House of Eratosthenes

Now imagine this. A lady goes on a blind date with a gentleman and discovers, to her horror, that her beau is incredibly self-absorbed. It’s like the old line about “Enough of me talking about me; you talk about me for awhile.” She’s about to call the evening a total loss, when — almost by accident — the Casanova says some things that pique her interest. He keeps it up, and since she decided from the get-go that he’s kind of cute, they go back to her place. By this time she’s on a complete hormone high, but at the moment of carnal bliss he passes out on her couch and she’s left alone with her disappointment.

Today’s question is about flogs, click the link if you don’t yet know the meaning of the word. How fast would a flog move to write up this scenario? Heh. You’d better not stand in the way.

Well, some fellow named Josh Hopkins has put up a pretty high-quality video describing the opposite. Ah…as if that could ever happen. Since when has a guy gone out on a date with a woman, and discovered to his disappointment that she only likes to talk about herself, and thus been plunged headlong into an incredibly boring evening? Hmmm…

The video ends with some humorous suggestions about date rape. This is unfortunate. All around the world wide web, feminists are now shaking their bony fingers at us instructing us to find the entire video hideous, because of the ending. Well, I’ll say this much. If it were my video, I would not have ended it this way. I would therefore excise from this work the material our shrill feminists tell me has aroused their anger this time…but unfortunately, I would keep the stuff that I suspect really has.

They’ll never confess it no matter what, of course. But I think they understand this isn’t about date rape. Beginning to end, the video draws on an interesting device in which the main character has split in half; the well-dressed version represents his corporeal self, and the guitar-playing “narrator” is dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, representing the thoughts in his head. This is crystal clear. And of course when the time comes to “mount” the drunken floozy, guess which guy is doing it. Right. It’s not the corporeal entity.

So that takes care of this concern about promoting rape.

But that’s all Captain Obvious stuff. None of this is really on-topic, and the feminists know this to be true. They don’t want to discuss what the video is really about.

And you know what I find interesting about that? The video isn’t really about much. Men, it turns out, can suffer from boring dates too. That one sentence covers just about everything. Pretty innocuous, and yet it manages to excite a “throw a rock into a pack of wild dogs, the one that yelps is the one you dun hit” moment. Our feminists really, truly, down to the marrow of their bones, do not want us to see this video. And if we do see it, they don’t want us to find anything good about it.

It’s all speculation, but if it’s fair for the feminists to psychoanalyze men, it’s fair for someone else to come along and do the same with the feminists. I think they see this video is all about a complaint that is perfectly valid, and they’ve been aroused into an instinctive frenzy of finger-waggling at everyone else, whether we’ve seen the video or not, whether we’re interested in it or not — because the valid complaint undermines their entire message. At least, the message from the brittle, frigid, extreme feminists. Their message has been one of expanding the definition of oppression.

Rape, battery, inequitable pay, everything in between, these are forms of oppression. Extreme feminism is about including more things. Putting up posters, pictures and drawings of women with better-looking bodies. Indulging in inappropriate humor in mixed company. Saying bad things about women in any setting. Saying good things about men. Passing laws that NARAL wouldn’t like. Voting Republican.

Feminism in 2007, is about stopping us from doing any of that. And if we can’t be stopped, it’s about getting rid of us.

For the past several decades, they’ve succeeded in this. And in early 21st-century America, we find ourselves in a culture in which a specimen of the fairer sex, whether she is well-bred or otherwise, regardless of her level of sophistication, feels a lack of motivation to broaden her horizons.

During my eight or nine months of single-hood a few years ago, I noticed this. There was me; there was an apparitional golem representing the man my “date” for the evening would want to meet. Some vision she had dancing through her head long before she met me, that had not been altered one iota since she learned about me, and would not be altered in the course of meeting any man, ever. Very much like the vision she had for a wall hanging or piece of furniture, just before heading to the mall to shop for it.

Questions about me, should they have arisen at all…had to do with any differences that might exist between me and that apparitional golem. A genuine question-question, I noticed after awhile, was a real occasion. And from the comments I see from other single men, this is not a unique experience at all.

I expect most of the single ladies — extreme feminist or otherwise — are somewhat clueless about how insulting that is for a man. And you know what’s funny? They aren’t supposed to be clueless at all. For much of my early-teen adult years, the feminist movement was supposed to be all about “objectification.” As in, admiring a lady’s bare limbs or conspicuous cleavage. Well…what better way to objectify someone, than to compare them with some preconceived ideal that has nothing to do with their personalities, or other individual attributes, whatsoever?

Anyway, in my meager experience that’s what single life is in modern America. A shallow woman talks about herself all night…and if she’s a real deep thinker and somewhat interested in you, she’ll ask a question or two to figure out how well you’ll blend in with her wall hangings, ottoman and Berber carpet.

The women who can think in more grown-up terms, it seems…to plagiarize from the single ladies unapologetically…are already taken. I’m just glad I have one of them now.

But like they say, it’s not easy out there.

All of which begs the question. If dating isn’t all peaches & cream for our spinsters, and it’s no more fun for the bachelors either, where’s this oppressive patriarchal society that our feminists keep telling us about?

I’ve seen the cringe-worthy frat-boy responses to this video praising it for the wrong reasons, and I’ve seen the various-feminist-chatboard-organized attacks laughably asserting that the video is an advertisement for rape. This article is easily the most rationally considered and original analysis to “Feigning Interest” that I’ve seen so far.

“If it were my video, I would not have ended it this way. I would therefore excise from this work the material our shrill feminists tell me has aroused their anger this time…but unfortunately, I would keep the stuff that I suspect really has.”

