May 14
Ninalyn commented on Savage Love.
Hey DSG, you know why I hate women like you?
I'll tell you.
It's because I'M A LESBIAN WHO'S SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF YOUR SHENANIGANS.
I am not your "experiment."
I am not your "feel good drunk plaything."
I AM A WOMAN WHO WOULD LIKE TO HAVE AN ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A WOMAN AND THE NEXT TIME ONE OF YOU BITCHES LEADS ME ON ALL NIGHT LONG AND THEN BREEZES PAST ME TO GO BACK TO HER BOYFRIEND JUST AS I'M READY TO ASK FOR YOUR NUMBER AND GO HOME, I WILL THROW YOU INTO A FUCKING WALL.
Don't want it to be "on you"? Then LEARN SOME FUCKING RESPECT.
Signed,
A lesbian who's been led into actual, buying-you-nice-things, taking-you-to-dinner relationships TWICE by girls who then proceeded to actually be straight and not interested in anything but drunk kissing
I'll tell you.
It's because I'M A LESBIAN WHO'S SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF YOUR SHENANIGANS.
I am not your "experiment."
I am not your "feel good drunk plaything."
I AM A WOMAN WHO WOULD LIKE TO HAVE AN ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A WOMAN AND THE NEXT TIME ONE OF YOU BITCHES LEADS ME ON ALL NIGHT LONG AND THEN BREEZES PAST ME TO GO BACK TO HER BOYFRIEND JUST AS I'M READY TO ASK FOR YOUR NUMBER AND GO HOME, I WILL THROW YOU INTO A FUCKING WALL.
Don't want it to be "on you"? Then LEARN SOME FUCKING RESPECT.
Signed,
A lesbian who's been led into actual, buying-you-nice-things, taking-you-to-dinner relationships TWICE by girls who then proceeded to actually be straight and not interested in anything but drunk kissing
Apr 30
Ninalyn commented on Savage Love.
@auntie_grizelda: you seem to have missed the part in all of these books, ALL of them, where the men in question get what's coming to them. Dolores is portrayed as a hero for tricking Joe into the well in order to save her daughter; indeed, the police in the case decline to charge her for his murder. Wendy is abused, yes--but by a reprehensible man. Would you rather we just not discuss that there are abused women? That, to me, seems the more misogynistic attitude.
And Carrie is horror--it's not supposed to be uplifting. If you want that, go read Nicholas Sparks.
Don't accuse a man of misogyny because he paints a real picture of the world. Denying that picture--THAT is the real misogyny.
And Carrie is horror--it's not supposed to be uplifting. If you want that, go read Nicholas Sparks.
Don't accuse a man of misogyny because he paints a real picture of the world. Denying that picture--THAT is the real misogyny.
Apr 16
Ninalyn commented on Savage Love.
@5: You do realize King speaks very highly of women and that very often they're the strongest protagonists in his books, right? You seem to be misapplying the term misogyny. Yes, women suffer a lot in King books. SO DO MEN. Take Gerald's Game: She does a lot of damage to her hand and has mental trauma from childhood assault, but all of the main men in this book end up dead. Likewise, Dolores Claiborne: Dolores and her daughter are badly used, but Dolores gets her own back at the man who used them. Ah, but both of those books are connected and they were written a year or two apart--well then, how about The Stand, where the mentor character, God's representative on earth, is a woman, and the starter of the new society is also a woman? What about The Dark Tower--where a huge chunk of the plot hinges on one woman who is actually four, and that woman (in all her forms) is shown repeatedly as strong, wonderful, and independent?
Not convinced? Maybe it's his recent work that has you riled up, like--oh, I dunno, that horrible book about a widow working through her grief and saving her husband and herself, Lisey's Story. Or perhaps it's Duma Key--where the deaths of several men are treated as not such of a much but the death of a mother figure and a daughter are such travesties that they become the unforgivable acts of the book. Or even, perhaps, the book that started it all--Carrie, where the female protagonist (unusual enough for horror at that time) is a tragic figure for whom there is literally no possible happy ending? Carrie's story is a very real one; girls just like her exist all over this country, and drawing light to it isn't misogynistic--it's the exact opposite.
