Grrl Power #1190 – Looooove Arc!
Boy if you guys were clutching your pearls at the previous page…
Parfait wasn’t kidding about her lust aura, was she?
Oh, and no kink shaming Gwen there. We all have our things.
To clarify about the stinger – UV Vision would be pretty cool if you could turn it off. If you couldn’t… everything would probably look really dirty all the time. Things that people don’t realize need cleaning up would be incredibly obvious to you, and none of our cleaning products are designed to not leave behind streaks in the UV spectrum. You wouldn’t be able to see through most eyeglasses since a lot of them are UV tinted. Probably most car windows either. But if you could get past that, it would probably be pretty cool. For one thing, the UV portion of the spectrum is about six times as large as the visible portion. I assume that means you would be able to see about 11 septillion more colors, unless the higher energy you get, the more space you need to distinguish hues. I think actually the opposite is true, but I wouldn’t put money on that. Something else you’d have to get used to is that people have about 80x as many freckles as they think when viewed in UV. Most people are like 40% freckle in areas of the skin that get exposed to sunlight. Google it!
A few notes: The packaging on Anvil’s reinforced boyfriend substitute reads “Mr. Titanium / For very select women / you know who you are. In making the text look chrome on the box, it became hard to read at smaller sizes. Also, for those interested, Anvil’s book’s title reads “Shirtless Alien Men Want to Hear About Your Day.” Presumably the only English phrases they’ve learned are “I hear you.” and “That sounds really tough.” Hah hah! I kid, I kid.
Random trivia; I was watching reruns of Newhart while I worked on this page. It’s weird, but I can almost always remember what I was watching or listening to when I look at a page. Except a lot of the earlier ones. Partially because my memory is crap, but also I was watching a lot of CSI-type crime procedurals back then and they really all blur together at this point.
The July vote incentive is finally up! There was a disagreement about digitigrade and plantigrade leg configurations. What better way to resolve it than a race?
And in the Patreon variant, what better way to resolve it than a nude race? You know, to eliminate uh… wind drag I guess?
.
.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
soooooo does this count as disabling a entire super team?
Kind of. Since they are just getting horny, they would probably still able to react to a genuine emergency, but no doubt they are going to be seriously distracted and their focus compromised until the lust aura explosion gets conained and/or they get their relief. Anyway, mental-manipulation events affecting a super-team for a while are standard fare. Archon already got that way with V, and they managed it fine.
They didn’t really manage it fine, they got violence aura’d into fighting each other while Vehemence was free to choke out Maxima, and Sydney had to save the day by neutralizing his violence aura.
It’s unclear how strong exactly Parfait’s aura is, but Kevin was able to make them attack each other, so seems possible for a lust aura to make them too thirsty to do their jobs.
Yes, but they got wrong-footed since V tricked them into letting an extended super-battle occur to charge him before he confronted them. And he was only able to force them once he got powerful enough to fight Max on equal terms or even as the strongest party. Before that point, V wasn’t apparently able to make people fight anyone they weren’t potentially willing to.
I assume runaway succubus auras work the same way, so at this point an handful people getting lewd across Archon HQ is not going to charge Parf’s one into fucking nobody they aren’t interested in. I suppose it would take a much bigger and longer orgy before a succubus gets charged into being able to override people’s will. This seems confirmed by how people affected by Parf’s aura react to it so far. Dabbler indirectly confirmed this when she talked about how much tantric energy from an orgy she would need to fight the whole team on equal terms like V did.
Syd is a bit more of an open question but then again I have long since tended to assume a sizable amount of bi curiosity lurks beneath her interest in polyamory and befriending succubae, and her protestations of not being also into girls are hollow and outdated for her current level of sexual awakening. If my assumptions are correct, then her giving in to her latent attraction for Parf because of the incident would just be the equivalent of what Math and Jabberwokky are doing.
I think with Vehemence it was more that the violence aura costs him a lot of vehemic energy to deploy (it also makes unconscious people wake up), so he deliberately held it back until he’d get the most benefit. Conversely, Parfait’s aura is a natural, instinctive ability which is unlikely to cost her too much, and even if it did she can’t control it.
It’s an awkward comparison in that sense. You still make a good case that it’s likely Parfait doesn’t have the raw power to do this. And if Succubi could just do that, they’d be fairly overpowered. But I did want to point out that we have seen emotional manipulation strong enoigh to do that.
> Syd is a bit more of an open question
Sydney is completely straight, as confirmed by WoG. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/gp0100/ “And just to be clear, Sydney’s not into girls at all”
Her interest in polyamory is purely due to wanting a piece of a guy who already has a girlfriend.
Are you seriously bringing up something from over 10 years and a **thousand** pages back? One of the world’s greatest satelite projects you may be, but I h ave to question your knowledge of how writing works. Hell, as a writer I change, my old decisions over the course of a month or two, much less *a thousand pages of character growth*
Well yes, in the absence of newer WoG or explicit contradiction in the story, I’m going to assume consistency, especially as DaveB tends to be very open about worldbuilding decisions and (even implicit) retcons. If he had changed his mind since then, I’d expect an author blurb or a comment to that end, especially since it came up several times before. (In an earlier comment page, I argued for Sydney being straight on purely in-story basis, and only found the WoG later.)
Additionally, it’s supported in the story. When showering with superheroines, we don’t see her react with attraction or arousal, we only see jealousy of their assets. When proposing polyamory to Leon she explicitly (and violently) rejected threesomes.
lol even the tattoo’s are ahegao…
Always has been
Well god damnit.
I like the sexy. Hell, I had sex today. I have attended sex parties in the past and I read a half-dozen frankly pornographic comix and I like them. I’ve had over 20 regular lovers in my lifetime and absolutely none that I regret – that’s a life well lived in my estimation. My exes remain dear friends, even as years pass since last time we were together. If one showed up tomorrow in need of basic shelter or help, I wouldn’t turn them away or “make them earn it.”
But start in on “mind control” and shades-of-coercion and dubious consent, and my skin starts crawling. That’s been a creepshow for virtually everyone I’ve ever known. That’s been the line I absolutely don’t cross or even risk crossing. That’s been the abuse and the nightmare that takes people away, turns them off sex entirely, causes them to distrust, and ruins the experience for them. That’s been what the people I most despise have done to the people I care most about.
No. Just no. You may see sexy hijinks or harmless fun but I’m seeing healthy people who through no fault of their own will never trust their own decisions or judgment or ability to set boundaries again.
And I just can’t. This is an analogue for trauma that has happened, too many times, to people I care about, and I just don’t wanna ride along on this ride.
We’ve had mind control before in this comic.
V and every time a speech bubble goes pink.
Very much so. Moreover, mind-control events are to be expected in a setting with magic and superpowers, and it seems the team took the one caused by V in stride. Hard to see this incident going any different, since it seems everyone is getting involved with people they were interested in, or dealing with horniness their preferred way. These are absolutely not people that are going to be traumatized by having their inhibitions removed and indulging in some casual sexy fun.
“the team took the one caused by V in stride.”
In stride? V’s effectively Guantanamo’d at Archon and if he uses his aura without Max’s explicit permission she’ll execute him on the spot. Not to mention most of the villains that were at the big brawl, including Jabberwokky, got off on technicalities because yeah emotional auras are indeed mind control and there was no way to prove they were responsible for their actions.
“These are absolutely not people that are going to be traumatized by having their inhibitions removed and indulging in some casual sexy fun.”
These are absolutely not people that are going to be traumatized by having their inhibitions removed and indulging in some casual sparring.
That’s not how trauma, sexual assault, or being drugged works dude (of course you’re a dude don’t even try) and it does more than that. We already know succubi lust auras ignore sexual preference and taste in partners, if Arianna & Armor were in the same room Mr. Titanium is staying in the drawer and “CoCoPineapple” is getting left on read.
When did you last read this webic? Kev has left to explore the stars, basically exiled from Earth
Ari and Anvil (not Armor) are in the same building, if the lust aura was as strong as you claim, that’s all it should take! Both of them (plus Gwen) still maintain enough control over how they react
> When did you last read this webic? Kev has left to explore the stars, basically exiled from Earth
He proposed it in #999, but I don’t remember confirmation that they let him do it.
> Ari and Anvil (not Armor) are in the same building, if the lust aura was as strong as you claim, that’s all it should take!
This doesn’t follow.
Arianna is somewhere in a large building, Mr. Titanium is right there, so it doesn’t make sense for Anvil to seek her out if she’s really horny. Additionally, she’s known to have problems finding boyfriends, so masturbation is probably her standard response.
Arianna, meanwhile, appears to have someone she can call to have sex with, so she would also be following her standard behavior from being horny. Seeking out Anvil doesn’t make sense – she doesn’t know about the aura, so she wouldn’t expect Anvil to consent, which given their relative strength means she isn’t available.
Mind-control level horniness doesn’t mean going for the next warm body like a zombie goes for brains. They still have their usual mental faculties, just their emotions and motivations have been changed, and they’ll follow that motivations like they would if they were natural. Without anyone who you could have sex with right there, this means calling your boyfriend if you have one, masturbation if you’re single.
This doesn’t mean they’d be able to resist if someone else was in the room.
So, Peggy, Seneca and Ren all happened to be hanging out together, in a room, with a bed, after hours?
And Bodie and Detla just happened to be passing at the same time?
Peggy & Seneca could very plausibly have been in barracks together for a number of reasons, and then approached Ren, just as one possible, plausible scenario.
You really need to stop relying on “argument from personal incredulity.”
> So, Peggy, Seneca and Ren all happened to be hanging out together, in a room, with a bed, after hours?
Yes, it’s very possible they happened to hang out together. They could then have gone to a room with a bed.
Similarly, Bodie and Detla.
We saw that Math and Jabberwokky happened to be sparring together, so I don’t understand your incredulity.
I assume that was offscreen because the last time I saw Vehemence was when they were sparring in the canyon.
Anvil/Armor whatever. My bad Anvil, Arianna, and Gwen have obviously been hiding their psychic powers or x-ray vision.
When’s the last time YOU read the comic? The out of control aura is obviously far stronger than the times we’ve seen Dabbler do it just to mess with people a little and when THAT happens the married & straight people in the room have to resist their sudden desire to fuck her.
In all evidence, Parf’s runaway lust aura is nowhere strong enough yet to override people’s will. All but surely, tantric and vehemic auras work the same, and we know it took a lot more juice for V to force people to fight those they did not want to. Dabbler said it would take her an orgy equivalent of the restaurant fight to reach the same power level. An handful people across Archon HQ masturbating or having one-night-stands is not quite the same. This would be consistent for what we have seen so far about the effects of the runaway lust aura event. People are fucking people or otherwise pleausring themselves they were interested to begin with, just like V for a good while could only manipulate people that were willing to fight to begin with. This seems esp. true if the assumption that Syd is a latent bi is correct.
Back then, Dab’s amp-up lust aura just strongly tempted people into having sex with her, but that’s not mind control. Any very attractive person can do it with the right mundane assets and behavior. As far as I can tell, my best assumption is Syd was a latent bi to begin with, and that side of her got closer to the fore as she got interested in polyamory, contemplated threesomes with Leon & Krona, and befriended succubae. As for Arianna, people are compex. Maybe she is a 1 on the Kinsey Scale.
Arianna has a ring on her left hand. She’s texting her husband.
“Syd was a latent bi to begin with, and that side of her got closer to the fore as she got interested in polyamory, contemplated threesomes with Leon & Krona”
You’re remembering wrong friendo.
Leon: “Are you.. talking about threesomes?”
Sydney:”I’M NOT INTO GIRLS!” *hits Leon with her boot*
Nope. I remeber that, but I was thinking of Syd’s subsequent attempt to date Krona to explore the possibility of sharing Leon (which soon blossomed into an Archon group outing, but that is another matter). By the way, I think Syd did protest too much when she said she is not also into girls in that event. BTW, in that occasion, the author was tapping the meme of ‘female on male violence for things that are not the guy’s fault is fun’ for comedy value and hence IMO it was not the best evidence to judge Syd’s real feeling on the issue.
I don’t think “override people’s will” is the correct framing. It influences people’s will. If they do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise, that’s still successful mind control, it doesn’t have to be something they’d be vehemently opposed to.
And it’s clear they wouldn’t have done these things otherwise – Arianna’s booty call didn’t understand what she wanted, it’s clearly not something she usually does.
It might well be weaker mind control (although we don’t really have evidence either way), but that’s s difference in degree, not kind.
Ari’s hookup may not have been expecting The Call at this time, but after the second text they soon clued in right quick
And yes, influence rather than override the will seems more appropriate
If you go past a bakery and smell the fresh baked goodness and decide to go in and buy a croissant, that’s influencing your decision (you still chose the croissant instead of a bagel or cupcake)
If you are a full vegan and go past a takeaway and go in and buy a kebab, that’s overriding your beliefs
If I go past a bakery and buy a croissant after getting hit by their appetite aura projector, that would be very scummy of them.
And what is the difference between a smell and an aura? Odors are just chemicals. What if they artificially create and spread a more enticing odor than is naturally produced by their baked goods? Is that inappropriate influence, or just inaccurate advertising? What if they change their recipes to make the goods themselves smell better?
What’s the difference between natural pheromones, perfume, genetically-engineered pheromone production, and a lust aura?
Are these differences of type, or degree?
Speaking of ‘inaccurate advertising’, ever seen the difference the between what they have displayed prominently, well, everywhere as opposed to what you actually receive?
Heck, years ago, local Pizza Hutt was advertising a pizza special with mustard on the crust, but when you bought said pizza, you were handed a tiny pottle of mustard that could barely cover two slices, and the reason for the difference? “The picture was just serving suggestion.”
> What if they artificially create and spread a more enticing odor than is naturally produced by their baked goods
Deceptive, but probably not mind control, as they’re only using natural stimuli. Explicitly hacking the brain like with an appetite aura, or even using a gaseous drug that increases appetite beyond suggesting there’s something edible and letting the brain handle the rest would be different.
Were you this up in arms about Dabbler’s use of magic on Jabberwokky?
Different situation because she was being attacked, but still a little squicky.
A less than ideal, yet nonetheless still nonlethal method of removing a threat.
Not mind control, undirected emotion or rather primal urge control. They simply get horny and I highly doubt any of them would engange in something they would not otherwise.
Technically speaking in terms of magic/super powers, you are right. I stand corrected. This one and V’s events are emotion manipulation rather than mind control. Apart from the different basic urge, the main difference is V was in control of his aura, while Parf’s has gone out of control and the runaway effect is hitting her as much as anyone nearby.
I mean, Vehemence’s violence aura made Archon members attack each other just by making them more aggressive, so it can hardly be taken as a given that Parfait can’t make them do anything they otherwise wouldn’t.
While I do agree so far as we apply this to actual life, I think in regards to this comic that feels like an over reaction. It’s not a case of tie you down/take by force. It’s a case of suddenly everyone’s feeling horny, and dealing with it how they would. Anvil’s picking up her trusty aid, Gwen’s going to her apparently usual site, Math is being Math, and Jabby isn’t doing her first rodeo of the kind either. Ari’s calling someone in for “emergency treatment”, etc. And Harem is, well, Harem. Remember her joke back at the public expo? I can’t see any of the characters doing anything they’d regret next morning.
Sydney might have words with Parf about keeping her aura in check, but she’s also well aware of what succubi are and what they do, and she’s not exactly avoiding them here – and is getting along with both Dab and Parf just fine.
It doesn’t look like it removes control, just makes people very horny. That some are choosing to take care of themselves helps show this.
In particular, “PRHotBlonde” texting her boyfriend instead of going down the hall to seek a guy out shows that they still have control.
do we have a guess on who CoCoPineapple is?
Arianna’s husband, presumably. Note the ring on her left hand.
Feel free to get off said ride
I must admit I’m not very impressed by people who think it’s their good deed of the day to try to chase away any and all critics of things they like. Negative feedback is valuable feedback too, and shutting down a conversation you weren’t even part of because you don’t like it isn’t a productive deed but a selfish one. Let the man say his piece.
They are the ones who say they have had enough, if that is the case, then… just leave, why stick around something that bothers them so much
To quote: “… just don’t wanna ride along on this ride.”
