Comics and Photos

A friend of mine convinced me to try mainstream super hero comics. I’d kind of done this before, but it never took. This time I started with Batgirl, which I’ve talked about in the past. I decided to read Marvel’s All New X-Men, which has been a really fun ride. It’s odd to know so much in passing about these characters and read a story with them that’s been running for a few years.

I think I’m going to keep this comic book thing up and find something else to read. So far my favorite characters are Jean Grey and Kitty Pryde, unfortunately they don’t have many storylines out there. When I was a kid and the old X-Men show was on a lot of it centered around Jean, which is why it’s funny to me that she’s been so underused (and for a while was dead) in current comics.

I also wanted to update my whole picture practice. Here’s one of the latest things I took. I’m mostly not posting these because they’re pretty goddamn boring.

That bokeh, though.

This is What a Male Feminist Looks Like

Can we talk about male feminists and the idea of what it’s like to be a man who supports women’s struggle for equal rights?

Yes, I know I haven’t watched or commented on the last episode of Doctor Who, yet. My blog, my rules. It’ll happen Tuesday.

There’s been a thing that’s been bothering me for a while. We know that people of all walks of life join all different kinds of movements. Women aren’t exclusively the only feminists out there, but when it comes to men there seems to be a wide opinion of what they’re after, who they are and what one might expect.

A friend of mine posted this article about the after effects of Emma Watson’s speech to the UN. There was a comment on the article about how cute the guys are. It just seems odd that after so much push to be seen as more than their looks we have women still making comments like that.

But it’s not uncommon.

When you go to the subreddit /r/creepypms on Reddit the picture at the top is of an over weight slimy looking guy riding away on a bike. The idea that only these kind of men are belittling women and that the supportive guys and the guys that are relevant look a certain way. Slender, with copious wrist bands, messy hair, white—it seems that there’s a bit of a trend.

Sure it’s not a one hundred percent thing. For example:

Louis CK is the shit. He’s also pretty vocal about women’s issues and raises two daughters who he talks about extensively in his stand up. He’s not the standard of attractive that we have come to expect and as a guy who is also not what would be considered “attractive” by most; I feel like we need to do more to make things both sexes do about feminist more about what they actually do, not holding up signs on Twitter with deep, contemplative expressions on your face.

And this isn’t to say that those men don’t believe in the cause they’re holding a sign up for. This isn’t me trying to act like this is a game only for certain men or some kind of exclusive club. Just call it a symptom of being considered creepy for doing the same things that “attractive” men do without consequence. You start to see things differently when you support something that does something counter productive like this or spends time dumping on Beyonce because she’s not the right kind of feminist. You still see the movement as important and relevant. But you see that there are those there willing to be self serving even if it hurts the movement or those who might not realize that what they’re saying and doing works against what should be their true goal: equal rights for all.

Stop Telling Black People That Racism Doesn’t Matter

When I was in first grade I loved the Ninja Turtles. This is a time slightly before the explosion of Power Rangers and before anyone here really watched anime at a younger age. The US back then largely relied on it’s own animation and guess what cartoon had gone from the small screen to the movie theater recently?

I remember it was cold outside, well, as cold as it gets in Texas. And I remember there were some kids talking about playing Ninja Turtles in this little playground just before you walked onto the soccer field. There were only three of them and I wanted to be Donatello. So I asked.

And the reply came back from one of the kids that the Turtles weren’t black. Sounds like someone should have taught the little fucker his colors. The Turtles were all shades of green. None of them had a “race” the way humans thought of it and it seemed odd that a kid would define something that obviously has no race as “not black” or “white”. Looking back I can totally understand it now. To that kid and a lot of other kids of other races, white is default.

Before I go on, I would like to quote someone off of a forum that I know and what they said in a recent thread.

I’m sick of trying to explain this to white boys on the internet (or whatever inevitable “actually, I’m not white, I’m..” outlier) who fancy themselves Spock bracing against all the “emotional” discontent of minorities.

They don’t get it. And worse than simply not getting it, they think they have a better grasp of “it” than us.” It” being our own experience. And suddenly, we find ourselves in Robot-Logic Land where any argumentation less scrupulous than a Master’s thesis need not apply because human experience is never muddied by anything other than numbers and rationality. This from the same sort of people who sub to some fat fuck nerd on Youtube for “telling it like it is” with nothing but anecdotes and Cheeto-powered rage.

