Great to have you back around Sam. You’ve been low profile the past few years if I am not mistaken.
What’s the deal on the Firefly thing? As a conservative sci fi nerd I gotta hear this one.
Yeah, I’ve been avoiding the politics threads pretty much in the last while. After 15 years, the arguments seem to be the same old recycled debates we’ve had many, many times. I guess I’ve gotten tired of it.
As for the Firefly story:
College campus police save students from threat of Firefly poster
The poster in question was one of Mal Reynolds standing, with one of his famous quotes underneath: “You don’t know me son, so let me explain this to you once; If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.”
Bear in mind that this is a professor of theater. He was accused of violating the ‘safe space’ of students who might be triggered by the word ‘kill’, or the notion of people having guns, or the thought that the professor actually believes that killing people is something fun to do. The professor himself is a liberal, and responded by putting up a cartoon poster saying, “Warning: Fascism.”
That got him into further hot water with the administration, and it was only when the whole issue went viral with several cast members of Firefly weighing in in his defense and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education becoming involved that the administration backed down and left him alone.
Lest anyone think this is an isolated case, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has been fighting these attacks against free expression for a long time. Usually the abuses are targeted at conservatives, but not always. FIRE defends people on the left and right, and they’ve amassed a pretty large case list.
You can read about them and some of the cases they’ve fought here.
No, no you really don’t.
Sure, probably. Is that the responsibility of the playwright, though? To what extent is that audience member validating something they already believed in? To what extent would that person’s behavior have been different if they hadn’t seen this particular play? Obviously, that’s not something that’s really knowable, but I tend to suspect that the sort of person looking for a rationalization for sleeping with a thirteen year old is going to keep looking until they find it.
I’m not sure I agree that it’s a fact that seeing something in a play is more likely to make an audience member accept it than reading about the same thing in an essay. But even if I did, I’m not sure why it matters. If it’s reasonable to object to the play because “at least one” audience member has come away with the idea that this is okay, then it’s equally reasonable to object to a collection of written essays on the same subject, because “at least one” reader has come away with the idea that this is okay.
This brings up something important which I think has been overlooked in this thread: namely, the play hasn’t been banned at all. The theater group at Mount Holyoke that normally performs the play, has decided not to perform it any more. There’s no indication, at least in the linked article, that they were forced to drop it due to any sort of outside pressure. It appears to be a decision they arrived at internally, based on how members of the theater group felt about performing the play. There’s nothing preventing another group of students from getting together and mounting a performance of the play on campus.
Since the decision to drop the play has been portrayed as an example of liberal censorship, despite the complete lack of an actual censor in the story, let’s all take a moment to consider the administrative reaction if a group of students decided to perform The Vagina Monologues at, say, Bob Jones University.
I’d like to respond to the rest of your post better/later/politer and hope I will, but I REALLY have to run for the evening now.
But HOLEY CRAP that’s some messed up shit right there.
That’s an adorable rant, Sam. Maybe someday you can post it in a thread where it’s relevant.
Yeah. Most of us could come up with an equally-long list of Objectionable Stuff done by self-proclaimed conservatives. If we then proceeded to make the claim that doing Objectionable Stuff is characteristic of conservatives, then we’d be standing on the exact same shaky ground that Sam_Stone staked out in that post.
Sure, but that (the “at least one audience member” aspect) was not my argument.
My argument was that the portion of the play in question (the “Coochie” segment) was probably not intentionally included in order to normalize adults’ use of kids for sex. But even if there was no intention to normalize, the segment does have strong potential to provide emotional support to those who want to see the use of kids for sex in a positive light. Seeing a viewpoint enacted on a stage can engender a very strong 'I’m not alone!’ reaction; the theater as an art form has made use of this phenomenon for millennia. (Of course my assertion that the segment has such a potential is not provable, but then I’m not claiming that it’s provable.)
For those who believe that normalizing the adult use of kids for sex is a bad thing, it would make sense to omit that segment. The play, after all, has a nearly two-decades long history of having segments added or deleted (witness the addition of the transgender-themed segments in 2004, as mentioned in my post).
I’m not arguing for banning the entire play or for pretending any particular segment never existed. I’m saying that times and perceptions change. What Ensler perceived in 1996 as being that segment’s message, may differ from what she now sees as the segment’s message.
Good point.
I can see someone having that reaction, I’m just not convinced that it’s necessarily something the people putting on the play need to be concerned about. You can’t predict or control how damaged people are going to react to a given work of art. I don’t think one creep in an audience thinking, “I’m not alone!” is the same as normalizing sexual abuse, and I doubt that watching a play is going to be the difference between that person molesting a kid, and them not molesting a kid. Certainly, if people involved in the production of the play (or Ensler herself) decide to remove the segment because it makes them uncomfortable, for the reason you outlined or some other reason, I’m not fussed about it. I just think that, if someone decides not to drop it, there’s nothing wrong with that, either.
