#norwood press
Text
Watching Granada Holmes: The Six Napoleons
Image description: Holmes and Lestrade shake hands at the inner door of 221b. / end image description.
A bit late with the recap this week - I think my recap days will most likely move to weekends from now until the finish. My schedule has become fuller, and I’m also writing more for Seize the Light (Star Wars Episode VIII rewrite, for those unaware).
This one was a fun case in some aspects, though the xenophobic treatment of Italians (apparently, according to PlaidAdder, it’s worse in some ways than the original canon!) was a bit much.
I’m filing this under “Case for Someone Holmes Knows”, given that Lestrade is the one coming to tell Holmes and Watson about it. Let’s begin.
The very first scene is... cringey, and irritating, and demeaning because it plays on stereotypes. The rest of the intro is interesting mostly because the dialogue is all in Italian without subtitles; you have to rely on the intrigue of the acting. Given it’s a long intro, I think this choice worked. Though it’s still cringey. That pattern continues for the rest of the episode whenever the Italians appear by themselves, so I’m skipping those scenes.
After the title credits, we open at the lounge room of 221b.
A lovely cozy scene, with the gentle music from the episode soundtrack, the fire crackling, Holmes reading the paper, and Watson with drink and cigar in hand.
But what’s this? They have a guest - Lestrade!
This scene sets the tone for the episode. Lestrade looks as if he’s come over for a relaxing evening, not case talk (cigar in hand, relaxed sprawl against the couch). He even tries to say he has “nothing... in particular” on (no cases) - only for Holmes to say, with a knowing smile, “tell us about it”. As Watson chuckles, Lestrade then admits (with a smile of his own), “Well, now you mention it...”
The atmosphere is very congenial, as if they’re all old friends - though it switches to “old colleagues” once Lestrade begins his tale of course. This is interesting given Lestrade’s previous appearances.
In Norwood Builder, he was an Antagonist of sorts. In Empty House, he was Watson’s Colleague and awkward acquaintance. In Second Stain, he was both hindrance and help.
In this episode, he’s the Apprentice - following along in Holmes and Watson’s heels. Sometimes he and Watson get to have a Moment, and other times Watson is shown to be ahead of him - or helped to be ahead by Holmes.
There are some delightful Holmes/ Watson scenes in this episode, too. For example, the scene after the opening, when a young, uniformed (and very eager) note-runner rushes to deliver a note from Lestrade to 221b.
It is Watson who receives the note, so it is Watson who tells Holmes who the note is from, and deduces why it was written.
And for once, it’s Watson who tells Holmes arrangements are already made and they’re leaving shortly: “Finish your coffee, there’s a cab at the door. Two minutes!”
Watson is quite pleased that he has the opportunity for this bit of role reversal, and Holmes seems amused by it also. Another “known each other forever” moment.
Other scenes include:
Holmes’s little smug moment to Watson about his gambit with the press having paid off - note Watson’s look of rueful tolerance as he says, “Very cunning, Holmes”.
That much gif’d scene of Holmes spying Lestrade peering at his papers and calling Watson over silently to show him.
Finally, a bit near the end of the episode where Holmes is explaining himself, and Watson begins to ask a question. Holmes gives him an answer of only two words - a name - and Watson instantly understands.
Now, onto Lestrade’s Apprenticeship. Prominent scenes include visiting the scene where the latest bust was smashed, visiting the morgue, the stakeout scene, and several scenes in 221b. Culminating, of course, in the best one of the lot.
Let’s start with the visit to the bust-smashing spot.
Lestrade, the junior apprentice, asks questions.
Holmes answers the first (which was a direct query for his opinion on matters) then walks ahead, leaving Watson to field the rest.
Watson does so quite well - and then gets stuck.
He glances at Holmes, who - rather than taking over - gives him a hint by gesturing with his walking stick out of Lestrade’s direct sight.
Watson is then able to answer, though is completely stumped again shortly and must verbally ask Holmes for help.
To which Holmes only says, “Remember it for later” (paraphrased).
I.e. “not enough evidence to answer it yet.” A neat insight into Holmes’s thought processes.
Then Holmes can’t help but be dramatic a moment later, when he announces their next destination: the morgue.
(Here, Holmes takes a moment to ponder “the one mystery not even [he] can solve: death itself” - which... is this a story quote or what???)
Anyway. The other pattern continues after that.
Lestrade and Watson talk between themselves again, before Watson notices a potential clue (photograph isn’t whole) and passes it to Holmes.
Holmes then examines the body closely - perhaps comparing it to the photograph?
Lestrade thinks aloud about the next steps and is disappointed when Holmes at first does not react - he has to prod him with a direct question. A sign in itself that Holmes is concentrating on other lines of thought.
This part of the scene gives off Autistic Holmes vibes to me.
They prepare to split off for a while, with Holmes and Watson following one line of inquiry while Lestrade follows another.
Holmes encourages Lestrade on this - after all, if they each follow separate avenues, they can “return and compare notes”.
Another apprentice moment for Lestrade, or so it seems to me. Though Holmes is not so accommodating as to share the photograph.
Note Watson’s little commiserating head tilt and smile before they head off!
And when they’ve gone, Lestrade leans over to study the body, trying to see what Holmes did.
They reconvene in 221b.
Everyone is playing the information game.
Holmes pretends not to care too much about his day’s work, summarising it vaguely.
Lestrade feels smug about his day’s work, and gets to glow in Watson’s encouragement for a moment, before Holmes becomes impatient.
For it’s going to be a long evening - so, Holmes suggests, how about a nap, once we’ve arranged the particulars?
Lestrade is Unamused, at first, with another perplexed glance at Watson, who only nods (it amuses me we can’t see Watson’s expression here).
Our next Team Scene starts with Holmes in his shirtsleeves, flinging papers around.
At least he’s only confining it to one of the smaller rooms, I guess - less work for Mrs Hudson!
The reason for that, of course, is that Lestrade and Watson are napping in the main room.
Until Holmes wakes them up, coats and hats in hand.
Lestrade is particularly tired, it seems, causing Holmes to tease: “Watson, I think you’ve been over-generous with the port!”
Lestrade grumbles: “You’ve been frugal enough with your information...”
You’d think Lestrade would be used to stakeouts, being a police detective - but he seems rather a novice.
Fortunately, their man soon arrives, running across the lawn. The three follow discreetly, leading to several lovely images.
One is the shot of them all peering cautiously over the hedge - Holmes, Lestrade, Watson, in a row.
The other is the one of them peering around a corner together.
But, though they apprehend their man, and Holmes has a delightful exchange with the owner of the house (that finger to the hat brim in acknowledgement!) it’s not over yet.
It’s back to 221b the next morning for the final denouement, leading to the scene that tops them all.
It begins with Lestrade explaining his own theories, rather smugly... only to find that Holmes is Not Listening so intently that Watson must resort to calling for Holmes’s attention on Lestrade’s behalf.
again... Autistic Holmes vibes.
And then the knock at the door, with Holmes adopting a pose - leaning against the mantel - so he can swirl around with quite the dramatic flair when their guest asks if he’s here.
The final bust is delivered and paid for handsomely, the guest ushered to the door, and Holmes turns around with a particular look towards Watson and Lestrade. They just blink back at him because they haven’t caught on yet.
So Holmes of course shows them, in quite the dramatic fashion.
He sweeps the tablecloth off one table (while not disturbing the tea things!), places it on another, and sets everything else up with plenty of flair. All the while with Watson and Lestrade looking on in befuddlement, and sharing confused looks.
Holmes: “Now gentlemen if you would give me your undivided attention...” *brings his walking stick down on the bust with a satisfying thwack-smash.* Then digs through the pieces of the bust to find... “the famous black pearl of the Borgias.”
This dramatic bit of theatre causes Watson and Lestrade to gasp and then clap - Watson even says, “Bravo!”
They pass the pearl from hand to hand in excitement, with Lestrade filling us in on why it’s just so important.
Then Holmes takes the pearl back so he can hide it reveal how he knew it would be in the bust.
(This is another “precious stone” story, so of course Holmes is the one who apparently keeps the thing.)
It’s quite an excellent tale this time, and puts together all the separate parts of the mystery - including bits we didn’t know were connected - together.
Watson is naturally impressed... and so is Lestrade.
“I’ve seen you handle many cases in my time, but I don’t know if I knew of a more workmanlike one than this.”
Holmes is abashed but pleased - offering a little smile with quick glance, then looking away again.
But Lestrade isn’t finished.
“We’re not jealous of you, you know, at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we’re proud of you.”
And Holmes freezes.
Stunned, and - as Lestrade continues speaking - overcome. You can see the emotion on his face, especially his eyes.
Once Lestrade has finished, Holmes says, “Thank you,” twice.
The first is loud, and trying to cover up just how touched he is.
The second, only said after he’s taken the briefest pause to swallow back tears, is much softer, rougher, and very heartfelt.
Oh my god. Just - Jeremy Brett, you marvel! All of that emotion conveyed so thoroughly in just a few microexpressions and tone of voice! Making me feel things, how dare.
After that display, with Lestrade still watching him, Holmes abruptly asks Watson to fetch another case’s files (for an excuse), and shows Lestrade the door. Hurrying him out before Lestrade could continue looking (too) closely and perhaps see more than Holmes intended.
At the door, however, Holmes stops Lestrade and, after saying a little something that basically amounts to the sentiment of, “um, thanks, if you have any more problems, I’m always happy to help”. And then he holds out his hand for Lestrade to shake.
Holmes does not shake hands with just anyone. He’s usually happy with a nod. We’ve had several instances with other characters where they’ve offered a handshake and Holmes has refused it. Now, after Lestrade’s appreciative words (which included mention of the Yarders shaking his hand in praise), he offers Lestrade his hand.
Idk if I’m making too much of this, I can’t check the earlier Lestrade episodes atm to see if it’s the first handshake they’ve had... but the fact that Holmes offered it seems significant, especially coming after the moment just before.
We leave them there, with Holmes releasing his feelings by playing the violin (Granada theme tune <3) and giving Watson his own private concert.
Image description: Watson sits in a lounge chair in 221b, his back to the audience as he watches Holmes, who is in front of the window playing violin, facing the street below. / end image description.
