept somewhere safe. Forget about it again.
Subtract someone from the list? [/blank stare]
Heebie, when the Brits diss our ancient customs, just remind them that they've been a second rate power since Suez.
Also, just say
"
:-) Blair! :-)"
Note: remember use/mention distinction.
201: Agreed. I was never interested in oral as a replacement for sex, even when I was a virgin. The boys seemed to think it prevented "emotional attachment," something they'd heard that women do because women are irrational crazies.
Pizza-party etiquette requires that the man reciprocate.
re: 196
Nah, it's cultural and independent of any kind of health care issue, I think. I grew up in an area where teen pregnancy was common and birth control was quite a long way down the list of priorities. I don't think what people did, and when, was particularly influenced by access to contraception [although I may be wrong].
It's possibly a factor in college age sex, perhaps, in the sense that on campus there'll be easy access to birth control, but I'm fairly sure the behavioural differences are all cultural.
I've talked to several (4-5 at least) women at different times who have said they are more comfortable with letting a man have intercourse with them than letting him perform oral on them. They also said that giving oral was even less problematic. So this might affect rates of reciprocation, as 189 puts it.
Same exact thing here. A girl once told me that I was very trustworthy, and if we were going out she would let me go down on her, unlike many douchebags with whom she would be too uncomfortable to do that but with whom she would be willing to engage in the less personal and vulnerable act of intercourse.
She was drunk at the time. I did not actually ever go out with her.
201: Wow. The idea that anyone -- male or female -- would rather give than receive blows my mind.
Pizza-party etiquette requires that the man reciprocate.
The women all know that if you take more than one cock at a time, you'll look greedy.
208 is weird. Did the men believe that because they knew they were fantastically bad at giving oral sex?
See, there's no penis dentata legend, whereas oral dentata is an actual fact. Scuzzy guys can be pretty sick.
211: That's hilarious. I can't imagine telling someone I'm not dating, "I would deign to allow you to go downtown! See how special you are to me?"
With the hoo-ha instead of the pee-pee.
I am a simpleton who laughed out loud when I read that.
Pizza-party etiquette requires that the man reciprocate.
But the social convention requires that she take only one turn until she is certain he is fully sated.
Study Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Heebie, and you will be able to amaze the guys.
212: Feminism really, really needs to reach the high school/college-age populations.
Please note AWB's stated position on cunnilingus.
I can't imagine telling someone I'm not dating, "I would deign to allow you to go downtown! See how special you are to me?"
A woman once said to me, "You don't know how many guys would like to be where you are now!"
I almost left. Almost. Seriously! I really would have left.
215: They said that because I was at a nerd school, where every male student has been told that ladies are soul-suckers who are out to keep them from being #1. The joke, of course, was that they were are super-emotional about everything.
219 totally pwned by 214. Dammit.
The idea that anyone -- male or female -- would rather give than receive blows my mind.
Megan has mentioned that she does a poll about this at parties and almost always the majority would rather give.
Opportunity and lifestyle are very important. Had I gone to a residential college my number would be higher; I lived at home and commuted. I worked summers and took quarters off to work and build up cash reserves. When I worked construction, driving trucks, or in a factory, I never met any women. After class I would go home.
When I started working in kitchens, right out of college, all that changed: I worked with and alongside of women, keeping crazy hours. That was all it took. That period lasted about two years, until I went to grad school. I had two serious relationships there, the second one was with my wife. The period where I the opportunity and inclination for new partners was certainly not 5 years, and may have been less than 3.
212: I suspect from the conversations that this was an issue of personal comfort with intimacy, body image (getting someones face in your junk is uncomfortable if you have programmed guilt etc. about said junk), and sexuality. I guess I can also see regarding giving a blowjob as a non-sexual act for you (not them), and hence non-intrusive, in some way. Why you would decide to do this anyway is a different question ...
Of course, there's the Republican who just got busted for public indecency (I should work harder to remember names.) If I've got the story straight, the Republican offered the cop $20 so that the cop would allow the Republican to blow him -- paying for the privilege of giving oral sex. So, this is not unknown among the gay male population.
229: Blowjobs are pretty intrusive if you do it right.
Megan has mentioned that she does a poll about this at parties and almost always the majority would rather give.
I am shocked that a people would admit to the group that they are a selfless in bed. You would think more people would admit that they lose interest after they get their's.
My experience is the same as anonatwork's on women allowing oral sex to be performed on them. My sense is that there's some sort of trust issue/body image thing going on.
224: I'm familiar with the "avoid attachment/wandering uterus" rule. I'm just confused about how oral-only could avoid that. The only conceivable explanation is that men know that the women won't orgasm since they're generally really bad at cunnilingus. Which would be a weird thing for a sexist to believe.
(Look, someone's got to be pedantic while w-lfs-n's in class.)
I was asleep.
233: Or maybe it's that you're not very good at it? Why rush to the women-hate-themselves crap?
Study Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Heebie, and you will be able to amaze the guys.
Saxophones are one thing, but can he tap out a tune on the skin flute?
237: The times it has come up, the women have explicitly mentioned the body issue thing.
Do people not keep a list?
Christ no. That's disgusting.
A memory isn't a couple of syllables, it's a smile or a patch of skin or an unusual phrase, maybe even with emotions attached. Logically, the name of a person or place might serve as a mnemonic, but... yuck.
230: Probably a larger, less Republican sample is required.
Megan has mentioned that she does a poll about this at parties and almost always the majority would rather give.
How can I get invited to one of Megan's parties?
234: Isn't part of what's going on here (and part, I think, of why I'm not personally familiar with the cliched blowjobs-yes-sex-no behavior) people with literal moral qualms about promiscuity, graded by the level of the sex act: kissing, not very bad; groping, badder; oral sex; not that much past groping, but not as bad as; intercourse? So if you don't have intercourse, you're not as intimate on a moral level, and it doesn't have to be a meaningful relationship to avoid worries about sluttishness.
I'm not sure this is really what's going on, but I think it might be a factor.
Christ no. That's disgusting. A memory isn't a couple of syllables, it's a smile or a patch of skin
I think it's grosser to keep a patch of their skin.
239: I'm surprised. I find men tend to assume that the things I do or want in bed have something to do with my inevitable Feemale Self-Loathing or Feemale Emotional Attachment, when really I'm just trying to make things fun.
How can I get invited to one of Megan's parties?
Apparently, profess that you are giver, not a receiver.
Blowjobs are pretty intrusive if you do it right.
Like a catheter.
244, 247: Heebie is the funniest ever.
242: I think that we're collectively banned from Megan's parties. They probably begin the evening by commenting on the fact that certain kinds of people don't know how to have fun, IYKWIMAITYD.
That's hilarious. I can't imagine telling someone I'm not dating, "I would deign to allow you to go downtown! See how special you are to me?"
We were having a semi-serious conversation about how annoying it is to go through a dry spell in which there are no potential sex partners, after leaving a relationship during which there were many opportunities to cheat that were not taken. Earlier I had said that I was much better at oral sex than actual intercourse and it was a shame that no girl was taking advantage of it, etc., etc.
"Who do I have to blow to get invited to one of Megan's parties?"
Probably Megan, though perhaps she assigns someone else if she's busy.
248: Perhaps true, but at times I am disturbed by the way she verges on bad taste.
247: Weirdest sex act I have ever read about: A Danish mystery novel, Smilla's Sense of Snow includes (in a book with not all that much sex in it) a scene in which a woman fucks a man's urethra with her clit. That just does not sound practical, barring genital anatomy significantly different from any I've encountered.
240:
Christ no. That's disgusting.
Excuse me?
You are assuming that such a list is like notches on a belt or a bedpost? Try going with the more charitable interpretation of it as a mnemonic.
Frankly, I can reconstruct periods of my life I might not otherwise remember particularly well by wandering through such a list.
252: Oh, your stars and your whiskers!
I update my list every year, whether I've had sex or not that year. This will be a boon for future historians.
I think it's grosser to keep a patch of their skin.
Something to alphabetize.
254: That's why limericks are especially good. You can do a little description, and they're easy to remember!
237: I'm not basing that on any inference from experience had during sex, and I hate to project that onto any other women. To hopefully clear that up:
- these were conversations about sex, not conversations during sex. In all but one case, these were women I had not or did not ever sleep with
- all of these women told me they found oral more intimate than piv sex.
- one said she just didn't like it.
- two (or three?) said that although they realized it was irrational, they felt (residual) guilt/shame doing this that didn't come up in piv sex. They said they had to be much more comfortable with a man to enjoy it.
fwiw, one conversation was with three women who were comparing notes, and it has come up once or twice elsewhere.
248: YAYY!! I perpetually fret over whether I'm being funny or annoying. It defines a lot of my life.
Wouldn't Clerihews work better? More flexibilty for accomodating names.
212: really? I love giving. But I'm not really a big fan of blowjobs, which are the only sort of oral sex I've even received. They're okay enough from time to time, but not generally something I'm going to get excited about.
253: see? I keep getting sucked in.
But I've encountered genital anatomy that would be capable of such an act, given that the mans was.
204: Perhaps this relates to the sedentary American lifestyle.
But I'm not really a big fan of blowjobs, which are the only sort of oral sex I've even received.
This made me laugh. Methinks you protesteth too much!
given that the mans was.
That's making an unwarranted assumption, I would surmise. But this is a digression.
245 surprises and saddens me.
Isn't making things fun a big part of the point?
259: I think a lot of women feel bored during oral, that it is less pleasurable when you don't have something to do. A few women have that Massengill-ad-inspired fear of their own vaginas, but most adult women really don't. It's not that we don't enjoy the feeling, but it makes a lot of women feel forced into a position of passivity that we're not likely to enjoy.
Concrete poetry, in the shape of former lovers, various acts, etc.
266:
By which I meant that without having tried it, I couldn't say for certain, but it certainly seemed plausible. I don't have nearly as good an idea of male genital variation though ... so I added a caveat.
Just how typical do you think your attitude about this is, AWB?
A few women have that Massengill-ad-inspired fear of their own vaginas, but most adult women really don't.
Although, most people seem to collect most partners during college-age, when such fears are probably most prevalent. I certainly had qualms about oral on those grounds until encountering a partner who was clearly enjoying himself.
I think a lot of women feel bored during oral, that it is less pleasurable when you don't have something to do.
I don't see any more being "done" by a woman during (missionary, at least) sex than during cunnilingus. It's not like you have to be immobile.
267: Okay, yes, this is getting more to the point: Some guys treat sex like something they are doing "to" you. "I'm gonna make you come!" etc. This is boring and not fun. Sex is something I want to do together. If someone wants to go down on me for a few minutes, that's fine and enjoyable. But don't expect me to just lie there doing nothing while you prove to me how totally sexy you are and I stare at the ceiling.
273: Missionary position sex gives a woman plenty to do.
273: This seems wrong to me, but I've discovered that (odd though it may seem from my prior posts) that explaining in detail why would feel like TMI.
This is totally embarrassing, but I also think it's funny. The other day, after jogging but before showering, I took off all my clothes except my socks and tennis shoes, and ran around yelling, "I'M DORKY NAKED! I'M DORKY NAKED!" Jammies was totally disturbed.
Would the distinction between penetrative and non-penetrative sex make people's numbers of sex partners vary that much? Mine would be exactly the same.
Again, my experience seems to mirror anonatwork's (#259) a bit. The specific issues that were mentioned by a couple of women were taste and smell (body image) and the likelihood that the other person would report that information to other people (trust issue). My categorizations may be bad categorizations, but they're not crazy ones.
men are, for one reason or another, more comfortable with random sex than women
Not in Louisiana, they're not. More comfortable, that is. It takes two to leave a bar, and most nights, they both did.
265: well, there are other varieties.
276: LB, the reason we all, including you, have totally impenetrable pseuds is so that there is no such thing as TMI. That is why the internets were created.
274: True that some guys do this, and that's one way of being really bad at cunnilingus.
Why would you want to generalize from those guys and that experience, though? Which is what your 268 seems to be doing with its I think a lot of women feel bored during oral.
274: gotcha. Some of that has to do with sexual (psycholgical) immaturity, perhaps less frequently amongst women but still there. People are sometimes more interested in having done this (for whatever reason) than actually doing it. It's always amazed me when people have told me they are having sex that isn't fun. I mean, as a habit. I just don't get it. It should be huge amounts of fun for everyone involved, or why bother?
I'd say the act(s) themselves are probably pretty irrelevant, it's the other persons reaction. If you start staring at the ceiling and doing nothing and they don't notice, this is a really, really bad sign.
Oh, and 273 is just plain wrong.
273 didn't seem right to me either.
273 didn't seem right to me either.
Time for a recount.
Why does everyone keep saying 273 is wrong?
A woman stuck immobile while receiving oral sex? That seems odd.
Why would you want to generalize from those guys and that experience, though?
Because that's what human beings do? Not having had all experiences, I tend to draw conclusions from the ones I've actually had, as opposed to the ones I see on TV.
I'm really just trying to defend against the impulse that interprets all of women's sexual preferences in terms of how ashamed they (of course) are of their disgusting bodies. Unless someone tells you explicitly, I think it is possible to assume that they might just not want what you're offering.
There's 'immobile' and then there's saying you can move a lot more during missionary than during oral.
260: You're quite reliably funny, IME.