Um, this implies that you think that absent social justice trend-following, we’d largely default to despising positive portrayals of transsexuals. That sounds off to me, but then I was interested in trans* and intersex issues before they were trendy. Maybe I’m in the freaky 1%.
Or maybe you have some big hangups about transsexualism.
Right, you’ve always loved transsexuals, just like you’ve always hated the “good rape” of 13-year olds, and in five years you will be proclaiming that you always knew that painting your house orange gives your cancer or whatever the lockstep cause of the moment randomly is then. The left-wing memory hole is a powerful thing.
And men. Both the situation described and the feelings reported about it are very similar to the introductions to sex of my maternal grandfather and of Gabriel García Márquez. I tried reading Gabo’s autobiography despite never having been able to stand his writings, but had to drop it after that scene - the mileage of thousands upon thousands of other readers evidently varies.
I think allowing people to discuss their interpretation of the scene and whether it is promoting rape or not is a good idea, therefore it’s a bad idea to demand the silencing of anyone who tries to discuss the scene, or cancel the play because transsexuals are upset at the notion that women tend to have vaginas.
Your maternal grandmother knew Gabriel García Marquez???
Cool!
Remarkably enough, some of us actually have been in favor of equal treatment for transgender people for years, even decades. Most of us don’t think 13 year olds should be having sex, period. There is also a difference between statutory rape (which is what the scene is question is about) and coercive rape which apparently many no longer comprehend due to their binary view of the world which makes no distinctions between one bad thing and another.
You are revealing just how narrow-minded you actually are by such statement, and that you have some sort of bias or agenda, the exact details of which I can’t discern but don’t really care about anyway.
That’s a very broad brush you’ve got there.
Give the lengths to which many transwomen go to have a vagina constructed the notion that they’re “upset” at “the notion that women tend to have vaginas” is ludicrous. SOME transwomen seem to be upset about the play, but it’s no secret that many transgender people are psychologically damaged, victims of assault and rape, and may have atypical reactions to certain things that don’t bother even other transgender folks. I think we should listen to these people, and perhaps warn them if we are aware a certain work might upset them, but I’m not 100% convinced the entire world should be censored because of their PTSD.
Ooh, tell us about how “technically it’s ephebophilia” next!
A 13 year old can “consent” to sex with an older adult in the sense that a 13 year old can want and desire sexual intercourse with someone, but because such a person lacks mature judgement, and the older person in inherently in a position of greater power (knowledge, judgement, money, freedom of movement, driver’s license, vehicle, etc.) the danger comes from exploitation of the younger person, emotional manipulation, and so forth. It can still be very damaging but differently damaging than coercive sex where the recipient does not want the contact, may physically resist, may be physically assaulted/damaged by the act, and so forth.
That is, in fact, why there is a distinction between “child molestation” and “statutory rape”. Neither is good, both are criminal, but saying they’re the same thing is like saying someone breaking into your home and stealing your stuff is the same as someone beating you senseless and leaving you bleeding in the street. Both are wrong, both are harmful/damaging, but they aren’t the same thing.
That’s also why two thirteen year olds having sex with each other are (or were, until recently) seen as a different circumstance than a thirty year old having sex with someone thirteen. Two teenagers are less likely to engage in damaging exploitation with each other, although I could make an argument they still shouldn’t be having sex with each other or anyone else.
But I’m sure you’ll find a way to twist that explanation around into some weird, twisted fantasy of yours that anyone who isn’t frothing at the mouth as much as you are over the topic is somehow “pro-rape”. :rolleyes:
As you may recall:
- The reason people suspect the play and the people who insist on defending the play as above criticism of being “pro rape” is because it very much does not present the incident as “just a thing that happened” but goes out of its way to both acknowledge it as a rape, and proclaim it “good.” The source of the claim that “what is portrayed in the play is a rape” is not me, or Puritans, or the legal code, it is the play itself, which chooses to use that word.
- The reason the scene is being brought up in this thread is because, in the past, the people who insist on defending the play as above criticism have worked to silence anyone who questions the scene.
- #2 is ironic because the same steamroller tactics and black and white “all art must be either Received Oracular Wisdom or Poisonous Issue of Satan” thinking that were once used to defend the “good rape” scene are now being used to keep the play from being staged.
Wouldn’t that be monophragm?
I can’t speak for anybody else, but a search of my posts would reveal I’ve been an LGB and T ally since at least 2000.