This isn’t to say that whites are evil or that all whites are causing the problem. I don’t have an issue with anyone based on skin color. What I do have issue with, as the quote kind of points out, is the idea that my experiences as a black person and the experiences of someone who is white are the same.

In the same way that two resumes that are identical with just male and female names will be treated differently, being black is going to make people make assumptions about you. Even other black people. It’s going to change how you’re treated in certain situations and how you act. I’ve come to realize that when dealing with people I don’t know I will often try my best to look as nonthreatening as possible, to speak softer than I normally do and the like. It’s not something that was done consciously at first—it just happened. This is the way that garners the most respect or keeps me out of trouble the most. It’s a defense mechanism.

It feels like people react to you as if they’re afraid of you a lot of the time. These attitudes about race, some of them contradictory, are ingrained in the culture of our country from a time starting back from when Columbus landed on a piece of dirt near here and decided that the people there didn’t matter.

And this isn’t just an issue with race, it can be applied to other things. A friend of mine recently posted an article on her Facebook page about street abuse of women and people acted like she was overreacting. When it comes to women everyone suddenly wants to point out how easily they actually have it; like somehow having doors held for you or not having to pay for all your own meals and movies would somehow make up for the cat calling, wage gap and the way that people don’t value your fucking opinions.

I’m tired of people deciding the narrative without listening to the other side of things. I’m tired of it being “too soon” to talk about these things or “me being too sensitive because the issue is too close”. Who better to talk about the experiences I’ve had than me? Why shouldn’t women speak out against guys thinking they have the right to treat them like property?

What the people do this are doing isn’t just avoiding the problem. They’re adding to it, but not addressing what’s there and deflecting discussion of it you’re telling the person who faces the issue that they don’t matter, their pain isn’t important, their experiences aren’t your problem, that the abuses should go on and they should just deal with it.

“That’s just the way things are” right?

Luckily, when I was in first grade the teacher pulled me aside after she heard what had happened with me and the other kids and she talked to me about skin color and how it didn’t matter. The discussion was really brief and simple. I was six, so I couldn’t take much more than brief and simple. The one thing I remember about it was how she told me that we’re different, but it doesn’t matter. It’s what’s inside that counts. It’s corny, but it’s true. Whether you’re brown, black, white or a mutated turtle, it’s what’s inside that counts.  

The White Knight Epidemic

All over the internet men are wrongfully defending bitches from being put into their place by the alpha players out there who, despite this attempt to set them back, run the monopoly on pussy (as it should be)!

This is the typical post or point I see held up when it comes to what people call white knighting. The term originates from…I don’t really want to waste the time to look it up, I can define it. It’s the idea that any guy who online or in person defends a woman who’s being treated wrong is doing so only to get sex. You see, to many men women are little more than sex vending machines who only exist to dispense sex in exchange for favors, free meals rides in nice cars, jewelry, and anything else that they can get from “men of status”.

Efforts to defame white knights seem to be more prominent than the actual “problem” that they claim to be trying to combat. I actually wrote a post on a forum where all of this was brought up explaining why I think that is:

The “problem” of men who go out of their way to be nice to women for the sake of getting sex will fix itself without other men or society intervening. Women won’t sleep with you for being nice and no one is obligated to sleep with you because you stood up for them. The men who do that will either grow out of it or they’ll just die virgins. More than likely the former. The vehement way in which other men strike out against men defending women lends me to believe that the problem is more akin to the type of behavior you see from people who claim they’re being judged by someone who goes to a party and doesn’t drink but also doesn’t say anything disapproving of those who do drink.

These men who feel the need to call white knights out and boast about all the sex they have (like member’s name) are probably not having that much sex and are not that confident. When they do have sex they’re probably lying to get it or going after easy game (drunk girls, low self esteem girls). This is also why they feel so threatened, if sleeping with incapacitated girls become rape then one of their only means of sex will be cut off or they’ll branded as rapist. If women of all walks have a boost in self esteem then they won’t have as many bottom of the barrel women to go after and they’ll probably be stuck fighting for scraps or going after girls under eighteen who are all hormonal and don’t know worthless men when they see them.

Or they might actually have to take a look at themselves and see how fucking shitty a person they really are and that their problem isn’t that white knights are wrong, that they might be even partially right and that women might start to realize it and leave their sorry asses alone.

I think that’s all there is to say about that.