#granada holmes#watching granada holmes#the six napoleons#jeremy brett is the perfect sherlock holmes#sherlock holmes#john watson#inspector lestrade#jeremy brett#edward hardwicke#colin jeavons
72 notes
·
View notes
Text
my old/beautiful book collection
the pretty books shelves
my Tolkien collection
vintage fiction
antique and vintage Bible study books
I have very few truly old books, but more than I remembered are from the early 20th century. List of titles and more details under the cut
pretty books shelves
Reader’s Digest editions: Little Women (Alcott), Tales from the Arabian Nights, Emma & Pride and Prejudice (Austen), Jane Eyre (Brontë), The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper), The Adventures of Robin Hood (Creswick), Two Years Before the Mast (Dana), David Copperfield, Oliver Twist & A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens), The Robe (Douglas), The Adventures, The Further Adventures, The Memoirs, & The Return of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle), A Passage to India (Forster), The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter & Twice-Told Tales (Hawthorne), Kim (Kipling), The Sea Wolf (London), The Song of Hiawatha and other poems (Longfellow), Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Smith), Kidnapped (Stevenson), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court & Innocents Abroad (Twain), A Journey to the Centre of the Earth & Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Verne)
The Confessions of Saint Augustine—E. B. Pusey translation, Franklin Library edition. This was a Christmas gift from my parents and @bluesidedown has the same one
The Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan)—CBN University Press Christian Classics. I don’t actually remember where I got this one but most likely from my dad.
Through the Looking Glass (Carroll)—Heritage Press edition with slipcover and illustrations by John Tenniel. Again, probably from my dad but not 100% sure (he gives me a LOT of books).
The Complete Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)—F. H. Hill translation, Arcturus books with slipcover and illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. Another Christmas gift where Blue and I got matching copies from our parents.
Heretics & Orthodoxy (Chesterton)—Hendrickson Christian Classics. Again, a Christmas gift from my parents.
Nemesis & The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (Christie)—Heron Books. Another one I can’t remember the origin of.
The Prairie (Cooper)—Easton Press collector’s edition. From my parents, Christmas this year. This is pretty much the handsomest book I own.
Great Expectations (Dickens)—Chatham River Press. Based on the inscription on the flyleaf this belonged to my dad first. Probably I got it as a gift or in his thinning of his collection.
The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orczy)—International Collector’s Library. Another of unknown origin.
Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz)—International Collector’s Library. It amuses me that in organizing these books alphabetical by author’s last name, these two matching editions still ended up side by side.
Treasure Island (Stevenson)—Children’s Classics, illustrated by Milo Winter.
Treasure Island–Prince Otto–Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde–Kidnapped–The Black Arrow–The Master of Ballantrae–David Balfour (Stevenson)—Canterbury Classics omnibus. I actually have most of these in other editions, but I keep this for the ones I don’t have elsewhere.....and keep the other editions too because I am a book-dragon.
The Prince and the Pauper (Twain)—Portland House Illustrated Classics, illustrated by Franklin Booth. Not sure where I got this one.
The Greek Myths (Graves)—Folio Society, two volumes in slipcover. These were a Christmas gift from my parents a couple years ago, because I collect fairy tales and folk tales and suchlike.
Tolkien
These are mostly newer Houghton Mifflin or HarperCollins editions. The Silmarillion has Ted Naismith illustrations; Children of Húrin has Alan Lee illustrations, as do the covers of LotR; The Hobbit and LotR have Tolkien’s original illustrations and maps, and Roverandom has cover art by him as well; and Bilbo’s Last Song, Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadill, and Smith of Wooton Major are all illustrated by Pauline Baynes.
vintage fiction (top down, left column first)
Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur—Norwood Press, 1911
Stalky & Co. (Kipling)—Macmillan and Co, 1927. Completely leatherbound with gilt spine and seal on the front cover
The Master of Ballantrae & The Black Arrow (Stevenson)—Everyman’s Library, 1938
Popular Fairy Tales (Andersen)—Blackie and Son. No date, but google tells me it’s from sometime in the 30s/40s/50s based on the binding style
Jo’s Boys (Alcott)—The Children’s Press, 1965
Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne)—Dean and Son. No date, but I’m guessing mid-twentieth century
Three Cheers Secret Seven (Blyton)—Brockhampton Press, 1960
The Burgess Animal Book for Children—Little, Brown, and Company. Copyright 1948, though likely printed later
At the Back of the North Wind (MacDonald), The Little Lame Prince (Mulock), King Arthur and his Knights (Frith), All the Mowgli Stories (Kipling)—Junior Deluxe Edtions. Illustrations are copyright 1956, no print dates
The Door in the Wall (de Angeli)—Doubleday. Copyright 1949, no print date
Freckles (Porter)—Grosset & Dunlap, 1916. Very beat up and mostly held together by packing tape on the spine
The Call of the Wild (London)—Grosset & Dunlap, 1910. It has a very faded picture glued to the front cover as part of the original binding, as well as illustrations throughout. Quite worn, with many pages about to or falling out
Kilmeny of the Orchard (Montgomery)—Ryerson, 1947. This was actually printed before the Anne series was entirely published, as the list of Montgomery’s works in the front only includes the first three books in the series
Captains Courageous (Kipling)—Thrushwood Books. Date uncertain, but google tells me probably 1950s
Heidi (Spyri)—Collins, 1958. While this did originally belong to my dad, it’s the copy I read as a kid and has been on my shelf for a long time
The Mark of the Horse Lord (Sutcliff)—Oxford University Press, 1965. I learned in making this list that my copy is probably a first edition, albeit rather beat up from being a school library copy.
Warrior Scarlet (Sutcliff)—Oxford University Press, 1966. I also have a 1973 copy that still has its dust jacket.
Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)—Dent/Dutton, 1966. A beloved favourite copy that I read many times
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Verne)—Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953. Another beloved copy that I read many times, I flatly refuse to part with this one despite having a less faded and beat-up edition because 1) I am dreadfully sentimental and 2) the illustrations in this edition are much better than in the RD edition.
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (Lanier)—Illustrated Junior LIbrary. Illustrations copyright 1950, no print date
antique and vintage Bible study books
Young’s Analytical Concordance—per a pencil note on the title page this was published circa. 1937, and it definitely looks the part
The Bible as History in Pictures (Keller)—Published in 1964, this is definitely outdated in terms of archaeological evidence of Bible events but it still fascinates me to see
The New English Bible: New Testament—as a Library Edition, I don’t think this strictly counts as a first edition, but it is definitely an early edition as it was printed in 1961 when the NT translation was completed (OT translation of this version wasn’t completed until 1970)
Exposition of Genesis (Leupold)—Wartburg Press, 1942
The Epistle to the Hebrews (Brown)—Banner of Truth, 1961
Luke the Physician (Ramsay)—Baker Book House, 1956
The Gospel in Ezekiel (Guthrie)—Adam and Charles Black, 1857 (or MDCCCLVII if you prefer). This is the oldest book I own, and while is is now quite beat up - the spine is 80% tape and the front cover has come off completely and been replaced with cardboard - I can tell it was a very handsome book when it was new. The spine is bound in dark blue and brown leather, with gilt lettering and decoration, and the edges of the pages have beautiful multicolour marbling on them.
#ooops this is veeeery long#in my defence i have rather a lot of books#so even the fraction that are old/beautiful is quite a few#to quote leah: hope this is enjoyable to others and not just wildly self-indulgent#i had fun and learned a few things about the books i own#and remembered a few i had forgotten i have#about
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
Aleksandras Lileikis (10 June 1907 – 26 September 2000) was the chief of the Lithuanian Security Police in Vilnius during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania and a perpetrator of the Holocaust in Lithuania. He signed documents handing at least 75 Jews in his control over to Ypatingasis būrys, a Lithuanian collaborationist death squad, and is suspected of responsibility in the murder of thousands of Lithuanian Jews. After the 1944 Soviet occupation of Lithuania, he fled to Germany as a displaced person. Refused permission to immigrate to the United States because of his Nazi past, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1950s. In 1955, his second application for permission to immigrate was granted and he settled in Norwood, Massachusetts, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1976. Eli Rosenbaum, an investigator for the Office of Special Investigations, uncovered evidence of Lileikis' war crimes; proceedings for his denaturalization were opened in 1994 and concluded with Lileikis being stripped of his United States citizenship. [...]
He may have helped other Lithuanian Nazi collaborators obtain CIA jobs or immigrate to the United States.[18] In 1995, the CIA claimed that "there was no evidence that this Agency was aware of his wartime activities". This statement was described as a "gross distortion" by journalist Eric Lichtblau.[19]
In 1955, he applied again for permission to immigrate to the United States. Although the CIA passed negative information to United States immigration authorities, his application was accepted without explanation.[20][15] Lileikis' deputy, Kazys Gimžauskas, and three other subordinates also immigrated to the United States.[20] He settled in Norwood, Massachusetts and became a naturalized citizen in 1976.[1][21] Lileikis was involved in the Lithuanian community in the United States; he attended a Lithuanian Catholic church and worked as an administrator for a Lithuanian encyclopedia company [...] Historian Timothy Naftali notes, "the presence of this mass murderer in the general population sent a signal to fellow veterans of the secret police in Nazi-occupied Lithuania that Cold War America was forgiving of these murders".[18] [...]
In late 1982, Lileikis was mentioned in a cable from Berlin as a potential war criminal and head of the Lithuanian Security Police, who had possible connections to Einsatzkommando 3, part of the Einsatzgruppen. The same week, another Lithuanian-American named him as a Nazi collaborator in an interview. This attracted the attention of Eli Rosenblum, who was working as an investigator for the OSI. After gathering information on Lileikis, Rosenblum went to his residence to question him. Lileikis admitted his leadership of the Lithuanian Security Police, but denied his involvement in the killings, stating that he had only done routine security work. Lileikis claimed that he heard rumors that the Germans killed Jews at Ponary but that it was done without Lithuanian participation.[23]
In late 1994, the OSI opened civil denaturalization proceedings against him, seeking to strip Lileikis of his United States citizenship under Section 340(a) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act,[24] which requires United States district attorneys to open civil proceedings against naturalized citizens suspected of lying on their immigration paperwork.[25] At the time, Lileikis was the oldest person to be subject to such an action. The CIA tried to stop the case being filed, threatening not to allow the disclosure of some of the classified records in court.[26] Describing Lileikis as "one of the most important Nazi collaborators" to be investigated by the United States, OSI accused Lileikis of lying about his World War II activities on his immigration paperwork. Lileikis refused to comment on the allegations to the Associated Press and invoked the Fifth Amendment when questioned by prosecutors.[27][11] Lileikis refused to state even simple details on his life, such as his date and place of birth. Under federal law, the Fifth Amendment applies only to criminal proceedings; the prosecution argued that Lileikis should not be entitled to Fifth Amendment protection because he was not subject to criminal prosecution in the United States. The defense argued that Lileikis had a legitimate fear of prosecution in Lithuania, and should therefore not be compelled to testify.[28][29]
In 1995, Judge Richard Stearns of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that Lileikis was not entitled to Fifth Amendment protection because the government had a "legitimate need for a witness's testimony" in enforcing "the organic laws of the United States".[30][31] On 16 November, he granted the prosecution's motion to compel Lileikis' testimony; since he still refused to testify, the prosecution filed another motion on 18 December seeking that allegations which Lileikis refused to answer be admitted, as if Lileikis had confessed to them. This motion was granted by the court on 9 January 1996.[32] The Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad and several other experts submitted affidavits along with more than a thousand pages of archival documents relating to the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, the Holocaust in Lithuania, and Lileikis' activities.[33] On 24 May 1996, Stearns found him responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews.[1][33] The judge noted that Lileikis was "attempting to turn the classic Nuremberg defense on its head by arguing that 'I was only issuing orders.'" Lileikis was immediately denaturalized[...]
