The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Could every man who is about to be driven from his job because of his history as a rapist and/or sexual harasser– and you fuckers know who you are— just do us all a favor and resign from your jobs and disappear off of the face of the earth now, without further ado and/or drama? You fuckers are over, and the world’s about to be better for it. Go join the fucking dinosaurs in the tar pits.
Thanks.
So a friend of mine, a friend who will likely see this, so it’s not as if it’s behind her back, posted this on Facebook the other day. Forgive all the blurriness:
And here’s the thing: yeah. It does. It makes me uncomfortable. The notion– a notion I believe without the remotest qualification, by the way– that literally every woman I know has experienced sexual harassment makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Hell, uncomfortable’s not even the word, although it’s part of it. There’s a fair degree of fucking rage in there too, for example.
And no, I didn’t “like” the post. In fact if I have hit Like (I don’t use any of the other options, ever; don’t ask me why) on any posts associated with the #metoo hashtag, I don’t remember doing it– and I’m pretty certain there aren’t any.
I hit Like on her post and then deleted it. Wrote a comment, and then deleted that too, and then spent the next couple of days fighting off this post. The reason I haven’t interacted with any of these posts online isn’t because of some feeling of discomfort or shame, is the thing. I haven’t because none of this is about me, and I feel like it’s pointless at best and empty virtue-signaling at worst for me to interact with a thing that isn’t supposed to be about me in specific or men in general.
So, yeah. All of them. #allofthem, if you prefer.
I’ve spent the last few days– longer than that, really, but it’s come to a head in the last few days– thinking a lot about my own actions as a cishet guy throughout my life. And in a lot of ways I’ve been resisting the temptation to paint myself as one of the good guys. I’ve never raped anyone, obviously. (Is it obvious? Probably flattering myself.)
But there was that one time, with that one woman, where she indicated her lack of consent to a certain action at the literal last possible moment, and it’s haunted me ever since. When I say last possible moment, I’m not exaggerating, not by a millisecond or a fraction of an inch. I didn’t go any further– of course I didn’t– but my first immediate visceral reaction was wait what the fuck are you kidding and I don’t know how much of that reaction got through to her.
I’ve never catcalled anyone, not once. Never hassled a woman in a bar, never got angry with anyone because they wouldn’t give me a phone number or something like that.
(I have what I’m pretty sure is a funny story about accidentally approaching the wrong woman in a bar who I thought was one of my friends; maybe I’ll tell it sometime. It’s not for this post.)
But I had years– years— where I bought into the idea of the friendzone, and where the idea of just telling a woman that I was interested in her and thought we should go out/make out/fuck each other senseless was pure anathema. No, she (whichever she was at the time) was gonna figure it out sooner or later and fall into my arms. I was a Nice Guy. Sooner or later she’ll figure out that all the guys she dates are assholes and I’m right here, all not being an asshole and shit.
I can think of some moments, some interactions that make me cringe right now, honestly. I’m pretty sure there were times when I was being creepy as fuck and didn’t even realize it. There are others where I know I was being creepy as fuck and I regret the hell out of them. Some of them probably involved the woman who originally triggered this post, honestly; we have a bit of history together, not all of which I’m proud of.
(True fact: the first time I kissed the woman who eventually married me, we were sitting at a table in a diner and I literally said “Let’s go make out in the parking lot,” and it worked. Sooner or later I broke past the idea that doing nothing would get me somewhere. That said, if that line doesn’t work? Possible eew.)
I remember one time in high school when a bunch of us– too many to fit in the car– were all going somewhere, and one of the girls decided she was going to sit in my lap. I put both my hands in my lap, palms-up. She shrugged and did it anyway, probably knowing that having both hands on her ass would make me twice as uncomfortable as it was making her and that it wouldn’t last more than a moment, which it didn’t.
I still remember that. I wonder if she does.
(I was gonna say “I’ve never groped anyone who didn’t want me to,” which is what reminded me of that story.)