Level Playing Field

Despite being fed up with most of the stuff in the sections you get by default on Reddit I still choose to visit the site. There are some funny and insightful things on there once you get a little ways off of the beaten path. There’s also utter lunacy—both the funny and scary variety.

Instead of sticking around to complain about what I was seeing I just unwatched a lot of the sections I disliked and went on about my business. Some of them slipped by unnoticed though and the worst of these was the Okcupid section.

Okcupid has cultural problems that stem mostly from its membership. The site’s design is clean and functional. When features are unpopular they just become harder to find and don’t have to vanish entirely and the site isn’t afraid to blatantly be what it is: a dating website.

The other day on Reddit one of the top posts in the Okcupid section basically amounted to some girl bragging about how she overcame her fear and sent her first message out ever. She was greeted with pats on the back and celebration of how she finally did it and how good of a person she was for participating in the site the way it’s meant to be used. This wouldn’t be so odd if I hadn’t seen more than a few men make the same kind of post when they first joined Okcupid (she had been a member for months) and get torn to shit in the comments about how they weren’t doing anything until they hadn’t heard back from hundreds of messages and the like.

Of course I stepped in and asked did she want a cookie or something. Did she think she had mastered the site just by sending a single message. There are thousands upon thousands of women out there who do send messages first and who do so often. She accused me of being mean and not understanding that she has social anxiety disorder. Guess who else does? But that excuse would never hold up for me.

We have all got to stop treating women like they’re Labrador Retrievers and they need constant positive reinforcement. You can take the initiative and message guys first. Do you have to do it always? No, but the guy shouldn’t always have to either.

Shyness is a sweet trait to a point. But if you can’t send a message over a semi-anonymous website to say “Hey, I see you’re really into Hannibal, who’s your favorite character?” then maybe you’re not ready to be dating.

This gripe really isn’t at women, it’s at society. Because society tries to say it enables groups to be on equal footing, but it really doesn’t. For the same reason that blacks can talk all we want about Civil Rights and how awesome Martin Luther King was, but don’t dare let some of these same people catch you not consuming exclusively black art or doing exclusively “black” things because they’ll turn around and make it about how you’re not acting black enough. And a sincere sentiment like that is pretty fucking racist. The same way that telling someone she’s too feminine or not feminine enough is pretty sexist.

But there’s nothing saying that either sex is unable to initiate communication. Everyone is capable of being nervous under the right circumstances. Let’s not treat it like only one sex’s nervousness is validated.

The Red Pill Making Headlines

Haven’t heard of the The Red Pill? I wouldn’t say that I am too surprised. Red Pill is a small section of the Reddit community that focuses on the betterment of men and is closely related to the greater men’s rights movement. It’s not the kind of thing that you would see spoken about too often in public and with it’s (comparatively) small user base it’s not going to make the biggest splash or hit the front page of the Reddit topics.

But it seems that Business Insider has gotten wind of it with the posting of this article about the small Reddit segment. The article captures so much of the issue that you would have when reading the things posted on the Red Pill. Some of its user base advocates things like domestic discipline which can be anything from putting your wife or girlfriend in time out to actual domestic abuse delivered as a punishment for disobedience or burning dinner or whatever the man see’s as fit.

Other cringe worthy things that they advocate are marital rape, which had a bit of press recently when Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member Melissa Gorga released a book for married couples that had some very similar views to that of the Red Pill. One segment written by Gorga’s husband that drew attention read like this, for instance:

Men, I know you think your woman isn’t the type who wants to be taken. But trust me, she is. Every girl wants to get her hair pulled once in a while. If your wife says “no,” turn her around, and rip her clothes off. She wants to be dominated. Women don’t realize how easy men are. Just give us what we want.

If you browse The Red Pill for long enough you’re sure to see things just like this, but the community has a kind of language that it uses to speak to it’s members. Red pills are the men who have subscribed to the teachings the site has to offer. They generally see themselves as the alpha-males of society and thus they think they are better than all women and most men. But they tend to think they have a sort of duty to help beta-males, whom they call blue pills.

The Matrix references don’t end there. They see finding this way of thinking as having the wool pulled off of their eyes and seeing the real world for the first time. They like to think of themselves as being a rebellion of sorts and they often reference the world having changed so much for the worse because of women gaining more control over their own destiny. One of the things that they preach is that it’s the natural state of a woman to try and be a whore and it’s a man’s job to beat it out of her, whether metaphorically or literally seems to be up to the man.