Agreed. That said, I think I may have commented before about how emotion control is basically just the normal sort of manipulation people subject each other to, but ramped up a bit. This is ramped WAY up, of course, but also not really in Parfait’s control – rather than being a ramped up version of purposeful manipulation (which, I should note, I’m definitely not a fan of), it’s more like a ramped up version of seeing a member of the opposite sex who is extremely attractive and perhaps dressed provocatively. Or, alternatively, this is akin to two people who are already interested in each other getting drunk at a party and deciding to go shag somewhere. Maybe they wouldn’t have done that – or at least not done it quite yet – without the inebriation, but it’s not a case where either is a predator, they’re both drunk. Or I guess this is more like someone genuinely-accidentally putting vodka in the punch bowl, and people who weren’t trying to get drunk getting drunk and doing the above. So I don’t really find this situation creepy. Potentially-awkward when the effect wears off, but not creepy.
But, back on the gripping hand, I’m not going to say Bear is wrong that it’s creepy to them, or is wrong to express distaste for this sort of thing.
Yeah, also not attempting to say what others can or can not find creepy, but they didn’t need to type 90% of their post (specially not the first paragraph)
Emotional manipulation (the non-magical kind even that happens every day to ordinary real people) is a horrible thing to live through, or witness somebody being subjected to.
Even if the victim escapes with their lives, the psychological damage can never be really healed. Some (large part) of the trauma will linger.
So please understand, and do not aggressively condescend to, people who express how they are triggered by events depicted in a story. Their fear and discomfort is very real, even if you cannot experience it yourself. Be thankful you have not lived through the manipulation they likely suffered from.
Again, they ended their post stating they didn’t want to ride the ride anymore
“This is an analogue for trauma that has happened, too many times, to people I care about,”
…What can you possibly experience in real life that is analogous to a magical spell like this? That is… Common enough that several people you know have experienced it, and also subtle enough that they cannot trust their own decision making because they cannot know if they are under the influence at any given time?
There is literally nothing. You know if you decide to drink. You know if you decide to do drugs. Maybe getting drugged? Except roofies knock a person out, they don’t turn you uncontrollably horny. If there was any drug that could turn your libido up 500% it would kick Viagra’s butt ten ways to Sunday.
Now, I can understand if the concept of something outside of your control influencing your decision making makes you uncomfortable. Mind control has a lot of heavy philosophical implications surrounding it that can lead to discomfort. But you’re taking it a bit far here.
You have to stretch like an Olympic gymnast in order to make this connection. Stuff like “I know several people with Alzheimer’s and anything to do with the mind reminds me of it”, or something along those lines. But then again, you apparently stuck around past Vehemence’s rage aura which raises exactly the same kinds of philosophical questions as Parfait’s lust aura, except Vehemence did it on purpose.
The only conclusion I can draw is that Parfait’s aura squicked you out and feeling like that alone is a bit of a flimsy criticism you decided to invoke trauma to buy cheap sympathy points.
Drugs.
Drugging people co-opts their agency.
Any other stupid fucking questions?
Do you know what reading comprehension is?
Yes.
I also know how pharmacology works, because I spent my young adult life as a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy.
Which is where I got to discover the joys of my fellow sailors and marines being the victims and perpetrators of being drugged in ways that left them impaired, but not disabled, and subsequently vulnerable to sexual assault. Does a lot to demolish one’s youthful optimism, believe me.
Now, do _you_ have any other stupid fucking questions?
Also emotional manipulation. And psychological manipulation. And outright coercion.
Alcohol.
Machism, and how girls are trained from a young age to find that if not attractive then at least exciting.
(I read romance novels too, but I have grown up enough to understand that 90% of the male leads in them are emotionally stunted, borderline headcases that are ‘recovered’ by the female lead’s ‘true love’. See also: bad boy appeal. It does not work that way, at best it ends in heartbreak and tears (though not infrequently in outright murder), but the concept got rammed sideways into our heads and is extremely difficult to dislodge, even after you grow up to learn better and understand how toxic that particular relationship pattern really is…)
Wanna know a fine example of emotional manipulation? Bear’s post. People like Bear use Trauma claims to emotionally manipulate people into turning off their skepticism. Just invoke the magic word “Trauma” and suddenly a ton of people will overlook glaring inconsistencies in a person’s story or give their opinion more weight than they otherwise would.
I notice you use the word “impaired” not “Horny”. As in, the drug you speak of does not do what this spell is shown to do. Bear is claiming to be triggered because these characters “will never be able to trust their own decision making again” not because “these characters have been violated.” Then claims real world trauma as the backbone of his argument.
The scenario you are describing is one where an aggressor impedes a victim’s ability to defend themselves and then takes advantage of it. This scenario is one where characters are experiencing an emotion and are dealing with it in ways of their own choosing. The two are not analogous with each other.
Again, Vehemence’s plotline early in the comic would have been MUCH more analogous, as it was applied deliberately and Vehemence manipulated the people who were under his influence. Hell, during that same plotline, Dabbler used her kiss to brainwash someone into joining the heroes during the fight, which lead to months of her being
You’re telling me, you got through Vehemence brainwashing people to join a massive brawl, as well as Dabbler kissing a love spell into Jabberwocky to brainwash her, AND the aftermath where Jabberwocky became obsessively in love with Dabbler for apparently months. But this scene where people became horny and chose to handle it in various ways is where you draw the line?
Unlike you, Bear, I am a rape and incest survivor. I wasn’t triggered by the events in the strip for my own reasons. I’m also not fond of someone who isn’t a survivor freaking out on my behalf by extension. You’re speaking of other people’s trauma and not your own. You’re bundling several people’s pain into your words. Did they consent to let you use their pasts in this fashion? Are you aware this could be seen as you using other people’s pain as a weapon? There are words for someone who does this, and they aren’t complimentary. Especially because you’re so damn sure nobody can recover from the possible trauma.
I trust people. I worked my ass off to where I can trust again. And your pity party bullshit erases my work and blurs me in with people who’ve not yet found their way to do what I do. I will not be told I can never recover. I will not hear anyone insist nobody can ever recover. It’s hard. Very hard. My trust was destroyed at the age of 3 and I can only say I have enough of it back to function well at the age of 55. I spent the 15 years following the first offense having my trust violated continuously. I had no protection. No quarter. Nowhere was safe unless I sought it out carefully, and even then I was wary of possible problems. After all of that and the rape that capped my childhood abuse like a cork in a really shitty bottle of wine, I. Can. Trust. Again. Especially in myself, the hardest trust of all.
And you honestly think a single night’s unintentionally unleashed wave of “you need to have sexual pleasure NOW” being answered by people consciously choosing how to do so is the same as mind control. Worse, you think they’ll be damaged beyond repair when they realize what happened. You, sir, are part of why survivors have a hard time trusting again. You claim to love and support us, then you use us as weapons and claim we can’t heal ourselves. You should be ashamed of yourself, but I don’t think you understand the concept yet. You don’t believe in me, but I believe in you. I know you’re capable of caring enough about other people to see that borrowing their pain to make cheap points is rude and hurtful. I know you can get to where you see that many rape survivors can and do heal. I have faith you will get there. Peace.
It is vogue these days to protectively take offense on behalf of others in ways that tend to infantilize them. It’s part of why I’m not fond of the current wave of political correctness. Moral guardianship is ever a mix of self-righteousness and infantilization, taking charge on behalf of people (whether victims or perpetrators of misbehavior in their view) who according to their moral perspective implicitly cannot be trusted to have a properly developed sense of judgment or strength of character (unless it corresponds to their own views). More annoying still is that people try to divide that into some left vs right dichotomy when it’s really more of a freedom & individualism vs authoritarianism divide.
That said, I am willing to give Bear the benefit of doubt as perhaps Bear’s concerns may have more to do with his own past licentiousness, as there can be issues of sexual consent in freely sexual environments, rendering him more sensitive to such things. For all we know maybe he’s seen the aftermath of sexual abuse and given it weight in ways that led to a distorted perspective of what sexual trauma necessarily is.
> some left vs right dichotomy when it’s really more of a freedom & individualism vs authoritarianism divide.
That is the left vs right divide.
The left is about positive freedoms.
The right is about everyone conforming to their view of how the world should be.
That really, really isn’t the divide. I’ve known people on the left who thought they’d figured out what’s best for everyone and sought to impose their rules on others and people on the right who just want small government and individual freedoms. The converse is also something I’ve seen, with people on the left who have a strong understanding of and principled support towards civil rights and people on the right who wanted to impose their notion of American values on everyone.
But I find your careful phrasing of “positive freedoms” to be telling, honestly. If you believe in freedom, you have to believe in the freedom to say offensive things and hurt people’s feelings (what you would regard as “negative freedoms” I imagine), or as Noam Chomsky once put it, “If we do not believe in freedom of speech for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.” Censorship always comes in the guise of protecting public morals, and it always comes in the guise of curbing reprehensible/harmful/etc speech, but at the end of the day it’s swiftly abused as a tool for social and political control. It’s very easy to say that “hate speech is not free speech” (it actually is free speech) and then take it upon yourself to identify opinions and stances you disapprove of with hate and thus seek to have them censored. And just like that, “purging hate” has become a tool for exercising one’s hate for opinions that clash with their own views (the genuine meaning of bigotry). And if you really want to drive out hate, you’d do better to bear in mind the words of MLK, Jr: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
I think freedom necessarily includes the right to go against the current and have opinions or do things other people think negatively of (until you’re genuinely hurting others, at least). If you don’t have the right to reject or rebel against what other people demand of you, you aren’t actually free. So I think it’s telling when people try to define freedom in narrow ways that suggest “you should have the freedom to do things I approve of (but not things I don’t)” because that’s just not what freedom is about.
Although the biggest tell in my view is that you immediately went back to “no, it is a left vs right divide” because that indicates a black-and-white worldview, which is usually the root of authoritarian behavior.
Some things actually are black & white.
Chomsky signed off on the stupid letter, and was wrong to do so: freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the social consequences of saying something stupid, evil, and harmful. That entire batch of nonsense was about Queen TERF getting backlash – well deserved backlash – and various neoliberals being upset to discover that society is progressing past them and their mealy-mouthed “centrist” positions. In short, they are running up against _another_ thing that Dr. King said, about the liberal insistence on waiting for a more propitious season, and ignoring the urgency of now.
And that makes them uncomfortable. They like the sanitized version of King, where he makes a speech, and suddenly racism is over, by magic. They don’t like the Dr. King who carried a gun, or who wrote the letter from a Birmingham jail, or who called for before distribution of wealth. They want to forget that he called them out for tepid and meager support, for preferring quiet, to justice.
The language of “light versus darkness” is very poetic, but the fact remains that force must be met with force. This applies to rhetoric as much as to violence.
To paraphrase a woc historian who’s name currently escapes me, we must be able to vindicate our ideals in the field.
> Chomsky signed off on the stupid letter, and was wrong to do so
Are you referring to his signature on the petition supporting Robert Faurisson’s right to express himself? He was right to do so. Objectionable and controversial views must have the right to freedom of speech if the right to freedom of speech is to mean anything at all. Supporting one’s right to express themselves is not tantamount to supporting the message being expressed. The ACLU went through their own version of this where they eloquently laid out the need for even neo-Nazis to be afforded the protections of freedom of speech in the Skokie trial of 1977-1978, which was a landmark case in free speech rights, because they understood the importance of universal human rights, because they understood that the moment you let people carve out exceptions you create an abusable power to censor not just in the singular exception there but in the acceptance of carving out exceptions to essential human rights like freedom of speech.
Frankly, I find that petition a good litmus test of how well someone understands freedom of speech.
> freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the social consequences of saying something stupid, evil, and harmful
This sounds to me as a defense of cancel culture lashing out over poor/disagreeable language, which is very much an attempt to undermine freedom of speech. If I say “you can say what you want but if I don’t like it/consider it stupid/consider it evil/consider it harmful I am going to punch you in the face, but don’t worry you’re still free to say what you want” I am obviously intentionally striving to create a hostile and dangerous environment for you to express speech that I object to with the express purpose of undermining your ability to express yourself. Punishing people for speech *is* a form of censoring speech. And I must confess I hold a poor opinion of trial by the court of public opinion, especially when it’s trial by social media, over people just saying something.
And I agree with you that King’s messages have been sanitized in his death but I cannot help but notice you swiftly used the subject of honoring MLK’s legacy to launch into distorting and reducing his statement on darkness driving out darkness and hate driving out hate as mere flowery language and declaring that the real answer remains, in your view, meeting force with force and violence with violence, which was NOT MLK’s creed (especially in light of the quotation you just willfully downplayed). So I want to be clear on this: You are just as guilty those centrists you deride when it comes to cherrypicking and twisting MLK’s message towards what comfortably aligns with your own opinions and values.
I’m referring to the open letter in Harper which he signed to along with the likes of Frum, Weiss, and fucking Rowling.
It boils down to one thing, the assertion that there shouldn’t ever be consequences for their shit. Yeah, I know Chomsky has been a “free speech champion,” blah-fucking-blah, but there is nothing great or good about his defending the “right” of holocaust deniers to spew their fucking falsehoods. No better is Queen TERF using her gigantic platform to demonize and attack trans people, whilst hiding behind “free speech”and acting like she’s the fucking victim. This shit does real harm, to real people, often in real time.
Also, it’s very cute and good and not at all dishonest or manipulative that you took my statement of “social consequences,” and by some neoliberal alchemy converted it into ”punched in the face.” Yes,those are totally the same thing, aren’t they?
As soon as you start whining about “cancel culture,” you’re demonstrating that you don’t want there to be consequences for causing harm. That you don’t think that we “mere mortals” have right to express our own dissatisfaction with the variously dishonest, harmful, and manipulative statements made by those who imagine themselves our betters.
Hey, quick question; have you noticed how all these mf’ers whining & whining about being “cancelled” all still seem to have massive platforms, get interviewed in the media, and continue making millions or billions of dollars in various contracts? It’s almost as if the whole, “Waaaah! I got cancelled,” thing is actually a huge grift.
And then there’s your asinine canard suggesting that public backlash against these oh, so special people is the same thing as “censorship.” Thats some weapons grade bullshit right there. Nobody is stopping them from saying anything they want, we just point out their fallacies, lies, conflicts of interest, and the material harm caused by lending their weight to such nonsense. And they wouldn’t actually give a damn, if it wasn’t costing a handful of them some tiny fraction their corporate sponsorships. Hell, look at the insane backlash when some of suggested that buying the Blood Libel TERF Wizard Game was not a harmless act, given that Queen TERF literally uses her vast wealth to fund literal goddamn Nazis, just because they’ll help make life harder for trans people.
Speech is never “just words,” because those words have real, material impact on real people. They have the power to shape thought, and bend the current of society. Ffs, a ten minute radio address in 1930 literally saved the entire US banking system. Two minutes in Gettysburg reshaped the entire nation’s relationship to a difficult & unpopular civil war that killed more US citizens than every other conflict combined.
Free speech is absolutely an ideal to strive towards, but nobody has a right to do harm, and it is our responsibility as adult human beings to mediate as necessary.
Moving back King.
The man carried a gun. He understood that he was in mortal danger at all times, and that he might have to defend his life, or someone else’s with lethal force. He taught non-violence in organized, civil demonstrations, in order to minimize the likelihood of a violent police reaction in the streets, but never even pretended that the reality of force didn’t exist. And yes, ultimately, force was necessary, and was deployed. The entire purpose of the fucking civil rights movement was to get the state monopoly on coercive violence on the side of protecting people’s civil rights, to counteract the violence used to suppress & deny them.
This is the fundamental failing of this blinkered, Pollyanna neoliberal attitude. Token gestures & symbolic acts cannot, and do not, produce material results. You can’t back into the future. You step forward, grasp the machinery of society, and make it do what is necessary to achieve Justice & progress.
There is no other way.
Telling people to “trust the system,” or otherwise rely on institutions that are already compromised by those benefiting from the very injustice one is seeking to overturn, is beyond asinine. It’s patronizing & insulting. As is your pretending that you “can’t tell the difference” between the side willing to use violence to maintain a level of injustice an the side equally willing to use violence to decrease the level of injustice. Idiotic smooth-brain horseshoe theory. Go blow smoke up someone else’s ass.
> I’m referring to the open letter in Harper
WAIT. You are referring to the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate”? https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ THIS letter? You took issue with paragraphs like this?
> While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.
Good grief. I’m properly flabbergasted. That’s… incredibly revealing about your convictions that this document offended you so.
> which he signed to along with the likes of Frum, Weiss, and fucking Rowling.
Not only did Chomsky, Weiss, Frum, and Rowling sign on this, but Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, Fareed Zakaria, Cornel West, Zephyr Teachout, and many others signed onto it also.
You also appear to be headed for some kind of “guilt by association” thing, as if freedom of association were a black mark against one’s character.
