Seriously, I have got some awesome stuff in the pipeline. Look for the following in the very near future:
–Two books from Raw Dog Screaming Press, both very interesting reads;
–A new Bizarro Week in July, with the book giveaways that always accompany one of my themed weeks (it has been over a year since I had a themed week – why you people continue to read here is beyond me and I thank you for sticking around);
–Two comics from Glenn Danzig’s imprint, one he wrote himself, both very adult and very gory. There is much blood and boobs, which I sense is pretty much what one would expect from Glenn Fucking Danzig. Did you guys know he had branched out into comics, like, at least a decade ago? Even Mr. Oddbooks knew. It’s like the whole world knows stuff I don’t and I really wish the bunch of you would share;
–And finally, the discussion I sense many of you are waiting for. I sense this because I keep getting e-mails about it. I will finally be discussing Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! collection, which includes issues 1-3. Also, I will be discussing issue 4, the infamous “Rape” edition, which Goad was kind enough to send me to me. Actually, the bulk of the discussion will be about the rape ‘zine and, believe me, if I manage to pull this off without bringing the entire extreme left-wing, feminist blogosphere down on me, I will kiss the ground and praise Dog. I seriously have a bad feeling in my gut about the potential reaction to this one, but the stuff that worries me the most are generally the articles people like the best, so fuck my nausea.
So that’s what’s pending. If anything as awesome as a Glenn Danzig comic book imprint has come across your radar, please share in comments. It can also be less awesome as long as it’s horrible, strange or odd. Or interesting. Or anything really. I’m easy like that.
I’ve been aware of the Bizarro genre for about 4 years but for some reason I never got around to reading any of it until very recently. Right now I only have one of the “Bizarro Starter Kit” books and I’ve been wanting to pick up more.
I read somewhere on Goad’s website that he’s going to publish issues 1-4 of ANSWER Me! in one book sometime this year. So there’s something to look forward to.
As for the backlash from discussing the rape issue, do you really think it could get that bad? I figure you’ve already alienated most of the feminist and social justice blogosphere given some the authors and books you’ve discussed in the past. Goad’s other books included.
Be sure to check out the bizarro week then because maybe you could win five books or so. The first I have finished from the series I plan to discuss was an amazing short story collection.
Regarding the Rape Issue: It may not spill over into the comments. Just know that my e-mail at times would frighten a lesser woman and I still have very unsettling people hollering at me about 2083. One really creepy guy is still linking to me in other people’s blog comments and urging people to come and put me in my place because feminists suck or something. 2083 has made a bit gun shy (well, sort of, but I do note that my conspiracy theory discussions have waned and I need to get over myself).
One of my fears also stems from the fact Peter Sotos is involved in the Rape Issue and again, the e-mails I get about him (and Ian Brady) fuck me up sometimes. I have two men who commented and became so paranoid that they asked me to remove their comments and one still messages me worrying about his sexual needs for little girls. So while it is not the liberal feminists who may hate me, Sotos always brings upsetting baggage.
You discuss outre and upsetting literature. Do you get terminal cases e-mailing you about the things they want to insert in their anuses?
Oh, and I meant to comment on your Matthew Stokoe entry. In fact I’m gonna do it now and hopefully before the weekend is over I will have a link up to your site on my side bar because I like your perspective.
I only started my blog a few months ago and I haven’t drawn any crazies yet. Though the short story on my blog that seems to get the most hits is the JG Ballard pastiche about Rick Santorum. Seeing the Google searches that lead to it is pretty amusing.
Your entry on Sotos is actually how I found this blog. I’ve actually read the story he wrote for the Rape Issue and yeah, I can see how some profoundly disturbed individuals would be attracted to discussions of his work. I have his book “Index” on my shelf and I’m hoping to discuss it on my blog once I’ve read it. I’m not entirely sure if I’ll be able to though. The pieces here and there I’ve read of his work almost always left me at a loss for words.
Thanks for the link by the way.