286: Now we know why no one's getting invited to Megan's parties.
287: That makes sense, which is why I was clarifying that my information was from explicit discussion, not inferred from experience. I also certainly wouldn't assume these people spoke for anyone but themselves --- I just found it interesting that they felt this way at all.
289: Thanks! Even 277? Because I think I shot my wad in posting that.
Now we know why no one's getting invited to Megan's parties.
for balance, they have to invite some people who enjoy receiving. But not the exact same number of people as like to give.
291: I appreciate the clarification, and I didn't mean to jump on you. It's just a pet peeve of mine. I'm not the most classically beautiful girl in the world, and I tend to get a lot of over-reassurance from partners about everything, because they assume I'm sensitive about my looks. It's really insulting, and a total deal-breaker.
See what I mean? If women have wads, I don't want to hear about them. I always try to keep my own comments within the bounds of good taste, though of course the flesh is sometimes weak.
278: probably a factor of two, at least ... but that's a guess. As noted, I can't even really count the former.
Excuse me? You are assuming that such a list is like notches on a belt
Yes, except also compulsive. Didn't mean to be rude-- much of my workday is spent with lists, it gives me hives when they intrude outside the office. The reaction says more about me than anything else, I guess.
287: What, and they're just being polite? I've seen women get uptight about their femmy bits, and that tends to go downhill, but boredom? God, I hope this whole endeavor isn't some kind of socialist make-work program.
There's 'immobile' and then there's saying you can move a lot more during missionary than during oral.
The opposite has been true for the 2 women I've been with, but that's a small sample size.
287:
Not having had all experiences, I tend to draw conclusions from the ones I've actually had, as opposed to the ones I see on TV.
I conclude from this that you haven't received much good oral sex. Whether that's an unusual experience for many/most women I can't say.
I'm really just trying to defend against the impulse that interprets all of women's sexual preferences in terms of how ashamed they (of course) are of their disgusting bodies.
My impression from those who are reporting women's reports of having trust/body image issues over receiving oral sex is that these are strictly personal reports, from the field, as it were, and don't aspire to any claim to universality.
I'm having trouble visualizing this, but I'm not going to argue with you.
(The real worry in one of these discussions is that someone will discover that they've been Doing It Wrong. At least that's the sort of thing I worry about.)
There's 'immobile' and then there's saying you can move a lot more during missionary than during oral.
My partners move less when I truss 'em up like cattle.
300: It's very good; I'm not knocking it as a thing. It's just not what you see on TV and movies where it's all women want from sex.
Would the distinction between penetrative and non-penetrative sex make people's numbers of sex partners vary that much?
Changes my number pretty sharply, yes.
294: Yeah, and I didn't even think about how this could have been read in the context you did. I wish I had, actually, because in my experience your take is very common. I hope (and believe) I have never been this way, but I have had many women comment that it has happened to them and it really gets to them. I mean that people (men) have assumed an inferiority complex or sensitivity or whatever, and acted on that assumption.
I'd be really insulted by it, were it to happen to me, so I can see where you are coming from.
I guess what I found interesting about it is I really can't imagine a man being tentative about getting oral. I can totally understand him not particularly enjoying it (them) and not wanting it but not for those sorts of reasons.
On the other hand, I've been told many men seem to have somewhat similar issues about piv sex, mostly about being judged I guess.
The discussion of whether women are more active during missionary or cunnilingus is cracking me up. Look, some women, when you go down on them, will wrap their legs around your head and squirm like they're trying to break your neck. Some lie still and occasionally moan. Ditto with missionary.
Off to swim!
Sex is dirty and wrong!
300.1: That was my initial reaction, but I figure she's had time enough to sample, and one of them must have been doing it right. Hence my make-work fears.
anonatwork, I think you're knee-deep in the thread at this point. Might as well give up the pseudo-pseudonym.
308: The difference, for me, is that missionary gives me a lot of great options of neat stuff to do to create mutual pleasure. Most of the stuff you can do during cunnilingus is about expressing appreciation.
A woman receiving oral encouragement generally has a lot of latitude to move around as she pleases. A woman doing missionary work often has to more or less stay where she is put. (She's of course not held there against her will, but signifcant repositioning can affect the goal of the mission.)
310: I'm in for thist thread, that's it. You lot sucked me in against my will. But I'll keep my little shred of anonymity. I suspect the more I type, the more obvious it will be who is hiding here.
Look, some women, when you go down on them, will wrap their legs around your head and squirm like they're trying to break your neck.
Are they saying "No, No, Goddamnit, I said NO!"?
312: "I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything."
312: the goal of the mission
To convert the natives?
311 is basically what I was thinking when I denied the validity of 273. I wasn't really thinking about the available range of bodily motion, but what is actually likely to happen.
312 is basically what I was thinking when I posted 273. Plus personal experience.
Comity!
AWB has an entrepreneurial conception of sex.
has to more or less stay where she is put
Brock only bangs chicks in wheelchairs.
"in wheelchairs" s/b "after removing them from their wheelchairs."
A woman receiving oral encouragement
This is also cracking me up.
Going back a bit:
72: Promiscuous women I've known, on the other hand, seem (I believe for safety reasons) much more likely to restrict themselves to acquaintances, or at least people they've interacted with enough to get a strong personal impression of.
I guess it kind of depends on how you define "promiscuous." To me, one of the defining characteristics of genuine promiscuity is that it often overrides normal safety considerations, so that you wind up with partner counts in the triple digits. (True of, or at least claimed by, several promiscuous women I've known.) OTOH I wouldn't be tempted to describe someone who has four partners a year as promiscuous.
I should warn you that I'm absolutely confident that I'm right and I intend to defend this position as if the very fate of humanity depends on my intransigence.
(I guess maybe the ground in 327 has already been covered, I've just kind of skimmed the thread.)
Anyone else notice in the linked CDC data that the median (not mean) number of female partners for men was 6.8? How do you get 0.8?
Also note that the distribution is pretty clearly not symmetric. The proportion of those one median above the median (about 25%) is much greater than those one median below the median (0%, by definition).
I really dislike that "promiscuous" song by Nelly Furtado. I think it's totally furtarded. And forced.
330: That is the best song ever. You are wrong, wrong, wrong. Timbaland is a musical genius.
301.2 makes me want to turn this thread into a compendium of the worst sex advice ever received, but I am both too late and too new here to do that.
I'll share anyway:
"I read this one time in Cosmo..." [from a guy]
"After you've done it enough times, do it drunk."
To go wildly off on another direction, in my experience some of the people many people thought were promiscuous turned out not to have been. I wonder how generally this is true.
My favourite piece of Cosmo sex advice ever was an issue where one of the Hot Sex Secrets was, literally, "show enthusiasm."
the median (not mean) number of female partners for men was 6.8? How do you get 0.8?
If they're controlling for demographics to get a representative sample, then the number doesn't need to be an integer.
How do you get 0.8?
Bed a woman with only one leg?
I have certainly engaged in oral sex with many more partners than I have engaged in genital-genital contact with. Part of that is that most of my sleeping-around time took place in college, and somehow that was just the norm for not-committed sexual relationships in the circles I traveled in. I waver on the question of whether people with whom I engaged in various naked high jinx and oral-genital fun but never penetrative sex ought to count as "people I had sex with" -- I would be sort of inclined to say no, except then what about the girls I've had sex with? And if oral sex counts with them, it seems like it ought to count in general.
Timbaland is a musical genius.
Yes, Timbaland is a musical genius. I seriously believe this and love nearly everything he's done. (But that one song is awful.) But the "The Way I Are" song - I love that one so, so much. I could talk Timbaland all day.
337: "Show your work for partial credit."
340:
"Show your rough work for partial credit."
336: People missing limbs: Not fully human.
"NEVER fuck a car with the engine on."
This might just explain the numbers disparity.
Timbaland is brilliant. But that song sucks. It happens. Nobody can bear reading "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," you know.
339: Goddammit, how am I supposed to troll you with you tugging on my heart-strings like that? No fair.
People missing limbs: Not fully human.
And yet, they get charged full cab fare. It's an unjust world out there.
The production on "Promiscuous" is awesome. I just don't understand what "promiscuous" is supposed to mean in the context of the lyrics.
Haven't y'all been doing your reading at Twisty's, et al? Women = not fully human. The men's numbers are actually vastly inflated when you account for each woman bedded contributing only .75 of a human conquest.
Haven't y'all been doing your reading at Twisty's, et al? Women = not fully human. The men's numbers are actually vastly larger when you account for each woman bedded contributing only .75 of a human conquest.
Doctor Slack, I don't got a huge old house, I rent a room in a house.
Haven't y'all been doing your reading at Twisty's
Not if I can help it.
3
The message here is that there is an elite corps of women who are having sex with virtually everyone they know in order to keep the ladies' average up.
I happen to know the generalissima of this most considerate of vanguards. Bless their strumpety souls.
On the whole definitional problem, I'm seriously amused that I can choose to identify myself as either virgin or whore, although obviously not both.
350: I ain't got a motorboat / but I can float ya boat.
355: Triple-digit blowjobs, no penetration?
I love the Texas girls who turn to anal to preserve their virginity. I love to picture them explaining to their fathers, "I'm still your princess, Daddy! I haven't lost my virginity! See, I found this loophole..."
Your body ain't Pamela Anderson. It's a struggle just to get you in the caravan.
357: I've never done PIV with an actual P, and I dated a professional dominatrix for a while (we met in the context of the non-commercial SM scene) and once did a "two mistress" scene with her and one of her "A-list" clients.
Actually, I should say "biological" and not "actual". But that's probably a distinction that'll be largely lost on Unfogged, I imagine.
I'm still your princess, Daddy! I haven't lost my virginity! See, I found this loophole
361: But that's probably a distinction that'll be largely lost on Unfogged, I imagine.
???
Are you questioning my assessment of the collective Unfogged hipness to the issues surrounding the genitalia of transpersons, MAE, or seriously asking the questing?
358: This is a fairly common attitude. The last time it was mentioned there was a reference to Naipaul's essay The Return of Eva Peron, and I remember first encountering it there also. About 1980. The literalism is of course extreme, and reminds of other, also usually religious-based ways of observing the letter without what most of us would think of as the spirit.
I love the Texas girls who turn to anal to preserve their virginity.
Proof that teenagers fear pregnancy far more than disease.
LR has a bionic prosthetic transhuman penetrator thingie. She is post-singularity ahead of the rest of us.
I'm surprised no one has linked to this particular study yet. Women randomly divided into groups, some hooked up to electrodes that were described as a lie detector, others told their survey was anonymous, first group reported an average of 4.4 sexual partners, second group 2.7.
Or, you know, I just have a boyfriend who's FtM trans and I'm not going to be an asshole and refer to his penis as not-actually-a-penis because he wasn't born with it. Sort of like how I don't refer to him as "she".
368: College students again, but we've mostly agreed those are the active years. It's interesting that the numbers for men and women about match when the lie detection effect kicks in.
And it's pretty sad if true.
369: On those grounds, I think you lose your virgin eligibility. You can return the unicorn to the stables around back.
364: I would consider the collective wisdom of the Unfoggetariat to be relatively hip to the relevant distinctions. But maybe I'm not hip enough to know what I'm not getting.
371: On those grounds, I think you lose your virgin eligibility. You can return the unicorn to the stables around back.
Nooooooooo, not Blinky!!!
370: College students again, but we've mostly agreed those are the active years. It's interesting that the numbers for men and women about match when the lie detection effect kicks in.
And it's pretty sad if true.
Yeah, I suppose. I think that the amount of time spent single is the biggest determinant - it's not hard to put together a few a year, and over time that really adds up.
I'm an Unfoggetarian closer to what LR must have in mind: I wasn't aware FtM trans equipment worked well enough for that.
I wasn't aware FtM trans equipment worked well enough for that.
Same here.
Also, I don't understand the definition of the word "biological" being used here, although I do understand what LRock is talking about.
To go wildly off on another direction, in my experience some of the people many people thought were promiscuous turned out not to have been. I wonder how generally this is true.
This was the case with my high school girlfriend. Everyone thought she was promiscuous, I think largely because she had sort of a punk rock aesthetic, but she actually wasn't even interested in having sex at all (to my endless frustration).
Well, at least people thought you were gettin' some. Which in high school can often be preferable to actually gettin' some. (less chance of punishment)
OTOH, I've met tons of people who you'd think, on meeting them, were absolutely, positively virginal, but turn out to have had super-kinky multi-gendered orgy sex. I can't decide whether they find it insulting that everyone is so surprised, or secretly delightful.
378: I suppose, but it didn't really translate into any noticeable advantages for me.
I once knew a woman who claimed to only have slept with 2 men. We discussed it one time, and her definition had loopholes such as: if she only slept with them one time, it didn't count. If she didn't plan on sleeping with them, but did on an impulse, that didn't count. Her true total was closer to 13. In her honor, I have adopted the definition that it only counts as "sex" if you have slept with the person one thousand times, which makes me a one-woman man. I'm practically a role-model.
379 has happened to me so often that I now assume anyone who seems virginal is a big time slut unless I have clear evidence otherwise.
370: to me, the interesting part of this is that it's the women lying, not the men. I mean, as a guy, no, I've never been in an anonymous survey and inflated my numbers, but it doesn't sound any less likely to me than a woman downplaying hers.
to my endless frustration
It will end eventually, teo. I'm sure of it.