> It boils down to one thing, the assertion that there shouldn’t ever be consequences for their shit. Yeah, I know Chomsky has been a “free speech champion,” blah-fucking-blah, but there is nothing great or good about his defending the “right” of holocaust deniers to spew their fucking falsehoods.
Again. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” One of the major mistakes of censorship advocates such as yourself (which is plainly what you are, at this point) is the belief that censoring speech you hate will eradicate it. In reality, it just drives it underground and feeds it legitimate anger and grievances, and in those underground spaces which have become the only safe spaces for discussing such ideas (and the more you err on the side of caution to censor subject matter that can lead to negative places, the more you cede reasonable concerns and discussion matter to spaces like that), people radicalize further and engage in real anger because there are far more extremists and far, far fewer reasonable voices to the contrary there. Hatred just feeds hatred, and anger feeds anger, sowing the seeds for violence, and so does the moral crusade end up making the world not better but worse.
The people you hate actively use the censorious and punitive behavior you condone as a recruitment call. You aren’t cutting off their supply. You’re giving it to them.
> No better is Queen TERF using her gigantic platform to demonize and attack trans people, whilst hiding behind “free speech”and acting like she’s the fucking victim.
That whole controversy began with JK Rowling saying this:
>Dress however you please.
>Call yourself whatever you like.
>Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
>Live your best life in peace and security.
>But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
>#IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1207646162813100033
It’s not so radical or offensive a position (I wholeheartedly agree with her saying this), but she was swiftly vilified and demonized for it with many a retelling attempting to paint her as a more radical, hateful, or vicious person.
Here are Rowling’s own thoughts on the matter: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
None of it strikes me as extreme or reprehensible.
> This shit does real harm, to real people, often in real time.
You have an incredibly one-sided view of what constitutes real harm, if you equate the open discourse of ideas you find objectionable with harm but find no trouble within yourself when it comes to censoring, career destroying, and character assassinating someone.
> Also, it’s very cute and good and not at all dishonest or manipulative that you took my statement of “social consequences,” and by some neoliberal alchemy converted it into ”punched in the face.” Yes,those are totally the same thing, aren’t they?
This is a fair criticism, aside from the part where you called something neoliberal just because you took issue with it, but my basic point is that promising to do harm as a consequence of speech is an attempt at chilling speech. I simply used the threat of physical violence as an example because it makes the issue more nakedly obvious. But the branding of persons with scarlet letters, where you strive to ostracize them from their own communities and disrupt their ability to conduct business and lead an independent life are all things that are commonly framed as benign-sounding “social consequences” but strive very much to reach into a person’s personal life and make it hell, and it is these sorts of things we speak of when we criticize cancel culture.
> As soon as you start whining about “cancel culture,” you’re demonstrating that you don’t want there to be consequences for causing harm. That you don’t think that we “mere mortals” have right to express our own dissatisfaction with the variously dishonest, harmful, and manipulative statements made by those who imagine themselves our betters.
This a motte-and-bailey fallacious argument. The complaint about cancel culture relates to hounding people and destroying their lives and careers and the threat of such destruction being used as a cudgel to make certain ideas unsafe to express, which is very much censorious behavior, as well as other forms of wrongdoing. The “motte” that you are retreating to is “you don’t think that we ‘mere mortal’” have right to express our own dissatisfaction with the variously dishonest, harmful, and manipulative statements made by those who imagine themselves our betters” in order to make yourself sound more reasonable. And clearly you are putting words in my mouth, creating absurd insinuations about power dynamics to frame yourself as some kind of champion for the downtrodden (when in reality you are creating an oppressive atmosphere, not lifting one, with your endorsement of censorship and going after people who say things you disapprove of), and disingenuously equating cancel culture with mere expression of dissatisfaction, when we all know that that is *not* what people are talking about when they speak of the cancel culture that you defend. And you know full well that I do support the right to express dissatisfaction with whatever statements by whoever for whatever reason that you decide to take issue, given that my entire issue here is freedom of speech and expression.
All of this suggests that you are attempting to villainize me and that you are arguing in bad faith.
> Hey, quick question; have you noticed how all these mf’ers whining & whining about being “cancelled” all still seem to have massive platforms, get interviewed in the media, and continue making millions or billions of dollars in various contracts? It’s almost as if the whole, “Waaaah! I got cancelled,” thing is actually a huge grift.
It isn’t. There is a gleeful appetite for the destruction of people’s lives when they have committed minor social wrongs, whether it’s Justine Sacco’s sarcastic tweet about AIDS flying over people’s heads or Larry Garfield being fired from the Drupal project because he practices consensual BDSM in his private life (which heavily offended some militant feminists) or Natasha Tynes complaining about metro service and being painted as a racist or Gibson’s bakery being accused of racism when the store owner took issue with a fake ID and shoplifting and so on. The appetite there is very much to destroy and often people don’t recover.
Some people, however, are big enough that attempts to cancel them are unsuccessful, but this still doesn’t stop people from going ballistic and threatening Twitch streamers for streaming “Hogwarts Legacy” (what you absurdly call the “Blood Libel TERF Wizard Game” – are you even listening to yourself?) or trying to spoil the game for others because they want to make a JK Rowling project fail. By your logic, complaining about cancel culture is a grift because the game was still a wild success, but the reality of it is that people did try to drive that project to failure and are constantly attempting to demonize JK Rowling, marginalize her, marginalize her work as well as deprive it of financial success, which is what cancel culture is about: it is attempting to push someone into a corner of silence and professional failure.
And no, that is not “suggesting that buying the […] Game was not a harmless act.” That is specifically trying to ruin people’s day for publicly enjoying a game because you want only negative things to be said about the game in public, equating positivity with harm or violence.
And public backlash that is deliberately bringing a hostile climate to bear on someone with the (often express) purpose of attempting ruining their ability to conduct a public life or pursue their profession over a matter of speech is a form of censorship, much like punching someone for saying something you don’t like is a way of censoring also.
> Speech is never “just words,” because those words have real, material impact on real people. They have the power to shape thought, and bend the current of society.
And here we touch on the crux. The desire to censor or “prune” public discourse of undesirable ideas is the desire to control the thoughts of people within a society and the current of society, by force. A totalitarian worldview, I do say. Words do have consequences, but censoring and creating a hostile climate to words you dislike is not how you create a better society and resolve problems. That is how you add to society’s problems.
> Token gestures & symbolic acts cannot, and do not, produce material results. You can’t back into the future. You step forward, grasp the machinery of society, and make it do what is necessary to achieve Justice & progress.
> There is no other way.
Cute, but the banner of “we are making progress towards a better future” can be used to justify doing literally anything. It has no moral weight, because the moral weight must come from what you are doing and *how* you are doing it.
> Telling people to “trust the system,” or otherwise rely on institutions that are already compromised by those benefiting from the very injustice one is seeking to overturn, is beyond asinine. It’s patronizing & insulting. As is your pretending that you “can’t tell the difference” between the side willing to use violence to maintain a level of injustice an the side equally willing to use violence to decrease the level of injustice.
I never said that you should “trust the system” (again, please do not put words in my mouth), but you should really study up on Satyagraha if you want to struggle for social improvements, and you need to learn that the desire for conflict and violence is also a desire for enemies as a place to unleash that conflict and violence upon, and that it is naturally alienating to the communities in which you decide bring about said conflict and violence. You don’t win a battle for hearts and minds with violence either, so what is your end goal of your violence for the persuasion of others to your way of doing things here? To terrorize people into submission or render them as corpses in the ground, unable to defy you? That is how you create your better world? Good causes quickly become bad ones if you use them as a license for wrongdoing.
If you want to create a better world, you have to either win people over or find a way of doing it that will allow others to go their separate ways. And if you want to win people over, you need a dialogue. And if you want a real dialogue, you have to allow the person you disagree with to openly express their views that you find so disagreeable.
> Idiotic smooth-brain horseshoe theory. Go blow smoke up someone else’s ass.
You have so much vitriol and hate in you that it’s plain as day your way of creating a better world will be self-destructive.
Honestly, I don’t think you’re really interested in creating a better world. You care too little about the negative fallout of your actions or the importance of finding a good path to success for that I think deep down you’re just drunk on your own sense of righteousness and the delicious moral comfort it provides to the indulgence of the dark urge to treat others like shit while considering yourself morally superior to them. That’s my frank assessment. But by all means, please do prove me wrong.
I’m not going to get into all of this, Since Bharda is doing such a good job, but Maya Forstater is an evil bitch.
“I stand with Maya” is causing harm.
> censorship advocates
One little thing here, just to prove that words can kill people:
Hitler only killed one person, himself. All the damage he did was caused by nothing more than his words.
If you need more proof than that that words can be violence, then you’re going to have to defend Hitler.
Wall of Text.
Summary: “Stop holding people accountable for what the say, and stop pointing out that what they say has a material impact on the social environment we live in, and also, you’re the real fascist.”
You’re engaging multiple fallacies & deflections here, especially false equivalency, Whataboutism, and appeal to moderation. You’re attempting to dress it all up in long-winded, patronizing language, and engaging in bog standard, banal tone policing.
You’re deliberately decontextualuzing ever around Queen TERF, acting as if she has never said the one thing about trans people, which is absolutely fucking precious, like a toddler who doesn’t understand that people can go and look things up themselves.
As for “guilt by association,” that doesn’t mean what you’re implying. But using Queen TERF as an example, again, do you really think that the company a person chooses to keep is irrelevant? I defy you to explain how the company someone chooses to keep doesn’t reflect their own positions, values, and character.
Case in point, Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, aka Nazi Barbie (not making it up, look at her Twitter, that’s what she has up). This is one of Rowlings little darlings, and has been for some time. She literally says she’s happy to work with literal Nazis and sacrifice feminism to theirregressive patriarchal fascism, just to get their help in eradicating trans people from public life. And this doesn’t seem to trouble dear miss mediocre magic school.
Dare I wonder why? Or is such speculation beyond the pale, hmm?
The point is, Anon-kun, that real, material consequences exist for all your mealymouthed, pearl clutching, breathless, ivory tower tone policing & sophistry. You don’t combat fascism with polite theorizing & strongly worded letters. There is no magic set of carefully arranged rhetoric that will change their minds, and the more oxygen you give them under the name of “free speech,” the more you enable them. Ffs, Goebbels outlined all this as one of their primary strategies for co-opting liberal societies back in the 1930’s. They exploit your high-minded idealism to acquire legitimacy, takeover institutions, and then start the pogroms. Do remember that the Nazis were elected. That the other factions did all the stupid, self-destructive capitulating and cooperating your proposing.
And we all know – or fucking should know – how that ended.
Mass graves filled by industrial extermination factories.
But it didn’t _start_ with gas chambers. It started with some asshole like you saying, “Well now we have to give them a chance!”
No. No, we fucking don’t.
@Illy
Maya Forstater has a right to express views critical of the current trend on transgenderism. Equating ideas you disapprove of with real harm is part of the problem. Harm can be found in virtually any speech if you apply the right perspective to it, and it is all too easy to equate political or religious views you disapprove of with real harm and censor them under that banner. If the speech is not inciting violence, performing fraud, etc. it should be suffered to stand and the antidote for reprehensible speech is presenting a healthier alternative. And censoring critical discourse of transgenderism will necessarily result in people with reasonable concerns being left only spaces where people strongly critical of transgenderism (and who have real grievances about censorship) can speak their minds and in those spaces the vast majority of people will only become more intensely anti-transgenderism.
As for Hitler, he became a head of state. What he was doing wasn’t “just words.” He was exercising his governmental authority to that effect. But I would defend the right of Nazis to speak their views as well, yes (though not the making of threats, as that falls under criminal activity). I certainly wouldn’t approve of those views, but I would defend the right for them to be spoken. Feel free to research the ACLU & the Skokie trial to get a clearer view of these things.
Now here’s the real shocker for you. Before Hitler’s government, during the Weimar Republic, there were a number of laws on the books rendering anti-semitism and hate speech crimes, and Nazis such as Goebbels were even jailed for their violations of these laws. None of it stopped HItler from coming to power and starting the Holocaust. Censorship laws do not really work to stop hate. It goes underground and intensifies, and it does so easily because most hatred would not stand up to scrutiny but because it cannot be discussed openly where it would be readily scrutinized and have healthier alternatives brought up, it is now instead discussed in spaces dominated by their views where the scrutiny and desire for a better alternative solution to whatever truly ails them is lacking.
@Bharda
I think you have lost all right to complain about goalpost shifting when you blithely refuse to engage with virtually everything I said, misrepresent my position, and decided to drag the conversation to subject matter you prefer. But I’ll answer this anyway.
> Summary: “Stop holding people accountable for what the say,
That is not what I said, nor what I believe. I just believe that your flavor of “accountability” is really just trying to chill and punish speech you find undesirable. Your arguments are framed in a “their speech causes harm, which ought to be reduced in order to protect against harm, therefore ‘accountability’ (the use of chilling and censoring speech through the application of punitive counter-measures for speech) must be imposed on them.” You can hold people accountable for their speech by
> and stop pointing out that what they say has a material impact on the social environment we live in,
I have not said that either, and I believe you *should* be free to discuss the impact you believe something will have on the social environment. I’ve certainly pointed out where your attitudes will lead for the social environment we live in (an intensification and growth of hatred, escalation of violence, a more hostile climate, a less free society, and us largely ending up further away from any real solutions to hate).
> and also, you’re the real fascist.”
I haven’t said that either, but I will confess that I find the desire to force other people to your way of doing things and making a religion out of your political values with a heaping of “either you’re part of the solution (like us) or part of the problem (like them)” thinking, desiring for your side to have binding authority over others so they must conform to your group’s demands, trying to suppress ideas that clash with your own (contemning them as harmful to society), trying to demonize, drive out, and interfere with the livelihood of persons spreading such ideas, and promoting the use of force and violence to achieve your goals has a rather awful lot in common with fascism, certainly.
>You’re engaging multiple fallacies & deflections here, especially false equivalency, Whataboutism, and appeal to moderation.
That’s not how it works. What has been asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. If you’re not going to present a case for all these accusations then your accusations are useless at best and malicious at worst.
> You’re attempting to dress it all up in long-winded, patronizing language, and engaging in bog standard, banal tone policing.
This is not even any form of argument. You’re just trying to paint me in a negative light now. And yes, there is a problem with acting angry and hostile in a discussion. I am worried that this isn’t a discussion in good faith anymore.
> You’re deliberately decontextualuzing ever around Queen TERF, acting as if she has never said the one thing about trans people, which is absolutely fucking precious, like a toddler who doesn’t understand that people can go and look things up themselves.
I honestly have no clue what you’re on about and you need to be clearer. You do seem to be sneering an awful lot, though.
> Case in point, Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, aka Nazi Barbie (not making it up, look at her Twitter, that’s what she has up). This is one of Rowlings little darlings, and has been for some time. She literally says she’s happy to work with literal Nazis and sacrifice feminism to theirregressive patriarchal fascism, just to get their help in eradicating trans people from public life.
I can’t tell what specific action of Rowling it is that you took issue with but all I could find is that Rowling took issue with the fact that she has been physically assaulted for speaking her mind on being critical about transgenderism. If there. If there is more (and you can cite the specific instances), do let me know.
You said she literally says she’s happy to work with literal Nazis so could you kindly cite where she said that? I’d be interested in reading that.
Frankly, I don’t regard JK Rowling as a hateful person as it does not seem in keeping with her character nor what I’ve found when I looked up her words. If there is something I’ve missed that you believe is of import, do let me know.
> And this doesn’t seem to trouble dear miss mediocre magic school.
That’s some spiteful language there, and also a tad juvenile.
> Dare I wonder why? Or is such speculation beyond the pale, hmm?
Incidentally, this is the sort of behavior people are referring to when they take issue with “just asking questions.” You are certainly making negative insinuations rather heavily, but if you are going to lay out a claim that she supports neo-Nazism (I still cannot be certain whether Kellie-Jay Keen is a neo-Nazi, nevermind Rowling’s purported support) which flies rather directly in the face of the themes her Harry Potter books engage in and wishes to eradicate trans people from public life, you will need to furnish actual evidence rather than produce hearsay, make insinuations, and insist people read between the lines to derive the conclusion you are so partial to. That is not the making of a good-faith argument. That is the making of a character assassination.
> The point is, Anon-kun, that real, material consequences exist for all your mealymouthed, pearl clutching, breathless, ivory tower tone policing & sophistry.
You have a lot of vitriol for your critics, I notice, and you seem awfully fond of poisoning the well. I’ve been rather polite and sincere all the way through, and if even this draws forth such spite and contempt, I can only imagine how you act towards others. What you’re doing isn’t healthy, and I have the sneaking suspicion you’ve burned some bridges in your personal life by acting like this.