Or wait--maybe it's his short fiction? I mean, certainly, Mrs. Todd's Shortcut--in which a woman manages to transcend all known laws of physics to fulfil the destiny she chooses--is definitely anti-woman. And "A Good Marriage," lord, let's not even get started on how a man who would harm women is treated as being BEYOND the lowest of the low in that story.
Misogyny =/= no woman is treated badly, ever. It's HORROR. The men and the women are equal fodder for bad shit to happen. King's women, on the whole, are strong, independent, wonderful women, not a Bella Swan among them.
Please direct claims of misogyny where they belong--which is not at King.
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Not convinced? Maybe it's his recent work that has you riled up, like--oh, I dunno, that horrible book about a widow working through her grief and saving her husband and herself, Lisey's Story. Or perhaps it's Duma Key--where the deaths of several men are treated as not such of a much but the death of a mother figure and a daughter are such travesties that they become the unforgivable acts of the book. Or even, perhaps, the book that started it all--Carrie, where the female protagonist (unusual enough for horror at that time) is a tragic figure for whom there is literally no possible happy ending? Carrie's story is a very real one; girls just like her exist all over this country, and drawing light to it isn't misogynistic--it's the exact opposite.
Or wait--maybe it's his short fiction? I mean, certainly, Mrs. Todd's Shortcut--in which a woman manages to transcend all known laws of physics to fulfil the destiny she chooses--is definitely anti-woman. And "A Good Marriage," lord, let's not even get started on how a man who would harm women is treated as being BEYOND the lowest of the low in that story.
Misogyny =/= no woman is treated badly, ever. It's HORROR. The men and the women are equal fodder for bad shit to happen. King's women, on the whole, are strong, independent, wonderful women, not a Bella Swan among them.
Please direct claims of misogyny where they belong--which is not at King.
Mar 5
Ninalyn commented on SL Letter of the Day: Sometimes You Just Have to Step Back.
@83 I believe the point #81 was making is that if this person went to a mental health clinic rambling like this, they would suggest she sign up for counseling and try to help her. You seem to have mistaken "help" for "Auschwitz."
Mar 5
Ninalyn commented on Savage Love.
Yup, definitely recycled, AND with information missing from the original letter (Dan originally advised that the LW might be training himself to not have erections, and suggested he consider this when discussing long-term play with his GF).
C'mon, Dan. Only one letter, and a recycled one at that?
C'mon, Dan. Only one letter, and a recycled one at that?
Feb 13
Ninalyn commented on Savage Love.
I skipped a whole bunch of the comments so this may be repeat advice, but DUD--as a lesbian whose mom once tried to do the "compassionate premature outing" thing when I was thirteen and sent me scuttling in tears to the very back of the closet in fear, here is my advice:
Address the porn.
Not whether it's gay, not whether it's straight. Not whether it's moral, not whether it's kinky or vanilla or stereotypical or WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER. Just the fact that there is porn, and it is on his computer:
"Hey, bud, I want to borrow your ear for five minutes. I've noticed some adult sites on your laptop. [Give him a second here to offer up whatever protest it is he wants to give you, from "I clicked it by accident" to "I didn't know it was porn".] Okay, that's fine--I just want to make sure you know free adult sites have a tendency to come with a metric asston of viruses attached, so if you do decide you want to browse--I'd rather have you looking at porn than having sex--make sure your firewall is turned on and don't bypass it just because something looks tempting, okay? There's more than enough out there and it's not worth risking your computer. [Give him time to agree.] One more thing. I want you to read this. It's by a columnist who actually gives pretty damn good advice." Then give him a printout of Dan's column on getting your twenty-year-old self laid. It'll embarrass the hell out of him (especially the part about masturbation), but it'll embarrass--and mortify--him far less than actually hearing this stuff from YOU. You sound like a good dad, DUD, but the last thing teenagers want is to hear their parents talking to them about how to have sex. I should know--my mom tried to take the open-and-honest approach and I was a terrified prude until I left her house.