See? Just mentioning the possibility is enough to kill the blog.
I am become sex, destroyer of blogs.
364: For what it's worth, I've know transgendered people (both FTM and MTF) fairly well, so I might question your assessment, yes. Not that I have personal experience, but this sort of thing seems to be a pretty common topic in the community (and with in comfortable social settings I guess).
i haven't read this yet but "false consciousness" didn't show up on a search.
Having trust issues about cunnilingus=/ body image issues, guys.
You can be absolutely delighted and in love with yourself as you are down there, and still think it is a more intimate act.
You're no longer face to face, for one thing, so you can't see him properly. And it's easy to completely flip out into crazy orgasm, which is a vulnerable state. And above all, it's sensitive down there!
I've encountered the "oral is more intimate than piv" concept twice. Once was from the girl who took my virginity (when it wasn't a question) and once was from a girl I hooked up with in college, who said, "it's been a long time since I felt comfortable to do that with anyone" after I went first and she reciprocated.
As to the counting thing -- my ninth became my wife, which took me out of circulation for my twenties, and my thirteenth became my girlfriend, whom I hope will take me out of circulation for a good while longer than the first one. I could bump the numbers up a trifle by counting oral, but in all cases where that's true, the thought was clearly "well, we're not ready to have sex, but this would be fun". So I don't count it as sex.
Interestingly, both my soon-to-be-ex-wife and my girlfriend have had far more lovers than I have had. In the first case, I would persistently ask for her number, which she refused to give (or claimed not to know), and it was something of a burr. In the second, she told me early on that she deliberately decided not to keep track of the number, and I accepted that without much fuss.
Once was from the girl who took my virginity
Did she give it back?
Did you sue?
By sue, of course, I mean stick your tongue in the holiest of holies.
No, no, no.
Unless by holiest of holies, you are in fact referring to a location in Temple Beth Shalom, in which case, maybe.
Unless by "a location in Temple Beth Shalom" you are referring to a location thoroughly obscured by conservative shabbos skirts and undergarments, no, no I'm not.
The preference for giving: You can experience the sensation of arousal and orgasm during jerkingoff, but you can't experience the sensation of someone else getting off. So giving does that that advantage.
I thought giving oral was giving into the Patriarchy, not recieving.
I suspect that both so-called cunnilingus issues and the fact that American women will give a guy a b.j. before they'll fuck him have a hell of a lot to do with what American women are taught about men and sex. Sex is a service you provide, men only want sex, by "sex" men mean "orgasm" (but women don't), and it's all about making the guy happy.
So I do think it's about a deep insecurity, but not about body or dirty coochies or anything so simple. More like an anxiety that men don't really like women along with the idea that being liked, if you're a woman, is extremely important--more important than thinking about whether or not you like the person you're worried might not like you.
20: One factor that Knecht touched on is that larger numbers of partners are less likely to be accurately recalled than smaller numbers. At age 50, my lifetime number of sex partners is 5. I'm sure that number is accurate, because I remember all of them. It doesn't matter whether or not you count the BJs. On the other hand, if you want to know how many women I dated over the twelve years between starting college at 17 and starting to date Kay at 29, my best estimate is somewhere around 3 dozen. I'm pretty sure it was more than 2 dozen and less than 4 dozen, but beyond that things get a little fuzzy. I'm sure there were some women I went out with once or twice that I don't particularly recall, and there are some borderline cases where it depends on exactly how you define dating.
Now some of that difference is due to sex being more memorable than casual dating, but I think some of it is just the sheer numbers involved. At some point, unless you were keeping a diary or other record, you're just not going to remember all the casual encounters you might have had. And if those with the largest numbers of partners have the biggest errors in their estimates, those errors will have a disproportionate effect on the overall means if they are systematic rather than random.
For what it's worth, I'm part of LB's 16% that is still below the median number of partners. My first time was at age 25, after eight years of trying to find a sexual relationship, when I concluded that there was a small but non-zero chance that I simply lacked whatever mysterious "chemistry" it took to attract women physically, and that maybe none of my dating relationships were ever going to get consumated. So I decided to take care of the problem while on a trip to Vegas, rather than continue to wait for an event that might never happen. Another close friend from grad school is probably in the same category, though I'm not sure I know about all his sexual partners. The ones I know about were a couple of commercial encounters from his first year, the girlfriend he lived with for the next couple of years, and the woman he subsequently met and married.
Another fun fact: my median number of sexual encounters per partner is two, although the mean is much higher. Ms. Median intended to break things off after the first time we slept together, but couldn't quite bring herself to tell me face-to-face, which led to a bonus session the next time we got together. She subsequently broke up by letter, claiming that we were just "too different" for things to work out. I sent her a collection of assorted flowers with a note: "They may all be different, but they sure look nice together." She laughed, but we stayed broken up.
Sex is a service you provide, men only want sex, by "sex" men mean "orgasm" (but women don't), and it's all about making the guy happy.
Yeah. I've always understood the US b.j.-thing as being something like, crudely, buying the guy off with a b.j. Whereas the European thing, re: fucking is, "fucking will (physically) get me off, too. If you want me to do something that doesn't (physically) get me off, I bloody well better like you."
i don't know why the analysis of 399 applies more to america than to to britain
oh, pwned by 401.
but it actually doesn't answer it. i woudl assume it might be the otehr way around.
re: 402
Er, because British people don't share the same cultural values as the US? It's easy to mistake the shared language for a common culture. For a start, no-one [or as near as dammit no-one] is religious.
re: 403
Why would you assume it would be the other way round? Or are you buying into the stereotypes [about 50 years out of date] about Brits being repressed?
but, like, what values?
"You better give me something if i give you something" sounds like a selfish american thing.
re: 406
Well, the religious element to US culture, the element of puritanism (which I know is by no means universal but it's definitely there in a way that it isn't here). That puritanical thing applies to drinking and drugs and other hedonistic pursuits too, it's not just a sexual thing.
Also, gender relations here are different from in the US. I've said on here several times that Unfogged threads on gender often read to me like I am reading about an alien land or like I'm reading a message from the past. Not that the UK is some paradise of gender equality, but the relationship between the sexes just seems different.
I can see the religious thing leading to more bjs than 'real' sex, out of a desire to maintain 'purity'. But that seems different than the thing B was talking about, with the 'american women are trained to only care about men's orgasm'.
And, for what its worth, most of the time when i read about gender on Unfogged threads, it sounds like an alien land, i and grew up in a small american town with parents who went to an evangelical church.
381: If we can adopt invented definitions, I'm going with, "It only counts if in retrospect I'm glad it happened."
Are there any women here who won't perform oral sex?
Another fun fact: my median number of sexual encounters per partner is two
I'd expect the norm to be a low number. My repeats began to increase exponentially after the first several. Talk about a learning curve.
But this only applies for sure to us 0-14s. My guess is that the many people in the 1-2 dozen range will have a similar pattern stretched out, or perhaps some spikes, dwarfed by the volume under the curve later on.
It's also my guess that those who return to partner-seeking after the age of thirty, for whatever reason, tend to repeat the process, brief encounters followed by new stability.
Reading all this makes me feel like an anthropologist-from-Mars. I hit college in the free love, pre-AIDS, post-Pill, if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with era. Oral sex was definitely sex, tho' generally considered a part of foreplay, rather than as an excuse to claim some odd "purity". My social group was rather lax about the old double standard, having no interest in a Madonna [the original model, not the current Ms. Ritchie].
But then, I was also brought up oddly, as a brain, not a girl. I never learnt the girly-games - when I was not being monogamous, I'd much rather have someone ask "do you want to fuck?" than go through some stylised ritual of seduction. [Not that I don't appreciate a good seduction, but none of that pretence that that the outcome isn't already tacitly agreed upon.]
As for the looking-like-a-virgin thing - some years ago, I was once described as looking like a Xmas tree angel. How very wrong an impression...
AKA the "Why don't we do it in the road?" era. I lived through that era without living it, however. My stats are much like EDguy's.
401, 407: Yeah. It's odd, I can't quite articulate it, but in a way, superficially, the British women I know are less aggro about feminism than American women/feminists are, but in another, more important way, they're quite a bit more independent. Or at least more comfortable with themselves.
I was also brought up oddly, as a brain, not a girl.
OMG, this is so well said. And such a sad indictment.
It's odd, I can't quite articulate it, but in a way, superficially, the British women I know are less aggro about feminism than American women/feminists are, but in another, more important way, they're quite a bit more independent. Or at least more comfortable with themselves.
Surprised you can't articulate it. We have the constant contradictions that result from everyone presuming that they will be judged under traditional Protestant morality standards, but they will also be judged for their fitness as a productive employee who is out for herself in the work force. Professional Brit women aren't subjected to the former anymore.
And it seems to me that having better access to day care for children would make a woman much more "independent", by the very definition of the word.
414: I'm guessing that a big part of the explanation is the lack of well-organized anti-feminism in the UK. There's a whole lot of 'Feminists are lesbian witches who hate men and will eat your babies' in the US, which leaves the reasonable moderate position as 'feminism is vaguely unseemly and unrealistic, and traditional gender roles are, actually, written in stone to a great extent, thinking about changing them is just unrealistic.' Without all the organized rightwing hostility, the moderate position on gender roles looks a lot more relaxedly feminist.
re: 414
Yes, they might not generally use explicitly feminist language, but take for granted some of the things -- both about themselves and about the way they expect men to behave towards them -- that I am still quite surprised to hear U.S.* women arguing for.
I'm not sure if that translates into substantial differences in the public realm -- representation in politics or business, for example -- but it certainly makes personal relations between men and women as portrayed by Americans seem very different from my own understanding of how things are here.
* especially college/grad-school aged women ...
I knew from reading that such girls existed, were probably common, but I never managed to identify one. They were probably all around me, but had sized me up and decided "no thanks."
I note however that you are supposed to ask, so maybe that's it.
419 was supposed to start with this:
I never learnt the girly-games - when I was not being monogamous, I'd much rather have someone ask "do you want to fuck?" than go through some stylised ritual of seduction
416 and 418 seem quite right to me. I really don't think it's (entirely) that Protestant morality thing--at least, I wasn't raised in a Protestant environment at all, and it doesn't feel like that to me. I think it's more the Essential Seriousness of Americans, and I suspect a really really big part of it is class shit--Americans all want to be and think of themselves as upper middle class, whereas in Britain the properly middle middle class or working class are still quite strong. Whereas here, being overtly sexual or flirtatious or getting drunk and acting outrageous is "trashy."
Whereas here, being overtly sexual or flirtatious or getting drunk and acting outrageous is "trashy."
THAT'S something that differs between UK and US? The UK tabloid media has misled me.
416 and 418 seem quite right to me.
You didn't mention 414! I said something about feminism that both LB and Bphd agree with!
Essential Seriousness of Americans: which was learned from the Germans. The War Against Seriousness is my prime mission. My message is, of course, entirely different from the kind of frivolity and irony everyone else is doing. Dialectically speaking, they remain serious or even worse than serious.
Kotsko especially needs work on the seriousness issue.
The UK is saner because they shipped over their religious fanatics on the Mayflower. And while many, if not most Americans, aren't Protestant, that essential seriousness (or dare I say... Protestant work ethic?) became part of the idea of what it is to be American, so much so that suggesting something as reasonable as ensuring that all our citizens have healthcare is met with attitudes that suggest people would be healthy if they just weren't so damn lazy.
I imagine feminists in France don't wring their hands over whether if they dress nicely they're spitting in the eyes of rape victims, either. The U.S. is a little weird.
I imagine feminists in France don't wring their hands over whether if they dress nicely they're spitting in the eyes of rape victims, either. The U.S. is a little weird.
Who does that here?
I imagine feminists in France don't wring their hands over whether if they dress nicely they're spitting in the eyes of rape victims, either.
What?
426: Paraphrase of a line from Twisty. Wearing heels is spitting in the eye of every rape victim, applauded here as the sort of seriousness that is impractical, but laudable, as if we should aspire to it.
Applauded where?
Who aspires to saying things like that without actually saying them?
423: You people just do not get Kotsko at all.
Or Twisty either. The woman is FUNNY, dammit.
Erm, what? Haven't you confused "Not going to devote a lot of effort to denouncing Twisty, given that she has a point about a bunch of stuff" with "Admires and agrees with everything she says"?
Or, another way to put that is that I'm sure there's a French feminist who'd get on fine with Twisty -- at least one. She probably wouldn't be mainstream in French feminism, just as Twisty isn't here.
Look up some of the discussions about Twisty here. You'll find a lot of 'well, basically....', with the resulting explanation being something like Twisty's right, but not all of us can manage to be as [whatever] because of life, so we make concessions where we can.
Nothing against Twisty. She was just the example closest to mind. But the response to her wasn't a defense of gendered clothing, but a concession that Twisty's right, in a perfect world we wouldn't [whatever], but we have to live where we are.
431 to 432. Seriously, you can't take general defenses of Twisty as hyperbolically interesting and illuminating as endorsement of her most extreme positions as an ideal.
I blame the Americans for taking her So Damn Seriously.