I look forward to your ANSWER Me! review. I really enjoy this blog, even though we disagree on some things (I hate Goad and think pretty much everything he writes is ass backwards intellectually). Your Sotos review is definitely one of your best.
I want to ask though – are you at least familiar with the actual ideas of Andrea Dworkin, like the things she wrote in her books etc.? Like the fact that she never, ever said “all sex is rape” or “all men are rapists” etc.? I highly recommend becoming familiar with her actual ideas, because I think after doing so you might realize how actually fucked up and sexist the screeds that Goad and Boyd Rice (probably my least favorite person on the planet?) wrote about her are.
Like the fact that Rice says that his article in the Rape Issue is “a joke, but based in truth” is insane and basically proves that the dude is a massive misogynist who wants to hide under ‘I’m kidding, but not really, but really i am, but not really’ so he can have it both ways – claiming that any random sentence in that article is “based in truth” and not a completely insincere troll basically automatically qualifies you for being a misogynist (although even as a “troll” writing something like that qualifies you as a douchebag anyway imo). Same with the social darwinist stuff he’s always spouting – sure he’s not a literal Nazi, but being a sincere social darwinist (which he is, it’s pretty much the one thing he doesn’t even try to pretend he’s trolling about) is just as bad, if not worse since a lot of actually rich and powerful people believe in that bullshit, too, since it’s essentially just the tenets of capitalist society pushed to an absurd extreme.
I’m sorry this got so long and I don’t want to sound like an condescending asshole telling you to “read Dworkin” – i’m just wondering if you actually have and how that’s informed your view of the magazine. Resorting to easy strawmen and stereotypes of ‘liberal feminists’ is pretty much exactly why i hate faux-counterculture right-wing extremists like Goad and Rice – which is what they really are, if you look at what genuine beliefs they let slip through all the “un-PC trolling” or whatever (I mean look at this: http://twitter.com/jimgoad/statuses/192602734896218113 – I read an interview where he said the exact same thing and added that this is why no black people or women have written great novels – this is a pretty obvious racist rightwing talking point) and I think you’re a better writer than that.
Christ I’m really sorry I already wrote this big rant in your comment box and you haven’t even posted the review yet . . . ugh. I guess these dudes are kind of a pet peeve of mine because the music/cultural scene I’m into (noise/industrial) is so saturated with badly covered up racism, fascism, and ignorance fed by their bad ideas it frustrates me to see those ideas get repeated. I just want to reiterate that I really really really like your blog though, you’re wonderful!!
Don’t apologize – this is an excellent comment coming from a place of authentic and informed reaction. And never apologize to me for leaving a big rant – given my verbosity this is a pretty brief rant. 🙂
I have not read Dworkin or MacKinnon in years and I tend to discuss them together when I do speak of them because the myths about them both are wrongly attributed to the other to the point that in respects to myths they are almost one sort of feminist strawman two-headed monster.
I have said before that we see so much negative male reaction to civil rights movements is because for a subset of people who have never been challenged before, simply being told they can no longer demean others with impunity is a huge mental blow. And that’s often the case. But so many people refuse to look at intersectionality as it applies to white men, and the common social justice warrior refusal to look at intent makes writings from men like Goad especially difficult.
But when I discuss the Rape Issue, I intend to look at the time when it was written and the reason for the reaction. You and I can now look online and see, point blank, the myths around Dworkin and MacKinnon revealed for what they are – a misrepresentation of their words, mainly by pro-pornography forces, to demonize both women. But even though neither said all heterosexual sex is rape, both, MacKinnon in particular, did make statements that, to men who had no idea what rape culture is and how it is they are affected by it even as they themselves are not rapists, were incendiary and difficult for decent men to swallow and understand.