Funny enough, –and it has drawn nowhere near the amount of ire (just one comment that has since been removed) fromt the feminists that the original edit has. Perhaps that’s just because it’s far less high-profile…or perhaos not.
- metroville | 06/11/2007 @ 14:20
Thanks for the kind comment. I edited your posting to change the unclosed <a> comment. Not sure if I did that correctly, and I hope it’s okay.
- mkfreeberg | 06/11/2007 @ 14:36
What I actually meant to write was, “Funny enough, such a version does exist…” and link to it:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2034707396
- metroville | 06/11/2007 @ 18:18
I don’t think there is any dispute that both sexes have to put up with long-winded, boring, self-centered dates.

But this video (both versions in fact, but especially the rape one) strongly imply that a man who puts up with actually listening to a woman deserves to get laid. I doubt you would see a joke like that with the genders reversed. Also it strongly implies that there are no women who have interesting things to say who are also worth sleeping with (otherwise why is this guy putting up with these vapid women at all?) It also strongly imlies that a woman who is a bit self centered “has it coming” and deserves all sorts of aggression (i.e. the dude fantasizing about yelling “bitch” in her ear).

Not to mention the actual rape joke — which was pretty grotesque and which would not work if the genders were reversed. So yeah, I’d put this video in the misogyny column, rather than the “riffing on bad dates” column.

If dating isn’t all peaches & cream for our spinsters, and it’s no more fun for the bachelors either, where’s this oppressive patriarchal society that our feminists keep telling us about?

Well, it’s not just about dating, or even particularly about dating. (I’ve personally enjoyed dating a great deal. I have certainly met my fair share of long-winded, self-centered male bores, but part of the fun is having a good “bad date” story to tell people later. A “bad date” story that never ends with my fantasizing about doing violence to the man in question.) But to start with, how about the fact that “spinsters” is a pejorative, a put-down, where “bachelors” is not?
- Margaret | 06/11/2007 @ 20:16
Margaret, what do you want? Men built this world, because we’re the ones that came with the biological drive to to take risk. Women are typically far more timid and unwilling to take significant chances.

As for the video suggesting that putting up with a boor equates to a deserved sexual encounter, well, that’s your take. The upshot of this guy’s song is that even after a long night of putting up with outrageous amounts of noise from the girl (and himself putting on the song and dance of indifference and arrogance so as to attract her), she passes out on the couch, even though she’d essentially dropped every single hint that she was interested and receptive to the idea of a sexual encounter with the protagonist. Girls don’t tell guys they’re carrying a vibrator in their purse unless they’re comfortable and attracted to them. I assume that by your name you are female, and thus probably don’t have the experiences of men in this regard.

Suffice it to say that I thought the song and video was funny, and rather true to life. Morgan’s right about the “split personality” effect, and how it was the internal personality performing the act. I can’t think of a single male I know, even the “players” I know, that would stoop so low as to have sex with a girl who’s unconscious. Aside from the obvious mechanical difficulties in having intercouse with a 120-140lb sack-of-potatoes rag doll, there’s just no fun in masturbating with a woman’s body. The whole point is to share an experience with a real, live human being. Without the participation of the other partner, the whole thing looses most of it’s luster, and honestly, is more trouble than it’s worth.
- dcshiderly | 06/13/2007 @ 03:31
Margaret, what do you want? Men built this world, because we’re the ones that came with the biological drive to to take risk. Women are typically far more timid and unwilling to take significant chances.

This statement is a non-sequitur. Even if it were true, what does it have to do with anything? Our ancestors with penises built the world so their current descendents with penises should be able to do what they want without criticism from women? I just don’t get your point.

The upshot of this guy’s song is that even after a long night of putting up with outrageous amounts of noise from the girl (and himself putting on the song and dance of indifference and arrogance so as to attract her), she passes out on the couch, even though she’d essentially dropped every single hint that she was interested and receptive to the idea of a sexual encounter with the protagonist.

This is pretty much what I got out of the song too (except for the part about pretending to be indifferent and arrogant in order to attract her). But:

— I object to the notion that getting laid should be the pay off for putting up with a boring person.

— The part about pretending to be indifferent and arrogant in order to attract her makes no sense. Do men really think this works? Maybe that explains why, back in my single days, a lot of men would act like complete jerks and then ask me out AGAIN! I always used to wonder why on earth they would think I would go out with them again.

— I agree that the woman in the video made it clear that she was interested in sex. I get that it would be frustrating for a man (or a woman for that matter) to anticipate sex only to be let down. Nonetheless, I found the hostility and violent fantasy expressed in the video repugnant and profoundly unfunny.

I can’t think of a single male I know, even the “players” I know, that would stoop so low as to have sex with a girl who’s unconscious. Aside from the obvious mechanical difficulties in having intercouse with a 120-140lb sack-of-potatoes rag doll, there’s just no fun in masturbating with a woman’s body. The whole point is to share an experience with a real, live human being.

Well, good. It’s also not that it’s no fun, but also that it is a terribly demeaning and violative thing to do to another human being. Unfortunately, rapes of incapacitated women DO occur.
- Margaret | 06/14/2007 @ 13:57
That second to last sentence should read:

It’s also not JUST that it’s no fun, but also that it is a terribly demeaning and violent thing to do to another human being.
- Margaret | 06/14/2007 @ 13:59
Nonetheless, I found the hostility and violent fantasy expressed in the video repugnant and profoundly unfunny.

So this must be pretty bad stuff then, huh.
- mkfreeberg | 06/14/2007 @ 15:03
Well, two wrongs don’t make a right.

But, secondly, I think Goodbye Earl IS distinguishable. I’ll come back later on opine more on that.
- Margaret | 06/17/2007 @ 13:59

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Feigning InterestSunday, June 10th, 2007

Feigning Interest
Sunday, June 10th, 2007