BreakerofHorsesandMen
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User ID: 3614
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
This is a different, less earthy, metaphor, sure, but it means the same thing.
Rather than worrying about makeup, you should stop sleeping in the woods.
Sex acts aren't inherently "erotica."
Sure they are. We can do this all day.
The idea that no library books ever depicted sex acts (visually or textually) before Gender Queer is false.
Not once have I argued this. You brought in the question of text. I’m not sure who you’re arguing with right now.
What I have argued and will continue to argue is that there is a constant churn of Cthulhu swimming left, towards greater and greater degradation of the commons. Today it’s someone defending cutesy drawings of blowjobs in library books that librarians push or market towards young teens or tweens, 10 or 20 years from now it’ll be someone defending librarians pushing kids towards cutesy drawings of some author’s autobiographical exploration of the first time they let their dog fuck them. Maybe sooner! Things are moving fast.
Maybe that will be too much for you, or maybe it won’t, maybe you’ll continue to say, “Well, I read Gor in the school library when I was a kid, and I remember the Gender Queer arguments on the Motte (PBUI) and the kinds of assholes who took the counter-argument to me, so this is fine also.”
Or maybe you’ll find your grandkid reading it in the library’s booknook and you’ll be appalled. I don’t know. But your current arguments are toothless to me because my stance is that Gor in the school library was already too much.
We are merely having the discussion about Gender Queer because that is where the current battlefield starts. Unfortunately, from my point of view.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
I am well aware it’s a strap-on. The facing page in the book in question specifically refers to the act as a blowjob.
I quote:
“I can’t wait to have your cock in my mouth—I’m going to give you the blowjob of your life. Then I want you inside me.”
“This is the most turned on I’ve ever been in my life. I am DYING.”
This writing is erotica.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
Bands probably would have been even better for me, actually.
I was a very competitive (within a few state area, not like actually competitive with genuinely good judo players) judoka for about 10 years. Most people, myself included, seem to age out of intensely competitive judo pretty young, even at the amateur level, just from wear and tear. At 30, they put you in the Master’s division for old folks. 😂
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
I don’t think this unhinged.
Thanks for writing so much about a passion topic for you! As a one-cologne guy, it’s pretty interesting.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
Would you like to argue that erotic images are a special category that should be treated differently? If so, make the case.
I make the case that erotic images have always been a special category that was treated differently, from the beginning of public libraries. Public libraries were designed and intended to educate, uplift, and edify their users. You have to make the case for why we should change.
My hypothesis is the null hypothesis because prior to May 28, 2019, the question “Should we have comic books depicting blowjobs both in the public library and marketed to under-18s” would have probably caught the questioner a pedophilia accusation. It would have been so uncontroversially a negative that even to ask the question would be suspicious, and yet it only took the release of Gender Queer for a vocal minority to argue that I’m the one who has to explain why it shouldn’t be in the public library.
At some point in the living past, the question “Should we have, in the public library, comic books depicting graphic rape” would have been uncontroversially answered with a negative, and at some point in the living past, “Should we sell photos of naked women at gas stations” would have been uncontroversially answered in the negative, and so on and so forth.
The Internet is mostly a sewage pipe with a small bubble of moderately fresh air trapped up against the pipe, and I don’t find your argument that therefore libraries should also become sewage pipes to be at all convincing. “The Internet is for Porn”, after all, so libraries can and should be for something else.
And everyone is always free to, you know, not take their kids to the public library if they don't want to. The fact that there is little necessity to do so is a load-bearing part of why the libraries should not necessarily feel obligated to cater their entire catalogue to the lowest age denominator.
This reasoning always shows up eventually. Of course I’m free to not take my kids to the public library. But I also used to be free to take them there and be fairly confident the worst thing they could stumble across was some text erotica. My parents could be reasonably certain the worst thing I would stumble across was a kiss and a fade to black in a fantasy novel. Their parents could pretty much trust the worst thing they were going to come across was a “Damn!”
The point is that my freedom to trust that the public library is in accord with what I and people like me view as the public interest has been slowly degrading for 40 years or more. This limits our access to and trust in the library and when we complain about it or express our grievances, we are met with your reasoning.