MacKinnon and Dworkin never said all heterosexual sex is rape. But MacKinnon did say that all sex involving a penis is violent, that the heterosexual sex act is a de facto act of violence against women. Dworkin, in her book Intercourse discussed sex as an occupation, a military and siege image that evokes nothing but the idea that when men have sex with women, culturally and personally it is an attempt to control, harm and demean women. I believe she said all sex is a violation, which isn’t that far away from saying all sex is rape. It’s been too long since I read that book to recall if there was much in the way of nuance, but my tendencies to have sympathy for the “devil” makes me wonder what it would be like to be an average Joe, reading something like that (presuming the men who responded did read the sources they responded to, an unlikely premise but never mind that for the moment). All the sex they had was occupation? Their penises were weapons of violence?
In the 80s and early 90s, the heyday of Dworkin and MacKinnon, rape culture was a completely new idea. We still cannot get men to understand that rape culture is a valid reality for most women, and the reason for this is a combination of male privilege and cognitive dissonance wherein they exist in this realm of sexist reactions and exposure, they know in their hearts they are not bad men, yet they are to be considered rapists because of centuries of conditioning that they did not consent to but was a part of their lives. The average man benefits from rape culture because it gives them all kinds of power in life but the average man at no point made a decision to be affected by the same forces that affect the rest of us in society. The forces that made women accept second class status are the same forces that made men unable to see the second hand status of others. We’re all in the same prison but some of us are prisoners and some of us are wardens, but if all we were taught was to live in the prison, the status of a warden isn’t much comfort on that day when it is revealed to you that you have, in fact, lived your life in that punitive environment. To read or hear that one’s sexual impulse is akin to violence and rape is shattering and creates intense cognitive dissonance and cognitive dissonance causes vicious reactions.
Should I care that these men experience this when they are made aware of rape culture? I’m not sure. I often become amused and filled with mockery when I read MRA sites and similar wherein men who have been made aware they are assholes react like even bigger assholes, or experience injustice for the first time and are so angry that the world may not be utterly fair. But when I read the Rape Issue, I try to bear in mind the newness of the idea of rape culture as they responded to it, the fact that running to ground rumors and myths was far harder then than it is now, and that the reaction of men to being told they are committing acts of violence each time they have sex was going to be an intense one.
My sympathy for the devil doesn’t excuse the devil. It just means I understand him.
Jim Goad… I like him. I like him for all the reasons you hate Boyd Rice because as Goad expresses ideas that are outrageous to the liberal body, he is never coy or cute about it. But I do concede he is often provocative for the sake of being provocative, as his Twitter sometimes demonstrates. If he feels blacks and women have never written a magnificent novel, it reeks of the sort of facile assertion all idiot racists make but Goad’s writings belie that he is an idiot. I find a raw honesty to his writing and draw a distinction between the Goad who tweets outrageous things and the man whose books I have read. I haven’t sought him out in media and haven’t read many of his interviews but even if he thinks things like that women and blacks cannot write excellent novels, it doesn’t invalidate the fact that he is an interesting cultural writer. I can reconcile the more problematic elements of his nature to the whole of the man and not get too upset with some of his more bombastic statements and beliefs.
I also cop to the fact that this may be because I just like him. I think we all cut some slack to people we instinctively like and I instinctively like Jim Goad.
Boyd Rice, on the other hand… I agree with every word you say about him. I really detest how he cloaks his words in a coy doublespeak so he cannot be nailed for his beliefs. Goad strikes me as a man who is doing his best to navigate a modern world that baffles and enrages him and he is pretty specific in his condemnations. Rice is a moral coward who demands we take note of the raincoat he is wearing even as he opens it and flashes his dick repeatedly.
So yeah, I have little use for Boyd Rice. UNPOP often appears to be a Hitler-worshiping joke (if there is a point to all the strange Nazi love, the collective isn’t conveying it well). His Social Darwinism is almost hilarious – the strong rule the weak, the clever rule the strong, and clearly Rice thinks he is clever as he engages in mindless provocation and insists that because he has worked with Jews it means he is not a Nazi. I have no use for such coyness. And I have even less use for a life work that is more pageantry and love of provocative symbols than any expression of earnest belief.
Thanks for reading my site and I really look forward to reading your reactions when I have the Rape edition discussion online.