And my only point was that pretty much everything about American culture seems to start with the premise that evidence of working hard means you're a good person, working hard means you'll succeed, and anything that detracts from that makes you morally suspect. It seems to affect feminism, too.
I don't know about British women, but English women have a stronger sense of themselves for the same reason the men do: their archaic class system (or what remains of it). Emerson knew. Cioran called it their "elightened stupidity."
One day they'll be as spineless as Americans.
LB, I'm not rehashing the blowjob or the fashion debates, but a lot of it seemed to me an endorsement in the way that a barely religious person might look up to Mother Theresa. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Should put paid to the clothing debates at least.
432: I like girly clothes. And Twisty herself has admitted, back in the mists of time, to having adorable kitten heeled shoes. The point isn't *literally* to condemn women for being girly; it's to talk about the way that femminess *signifies* in American culture. That it could, or should, signify differently than it does is a different argument altogether.
I did some quick searching, and found you making the same point about 'spitting in the face of rape victims here, except that no one responded to it by saying that Twisty was right. Now, you may be talking about the support she gets in her own comments, but I still think it's awfully weird to think of her as representative of the mainstream of American feminists.
While I don't read her much, I'll defend her in an 'often interesting, sometimes I agree with her, and why attack people on the left when there are so many more deserving targets out there' way, but that doesn't mean I'm holding her up as an ideal.
I think Twisty is vastly, vastly underserved by her commenters, who are much less intelligent and amusing than she is.
I think Cala's right about what many of us hear/read, whether you jokers and teasers mean it or not, in those discussions.
I wish with all my heart that I could be as light-hearted and un-serious-minded about the subject as LB seems to usually imply should be as easy as falling off a log, but I just can't. I've wanted to be that person since adolescence, clearly recognised it as a better way, but have always felt fraudulent and conscience-stricken whenever I've tried.
Here's hoping my kids, the first non-Protestant/Puritans in 15 generations, will escape.
I find Twisty very intelligent and amusing and I like her pictures of food. I don't think there are arguments behind her polemic, but there's certainly no rule that everyone has to have an argument.
Her commenters try to outdo themselves in a race to see who is the most feminist.
444: I believe it's "quien es mas feministe," Cala.
new rule:
everyone has to have an argument.
Her commenters, I think, are angry and unhappy, some with justification. But I don't read the comment threads.
Sure, her commenters are an odd bunch, but I'm still offput by taking them as a fair representation of American feminists generally.
I give Kotsko credit for fighting against seriousness, but I still worry that he'll turn out like Nietzsche, who earnestly endeavored to be unserious.
Of course; they're not. They're representative of a deep kind of unhappiness and anger at a whole host of things, some of which get focused on "men" as a class. I think a lot of it is resentment of a kind of freedom they perceive men as having.
I'm not taking them as a fair representation of American feminists, but I mistakenly took the defenses of Twisty by actual representative feminists to mean that they were sympathetic to her positions instead of just a defense of liking her witty tone.
That, and I think a lot of Twisty's commenters, and maybe Twisty herself, are as hard on themselves, as unhappy and unempathetic towards their own feelings, as they are towards "men." I think for Twisty, at least, a lot of that is that she has fucking cancer and has had half her fucking body mutilated in an attempt to keep herself alive.
451: You're caving, Cala. Not very feminist.
451: I am sympathetic to her position(s). I think if the people who are so offended by her were more sympathetic towards her, they'd find that what she says isn't as much of an attack as they think it is.
452: I see it more as a competition thing. I was assaulted so therefore I have the gravitas to speak on this issue. Oh yeah? Well, I was a whore! Oh yeah? I was an assaulted whore who never gave a blowjob but now I'm lesbian!
Someone's gotta be exaggerating.
453: I'm caving because I'm not up for a round of how incapable I am of understanding tone (I'm really not stupid, people, I just don't proofread) on a comment that was mostly tangential. Plus, I'm not going to tell LB & B that they weren't arguing what they thought they were. Presumably they know that better than I.
I think if the people who are so offended by her were more sympathetic towards her, they'd find that what she says isn't as much of an attack as they think it is.
It's hard for me to be sympathetic with people whose rhetorical strategy is to attack everyone other than themselves, and then reveal later that it was mostly hyperbole. This includes her and often you.
This is an unfortunate result of the lack of nuance/tone of voice in internet communications.
Oh, Tim, do shut up sometimes.
Really, B?
459: No, it's an unfortunate result of not realizing that neither she, nor I, are *attacking*. Neither you, nor "everyone." Read more carefully. Think of what you read, her stuff especially, as something you happened across, rather than addressed to you personally.
459: It's hard for me to be sympathetic with people whose rhetorical strategy is to attack everyone other than themselves, and then reveal later that it was mostly hyperbole. This includes her and often you.
I've never seen Twisty do this in a way that's not intended to illuminate people's own culpability in creating and enforcing patriarchy, because that is basically her schtick. That's the point, practically: how people (usually, men or women who've bought into P through their men) take offense at the mere suggestion that they could be part of a system that damages people, in ways that end up making them completely discount the people talking about the damage.
Plus, what B said: her comments are very much impersonal critiques of a system, not individual people. It's not like Unfogged, she's not really personally engaged with her own commentariat on a level that we'd find meaningful, let alone some random blog dude.
Rocky, we really have to stop meeting like this.
I believe you're misreading Ned if you're taking him to be saying that his problem with Twisty is that she insults him personally, or that he doesn't understand apostrophe. I read him as saying that the problem is the constant hyperbole, presented as a serious argument or position, which instantly retreats to a more defensible position the second it's challenged.
Why can't I quit you, B? Why can't I quit you?
You and she seem to share some issues with your relationship to your commentariat, although you're more engaged with yours and yours has a much higher percentage of people who seem to fully "get" you. But there's definitely this weird gap going on between "context of poster" and "context of commenters" that feels mainly like a class thing. Or really an education thing, which is basically a class thing.
Yeah, really, Tim.
I'll tell you what, you go first.
465: The question is whether one is to take that as an indication of dishonest equivocation in the speaker, or insensitive reading in the reader. I don't mean to prejudge the answer in general by putting it that way -- there are people who I'd read as dishonestly equivocal. But for a speaker whose positions you're generally sympathetic with, if you read something inflammatory they write and think "Position Y is completely indefensible, and knowing her, I know that if I call her on it, she'll say that she was being hyperbolic and really only meant X, which is of course unobjectionable," that there's a good chance that they do really mean X and are just expressing it in a way you find unsympathetic.
468: I'm really trying hard not to be insulted here, but I'm not doing too well with it.
But in short, it's not a problem with tone, but rather a moving-the-goalposts problem. Being hyperbolic is fine. I have used it myself on occasion on this very blog. But the problem is when someone defends the hyperbolic position in all apparently seriousness for a while and then as it turns out, the person was really saying something, undetectable by actually reading their words, much weaker that would have been unobjectionable had they clarified that when first challenged.
469: That is a dastardly tactic and no one would ever try to attempt that on a blog as intellectually rigorous as this one.
But for a speaker whose positions you're generally sympathetic with, if you read something inflammatory they write and think "Position Y is completely indefensible, and knowing her, I know that if I call her on it, she'll say that she was being hyperbolic and really only meant X, which is of course unobjectionable," that there's a good chance that they do really mean X and are just expressing it in a way you find unsympathetic.
If this happens all the time, though, I'm going to think that the speaker is indeed being disingenuous, or at least irritatingly heedless about expressing his or her opinions with care. Expressing things two different ways involves expressing two different things: it's not as if some pure, ideal underlying sentiment is just wearing an ugly hat that day.
468: This is a hell of a conversation to have without specifics and context, is the thing. Without specifics and context of precise, quoted, things having been said in context by identified people, there's no way to reasonably talk about who's moving the goalposts and who's being uncharitable (and of course there are going to be edge cases).
All I meant, really, was to respond to Ned's 459; the flip side of 'I can't be sympathetic to someone who's always attacking me' is that 'if you were sympathetic, you wouldn't be taking it as an attack.' To figure out which of those positions is actually right, you need to nitpick details, and you need to make subjective judgments, but they're both plausible ways of reacting to Twisty-style rhetoric.
Attacking society in general for being sexist (or racist) is similar to attacking everyone but oneself for being sexist (or racist). The former is acceptable, and the latter not. People who want to be seen as victims sometimes do the latter and then wonder why people are unsympathetic or defensive.
A White Bear is good at making it clear that society is the problem rather than specific people, when that's what she means, instead of personalizing the grievance.
This is a hell of a conversation to have without specifics and context, is the thing.
Yeah, I'm a bit uneasy about having said the previous paragraph, but it makes sense to me.
On the Twisty things: when she says things like "Prostitution . . . is the very core of the female's condition, and all women are political prisoners" (taken at random from the latest post) I don't really see much reason to assume she's being wittily hyperbolic or that she doesn't mean it seriously. A lot of the over-the-top stuff on her blog proceeds from that kind of perspective; some of it's justifiable, some of it isn't, sometimes she's impressive and sometimes not (mostly I vote for "not," but she has her moments) -- but I see no reason to assume her commenters are a bunch of rubes who just aren't getting the subtle undertones. I think the bulk of her commentariat suits her precisely, and I think people who see her as mostly hostile are pretty much right to do so.
Well, I'd say that any attack on a real world statement including the word 'all' that involves finding counterexamples is an example of misunderstanding hyperbole. I'm not calling it witty hyperbole, but "all women are political prisoners", clearly, to me, means something more like most women, or women generally despite the fact that there may be counterexamples, have their freedom restricted in ways analogous to the restrictions on freedoms imposed on political prisoners. I mean, obviously, if you take it absolutely literally it's nonsense, I haven't been locked up, and neither have plenty of other women. So, there's a difference between saying she's not serious and saying she's not being literal.
Not that that directly contradicts what you said -- I just wanted to make the point that 'doesn't mean it seriously' doesn't take us far. Obviously, she doesn't mean it literally, so there's interpretation to be done before you look at what she does, seriously, mean.
412, 413: I feel like in my early 20s I managed to walk through some of the battlefields of the Sexual Revolution without acquiring so much as a flesh wound, damn it. Many of my peers were having a lot more fun.
474: On the Twisty things: when she says things like "Prostitution . . . is the very core of the female's condition, and all women are political prisoners" (taken at random from the latest post) I don't really see much reason to assume she's being wittily hyperbolic or that she doesn't mean it seriously.
Twisty didn't say that, she quoted Kate Millett saying that, and that's only "taken at random" because you're apparently a half-literate jackass who didn't read the whole post, let alone the words right between those two statements that attributed the statement to Millett, which you happily elided.
The people who are getting all up in her arms are reading her looking for things to get offended about, which is practically her point.
SP{jgferkrkr. Getting all up in arms about her phrasing, even. I CAN HAS BRAIN DAMAGE.
478: Heh. I didn't go looking for the original of the post. Should have.
Shouldn't I be blowing a whistle and clucking about the intentional fallacy (broadly construed) right now?
Anytime someone uses the word 'all' I have to assume they didn't mean it, or it's my fault if I take them seriously? (People seemed to take my 'no one ever has fond memories of the library' pretty literally. Were they all wrong to provide counterexamples of the libraries they loved?)
This indeed is a strange notion of charitable argument. It's one thing to be charitable to your dialectical opponent and assume they're arguing in good faith, but it's another thing when being charitable means re-writing what they say to mean something to which you already assent.
Expressing things two different ways involves expressing two different things: it's not as if some pure, ideal underlying sentiment is just wearing an ugly hat that day.
Beautiful.
Read the post; she quotes Millett in the context of a site designed as a "charity"/interactive amateur porn gig to get women breast implants.
475: Yes, we'd interpret it the same way. Point being, the basic thrust of the argument is meant more-or-less seriously and radically. She's not just taking the piss, and she's not doing something categorically different from and more cleverly-shaded than other radfems, which to me is what the "hyperbole" defense tends to imply. Her radical rhetoric is, in fact, radical rhetoric.
That's not inherently a bad thing, of course, though in a lot of ways I find the radfems-of-our-day unsympathetic, Twisty included. She does have a sense of humour, which is good, I just don't think she's the Andy Kaufmann of feminist blogging or anything.
es, have their freedom restricted in ways analogous to the restrictions on freedoms imposed on political prisoners.
It's not always clear if the claim--in this kind of language, not speaking to Twisty--is that the restrictions are analogous (and how analogous) or the same in all important respects. When someone says "X are America's last n*g**rs," they're not saying, "Well, we've also suffered oppression." They're saying something much, much stronger. (And much, much wronger.) That is, I don't think it's always clear that such language isn't meant to be taken literally (or effectively so).
It's one thing to be charitable to your dialectical opponent and assume they're arguing in good faith, but it's another thing when being charitable means re-writing what they say to mean something to which you already assent.
But if they're saying something hyperbolic, you have to rewrite it as something non-hyperbolic before you can agree with it.
481: But that's a statement that makes no sense taken literally. I mean, there could be someone who believes that all women have been literally imprisoned for their political beliefs, but that person would be beyond mistaken into insane, particularly given that she is a woman herself who is presumably not incarcerated. So if you're going to take it literally, the only sensible response is 'Poor Twisty. I hope there's someone taking care of her and she gets better sometime', just like if she were claiming to be a slice of lime looking for a gin and tonic to jump into.