I remember a week– one very, very weird week in middle school– where for some reason everyone, boys and girls, were all going around trying to yank each others’ shorts off. By the end of the week everyone had their belts on so tight or their pants laced so tight that I suspect some of us were cutting off our circulation. I was on both sides of that little game. But I can’t say I’ve never tried to take anyone’s clothes off who didn’t want me to, either. I still remember the two girls I targeted; I know one of them took a swipe at me at one point too, although I don’t know who was first. I don’t remember what the other one thought about it.
(God, I’m glad my middle schoolers never had that bug hit. I can’t imagine what the teachers were thinking.)
I don’t know that I have a single, overarching point to all this. Okay, yeah, there’s obviously an element of the confessional here but that’s not the entire point. I have contributed to this culture of rape and harassment, or at least participated in it, and the fact that I’ve learned (tried to learn) to be better in recent years doesn’t affect the facts of who I was and what I did, even if I can point to any number of men who were maybe worse.
You don’t stop rape, or sexual harassment, by controlling women. You stop rape and sexual harassment by insisting that men learn to be better. One of my most important jobs right now is to raise my son to be better than me.
Maybe men need a #metoo hashtag. Or an #allofus hashtag, because right now, it is all of us. We’ve all contributed to this.
Or maybe we could just stop, and fucking listen, which was what the point of the hashtag was in the first place, and try to learn to get better.
Maybe.
I am a big enough Stephen King fan that the majority of the time I know about his books way in advance and they get preordered. I have read damn near everything he ever wrote, excepting only his book about the Kennedy assassination (which I refuse to read, because Wrong) and for no clear reason the third book in his Bill Hodges trilogy, which I’ll get to eventually. So the fact that I hadn’t heard about Sleeping Beauties until finding it on a shelf in Target, of all places, was more than a bit unusual.
Here’s the inside jacket text:
In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare.
One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanting to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.
Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously dramatic father-son collaboration that feels particularly urgent and relevant today.
I read that mess, laughed, and handed the book over to my wife, saying that she had to buy it. Now, again, usually new King is an insta-buy. And I can’t recall any other King books that were bought so explicitly for a hate-read as this one was. But… I’m not wrong, right? That description sounds absolutely terrible. From the weird “future so near and real” (the book is not set in the future, at all) to the deeply odd “urgent and relevant” (how?) bit at the end, it’s a cavalcade of bad. It makes the book sound awful.
Having read all 700 pages in the last… week? or so, and having stayed up way late last night to finish it, I can confirm: it’s not nearly that bad. It’s one of those books that’s better while you’re reading it and not so much the day afterward when you’re thinking about it, though. And I’m pretty sure, despite what Stephen and Owen have said in interviews, that Owen wrote most of the book. The plotting is pure Stephen King, but on a sentence-to-sentence, page-by-page basis, most of the prose doesn’t sound like him to me. Part of me wants to feed the book into a computer and go all Documentary Hypothesis on it, to be honest; I think it’d be fun.
So, yeah, the book: that description’s not far off in a literal sense, it’s just way crappier. All the women in the world suddenly start spinning cocoons around themselves when they fall asleep, because Reasons, and there’s this woman named Evie (not “Eve,” which would have been way less subtle) who doesn’t web up and seems to be psychic because Reasons, and they get really violent if you remove the webbing because Reasons, and eventually (spoiler!!) the women all come back because Reasons.
A careful reader will have discerned my issue with the book already. Unlike, say, The Stand, which is my favorite King book, what happens to the world’s women in this story is presented as purely supernatural, with no scientific explanation of any kind at all. And while most of King’s work does have at least supernatural underpinnings to it, even Under the Dome did a better job of providing reasons why the Bad Shit was happening and not a bunch of handwaving. This book is composed of 100% dura-grade premium Handwavium, and nothing in the basic premise happens for a reason. Once the scenario is up and running, okay, characters tend to respond in reasonable and understandable ways. But the setup itself?
Why do the women all fall asleep? Why is Eve so tremendously violent when we first meet her? Why the cocoons? Why can’t I spell “cocoon” without putting a double-C in there? Why do the women go to what they call the Other Place, and why aren’t there any women from outside Dooling there? Are only the women from Dooling sent to the Other Place? Why? Why does Evie seem to be trying to get herself killed for part of the last third of the book?
(The Other Place, in general, is narratively unnecessary, and every page set there could have been cut without harming the book.)