That's it. Address the porn. Especially if he's been visiting sites where the address makes it blatantly obvious what's there. And do so NATURALLY. Don't "avoid" mentioning that it's gay porn--just don't mention it because in the context of what you're saying, it doesn't matter. Your kid is exploring. Let him explore and tell him to do it safely. If you let him see that it's not such of a much--that your first priority is his health and safety--he will be more willing to come out, especially because you've already made it not a big deal between you. (Feel free to freak out to a friend who can keep his or her mouth shut WELL OUT OF THE HEARING RANGE of your son, though--my mom did when I finally came out. It was the "out of my hearing range" part she failed at. The telephone does not count. Get out of the house, AWAY from the kid and talk there. You needing to adjust does not make you a bad ally or a bad dad. You having a big sad in front of your son would not be a gold star, however.)
And if he goes "uh, dad . . . about that . . . . " when you give him the two-minutes-or-less porn chat, be ready to NOT GIVE ADVICE, and say the following: "Yeah, I gathered. I love you." Nothing about "I still love you" or "I love you anyway." Don't make it out to be an "in spite of that fault . . . " thing. Just LOVE HIM.
Don't overwhelm him with PFLAG information. Don't offer to call the school and demand a GSA. Let HIM tell YOU what he needs. He will know best. Then make sure you follow through--that your door is always open.
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Address the porn.
Not whether it's gay, not whether it's straight. Not whether it's moral, not whether it's kinky or vanilla or stereotypical or WHAT-THE-FUCK-EVER. Just the fact that there is porn, and it is on his computer:
"Hey, bud, I want to borrow your ear for five minutes. I've noticed some adult sites on your laptop. [Give him a second here to offer up whatever protest it is he wants to give you, from "I clicked it by accident" to "I didn't know it was porn".] Okay, that's fine--I just want to make sure you know free adult sites have a tendency to come with a metric asston of viruses attached, so if you do decide you want to browse--I'd rather have you looking at porn than having sex--make sure your firewall is turned on and don't bypass it just because something looks tempting, okay? There's more than enough out there and it's not worth risking your computer. [Give him time to agree.] One more thing. I want you to read this. It's by a columnist who actually gives pretty damn good advice." Then give him a printout of Dan's column on getting your twenty-year-old self laid. It'll embarrass the hell out of him (especially the part about masturbation), but it'll embarrass--and mortify--him far less than actually hearing this stuff from YOU. You sound like a good dad, DUD, but the last thing teenagers want is to hear their parents talking to them about how to have sex. I should know--my mom tried to take the open-and-honest approach and I was a terrified prude until I left her house.
That's it. Address the porn. Especially if he's been visiting sites where the address makes it blatantly obvious what's there. And do so NATURALLY. Don't "avoid" mentioning that it's gay porn--just don't mention it because in the context of what you're saying, it doesn't matter. Your kid is exploring. Let him explore and tell him to do it safely. If you let him see that it's not such of a much--that your first priority is his health and safety--he will be more willing to come out, especially because you've already made it not a big deal between you. (Feel free to freak out to a friend who can keep his or her mouth shut WELL OUT OF THE HEARING RANGE of your son, though--my mom did when I finally came out. It was the "out of my hearing range" part she failed at. The telephone does not count. Get out of the house, AWAY from the kid and talk there. You needing to adjust does not make you a bad ally or a bad dad. You having a big sad in front of your son would not be a gold star, however.)
And if he goes "uh, dad . . . about that . . . . " when you give him the two-minutes-or-less porn chat, be ready to NOT GIVE ADVICE, and say the following: "Yeah, I gathered. I love you." Nothing about "I still love you" or "I love you anyway." Don't make it out to be an "in spite of that fault . . . " thing. Just LOVE HIM.