Polish authorities indicated that he could face trial in Poland for the murders of Polish Jews in Vilnius.[34] Lithuania initially indicated that he would not be prosecuted due to the lack of eyewitnesses.[35][...]
Lithuania was slow to prosecute Lileikis. At the time, the country sought membership in NATO and the United States asserted that prosecution of Lileikis and other war criminals would be strong evidence of adherence to "western values," a prerequisite to joining the alliance. The message was relayed by the United States Vice President Al Gore during a meeting with the speaker of the Seimas in April 1997 and by thirty members of Congress in a November 1997 letter to the President of Lithuania.[37]
On 6 February 1998, Lileikis was charged with the crime of genocide by Lithuanian prosecutors.[1] It was the first Nazi war crimes prosecution in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.[38] He appeared in court in November 1998, but fainted just after few minutes and was taken away in an ambulance. Three special laws were passed in order to enable continuing prosecution of Lileikis and his former deputy Gimžauskas[1] (who had left the United States in 1995, facing denaturalization proceedings).[39] One of the changes allowed video evidence during genocide trials.[1] He was questioned over video on 23 June 2000 but after twenty minutes the proceedings were interrupted by an attending doctor and Lileikis was taken to a hospital.[40] The U.S. Department of Justice and Jewish organizations accused him of feigning illness.[21] The Simon Wiesenthal Center accused Lithuanian authorities of deliberately prolonging the trial in hopes that Lileikis would die of natural causes before he could be convicted.[21] The trial was well-publicized in Lithuania.[41] Lileikis died of a heart attack at Santara Clinics in Vilnius on 26 September 2000,[8] still insisting on his innocence and that he was the victim.[1][42] His funeral at the Vaiguva [lt] cemetery was attended by about a hundred people, including Mindaugas Murza, a radical nationalist.[2][43]
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
In international relations, it’s the message, not the medium
New Post has been published on https://sunalei.org/news/in-international-relations-its-the-message-not-the-medium/
In international relations, it’s the message, not the medium
Over 180 world leaders maintain social media accounts, and some of them issue policy warnings to rivals and the public on these platforms rather than relying on traditional government statements. How seriously do people take such social media postings?
A new study suggests the general public and policymakers alike take leaders’ social media posts just as seriously as they take formal government statements. The research, by MIT political scientists, deploys novel surveys of both the public and experienced foreign policy specialists.
“What we find, which is really surprising, across both expert audiences and public audiences, is that tweets are not necessarily seen as this form of cheap talk,” says Erik Lin-Greenberg, an MIT faculty member and co-author of a new paper detailing the results. “They’re viewed as the same type of signal as that being offered through more formal and traditional communications.”
The findings suggest that people have become so fully acclimatized to social media that they regard the medium as a vehicle for messages that have just as much credibility as those generated through the old-school method, in which official statements are released in formal language on official government documents.
“One clue that sheds some light on our unexpected findings is that a slight majority of our survey respondents who read a tweet identified what they read as a White House press release,” says Benjamin Norwood Harris, an MIT doctoral candidate and co-author of the paper. “Respondents really seemed to believe that tweets were just another way presidents communicate in their official capacity.”
The paper, “Cheap Tweets?: Crisis Signaling in the Age of Twitter,” appears in the June issue of International Studies Quarterly. Greenberg is the Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of the History and Culture of Science and Technology at MIT; Harris is a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Political Science who specializes in security studies and international relations.
The study fits into a larger body of political science research in the area of “crisis signaling” — the way words and actions in international relations are interpreted, which is often critical to diplomacy. However, when it comes to the use of social media, “There’s been very little research that looks at the credibility of public signals,” Lin-Greenberg notes.
The research consisted of a multilayered set of surveys, conducted in 2021. Using the survey platform Lucid, the scholars surveyed 977 members of the general public about a hypothetical confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, using facsimiles of messages on Twitter (now known as X) and formal White House statements that might have been sent by U.S. President Joe Biden during such a scenario. Separately, the scholars also recruited foreign policy experts from the U.S., India, and Singapore, which all have active English-language think tank spheres, to take the same survey.
Asked to rate the credibility of tweets and official statements on a five-point scale, the public rated official press releases at 3.30 and tweets at 3.22. The policy experts gave a 3.10 rating to the official statement, and a 3.11 rating to the tweets.
“No matter how we cut the data, we just don’t see much difference in how respondents rated Tweets versus official statements,” Harris says. “Even when we vary the formality of the tweet language — including things like all caps and lots of exclamation points — we don’t find an effect.”
A follow-up layer of the survey then asked respondents about a related hypothetical conflict between the U.S. and Iran in 2026, with facsimile tweets and White House statements attributed to both Biden and former president Donald Trump, given that either could be president then. The aim was to see if different leaders influenced perceptions of the two forms of statements.
But in this instance, the public and policy experts regarded tweets and official statements virtually equally seriously. Trump’s statements were given slightly more credibility overall, but with a strong partisan divide: Liberals took Biden’s statements to have more credibility, and conservatives took Trump’s statements to have more credibility.
Overall, the study suggests that many people are simply unaffected by the medium in which a global leader might choose to issue a warning to leaders of other nations. In the surveys, participants were given the opportunity to describe qualitatively what shaped their responses; only about 2 percent cited the medium as an issue.
As Harris notes, the survey data also indicate that slightly more than 51 percent of respondents believed a tweet constituted an officially released government statement. Additionally, about 73 percent of respondents thought tweets were generated in the same way as statements that have the official imprint of a national government.
“People who see a tweet don’t really differentiate it in their minds. They don’t think the tweet is not an official statement,” Lin-Greenberg says. “About three-quarters of the population think it’s coordinated, whether it’s a tweet or an official statement.”
In the paper, the scholars suggest there is considerable room for follow-up research in this area. Among other things, future studies might compare the effect of social media statements to other types of communication, such as speeches. Scholars might also study other social media platforms or broaden the set of countries being studied. Such research, Lin-Greenberg and Harris conclude in the paper, “will further enrich our understanding of the interactions between emerging technology and international politics.”
0 notes
Text
In international relations, it’s the message, not the medium
New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/in-international-relations-its-the-message-not-the-medium/
In international relations, it’s the message, not the medium
Over 180 world leaders maintain social media accounts, and some of them issue policy warnings to rivals and the public on these platforms rather than relying on traditional government statements. How seriously do people take such social media postings?
A new study suggests the general public and policymakers alike take leaders’ social media posts just as seriously as they take formal government statements. The research, by MIT political scientists, deploys novel surveys of both the public and experienced foreign policy specialists.
“What we find, which is really surprising, across both expert audiences and public audiences, is that tweets are not necessarily seen as this form of cheap talk,” says Erik Lin-Greenberg, an MIT faculty member and co-author of a new paper detailing the results. “They’re viewed as the same type of signal as that being offered through more formal and traditional communications.”
The findings suggest that people have become so fully acclimatized to social media that they regard the medium as a vehicle for messages that have just as much credibility as those generated through the old-school method, in which official statements are released in formal language on official government documents.
“One clue that sheds some light on our unexpected findings is that a slight majority of our survey respondents who read a tweet identified what they read as a White House press release,” says Benjamin Norwood Harris, an MIT doctoral candidate and co-author of the paper. “Respondents really seemed to believe that tweets were just another way presidents communicate in their official capacity.”
The paper, “Cheap Tweets?: Crisis Signaling in the Age of Twitter,” appears in the June issue of International Studies Quarterly. Greenberg is the Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of the History and Culture of Science and Technology at MIT; Harris is a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Political Science who specializes in security studies and international relations.
The study fits into a larger body of political science research in the area of “crisis signaling” — the way words and actions in international relations are interpreted, which is often critical to diplomacy. However, when it comes to the use of social media, “There’s been very little research that looks at the credibility of public signals,” Lin-Greenberg notes.
The research consisted of a multilayered set of surveys, conducted in 2021. Using the survey platform Lucid, the scholars surveyed 977 members of the general public about a hypothetical confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, using facsimiles of messages on Twitter (now known as X) and formal White House statements that might have been sent by U.S. President Joe Biden during such a scenario. Separately, the scholars also recruited foreign policy experts from the U.S., India, and Singapore, which all have active English-language think tank spheres, to take the same survey.
Asked to rate the credibility of tweets and official statements on a five-point scale, the public rated official press releases at 3.30 and tweets at 3.22. The policy experts gave a 3.10 rating to the official statement, and a 3.11 rating to the tweets.
“No matter how we cut the data, we just don’t see much difference in how respondents rated Tweets versus official statements,” Harris says. “Even when we vary the formality of the tweet language — including things like all caps and lots of exclamation points — we don’t find an effect.”
A follow-up layer of the survey then asked respondents about a related hypothetical conflict between the U.S. and Iran in 2026, with facsimile tweets and White House statements attributed to both Biden and former president Donald Trump, given that either could be president then. The aim was to see if different leaders influenced perceptions of the two forms of statements.
But in this instance, the public and policy experts regarded tweets and official statements virtually equally seriously. Trump’s statements were given slightly more credibility overall, but with a strong partisan divide: Liberals took Biden’s statements to have more credibility, and conservatives took Trump’s statements to have more credibility.
Overall, the study suggests that many people are simply unaffected by the medium in which a global leader might choose to issue a warning to leaders of other nations. In the surveys, participants were given the opportunity to describe qualitatively what shaped their responses; only about 2 percent cited the medium as an issue.