Just take a look at this quote:

“A woman is a lock and a man is a key. If a key opens a lot of locks, it is a master key. But if one lock is opened by lots of keys, it is a dodgy lock.”

That’s pretty much the kind of person we’re talking about. And why am I sharing this? Because there seems to be this idea out there that these kind of archaic thoughts don’t exist and that most people believe women are more or less equal to men. There are a good number of people out there who believe the opposite and who actively preach it and try to spread the word.

These attitudes aren’t dead. So it’s best not to treat them like they are. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

You Should Be a Rapist

So some nerd has decided that he has the key to getting women in bed and seduction and so on and so forth. This isn’t some new thing for the internet or the writing world. I’ve seen at least a dozen different pickup gurus out there writing these kinds of books and trying to pilfer money from lonely guys who expect some get-laid-quick scheme to work in their favor. Most of the time the books spend a good deal of their page space talking women down, belittling them so that the man reading it can feel like he holds all the power. They often tell you to take a role like that with women to get their attention and to get them to respect you.

At their core, there’s a good deal of misogyny there. But most of them at least tell you that when a woman refuses your advances the gig is up. Even if they tell you to slow it down and back off some, most don’t say to press on—she really wants it. You know, because that’s basically a chart topper on the Rape Anthems soundtrack.

But in the link here this guy discusses what he saw on the Reddit by this book’s author.

This is a nightmare.
Watching the video, reading the description, it sounds fairly innocent but a little eye-roll inducing. It’s another book where some nerd, desperate to be liked by women (this is not an insult, we are ALL desperate to be liked by someone we want to have sex with) thinks he’s figured out some cheat code or check-list like routine they can run in a bar to make women sleep with them, as if women aren’t people but a series of subroutines or an obstacle course that they can optimize to get their dick wet as fast as possible. And he’s written that advice down! And he’s selling it! To you! You could learn his cheat codes. This is nothing new for the internet. In fact, a large swath of this book was published already on Reddit. What’s new is that he’s crowdfunding it. 

And sure, you might think this is sad or dumb or that this guy is just another lonely dude talking to other lonely dudes who’ll head out into the night with their fedoras to failure, right? Not a big deal? Oops, turns out we’re wrong, because here are some excerpts from what he’s already put on Reddit –
”5) Get CLOSE to her, damn it!

To quote Rob Judge, “Personal space is for pussies.” I already told you that the most successful seducers are those who can’t keep their hands off of women. Well you’re not gonna be able to do that if you aren’t in close! ”

“All the greatest seducers in history could not keep their hands off of women. They aggressively escalated physically with every woman they were flirting with. They began touching them immediately, kept great body language and eye contact, and were shameless in their physicality. Even when a girl rejects your advances, she KNOWS that you desire her. That’s hot. It arouses her physically and psychologically.”

“Decide that you’re going to sit in a position where you can rub her leg and back. Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances.”

“Sex

Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, GRAB HER HAND, and put it right on your dick.”

– Source

SO. Now I am no longer rolling my eyes.

This guy is no longer just being weird and creepy on the internet. Now he’s writing a book about how to sexually assault women, and he is using something I believe in (Kickstarter) to ask YOU for money to do it. I am offended as someone who believes in the platform, and more importantly I am offended as someone who believes women shouldn’t be treated this way, and that people who say otherwise CERTAINLY should not profit off saying they should. 

This isn’t harmless. People come to these boards because they are scared of being humiliated, and they are saying to the world, “Tell me what to do, because I don’t know what to do.” And this guy has chosen to tell them, “You should be a rapist.” 

There’s largely nothing we can do about people saying this shit on a place like Reddit – Reddit’s a mess for another time – but let’s get it off of Kickstarter. The project is funded in 10 hours – and unfortunately a lot of those are sleeping hours – but PLEASE report it to Kickstarter, please tweet @Kickstarter asking them to take it down, and PLEASE do not let something cool be used for the UGLIEST thing imaginable.

I just wanted to put this out there for others to see. This isn’t hard, I mean this shit is baby-town frolics—if a woman says no or tries to shy away from your advances then you stop. Hell, if a woman doesn’t seem to be into it and you have to question your advances, you should stop. There’s no excuse for forcing yourself on someone and no one owes you sex or any sexual favors.