Your way of doing things does not strike me as productive but rather destructive and that destructiveness takes on a life of its own, to the detriment of everyone.
> You don’t combat fascism with polite theorizing & strongly worded letters.
You really ignored what I said about Satyagraha, huh? Or the need for a more harmonious solution, especially if you seek to overcome hate. Or all the pitfalls I pointed out with your way of doing things.
> There is no magic set of carefully arranged rhetoric that will change their minds, and the more oxygen you give them under the name of “free speech,” the more you enable them.
As I explained above, the people you hate actively use the censorious and punitive behavior you condone as a recruitment call. You aren’t cutting off their supply. You’re giving it to them. And censoring speech doesn’t stamp it out, it feeds it grievances and drives it underground, where it radicalizes further and becomes an angrier, more dangerous version of itself.
I’d also recommend checking out Daryl Davis’s TED Talk “Why I as a black man attend KKK rallies”: https://www.ted.com/talks/daryl_davis_why_i_as_a_black_man_attend_kkk_rallies
The man does good work in driving out hate. You should probably also check out Martin Luther King’s book “Strength to Love.”
> Ffs, Goebbels outlined all this as one of their primary strategies for co-opting liberal societies back in the 1930’s. They exploit your high-minded idealism to acquire legitimacy, takeover institutions, and then start the pogroms. Do remember that the Nazis were elected. That the other factions did all the stupid, self-destructive capitulating and cooperating your proposing.
> And we all know – or fucking should know – how that ended.
> Mass graves filled by industrial extermination factories.
>
> But it didn’t _start_ with gas chambers. It started with some asshole like you saying, “Well now we have to give them a chance!”
> No. No, we fucking don’t.
I’ve answered a lot of this in my answer to Illy above. And I’ve explained multiple times how censorship is not the antidote to hate.
> Equating ideas you disapprove of with real harm is part of the problem.
So you think people saying that a group of people should be exterminated isn’t doing “real harm”.
So you’re pro-genocide.
Gotcha.
Illy,
You know full well I’m not, any more than the ACLU were when they supported neo-Nazis’ right to speech and assembly in Skokie or Chomsky was supporting Faurisson’s right to speech. You also clearly opted to bury your head in the sand and ignore anything I had to say about the productiveness of this approach, and this sort of argument is a frequent and ever-wrong canard of the pro-censorship crowd, as they have a frequent difficulty understanding that it is possible to support someone’s right to speak without supporting the message they are speaking. I think I even went over how there were anti-hate speech laws on the books in Germany before Hitler came to power and those didn’t help then either, but you have opted to ignore that as well. Censorship is a tool of totalitarianism and it *does not* cure hate.
For goodness’s sake, if you’re going to present a point, at least do the proper courtesy of addressing what the other person has already said on that point.
@Anon
As soon as you started carrying water for literal Nazis, everything else you had to say became devoid of value.
Lie down with dogs, rise up with fleas.
Last thing I’m saying, so please, enjoy having the last word, fascist.
Bharda,
Yeah, you were never genuinely arguing in good faith. When I make an argument, you sidestep it. When I point out the need to bring people together, you ignore it. When I suggest a better path, you refuse to acknowledge its existence. When I suggest learning up on the non-violent struggles of the past, you reject it. When I speak of curing hate, you just insult me and accuse me of supporting hate.
Don’t kid yourself, Bharda, the truth is you were always looking for a way to avoid engaging with anything I said. Spite, vitriol, scorn, downplaying my words, and trying to paint me in a negative light, no matter how unfair, has been the core of your engagement.
I was hoping for some kind of common ground out of a desire for understanding or a better world that we could build off of, but I have to say, you are really closed-minded and frankly bigoted in the truest sense.
> Last thing I’m saying, so please, enjoy having the last word, fascist.
The fact that you equate the free and open exchange of ideas with fascism disturbs me.
Well, good luck to you. I hope you overcome your difficulties one day.
> understanding that it is possible to support someone’s right to speak without supporting the message they are speaking.
There’s a difference between supporting their right to speak in general, and supporting a Nazi’s right to speak in specific.
Also, you not seeing anything bad in Rowlings “I hate trans people” paper says a lot about you.
Hello Illy,
I have to say, universal human rights are necessarily universal for a reason. It is not for nothing that Chomsky said “if we do not believe in freedom of speech for people we despise, we do not believe in it at all.” Cutting down the rights of people or ideas you despise may seem a tempting and righteous prospect, but in reality you harm not only your targets but also the right itself in doing so, which leads to rather poor consequences. We should also be leery in general of people taking it upon themselves to become the authority to decide what is fit for censorship and what is not because that power certainly sees abuse far beyond the circumstances for which it was intended.
Anyway, as I said above, please, please do look up why the ACLU felt it so necessary to support the neo-Nazis’ right to speech and assembly in Skokie (or why Chomsky supported Robert Faurisson’s right to freedom of expression, but that one will make more sense if you’ve looked at the Skokie case first). The Skokie case was incredibly important to the civil rights movement of the USA even though it protected the right of literal neo-nazis’ speech, or rather precisely because of it. Precisely because it offered the forces of censorship no safe harbor at all to restrict speech and assembly, forces which would’ve been unleashed on the civil rights movement without the slightest hesitation if offered the slightest legal justification. It’s very important to note that the protection of literal hate speech by literal neo-Nazis was actually a watershed moment in the struggle to overcome racial hatred.
And as I’ve said many a time above, censorship does not cure hatred. It rather creates an atmosphere ripe for hatred. I’ll quote what I said above to Bharda about it, as it seems pertinent here:
> Again. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” One of the major mistakes of censorship advocates such as yourself (which is plainly what you are, at this point) is the belief that censoring speech you hate will eradicate it. In reality, it just drives it underground and feeds it legitimate anger and grievances, and in those underground spaces which have become the only safe spaces for discussing such ideas (and the more you err on the side of caution to censor subject matter that can lead to negative places, the more you cede reasonable concerns and discussion matter to spaces like that), people radicalize further and engage in real anger because there are far more extremists and far, far fewer reasonable voices to the contrary there. Hatred just feeds hatred, and anger feeds anger, sowing the seeds for violence, and so does the moral crusade end up making the world not better but worse.
>
> The people you hate actively use the censorious and punitive behavior you condone as a recruitment call. You aren’t cutting off their supply. You’re giving it to them.
As for Rowling’s paper, as far as I can tell she does not, in fact, hate trans people. The way you speak of her paper strongly suggests to me that you haven’t actually read it, so I have to ask if that is the case, because you owe it to yourself to take a proper look at things before judging someone or their words. It’s part of what it means to be fair and it’s part of what it means to be an independent-minded person, to take a good look for yourself and assess for yourself before casting judgment.
So, here is her paper and do let me know what you think of it: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/
She’s not being unreasonable here, in my view. And if you disagree, I’m happy to have a civil conversation with you where we explore what may or may not be wrong with it.
Anyway, I hope you have a good day.
> As for Rowling’s paper, as far as I can tell she does not, in fact, hate trans people.
It’s an inconsistent mix of TERF, truscum and “I’m a self-repressing trans man” talking points.
Rowling supports Kelly-Jay-Keen Mitchell, an open Nazi who wants all trans people dead. She also supports an number of other political figures who want all trans people dead.
Here’s a rather detailed look at the people she chooses to associate with from about a year ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_xvXJJk7k
> I’m happy to have a civil conversation with you
Yeah, not interested in arguing with a sealioning Nazi apologist.
Censorship is inevitable. If you don’t specifically ban threats, people will use threats to get people to censor themselves. If you don’t ban spamming, excessive noise, or other obstructive behavior, then people will use it to drown out people they want silenced.
Just as force can justify force in response, so can attempts to silence others justify silencing them.
“Left” and “Right” unfortunately have too many meanings, too many referents, to really make broad definitions. Are they ideals, or groups of people? “Liberal” and “conservative” have similar problems, though the latter has the additional problem of being relative to a point in time. Any position can be “conservative”, and at one point, American Conservatism referred to a set of ideals that were quite liberal.
Threats cross the line from speech into (criminal) actions and spam is not meaningfully speech. There is a difference between curtailing this and conventional censorship, which is what you are attempting to normalize here with what appears to be a motte-and-bailey fallacy (the motte being your points on threats & spam and the bailey being the argument that censorship is inevitable and implicitly something people should accept).
Those goalposts look heavy, Anon-kun, you need help shifting them?
You genuinely do not see the difference between regular speech and speech actions or speech and white noise? This disturbs me. I think the person who is accustomed to shifting goalposts is you.
Freedom of speech is about the free and open conveyance of thoughts and ideas. It is not about the ability for someone to say “Put your money in the bag or I will fucking kill you.” unpunished or the ability to make a contract and see it go unenforced because “contracts are really just words so punishing breach of contract would be violating my freedom of speech”. Because the latter constitute actions and you can be held liable for your actions.
“no u”
Very convincing.
So your solution to the paradox of free speech is to redefine censorship to exclude curtailing some harmful speech, or to redefine some speech as not speech because it’s not “meaningful”. You don’t see how this is just as subject to abuse as “conventional” censorship?
My point is that a rule like “nobody is ever allowed to stop anybody from speaking or impose consequences on them” leads fundamentally to contradiction. Creating a functional rule requires examining the purpose and goal of an idea like “free speech”. I would suggest something more like “people should not be prevented from expressing their ideas to a willing audience”.
Counterpoint: Holocaust deniers & other people who purvey verifiably demonstrable falsehoods should not be permitted to do so, because it causes demonstrable material harm to real people.
I’m torn about that. On one hand, we should certainly do something about demonstrable harm… But fiction is demonstrable falsehood which we willingly engage with and consume. Where do we draw the line? It’s one thing to say that holocaust deniers are firmly on the wrong side of it, but harder to say exactly where the line should be, and who gets the authority to determine that.
As much as I might be in favor of discouraging harmful falsehoods through other means, I’m inclined to stop short of actually outlawing them. It’s also impractical, unless you’re suggesting actually policing private conversations between individuals, and not just public communication. I think there has to be a better, more targeted solution, but I admit that I don’t know what that would be at this time.
Just going to point out an extreme case to make the point:
Hitler rose to power by only “Expressing his ideas to willing audiences.”
> Hitler rose to power by only “Expressing his ideas to willing audiences.”
That’s not true, the SA was very willing to use violence to hinder the expression of political opponent’s ideas, and of course we know what happened to free expression of ideas after he rose to power and worked on keeping it.
I would suggest that Hitler himself wasn’t the real problem, but that there were systemic causes that led to there being an audience receptive to his ideas. Education and economics are the things that shape people, either to strengthen their moral character, or weaken them until they become susceptible to toxic, self-serving lies.
Speech might be easier to shut down, but it’s only a temporary fix. Unless the core problems are addressed, someone else will come along and start a fire somewhere else.
> That’s not true, the SA was very willing to use violence to hinder the expression of political opponent’s ideas
And Hitler never did any of that himself. He made a point of staying away from anything where violence was expected.
He just expressed his ideas to a willing audience. That willing audience then went on to do terrible things.
No, giving order is not the same thing as “expressing ideas”.
And if they acted on their own accord, violence against speech was still used to help him rise to power.
Speaking as a card-carrying leftist, that isn’t entirely fair to the right.
You’ll find people with authoritarian leanings all along the spectrum; it8s more accurate to say that the left is less change-averse than the right, as the right tends to view all potential change through the lens of prospect theory, also known as loss-aversion.
Basically, conservatives focus on what can go wrong, and tend to assume that any change from the status quo is likely to, or necessarily will, result in greater harm than leaving things alone, whereas we evil communist leftoid freedom-destroyers tend to favor the “fucking do something” approach, because we believe that even if we make mistakes along the way, improvement and progress are active processes.
And history tends to bear us out, usually.
THAT SAID, it would be dishonest to ignore the fact that such Modernist ideas don’t always pan out for the best. That’s the whole reason Post-Modernist theory can be effectively applied to ideology & policy.
Honestly, this is why I find right-wingers flailing about Post-Modernism hilarious. It is, at it’s root, a _conservative_ philosophy that says, “You don’t know or understand as much as you think you do.”
Bloody idiocy…
> And history tends to bear us out, usually.
History bears out slow, measured change, which I believe is the result of conservatives and progressives moderating each other, with progressives dragging conservatives out of their comfort zone and conservatives sanity+checking progressive ideas. When too much change happens too quickly, it tends to lead to destruction and oppression (e.g. french revolution, communism) more than the implementation of the original ideals.
History bears out a ‘punctuated equilibrium’ with long periods with relatively little changed interspersed with short moments of rapid and frequent radical change.
People by and large are resistent to change and this is why most poly- and pantheistic religions have their trickster gods. They are primarily teachers (through the school of tough love), but when the status quo can no longer be maintained they are the ones who kick over the apple cart and allow for modified structures to emerge that allow for the changes that made the status quo untenable.
It is also why the (mono)theistic religions that lack this aspect either incorporate it in another form, or in the long run they become dangerous to both the believers and the peoples around them. Religion freezes the cultural and societal norms (which is not inherently a bad thing) but if the situation changes and no change to the religion is possible it leads to either a violent explosion (as the society tears itself apart from the growing stress) or to ever more desperate and violent attempts to force the environment to confirm itself to what the religion says it should be. In humans that would be a recipe for schizophrenia and paranoia. Societies are not people but denying reality is not a great thing for them either).
To clarify my meaning, by “history bears out” I meant that “measured change” where potential improvements get carefully considered and potentially implemented is what works best.
A thing that has literally never happened.
Strangely, it always seems that any change is too much, and the only appropriate time is always “later.”
Change is not gifted from above.
It is forced from below.
… maybe? For all I know, the changes you’re advocating are actually often not good ideas, or at least not sufficiently thought out, and slowing you down is the right response.
“Change” is sometimes good, sometimes bad.
See?
You’re already coming up with excuses, and I haven’t even given you a policy proposal yet.
You’re definitely a conservative.
So because I’m not on board with policy proposals before I’ve even heard them, I’m a conservative? Accepting the possibility that a proposed change might be bad is just common sense.
I’m cautious of your worldview because it seems very one-sided. There’s little more I can say about your impressions than “consider that the other side might have a point”.
@Voyager
No, you’re a conservative because you started from a position of assuming a negative outcome, instead of asking to hear a specific proposal in order to eventuate it.
That’s the difference.
And there’s a built-in corollary to the line youparaphrased from Jorby Peterwaffen, “they also might not have a point.”
I have not assumed anything, I offered a potential explanation.
> And there’s a built-in corollary to the line youparaphrased from Jorby Peterwaffen, “they also might not have a point.”
Yes, but that’s not what people like you need to hear.
Or rather, it’s not what anyone needs to hear, because if you didn’t think they were wrong, they wouldn’t be on the other side.
You’re both being ridiculous. There are new ideas that are great and new ideas that are horrible. People need to stop pretending there is inherent positive value in social change as if the right pacing of adoption will magically make adoption of ideas turn out good. At the end of the day, whether or not something good comes out of your social changes and which way is best to implement them obviously depends on the specific social changes you are trying to make.
This discussion you’re having is so hopelessly overgeneralized as to be useless and grossly errorprone.
> You’re both being ridiculous.
Are you referring to me? Because I don’t think I disagree with anything you said.
Change needs to be slow not as an end to itself, but because if it’s fast, that usually means the sanity checks protecting against bad change are failing.
What’s the acceptable compromise between “we want to live” and “we want to genocide those people?”
What’s the “sane” pace of emancipation? How many women should be afforded the vote each cycle, before we all get to participate in the government that controls the country we live in?
Wouldn’t want to rush into anything and suddenly make the entrenched power interests suddenly uncomfortable, would we?
> What’s the acceptable compromise between “we want to live” and “we want to genocide those people?”
The topic is change, not compromise. So if group A is alive, and group B wants to genocide them, should we embrace that change?
> What’s the “sane” pace of emancipation?
What’s the sane pace of making Hitler chancellor? Of guillotining dissidents? Of disowning the kulaks?
It’s easy to find an example that seems clear in hindsight. You don’t have hindsight when making the decision.
As I clearly said before, it’s not about the pace in itself. It’s about the process of figuring out things. That it’s slow is not good, but the alternative is worse.
“It’s not about pacing, but anything faster than cold-molasses in January is innately worse.”
You’re deflecting. I never even suggested that “all change is good.” I pointed out that the position of the Right always boils down to neophobia. You then prove my point by immediately retreating to “well bad stuff can happen.”