As Harris notes, the survey data also indicate that slightly more than 51 percent of respondents believed a tweet constituted an officially released government statement. Additionally, about 73 percent of respondents thought tweets were generated in the same way as statements that have the official imprint of a national government.
“People who see a tweet don’t really differentiate it in their minds. They don’t think the tweet is not an official statement,” Lin-Greenberg says. “About three-quarters of the population think it’s coordinated, whether it’s a tweet or an official statement.”
In the paper, the scholars suggest there is considerable room for follow-up research in this area. Among other things, future studies might compare the effect of social media statements to other types of communication, such as speeches. Scholars might also study other social media platforms or broaden the set of countries being studied. Such research, Lin-Greenberg and Harris conclude in the paper, “will further enrich our understanding of the interactions between emerging technology and international politics.”
#Accounts#biden#career#career development#communication#communications#Conflict#data#Department of Political Science#development#Emerging Technology#English#Experienced#Faculty#form#Forms#Future#Global#Government#History#how#India#International relations#Iran#it#joe biden#language#Light#matter#media
0 notes
Text
a look around the Bird House brewery, taproom and cocktail bar in Herne Hill
New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/vZkO0
a look around the Bird House brewery, taproom and cocktail bar in Herne Hill
We recently paid a visit to the new Bird House Brewery in Herne Hill and rather enjoyed our visit. The place is a little bit difficult to find as it’s positioned in an alley behind the row of shops on Norwood Road (see map below). We arrived on an extremely low profile press launch night […]
See full article at https://petn.ws/vZkO0
#BirdNews
0 notes
Text
Norwood Financial Corp as of the shareholder record 2024-04-15 $NWFL #NorwoodFinancialCorpasoftheshareholderrecord2024-04-15
HONESDALE, Pa., March 22, 2024 - Norwood Financial Corp (NASDAQ Global Market - NWFL) and its subsidiary Wayne Bank have recently announced a positive development for their shareholders. James O. Donnelly, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Norwood Financial Corp, disclosed that the Board of Directors has declared a $0.30 per share quarterly cash dividend. The dividend is set to be payable on May 1, 2024, to shareholders of record as of April 15, 2024. This marks a significant increase of 3.5% compared to the cash dividend declared in the first quarter of 2023. Norwood Financial Corp has always placed great emphasis on rewarding its shareholders. In a press release dated September 18, 2023, the company demonstrated its commitment to shareholders by boosting its dividend. This move indicated that the company values the contributions and investments made by its shareholders. As of the third quarter of 2023, Norwood Financial Corp reported a dividend payout ratio of 29.72%. While this represents a decrease compared to the previous quarter, it remains above the company*s average of 50.66%. https://csimarket.com/stocks/NWFL-Dividend-Comparisons.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr
0 notes
Video
vimeo
'Whipping Post' - Joanna Connor and The Wrecking Crew from The Extended Play Sessions on Vimeo.
The Extended Play Sessions - July 11, 2023
Joanna Connor and The Wrecking Crew performing the song "Whipping Post" on The Extended Play Sessions. National and International accolades in the press and radio media resulted into a decade of world tours, a dozen recordings on Ruf Records, MC Records and others, a documentary on Germany’s WDR Television, and a multitude of TV appearances and radio features. Joanna Connor has earned her stripes...as a player, a singer, a writer and a top notch bandleader.
The Band:
Joanna Connor - guitar, vocals
Shaun Gotti - bass
Jason 'JRoc' Edwards - drums, vocals
Nic Byrd - guitar
The Fallout Shelter is an all ages 100-seat performance venue and state-of-the-art broadcast and recording studio, offering one of the most unique live music experiences in New England. Located in Norwood, MA, just 15 miles from Boston, The Fallout Shelter is run under the auspices of the Grass Roots Cultural and Performing Arts Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, promoting and advocating for traditional American Roots music.
Youtube: youtube.com/@thefalloutshelternorwood
Website: extendedplaysessions.com
Facebook: facebook.com/epsfalloutshelter
Instagram: instagram.com/thefalloutshelternorwood
0 notes
Text
“That night,” Connor began, hesitating. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know, but not knowing was making his thoughts swirl unpleasantly. “When they got me drunk,” he continued.
“Connor,” Hank's voice was warning. His tone didn't do anything to settle the nervous roll of Connor's stomach.
“Did I say,” he pressed on regardless, “or do,” he almost didn't want to think it, let alone say it, “anything? Or try to?”
Connor looked up and found Hank's blue eyes gazing down at him with affection, and a frown on his face. “I told you it doesn't matter,” he said.
Connor swallowed over his dry throat. “I know,” he replied. “It still doesn't,” he added, because it didn't. No matter what he'd said or done that night, it hadn't changed anything. Hank had dragged him out for a hangover cure breakfast that Connor had needed to clean his teeth three times after to remove the grease, and then things had gone back to normal until Norwood had turned both their lives completely upside down in one desperate swing of a knife. “But I need to know.”
https://archiveofourown.org/works/45152299/chapters/116601619
Chapter 8 now up.
0 notes
Text
Sheffield United seal their fourth straight win after beating West Bromwich Albion 2-0
Sheffield United welcomed Steve Bruce’s West Bromwich Albion to Bramall Lane for a late kick-off in the Championship yesterday.
Sheffield United have won three of their last five games, West Brom on the other hand have dropped a total of 11 points in their five last games.
Manager Paul Heckingbottom made four changes to his team, starting Baldock, McGoldrick, Robinson and Hourihane and dropping Fleck, Berge and Norrington-Davies to the bench. Davies missed out.
In his first match as manager, Steve Bruce also made five changes to his side after their 0-2 defeat against Preston.
Prior to kick-off, former Sheffield United Mark Duffy, known as the “Bounce Slayer”, was brought out on the pitch in front of 26,541 supporters and received a great reception from the home fans, whilst a clip of his goal in the derby at Hillsborough was shown on the big screen.
It was West Brom who made the stronger start but against the run of play Sheffield United captain and number 10, Billy Sharp, took the lead 22 minutes in, after a lovely bit of build-up play involving McGoldrick and Baldock.
United and Sharp thought they had doubled their lead, after a brilliant pass from central midfielder Conor Hourihane, but the celebration was cut short by an offside decision.
The nightmare continued for West Brom when their central midfielder Jake Livermore was shown a straight red after a scissor tackle on Hourihane five minutes before half-time.
West Brom’s goalkeeper, Johnstone, made two great saves in the first minutes of the second half, keeping West Brom in the game and denying the Blades a second goal to kill the game.
David McGoldrick went down injured in the 67th minute and had to come off shortly after, replaced by Oliver MacBurnie.
Manager Heckingbottom said in the post-match press conference that the striker had: “Done something to his thigh” and that they don’t know the extent of the injury but that it: “looks serious given how he pulled up”.
Billy Sharp doubled United´s lead in the 81st minute with a curled effort into Johnstone´s corner.
After the second goal West Brom created few chances and United were awarded their fourth straight win which puts them right in the play-off mix in 10th place moving above West Brom, with games in hand.
Sheffield United: Foderingham, Baldock, Basham, Sharp (Berge 90”), Egan, Norwood, McGoldrick (McBurnie 68”), Robinson, Bogle, Hourihane, Ndiaye (Gibbs-White 68”)
Unused: Davies, Fleck, Goode, Norrington-Davies
West Brom: Johnstone, Furlong (O´Shean 86”), Townsend, Ajayi, Livermore, Diangana (Mulumby 45”), Carroll, Clarke, Grant, Reach, Mowatt (Robinson 78”)
Unused: Button, Kipre, Tulloch, Gardner-Hickman
Link to the published article.
0 notes
Link
Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Horace Complete Works.
0 notes
Text
0 notes
Text
MariMed Mourns the Passing of Robert Fireman, Chairman, CEO And Cannabis Industry Pioneer and Visionary
MariMed Mourns the Passing of Robert Fireman, Chairman, CEO And Cannabis Industry Pioneer and Visionary
PRESS RELEASE
NORWOOD, Mass., Dec. 12, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — MariMed, Inc. (“MariMed” or the “Company”) (CSE: MRMD) (OTCQX: MRMD), a leading multi-state cannabis operator focused on improving lives every day, today announced with deep sadness that Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and co-founder Robert Fireman died unexpectedly on December 11, 2022.
The Company will provide further information…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Grant funds will help with Norwood business expansion - The Stanly News & Press
Grant funds will help with Norwood business expansion – The Stanly News & Press
Grant funds will help expand the Norwood business
Published on Thursday, December 8, 2022 at 3:26 pm
The North Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority (RIA) has approved grant requests to local governments totaling $2,979,648, Gov. Roy Cooper announced Thursday.
The $2.9 million in funding is on top of the $42 million already awarded this year, making 2022 a record year for RIA investments in…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
These are the areas affected
A number of areas within the metropolis of Johannesburg might be with out water for a minimum of thirty hours.
This comes after Rand Water introduced that pressing repairs must accomplished attributable to a significant burst on the A6 pipeline.
The pipeline provides water from Vereeniging purification works to Zwartkopjes pumpstation.
Johannesburg Water stated water might be remoted at 6pm on Friday.
“It’s estimated that the period of the outage might be for 30 hours. Rand Water and Johannesburg Water infrastructure (towers and reservoirs) could have most capability in the course of the shutdown.
“Nonetheless, the next reservoirs, towers and direct feeds might be affected, ought to the water stage drop to essential ranges,” the water utility stated.
ALSO READ: Rand Water lifts stage 2 water restrictions
Reservoirs and Towers affected:
Foresthill tower;
Yeoville reservoir;
Berea reservoir;
Parktown reservoirs; and
Crown Gardens reservoir.
Forest Hill Tower zone:
Oakdene;
Components of Rosettenville;
Kenilworth;
The Hill;
Towerby;
Linmeyer;
Southdale;
Foresthill;
Townsview;
Robertsham;
Gillview;
Winchester Hills;
Chrisville;
Turf Membership;
Glenanda;
Turfontein; and
Klipriviersberg property.
Yeoville reservoir zone:
Hillbrow;
Parktown;
Spes Bona;
Linksfield;
Observatory;
Jeppestown;
Bruma;
De Wetshof;
Cyrildene;
Forest City;
Fellside;
Highlands;
Kensington Fairwood;
Bezuidenhout Valley;
New Doornfontein;
Bertram;
Lorentzville;
Judith’s Paarl;
Troyeville;
Vrededorp;
Cottesloe;
Doornfontein;
Berea;
Yeoville;
Killarney;
Orange Grove;
Westcliff; and
Structure Hill.