Edited because closing italics tags just makes sense!
Anita, you write that “so much negative male reaction to civil rights movements is because for a subset of people who have never been challenged before, simply being told they can no longer demean others with impunity is a huge mental blow.” Can’t these MEN just oppose something because they have a basic philosophical disagreement with liberal ideology (like “civil rights”)? The problem with your assertion is that you assume that there can be no legitimate objections to a liberal political policy (like “civil rights” statutes). Maybe these MEN see what you call “civil rights” not about a process of “demeaning others ” – but merely as a fraudulent legislation that transfers wealth from one social group to elitists like Jesse Jackson & Hilary Clinton.
Can’t these MEN just oppose something because they have a basic philosophical disagreement with liberal ideology (like “civil rights”)?
Sure they can. But if this is the way they are examining civil rights, it’s certainly not taking the form of opposition to liberal ideology, because if that is what they are doing, expressing a distaste for liberal culture, what they are actually saying is that they are, by dint of being born white men, morally entitled to demean, control and abuse women and non-whites. When told they don’t have that moral entitlement, they whine and cry and create entire websites explaining what cunts women are for wanting to be able to vote and not be raped and for not wanting to fuck them specifically. It’s not about political ideology. It’s about personal entitlement.
You can try to distill that twisted entitlement into a rage against the liberal machine if you want. You may be doing so if you really consider civil rights to be synonymous with liberal ideology and not simply a function of a democratic republic.
The problem with your assertion is that you assume that there can be no legitimate objections to a liberal political policy (like “civil rights” statutes).
And this is because there is no legitimate objection in denying civil rights. Period. In order for me to swallow that I need to give credence to objections to the legislation that allows me to have the same rights as you I would have to be a complete fucking masochist. I’m not. And I look askance at any person who can logically deny civil rights to legal citizens of this country on the basis of opposition to liberal political policy.
The problem with non-whites and women having civil rights is, for many white men, a zero sum game. They have a puerile belief that any advancement for the rights of others is taken directly out of their hides. A woman playing a multi-player game online is INVADING THEIR SPACE and must be harassed until she goes away. A woman with a job must be sexually harassed and worse until she goes home and cooks dinner forever. A woman who does not want to have sex with them is a prude bitch who needs a good fuck. Some white men have been in control for so long that to experience for one moment the reality of non-whites and women is intolerable to them.
Butthurt, in my reality, is not a valid political reaction.
But it is the political reality of the white men I was discussing. I refuse to discuss the sites in depth and risk giving any of them traffic, but if you visit a MRA site – any of them – you aren’t going to read bloodless and civilized refutation of the excesses of liberal culture – which there are many, and I will discuss them in the Rape Issue review. You aren’t going to encounter that mindset. You are going to read the most ridiculous strawmen and assumption that extremity is the rule because of that one time a woman falsely accused a man of rape. You will read rape apology (bitches can’t say no because it’s a violation of the natural order of men taking what they want), women should stay in the fucking kitchen (and make sandwiches, it seems) and advocacy of violence against any woman who disagrees. You will read accounts of men who had a bad relationship who now advocate beating women, sewing their mouths shut, insulting them in public, and even raping them to show them who is boss.
That isn’t disagreement with liberal political ideology. That’s fucking misogyny. If it is what you consider a refutation of liberal political ideology, we have very little to discuss on this topic because I will not argue that such a mindset is a valid political reaction to giving women civil rights and women wanting to keep them.
Maybe these MEN see what you call “civil rights” not about a process of “demeaning others ” – but merely as a fraudulent legislation that transfers wealth from one social group to elitists like Jesse Jackson & Hilary Clinton.
Dude, strawman much? Oh noes, black men and women in power, all the white mens are doomed! I take seriously the white male reaction to civil rights because change is hard and having privilege removed is painful but I can’t help but laugh at the notion that white men making apology for violence against women are really operating from a place wherein they are simply concerned about the transfer of power from one elite group to another.