Yes, bad stuff can happen, hense my point about Post-Modernist critique, however, there’s a lot of daylight between ‘can,’ and ‘will.’
You, by your own words, favor the “fucking do something” approach. I favor the “figure out things before we act” approach.
Slowing down good change is an acceptable side effect thereof, not a goal in itself.
Conservatives and progressives both have their own blindspots, but your strawmanning isn’t going to help anyone learn from each other.
@Voyager
And yet, still, the conservative argument is always “we need more information.”
It’s a deliberate grift, intended to indefinitely delay action.
Look at climate change.
The greenhouse effect has been understood since the 19th Century, and the trajectory of anthropogenic climate change has been understood since the mid 20th Century. Hell, we have the evidence that the fossils have been covering it all up for decades! But still, we get told “it’s not conclusive! More study! We can’t rush!”
Meanwhile, the planet is literally dying around us.
But okay, sure, let’s keep sitting on our thumbs.
> Change needs to be slow not as an end to itself, but because if it’s fast, that usually means the sanity checks protecting against bad change are failing.
Again, it really depends on the changes. Some changes need to be done fast because a course correction is due before disaster strikes and some changes need to be done fast because justice delayed can be justice denied like that. And then there are changes that will necessarily fail *unless* you are willing to go slow about it.
At the end of the day it all depends on the specific changes in question.
> At the end of the day it all depends on the specific changes in question.
My point is that you need the time to figure out which are which.
Any particular change might be better, worse, or just different. But unless your proposition is that we’ve somehow already stumbled on perfection, some change is going to be better than no change.
And that’s the difference between a conservative and a progressive. A conservative is evaluating the choice as “change or not?” A progressive has already decided on change, and is evaluating which change would be an improvement. Because if you look back at history, change has always been the right choice, even if we didn’t always choose the correct changes to make.
And some other change is going to be worse than no change. If you just want change, someone still needs to evaluate whether this particular change is an improvement.
And sometimes, we have already reached the optimum (not through stumbling on it, but through iteration, hard thought and learning from past mistakes). The process you’re describing has an endpoint. Then the progressive is guaranteed to make things worse. That’s a case of “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Conservatives kid themselves if what they think they’re doing is “sanity checking” progressive ideas. There’s no deliberation, no consideration that any progressive idea might be good. It’s immediate stonewalling, resistance, and trying to drag society backwards.
It’s really pretty simple: if a change entrenches or reinforces existing power structures, conservatives are all for it. If it disrupts who has power, they’re against it.
Yeah, I’ve heard many people talk roughly like that about their political opponents. Scepticism is usually warranted.
I you haven’t already, I strongly recommend reading ‘The Authoritarians’ by prof. Altemeyer.
It deals with what is the core split we are talking about here, which is not left/right but between authoritarian followers and those who are not.
In the USA there is a huge overlap between authoritarian followers and the christian conservative right, because the religion strongly encourages (and lately attempts to mandate nationally) the mindset and society that they are most comfortable with, and even have a psychological need of.
In the days of the Soviet Union you would find most authoritarian followers in the communist party for exactly the same reason. And in today’s Europe you see authoritarian followers strongly gravitating towards the alt-right movements, because those offer the kind of strict hierarchy and authority figures that they desperately crave.
(prof. Altemeyer also carefully explains that authoritarian followers do not have some kind of mental issue, even stating that they are a vital component of the social fabric of human communities. It is just that they because of their psychologic, they are particularly vulnerable to particular type of social predator (the ones with a domineering personality and scoring high on the dark tetrad personality tests)
I’ll not name names so as not to drag this discussion any deeper into the quagmire of politics.
“The left is about positive freedoms.
The right is about everyone conforming to their view of how the world should be.”
That is exactly and perfectly backwards. Welcome to the 2020s, I know the 80s were a blast but it’s been 40 years since then. The sides have flipped since the left gained political dominance and now it’s the left that demands total obedience to their worldview, while the right is fighting to keep basic freedoms.
The right to free speech, the right to self defense? Those are heavily under fire right now… From the left. Those are natural rights; but you don’t get to exercise them anymore. Defend yourself from a violent criminal? Get ready to have your face plastered on the main news networks as a vile individual who shot a poor innocent mugger.
Fail to keep up with rapidly evolving language? Well time to have strangers dox you and call up your boss to tell them all kinds of lies to get you fired.
Now, as a centrist, I’m under to illusion that the right wouldn’t go straight back to their satanic panic nonsense as soon as they gain real dominance again. But right now, the roles have been reversed.
In the end though… Both sides suck. They both end up doing the same exact things, but claim different reasons for doing them.
The only basic “freedom” the right is interested in is the use of violence to control others. Free speech doesn’t mean “freedom from all consequences”. In what way is the left trying to impose prior restraint on speech? They are trying to impose consequences for harmful, threatening speech, but it’s the right that’s trying to prevent certain groups of people from speaking at all.
The left has no problem with people actually defending themselves. It’s when people commit unwarranted acts of violence and then claim “self defense” that the left has a problem with. Self defense ends when the attacker is no longer a threat. If you kill someone who’s running way, that’s not self defense. It’s not the average citizen’s role to pass judgment or punish a criminal.
Nobody has to “keep up with rapidly evolving language”, just not be a jerk if someone pushes back. It’s the insistence that people have a right to call other people whatever they want, without consequence, that’s at issue. If you insist on being rude to people, they’re rightfully going to say that you’re creating a hostile environment, and that you don’t reflect well on your employer.
Gonna blow your mind with this one; Freedom of speech IS freedom from consequences. That is literally the whole point of free speech. If you fear that you will be punished for speaking, you will not speak. And right now, the left doles out punishment for speech like it’s going out of style. Quibbling about whether to boot on your neck is owned by the government ignores the greater problem that there is still a boot on your neck.
The left absolutely has a problem with people defending themselves. There have been numerous cases where someone was in a clear case of self defense with video evidence and a leftist prosecutor decides to arrest them and make their life hell for as long as they can get away with anyway.
Remember the bodega owner who defended himself with a knife against an attacker who cornered him and was twice his size, and he ended up arrested and jailed until the judge finally dismissed the case? We don’t have a lot of right wing gun nuts chasing people down and then claiming self defense, but we sure do have a lot of innocent people who defended themselves being locked up while left wing prosecutors turn a blind eye to actual crime.
And yes, we do have to keep up with rapidly evolving language. Words are constantly evolving. The diagnosis for a mental illness I have is currently offensive because someone randomly decided it was a few years ago and I have to use a different word now. There have been numerous counts of people slipping up and getting cancelled for it.
There was a kid a while ago who didn’t know about the whole pronouns thing and laughed nervously after fumbling over his words when asked for his pronouns and he got banned from a pokemon card tournament for such a heinous crime as… Being slightly socially awkward as a teenager.
Or how about the “Smug” Covington high kid who a ton of leftists were making woodchipper memes about who then turned out to be completely innocent because the footage was deceptively edited and the story was mis-reported on purpose to claim that he harassed a poor old man when the reality was the old man approached him and started banging a drum in his face to try to provoke a reaction and the kid did nothing.
The left have been absurdly tyrannical as of late. And again, as a centrist I don’t doubt the right would be equally tyrannical if they had the reigns but you have to be extremely dishonest to claim the left has only ever used this power to silence, punish and censor in the most responsible and disciplined way.
Typical conservative grift.
“Here are some examples of individual outliers that support my narrative, I will now assert this proves my general assertion.”
Kindly point to the systemic structure that causes any of this to be true in a statistically significant number of cases. Otherwise, we’re gonna file this under the “hasty generalization” fallacy.
Oh yes, the typical grift of… Citing actual specific examples of things that really happened.
As opposed to the legitimate debate technique of vaguely waving your hand and going “Uh… The thing I think happens happens all the time. Totally.”
See?
I asked you to show me evidence of a thing happening in a systemic manner, a verifiable pattern of a statistically significant number of cases, and instead you tried to accuse me of the thing you yourself are doing, right here.
Show me the numbers!
Bharda, you’re being ridiculous. He’s already cited examples of this sort of thing being a problem and now you’re demanding a statistically significant amount of cases in a context that is likely unquantifiable, essentially laying out an unreachable goalpost since it is impossible to determine what is “statistically significant”. And he doesn’t need to do that. He’s already laid out instances of these principles and values causing problems which already exposes problems with these conducts and you haven’t laid out any solution for them.
Implicit in your demand for a “statistically significant amount of cases” is that you don’t think this much warrants any course correction, which means that you think it’s fine to abide this much happening. That’s telling in its own right.
By that definition, the only speech that’s free is speech that nobody else hears. Because all speech has consequences. They may be consequences you desire; those consequences may be the very reason you’re choosing to speak. Speech may make some people like you more, some people like you less, change their mind about a topic, or call them to action. The whole point of speech to affect how other people think or feel or act. To communicate. And since speech can be used to punish others, protecting “free speech” requires restricting some speech. There’s no way around it. Either you punish some speech, or other people use that speech to punish other people for speaking.
We absolutely do have a lot of right-wing gun nuts chasing people down, starting fights, and then claiming self-defense after they kill the person who is themselves only trying to defend themselves from someone with a gun.
What is “cancelling”, and who’s at fault? Aren’t the people publicly criticizing someone only exercising their right to free speech? If someone loses their job over false accusations, it’s their employer who is in the wrong. You cite one example of misinformation, and then don’t consider that some of your other examples might be misinformation as well. Who’s at fault? The person who responds to the information they have, or the person deliberately producing misinformation? We should all be skeptical of information these days, given the technology to produce very convincing fakes, and the existence of people obviously motivated to do it.
People just forming opinions about you based on your speech isn’t a consequence, it’s the primary feature of speech. Sharing your opinions lets people know what your opinions are.
But the “Freedom of speech isn’t freedom from consequence!” crowd isn’t talking about this natural aspect of speech. They’re defending the act of doling out PUNISHMENTS for speaking. The woke mob threatening to ruin people’s lives if they say the wrong opinion is “Just free speech” in the same way that an old fashioned mobster saying “Nice place you got here. Be a real shame if somethin’ happened to it. Maybe you aughta pay me somethin’ to make sure that don’t happen…”
The only difference is, the old mob wanted payment in the form of cash. The new mob wants payment in the form of obedience.
“Woke mob.”
Hereby disregarding everything you have to say.
> The right to free speech, the right to self defense? Those are heavily under fire right now…
They really aren’t.
> Now, as a centrist,
LOL. You expect anyone to believe that?
California introduced an amendment proposal to restrict the 2nd amendment, the governor of New Mexico attempted to freeze the ability to carry firearms via executive order. The actual president said the words “The second amendment is not absolute”. It was revealed that Twitter was chock full of ex FBI agents and that the FBI was working with twitter, facebook, and youtube ahead of the last election to censor truthful information.
But sure, not blindfolding myself for the sake of your side makes me “right wing”. I don’t march in lockstep with the left or the right. I’ve seen what the right likes to do in the 90s, I remember when literally SPIDER-MAN who’s main thing is punching people wasn’t allowed to punch people. I remember when cartoons were REQUIRED to have a “positive moral message” (as defined by the church) in each episode and the utter cringe that came with.
That is why I’m a centrist. Sure, I’m opposed to the nonsense the left is doing right now, but I have zero doubts the right would be doing the exact same thing if they had the reigns. Handing control over to the right isn’t the answer. The answer is to stop tolerating bad ideas just because they come from the side you like more.
> California introduced an amendment proposal to restrict the 2nd amendment,
Wasn’t that done under Reagan because he was upset that black people were open-carrying to dissuade police violence against black people?
…What are you even talking about? Ronald Reagan is:
A) from Illinois, not California.
B) Not someone who is currently legislating or campaigning.
C) Not even alive.
The amount of wrong you have to be to mistake Gavin Newsom for Ronald Reagan in this situation is so mindbogglingly extreme, it’s a wonder you were able to type that without your computer melting down as a result of logic and anti-logic coming together like matter and anti-matter.
Learn some history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governorship_of_Ronald_Reagan#Mulford_Act
I see no constitutional amendment mentioned anywhere in that article, Illy. Your argument amounts to “Some guy 60 years ago tried to restrict gun ownership in some fashion, therefor the modern attacks on the second amendment don’t matter.”
I do see why you wanted to conflate the two though. You still think I’m lying about being a centrist, and are assuming that I would bend myself into a pretzel to defend Reagan like a right winger would, thereby exposing some hypocrisy.
Unfortunately for you, I am honestly a centrist, and thus your argument only bolsters my own. As I said before, the republicans were anti-freedom back when they were in power, and now that democrats are in power, they are anti-freedom. Its the same show with different actors.
I don’t care about the difference between a constitutional amendement and any other law.
To all those clutchers bitching about this and the last page: when has DaveB ever let shit like this go unpunished?
When Dabbles gave Sydney the Warmth spell (without letting her know about the side-effect), Sydney punched her in the showers
When Dabbles used Maxi’s golden globes like a fun house mirror, Maxi punched her through a wall
If you have a problem, then just fuck the fuck right out of here! Don’t bother rage-quitting, just fucking leave!!
well the issue really was that it had never really gotten to that point before which is why you had people “pearl clutching”, and while yes their has always been fallout it had never been a a similar case honestly the closest thing I can think of is when dabbler groped max or the kissing prank by harem both which were early on and both times done as a “prank”.
warmth’s spell really was not the same as the whole attempt to make out with. heck the side effects of the warmth spell is not something that might have even crossed dabblers mind at the time of casting said spell. think of people being prescribed Sildenafil for high blood pressure.. the other name Sildenafil is Viagra. Is the doctor trying to get freaky with their patiant or its it that said drug has multiple benefits?
as for the golden globe incident remember the whole joke on that was she was trying to seduce maxima at the time but being dabbler got distracted by seeing her reflection which was the whole point of the joke she never actually “forced” herself onto max.
So, what you are saying, is that Sydney had no right to assault Dabbles in the shower?
yes she didnt but at the same time its not like she actually hurt her ether max called out dabbler for sandbagging
Gotta say, your palpable rage (“…fuck the fuck right out of here! Don’t bother rage quitting, just fucking leave!!”) (Seriously. The only cliche you missed is accidentally including a few “1”s in your multi-exclamation-point entry. Damn.) against people who hate rape…is as disturbing as it is preciously impotent. Get over yourself. You’re a walking red flag if you get this pissed at people whose only crime is sharing their negative reaction to a plotline that triggers their “rape is evil” buttons.
But, to use your words: “[anyone who thinks rape is ever ambiguous,] fuck right the fuck out of here! Don’t bother rage quitting, just fucking leave!!”
I’m personally offended by knowing that rape apologists are sharing my air.
And if rape survivors complaining is enough to piss you off that much… try on the shoe. Bet it fits!
Where is the rape? Show me one person on this page who is getting raped?
Did Sydney consent to being kissed? Was Sydney even planning on having sex with Parfait? Was Parfait planning on having sex with Sydney, or did the day’s entertainment and conversation push enough of her buttons that she had to do something or suffer for it? Rape, not yet. Possible sexual assault, yes.
Oh, and did everyone in the building sign a waiver or some such noting they understood a succubus was going to be sleeping over that night so there was an unpredictable risk of a compartmented orgy breaking out? Everyone has choice in this situation except maybe Sydney. They still have been rendered thirsty like it’s high noon in a sex desert. The next strip or three should be enlightening.
This is also another time Sydney bulled ahead without realizing she lacked full awareness of the risks. This is SOP for her. It’s not that she wants to cause problems. She just makes choices that cause other people’s plans to change very abruptly. At least this time, there shouldn’t be anyone who gets non-consensually hurt.
Again, show me one person on this page, actually getting raped
Coercion? Mental manipulation? Sure, there’s plenty of that, but there is also plenty of being in control of their actions and making choices that line up with their feelings: Gwen locked her door before viewing a sexy website in private; Anvil reached for her dildo rather than go looking for Les or Wart (possibly the only two males who could survive snu-snu); Ari texted for her SO to come to her, again, rather than go looking for someone already there; Math and Jabs were in the middle of sparring match and already showed signs they were interested in each other
Neither of them consented and this is certainly pushing boundaries. Likely it is violating boundaries as well, but where exactly those boundaries lie depend on the people in question, as these boundaries tend to be highly personal things. I wouldn’t classify this as rape but it certainly falls under some version of less-than-consensual sex. The biggest problem with sexual assault here is really that neither party is in control of their actions so while it is certainly possible to feel assaulted the “assaulter” could well be a victim too. I guess the closest real-world analogue for most of this would be ending up in an unplanned sexual encounter with a stranger while both of them are involuntarily intoxicated with something like Ecstasy (MDMA), which has no doubt happened at some raves, as some people do spike the drinks of strangers with party drugs, resulting in wild and unintended behavior.
