Hey lovely readers!
As some of you know, I’m semi out of commission lately. I have repetitive strain in my wrists right now and I’m trying to take it easy. If I haven’t replied to your comments or emails, that’s why.
As such, I’ll be postponing blogging for a week to give me a chance to recoup.
Take care everyone, and remember to give your wrists a rest once in a while!
Trigger warning for discussion of sex work.
There was a thread earlier on Literotica talking about prostitution, why it was illegal, and what that meant. Someone said the problem was that some women didn’t have a choice but to sleep with people for food to feed their family.
We often talk about being politically correct and using language that isn’t purposefully offensive to people. We try to be mindful of other people’s feelings and to maintain civil discourse.
However, there have been times when I have complimented someone and they took it to be insulting just because of their own associations with a specific word, and their own relationship with language.
I’ve never read a book based on who published it.
I wasn’t sure if this was a strange thing or not until I did this blog. I read books based on my interests, or recommendations from others who have similar interests to me. I can only name three publishing houses off the top of my head (Harlequin, Scholastic, and Penguin) and I couldn’t tell you of a single book under those houses.
I’ve read a few articles lately that talk about how there are some men out there that look for a woman’s opinion before feeling okay about something. Leigh Alexander of Sexy Videogameland had an article about how she’s not just a woman, but a person too. It’s a valid concern, as women are seen as a minority in the business and thus assumed to have different–and specific–views and concerns on various issues, which are often times true.
Pedophilia has nothing to do with actions and everything to do with desires. A pedophile has not molested a child. Child molesters have molested a child as it has everything to do with actions and, often times, very little to do with physical desires.
Because of our complications and confusions of these two terms, particularly in news reporting, we’re cutting down on our compassion and empathy for a group of people with disturbing desires that can be helped. Because of the stigma associated with the word ‘pedophile’, very few seek the help that they should, and without a support network that helps them deal with their unhealthy desires, they may be more likely to actually offend.
As defined on TVTropes.org,
“Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. Above all, a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, a linguistic idiom… you know it when you see it.”
Last year, Feminist Frequency did a video about The Evil Demon Seductress trope.
Blindness is a film about a fast spreading pandemic that sweeps across the world, rendering most of the population blind. There may be spoilers in this post.
The movie follows a group of infected individuals as they’re dumped in a facility without anyone to guide them. They’re treated cruelly, quickly things become a mess as people are unable to find their way around as they adapt to their sudden blindness. They are under armed guard, and there is one scene where a guard shoots a lost blind man who is simply seeking guidance of where to go.
-Trigger Warnings-
Forced seduction. Bodice Rippers. Blackmail. Coercion. Stalking. Dominance.
Romance novels are filled with rape that isn’t called rape. If she says no, and he keeps forcing her into sex, that’s not forced seduction. That’s rape. If he tells her that she has to have sex with him or he’ll reveal a secret she’s been keeping, that’s rape. If he follows her, tells her that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, that they’re meant to be together, then has sex with her despite protests, that’s rape.
-Trigger Warnings-
Buffy is 15-16 years old when Angel sees her and falls in love with her. He looks to be about 20 or 21, but in reality, he’s over 200 years old.
According to other media, we should be really creeped out. In Pretty Persuasion, we’re supposed to be disgusted by the two 30-something men talking about the two 15 year old girls, after all. We think they’re too old for them, that a sexual relationship with them would have extreme power imbalances. It would be, above that, disgusting, and the fact that they can’t relate to women their own age would be used against them.