I’m generally okay with a book not tying up every loose thread and leaving some questions unanswered, but holy shit, this book is nothing but unanswered questions. My lack of reading comprehension can probably be blamed for a couple of them, but there’s basic worldbuilding shit here that’s left undone in favor of handwavium and it bugs. And the ending is weak as hell. Spoiler, but you know this already anyway: the women come back. They literally just decide to not be sleepers anymore and then they aren’t. Or maybe Dooling’s women decide for the whole world? Why do they specifically get to decide? Who knows! But they all have to decide to come back for any of them to come back, which is not as much of an obstacle as it might seem. Why do they all have to agree? Reasons!
(Apropos of nothing, in case you’re wondering, the book doesn’t know trans women exist.)
I dunno. I four-starred this on Goodreads originally, but I’ve dropped it to three while I’ve been writing this. The book wasn’t bad while I was reading it, but the lack of any real resolution at the end dooms the entire enterprise.
Perhaps the sound of a million baby-men all wailing at once alerted you; there is to be a new Doctor Who, or maybe a new Doctor, hell, I don’t watch the show, I don’t think “Doctor Who” is actually the character’s name, but maybe it is– and at any rate, the Doctor is to be played by a Person of Feminine Aspect, a Vagina-Haver, a Breasted-American, except she’s not American and Breasted-Brit sounds like some sort of snack food. A girl! Playing a character who used to be played by a man with a penis!
I assume Peter Capaldi has a penis. And all the others, whatever their names are. Steve or James or Bonbon or something else British. I’m only assuming they all had penises. I’ve never seen any of their penises. But apparently they were really important to all this Time Lord business.
So, yeah, there’s a girl in a show now and oh so many judgment-challenged sillymen are oh so very upset. And here’s the thing: I’ve kinda been jonesing for a new Nerd Thing lately that I could pay attention to? I’m tired of Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones has worn very very thin and I was never into the TV series anyway, and I’m not actually certain that the new Star Trek is actually watchable by regular people who don’t have some sort of arcane CBS subscription that I refuse to find out anything about. But I can watch this new Doctor Who thing, right? And knowing that me watching it is a tiny thorn in the ample sides of some very horrible people brings me pleasure, so there’s that.
I have actually tried to get into Doctor Who on a few occasions and failed. With the notable exception of Monty Python, British entertainment does tend to bounce off of me a bit, and every previous episode of the program I’ve tried to watch really didn’t get anywhere with me. But for some reason I downloaded the two-part season finale of Season 10, which was Capaldi’s final season (although I understand there’s some sort of Christmas special thing coming, where he’ll actually end his run?) and damn if I wasn’t well and hooked despite not really having the vaguest idea what the fuck was going on or who any of the non-Capaldi characters were. The Cybermen should have been Power Rangers-level cheesy nonsense but somehow they worked, and I was suitably creeped out by them.
And so: I shall be partaking of this new LadyWho person, and hopefully I will enjoy it. And if not, meh. At least I annoyed some idiots. That’s always worth something, right?
PS: Is “Dr. Who” some sort of faux pas? I keep wanting to spell it that way and changing it back to eliminate the abbreviation. Is it like Spider-Man, where if you don’t include the hyphen you die in seven days?
I’m on the couch with my laptop in its appropriate place, and I think I literally fell asleep with my eyes open a few minutes ago. So watch this and maybe I’ll type words tomorrow:
On the plane on the way to Denver it became obvious very quickly that the young woman one row ahead of me and across the aisle was going to the same event I was. She was in her early 20s, blonde, pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way and, as it turned out, really chatty. She spent the entire trip talking with everyone around her, a circle that grew bigger as it became clear just how many of us were on the plane for the same reason. The guy she was seated next to, who was in his late forties or perhaps even his early fifties, wasn’t with us. I overheard her mention her boyfriend at least two or three times during the flight, and it’s not as if I heard their entire conversation. Later on, she told me that he’d spent some time talking about his daughters, one of whom is a recent high school graduate– meaning that she and the eldest daughter were no more than three or four years apart.