Whatever is happening between Sydney and Parfait will ultimately have to be resolved by how they both perceive and come to terms with it as well as however the law is going to get laid down on this. Probably Sydney will have to spend quite some time processing it, including her own sexuality. On that note, it’s not fully clear whether or not Sydney already had bisexual tendencies. Sydney made an oblique reference earlier to having the “other kind” of porn that she would prefer to ease into, which could be a reference to lesbian porn (or not), and she also made an overture to Krona about doing a threesome, but it’s not clear where she lies on genuine homosexual interest. Well, we’ll see how things shake out. I can at least predict that Dave intends for Sydney to be bisexual in the future and that he doesn’t intend for Sydney to be properly traumatized by this. Probably the Sydney/Krona/Leon relationship triangle will also be developed further.
I honestly wasn’t expecting Dave to take things this far, as this is really devolving into a porn comic now. I figured Dabbler would’ve intervened at this point before things got out of hand simply because she’d be able to sense what’s up and would try to get it under control. What is going on with Dabbler right now is a whole other mystery.
Really what I was expecting was that after watching “sexy anime” (read: anime porn) together, either Parfait would end up giving Sydney a shoulder rub or Sydney and Parfait start joking about the ridiculousness of porn logic with mild play-acting, only for it to lead (predictable) places resulting in a Fade to Black and Sydney waking up naked in bed with Parfait. That… would’ve been considerably tamer than what we got now. I did figure this was going to end in a sexual encounter between the two of them the moment Sydney decided watching porn with a succubus alone in the bedroom was a good idea, but I certainly wasn’t expecting this.
I too expected the Syd/Parf encounter was building up to end this way and upgrade their relationship to FWB once they started to watch hentai porn together, ogle hot guys, shop for sex toys, and have sex talk about the pleasures of the succubus bond. The slippery slope was noticeable. As a fan of polyamory in fiction and the pentagon ship (Syd x Flix x Parf x Leon x Krona) I could only cheer for this plot development. The runaway lust aura incident was unexpected but not unwelcome (action-adventure, superheroics, erotica, and comedy are four great tastes that taste great together in the right mix. The issues that others may have with this event are as far from my sensibilities as the other side of the moon; I would not notice or care for them unless they get thrown in my face.
The author can mine several extra plot developments from this ship being fulfilled this way: upgrade at least Math and Jabberwokky to a couple; add the issue of Arianna’s bf; highlight the necessatity of Archon upping its game about protections from mental manipulation effects; opportunity for more screen time for Dabbler and Parfait’s sisterly bond and her need for more succubus training; Max getting mad with Sydney, and so on.
Conversely, one thing I really don’t see as in-character for Sydney is needing extensive or difficult self-reflection to internalize and process this event or its revelation about herself. She shall hit the ground running with this and adapt to it on the fly like she does with everything else in her life, apart from a few awkwardness moements.
Moreover, Syd being traumatized by this kind of event would be quite out of character for her. This is the girl who recovered with flying colors from being stranded on a dead alien world with no apparent way home and being hunted by a murderous kaiju with little more than a few nights of troubled sleep and a couple pep talks with the team therapist. It took something like being covered from head to toe from gore or experiencing death in an erased timeline to shake her, and it did not last more than a scene or two.
By the way, if you ask my opinion, Syd’s adaptable and indomitable attitude is one of her most valuable, admirable, and (from my perspective) relatable qualities. Speaking from lived experience, there is nothing bad or ‘improper’ with being resilient to trauma, and being the opposite does not seem anything good to have.
YAWN, anon have verbage but it’s all reasonable alt right shit…always has been. T
Dude, what is your problem?
You just randomly reply to my post for no other reason than to start calling me names and make bizarre insinuations?
It’s the usual rethoric that everything sexual is rape unless it is treated like surgery.
That’s what it seems like
Show me where I said anyone on this page was being raped? Reading comprehension not your strong suit, eh? I’m not going to explain how you sat on your own dick here.
I will point out that you’re a liar, however.
|
“So, yeah, completely understand how some could find what is happening traumatic and most fucking certainly am not dismissing peoples opinions on that or their feelings”
|
Unless those feelings are (in your opinion) too strong. Then, not only do you dismiss them, you want the person(s) feeling those things to “fuck the fuck right out of here!… just fucking leave!!”
|
And now we’ve got a rape survivor telling someone they don’t know “how dare you!!1!” for empathizing with rape survivors who aren’t them, and might feel differently than them. I’m a rape survivor too, LysKitsen, and *I’m* not fond of *you* acting like only *your* opinion and experience actually matters, and every rape survivor must feel just like you, and be exactly as far along the path of healing as you. BITE. ME. Sanctimonious tone policing is toxic. And nobody said “beyond repair” so do what guesticules said with that nonsense rhetoric and emotional manipulation. Heck, just because Bear didn’t mention their own possible trauma doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…but you didn’t consider that. Shame on *you*.
|
Oh, and guesticules? I know reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit, so I’ll explain Bharda’s actual meaning, which apparently broke the sound barrier as it flew over your head: Bharda was saying that the difference between the choker in the bar with Max, and *this* scenario is that *no one is actively, deliberately controlling or causing Parfait’s lust aura to spread like this* Bharda clearly wasn’t saying no one has even a modicum of control left. They were saying that this whole mess isn’t a result of a deliberate malicious act. No one is controlling it. There’s no “Mens Rea” or motive. Unlike the choker. Ya follow? Great.
|
No one has been forcibly raped on this page. Multiple people have been roofied. And even if you (universal you) only adulterated a person’s drink as a “joke” and the only person they sleep with is their partner…it’s still drugging someone. And it’s still illegal. Difference here is no one deliberately drugged anyone. It can still trigger people who *have* been raped or drugged, especially when their trauma is dismissed as pearl clutching. Personally it isn’t my favorite scenario, but I’m interested to see how Max reacts, and I realize Dave didn’t intend to insult trauma survivors. We all chew on our feet sometimes. But just because I’m fine doesn’t mean I’m fine with you telling people who experience their trauma differently to “fuck the fuck right out of here!…” I don’t. It’s gross, childish, and super uncalled for. Grow up.
I think you’re being a bit overboard here. LysKitsen wasn’t speaking on behalf of every rape survivor or any such nonsense. LysKitsen was pointing out that the notion that “[people who were sexually violated] will never trust their own decisions or judgment or ability to set boundaries again” is excessive, wrong, and reductive towards victims of sexual abuse, all of which is certainly fair for her to say. People can and do heal, even from extreme abuse, and saying these things does delegitimize this sort of progress and healing from hardship and trauma. Not everything is a competition between who is allowed to be right.
I’m really not a fan of Guesticules’s sentiment that “if you don’t like it, then gtfo” but I’m also not convinced you’re handling matters productively here. I think you’re getting carried away a bit here and are perhaps over-eager to equate people with rape apologists, and maybe I’m projecting a bit, but I’d like to imagine that most trauma survivors of whatever variety prefer to make their inner peace with it and move on, leaving it as a bad event that happened in the past so they can act as and be treated as normal people rather than continue to let victimhood define and haunt them like an unending specter, something hypersensitivity on behalf of trauma victims promotes. And I think that’s the issue that LysKitsen took with Bear, the strong implication that it *will* necessarily haunt and define someone forever. I don’t see why you would need to lash out at someone over that. She never claimed her experiences invalidate your own, and I strongly doubt that’s how she thinks.
Never even commented on Bharda‘s comment about what happened in the bar
If no one on this page has been raped, why is everyone shouting “RAPE!”?
Maybe if you stopped hiding behind an attack, we can talk about this properly, but we all know that won’t happen
To that extent that consent is a requirement, sure.
If that bothers you, you have a serious character flaw.
If you equate an unasked for kiss as the same as rape, then it is you who are flawed
Assault? Possibly, depends on the one giving and the one receiving the kiss, NOT armchair tarnished knights
Rape? Are you fucking kidding?
Don’t put words in my mouth, boy.
I didn’t specify an act, and I was responding directly to the comparison of sex to surgery (both of which generally require consent), and while kissing can be involved in sex, it is not itself dependent thereupon.
But it’s okay for you to do the same to me?
That has been your MO from day one: put words in others’ fingers and then plead persecution when they call you out
Oh, and insult people any chance you can
Notice how you suddenly don’t want to talk about the subject of the exchange anymore?
Why is that, Guest?
Why does my proverbial bedside manner suddenly matter more than the topic of discussion?
Everyone is welcome to shun what they dislike, but it is no excuse for censorship and silencing of those who like it through endless complaining. Prudes can pry my lewd fiction and porn from my cold, dead hands, or otherwise stay the heck out of my life. I am greatly annoyed by them intruding in my pursuit of happiness.
Show me where any of the people “complaining” have any power to “censor” Dave? You can’t. So really you just want to silence people whose reactions don’t match yours. And that is seriously gross. Get over yourself. If they want to say they’re done, let them freaking say it, and don’t try to belittle or delegitimize or dismiss their experience and reactions. Saying “I don’t understand the problem, but you do what is best for you” is a hell of a lot better than telling people to “fuck off”. The latter is silencing and abusive. Are we on 4chan? No? The what the hell is wrong with this picture? Let people react however they want or need to react. This isn’t hard.
“Let people react however they want or need to react.”
Show me where any of the people “silencing” others have the power to “let” anyone do anything? You can’t. So really, you just want to silence people whose reactions don’t match yours. If they want to complain, they will complain whether you say anything or not. Don’t try to pretend you have a moral high ground because you have empathy. You think that a scolding is going to put them right instead of just encourage them to keep going just to spite YOU in particular? Are we on Youtube? No? Then what the hell is wrong with this picture? Stop pretending like your verbal crusade will be recognized by anyone. This isn’t hard.
It’s just the usual cycle of:
Speech: good
Speech criticizing other speech: bad
Speech criticizing speech criticizing speech: good
Speech criticizing speech criticizing speech criticizing speech: bad
And so on.
If you’re getting off to nonconsensual sex, then you have a serious character failing.
For the Universe’s sake, are we still dealing with the “comics/games/music/porn/etc. make people do bad things in RL” mindset? Attempts to guilt-trip or shame me according to any values but mine do not really work, doubly so for something as harmless and personal as my tastes in fiction and gaming. Best case, I could not care less. Worst case, you made me your enemy. That is part of how the sjw crowd made a sworn enemy of me, despite my social-libertarian leanings and my subscribing to a great deal of the (non-woke) liberal agenda.
My liking a great deal of ‘badwrongfun’ sex and violence in my entertainment won’t make me rape or murder anyone any soon, so religious zealots and equality/identity fanatics are better keep their paws off my fun. No one got harmed when Dave summoned this plot arc into being from his creativity, his nerd knowledge pool, and a lot of 0s and 1s.
Strawman.
Nobody either said or even suggested that media consumption compels behavior.
What _has_ been established, however, is that media influences the cultural zeitgeist, and can provide a more permissive environment for various behaviors & practices.
In the same way that religiously moderate communities provide places for fundamentalists & extremists to incubate or camouflage themselves, or a society that subscribes to “boys will be boys,” and “good girls don’t dress/talk/act ‘that way’” provide cover & mitigated culpability for sexual violence against women.
You’ll notice a comment I made referencing the sex-romp “comedies” of the 80’s (and 70’s, if we’re honest). That was deliberate. Nobody is going to try making “Porky’s” today, because society recognizes that kind of behavior as sexual harassment, and not suitable as the subject of humor.
If that maturation of social conduct upsets you, then good. Seethe.
I won’t mince words with you, sex can be hilarious, entertaining, even deeply emotional and moving.
But consent – fully informed, affirmative consent – will always be the standard for acceptance & minding one’s own business. The instant you extend so much as atone into nonconsensual activity, yes, I have a fucking problem with you, as does every other decent human being.
And for exact same reason that getting off to kids is a big fucking no-no. They _cannot_ consent, because they aren’t fully functional& informed human beings yet. There is zero daylight between can’t consent, and won’t consent, when it comes to sex. And if you’re struggling with that concept, then once again, you have a serious failure of character to work on.
Why is it always self-proclaimed “libertarians” who struggle with the concept of consent & want to normalize eroding that standard?
because the money behind libertarianism, is covering up something darker. they say they want easier rules of business and more competition. yet, somehow amazingly the actual policies and legal structures libertarians build lead to something else entirely, almost as if libertarianism is the used car salesman of political thought. I don’t doubt that the people expressing these opinions are sincere but, the system seems geared to deceive them most of all.
*smacks hood*
You can fit so many thirteen year old Asian brides in this thing!
what do I want with 13 year old Asians? I mean carnal knowledge of statues aside, then I’d have to feed them! have you seen what groceries cost nowadays?
also have you seen what a pie costs at a pizzeria?
You’re not thinking like a proper libertarian!
Once you’ve convinced them to sell themselves to you, just have them grow food for you, then you give them the bare minimum to keep them alive, sell off the surplus, and use the proceeds to convince more such young adults to sell themselves to you.
What? Slavery?
Oh, no! No, no, no, friend.
Thisisn’t slavery, your not forcing them to sell themselves to you, they’re making than decision on their own, because that’s totally what autonomy realky means.
The freedom for someone to sell themselves as a commodity for use!
Libertarianism.
Oh, I am seething a lot about the woke madness taking over Western entertainment and spoiling a lot of that for the likes of me. However, more than that, since I am a practical guy, I prefer to focus on keeping my access to un-PC media of the past free from sjw cyberbully mob censorship, and enjoying present ones (e.g. anime/manga/LN) that thankfully remain free of such influence. Bless the souls of East Asian authors and media for creating so much wonderful fiction that remains thankfully free of sjw crap. Let that make the likes of you seethe in turn.
I am strongly persuaded that the consent standard used for surgery and the like is nowhere a good fit for romantic and sexual issues, since it sucks far too many options, spontaneity, passion, and romance from them like a prude vacuum. A somewhat more nuanced and flexible standard is necessary to keep all the acceptable and gainful options in this aspects of life available and legitimate. The alternative makes much more harm than it supposedly tries to prevent. IMO, if everyone were to behave by the draconian standards of the radical-feminist dating and sexual playbook, we might as well make libido suppressants part of our standard diet, and reproduce by cloning, IVF, and artificial wombs, as in certain sci-fi dystopias. E.g. the Demolition Man bad future, which to me is a good portrait of wokeism brought to its natural consequences. I refuse to live in that kind of world, and I shall fight its advent to my dying breath.
Another thing I strongly oppose, since it has invariably brought a lot of harm to humanity and it looks nonsensical to my eyes, is to make sex special and sacred (or unholy since it is the other side of the same concept). Sex is an important and pleasurable aspect of life, nature, and the body, nothing more, nothing less. This is why I absolutely refuse to deem rape a special kind of evil, and sexual violation worse than the non-sexual equivalent. Moreover, my notion of pragmatism, a fact-based world, and autonomy demands to acknowledge a choice between suboptimal options shaped by necessity as genuine and legitimate: e.g. I may accept a non-ideal job I do not especially like in order to pay the bills.
For the reasons above, I hold transactional sex as entirely legitimate and something that needs to stay part of existence, be it sex work or just an agreement that I’ll do you favor X and you’ll let us have sexual conduct Y. Abuses in sex work need to curbed just the same way as in non-sexual jobs, but demonizing sex work because of its focus is harmful, insane, and futile. We may revisit the issue of choices with less than ideal options if and when technology, magic, or superpowers allow us to live in post-scarcity utopias where we are immortal and all-powerful demigods.
As it concerns the issue of underage sex, I do not see the harm in (and hence I oppose demonizing) people getting off to the mere appearance of it in media manufactured to cater to such tastes, such as hentai anime/manga with loli characters, or incest porn created by paid actors with the right assets.
Please note that I have no personal stake in this matter: my tastes regard the loli type as a serious turn-off (sorry to the A-team) and go to the classic bimbo type combined with athletic fitness. In this regard, the default superheroine body type in the Grrlverse and similar media (combined with an instinctual or practical preference for skintight/skimpy clothing) is bliss to me.
In this regard, my tastes are obviously biased, but honestly I do not see the point in the feminist opposition to the stripperific costumes of many superheroines. If you enjoy flaunting your ideal body, mundane armor and weapon are worse than useless to you, skintight/skimpy clothing makes fighting and movement easier, and you have no reasonable worry of disrespect from puny humans, what is the point of sensible clothing?