———
This is obviously a generational battle and will continue to be so. I don’t fault my predecessors for not understanding what was going on, because it probably felt like having to explain to someone that the sky is blue and the grass is green, and that while sometimes the sky is orange and the grass is yellow, they still aren’t the same thing, only to be met with adamant accusations that the sky and the grass are the same thing until their will to resist was exhausted.
Now we are living in the world where everyone is expected to act like the sky and the grass are the same thing, and unsurprisingly it is starting to crack up under its contradictions.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
So I have actually looked at the images in Gender Queer.
I extend to people the presumption that if they are engaging in the discussion, they have at least looked at the most salient examples of the topic, and so stating that I have “actually looked” at the examples could only be read as a veiled accusation that the other person hasn’t.
———
It’s a blowjob, dude. It’s erotica by its very nature. It shouldn’t be in the public library. Again I stand on the null hypothesis that until very recently, essentially every library in America agreed with me, and it is the change that has to be justified.
That being said, you bring up a good point. Flowers in the Attic and Gor shouldn’t have been in your school library. It shouldn’t have been in mine.
The sewage was already lapping around our ankles when we were kids, but that’s no excuse for letting things get worse. And yes, on the way back to having no metaphorical sewage flowing through our intellectual and spiritual lives, we have to pump the sewer back down to just around our waists, and then our knees, and our ankles, and so forth.
There are things that can be sexual but not pornographic, but those things are, culturally, well prior to Playboy.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
If you really did want to use tariffs, even punishing tariffs, to return domestic manufacturing of physical goods to within your borders, how would you go about it?
It seems to me that you would want to start at the top of the value chain and slowly work your way downwards. I.E., you start with XX% (or XXX%) tariffs on completed automobiles, then some time later, you apply some degree of tariff on whatever products are used in the step before completion, and so on down the chain until you reach the degree of autarkic internal production that you desire.
Is this correct, or headed in the direction of correctness, or what?
Relatedly, it’s possible that laying out a roadmap of your plans and clearly communicating it and sticking by it might even accelerate your plan, if business views it as credible and starts on-shoring faster. I am also open to the idea that publicizing your roadmap might allow a trading partner to pursue a strategy of increasing domestic subsidies until you give up, in that “They have the watches, we have the time” kind of way. Which direction would you go in that regard, or what alternative approach seems best to you?
Please consider a “Should we have a 1% or 2% war tax” kind of response, not culture war. Thank you.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
The reason there is so much male on male rape in American prisons is precisely because of civil rights concerns, and an indicator of how the whole concept is fundamentally unworkable.
The correct response to a prisoner accruing so much power that he is able to engage in a consistent pattern of rape is for him to have been executed for whatever moderately violent crime or string of questionable life choices he made in the first place.
What I’m saying is, is civil rights concerns are the only reason the rapist prisoners are there at all, and more civil rights concerns prevent us from either dealing with them or treating all the prisoners in such a way that rapes are zeroed out or nearly so.
This is entirely compatible with males go to prison with males, and females go to prison with females.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
So you guys are, internally, an anarcho-syndicalist commune that, externally, acts as an unaccountable oligarchy.
I kinda like it, actually.
Alternatively, if we consider Zorba to be the monarch, mostly focused on foreign policy and economic concerns, you guys are more like an aristocracy.
I like it even more! This is a good experiment. I wish you great success.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
Speaking just for myself, I’m not entirely opposed to elementary schoolers (that is, 10 to 12 year olds) learning about puberty in a strictly “changes to the body” sense. I am not opposed to middle schoolers (that is, 14 year olds or thereabouts) learning about sexuality in a strictly heterosexual, pro-natal “this is what sex is and you should wait until marriage” way.
What I am opposed to is a combination of these concepts being introduced at much younger ages (“We’re just teaching them to recognize abuse!!” is a motte at those ages), and the fact that nearly everyone doing the teaching is philosophically opposed to my people’s point of view.
On another note, “Why is it so important to you” questions, and all variations thereof, are silly. It’s clearly important to you or else you wouldn’t be asking the question, so humans being what we are, someone somewhere is going to take the opposite stance from you. Questions like that remind me of the scene in Blindsight where the aliens perceive informationally-unnecessary communication as a hostile attack on their mental processing cycles.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
This argument is the same as “You already live in a sewer, might as well eat shit, shrug?”