Berea reservoir zone:
De Wetshof,
Observatory,
Bruma,
Cyrildene,
Bezuidenhout Valley,
Bertrams,
Lorentzville,
Judith’s Paarl and
Troyeville.
Parktown 1 reservoir zone:
Victoria, Linksfield, Glenhazel, Linksfield North, Rouxville, Highlands North, Sandringham, Fairmount, Glensan, Dunhill, Raumarais Park, Fairmount ridge, Gresswold, Fellside, Bramley, Bramley Park, Orange Grove, Oaklands, Orchards, Sydenham, Norwood, Waverly, Savoy Property and Kew.
Parktown 2 reservoir zone:
Saxonwold, Hyde Park, Dunkeld, Park view, Parktown North, Greenside, Riviera, Melrose, Oaklands, Orchards, Houghton Property, Parkwood, Norwood, Fairwood, Highlands North, Kew, The Gardens, Illovo, Killarney, Westcliff, Rosebank and Fairway.
Crown Gardens reservoir zone:
Southdale, Booysens Reserve, Ormonde, Mondeor, Nasrec, Ophirton, Lake View, Selby, Evans Park, Robertsham, Winchester Hills, Reuven, Ridgeway, Theta and Selby South.
Direct Feeds affected:
Hector Norris pump station and Turf Membership direct feed.
Hector Norris pump station:
Johannesburg central enterprise district
Turf Membership direct feed:
Turfontein Race Course
Johannesburg Water has urged prospects to retailer enough water all through the outage.
“Additional updates might be supplied to prospects in the course of the course of the outage,” it stated.
ALSO READ: Excellent news as eThekwini municipality reopens some seashores
Originally published at Irvine News HQ
0 notes
Text
My highlights on Jane Ward's - The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (2020) because it was easier exporting it here than to my drive
(Sexual Cultures) Jane Ward - The Tragedy of Heterosexuality-NYU Press (2020) - (PDF) (Resaltar: 191; Nota: 1)
───────────────
▪ 36 (she has a ref for that lol)
▪ many straight men find themselves
with women they don’t actually want to talk to; both parties learn to fake
interest in the name of relationship success
▪ many straight men find themselves
with women they don’t actually want to talk to; both parties learn to fake
interest in the name of relationship success.
▪ sense of what it
means to keep on living and looking forward to being in the world
▪ It is possible for straight men to like women so much, so deeply, that
they actually really like women. Straight men could be so unstoppably
heterosexual that they crave hearing women’s voices, thirst for women’s
leadership, ache to know women’s full humanity, and thrill at women’s
freedom. This is how lesbian feminists lust for women. I do not despair
about the tragedy of heterosexuality, because another way is possible
▪ Najmabadi argues that as the
new concept of heterosexuality began to circulate in the nineteenth cen-
tury,3 Iranians resisted one of its defining principles— that men should
feel love for, and desire companionship with, women. This idea was
a “hard sell,” Najmabadi explains, not only because it conflicted with
long- standing beliefs about women’s subordination and degraded status
(how could men love their inferiors?)
▪ Romantic marriage— and the
forging of bonds between white men and women— was offered to white
couples as a white- supremacist strategy during the early Jim Crow era
and later offered to African Americans as a central pathway to member-
ship in American “normality.”13
▪ aggressively marketed heterosexual love to Americans, campaigned to
make it appear more appealing than homosocial intimacies, and devel-
oped myriad techniques to both normalize and unravel the misogyny
paradox. As they did this, they built both an industry and a culture out
of the contradictions of straightness
▪ the Eugenics Publishing Company
▪ quo of the time: men and women commonly wished harm on each
other, found each other disgusting, and were made utterly miserable by
marriage.
▪ Taking this conflict (i.e., women’s desire for
sexual pleasure and men’s lack of interest in providing it) as a starting
point,
▪ hygiene products marketed to white
women to promote gender and racial purity,
▪ husbands’ rape of their wives appeared to be
the wedding- night default and that this formative sexual assault stood
to ruin marriages from their outset
▪ African American physicians and social reformers declared it a
social and political right
▪ Marriage
▪ marriage to be reconceptualized as a freedom, rather than an
economic obligation or necessity
▪ African American reformers focused on
the ways Black sexual respectability was best achieved through Black
women’s freedom of choice
▪ For Maher, the gap between the fantasy and
the lived experience of heterosexuality (or the reality of married life and
parenting after the wedding day and baby’s birth) left women disap-
pointed and wanting more, a craving that was soothed by watching the
fantasy reenacted on screen over and over again
▪ Despite her sharp analysis of misogyny, Forward,
like Norwood, ultimately placed responsibility for change in individual
women’s hands. Women needed to stop normalizing men’s abuse, set
limits on what they would tolerate, and learn to assert their own needs
▪ One of the great
paradoxes of the heterosexual- repair industry is that this unrecipro-
cated care of husbands is, at least according to Maushart, the reason that
straight women initiate 75 percent of all divorces, but it is also relent-
lessly presented (albeit in ever- new forms of self- help) as the “solution”
to women’s misery.
▪ To the extent that women do need to ask some-
thing of men, they learned that they should do so with patient guidance
and a hefty dose of gratitude.
▪ Disguised
as a form of pop- feminist self- help, He’s Just Not into You reinforced the
notion of a simple gender binary wherein straight women desperately
grasp for men and straight men plod along with no logic, agency, or
emotional depth whatsoever.
▪ But it is
worth noting that the heterosexual- repair industry takes many forms,
several of which emerged or expanded in the late- capitalist period.
The global sex- and romance- tourism industry, for instance, now tar-
gets both women and men, capitalizing on the broad range of reasons
that straight people have become disillusioned with heterosexual court-
ship.75 Homosocial online communities have also proliferated, offering
spaces where straight men, in particular, can vent their frustrations with
heterosexual relationships.
▪ New Age self- actualization seminars and Christian megaevents are
also popular spaces for heterosexual repair, merging long- standing
bioessentialist arguments about gender difference— or masculine and
feminine “energies” and “destinies”— with the project of personal trans-
formation.77
▪ the very gender binarism and misogyny
that produce heterosexual misery are also the interventions proffered to
consumers to remedy it
▪ find out fairly quickly that I am not one of the
women they are interested in seducing. A thirty- eight- year- old feminist,
I am far too old, too serious. Perfect. I am just a fly on the wall
▪ In other words, straight men are finally bur-
dened with some of the labor of making heterosexual desire functional,
though they come to this work, as did their early twentieth- century
counterparts who resisted loving women, with fear and ambivalence
▪ strategies used by dating and seduction coaches are composed of
old, new, and repurposed attempts to reconcile heterosexual desire with
misogyny; intimacy with “faking”; feminism with the science of gender
difference; and seemingly private problems with neoliberal interventions
(self- actualization seminars, personal coaching, and other financial in-
vestments in personal and relational improvement
▪ Their industry is
also a transnational and imperialist one; as American and European
coaches offer seduction bootcamps around the globe, they name and
then “solve” the heterosexual disappointments and desires of men in the
global South.
▪ stunning example of the misogyny paradox, pickup artists built
their success on helping other men resolve the tension between straight
men’s socialization, on the one hand, and straight women’s reality, on the
other. They spoke directly to men’s sense of a lost heterosexual birthright
and an unfulfilled media- fueled expectation that men, no matter how
average in personality or appearance, would have access to a reason-
able amount of uncomplicated sex with women they find attractive.3 The
filmmaker Sut Jhally calls this the “male dreamworld,” a fantasy world
in which young, beautiful women are presented to boys and men as an
entitlement,4 and the feminist writer Laura Kipnis, too, has noted the
perplexing disparity between powerful, straight, white men’s inflated
sense of their own appeal and their over- the- top requirements of the
women they desire (Kipnis describes men like Harvey Weinstein and
Donald Trump as “bulbous, jowly men; fat men who told women they
needed to lose weight; ugly men drawn to industries organized around
female appearance”).5 But as pickup artists knew, many men reached the
pinnacle of heterosexual misery when their dreamworld could no long
integrate real women. In reality, the women these men encountered had
grown tired of men’s sense of entitlement, their scripted flirtations, their
braggadocio, and their aggressive and self- centered approach to sex.
▪ ,6 one
of the immediately observable features of the trainings is the likability of
many of the men who circulate within them, a feeling that stems largely
from their vulnerability and mutual care once inside the protected space
of the seminar.
▪ It
seems like . . . the mood of an infertility group for women
▪ How old are you?’ you say, ‘Old enough to be your father.
And it’s past your bedtime!”
▪ Coaches also gave extensive
attention to what they called “inner game” by replacing men’s defeatist
psychology with a willingness to get “blown out,” or rejected by numer-
ous women, without being psychologically annihilated by it
▪ This “fail harder”
ethos comes directly from corporate, sales- driven motivational frame-
works, which, as the sociologist Rachel O’Neill argues in her outstanding
study of London- based seduction bootcamps, makes seduction less of a
game than it is a form of work, in which men become sexual entrepre-
neurs who approach sex in terms of long- term investment and increased
▪ the coaches at Love Systems, al-
though the negging technique has a bad reputation, some mild and play-
ful negs, used sparingly, are proven to work because they do the opposite
of what women expect. Instead of fawning over women and showering
them with false compliments, men can neg women to show that they are
confident enough not to beg for attention
▪ that men and women want fundamentally different things out
of heterosexuality, and as a result, their attraction and relationships are
fraught with conflict and misunderstanding
▪ hetero-
sexuality works best when men and women learn to say and do things
that they don’t actually want to say or do
▪ hetero-
sexuality works best when men and women learn to say and do things
that they don’t actually want to say or do, for the sake of heterosexual-
ity— to express interest, gratitude, and connection, whether they feel it
or not. In the heterosexual- repair industry, this is not about manipula-
tion; it is about learning an advanced relationship skill.
▪ For one thing, no one likes the idea that sexuality
is scripted and formulaic, even when it is
▪ centuries- long heteropatriarchal campaign about the unique
and mystical nature of romance itself (a campaign that has long served
as an ideological cover for women’s oppression at the hands of men who
claimed to love them
▪ It not only builds on a
century of popular and scientific theorizing about purportedly natural
gender differences and the trouble they cause well- intentioned straight
people, but it also upholds the value of individual self- actualization
(i.e., taking dramatic steps to know yourself and get what you want,
right now) and embraces neoliberal mantras once reserved for cor-
porate motivational posters, applying them to heterosexual sex (“Fail
harder!” “Embrace a mastery mind- set!” “Show her your leadership!