Don't overwhelm him with PFLAG information. Don't offer to call the school and demand a GSA. Let HIM tell YOU what he needs. He will know best. Then make sure you follow through--that your door is always open.
Jan 30
Ninalyn commented on Savage Love.
@55: Nonsense. "Safe in a sexually hostile world"? Sure, the world is sexually hostile. I'm a large-chested blonde and nobody knows that better than me (I get whistled at in the grocery store like I'm a dog . . . lucky I haven't been arrested for assaulting one of these bozos yet). But you know what . . . I am not insecure about my girlfriend bringing home porn (straight, lesbian, m/m or poly). It's a way to spice up the sex life. Fortunate has this one right--it's flat-out insecurity and I say that AS A WOMAN. As for taste or politics . . . how long have you been reading this column? Not long enough, say, oh, the last two months, or you'd have heard Dan talk about sex-positive, woman-positive porn (both for and by women). And I'm going to guess you're one of those Insecure Irenes yourself--or you'd also know about sites like Xtube, where amateur porn is king/queen and videos run the gamut from poorly-made, "look, it's a badly-lit penis ramming into a badly-lit hole!" clips to twenty-minute videos from foreplay to lovemaking (and I use that term deliberately--once upon a time there was a French couple on Xtube who posted two or three times a month and it was very clear both of them had an exhibitionist kink, and weren't just in it for the down and dirty). There's not a whole lot for a woman to object to if another woman wants to show off her tits. It's her body and her right.
Queralinda: Sorry, I agree with Fortunate and as noted above, I'm female. Do I like those "busty bitches" who "get what they deserve" videos? FUCK NO. Do I enjoy porn? Bet your ass. It sounds to me like you're objecting to all porn while disguising your argument as being about objectionable forms of porn like snuff or coercive porn.
You know what the solution to that is? YOU ARE. Embrace sex-positive, partner-positive porn (there's a great selection of amateur stuff on Xtube, as noted above, and that's only a jumping-off place) and state in explicit terms, when asked, why you disapprove of exploitative porn--while making it EXPLICITLY CLEAR that you are referring to a subgenre, not the genre as a whole. I have to do this a lot because I fall into one of those subgenres--I'm a lesbian who can't stand "lesbian" porn where some bored-looking actress goes "oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah" and could as easily be giving a naked weather report as having sex. I object routinely to such porn while pointing people to women-friendly, lesbo-friendly porn and porn actors like Jiz Lee. You can too--if you can stop being totally anti-porn.
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Queralinda: Sorry, I agree with Fortunate and as noted above, I'm female. Do I like those "busty bitches" who "get what they deserve" videos? FUCK NO. Do I enjoy porn? Bet your ass. It sounds to me like you're objecting to all porn while disguising your argument as being about objectionable forms of porn like snuff or coercive porn.
You know what the solution to that is? YOU ARE. Embrace sex-positive, partner-positive porn (there's a great selection of amateur stuff on Xtube, as noted above, and that's only a jumping-off place) and state in explicit terms, when asked, why you disapprove of exploitative porn--while making it EXPLICITLY CLEAR that you are referring to a subgenre, not the genre as a whole. I have to do this a lot because I fall into one of those subgenres--I'm a lesbian who can't stand "lesbian" porn where some bored-looking actress goes "oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah" and could as easily be giving a naked weather report as having sex. I object routinely to such porn while pointing people to women-friendly, lesbo-friendly porn and porn actors like Jiz Lee. You can too--if you can stop being totally anti-porn.
Jan 29
Ninalyn commented on If Your Gay Kid Is Being Bullied At School And He Begs You To Homeschool Him....
@9: Wrong. I was homeschooled for two years. My mother was a teacher at a very poor school and delivered pizza on the weekends; as a result we joked that I attended "night school" (I was expected to study my course materials from 10am to 1pm, then to have classroom time from 5pm to 9pm), since my dad also worked two minimum-wage jobs and was on the road as a trucker a lot. When he was home, he took care of my "life skills course" by having me help him with home repairs--rather than stitching samplers I helped to paint a deck, rip out and replace a staircase, and put up new plasterboard walls to replace highly flammable paperboard in our postwar tract house.