As it turns out, people should not only not eat the shit, but also actively pursue stanching the flow of sewage.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
I could not possibly be in more agreement with you.
Everyone knows arrests are Constitutionally required to be fair fights. The fascists have arrived like bullies, like they always do, using strength of numbers to abuse the innocent and violate their rights.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
So, you say you didn’t roll it back because it was just one day, which sounds like there was, at a minimum, no mod consensus that the ban was justified.
In the absence of such a consensus, why is there no wrist slap of the original mod for overstepping his bounds?
If there was a wrist-slap, why is the broader user-base not aware? Justice has to be seen in order to be seen to be done.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
On the topic of grip strength, as an aging judoka, I picked up one of those rock climbing finger boards and a peg board. Those are really handy for working the same tendons and joints in a slightly different way, and I think they’ve helped protect me from sport-specific overuse injuries.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
Sure you can!
Voters elected George W. Bush, in part, to defend a traditional concept of marriage that had existed for well over 2000 years and had never been questioned by the men who wrote the Constitution.
Turns out that was unconstitutional!
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1d ago
I am happy to defend the idea that drawn erotica is inappropriate material for a public library to carry. Tom of Finland may have made many gays very happy, but if they want his material they are free to pay for it themselves.
I stand on the null hypothesis that public libraries, until very recently, also agreed with me.
Would you like to defend or justify some sort of reasoning for the change?
BreakerofHorsesandMen
3d ago
Schoenfeld: .....The school the express directive from the school is you don't need to understand your peers, you don't need to agree with them, you don't need to affirm with them, but you do need to treat them with respect.
The problem with this kind of rhetoric is that it has become transparently false. I have social circles I move in that range from boomer shitlib to woker than woke, and they all agree and affirm that the only way to treat someone with respect is to agree with them and to affirm them. Anything less makes you a monster.
Some white evangelical 14 year old politely saying they disagree that there is such a thing as trans people is not going to be treated with respect.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
5d ago
I think you might be typical minding the Japanese people and the kinds of social structures they view as immoral enough to be criminal.
…you're allowed to abuse your social lessers according to a nebulous and ever-shifting social pecking order…
This sounds like the mythological version of American high school in the 80’s, also like a surprising number of Asian high school dramas (also possibly mythological), and if you narrow down to one social lesser, it sounds like any number of sketchy but not criminal friend groups, where one guy is usually the butt of the jokes.
Parks and Rec, peak liberal slop, even did an episode on the topic of the office buttmonkey and played it for laughs.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
5d ago
Ancient Law, by Henry Sumner Maine.
Surprisingly readable for a legal history book last updated in 1906.
Also, while I am reading the Imperium Press edition, nominally intended to re-expose people to classics of rightist thought, it is amusing to read Sir Maine extolling the virtues of the progressive society of the late 19th-century vs. the Roman law.
He seems to have a particular disdain for the Canon Law and the (his words!) retrogressive concepts of coverture and marital power. It’s interesting, because he seems to be on board with the man leading the marriage, however you choose to define leading, but not with the legal doctrines that mandate such a situation. In this regard, he strikes me as a very modernistic, even borderline woke, thinker. It makes me wonder if Imperium Press just pulled the oldest law book they could find that mentions Rome and uses the word Aryan.
I’m only halfway through though, so maybe he takes a 180 and retvrns later in the book.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
5d ago
Full Scale: 123
Memory: 111 (VM: 51 / 85, EM: 20 / 26)
Verbal: 142 ( V: 33 / 34, A: 17 / 27)
Spatial: 121 (MR: 15 / 17, CP: 8 / 18)
Not surprised that memory was bad, I’ve never been good at it. The whole thing is 10 points lower than last time I took a likely equally inaccurate test 10 years ago, which seems like it probably lines up with age, impact, and the kind of people I usually hang out with.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
8d ago
I think the usual solution among actual prisoners is referred to as a shanking.
I’m inclined to think that “jobs” is just, in democracies, the politically optimal phrasing to accomplish what nations really want, which is adversary-proof production of food and materiel.
My question is about the physical goods manufacturing, and is to do with, for example, how many steps of the process of car manufacturing can you, hypothetical power of a country, get within your borders and how should you go about it if tariffs are in your tool chest? Lights-out factories are totally fine.
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