▪ .e.
▪ seduc-
tion coaches worked from the premise that most men, in their natural
state, are not what straight women want. And most women, in their
natural state, are not what men want
▪ Their work
illuminates that straight culture exists in a very conflicted relationship
to what I have elsewhere called “gender labor,”20 the intimate work that
must be done to make both heterosexual attraction and the gender bi-
nary appear natural
▪ On the one hand, gender labor smooths out the
contradictions, but on the other hand, the very act of doing this labor
exposes heterosexuality as a high- maintenance, nonautomatic project
▪ how to be less boring and
weird,
▪ what men receive in return for their enrollment
fee is an entire weekend reflecting on what women actually want from
men and from heterosexual sex itself.
▪ what actually happens
once trainees and the women they have seduced transition from public
to private space, where sex is believed by many men to be a foregone
conclusion. But the curriculum does ask men to actively disavow ag-
gressive masculinity, to exercise empathy, and to spend more time than
they’ve ever spent thinking about the rigged conditions under which
straight women must negotiate sex with men.
▪ which they
call “kino”
▪ For coaches to draw so heavily on scientific and corporate lingo—
kinesthesiological data, best practices, strategy, leadership, and so on—
may seem unsexy, but coaches believe that these are “male languages”
that resonate powerfully with their clientele
▪ Rachel O’Neill expresses a similar concern that this view of
women having a strong but socially repressed sex drive causes seduc-
tion trainees to paradoxically believe that challenging a woman’s “last
minute resistance” is a means of honoring women’s sexual impulses.23
In the seduction industry, acknowledging women as sexual agents
does little to intervene in long- standing claims that women say no
when they actually mean yes
▪ straight women who do not want to have sex with a given
man but consent to his sexual requests because doing so yields other
things that straight women want (safety, making nice, getting it over
with, money, straight privilege, etc.)?
▪ Here was evidence of the power and resilience of narra-
tives that repackage men’s deficiencies as enticing challenges for women
▪ wheels of sexual access or to continue receiving women’s emotional
labor, this makes no intervention into men’s profound sense of en-
titlement to women’s bodies and women’s love, nor does it pose any
challenge to men’s unrelenting attachment to their own masculinity
as the core of their identity, the foundation of their goodness, the basis
on which they connect with other men, and the primary contribution
they think they’re making to the world.
▪ classes, suggesting to straight male
students that if for no other reason, they should at least embrace fem-
inism because doing so will result in better heterosexuality— more
authentic relationships with women and better sex based on women’s
enthusiastic interest, rather than women’s placating and ambivalent
consent. But I don’t feel good about this approach; I want men to be
feminists because they value women’s humanity, because they identify
with women, and because they see that the gender binary is a histori-
cal, political- economic, and cultural invention that has caused no end
of suffering for women and also for themselves. When men extend
empathy and subjectivity to women out of self- interest, to grease the
▪ A SICK AND BORING LIFE
Queer People Diagnose the Tragedy
I’m going on record here to notify every heterosexual male and
female that every lesbian and every homosexual is all too aware
of the problems of heterosexuals since they permeate every as-
pect of our social, political, economic, and cultural lives. . . . I
think all of us are authorities on the heterosexual problem.
— Jill Johnston
Once you’re on this track, you’re pretty much a lesbian and you
think like a lesbian and you live with lesbians and your commu-
nity is lesbians, and the heterosexual world is foreign.
— Gloria anzaldúa
▪ As I have written about elsewhere, method-
ological critiques are also frequently used as a deflection strategy when
readers feel implicated or threatened by new and/or critical ideas
▪ as
▪ “I often reflect on Edith Massie’s [sic] quote in John Waters’s Female Trou-
ble: ‘the world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life.’ Probably the
most obvious part is the inability for many straight couples to be honest
with each other about their additional attractions. . . . I think this is sad
and sews mistrust.” (queer Latinx male)
▪ Back in chapter 1, I quoted from the fabulously over- the- top character
Aunt Ida, played by Edith Massey in John Waters’s 1974 cult film Female
Trouble, who scolds her straight- identified nephew about being a het-
erosexual: “Queers are just better. I’d be so proud of you as a fag. . . . I’d
never have to worry. . . . The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring
life.” So too does one of the respondents above quote Aunt Ida’s wise
words; we both hark back to a dark and utterly bizarre film from 1974 to
find corroboration for something that remains true to our present expe-
rience and yet is rarely acknowledged. Indeed, “boring” was the most
frequently repeated descriptive term used by my queer interlocutors to
describe straight people and/or straight culture. Things that bore us are
not just uninteresting but often also often tedious, repetitive, unorigi-
nal, mechanical, and sometimes mind numbing. To bore something is
also to make a hole in it, to hollow something out; hence, sometimes
being bored feels like being completely empty. Significantly, Valerie
Solanas began SCUM Manifesto, her 1967 wild feminist screed against
the patriarchy, by reminding readers that oppression and boredom are
interconnected: “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and
no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to
civic- minded, responsible, thrill- seeking females only to overthrow the
government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation
and destroy the male sex.”14
▪ boring
▪ Things that bore us are
not just uninteresting but often also often tedious, repetitive, unorigi-
nal, mechanical, and sometimes mind numbing. To bore something is
also to make a hole in it, to hollow something out; hence, sometimes
being bored feels like being completely empty
▪ To bore something is
also to make a hole in it, to hollow something out; hence, sometimes
being bored feels like being completely empty. Significantly, Valerie
Solanas began SCUM Manifesto, her 1967 wild feminist screed against
the patriarchy, by reminding readers that oppression and boredom are
interconnected: “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and
no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to
civic- minded, responsible, thrill- seeking females only to overthrow the
government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation
and destroy the male sex.”14
▪ oppression and boredom are
interconnected
▪ straight, or normcore, fetish
objects
▪ It’s Sad How Much Women and Men Dislike Each Other
▪ There is a lot of shit
talking about unsatisfied wives and midlife crisis feels
▪ From a queer point of view, one of the defining features of straight cul-
ture is complaint. Straight women complain about men they date or
marry with such gusto that queer people are left shaking our heads and
thinking, “My god, why, why, why does this woman stay with some-
one she finds this pathetic?” In The Female Complaint, Lauren Berlant
demonstrates that complaint was cultivated in women through the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to create a singular and
normative “women’s culture” organized around the premise that het-
eroromantic love is what women want most and what they will seek at
all costs, even when it fails them and causes them great pain.23 Prod-
ucts marketed to women— cosmetics, romantic films and literature,
self- help programs— manufactured sentimental belonging in “shared
womanness” by celebrating women’s ability to survive their disappoint-
ing and failed relationships, and this survival became a defining feature
of women’s empowerment. For Berlant, the female complaint also keeps
individual women tethered to their own somewhat- unique expressions
of normative heterofemininity: “[Women’s culture] flourishes by circu-
lating as an already felt need, a sense of emotional continuity among
women who identify with the expectation that, as women, they will
manage personal life and lubricate emotional worlds. This commod-
ity world, and the ideology of normative, generic- but- unique femininity
trains women to expect to be recognizable by other members of this
intimate public, even if they reject or feel ambivalent about its domi-
nant terms.”24 By the twenty- first century, complaints about men, or the
collective recognition that “men are trash” (see the ubiquitous Twitter
hashtag), has become the endlessly meme- ified and T- shirt- emblazoned
slogan for empowered straight ladies. As Berlant explains, this ostensibly
▪ rity and respectability are measured by what one has given up in order
to keep the family system going, an ethos that is challenged by the pres-
ence of a queer child, for instance, who insists on “being who they are.”
▪ universal women’s culture is marketed as one that spans race and class
hierarchies among women, attempting to hail all American women
into its membership. Indeed, to the extent that art and music by Black
women has been embraced by mainstream white feminism, it has often
taken the form of the sassy, resilient Black woman trope described by
Melissa Harris- Perry in Sister Citizen.25 Black women, already cast in the
white imagination as strong, aggressive, and hyperheterosexual, come to
represent the possibility that all straight women can survive bad men, a
hurdle that is arguably a heteroromantic rite of passage (with an anthem
by Gloria Gaynor).
▪ Straight culture’s orientation toward heteroromantic sacrifice is also in-
fluenced by socioeconomic class. Respect for sacrifice— or sucking it up
and surviving life’s miseries— is one of the hallmarks of white working-
class culture, for instance, wherein striving for personal happiness carries
less value than does adherence to familial norms and traditions
▪ Matu-
▪ Queerness— to the extent that it emphasizes authenticity in one’s sexual
relationships and fulfillment of personal desires— is an affront to the cele-
bration of heteroromantic hardship. As Robin Podolsky has noted, “What
links homophobia and heterosexism to the reification of sacrifice . . . is the
specter of regret. Queers are hated and envied because we are suspected of
having gotten away with something, of not anteing up to our share of the
misery that every other decent adult has surrendered to.
▪ For many lesbian daughters of working- class straight women, opting
out of heterosexuality exposes the possibility of another life path, beg-
ging the question for mothers, “If my daughter didn’t have to do this,
did I?” Heterosexuality is compulsory for middle- class women, too, but
more likely to be represented as a gift, a promise of happiness, to be
contrasted with the ostensibly “miserable” life of the lesbian. The lesbian
feminist theorist Sara Ahmed has offered a sustained critique of the role
of queer abjection in the production of heteroromantic fantasies. In Liv-
ing a Feminist Life, she notes that “it is as if queers, by doing what they
want, expose the unhappiness of having to sacrifice personal desires . . .
for the happiness of others.”28 In the Promise of Happiness, Ahmed ar-
gues, “Heterosexual love becomes about the possibility of a happy end-
ing; about what life is aimed toward, as being what gives life direction
or purpose, or as what drives a story.”29 Marked by sacrifice, misery, and
failure along the way, the journey toward heterosexual happiness (to be
found with the elusive “good man”) remains the journey.
▪ hate men. They don’t have to have sex with them!”34
▪ I don’t know why people think lesbians
▪ Roberson acknowledges that she learned as a young girl that, in
straight culture, “flirting” is synonymous with opposite- sex “meanness.”
▪ The dislike, dissatisfaction, complaint, and witnessing by others is
part of the heteroromantic ritual, albeit one that queer people find both
tragic and mind- boggling
▪ exoticized same- sex curiosity guised as repulsion
▪ perceptual dissatisfaction with
‘self’ masked as bourgeois self improvement
▪ Straight men in particular are odd and uncomfortable to be around for
me. Those insecure in their masculinity very often police mine
▪ manifests as gaslighting, invalidating my anxieties and ‘softer’ emotions.