And really, why the fuck would I care if these men fear the transfer of wealth from one group of elites to another? I believe I have said this before but I’ll risk being repetitive – we’ve done it the white male way for millennia. White men had their chance to shape the USA and they created political systems of repression for non-whites and women. Why should I care that men mourn the transfer of power from their elites to the elites who at least on paper say they support the issues that are important to me.
The tacit meaning to such a mindset is that there is something intrinsically wrong with women and black men having political power, that we need to keep the power in the hands of the white male elites because… Because why? Unless you are advocating bloody revolution wherein we kill all the elites and start over again from a place of utter egalitarianism, there will always be elites and politicians who control us.
But I have no use for people who wring their hands and consider transfer of power from one elite to another wrong because it is their elites who are giving away and someone else’s elites taking control.
And that assumes that Jesse Jackson and Hillary Clinton are really going to effect the sort of change that is so appalling that it makes white men fear the exchange (and it is debatable that there is an exchange at all – elites are elites and Hillary Clinton has far more in common with the Bush family than she has in common with me).
But at the end of it, you have to ask if it is really my job to take into account the mindsets of people who are appalled that I can vote, have a job, and, as of this writing, have control over what happens to my body. The fact of the matter is that I do take it into account – the problem arises when I refuse to give such mindsets priority over my own. And since I am a woman, the sorts of men who are the basis of this discussion think mine has no validity and I need to shut up. So really, I actually give such mindsets more credence than they are worth because of my innate sympathy for the devil.
Why are women somehow freer if they are now doing what the boss orders them to do in the workplace than if they were doing what a husband tells them to do in the kitchen? Maybe a woman is now able to prosecute a man for “date rape” in this age of equality – but are modern relationship any less shallow than they were a generation ago? Sure women have the vote, but do they have any better choice of candidates than a century ago? Seems to me that they are just exchanging one oppressor for another. That is the whole problem with “civil rights” – women are just changing one obvious tyrant for a far worse foe.
Replying here to prevent those skinny, heinous little reply columns.
Why are women somehow freer if they are now doing what the boss orders them to do in the workplace than if they were doing what a husband tells them to do in the kitchen?
Self-determination. Self-determination isn’t freedom, per se, but it certainly is freeing. Women have a right to determine if they want to stay at home, whether they want to work, and whether they want to follow orders at all. It’s not a fucking binary, EG. I am a stay at home wife, based on decision calculus between my husband and me as we determined how much I could earn versus the the value of what I could do at home. I didn’t make the dire, bleak decision to change one tyrant for another. I decided I preferred the work of home and that my household was the better for it.
But women who go out to work aren’t deciding to be bossed around by a different boss. We all have someone in this world who can tell us what to do, from a boss, to a police office, to a judge, to our parents. No one can escape the fact that in some regard we answer to someone and to assume that women are in some manner stupid to want to accept the authority structure of work because they can just be ordered around the house asks the question why men, who in your assumption do the ordering at home, would ever submit themselves to having to take orders from someone else. If you can take it, so can we – after all, we’ve had plenty of practice.
The reason men and women do this – accept authority in the workplace – is because work is not just the yoke of submission to a boss. Work permits women and men to engage in life work that is meaningful to them, to get insurance, to make money, to meet people, to make friends, and in some cases, one day become the boss themselves.
Women also are more likely to work for themselves in art/craft and service industries. Many women who work eschew the boss situation entirely if you don’t take the IRS into account.
But more importantly, as a woman who is, in fact, in the kitchen a whole hell of a lot, I don’t have anyone telling me what to do. When I worked, I often had jobs where I was largely left alone to work. I never had to choose between being ordered around at home or at work, so in the micro my anecdata looks at yours and snerts at it.
Maybe a woman is now able to prosecute a man for “date rape” in this age of equality – but are modern relationship any less shallow than they were a generation ago?