A flatly literal reading of the statement just isn't possible. (And, of course, as LR says, she was quoting someone else.)
That is, I don't think it's always clear that such language isn't meant to be taken literally (or effectively so).
It is always clear that such language isn't meant to be taken literally; "Woman is the nigger of the world" doesn't mean that John Lennon thought all women were darker-skinned than white men. Once you're interpreting a metaphor, then, there's nothing to do but try to understand what the writer meant by it.
Sure. But that's why I don't attempt to have an argument with Twisty saying 'women aren't REALLY political prisoners.' Because I don't think she can mean it literally.
But maybe she does -- the sort of thing ogged was talking about in his post were cases where people were giving arguments for their ostensibly hyperbolic positions. If I decide they must not really mean it when they're arguing for the position, that's not being charitable, just condescending.
488: Right, which I understood, and which is why I said "or effectively so." And in understanding what she was trying to communicate, I understand that "n*g**r" usually references a particular set of circumstances in this country. It is, I think, a very strong claim. Or hyperbolic. Or put it this way: when I see that, should I read it as hyperbole or not? And if so, how hyperbolic?
I get it! She calls herself Twisty because conversations about her spiral ever inwards.
450: They're representative of a deep kind of unhappiness and anger at a whole host of things, some of which get focused on "men" "liberals" as a class. I think a lot of it is resentment of a kind of freedom they perceive men gay/black/hippie liberals as having.
Doot dee doo.
469: But in short, it's not a problem with tone, but rather a moving-the-goalposts problem. Being hyperbolic is fine. I have used it myself on occasion on this very blog. But the problem is when someone defends the hyperbolic position in all apparently seriousness for a while and then as it turns out, the person was really saying something, undetectable by actually reading their words, much weaker that would have been unobjectionable had they clarified that when first challenged.
Mmm. Never seen that happen!
Now I opt out, and go to (wait for it) swim.
No, it's really not condescending to decide that 'all women are political prisoners' is a metaphor not to be taken literally. Your choices are believing it's a metaphor, or believing that Twisty is insane. You can argue about what she means by it, but you can't possibly engage her under the assumption that she means it literally. (And I'd say that internal evidence in the stuff she writes makes it clear that that sort of thing is metaphoric, rather than that she's in a straitjacked somewhere.)
Using figurative language doesn't actually require everyone to treat you as Humpty Dumpty would like to be treated. If I say "all Republicans are dirty weasels," and you say, "I actually know many Republicans who are personally morally upright and straightforward," it isn't much of a refutation for me to reply "Oh, when I say 'dirty weasels' I mean 'personally distasteful to me and me alone.'"
478: Twisty didn't say that, she quoted Kate Millett saying that,
Paraphrased her, you dysphasic troglodyte*. And I elided it because it's representative enough of how Twisty comes by such rhetoric that the specific author doesn't matter.
And yes, she's talking about a stupid amateur porn site. Which has nothing to do with my point, really. (HINT: I was not saying "Twisty is always wrong.")
(* See, witty hyperbole! Totally deniable. I could get used to this.)
492 to 489.
To 490: Once you accept that it's a metaphor, you're stuck with figuring out what she meant by it. At that point, you can say "If that's what she meant, it's a bad metaphor" or "I understand her to mean X by it, and I disagree that X is true," but you're stuck interpreting what's going on in her head -- you can't call her interpretation of her own metaphor (which, again, this one wasn't her own) objectively false.
Your choices are believing it's a metaphor, or believing that Twisty is insane.
As per 484, I believe it's seriously-intended radical rhetoric. Whether or not it's "literal" is a red herring.
nd you say, "I actually know many Republicans who are personally morally upright and straightforward,"
I think you first have to say, "Actually, all the Republicans I know are human." Then you get to the next step.
410: Are there any women here who won't perform oral sex?
If you'll accept here at one remove, then yes. Kay finds the concept of fellatio so disturbing that even talking about it is very upsetting to her, because of the mental images it brings to mind. We discussed why at one of our counseling sessions (it involves a bunch of associations from her life long before I was ever involved), and she asked that the two of us never discuss the subject ever again.
To 493: Oh, sure, that goes all the way back to my 468: "The question is whether one is to take that as an indication of dishonest equivocation in the speaker, or insensitive reading in the reader."
Sometimes it is dishonest equivocation. I just think that insensitive reading is often rejected as a hypothesis, and people don't recognize how much interpretation they're doing to get at a reading they find distasteful.
Your choices are believing it's a metaphor, or believing that Twisty is insane. You can argue about what she means by it, but you can't possibly engage her under the assumption that she means it literally.
I agreed with that! For fuck's sake! What I am saying if someone says, to take Brock as an example, something that seems to be crazy like the moral equivalence of fetuses and toddlers and attempts to argue for it (SOMETHING WHICH TWISTY IS NOT WONT TO DO GIVEN THAT HER SCHTICK IS HYPERBOLE), I am not being uncharitable if I assume he actually holds the position for which he argues. In fact, assuming your opponent is arguing in good faith is pretty much the starting point of charity!
I am not required to assume his position is really a milder one that no one would disagree with IF I AM TAKING HIS ARGUMENT SERIOUSLY. I don't see how it's not just saying 'Tut, tut, you can't possibly mean crazy position X' when the person is arguing that they mean crazy position X.
496: But calling it 'radical rhetoric' doesn't tell you if she's right or wrong; you have to read a whole bunch of stuff in context to figure out what she's saying when she says 'political prisoners', given that she doesn't mean 'people who have been literally incarcerated for their political beliefs'.
501: But calling it 'radical rhetoric' doesn't tell you if she's right or wrong
I really didn't say it did. Honest.
she asked that the two of us never discuss the subject ever again
Kay or the counselor?
Or Twisty either. The woman is FUNNY, dammit.
So's Tucker Max. Actually, those two are in the same folder in my mental filing cabinet.
500: You did agree with that, and I misread you; sorry, I screwed up. But at this point, we're back to the whole 'specifics and context' problem -- generally, I'd agree with you, but that doesn't get us to anything about anyone particular.
I just think that insensitive reading is often rejected as a hypothesis, and people don't recognize how much interpretation they're doing to get at a reading they find distasteful.
I think Dan Brown has advanced a similar theory about High Culture critics of the Da Vinci Code.
494: She explicitly credits another woman, by name, and gives no indication whatsoever that she is paraphasing or that the quote is not direct. Misattributing statements and willfully conflating two people is bullshit, sorry, no pass.
And yes, she's talking about a stupid amateur porn site. Which has nothing to do with my point, really.
It has everything to do with your point, again, you half-literate jackass, because she makes a point of analyzing all the transactions going on in that site and showing how it is indistinguishable from prostitution in the way that it is transforming the bodies of women into a sexualized commodity that is traded between men. You can't just point to one (quoted!) statement and claim it's random angry hyperbole that's not specifically tied to any argument in particular when not one twitching of the scrollwheel up the page she very clearly does contextualize it. LB is right: this is not insane hyperbole unless you literally cannot read.
It has everything to do with your point, again, you half-literate jackass,
Okay, at this point you can fuck off. Not hyperbole.
(But a hint for future reference; if you're seriously going to throw around rhetoric like "half-literate jackass" you should try actually reading the other party's posts first.)
507: Okay, at this point you can fuck off. Not hyperbole.
Why, because I'm pointing out that your "reading" of the post was indistinguishable from that of someone who is so less-than-fully-literate he's only capable of skimming the damn thing looking for points to be offended about?
(But a hint for future reference; if you're seriously going to throw around rhetoric like "half-literate jackass" you should try actually reading the other party's posts first.)
Stands for itself, I think.
Um, DS? I'm the wrong person to make peace, given that I'm in the argument, but given that you started the namecalling (which I completely understand was meant to be funny, when you did it) being genuinely offended at having epithets thrown back at you seems awfully touchy.
510: he's not offended. When he said "not hyperbole," that was hyperbole. Only a moron wouldn't see this.
It's arguable that I started the name-calling, LB, and I'm more than happy to cop to that. I simply think it's perfectly justifiable, given that he basically deliberately misattributes someone's statement to make a troll reading. That infuriates me, and, tellingly, it's something that the Unfogged commentariat does not tolerate in discussions of any other subject.
You can't talk to my bitch like that, LB.
Further hint to the intrepid Rockette: try finding anything in my posts that says this: and claim it's random angry hyperbole that's not specifically tied to any argument in particular
I think you may find you're somewhat half-literately conflating me with someone else. Make your own assessment, then proceed with the fucking off at your own pace.
510: given that you started the namecalling
You got me. I actually posted 478 and am having this argument with myself. Loved sock-puppets as a child.
Look, DS is not literally suggesting that LR engage in intercourse. That's a totally disingenuous reading of his comment. Once you accept that, all readings of "fuck off" are totally subjective.
You two are about to achieve comity, right?
Comity, tragity, in the end it is all one.
488: There's no bright line between literal and metaphorical interpretations.
I just think that insensitive reading is often rejected as a hypothesis, and people don't recognize how much interpretation they're doing to get at a reading they find distasteful.
I know you don't mean this to be condescending, LB, but I'll be honest and say that I do find it to be so. Educated, intelligent woman. Not a top-tier big firm lawyer, but in a discipline that's pretty much about arguments. I reject the hypothesis because I find it to be incorrect based on what I know about myself.
515: Sorry, I missed 478 completely. I noticed your 'dysphasic troglodyte' first, and thought LR was responding in kind.
Still, can't we all just be brothers? (Well, siblings generally?)
My memory of LB's gloss/defense of Twisty resembles Cala's: what was irritating wasn't LB's nuanced position, with which like Cala I wholeheartedly agreed, it was LB's adamant insistence that her restatement was the same as Twisty's statement, and that those of us who disagreed with that were either being obtuse or reading in bad faith.
Still, can't we all just be brothers?
I'm going to wager you don't have actual brothers. This, in fact, is how one interacts with one's brothers.
515: I think you may find you're somewhat half-literately conflating me with someone else.
I can read, thanks.
474: On the Twisty things: when she says things like "Prostitution . . . is the very core of the female's condition, and all women are political prisoners" (taken at random from the last post) I don't really see much reason to assume she's being wittily hyperbolic or that she doesn't mean it seriously. A lot of the over-the-top stuff on her blog proceeds from that kind of perspective; some of it's justifiable, some of it isn't, sometimes she's impressive and sometimes not (mostly I vote for "not," but she has her moments) -- but I see no reason to assume her commenters are a bunch of rubes who just aren't getting the subtle undertones. I think the bulk of her commentariat suits her precisely, and I think people who see her as mostly hostile are pretty much right to do so.
Please explain to me what "hostile" means in your statement here, if it has any meaning other than "zomg she just used a strong statement", because given her actual specific arguments and what the "essential condition of prostitution" phrase was referencing, the only "hostility" I'm seeing in her entire post is to the guy running the porn site.
521: We're back to the 'context, specifics' problem again. If we were talking about a specific interpretation of a specific set of statements, I could say that I thought your reading was fair or unfair. Given that we're talking in vague generalities about Twisty generally, I'm going to say that I think she often gets an unsympathetic reading, but I'm not characterizing any specific reading you've made of a post of hers as unsympathetic, because I'm not looking at any specific reading you've made of a post of hers.
523: yes. "You disagree with what I said? But what I meant is entirely uncontroversial!" is not, like, high-end debate team material.
527: But sometimes it's true. Look, backing away from Twisty specifically, can we agree that what I'm talking about: unsympathetic reading of anything which requires any kind of interpretation, which in normal writing all sorts of stuff does, can be a source of misunderstanding? Not Twisty -- think of someone you like and agree with, being given a hard time by an unsympathetic interlocutor.
"Prostitution . . . is the very core of the female's condition, and all women are political prisoners
LR's right. Nowhere in this quote does the author indicate that she feels these conditions to be undesirable, or worthy of hostility.
Trying to be serious here for a moment: LB, it seems like you're assuming that all rhetoric, though it may have many forms, basically serves the same purpose, which is to make an argument or advance a thesis. But that doesn't seem to be what Twisty is up to. Whether what she is doing is consciousness-raising, or affirming radicalism, or critical hyperbole, we can debate, but it seems like the way to understand her rhetoric is to see it as something other than argument.
528: But there are limits to reasonable readings, otherwise we'd all be carrying out conversations with fictive others, and all discourse would be verbalized solipsism.
Look, if this was anyone other than Twisty, would a given commenter look like a complete jackass and/or illiterate if they honed in on the strongest statement in a given post, a statement which was quite clearly attributed to someone other than the author and which was very carefully contextualized throughout the post, and then used that (misattributed) statement to hold up a general point about how, oh, "uncivil" that poster was?
think of someone you like and agree with, being given a hard time by an unsympathetic interlocutor
Okay. In my particularly guided imagery, I'll make the someone B, and the interlocutor myself.
There is a difference between making ambiguous or overreaching statements because you aren't able to express your opinions perfectly and using those statements intentionally as a rhetorical device. The first is understandable, if unlikely to help you win arguments on the internet, while the second is sort of cheap and sort of annoying.