And their constant performances of ‘toughness’ is just very exhausting.”
▪ their inability to feel emotions that aren’t anger
▪ But the thing about heterosexual misery that makes it irreduc-
ible to basic human foible is that straight relationships are rigged from
the start. Straight culture, unlike queer culture, naturalizes and often
glorifies men’s failures and women’s suffering, hailing girls and women
into heterofemininity through a collective performance of resilience
▪ The preoccupation with my repro-
ductive plans (I am child- free by choice and that’s more than some can
comprehend).”
▪ straight people
are held to their own puritanical inhibitions with regards to sex, night life,
and overall interactions with the broader public. . . . I find most mainstream
straight people to be sad, repressed, and oblivious
▪ It
feels like your whole life path is scripted in straight culture. . . . I think I
would feel so hopeless and sad and bored and unexcited and trapped. . . .
It seems like straight culture grooms you to be a better tool of capitalism
by accepting ways of living that are boring and exhausting without ques-
tion.
▪ limited imagina-
tion.
▪ Straight culture, I dunno. I don’t think they really have a culture outside
of the conformity and curious closets, like kink, mistresses, love children,
secret abortions, etc
▪ Their obsession with romantic love? I feel like queer people are more
open to intimate friendships and since we often choose our family units,
our friendships mean more
▪ caretaking can we get with one another, what names can we give to these
new forms of relating, and what rules do we need to put in place to make
sure we enact them safely, sanely, and consensually?
▪ caretaking can we get with one another, what names can we give to these
new forms of relating, and what rules do we need to put in place to make
sure we enact them safely, sanely, and consensually? While the topic at
hand is straight culture, we need to acknowledge this
▪ They tend to have a limited imagination for formations of sexual and
romantic relationships and base their own relationships on ownership
▪ myopic and constrained
▪ unable
to see or understand all of the potentially liberatory sexual and gender
options available to them.
▪ our love of elaborate sexual and
gender typologies
▪ the guiding sexual ethos
of queer feminist life was to ask, How intimate, creative, debauched, and
▪ sexual orientation/preference is based in
this culture solely on the gender of one’s partner of choice,” despite the
fact that many other creative possibilities could be equally or more sig-
nificant
▪ sexual orientation/preference is based in
this culture solely on the gender of one’s partner of choice,” despite the
fact that
▪ Ultimately, your relationship can be as flexible, idiosyn-
cratic, and unpredictable as your libido. . . . Being not- straight taught me
that the old rules don’t work.
▪ the impetus
for many of queer culture’s best insights is the desire not to reproduce
the failed practices of straight culture.
▪ bian feminists for the concept of ethical nonmonogamy, the existence
of feminist porn, the bold notion that people can remain friends and
family with ex- lovers, the emphasis on consent and care within kink
practices, and the radical idea that women can strap on dildos and pen-
etrate people, including their boyfriends and husbands. It is no wonder,
then, that queer people feel sad about, and sometimes exhausted by, the
“limited imagination” characteristic of straight culture. What straight
people don’t know does hurt them, and queer people often find them-
selves launching a rescue effort
▪ What straight
people don’t know does hurt them, and queer people often find them-
selves launching a rescue effort.
▪ What straight
people don’t know does hurt them, and queer people often find them-
selves launching a rescue effort
▪ “The
straight mind cannot conceive of a culture, a society where heterosexu-
ality would not order not only all human relationships but also its very
production of concepts and all the processes which escape conscious-
ness, as well
▪ straight culture can feel decades behind the curve (i.e., straight
people are constantly “discovering” things, like conscious uncoupling
or androgyny or 50 Shades of Grey– style kink, et cetera, that dykes and
fags spearheaded years ago).
▪ We can thank lesbian feminists for
the spate of well- lit, shame- free, and education- oriented sex shops (like
Good Vibrations and Toys in Babeland) where average straight couples
can now buy sex toys without feeling like deviants.
▪ find that straight people have everyday rituals that require the partici-
pation of all people engaged around them. . . . I find there’s a lot of con-
versation that leads to comparing amassed goods around the household
that are coded in various ways. Questions about the latest home gadget,
decorative accent pieces. I think to myself, why is this important? These
conversations tend to evolve into who has ‘better stuff
▪ No one will ever convince
me that it is normal or healthy to celebrate the biological genitalia of an
unborn baby. That’s weird
▪ punk trans partner
▪ The point here is that I spent those first sev-
eral years in my job witnessing, celebrating, and participating in straight
rituals without any of my colleagues even noticing the emotional labor
this required.
▪ I have been to a couple of
queer weddings that I found alienating and boring
▪ Drag- queen performances and dyke psychosexual dramas
are other queer traditions I enjoyed when I was younger but now find so
predictable that I can hardly bear them.
▪ These issues aside, the above comments from my respondents point
to the fact that straight rituals are oppressive on a far greater order of
magnitude, because of not only their disturbing content (e.g., throwing a
party to announce the shape of an unborn baby’s genitals) but also their
compulsory force. Heteronormativity is not a neutral cultural forma-
tion organized around a natural, freely occurring sexual preference but
an obligatory system structuring many of
▪ straight rituals are oppressive on a far greater order of
magnitude, because of not only their disturbing content
▪ their
compulsory force.
▪ Heteronormativity is not a neutral cultural forma-
tion organized around a natural, freely occurring sexual preference but
an obligatory system structuring many of the world’s societies, a system
“that has had to be imposed, managed, organized, propagandized and
maintained by force
▪ straight rituals
feel like they “require the participation of all [people] engaged around
them,” including queer people.
▪ Heteronormative rituals shape how we understand the difference be-
tween youth and adulthood, success and failure, loneliness and connect-
edness. In straight culture, if women don’t get married and have children
and figure out how to stay attractive and keep their man, a cascade of
tragic temporal consequences ensues: the clock is ticking, the window is
closing, youthful beauty is fading, expensive interventions are needed. By
contrast,
▪ No breeders!
▪ No breeders
▪ ing to discover that we both felt that way, but at the time, neither of us
was quite sure what it was that was so straight. Later I pieced together
all of the straight rituals I observed that night, which had combined to
create an intense experience of hetero immersion: women complain-
ing about their husbands, middle- aged couples chatting about how the
school fund- raiser was their big night out that year, men making bad
jokes to which women responded with halfhearted laughter, women in
the bathroom trading information about diet and exercise, donors to
the school being referred to by their shared last name (“let’s all thank
the Petersons for their generous gift!”), the presence of many men I had
never seen before because this is the only school event they show up for,
“his” and “her” silent auction items, and more examples I can’t recall. My
partner and I, a genderqueer butch and a femme dyke, were welcome at
the event, but the event was not for us.
▪ But straight culture is so hegemonic, so overdetermining, that it is
often challenging to imagine how to have certain experiences in queer
ways or without the imposition of heteronormative meaning
▪ discourses of heterosexuality oppress us in the sense that they prevent
us from speaking unless we speak in their terms
▪ truth was that I did not share their perceptions of infant behavior and
that I planned to parent differently than they had, to parent queerly.
Sometimes I tried to explain what this meant to me, but I was often met
with expressions of defensiveness or bafflement.
▪ an environment to feel straight
▪ unbelievably inappropri-
ate.”
▪ queer victories and take them as
their own (love wins!),
▪ love wins!
▪ Sometimes
I feel enraged, often, I feel unsurprised and protect myself before I even
know I am doing that.”
▪ utterly oblivi-
ous to the effect of their presence.
▪ media representations
of gay men as possessing special skills that they are just waiting to share
with straight people
▪ even well-
intentioned gestures of alliance can feel, to queer people, like further
subjection to the straight gaze.
▪ these are platitudes that obscure
queer complexities: Love is not exactly the point of queer liberation. Not
all queer people want
▪ these are platitudes that obscure
queer complexities
▪ Love is not exactly the point of queer liberation. Not
all queer people want to be beautiful or brave. Telling us we’re beautiful
is telling us something we already know. Why do you think we care what
you think to begin with? And the list of internal objections goes on.
These kinds of statements— perhaps akin
▪ . They’ll ‘spice things up’
by using fuzzy handcuffs and think that it’s wild
▪ the concept of someone being ruled out of partner
status because of what their genitals are just is absurd to my mind
▪ Another troubling feature of straight culture’s relationship to sex is
its obsession with gendered body parts
▪ how the orifice feels about itself: what it wants,
what it can do, what it can enjoy. For many humans, the capacity to
take something very large into one’s body is extremely pleasurable
▪ of
course, straight people are not reducible to straight culture. Many
straight people relate to their heterosexuality in dazzlingly feminist
and queer ways. Many straight people, including straight men, are
lovable, vulnerable humans. And many straight people have queer
futures ahead of them, like I once had. I love the person quoted above,
▪ What does it mean that
“queering heterosexuality” is often offered as the best route forward
for straight people to achieve some degree of gender and sexual jus-
tice? Is it possible that heterosexuality, qua heterosexuality, can rescue
itself from its own tragic condition?
▪ the most direct path toward the subversion
of straight culture is for straight people to be more honest about their
perverse desires and gender- bending curiosities (think about all those
straight men waiting for Halloween, their one socially sanctioned op-
portunity to dress in drag
▪ think about all those
straight men waiting for Halloween, their one socially sanctioned op-
portunity to dress in drag).
▪ think about all those
straight men waiting for Halloween, their one socially sanctioned op-
portunity to dress in drag).
▪ ing one’s own capacity for joy and pleasure
▪ as well as in the encounter
between people who can share that self- knowing pleasure with one an-
other. Lorde explained that one of patriarchy’s tools is to deny women
this power, to offer it to us in only superficial forms “in order to exercise
it in the service of men.”6
▪ The formation of modern heteromasculinity is marked by
erotic competition among men for women’s bodies, public conquest of
women’s bodies as a spectacle for other men, and the construction of
sex itself as an act of men’s collective force or manipulation, women’s
collective gift or sacrifice, and a cultural encounter in which men’s plea-
sure is the driving impulse, the inevitable focal point
▪ queer-
ness is defined as practices of gender and sexual nonnormativity
▪ For Lorde, “the erotic” is a kind of power that arises from know
▪ In evoking “deep heterosexuality,” I borrow from the queer femi-
nist artist Allyson Mitchell, whose project “Deep Lez” weaves together
the old and the new, the most useful theories and practices from the
rich archive of lesbian feminist herstory with contemporary intersec-
tional, transfeminist politics. Deep Lez allows us to mine what is lib-
eratory about the practice of women loving women, without dismissing
this herstory outright for its essentialism, false universalism, or other
limitations.8
▪ Straight men do not need to be queered; they need to learn to like
women.