Why the hell are you equating rape prosecution with the relative depth of modern relationships? I don’t know if modern relationships are less shallow than they were a generation ago and I don’t know if it matters if both parties are able to leave a crappy relationship. Are you saying that being able to prosecute “date rape,” which is very hard to do actually, should have caused a depth in modern relationships? I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about here.
Sure women have the vote, but do they have any better choice of candidates than a century ago?
Does that matter? Bad choices are an indictment of the manner in which candidates are vetted. If we are to question the value of women’s right to vote because they lack decent candidates, then men too should look at the chance to participate in the political process solely in terms of candidate quality. Unless you propose denying Americans suffrage because the candidates suck, then this is a strange argument, especially since we can emphatically say that women did not create this political system wherein the choices stink. We never asked to dismantle the voting system in the USA – we just asked to be able to participate. No one ever said we would only vote if we had excellent candidates.
That is the whole problem with “civil rights” – women are just changing one obvious tyrant for a far worse foe.
No we aren’t. You haven’t even made a prima facie case for such an assertion. You’ve made a false conflation between bosses and husbands, as if men do not face the same forces of authority in their own lives. You’ve said something about prosecuting rape and how modern relationships are still shallow, as if the promise of perfect marriages was the sole intent of the feminist movement. You’ve insinuated that if women, precious little flowers we are, cannot get uber feminist Wonder Women as candidates we need to flounce our skirts and go home, as if we can only vote if there is a utopia available for us.
Your perspective of modern womanhood and the reasons why women make choices to stay home, to work, to vote, to marry and divorce are based on some pretty facile premises, as if women need a perfect world to make our participation valid. Nothing you’ve brought up seems such a burden that women should feel like making work decisions and voting is trading one jail for another. Being able to engage in self-determination while recognizing the basic drawbacks of modern life like authority structures, the possibility of divorce and crappy political choices is a human dilemma, not a female dilemma.
I read an interview between Michael Moynihan and Sotos from some time ago in which Sotos talked about Dworkin as being one of the biggest influences on his writing. It’s an extremely back-handed compliment, but It might be the one from Seconds Magazine. He said something like (and I’m paraphrasing, but I think I remember it pretty well), “I don’t believe the world is really the way Dworkin sees it, with women constantly tortured by having cocks thrust in their faces, but I’d like to. I really wish it was that way.” It was a fairly early interview and it was interesting because Sotos had a lot of swagger in it, though he ended up cutting a pretty tragic figure. Other interviews I’ve read with him have been more guarded and it was one of the few times when I’ve seen both Moynihan and Sotos really openly revelling in just being unpleasant scumbags, without much of the counter-cultural window dressing you usually get with that crew.
I agree about B. Rice and share the anonymous poster’s irritation at constantly running into Rice and his buddy Moynihan, first in Industrial culture, then in Black Metal. It’s troubling to me that the same small group of American far-righters turn up at almost every turn in my preferred area of the cultural landscape (alongside the ubiquitous Genesis P Orrige). If Rice has any redeeming feature as a cultural object I would say it’s this – that he demystifies the whole argument about “Is it Nazi? Is it not Nazi?” At first you’re playing this game with him about whether or not there’s more to it, some hidden depth. At a certain point you just say, well it makes no difference, because ultimately the outcome is the same regardless of what he might claim as his intentions. When these guys parody fascist writers, or go round in jackboots and throw closed fist salutes in front of flags that look like Swastikas, be it provocation or fascism veiled under a protective layer of false irony, we’d all be best just to regard it as a waste of everyone’s time.
I used to think Goad was another story, though I’m pretty much out of patience with him these days, since I think Takimag is a disgusting publication and a lot of what he writes for it is just straight up right wing provocation, the project of which is to see how slick he can be in presenting objectionable and unacceptable ideas in an apparently well-reasoned fashion. It seems like there’s a reactionary agenda first, and then the “common sense” element gets built on top of it. I am still looking forward to the discussion here though Anita, because it’s always interesting to read you writing about Goad and I like to read people eloquently disagreeing with me!