I'm going to say that I think she often gets an unsympathetic reading,
This is the part of the argument I genuinely don't understand. Given a certain reader response, surely at some percentage point--X% percentage of readers take away what you would deem an unfair reading--the issue changes from "unsympathetic reader" to "poor writer." (I should note that I'm not trying to attach that to Twisty. Rather I take yours to be a more general argument.) Perhaps the argument is that such language is best understood by like-minded people, and that people outside that group are unlikely to understand what is meant? (That's a position that I'm at least mildly sympathetic to.)
I'm handicapped here by the fact that I don't read Twisty much -- for some reason she's blocked by my work filter, and I mostly don't read blogs at home. So I read her when she gets discussed enough to make me remember to check her at home, and on those occasions, she never seems as nuts to me as people tend to say she is (her commenters are a little off, but so are almost everyone's in their varying ways.)
Beyond that, I'm not sure how to respond -- I wouldn't draw sharp distinctions between all of the rhetorical goals you name.
528: Sure, but if I ask myself, which is more likely? Is this hyperbole that is in the neighborhood of a respectable argument, but is intended for a purpose other than argument, or have I suddenly lost the ability to read, I'm betting on the hyperbole.
To expand on my earlier comment, part of LB's argument that really annoys me is that she keeps asserting (as in 501) that lots of interpretation is required to make any sense of what people like Twisty say. But the problem isn't that people are taking her literally (which is why comments like 492 annoy me so much--strawman), but that you, LB, don't agree with their interpretation of her metaphor.
My opinion of Twisty's writing is that, if it actually is as subtle and trenchant as BitchPhd keeps saying, then it's written for such a limited audience, one that's very literate about feminism, that it's not very useful at all to anyone else. No one else is qualified to understand the metaphor as Twisty intended it.
My opinion of her commenters is not so positive.
Again, to the last bunch of comments (531-34), I don't read her consistently, but when I do, I'm usually surprised by how hostile the reaction to her posts is from people who I think of as generally sympathetic on those issues. Possibly the answer is that I'm a bad reader, cutting her way too much slack, and inventing reasonable interpretations of what is genuinely unreasonable writing. Possibly all of you are being bad readers, and interpreting heated rhetoric unsympathetically. I don't see a way to settle this other than by picking apart a specific post in context (and I wouldn't expect that to actually settle it, of course).
Cala, I'm sorry that I'm offending you. Does it help to point out that our situation is symmetrical; that in that we disagree generally about how to read Twisty, that one of us is reading badly? You think I am, and I think you are, but I don't take your belief that I misread her as an attack on my education or intelligence, and I don't mean my belief that you are as a similar attack.
You are in a maze of Twisty references, all alike.
I don't think you're reading her badly as much as you're using her for a jumping off point for a more serious discussion. I just don't think that your generally very good arguments are the core of what Twisty is expressing hyperbolically.
I know you're not intentionally being offensive. And I'm sorry I'm a little cranky.
But the problem isn't that people are taking her literally (which is why comments like 492 annoy me so much--strawman), but that you, LB, don't agree with their interpretation of her metaphor.
The point of 492 is to make it clear that what we're arguing about is two different interpretations of speech that requires interpretation -- that simply can't be taken literally. It's not a matter of some people reacting simply to what she actually says, and other people coming up with convoluted interpretations of what she really meant: both sides are going through very similar interpretative processes, and coming up with different results.
535: one distinction I can think of is that you would employ the one with people you respect on an intellectual level and the others with people who you felt, for whatever reason, were incapable of grasping your straightforwardly expressed. To condescend to your readers in such a way, and to further assume that the right-thinking ones will realize this, and discount much of what you say, doesn't seem conducive to a genuine exchange of ideas.
Which, then, would mean we're not talking about "argument," at least not if you define argument as a species of conversation. We're talking about "yelling," in some manifestation or other.
Possibly the answer is that I'm a bad reader, cutting her way too much slack, and inventing reasonable interpretations of what is genuinely unreasonable writing. Possibly all of you are being bad readers, and interpreting heated rhetoric unsympathetically. I don't see a way to settle this other than by picking apart a specific post in context (and I wouldn't expect that to actually settle it, of course).
We could vote. Unless you hate democracy. Like slol.
Will someone please restate the question for me?
LB's rephrasing, her reading of the Twisty passage, basically a statement of what it meant or suggested to her, was always something I was happy to agree with. Her insistence that it must be obvious that the two were the same, and showed a deficiency in those of us who couldn't see that they were, whatever the respective merits of each might be, that I've never gotten over.
503: > she asked that the two of us never discuss the subject ever again
Kay or the counselor?
Kay asked, as part of explaining why she finds the concept of fellatio upsetting, that I never discuss the subject again with her unless she brings it up first (while making it clear that she has no intention of doing so). It's not that I was doing it very often - more like once every few years - but it's a major hot button for her.
546: If there's something I should be apologizing for, could you find it for me? It's possible that in retrospect I'd back down, but I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, and searching the site isn't helping.
542: Funny, that's the exact opposite of how I read it. Heh.
524 gets it right.
In the spirit of brotherhood, then, 506: she explicitly credits another woman, by name, and gives no indication whatsoever that she is paraphasing or that the quote is not direct
You know how you indicate you're quoting someone? With "quotation marks." If you don't use them, the reader will assume you're paraphrasing. Quote or not, given that Twisty uses the phrase with enthusiastic approval, it is not separable from her own rhetoric and is perfectly admissible as an instance of it. Your attempt to pretend this is some sort of "gotcha" is mistaken, your attempt to imply that others are being hypocritical by failing to line up on cue with pitchforks is flat-out idiotic, and you should really probably stop.
525: I can read, thanks.
So you can read the text in between the parts of my post that you bolded, right? The part where it says sometimes it's justifiable, sometimes not. You saw that, right? That's the part that indicates that I was not necessarily saying the particular post in question was wrong, and that I was not confining my comment to that post in particular. That's sort of important, as any half-literate jackass could tell you.
As for what "hostile" means, I'm not using any esoteric definition of it. It means that when Twisty adopts a hostile tone toward something -- and this is actually not that hard to identify, as FM mildly hinted -- she means what she says.
And since you can read, you will have noticed that in none of my posts have I accused Twisty of being merely "uncivil" or of not having arguments. So we can pretty much dispense with 532, right?
546: Okay, but why is it so damn hard to just either read the woman charitably, or not read her? I have to say that I'm really tired of the way "Twisty" gets brought up *all the time* at places she never comments at (it happens at SG too) and then talked *about* in her absence. I always feel like somehow I'm supposed to either "defend" or "renounce" her, and it fucking sucks. I don't like defending her, because she's perfectly capable of defending herself, and I won't renounce her because I happen to like her both personally and as a writer, thankyouverymuch.
I can't help but feeling like people's reactions to Twisty in the end are a lot more about themselves than it is about anything she says or doesn't say, or how she says it, or any of that nonsense.
Okay, but why is it so damn hard to just either read the woman charitably, or not read her?
Pretty easy. Not talking about her, that's the trick.
Attacking society in general for being sexist (or racist) is similar to attacking everyone but oneself for being sexist (or racist).
Nonsense. First, why the exception? Twisty writes about her own struggle with sexism--fuck, the entire blog's about that, if I'm not mistaken. And second, the whole is more than the sum of one's parts.
Society in general *is* both sexist and racist. I shouldn't have to reassure people that yes, I am part of society (and therefore implicated) and that no, I don't mean that they, personally, are bad people for the basic fact of that statement to be more or less agreed upon.
I can't help but feeling like people's reactions to Twisty in the end are a lot more about themselves
That's probably broadly true.
551: To be fair, when people talk about her in threads like this, they (I assume) usually mean to use her as an emblematic example of a collection of similar bloggers, of which she's the most prominent. That the discussion often can't generalize well to those other bloggers is a side effect of breaking the analogy ban.
You're all banned.
I don't read Twisty at all, but did want to defend my right to be annoyed when people blithely lash out, overgeneralize, or make hyperbolic arguments, defending their excesses by retreat to more nuanced arguments, and other such rhetorical irritations.
When I talk about Twisty I'm really talking about B.
Which is to say, some people were talking about Twisty, and I didn't have anything to contribute. Then they got on to some more general topics of rhetorical behavior and how to take it, and I perked right up.
I rarely read Twisty, but she's a hell of a lot smarter than Marcotte, that's for sure.
</just trolling>
530: Trying to be serious here for a moment: LB, it seems like you're assuming that all rhetoric, though it may have many forms, basically serves the same purpose, which is to make an argument or advance a thesis. But that doesn't seem to be what Twisty is up to. Whether what she is doing is consciousness-raising, or affirming radicalism, or critical hyperbole, we can debate, but it seems like the way to understand her rhetoric is to see it as something other than argument.
This is just about a perfect example of what I find objectionable to the objectors-to-Twisty-as-disengaged-from-her-actual-blog that B is talking about above. Seriously, what the hell is this other than basically discounting her outright? I think her arguments and thesis are a great deal clearer than most other feminist bloggers, frankly. Maybe I'm being overly charitable to Ogged, but I've seen both him and the contra-Twisty Unfoggedetariat give more credit for good faith to people like that one guy on Bandarlog and Glenn Reynolds, and seriously, the way she's discounted is extremely creepy.
Yay! I think that is my very first banning.
548: I'm not looking for an apology, and my only interest in the subject is the memory Cala's brought back for me. I honestly never have had trouble interpreting Twisty, nor finding her fairly witty. I was new here then, sometime in the Spring of '06, and as I keep saying, it was the insistence on the practical equivalence of two fairly distinguishable statements that got under my skin then. Now I'd probably know to leave the whole subject alone and just read.
I can't do it just now, but I will try to look for it.
Am I allowed to say that I, personally, think 498 is just really quite tacky? If you're going to talk about your partner's sexuality, for god's sake have the class to do it presidentially. Spill your own secrets all you like, but jesus, man.
it's really not condescending to decide that 'all women are political prisoners' is a metaphor not to be taken literally. Your choices are believing it's a metaphor, or believing that Twisty is insane.
I have to disagree. Why can't it be literal? If "the patriarchy" (a phrase I am quite tired of, myself) exists, then it among other things it is political. Therefore it makes sense to say that "all women" (and for the matter of that, all men) are prisoners of it. You've all read Foucault. (Or are basically familiar with the jist of his methods.)
I didn't discount her, L-Rock (you crack whore). But there's just no argument to be made (at least for any definition of "argument" that I know) for something like "Prostitution, as Kate Millett said, is the very core of the female's condition, and all women are political prisoners." You're never going to establish that for me as a fact, so I take it that she's up to something else, and there are lots of kinds of rhetoric that are valuable, whether they're arguments or not.
561: Seriously, what the hell is this other than basically discounting her outright?
I believe it is what it says it is, which is a discussion of whether her rhetorical strategies are part of an attempt to engage in reasoned debate, or something else entirely.
've seen both him and the contra-Twisty Unfoggedetariat give more credit for good faith to people like that one guy on Bandarlog and Glenn Reynolds
Really? URL? Not buying it otherwise. I certainly ain't never given no numbnuts transhuman credit for good faith.
I can't believe I got sucked in! Ok, leaving again.
I've seen both him and the contra-Twisty Unfoggedetariat give more credit for good faith to people like that one guy on Bandarlog and Glenn Reynolds, and seriously, the way she's discounted is extremely creepy.
Amen and hallelujah. Preach it my sister.
555: Same thing applies. Why in god's name do people (ahem, mostly men) feel it's *so* effing necessary to talk about "some kinds of feminist blogs" in this way? It's just gross. If you don't like some women's "tone," then read something else.
564: Given that EDGuy stands for ErectileDysfunctionGuy, back from your sex threads, and predates presidentiality, I think he gets a pass.
And on the literal/figurative thing, work with me. There's a sense in which we call people prisoners when they're physically confined, and not prisoners when they're not. I'm calling that sense 'literal', and more expansive senses 'figurative'. While you may want to use different vocabulary, you do know what I mean, right?
564: So you're saying maybe "political prisoners" is literal, it's just the "prisoners" part that's metaphorical? I repeat, there is no bright line between literal and metaphorical interpretations.
Also, I believe "EDGuy" was the a presidential pseudonym chosen by EDGuy way back when before there were presidential pseudonyms, so I think he should get a pass.
"Prostitution, as Kate Millett said, is the very core of the female's condition, and all women are political prisoners." You're never going to establish that for me as a fact
Why, for god's sake? It simply doesn't seem like that outrageous a statement to me. At all.
. Why can't it be literal?
The likelihood of this response from a sympathetic reader is what I was trying to get at in #485. Looking at it again, I didn't do a very good job.
for god's sake have the class to do it presidentially
Whether he signed it EDGuy or Franklin Pierce, I still haven't the faintest idea who he or his partner is.
570.1: No, the prisoners part isn't necessarily metaphorical either. We are all, literally, imprisoned by our history and our culture: there are ways of thinking that are completely alien and inaccessible to us. E.g., the medieval belief in demonic possession. I do not believe that anyone, neither the secularists nor modern fundies, understands that in the way that it was once understood; I think the context and ideologies in which it was "true" are lost to us.
561: I just read a bunch of Twisty, and it just doesn't seem like she's trying to convince anyone of anything. She seems to be trying to motivate the convinced.
574: Okay, fine. I still think it's tacky. Would any of the rest of you talk about your wives or husband's sexual proclivities like that? I wouldn't.