I gladly agree to keep underage sex an absolute taboo as long as it means what nature intended i.e. prepubescent children, the proper meaning of ‘kids’ in this context. I am absolutely opposed to the infantilization of adolescence (in this and other contexts) and the demonization of consensual teen romance and sex, especially with close-in-age peers. The alternative is way too harmful, innatural, and futile. Puberty does not occur at 18, and it is insane trying to pretend it does and force the issue with criminal laws.
And what is this “woke madness”? Nobody seems inclined to define it. What’s really changed?
I don’t think you know what “consent” is. I’ll give you a hint: it’s not a specific phrase informing someone of your willingness to engage in an activity. It’s the willingness itself. That’s what people who are concerned about consent are focused on. Making sure that nobody is coerced, doing things against their will. The difficultly arises because we do not have direct knowledge of another person’s internal state, and must guess from available cues. Some people use that ambiguity to misinterpret or ignore those cues. Communicating consent doesn’t have to be verbal or explicit, but it still has to be communicated. An unresponsive person is not consenting. Someone who is pushing you away is not consenting.
Sex is special because of its intimacy. Many sexual acts involve one person literally putting part of their body inside another person’s body. You can’t get any closer to a person than that. And if you’re doing it without their consent, you’re violating the most fundamental boundaries a person has. Their body is how they perceive and interact with the world. It’s their connection to it. That’s why inflicting injury or death are evil, and the same applies to sexual assault and rape. It’s dissociating them from the thing that is most fundamentally theirs. Rape is effectively murdering a person while leaving their body alive.
>Sex is special because of its intimacy.
Not to the likes of me. Analysis of history drives me to assume the idea invariably makes much more harm than good if adopted as a policy. Sex is not, and should not be, nothing more than a important and pleasurable part of life and body function, but nothing more than that. Treating it as any more special than the non-sexual equivalent creates serious problems.
As it concerns my personal perspective, a mix of overall personality, lived experience, and lifelong introspection leads me to assume it is no such a big deal (albeit rather important for its pleasurable aspects) and violation of its boundaries another unpleasant experience that I can overcome with no lasting harm of mind and hopefully body. Certainly not ‘being murdered while I am alive’. Much more like experiencing a unpleasant or painful medical procedure.
My typical response to that kind of (near-)experience was, and it would be “I am alive, of intact body and mind, and this is what matters. This won’t break me”. If it were something I need to get along with, I would think “This is just sex”. If it were something I decide I need to fight off, I would think “This is just pain”.
My personal experience also confirms my notion that there is no meaningful difference between enemies trying to beat you within an inch of your life, trying to make your life hell in other ways without touching you, or trying to violate your body in sexualized ways.
>Making sure that nobody is coerced, doing things against their will. The difficultly arises because we do not have direct knowledge of another person’s internal state, and must guess from available cues. Some people use that ambiguity to misinterpret or ignore those cues. Communicating consent doesn’t have to be verbal or explicit, but it still has to be communicated. An unresponsive person is not consenting. Someone who is pushing you away is not consenting.
This is mostly sound, and something I live by and can agree with, with a few very important caveats. Precisely because we are mind readers, honest mistakes about interpreting one’s clues can happen, and should not demonized. The facts of courtship often require that one initiates certain acts in tat context, without being sure that they are welcome or at least acceptable, and this should not be demonized either.
Someone may be willing to get along with sexual stuff for their own reasons, even if they do not especially like the act itself or find it pleasurable, and that is valid consent too. Consensual transactional sex is legitimate. Being bad at sex or a date is not a violation, just an expression of the imperfection of life. Regretting a sexual act after it run its course is buyer’s remorse, and should be treated the same way.
If I knowlingly choose to get drunk or high, because it feels pleasant, I yield to peer pressure, it lowers my inhibitions or any other typical reason, and in that altered but conscious state I agree to sexual acts that my sober self would not like, giving all the appropriate clues of (hopefully but not necessarily enthusiastic) consent, the consequences of my choices and my regret are mine and mine alone to bear. It is not the responsibility of my partner to perform a thorough mind reading or extensive background check and tell the difference. This is doubly true if my partner is drunk or high too.
It is always better for everyone if sex is pleasurable and enthusiastic for anyone involved, and always striving to ensure it is a wise and laudable act. However, life is imperfect, and if the act fails to match this standard, too bad.
Consensual casual or transactional sex are important and legitimate parts of life, and need to be left free to happen. A romantic bond or feeling attraction for the partner or liking the act itself regardless of other possible reasons for genuine acceptance are not valid requirements for consent.
tl;dr
“I don’t give a fuck about anything or anyone outside myself. My dick is hard, that’s all that matters.”
Also, until you can actually define what “woke” is, I’m going to disregard anything else you have to say about anything else. I’m interested in real discussion, not the malding of disgruntled man-children upset that society expects them to treat other people with dignity & respect, instead as resources to be consumed.
Maybe because our values drives us to maximize autonomy and responsibility in individual choices, and see the great evils in infantilizing people and make society choose for them.
E.g. if you knowingly choose to get drunk of high together with a stranger or acquaintance, maybe because it feels fun or pleasurable or it lowers your your inhibitions, circumstances drive you to accept engaging in (hopefully but not necessarily enthusiastic and pleasurable) casual sex, and your sober mind regrets the act or your choice of partner the morning after, the consequences of your regret are yours and yours alone to bear. Demonizing or criminalizing the event is an acceptable option.
At most, if the burden somehow becomes too much to bear, you are welcome to seek professional help paid by the health service. I am not the kind of dogmatic libertarian that fails to appreciate the vast practical benefits of a functional welfare state or protecting the environment. To me the ideal just means maximizing individual autonomy and choice in personal matters, not maximizing the undeniable evils of runaway capitalism. I.e. society is not entitled to screw me if I seek recreational substance use, download porn, or hire an escort to ease my loneliness and incel dating ineptitude, or simply I cannot be bothered to play the dating game atm.
I also seek not to be an hypocrite in my ideals: e.g. I steadfastly oppose the horror that is denial of reproductive freedom and forced birth, as much as I may opportunistically enjoy conservatives curbstomping wokes in other matters.
Demonizing or criminalizing the event is an ‘un’acceptable option. Damn the lack of an edit option.
Because the principle that libertarians actually hold as the highest is power, and want all these silly rules to get out of the way of their natural dominance.
No. Your sexuality is not a character failing, or something you can control.
Actually raping people is a character failing, not enjoying certain kings of fiction.
… I’ve never seen “rape” described as a “sexuality” before.
This is a new low.
You need to work on your reading comprehension. I specifically contrasted sexuality and rape.
Getting off to rape is a character failing.
It demonstrates a disregard for the basic humanity of another person, in service to one’s own gratification.
It is literally reducing a human being to the status of a sex-object.
It’s we’re not talking about consenting role play between adults.
We’re talking about literally getting off to nonconsensual sex.
No, it isn’t. What makes you horny has no relation to your ethics, or anything else that could be described as character failing. Knowing something is wrong will not prevent arousal, much less “it would be wrong in reality”. You are only responsible for what you actually do.
> We’re talking about literally getting off to nonconsensual sex.
In this case, we’re talking about lewd fiction. No actual humans and no actual non-consent involved. That’s in fact the same level as consenting role play.
Then please, expound on the nature of the specific “sexuality” that you’re referring to.
I was speaking in terms of sexuality in general.
Then I also contrasted sexuality, specifically “enjoying certain kinds of fiction” with rape.
When has Dave let shit like this go unpunished?
Dabbler’s still part of the team, isn’t she?
And we already know Syd and Gwen aren’t going to be getting significantly busted for this. At worst they’ll get yelled at.
Getting punched through a wall wasn’t punishment? Or getting punched in the shower?
Having those three girls do the obstacle course in their underwear wasn’t punishment?
Guest.
I’m writing you a prescription for 1000mg of chillthefuckoutnol.
I recommend taking it as a pill, but suppositories are available, if that’s what you need.
We can have a conversation about difficult topics in a comic without throwing Dave under the bus.
C’mon, li’l dude, you know me well enough by now to know that I have some hard and sharp lines about consent issues, and do you see me flying off the handle? No?
There’s a reason.
Now, I haven’t read every single comment, and I don’t plan to, but I think that what a fair few folk fail factoring fully is this: there is no “control” being applied here. Yes, we could talk about unwanted influences of a supernatural type, and certainly should, in other scenarios…case in point my thoughts on the choker, a few pages back at Max’s bar scene.
The thing that makes this different, is that it is very clear that Parfait isn’t doing this deliberately. She’s not in control, either, and is to that extent just as much a victim as everyone else. And that’s the critical difference. There is no motive, in this case. We could definitely argue for negligence, though that would be complicated by her being summoned, and therefore not exactly having planned for this potential event, but that’s a conversation for another time.
None of which it to minimize the fact that this little disaster – and that is exactly how HR is going to view it – is definitely violating all manner of regulations, but all of that is mitigated to a greater or lesser extent by the fact that it is not the result of any deliberate, knowing, intentional malfeasance. There will definitely be repercussions and various consequences, but in the end, this was not an act of “mind control,” even extending that to include emotional manipulation. It is the result of what is, essentially, a couple of jumped up teenage supers having their night-in go wildly sidewise, admittedly in the problematic vein of a B-list 80’s sci-fi/fantasy romp comedy movie.
And it _is_ problematic, Guest. I rerealize that a certain segment of the population has difficulty with this, but things like this, no matter how benign they may be, can still trigger PTSD in people who has survived sexual abuse/assault. You seem to suffer from a serious case of Audience Syndrome. As in, “I AM THE AUDIENCE AND ONLY MY REACTION COUNTS.”
You’re not the only one reading, and your opinion isn’t the only valid one. I suggest you work on developing your empathy.
And your anger management skills.
No control? o_O
Gwen taking the time to ensure her door is closed before going to that website isn’t being controlled?
Ari controlling her urges (crossing her legs) while sending a text message to someone not even in the building isn’t being controlled?
There is no control in relation to Parfait’s lust aura going wild.
You’re smarter than this.
So, Gwen wasn’t in control when she stopped to ensure her door was closed first?
Ari wasn’t in control when she texted Coco to come to her in her time of need?
Every time you type, just shows you are not as smart as you believe you are (by the way, never, personally, claimed to be smart)
Good, because I just revised my opinion down.
There is no control being applied to Parfait’s lust aura. Neither she, nor anyone else, is in control of it, which means nobody is engaging in deliberate coercion of others. Parfait is clearly as much subject toit, as source of it.
So this behavior is okay if it’s punished?
No, it is Dave showing, in the story, that this behaviour is not okay.
“when has DaveB ever let shit like this go unpunished?”
Shit like this? The last time it happened.
This is NOT a quick gag like Dabbler using Max’s shiny tits as a mirror, and you know it.
This is like, as I’ve said multiple times, Dabbler and the super barber after the big brawl. We learned she erases the memories of her partners, the comments pointed out that’s kinda rapey and rather than dealing with the implications Dave made a comic about how it’s somehow rapey against HER.
She doesn’t erase their memories of the sex, she erases their memories of how it felt: they still know they had sex with her, they just don’t remember how great it was and know they will never experience the same feeling(s) with anyone else but her
To bad Sydney is preoccupied her force field should still negate this aura.
but then that leaves her with limited air or no hands and a very horny teenage succubus. Wait, is that a porn title or a punk rock band? maybe porn staring punk rockers?
She discovered the green orb can make air recently in the pool remember
shield orb in one hand, air orb in the other. horny teenage succubus inside shield with her= Sydney has no hands
shield orb in one hand other hand to fend off/undress/slap/grope succubus = Sydney has limited air in a shield bubble with said succubus.
There was a band like that (i.e. porn starring punk rockers), once upon a time.
They could not get a gig anymore once they got sufficiently (in)famous, because of pearl clutching city councils would prohibit them performing (or outright shut down venues to prevent it). “Think of the children” and all that hysterical rot.
Is Gwen reading Grrl Power?
Yes! I caught that as well. There is also a favorite for webtoons. Neat Little easter eggs.
Of course she is, ARC Light has to stay ahead of the game somehow
Don’t most insects see in the UV spectrum?
I feel like being able to toggle UV vision would be worse than having it on constantly because at least if it’s always on you’d get used to it (like people who can see part of the infrared spectrum and don’t realise it).
Toggling means that when it’s off, you know that something could be there and would constantly be trying to balance curiosity vs ignorance is bliss.
This is gonna be an HR nightmare lol
Well, there is going to be some embarassing debriefings, Syd and Parf are getting reprimanded, and Achon HQ needs to step up its protections against mind control and runaway tantric/vehemic auras. Max is going to be mad and probably deal everybody involved under her authority some hellish physical training. Syd is going to have her summoning privileges and Parf her on-site visitation rights restricted until they show better control.
Apart from this, I do not see too much HR grief happen, since standards of fraternization and tolerated sexual behavior are necessarily already rather relaxed at Archon HQ. The horny and oddball supers that make up this team would not tolerate any stricter discipline. As others noted, pretty much nobody we know of is getting involved with anybody they were not interested in. We might easily see a few dating or FWB relationships arising from this event.
Seems the aura is not just making people get busy with just whoever is available in proximity. People previously interested in each other are having the inhibitions which were holding them back from acting on it, removed.
Yep. We might easily see Math and Jabberwoky form another in-team couple like Mr. Amorphous and Heatwave, or at least become FWB, since they seem highly compatible. Syd may easily realize she is bi after all, and upgrade her bond with Parf to FWB as part of her exploration of polyamory; Frix surely won’t mind. Insufficient data to tell whether Peggy, Seneca and Ren are going to treat this as a trigger for a relationship, a FWB bond, or just a one-night stand, although Peggy might lean to the latter. Harem is just being Harem, and Arianna is just going to share a good memory with her bf.
Ahahahaaaa I love this.
What a concept
Had me giggling
Dabbler is going to be pissed that she missed this… Or she is in Archon HQ and is just enjoying the show
She is protective of her little sister and would want to protect her from getting humiliated by her embarassing loss of control. If she were in HQ, she would surely bask in and enjoy the tantric spike a lot (this event is the equivalent for succubae of a super-battle for V) but also come to the rescue of Parf.
Nah, if Dabbles was onsite, she would know something went very very wrong and apply that inhibitor tranq Parf mentioned
This seems like the likely response. The minute Parfait spiked, Dabbler would be in and shutting it down.
Sure, we are saying the same thing with different words. I was just remarking that the event is going to give a massive power boost to any succubus in place. If she were at HQ, Dabbler would surely come to the rescue of her beloved little (half-)sister and contain the event by administering her whatever appropriate treatment for a runaway lust-aura incident, quite possibly the very stuff Parf mentioned.
She is probably elsewhere ATM and we dunno if she is in a position to notice the tantric spike (and hence act to cut it short) or the event shall run its normal course, likely to the orgasmic exhaustion of anyone involved. Otherwise, it likely takes someone with the appropriate supernatural expertise to notice and understand what is happening. However, preciseily because the effects resemble normal horniness, Gwen did not and got busy pleasuring herself with one of her preferred kinks.
The funny bit would be if this was all happening BEFORE Parfait’s lust aura kicked in.
To clutch pearls, you gotta be invested in the characters. I lost that long ago, with the constant focus whiplash.
Then… why are you still here?
Concern trolling, I think.
Habit mostly. Its on my list of 200 webcomics I roll through every week.
Sidney said this will happen :)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-467-pitched-out-meeting/
I love how our resident pervert is the only one seemingly unaffected.
“That’s my secret. I am always horny”.
Also, after the mentioned “wardrobe malfunction” he get ordered to go and oogle naked breasts on the internet, until they stop causing any reaction from him. I think he take that order VERY seriously (even if the result wasn’t 100% succesful).
No, it wasn’t to ‘stop any reaction from him’, it was to ‘prevent him from getting distracted in battle’, and this page shows that it was effective: he wasn’t distracted by the bewbies… it was what happened after that worked (as a distraction)
UV vision could also be emitting UV rays from your eyes, so you would be a walking tanning booth. At high enough levels though you would essentially have laser beams shoot from your eyes, invisible laser beams.
Also her lust aura turns a military organization into a Friday night frat house.
I get why people don’t like this but if you think this is bad you should read how Dangerously Chloe ended because, ho boy, it’s 200% worse than anything here.
…I don’t remember Arianna having that ring before. I’m curious as to whether that’s a recent in-universe development, Dave neglecting to draw it before, or my memory just failing me.