Hey Vince,
Just letting you know I read this comment and will probably answer it more in depth later but in the event I don’t (so sorry but we all know how I am), I wanted to throw a couple of things out there.
I have read several interviews where Sotos talks of Dworkin and I probably have not read the one you mention. Some I have read show that perhaps later Sotos was either more honest or less interested in cheap provocation because he says that no one understood De Sade the way Dworkin did, and that he admired her writing, not from a place of mock-mourning that America is not a place of continual sexual assault, but rather that he really reveled in her ideas. I can see that because despite her hatred for pornography, there is no better pornographer, especially of sexual violence, than Dworkin. For a man like Sotos, I bet Dworkin was a source of many thrilling ideas.
I think Sotos’ love of Dworkin is real and not affected in order to demonize her work because she’s so… so extreme in her approach.
I see Dworkin and Sotos as being different sides of the same coin, and maybe there isn’t even that much difference – perhaps Sotos is heads and Dworkin, rather than tails, is the side of the coin. Regardless, both have/had a salacious interest in sexual violence and victimization, their writing styles at times are remarkably similar and it’s extremely hard to tell when either one is telling the truth.
To be brutally honest, I don’t read Taki’s Magazine. I tend to avoid most political content like that from either side of the debate. I’m actually so liberal there is not a real political presence for me to follow in the USA, but even so, I have over 800 books in my to-read pile and when I am loopy from insomnia, I prefer the extremity of conspiracy theory. So even if I were inclined to read such content when clear minded, I have too much to read to spend much time on political sites. So I don’t know as much about Goad’s articles. I do know that if I read a book of right wing propaganda, I would handle it with caution and possible contempt if the content warranted it.
I almost want to write a discussion about this because it is often hard for me to explain why it is I don’t mind troublesome content and troublesome people. Goad is difficult for me ideologically at times but there is a certain commonality to our early lives, a sort of redneck, white trash despair, that I often feel like I know where he is coming from in a way some people don’t, and who knows – that could be utterly presumptuous on my part.
But there are certain essential facts that affect me and I should at some point enumerate them. Like with Goad – if he was out there using conspiracy theory to encourage race hate, I would be appalled. And I have no idea if he is or isn’t until I read his articles, if I read them, but my money is on that he doesn’t. I don’t get as upset about political ideology as I should if it comes from a place of honesty. Jew haters know The Protocols are fake and yet they keep reading them. Most Islamaphobes know Bat Ye’or has nothing to back her claims, but they cite her anyway. That sort of shit I tear apart, like I did with Fjordman.
The original intent behind the Tea Party is a good example of how it is that I can’t really find it in myself to mock such people even as they have been taken over by Birthers and worse. I remember the reason the party gained ground – not because people are upset the President is black but rather because people are scared, both political parties have done nothing to help the Rust Belt recover and have actively worked against them, and increasingly the idea that any man can grow up and work hard and have a comfortable life is a lie. That is the basis of the Tea Party, regardless of what morons and Orly Taitz have turned it into.
Goad, as long as he remains in a place of intellectual honesty about the origin and application of his ideas will always be a writer I respect even if he espouses ideas I don’t respect. God, I hope that makes sense.
I have zero use for Moynihan. I don’t even like talking about him. I was once friends with a notorious black metal musician that Moynihan wrote of (and this is easy enough to discern but I don’t speak of it much because I never exploited the friendship when it existed and since it ended badly I don’t want to set off Google alerts using his name because there is only so much shit I can take before I crack, you know?) and after six months of letters, I realized that Moynihan’s approach to his book was at best bizarre. He had an agenda and he shoehorned my former friend into a role that had him push that agenda. It was sobering. I also hate Blood Axis with the angry stench of a thousand hobo farts.