▪ identification and
deep mutual regard, rather than oppositeness and hierarchy
▪ how to identify with
someone and fuck them at the same time (i.e., how to desire women
humanely). I offer these gifts to straight men.
▪ Deep het-
erosexuality draws on lesbian feminist insights about the nexus of desire
and identification in order to help release straight people from the binds
of a sexual orientation characterized by attraction to people one dis-
likes.9 Deep heterosexuality accesses the erotic as a site of identification,
mutual recognition, and joy, and when this happens, as Audre Lorde
explains, “we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffer-
ing and self- negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like
their only alternative in our society.”10
▪ how to identify with
someone and fuck them at the same time
▪ taking responsibility for one’s desire and
articulating what it accomplishes in the broader context of one’s life,
▪ straight women and men were to develop a list of rea-
sons that they have named themselves “straight,” what would be
▪ heterosexu-
ality as a cultivated desire of which they are agent, rather than victim or
passive recipient.
▪ This kind of reframe is, I believe, especially crucial for straight men,
who have been encouraged to relate to their desire for women as so
physiological as to be outside of their control and so compartmentalized
as to enable the disconnect between wanting women and liking them.
This very narrow and conditional way that men have learned to desire
women is arguably a fraction of what that desire could entail, making
heteromasculinity a strikingly feeble and impotent mode of attraction
to women compared with what is possible for dykes and other women-
desiring queers. As the Radicalesbians articulated it, women who desire
other women provide their counterparts not only with sex but also with
“personhood,” “a revolutionary force,” “freedom,” “mirroring,” “solidar-
ity,” “emotional support,” “the melting of barriers,” and “real- ness.”12
▪ Figure 5.1. Heterosexuality is tragic. (From Parks and Recreation)
▪ What do you like
about men?”— I am struck by how often they look like deer caught in
headlights
▪ that inter-
venes in the oft- cited notion that women care more about emotional
connection than they do about sex
▪ the work at hand is to cultivate some kind of agen-
tic relationship to the fact that they have not chosen queerness
▪ A basic premise of straight culture is the idea that gendered bodies,
especially women’s bodies, require purification and modification to be
desirable— shaving, perfuming, toning, refining, shrinking, enlarging, and
antiaging. But in queer spaces, it is often precisely the hairy, sweaty, dirty,
smelly, or unkempt gendered body that is most beloved. I recall the first
time I entered a gay men’s sex shop, in the 1990s in the Castro district of
San Francisco, and encountered a barrel full of lightly stained and dingy-
looking “used jock straps” for sale. It was my introduction to the fact that
there were people in the world who desired men’s bodies so much that
they wanted deep, intimate, and seemingly unconditional contact with
them— even and especially the parts of men’s bodies that straight women
seemed to want to avoid. Most straight women I knew, no doubt due
to their socialization as girls and women, appreciated men’s bodies for
their sexual functionality but not as a site of objectification that they were
excited to dive into and explore— to smell, taste, or penetrate.16 Similarly,
I have been to dozens of dyke strip shows, burlesque shows, drag- king
shows, and sex shows in which women’s armpit hair and leg hair and facial
hair or their body fat or their genderqueer bodies have been precisely the
objects of the audience’s collective lust. Fat bodies and hairy bodies are
also staples of queer dyke porn, not relegated to a fetish category. In other
words, queer desire is marked by a lustful appreciation for even those
parts of men’s and women’s bodies that have been degraded by straight
culture. Like a food adventurer who delights in those parts of the animal
or plant deemed undesirable by the narrowing of mainstream tastes, queer
people’s desire for the full animal has been less constrained. Recognizing
this suggests that gay men may have a deeper or more comprehensive
appreciation for men’s bodies than do straight women, just as lesbians’ lust
for women is arguably more expansive and forgiving than straight men’s.
▪ A
▪ merging of ob-
jectifying desire, on the one hand, and a feminist, subjectifying respect for
those who are desired, on the other
▪ Lesbian feminist ethics dictated that to lust after
women, to want to fuck women— even casually or nonmonogamously or
raunchily— was inseparable from being identified with women as a whole
and with the project of wanting women’s freedom
▪ to have genuine regard for women logically meant not
attempting to own them in marriage or otherwise block their intimacy
with friends and comrades or inhibit their capacity to live engaged and
meaningful lives
▪ meant recognizing that while straight
men claimed to love women, in fact their energies flowed toward men—
toward admiring men, seeking men’s approval, forging bonds with men,
and so on. Heterosexuality, lesbian feminists recognized, was an oppres-
sively homosocial— and often homoerotic— institution that romanticized
men and women’s alienation from each other.
▪ Radical hetero-
sexuality, according to Wolf, had roughly six goals: (1) straight women
needed to be financially independent and/or have the skills necessary to
leave an abusive relationship; (2) legal marriage needed to be abolished
in favor of something akin to (then illegal) gay and lesbian commit-
ment rituals and “chosen family”; (3) straight men needed to disavow
patriarchal privilege; (4) straight women needed to disavow the privi-
leges associated with femininity; (5) radical heterosexuals needed to re-
sist their “gender imprinting,” or their erotic investment in traditional
gender roles; and, relatedly, (6) feminists needed to forgive one another
for their attachments to the gender binary given that gender roles are
such a ubiquitous and powerful part of erotic life
▪ But I believe this
convergence could occur in heterosexual sex, wherein straight men
might have the capacity to feel such enthusiastic and irrepressible desire
for women that their energies flow in the direction of women. Straight
men could be so deeply heterosexual, so drawn to women, as to be
“woman identified,” to see themselves mirrored in the faces, bodies, and
lives of women.
▪ gender differences are sexy— in queer
relationships, too— but in straight culture these differences are almost
always taken to be essential, unchangeable, and of great consequence.
They are imagined to be so significant as to produce inevitable cross-
cultural misunderstandings and tense encounters, battles even, between
people from two different planets. They are believed to cultivate the at-
traction of “opposites” and to inhibit identification and sameness
▪ The stone butch is
often defined by what she did not want to do— she did not wish to be
penetrated or even to be sexually touched in some cases
▪ stone butch symbolizes the
possibility of erotic generosity and woman identification
▪ bio- dildo
▪ sive lust for women can be found in lesbian feminist memoirs, in which
body fat, cancer scars, power exchange, disability, aging, radical activ-
ism, self- love, years of sexual experience deemed “slutty” in the straight
world, and various forms of embodied “ridiculousness” are all fodder for
lesbian feminist arousal
▪ The best women lov-
ers have the scars, the hunger, the weight, the teeth, and the political
and sexual experience that allows them to know and harness their erotic
will. Through Lorde’s desiring gaze, physical features that are often cast
as deeroticizing imperfections in the straight world are remade into
sites of pleasure
▪ men’s lust for women is triggered
by women’s actual temperaments, bodies, and experiences. Men’s sense
of being sexually orientated toward women must signal, as it does for
most lesbians, an acute interest and investment in women’s lives and ac-
complishments because, within deep heterosexuality, attraction is mea-
sly and half- baked if it is not a synthesis of lust and humanization. From
this viewpoint, the hyperstraight man possesses an unstoppable interest
not only in women’s bodies but also in women’s collective freedom. To
be into women, one must be for women. To be an authentically straight
man, or a deep heterosexual— and not a pseudoheterosexual who uses
women to impress men— one must be a feminist.
It Can Get Better
The discourse surrounding queer
▪ queer sensa-
tions of freedom that result from having escaped not homophobia but
heterosexual misery
▪ we cannot underestimate the capacity of neoliberal projects,
like the self- help movement, to repackage and monetize feminist ideas,
reducing them to matters of self- interest and economic exchange
▪ And to Kat and Yarrow, my anchors: thank you for valuing queer and
feminist ways of life as much as I do. I love you both so much.
▪ Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution
(Tallahassee, FL: Spinsters Ink, 2011).
25. Cherríe Moraga, “The Slow Dance,” in Loving in the War Years (Boston: South
End, 1983), 26.
26. Tovia Smith, “This Chef Says He’s Faced His #MeToo Offenses. Now He Wants a
Second Chance,” National Public Radio, October 7, 2019, www.npr.org; Lucia
Graves, “How Famous Men Toppled by #MeToo Plot Their Comeback,” The
Guardian, May 27, 2018, www.theguardian
▪ Wypijewski
▪ this way, the seduction industry sells straight men the opportunity to participate in a global homosociality, in which access to sex with white women becomes the foundation of cross- racial and cross- national solidarity and “love” among men. As if taken right from the pages of Eve Sedgwick’s analysis of what she famously termed the “erotic triangle,” wherein sex with women serves to strengthen the bonds of men
▪ Yeah, I mean, you were the typical brown guy that wanted to come to America to get the hotter chicks!”
▪ Hochschild finds the answer in a complex mix of rural whites’ gratitude for their industrial jobs, their Christian belief that God will ultimately restore any human damage done to the Earth and to their own bodies, and their belief that the government cannot be trusted to help them.
▪ Under feminist scrutiny, seduction coaches tamped down their focus on conquering women and instead amplified their focus on healing men. But this approach, too, takes its cues right from the old mythopoetic men’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which sought to help men rediscover their lost masculinity through spiritual healing with other men and with a strong dose of antifeminist woman- blaming thrown in for good measure
▪ apparently, one of the most effective strategies for getting straight men on board with profeminist, antirape messages is giving them space to celebrate their masculinity in the same breath. From a queer perspective, this is one of the more discouraging elements of the heterosexual tragedy: when straight men move toward feminism, they almost always do so in ways that prop up the gender binary that causes their problems in the first place! Straight men’s feminism— when anchored in gender- essentialist ideas about “real manhood”— also relies on the emotional labor of straight women who are compelled to celebrate and reward men for putting their “masculine energy” or “male strength” to a nonviolent use
▪ where men are] having fun with the women but they are not masculine with the women.
▪ , the romance lies not in the relationships men have with women— which are described in more transactional terms (the win/win)— but in the relationships they have with one another.
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
mikewarehousesblog
Mikewarehouse
himolata
Untitled
eandkfeet
E and K
xtradonaire1
Politics & Life Experiences
eatdreamwell-blog
La Reveus