Also, Harem’s tattoos are “on the nose” enough that I’m half expecting to learn that she got Gwen to enchant them into…let’s call it “mood-ink”
Nah, each Daphne has different ’embellishments’… except for Berry (who has none, she may not be the original, because even she can’t remember, but she is, currently, the only ‘pure’ one, apart from maybe a few ‘normal’ piercings)
I’m aware. I’m saying that the ink on this Daphne’s shoulder is pretty much one long string of …”O” faces, at least to the extent that I can make it out, and that almost feels too thematically appropriate to this lust-aura-induced scene to be coincidental.
Hence my half-joking suggestion that the tattoos may have been enchanted to shift with Daphne’s mood. Ie, under the influence of Parfait’s aura, the tattoos take very horny forms, but under the influence of Vehemence’s aura they’d be more “Hulk smash!”
That would be hilarious, but, her ahegao tattoos were mentioned quite a while ago in the comic. In one of the commentaries, Dave linked to the full tattoo image.
honestly yea she had no reason heck alot of her attacks really would end her up in jail in the real world. you seem to not be factoring in that she is both physically the weakest and they are all supers its not like she really has really hurt anyone on the team heck max even called out dabbler on “sandbagging” afterwords
So, because Sydney is the physically weakest, it’s okay to hit people with chairs (like she tried to do to Dabbles the first time they met)
And we have no idea about Dabbles anatomy, that place she was hit could have been the equivalent of a fatal hit (like stabbing someone in the chest on the right, and that person is one of the few whose heart is on the right rather than the left)
Also understand: Maxi hasn’t really been hurt since she became gold until her fight with Kev (even that explosion at the warehouse was more of an embarrassing inconvenience, due to her clothes being destroyed, which she didn’t even notice until Hiro’s reaction)
I am mildly amused at Arianna’s … situation.
I have zero interest in Math.
UV spectrum is from about 10 nm to 400 nm, spans 390 nm of frequencies. Visible light is from 400 to 700 nm, about 300 nm span of frequencies. That’s only about 1.3 times as wide a range. I suspect you were confusing trivia about IR and UV. IR goes from 700 nm to depending on which bands you include 1 mm. For a lot of the band that’s used for night vision or thermal imaging, the spectrum range is on the order of 5 to 20 times as wide as visible light, but if you take the widest definition of IR it’s more on the order of hundreds of times.
Assuming the superpower is just being a tetrachromat or pentachromat with some UV sensitive opsins, UV filters would be the equivalent of color filters in vis light. Look through a filter that only blocks yellow, and stuff will look weird, but you still see all the other colors. So UV filters would just give the superchromatic person normal human vision. It would look very strange to them, but they’d manage just fine.
If you had a really high count polychromat, say 12 to 15 opsin types covering from short UV to thermal IR, you’d have one heck of a satellite imagery analyst, crime scene investigator, and scout/spotter. Hiding stuff from them would be near impossible. Camo paint and clothes would be about as concealing as high-vis yellow green.
Oh hi, you’re talking about me!
Came here to say “Hi, I see well into the UV spectrum.” It’s absolutely useless as a superpower and glass is fine. Technically it’s tinted a little but that’s always true, just depends upon how the glass is made, and the typical visual cortex corrects for it anyway. (BTW, most ordinary glass blocks about half of UV? By no means all of it.) But I do have special (expensive :/ ) sunglasses that are _extra_ good at the UV range; I wear them when out biking or driving. To most people, they’re clear. To me, they have a clear but very limited tint, looking kinda yellow-orange.
The biggest impacts on my life were 1) in art school which is when I had endless, and I do mean _endless_, arguments about colour, and 2) most of my life, when I was all “what is the point of ‘black’light? It’s not black.” (A blacklight looks like an INTENSELY BRIGHT violet light to me.)
I only figured “blacklight effects” out once when I accidentally wore my sunglasses _indoors_ at PAX Prime in Seattle and got to see blacklight displays the same way you lot do for the first time. I get it now! It’s actually kinda neat!
Also in the right circumstances (which is a lot of the time) water is some degree of violet, not clear. (Occasionally with the right kind of cloudiness and sun placement behind those clouds, very violet.)
I guess I am also a little more aware of visual textures that nobody else seems to notice. But that’s always been true so that’s just how the world is. I am _exceptional_ at colour differentiation, which is sometimes a detriment, and my colours don’t always line up with yours, which is definitely a detriment. If my vision were _sharper_, that whole “you cannot camouflage” thing would probably be real, but while my vision is Basically Fine, it’s on the soft end of fine and I’m nearsighted as hell. xD
So, yeah. World’s most useless superpower.
But it’s kinda cool to have one anyway. :D
Oh dang, I forgot why the sunglasses!
You guys engineer for sun glare off cars (and other things but mostly cars) pretty well… in _your_ visual range.
You don’t engineer for it _at all_ in _mine_. Which means that driving is just an ever-shifting constellation of “fine, fine, fine, SPOTLIGHT IN MY FACE” if I don’t have my glasses. Because you don’t filter for UV glare. Apparently.
Ordinary sunglasses tend to do the job acceptably as well, but my specialty lenses do it better, so I have them.
Very educational! Thank you! Neat to hear how things work for you.
Oh dang, I forgot why the sunglasses!
You guys engineer for sun glare off cars (and other things but mostly cars) pretty well… in _your_ visual range.
You don’t engineer for it _at all_ in _mine_. Which means that driving is just an ever-shifting constellation of “fine, fine, fine, SPOTLIGHT IN MY FACE” if I don’t have my glasses. Because you don’t filter for UV glare. Apparently.
Ordinary sunglasses tend to do the job acceptably as well, but my specialty lenses do it better, so I have them.
Ah, so they need to have The Conversation, then.
(I.e. the forty-hour road show/lecture/study program that talks about human sexuality and proper responses for just about any kind of relationship and power exchange. And what to do to people that ABUSE power relationship exchanges.)
…look, the Dawn Empire had dealt with a lot of people using emotional-attack weapons to deal with their military caste. The two options were to go the whole Jedi “don’t feel, think” route or the “know what you’re feeling so you know if it’s a genuine feeling or somebody trying to make your day with a tasp” route.
They definitely went for “know your feelings and know when they are appropriate and inappropriate.”
This would be a good time for Sydney’s ‘Orb of Unspecified Powers’ to do something.
Omega 13?
Math owes a big one to Parfait for making one of his wishes true…
Can remember reading, a long many years ago, a Death story (DC’s Death, sister of The Endless’s Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman), in it, some arsefucker gained some power (well, stole is probably closer) and held some people hostage simply because he thought it was fun to, and he made them do some truly despicable things before killing them. At one point, ‘The Addams Family” was playing on a TV in the background, and, because of this story, refused to watch the new movie because didn’t wanted to remember the story
Another story was a Savage Dragon crossover with Mars Attack. In the story, the Martians had captured some people, and were raping them to produce hybrids (or maybe just because the women were helpless). And, again, because of that story still have never seen the full Mars Attacks movie
So, yeah, completely understand how some could find what is happening traumatic and most fucking certainly am not dismissing peoples opinions on that or their feelings
If Dabbler came back and saw this,she’ll be more like…Ren Hoek!?!
Go here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCa7tKiCMN4
More like Hercules when he finds himself in not his own world (or Dabbles finding out they didn’t invite her)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbDHqtkwmk4
How about…
Dabbler: You! Both of you! Oh, what I’m gonna do to you. I’m so angry! First, I’m gonna tear your lips out. Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do. And then I’m gonna gouge your eyes out. Yeah, that’s what I’m gonna do.
Parfait: We don’t like this, Xuriel.
Sydney: Yeah, you’s scary us.
Dabbler: Yeah, you’re scared, huh? Next, I’m gonna tear your arms out of the sockets. And you wanna know what else? I’m gonna hit ya, and you’re gonna fall, and I’m gonna look down, and I’m gonna laugh. But first, FIRST! I gotta take a whiz, don’t you go anywhere, you stay right here, right on this spot, I’ll be back.
Already looked at the clip you posted
Dabbles wouldn’t be angry, she would be upset… because after all that time she spent ‘priming’ everyone in the building, the time they finally have an orgy she coulda gotten fat off of, she wasn’t there!!!
She missed all of it
Maybe you’re right, nobody would spend an orgy playing Don’t Whiz on the Electric Fence…..
I have a few similar memory entanglements. My wife was reading a series to me back when i played the first Matrix game years ago. I recently re-read the series and when i get to the parts of the book i was playing the game during i get flashbacks of the game and sitting playing. A similar issue with the show DEXTER ,, We use to watch it as a group and we would get a big sushi tray to eat as we watched it. Now i cant even think about Dexter with out getting a craving for sushi. Its funny the pavlovian entanglements our mind will create.
“blah blah blah consent blah blah sexual assault blah”
My dick is hard. That is all that matters.
but has it been more than 4 hours?
Real scumbag thing to do to pose as someone else and put words in their mouth because you’re butthurt over them not getting offended by this comic.
My mother was a hamster and my father smelled of elderberries.
Is this going to be this universe’s version of “the fappening?”
Honestly, this “Lust Aura” is really no worse than being pleasantly drunk…
…remind me, what’s the legal status regarding drunk people and consent???
GADGET TOO THE RESCUE! She seems asexual, so she may be immune.
…..someone notify her? At least one Harem should be out of range, and there DEFINITIVELY should be a lust aura alarm sensor at the base.
That was logic talking, now let’s have ego speak:
“KEEP IT UP IF IT’S THE USUAL CONSENSUAL PARTNERS!”
… or wonderful new ones. I am enthused for Math and Jab getting a relationship upgrade with a little succubus help. Theirs is a match made in a dojo.
I think the arguments for how what is happening to the people on this page is ok are weak but w/e.
What really worries me is Sydney’s situation. I’m worried the next comic is going to be the afterglow of Syd and Parfait having slept together because nah that would have been 100% rape and it’ll take some serious mental gymnastics (the explanation after the last succubi controversy) or an asspull (she was bi all along and wanted it despite all evidence to the contrary!) to explain it away.
This. ^
Even “Guesticles” in all his minimizing thirst has trouble arguing the Sydney part is just harmless sexy fun. Not saying I’ll leave but if this results in Sydney & Parfait in bed and it isn’t treated with GRAVE seriousness my interest in Grrl Power is certainly going to wane.
Well, of course my preferred solution to the issue is Syd realizing she was bi after all, enjoyed the experience, and liked Parf that way after all, even if it all started under the premises of a magical accident. I would not see it as an asspull at all, since I perceive possible clues to this effect in the past and the buildup to this incident, and I find the evidence to the contrary questionable and possibly flawed.
Even if I turn out to be regrettably wrong, I expect this incident to be treated with at most no more gravity and seriousness than the other events where Syd faced death and quickly recovered without any long-term psych harm. These included being stranded to die of starvation (or a murderous kaiju) on a dead alien world, and being killed by a murderous blood mage in an erased timeline. In all likelihood, Syd is not one to deem accidental sexual violation worse than death, so any reaction of hers needs to be scaled accordingly.
Moreover, in this incident Parf was overwhelmed by the runaway lust aura as much as Syd, and there was no malicious intent, so any reaction by either of them or third parties needs to take that into account.
“Well, she didn’t MEAN to seize control of my mind and rape me! No harm, no foul amirite? Who wants hot sauce!? Derp!”
feellikeimtakingcrazypillsmeme.jpg
You people must have worn out certain letters in the keyboard, given how fond you are of using the word rape. How tiresome. I know it looks unthinkable and unconceivable to the likes of you, but there are people in fiction and RL who would more or less react with little more than a shrug, including yours truly. I’ll make you a list of possible reactions I’d deem appropriate and likely use, if I were put in similar circumstances:
“I am alive, with an intact body, and the mental manipulation wore off. This is what matters”.
“Who cares, it was just sex, and a very pleasurable experience”.
“She was a dear friend, and she did not mean it. It was an accident”.
“I have faced worse things, and I overcame them. This is no big deal”.
“The body is not so important. The mind is what matters. I need to improve my mental defenses. This happening at the hands of an enemy would be dangerous”.
“Well, it certainly was a very interesting experience. Live and learn”.
“Can we make it again?”.
I swear on a pile of sacred scriptures that one or more of these reactions would be my own, if I were put in Sydney’s shoes. Pick your choice of whether it would mean I am transplanted in her body, or the whole scenario gets translated in m/m terms. As far I can tell, the only meaningful difference would be that in the former case my answer would be closer to the positive end of the spectrum (if I were to get a flawless gender shift, I’d be almost surely bi) and in the latter case closer to the resilient end of the spectrum (m/m is really, really not my thing).
I can also tell that in my lived experience I came close to experiencing this kind of stuff in far more potentially traumatic circumstances than a creature optimized for sex seducing me, and my response basically was “I am alive, of sound body and mind. This is what matters. I’ll keep fighting or fleeing, or at least surviving, my bullies until this nightmare ends. They won’t break me”. And they didn’t.
Sounds to me like they broke something.
Regardless, different people have different experiences. Yours doesn’t invalidate anyone else’s, just like theirs doesn’t invalidate yours. Your arguments largely seem to take the form “This wouldn’t affect me, therefore it shouldn’t/wouldn’t affect anyone else.”
We’ll see how Sydney reacts to this. But her reaction will not necessarily be any more right or wrong than anyone else’s. It will simply be hers.
> Sounds to me like they broke something.
Very skeptical of that, looking at my whole life trajectory. At most, they didn’t broke what was never there to begin with, brought to the fore what was already there.
> Regardless, different people have different experiences. Yours doesn’t invalidate anyone else’s, just like theirs doesn’t invalidate yours. Your arguments largely seem to take the form “This wouldn’t affect me, therefore it shouldn’t/wouldn’t affect anyone else.”
My main argument is that, when someone says that event or condition X would traumatize everyone, I may not so rarely I am in the position to say that it false, since certain people would withstand it w/o excessive trouble, and I know it for sure, since I am one of them. This makes me best suited to relate and express the viewpoint of real and fictional people that have that PoV. Admittedly, I am a self-centered individualist, hence prone to express my viewpoint in emphatic terms and not so good to empahtize with the opposite one. Comes with the personality.
>We’ll see how Sydney reacts to this. But her reaction will not necessarily be any more right or wrong than anyone else’s. It will simply be hers.
We shall see indeed. I can just say that Sydney’s indomitable and adaptable traits are among the aspects of hers that I find most admirable and relatable. This is one of the reason why I root for her reacting the same way to this incident. Admittably, the calls and expectations for Syd to react to this event like a traumatized victim sound unwelcome and annoying to my ears.
Fairly sure haven’t mentioned anything about Sydney on this page, because this page doesn’t feature Sydney at all
This is probably an oversimplification on my view of things.
Imagine someone had an ability to make others itchy. Possibly very very itchy. Now imagine that the person does not always have control of this ability.
Is this considered mind control, as it creates a physical desire to scratch/be scratched despite possible socially embarassing circumstances? It’s certainly influence, as without some degree of itching, there is little if any desire to scratch oneself. Similarly, some people will take actions to diminish the social embarassment associated with the action or procure aid with the action of scratching the item such as tools or mutual assistance.
As said, this is probably an oversimplification as itchiness is almost purely a physical stimulus, where as this situation has a more physical/mental/emotional blend and thus a bit more complicated. Im mostly just trying to consider a baseline to extrapolate from as this is definitely an intensely debated topic here.
“oh, hey, i was wrong. That totally worked” Got me XD
The EXTREMELY questionable nature of what’s going on, and consent issues, aside I have another complaint.
They’re all super hopped up on lust juju and THIS is how saucy the art is? I’m not expecting a page of free vote incentives but this is really tame.
Ah.
So Parfait is using the Bill Clinton* aura. Sure, you could argue that, in both cases, the people affected by the aura/power were not impaired in their ability to walk away or cope with their predicament in their own way but….
*I would have said Harvey Weinstein but there is evidence of physical force being used in some of his encounters.
Man this comment section is just gross. I am not a fan of the direction this comic is headed right now, but I’m cautiously optimistic it’s going to be more than an overly drawn out joke.
On the flipside, people are so fucking eager to be gnarly. Some folks are making an arguably meaningless “I don’t wanna be on this ride,” and people are taking a deep, personal offense to that that is really out of whack imo, and which is hellbent on dismissing any of their concerns seemingly entirely out of hand.
The comic is… okay. But lord, the commenters here need a bucket of water for all kinds of reasons.
UV vision would be a super usefull power as a bank teller or cop but ONLY those 2 cases and only if it could be Toggled off
Uh, yeah, okay
This seems extreme. Both in topic and IC for succubus to just do accidentally.
I just noticed that in the web browser there is a favicon for the grrlpower website
if that is the case then Gwen has the most powerful power there is… 4th wall breaking