And you may be surprised – you may not disagree with me at all. I am in the middle of feminist/male centric issues. Men are my allies as much as women are and we have all traveled in this same fucked up world, acquiring damage in different ways. But within that centrist view is a feminist heart that can at times see only that which is honest and worthy of heart-felt discussion. There is a way to discuss rape and how actual violence against women was seen only as a political action while words themselves replaced rape as a method of causing grave personal harm that in no way can tolerate bro-fueled fuck-nardery. I can discuss the political nature, the times that inspired and the rage behind the Rape Issue, without giving any credence to stupid, horrific ideas.
So hopefully in some respect we will end that discussion more on the same page than not.
Hey Vince,
A friend of mine in my other blog posted this today and it reminded me of this discussion. Evidently the band Adversary, who has been openly contemptuous of racist and sexist imagery and lyrics of certain industrial bands was asked to open for two of those bands. Rather than pull out of the concert in protest, they decided to create this video and streamed it onstage as they performed.
I am pretty removed from the Industrial scene but I found this expression of disgust to be very interesting.
Somehow I missed this Adversary video last year when you posted it, but luckily the recent post brought me back here. Thanks for sharing this. It’s actually pretty moving. I want to find out more about the act now.
I would just like to say, though more deserves to be said, that I appreciate the discussion going on here and thank both Anita and the person who replied to me for their insight, intelligence, and sincerity. (I’m the anonymous commenter who made the first long post about the Rape Issue / Rice etc). This blog is great, and thank you!
Also: “I don’t believe the world is really the way Dworkin sees it, with women constantly tortured by having cocks thrust in their faces, but I’d like to. I really wish it was that way.”
Sotos says this exact thing in one of the texts collected in PROXY. I think his appreciation for Dworkin is sincere in that he appreciates the intensity of her style on an aesthetic level, as another form of pornography (like he always talks about, his definition of pornography being anything which is used in a certain way), which he mentions in interviews as well.
I read Sotos for the first time this summer (they had PROXY in my college library for some reason . . .) and the depth of his nihilism really took me to a weird, horrible place. The dude just straight up does not believe in the existence of love or selflessness, at all, and that’s sort of the real subject I see him dealing with, overall. And I sort of see the value in reading him as taking it upon yourself to confront that position. In some ways I could even say that such a shocking, anti-reader position is in some sense the ultimate expression of what literature really IS or should be for me – a challenge, a brutal endeavour, etc. (Maldoror is one of my favorite books for putting me through a very similar experience).
Dennis Cooper, being someone more willing to appreciate art on an amoral aesthetic level than I am (and pretty much the only thing I dislike about the dude is his half-baked use of ‘anarchism’ to excuse his apolitical and amoral views on the world – he’s one of my favorite writers otherwise) likes Sotos essentially for the genuinely innovative style he uses – it is actually pretty structurally unique and groundbreaking, the use of collage, plagiarism/quoting, appropriation of psychological questionnaires/surveys, lack of a real narrator or centered subject etc. etc. Which I can all agree with, but the experience of the writing itself is pretty central for me because I can’t just, like, ignore content like that, and “art for art’s sake” doesn’t fly with me as a way of existing in the world – I wouldn’t ever want to consider supporting someone like Sotos or Rice or Goad with actual money, for example, but on the other hand, like I said, the experience of confronting the abyss is also valuable (and is what makes me feel separate from some of my more lighthearted left-leaning friends who have no interest in things like this – sort of like the dilemma experienced by Bataille’s narrator in Blue of Noon I guess?).
Hey Anon, wanted you to know that I read this and want to respond in depth but am under water at the moment. This is very worth discussing and I’m sorry I’m busy getting all the bizarro stuff squared away for Bizarro Week. I really look forward to your reaction to the Rape issue.
One final thing, too: I got through my library a .pdf scan of Bruce Benderson’s critical article “The peter sotos question” which is in French (originally published in the New French Review). I do not read french. if anyone is interested in potentially translating it out of curiosity, or would just like a copy of it, let me know.
There was once a reader who came by who could read and write in French but she hated Sotos more than I loathe Boyd Rice. And that’s the end of my french connections, so to speak.
Actually, I may know someone else. I’ll shoot some e-mails and see.
awesome, thanks!!