I’m betting that if I stopped talking right now, you’d all be able to predict how this ended. Because of course he either magically ended up in the same car rental shuttle pickup as her or he actually followed us, and of course he asked her out, despite her making it clear that she had a boyfriend and despite her being less than five years older than one of his own daughters.
Because, y’know, she talked to him, which is exactly the fucking same as wanting a date.
I heard a lot of presentations from furniture company reps and various executives in my own company over the last week. What got to me was the repeated and constant gender essentialism of goddamn near every single presenter we heard from. The funny thing? None of them agreed. Some of the reps refused to use any word other than she to refer to the buyer, because why would men be interested in something like furniture? Obviously only the women would make decisions like that. Others went on and on about how these features of the furniture would appeal to the girls and these more practical features would clearly appeal to the men— and it was always the more practical features– construction, say– that were for the penis-people and style or color concerns that were appropriate for the more vaginal among us.
It was constant.
Had a conversation at our table at one point about whether being married or unmarried was a detriment to being an effective salesperson. One of the salespeople– another young, unmarried woman– said that she’s figured out that if she wears her Irish wedding band on her left hand when talking to couples she’s a lot more likely to close the sale. This contention came as close as anything did during the week to actually causing an argument. On my end, for whatever it’s worth, I’ve not noticed that any particular demographic or combination of customers is more or less likely to buy from me.
That one dude who won’t stop explaining basic simple concepts about sales or about furniture to every woman at the table, and won’t accept corrections from anyone except for the men, at which point he immediately starts pretending that’s what he was saying all along. Had him too.
On the last day of the trip we’re allowed to wear streetclothes because we’re all headed to the planes after the final exam. I wear my ASK ME ABOUT MY FEMINIST AGENDA shirt, which I have legitimately packed accidentally (I have a plain shirt of a similar color) but I’ve got it with me so fuck it. The following things happen:
For the record, and possibly for future reference via some sort of preprinted business card, this is a representative but not complete list of the items on my feminist agenda, such as it is:
I could probably write more, but it’s 10:30 and I have to sleep sometime tonight. This will pop tomorrow morning; be aware that I likely won’t be able to respond to any comments until I get home from work.
I wasn’t able to attend the South Bend march yesterday (stupid job) but my wife was. She took some pictures.
If you’ve been paying attention to my posts lately, or to my Twitter feed, you can probably guess why I didn’t post yesterday, and I suspect you’d be right. I’ve been trying to write about it and I’m not quite there yet, for a variety of reasons. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please forgive the vaguebooking; all will be made clear soon enough.
Instead, let’s talk about something how I’m either too old, too liberal, or both to play video games any more. Despite shit-talking it when it came out, The Witcher 3 went on a steep-ass discount a few weeks ago– I got the game and both expansion packs for $20, if I remember right– and I was in a period of mourning the lack of video games in my life at the time and so I went ahead and picked it up. I mean, fuck it, right? This thing got Game of the Year awards from basically everybody, and I’ve been wrong before, right?
Nah.
The Witcher 3 is exactly the game I thought it was before picking it up; it is not only bad in all the ways I thought it would be bad, it manages to be worse than I thought it was going to be in several critical areas. I have been gaming for a very long time, so it is likely that I have played a more misogynistic game than this one at some point or another, but I can’t recall what that game might have been. This is a game that very, very badly wants to be taken seriously, but the overgrown adolescents who coded it think that “serious” means that you get called a cunt everywhere you go, and mistake adult content— there are lots of tits, oh so many tits, and oh so many whores, and so many of the swear words– for adult complexity.
I would probably have really loved this when I was sixteen. That’s who it’s aimed at, and regardless of the actual chronological ages of the designers, it’s who it was made by. There are bits of the gameplay I do enjoy, but I commented to my wife this morning that the game’s greatest feat is managing to remain perfectly balanced on the razor’s edge where I’m enjoying it just enough that I’m still playing, but it’s not actually good enough to make me forget the parts that make me want to quit– so I’m still playing, but I hate the game for maybe half the time I’m playing it.
I don’t mind the stabbing. I don’t even mind the crafting and alchemy, which is normally a part I do my best to ignore in most games. It’s whenever I’m not in control of the character– ie, cutscenes– that I want to throw my PS4 out the window and cultivate a new hobby.
Blech.
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