Insults in a debate 'myopic harridan'

[enlightenmequick]

I clicked on the below lin because it had been posted on a relationship thread I was reading and ended up reading the comments below the blog.

One poster had resorted to the above insult. Why do they resort to this? I imagine I will be called something similar soon enough, if my increase in challenging people continues.

Anyone have a kick ass way of dealing with it?

Is it because they have been challenged to think differently and they are upset at now being off kilter in their assumptions. cognitive dissonance?

link here

Buffy

No your not right. The OP actually thinks that the women's use of the rom com is worse than the porn, because she has formed an attachment to the actor, whereas he has not formed an attachment to porn!

Sorry Buffy, not making myself clear!

Someone in the comments section (i'm guessing it's a man) has called a poster who commented, a myopic harridan for daring to disagree with the op and arguing porn is harmful.

harridan = a strict, bossy or belligerent old woman.

Fabulous word, a much underused description!

buffy

for you.
for me

I will explain myself better next time!

alwayscheerful

Are you in the right section? I thought this section was full of intelligent women, who have interesting debates? The poster who said that, to my knowledge has no idea of the poster's age, nor of their character.

Read the link and it's a shame, as the topic under discussion could have gone somewhere interesting.

Wondering whether Dervel, you mean the actually original article, or the debate in the comments section?

I think the blogger shut down the debate because it was bloody hard to argue with the 'myopic harridan' without sounding like an insensitive misogynist.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. Admiring Ryan Gosling as a romantic lead actor in the context of a big budget film is worse than secretly wanking over hardcore porn behind your partners back x 10.

The blogger was also having a go at the betrayed partner's (a total stranger btw) way of dealing with it. Apparently the blogger has no sympathy for her; she should bloody well step back, think about her actions before daring to criticise her wanker boyfriend.

I'm so sick of this shit.

Well whenever this porn debate comes up it tends to gravitate towards pro-porn, libertarian arguments vs anti-porn humanist not just feminist arguments that look at the damage it inflicts on women and society in general. Perhaps taking this rom com analogy flawed as it is, would perhaps allow an alternate perspective.

My own personal position is that in principle I wouldn't have a problem with porn, because I do not have a problem with sex. I don't think there has to be anything wrong with either, but pornography does not exist in a vacuum. The pornography or erotic art that a society produces is reflective of that society.

The subject matter today seems to reveal deeply disturbing kinks and fetishes: youth, power & and control fantasies, heck even race seems to get caught up in it somewhere. Now I haven't done a systematic study of the subject, but it seems to me that the real issue is with an underlying problem in attitudes to sex and sexuality, if you removed that maybe porn would be fine, or perhaps would need to exist at all. Although without question with the prevalence of the internet pornography is potentially both cause and symptom.

Now the the rom coms throws up a very interesting dimension. Beyond the fact the boyfriend threw it in there fallaciously, because he was caught out there is one very obvious difference between the girlfriend watching the notebook and the boyfriends porn collection. One was hidden and one was on display. There is a correlation with threads on here on prostitution, page 3 and porn, precious few men who rush to the defence of these practices actually own up to being users of prostitutes, porn or page 3. Why is this unless there is some tacit awareness even if never spoken that there is in fact a problem?

Additionally in real life although this is hardly a study by any means, I don't see my male friends talking about that great piece of pornography they watched last week like they would an episode of Doctor Who, or a movie they watched. If there is truly nothing wrong with pornography why isn't this the case?

Quite right, I have to hold my hands up and say my thoughts on the subject are very much a work in progress. I am by no means an authority on much of anything really. I am interested in working all this out, as I have a little boy and want him to have fulfilling friendships and relationships with women, and I myself was quite lucky in that I grew up before the internet exploded, and in my experience at least as far as relationships and sex go things are worse than they were when I was working all this out.

Also I would add although I object to a lot of rom coms on grounds of terrible writing, there are a few good ones but actually I really don't like that we assign story types to genders these days. I love a good romance, Romeo & Juliet was not written exclusively for women and ok I know a lot of old literature falls down under feminist analysis.

However how in the original article it seemed to be taken as read that men are primarily sexual beings with no interest in romance or emotion and we cast his probably erstwhile gf actual objection seemed to have been lost in that the porn use was something he had hidden from her, and of course that then begs the question what else does he hide?

I also get what you are saying Dervel, but did a bit at the 'i have no problem with porn, because I have no problem with sex' but I did understand that you meant it in the context of a theoretical sense, and in reality it doesn't quite pan out like that, due to the power dynamics and the obsession we all seem to have with youth etc.

I agree a little bit, but I do find it quite weird (for want of a better word) that such a thing exists in the first place.

People actually act out having sexual intercourse/doing sexual acts, for the benefit of others to watch and get aroused over.

Interviewer. 'What's your job description?'
Pornstar. 'Well, I pretend to enjoy having sex, so that someone can watch it, masturbate and have an orgasm.'

It's quite a surreal concept to me, when I think of it in those terms.

kerry

I hear you. I'm quite new to seeing it, iyswim, so i'm still at the fight it, challenge it stage. I'm sure i will become quite jaded, very quickly as it seems to be so ingrained, that even fairly nice people hold views that are scarily sexist and misogynistic

My mil told me in October, that if you're not giving a man sex, you should expect him to go elsewhere. [shocked]

I didn't challenge her at the time, but i have told dp that i will be doing next time.