I wouldn't trade those two years for anything. Was it "traditional" school? No way. Did I flourish in them? Oh yes, and I was removed from the classroom for similar reasons to those Dan describes here (I'm autistic; at the time I had not been properly diagnosed and you can probably imagine the havoc).
@13: This is a wonderful idea! Rather than "foster system" I would use the term "host family," as you would be hosting a child to provide new and beneficial experiences. "Foster family" sort of implies the bio-parents can't do their jobs. Perhaps this is something we should try to get actively implemented in various states.
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I wouldn't trade those two years for anything. Was it "traditional" school? No way. Did I flourish in them? Oh yes, and I was removed from the classroom for similar reasons to those Dan describes here (I'm autistic; at the time I had not been properly diagnosed and you can probably imagine the havoc).
@13: This is a wonderful idea! Rather than "foster system" I would use the term "host family," as you would be hosting a child to provide new and beneficial experiences. "Foster family" sort of implies the bio-parents can't do their jobs. Perhaps this is something we should try to get actively implemented in various states.
Dec 25, 2012
Ninalyn commented on Savage Love.
Broken link alert! "An After-Christmas Miracle" keeps redirecting here and I can't read the new column.
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I do not expect this. What I expect is to NOT BE USED. Don't start a relationship with me, let me take you on dates, call you my girlfriend TO OTHER PEOPLE, etc., etc., and two months in when I suggest you sleep over, you say "oh, I'm straight, I thought you knew."
THAT is bullshit. If you're straight and you know I'm gay and you know I think we're dating and you are any kind of responsible, you'll say "hey--no offense, but you do know I'm straight, right?" the first time I introduce you as my girlfriend. It's not called "friendzoning"--I've definitely had straight girl friends I was attracted to, gone to a couple of activities with, and then had them tell me "you know, just so you know, I love doing stuff with you but I'm straight" and I have no problem with that (one of my best friends in college was a failed dating attempt that we still laugh about several years later). What I have a problem with is being really, actively led on.
@ other commenters telling me to stop hanging with douchebags, etc.: out of a total of four relationships I've had, TWO of them have been with girls like this--one whom I met first online through a shared love of musicals and then in person, and one who was part of a group of my friends; we did in fact meet in a bar, but could as easily have done in a restaurant or other "girls' night out" venue; the bar was just where we happened to be hanging that night. Where did they get the idea it was okay to make me an experiment (one of them flat out told me she was bisexual, only for me to discover later that she has no interest in women beyond what they can buy for her) without telling me? And I quote: "I see other girls do it all the time, I didn't know you'd be so upset." WHERE DO YOU SUPPOSE THEY ARE SEEING THESE GIRLS, HM?
DSGs make it harder for lesbians and MUCH harder for bisexuals: 24, 26, I hate to tell you I'm one of those lesbians with a no-bisexuals rule because fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. There is no fooling me three times.
Damned right I'm angry. I'm angry that it's okay for two DSGs to go to a lesbian bar, spend all night making out with each other, and then call me a disgusting queer. I'm angry that they think it's funny to point and laugh and try to shame actual lesbians. I'm angry for my bisexual friends that they have to put up with this bullshit (I assume that they, at least, are not lying to me about their orientations because, having been placed firmly in the friend category, they have no reason to do so). I'm angry and disgusted that this behaviour leads to men who find out I'm a lesbian and go "so, like--I can watch you and your girlfriend make out, right?" (The number of men who have offered to pay me to do this is absolutely revolting. I'm not a whore, assholes.) I'm angry that there are women who think it's funny to go out of their way to cockblock other women.
Don't like it? Try being on the gay side of the fence for once. Ask a gay man what he hates most about gay bars these days, and odds are good he'll agree with me: "All the straight women."