So wait, everybody's a political prisoner? Now that's the kind of radical ideology I can get behind!
568: As 556 shows, "similar blogs" doesn't always mean "similar feminist blogs".
566: I wish people would stop using "transhuman" as a dirty word.
565: My point, Ogged (you douche), is predicated on what LB said above: you're basically just splitting hairs over what "argument" and "thesis" mean, but in a way that doesn't really say anything useful but seems calculated to paint Twisty as an example. Basically, I don't see how she in particular is different from almost any other blog or blogger in terms of being a mixture of "reasoned argument" and consciousness-raising and critique &etc, and since you and the commentariat for the most part don't seem overly bothered by these niceties of distinction in the case of those other bloggers, it certainly seems like there is a kind of rhetorical strategy in that very quibbling.
After all that, I feel the need to say motherfucker, so: motherfucker!
We are all, literally, imprisoned by our history and our culture
It's like you don't even love us enough to try anymore.
For a bunch of literal prisoners, womenfolk are pretty damn mobile.
566: I don't use it as a dirty word, I use it as a hilarious word!
I think it's a pseudonym of a pseudonym, and that EDguy was hardly graphic or disrespectful any more than anyone who posts about their sex life on the internet is, and far less than most.
575: See, this is what I mean by the difference between a literal and metaphorical reading. Many, many words have established, literal senses which are metaphorical extensions of older senses. "Prisoner" and "imprisoned" are a perfect example of this. If you want to argue about whether a particular sense of a word is metaphorical or not, it will often come down to whether the dictionary has gotten around to adding that sense of the word yet or not. And that's just not a very interesting discussion to have.
Rocky, where have you been all my life?
Lunar, you sheepfucker, I was basing my point mostly on the phrase DS quoted. I rarely read Twisty, and if she's not typically making statements like that, my apologies. And I actuall agree that a lot of stuff is dismissed as not having an argument, so I don't really want to do that if it's not true. But I still don't think I'm literally in prison.
586: Nor is "waaah, Twisty's so *shrill*" very interesting. But people seem to insist on it, so the very least they can do is recognize that if you're gonna talk about rhetoric, you're going to have to fucking talk about language.
You just wait. When the singularity comes, I'll show you.
But seriously, I'm a transhumanist, and I ain't no dumbnuts Glenn Reynolds. I'm not sure she's ever used the word transhumanist, but Orcinus's Sara Robinson identifies as a futurist, and might qualify as a transhumanist under many definitions.
588: Of course you don't, Ogged. You are an ahistorical subject, and your mind can wander freely through any ideology or way of thinking. All things are the same to you.
But I still don't think I'm literally in prison.
That's how strong the chain in your mind are, my man.
Neither is being told repeatedly that your argument comes down to whining that someone is shrill all that terribly interesting.
589: But if you're going to prance around insisting that Twisty's usage of "prisoners" there was literal, and not admit that it's also metaphorical, depending on how you look at it, then I'm going to link this again.
Are you sitting in a cube right now, Ogged?
For the record, I found EDGuy's stuff creepy, not so much for the lack of psuedonymity, but in the way that he wasspecifically talking about someone else's trauma without (as far as we can tell) their express permission. (And, yes, the simple fact of the existence of a trauma is IMO the "discretional property" of the person it happened to.)
586:[I]t will often come down to whether the dictionary has gotten around to adding that sense of the word yet or not. And that's just not a very interesting discussion to have.
Since when has that stopped us?
594: I'm not going to "prance" for you one way or the other, pdf.
593: Not your argument, personally, Cala. Just the whole damn talking about x or y or z individual or group of "extreme" or "radical" or wtfever feminists. It's just so tiring.
Are you sitting in a cube right now, Ogged?
Oh no! Aaaaaaaaaa!!!!
So, Ogged, you goat-fellater, what point were you making vis-a-vis the statement of Kate Millett's that Twisty referenced and was misattributed by DS?
584 to, I'm thinking, 576?
Also, pdf23ds, you were once human? I'm crushed.
580: sheesh, fine, Twisty s/b Kevin Drum. Or wait, that doesn't work. Twisty s/b Yglesias. Hmm. No dice. Twisty s/b Majikthise. Darn it! Twisty s/b Instapundit! That works! Twisty s/b Jonah Goldberg! Okay! Now we're getting somewhere.
The point being, it's a lot more annoying when somebody who you would ostensibly like to agree with uses dishonest rhetorical strategies in order to put you on the defensive or cast you as the enemy (or, if that's too strong a word, the opponent). It doesn't bother me in the same way when wingnuts use dishonest rhetoric because I have no interest in having an actual reasoned conversation with them. It bothers me when feminists do it, because I'd really like to understand the feminist position so that I can better understand that way of looking at the world. If I were just interested in mocking feminists, I wouldn't give a shit.
601: and was misattributed by DS?
You're a class act today, L-Rock. Got a response to 550 yet, BTW?
596: so if you see somebody get punched in the face, telling anybody about it is a violation of their privacy?
How'd we get on Twisty to begin with, anyway?
How'd we get on Twisty to begin with, anyway?
It's our essential condition as oppressors.
pdf23ds: If it wasn't so funny, I'd find the entire concept of transhumanism rather offense in its strident attempts to pretend that the brand of magical thinking it offers is not magical thinking at all.
But then there's Bill Joy and his robots, and I cannot but lol.
606: We're really talking about our hairlines.
590: I find the concept faintly ridiculous because (a) I find the goal of living forever faintly ridiculous and (b) I find the idea that space exploration will ever be a solution to, like, population problems or environmental problems utterly ridiculous.
603: Okay, but *stop making it about you*. If "you" are not the enemy, then you don't have to get all bent over it. Or, you know, you could like maybe realize that it's possible to be "the enemy" no matter how lovely your intentions are--e.g., we are currently all the enemies of Iraq--and not get all hyped up about how you want to have a "reasoned conversation" with people who, you know, really do have a perfect right not to want to talk to you.
t I can better understand that way of looking at the world
Ah, to be young, if only at heart.
605 isn't clear, but I'm wagering it's clear enough.
Because I was dumb enough to bring her up as an ideal of feminism-as-defining-itself-via-work-ethicness that is defended by more moderate writers (WHICH NO ONE EVER DOES BECAUSE NO ONE EVER DOES), which lead into a discussion as to whether the more moderate writers were doing that, and, if they were, whether it was fair to attribute their reconstructions of those arguments to Twisty.
Rocky, I'm down on one knee. Please, please marry me.
603: The thing is, what makes you say 'dishonest'? When I've read Twisty, I could see saying excited, overblown, florid, sure, but dishonest (which I realize you haven't here tied to anything specific) seems like calling the use of 'prisoners' dishonest when referring to people not locked in rooms. Is there stuff more dishonest than that that you're talking about.
You people are harsh. EDGuy was talking about his wife's issue and by extension about his own issue in a spirit (by my sympathetic reading) of thinking maybe we could learn something from their experience and maybe someone here could offer something that would benefit them. Dear God, earlier in the thread two other presidential commentors talked about the challenges of a wife/parter who has sexual issues as a result of abuse and no one jumped all over them as "tacky."
Hell, B, you've talked on your own blog about struggling with issues related to a (perhaps transitory) mismatch in your and Mr. B.'s level of desire. That's kind of talking about your partner's sexual proclivities, no?
I FIND IT LAUGHABLE WHEN PEOPLE SUGGEST THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL NOT SOLVE ALL OUR PROBLEMS. IT ALWAYS HAS IN THE PAST.
608: Not all transhumanists are optimists, you know. Some of us think the world is probably doomed.
When I've read Twisty, I could see saying excited, overblown, florid, sure, but dishonest (which I realize you haven't here tied to anything specific) seems like calling the use of 'prisoners' dishonest when referring to people not locked in rooms.
Wait, are you now coming around to B's position that perhaps "political prisoner" is literal? Or at least not necessarily not literal?
611: okay, not talking about Twisty here, since she and I have been 100% perfect in not talking to each other so far, but you do the same thing sometimes: why's that? You aren't interested in helping me understand the way you see the world, or at least you're not interested enough to be rhetorically honest with me (take "me" to mean: everybody here who doesn't already agree with you)? Then what the heck's the point of talking about feminism with you, ever? Why would you even bother to talk about it here? So you and two or three other commenters can enjoy your mutual admiration societies to the detriment of everyone else?
Hell, B, you've talked on your own blog about struggling with issues related to a (perhaps transitory) mismatch in your and Mr. B.'s level of desire. That's kind of talking about your partner's sexual proclivities, no?
Have I gotten into specific sex acts he will or will not perform? Have other commenters? It's the specificity rather than say, a general thing about "we have mismatched desires" that bugs me.
But guess what? I'm not the boss of EDguy. It really doesn't matter what I think.
No, I'm saying that it's transparently a metaphor. I'm not going to argue with pdf and Bitch about whether the metaphoric usage is now standard enough to be called literal, but whatever you call it, she's obviously not talking about people in locked rooms, and calling her dishonest for using the word 'prisoner' to describe people not actually incarcerated (which, to be clear, no one has done. I just can't figure out what Sifu's use of 'dishonest' is based on other than that sort of thing) seems screwy to me.
622: Well, I say different things at different times with different audiences in mind. You know? Sometimes I say things that to me are self-evident, and people say, "I don't get it," and depending on my mood, see (and who's talking, and a whole host of other shit like maybe having to pick my kid up at school or maybe having gotten well porked the night before and being in a really good mood) I maybe say, impatiently, "oh, you're an idiot" or else I maybe say, "hm, let me try to explain this."
I am, I truly believe, "rhetorically honest." I may not always be rhetorically *transparent* to everyone, or sometimes I suppose to anyone. To be honest, I don't even know what you people mean by this whole "rhetorically honest" thing.
It really doesn't matter what I think.
Whoa.
625 to 621.
to 622: Isn't the key 'sometimes'? Sometimes communication is directed at you, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you can get something useful out of it despite not being the intended audience, sometimes you can't.
And again, back to specifics and context. It's really really hard to address this kind of thing:
you do the same thing sometimes: why's that? You aren't interested in helping me understand the way you see the world, or at least you're not interested enough to be rhetorically honest with me
without specifics.
"Intentionally saying things that you do not mean, with the awareness that some portion of your audience will take them in a way you don't mean," is how I'm using "dishonest."
You could tell me that doesn't happen, but I totally wouldn't believe you.
Also, Sifu grumpy! Grr! Fight! Fight!
Maybe I should go eat something.
To be honest, I don't even know what you people mean by this whole "rhetorically honest" thing.
Me neither.
603: The point being, it's a lot more annoying when somebody who you would ostensibly like to agree with uses dishonest rhetorical strategies in order to put you on the defensive or cast you as the enemy (or, if that's too strong a word, the opponent). It doesn't bother me in the same way when wingnuts use dishonest rhetoric because I have no interest in having an actual reasoned conversation with them. It bothers me when feminists do it, because I'd really like to understand the feminist position so that I can better understand that way of looking at the world. If I were just interested in mocking feminists, I wouldn't give a shit.
I don't think Twisty's rhetorical strategies are dishonest. There are a whole body of tactics and strategies and abuses of rhetoric used by wingnuts that the liberal blogosphere has identified and analyzed (concern troll, "not touching you", etc), and I have never seen any evidence of Twisty falling victim to them.
That said, the argument you are making is that of Minority Tour Guide, and that is yet another one that has been identified and dissected by the blogospheres of any number of minorities (sexual, ethnic, gender), and specifically rejected by Twisty in no uncertain terms on several occasions.
Twisty expects you to realize that wanting or demanding radical feminist arguments be carefully couched in concilliatory language and pre-digested for a patriarchal audience is a perpetuation of patriarchy (and I use the P word because those are her terms). Either you do, or you don't, but she's not there to help you with this process.
627: Well, it matters to you. Because if you don't do as you're told, I'll kick your ass. But EDguy? Whatever. If his wife doesn't care about his saying she won't suck his dick on the internets, then he isn't really likely to give a shit what *I* think about his saying so, now, is he?
I have no idea why you're so upset about EDguy. Are you still imagining that he hasn't been speaking pseudonymously?
Okay, but here's the thing: if I'm participating in a thread, and I say something that is directed at some (but not all) of the people in the thread, and not only do I expect some of the other people in the thread not to get what I mean, I intentionally make no effort to address those people's entirely predictable confusion, I am being insulting to those people, intentionally. That may not be the whole point of what I am saying, but it is hardly unintentional. Perhaps you work differently.
"Intentionally saying things that you do not mean, with the awareness that some portion of your audience will take them in a way you don't mean," is how I'm using "dishonest."
You could tell me that doesn't happen, but I totally wouldn't believe you.
That's a silly way of using "dishonest." If I intentionally say something like "I hate my child" knowing that there are Very Concerned Readers who will leave comments and send me email telling me how Awful a Mother that is, that is not me being dishonest. That is me writing for a specific audience in a specific way, and *not taking responsibility* for other people's failure to Get It.
Which really, if you didn't draw the line *somewhere* you wouldn't ever say anything at all.
The second post linked in 631 contains an important sentence: This blog is written for women.
The conversation anywhere at the I Blame The Patriarchy blog is expected not to contain any men. Men disrupt things.