Immersive research can be too much

I decided to do some research for Keep Austin Safe. Part of what I had planned was more or less asking questions to friends I knew just about their feelings and experiences. I’m well aware now that as a man I can’t accurately write a woman without knowing a bit more about their perspective. I mean, I wrote Holly for years—but she was based on a woman that I knew well enough that I could practically tell what she was thinking from a text. I didn’t need to work to hard to figure out her actions.

But the three women in Keep Austin Safe, Maddy, Wendy and Annemarie are more foreign to me. I made them up, but when I make up a new character it’s like meeting a new person. I have to spend time getting to know them.

In a bid to understand women better and get to know these ladies and just write a story that wouldn’t be as stereotypically written with tropes that played off the same ideals we see putting women down in other books they star in. I started off trying to do something without romance at it’s center. What I ended up doing was pouring over Feminist blogs, articles and at times news. I have actually written a post for a Feminist website, so I’m not a stranger to the kinds of things there.

But I never read about much of the day to day life and what started it all and gave me the idea to check these kinds of things was this article about a woman on a train. I was shocked by it because of the number of women I knew and on the article relating similar stories. the deeper I looked into the whole thing the more I realized it was very common. Blogs here and here illustrate the point pretty well—the second one is actually about a book called Hush Hush and it’s terribly creepy plot. It was a best seller, by the way.

Now I’m still going to write this thing and I’m going to doo my best to tell a good story with it, but the research has me feeling more guilty than inspired. Partly because the behavior is so ingrained in our culture that it has you second guessing every thought you have as a man (and probably a woman) and also guilty because even though I’ve never seriously done anything to make someone uncomfortable I have seen far worse done and been in places where it was common and acceptable and everyone just accepts it.

Doing my best to hold the thoughts about the narrative and what I’ve learned clear and utilize the things I now know in the story and in real life. But it’s a shock to read some of this stuff because you just don’t do it yourself. You learn it’s not decent to put your hands on random girls in buses or clubs or bars and you take care to avoid it. You never think about how often that happens or how often someone whistles at a woman or stares her down like meat.

In the end it just makes me feel disgusted with society, but I know society’s gotten better. And that’s the scariest thing.

Chelsa Mueller And Krav Maga for Writers

For anyone who has struggled with writing fight scenes, especially believable ones for small female characters or characters in supernatural worlds where things are generally stronger than them, these posts are a must read.

Real-Life Urban Fantasy Heroine?

Three Writing Lessons from Krav Maga

Krav Maga Lesson on Distraction

Breaking the Big Guys Down [Krav Maga for Writers]

There is really something for anyone here who thinks they might even write just a little bit of fighting in their stories. It’s good to have a background where the character could know these kinds of things in place even before they start to put them into practice. The good thing about Krav Maga is it’s used in practical situations and it’s designed so that just about anyone can utilize it.

While we probably won’t be seeing any flashy fighting from the ladies in Keep Austin Safe, Holly Prescott from my main series actually uses Krav Maga regularly and she claims that it’s her dominant go to form. So I might be taking a lot of this to heart.

Have You Ever Wanted To Rape Someone?

That was the title of a thread I read recently on a forum. The post was a man describing how he almost raped a girl and then was stopped at the last minute by the fact that he really respected her. Though, since he called her a whore a few sentences before that, I think the jury’s still out on that one.

Some of the replies are actually concerned that it was unfair that he didn’t get to have sex that night. One person even says “At least she finished you off some kind of way, that would have sucked.”

The original post on the forum ended by asking other men if they’ve had a similar experience. Other than a few people answering jokingly, no one has said yes I don’t think.

When I read the title I thought it was to grab attention. A lot of guys will admit to kissing a girl who didn’t want them to or trying,  but I would think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who would admit to wanting to rape a woman. That’s entirely different from the kiss thing, in fact I don’t think it’s something inborn in us. Though the person writing this thread thought it was: “It felt so natural, like it was instinct”. Kind of makes me understand why women don’t trust men.

Your reason for not wanting to rape someone shouldn’t have to do with the law if you’re right inside, it should just be because it’s wrong. Because it hurts another person and can ruin their life.

There’s something wrong with anyone who thinks their entitled to someone else’s body. I have a blog I keep for personal topics, ranting, and the like—it’s separate from this with good reason. I try to keep my politics out of here, because that stuff is polarizing. But I think this kind of thing needs to be talked about more often by anyone who has any sort of voice. This shouldn’t hinge on political affiliation, religion, race or even gender. All people should be able to agree that rape is just plain wrong.