633: I'm not "so upset." I said that I thought it was tacky, and I'm continuing to respond, in a rhetorically honest and responsible fashion, to people who are continuing to ask me about it.
I am being insulting to those people, intentionally.
Nonsense and stuff. A blog is a public forum, really. If you and, say, w-lfs-n get into a chat about some obscure music thing that you know other people aren't into, are you being intentionally insulting to, say, me? Hardly.
635: aaaand, if I were somebody reading your my first post on your blog, and I read that and took it literally, and I asked you about it, and you said "yes. I hate my child. That is what I'm saying to you. I hate my child for the following reasons: [list]" and then I said "but that's terrible! How can you hate your child?" and you said "ha, ha, you idiot. I was not being serious. Anybody who has read my entire ouevre would know I was probably joking, no matter how seriously I seemed to be arguing the point," you're saying that in that case, I would have no right to feel put upon? That I was not, in any way, tricked?
619: Not all transhumanists are optimists, you know. Some of us think the world is probably doomed.
Whether thinking is or is not magical has no bearing on the optimism or pessism of that line of thinking.
631 pretty much sums it up exactly. For god's sake, the woman says straight up who she is writing for and what her premises are. If people don't agree with her premises or aren't her intended audience, then why must they insist on getting all upset about them?
If you guys want to talk about radical feminism or Valerie Solanis or whatever, then fine. Let's do that instead.
I have never seen Twisty say anything as genuinely freaky if read literally as "come lick mama's ass" from that one horrible, horrible thread. Just sayin'.
638: Exactly. Because if you are so effing lazy that you read something that offends you and you don't bother to, you know, *read a little bit more* to get a sense of context, then no one is "tricking" you; you're simply an idiot.
Anybody who has read my entire ouevre would know I was probably joking, no matter how seriously I seemed to be arguing the point," you're saying that in that case, I would have no right to feel put upon? That I was not, in any way, tricked?
I'd say that. Or, right to feel put upon, eh, you have a right to feel however you feel, but the sympathetic reading I keep on bringing up would have steered you straight, and if you're not invested enough in communicating to work on becoming informed about what the person you're reading is likely to mean, I wouldn't worry about you much.
I mean, we say reasonably outrageous stuff here fairly often, and someone who shows up and is shocked by it gets mocked and asked to bring cake; I don't think we need to feel bad about that.
641: Does that mean you won't marry me, Rocky? :'(
I promise you won't have to lick mama's ass if you do.
Yeah! Valerie Solana sucks! Twisty is swell, as far as I know! Glenn Reynolds is a moron! Transhumanists are fine unless they're optimists! Don't come lick mama's ass!
I'm going to go eat clams, dammit.
I promise you won't have to lick mama's ass if you don't want to.
Is what I meant to type.
637: The thing is, no one is going to be confused by such a discussion such that they'll misinterpret it badly. Not so much with feminism discussions.
The thing about "I hate my kid" is that the entirely predictable person who Just Doesn't Get It isn't someone you really care about, so you don't mind misleading them. You have no reason to be respectful to them. And if your fellow commenters at Unfogged aren't people you really care about, I suppose it doesn't matter that you say things that you know will probably confuse them. But it *is* disrespectful. (I wouldn't say dishonest, though.) And since there's a presumption of respect at some level in these discussions, you get people like Sifu asking you WTF.
If I marry you, B, can we have hilariously inappropriate wedding cake topper figures?
And if your fellow commenters at Unfogged aren't people you really care about, I suppose it doesn't matter that you say things that you know will probably confuse them. But it *is* disrespectful.
Again with the specifics and the context. What specifically *is* disrespectful to who that who should really care about?
no one is going to be confused by such a discussion such that they'll misinterpret it badly.
Wanna bet?
Not so much with feminism discussions.
And the point is, whose problem is that?
Off-topic, does Ronald Bailey count as a transhumanist? Or a futurist? Or what?
I'm intensely disappointed in this supposedly rational libertarian magazine doing the debunked "LOL PANICKING ENVIRONMENTALIST WEIRDOS" routine, now combined with the "How self-important can these people be, to think that the world will be destroyed during their lifetimes Please, get over yourselves." routine that you only hear elsewhere from 80-year-old paleoconservatives. Would they rather sacrifice the earth than admit that there's a market failure going on? Why are they pretending that science-based concern about global warming is the same as religion-based concern about the coming of the Antichrist?
647: The thing about "I hate my kid" is that the entirely predictable person who Just Doesn't Get It isn't someone you really care about, so you don't mind misleading them. You have no reason to be respectful to them. And if your fellow commenters at Unfogged aren't people you really care about, I suppose it doesn't matter that you say things that you know will probably confuse them. But it *is* disrespectful.
There was supposed to be an "in Bizzaro World" tacked onto that, right? RIGHT?!?!?!
642: hence the "asking about it" part of the comment. But whatever. Clams.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't mock the person, only that the person would rightfully feel excluded. More than that, though, an argument where one person is arguing in bad faith, confident that most people will understand they are doing that, is boring for the person who's not in the know. That's the part I really don't like. It's a form of debate that is intentionally only entertaining for only one of the parties involved, and I find that (on this forum) kind of annoying and bullying.
Anyhoo, CLAMS!
648: Baby, you can have whatever you want.
647: Can you not see how it is *also* disrespectful to insist that *every comment* be intelligible to you, personally, and that if it is not, the commenter be available and willing to explain it to you until you are satisfied?
More than that, though, an argument where one person is arguing in bad faith, confident that most people will understand they are doing that,
If the intended audience will understand, it's not bad faith. If you're hoping that someone you're directly engaging with will misunderstand you, that would be, but again, specifics? Context?
639: I would be very surprised if any of my beliefs could be reasonably described as magical. I know many people who identify of transhumanists that you could say the same thing of. I conclude that either you're overgeneralizing, or you'd consider my beliefs to be magical. I imagine it's the latter. I'm not really concerned with getting into details.
It's a real metaphysical conunudrum. Millions of men have been thinking feverishly about Cindy's important parts for all this time, and these two little boys have this very special relationship to them but they don't think of them that way at all. Their mom's goodies totally wasted on them. Someone phone up Zizek. The return of the repressed, or the object little a, or immaclate conception, or some shit like that.
It's a real metaphysical conunudrum. Millions of men have been thinking feverishly about Cindy's important parts for all this time, and these two little boys have this very special relationship to them but they don't think of them that way at all. Their mom's goodies totally wasted on them. Someone phone up Zizek. The return of the repressed, or the object little a, or immaclate conception, or some shit like that.
653: I'm fine with pretty much everything you say in this comment, and I think we have no substantive disagreement. I do not think that that kind of exclusion is what T. is doing--and if it is, as far as you're concerned, and you find it boring, then seriously: god bless and don't bother with it. I don't think it's something I do often to commenters on this blog I particularly like, but, well, yes: there are some commenters who I'm not particularly concerned with one way or t'other. Oh well.
I do have a problem with this "clams" thing, though, you sexist bastard.
If the intended audience will understand, it's not bad faith.
The issue arises when the person you're arguing with is not the intended audience for what you're saying. This happens when you have people cheering you on in the argument no matter what kind of ridiculous things you say. Everyone is prone to laziness like this if they have an echo chamber to back them up and they would really rather the disagreeing person just go away rather than disrupt the convivial thread by disputing everything.
Sifu, I think we still have basic disagreement in whether or not Twisty is arguing in bad faiths.
For example, the Kate Millett quote? Not personally calling every woman a dirty whore.
656: The problem with the Twisty discussions isn't so much that Twisty isn't writing for me, but that discussions about what she said seem to presuppose that she is writing for me and that I'm just not getting it.. If Twisty's (or whomever) honestly not trying to convince anybody, then why do we insist on construing her as making an argument?
I'm not saying every single feminist blog has to be responsible for outreach, but it's pretty depressing that so many arguments about the feminist blogosphere have the "so what if we're just talking amongst ourselves? got a problem with that?" defense as their endpoint. In the current historical moment particularly, if it's fair to expect that the left as a whole should make an effort to engage with feminist perspectives (and it is), the reverse is also true.
657: I would be very surprised if any of my beliefs could be reasonably described as magical. I know many people who identify of transhumanists that you could say the same thing of. I conclude that either you're overgeneralizing, or you'd consider my beliefs to be magical. I imagine it's the latter. I'm not really concerned with getting into details.
If your thinking is similar enough to other people who use the term "transhuman" that you can adopt their label, and you don't have advanced degrees in some form of neurology, materials science, and physics, than yes, probably your beliefs are in some way or another magical, or at the very least, were formed in ways that basically makes them indistinguisable from magical thinking.
Wait, pdf, you really want to be a robot? (This is much more interesting than Twisty.)
667: That's the same fallacious argument used by global warming deniers to condemn non-experts who believe in global warming.
I trust in the plausibility of many new technologies because experts have told me they're plausible, not because I have any fucking advanced degrees in the relevant subjects. And the only technology I put any serious stock in is one where I do have expertise.
I'm not saying every single feminist blog has to be responsible for outreach, but it's pretty depressing that so many arguments about the feminist blogosphere have the "so what if we're just talking amongst ourselves? got a problem with that?" defense as their endpoint.
I'm repeating myself over and over and over again, but this sort of thing is really hard to engage with unless you're talking about specifics. I think we can all agree that it's reasonable to talk about feminism without dragging everyone who wants to get into it through Feminism 101 in every discussion. We can also all probably agree that if every feminist refused ever to engage with anyone who didn't agree with her about everything, that would also be unreasonable. Obviously, the real world is somewhere in between those two possibilities, and people can be behaving badly in either direction (demanding that every feminist drop what they're talking about to cater to every confused or offended commenter; uniformly refusing to engage with people genuinely trying to enter into useful dialog).
So the sweeping generalities aren't so much helpful. If you've got a problem with someone, make it specific, not the 'feminist blogosphere', or it's going to be hard to go much of anywhere with it.
Hey, this means Unfogged can have its own transphobia scandal, doesn't it?
668: Well, if by "want to be a robot", you mean "prefer to live in a world where I wasn't severely constrained by a physical body and a physical environment, all else being equal", then yeah.
re:Twisty, I've now read quite a lot of her. Smart girl, but quite clearly insane. I do now have to take exception to B's 611: *stop making it about you*. If "you" are not the enemy, then you don't have to get all bent over it. Twisty pretty clearly states that she feels all men less committed than she is to overthrowing the patriarchy are the enemy. Ladies get a pass, most of the time. She makes some good points, but a)you have to wade a bit, and b)it's no use pretending her rhetoric isn't confrontational.
Lunar, if it helps you identify my beliefs any better, I'm not really committed to the term "transhumanist". It's an incredibly broad term, anyway. "Singularitarian" would be a more accurate description.
it's no use pretending her rhetoric isn't confrontational.
Did anyone?
It seems to me that the issue here is not specific to feminists, it's communities that turn into echo chambers where people who disagree with something periodically appear and are beset with hostility from all sides by the choir members, who want to be left alone to preach to themselves.
Transunfogged: a room filled with realdolls equipped with speech synthesizers so that they can yell our comments at each other.
Wow, it's precipitous in here.
669: No, it's not. Can you go back and check the work of those experts? Engage it in a rigorous fashion?
I actually do think that many of the people who "believe in" global warming happen to be engaging in magical thinking, or at least a form of faith; they just happen to be right anyway.
672: prefer to live in a world where I wasn't severely constrained by a physical body and a physical environment, all else being equal
Magical thinking. FAIL.
675: Not really, but LR was trying to say something along the lines of Twisty not really being "hostile", and her getting singled out among all other bloggers (presumably on account of her feminism).
674: The singularity is bullshit. The first half of a sigmoid looks pretty similar to an exponential.
679: For the most part, no. Can you go back and check the work of climatologists? (May ogged forgive me.) Is your assessment of the probability of global warming due to magical thinking? (I think it would be helpful to speak of degrees of belief instead of belief simipliciter.) I'm not sure what you mean by "magical thinking" here. I'm not that familiar with the term.
680: I believe I understand what you think I'm saying, and I'm wasn't saying it. But given how hostile that comment was, I won't respond further.
I thnk both numbers are way small. Because according to them I'm above average, despite the horribly obvious fact that I've been a loser pretty much my entire life.
Regular non-loser people have just got to be getting more than me, right? God I hope so; if not then this miserable world sucks even more than I thought.
670: This particular instance of The Debate Over Twisty is a specific case. Also, 676 gets it right.
682: Kurzweil's singularity, sure. Not Vinge's.
Oh, wow. Back to the actual post.
I was wondering what the heck W. Kiernan was talking about for a sec.
683: Can you go back and check the work of climatologists?
To a certain extent, actually, yeah, I can. To the extent that on certain occasions when I was reading various studies I had to go back and do some research on, say, the math behind a model being used, it was much less difficult and nearer to my original training than, say, the amount of work I'd have to do in order to participate in the LHC Olympics*.
* Which I frankly wish I could do, because how awesome is that, seriously?
687: You mean, like, your bringing up her latest post way back in 474? But you didn't say anything much about it, other than that she's not being wittily hyperbolic, and she intends to be taken seriously. That sounds reasonable to me, but you haven't (AFAICT) given a reason for taking issue with the post.
I'm not sure what the specifics of the argument are.
691: OK, then that's a bad example. Oh well.
