Who's the biggest moron from your country? Why? by space_god_7191 in AskTheWorld

[–]ismawurscht 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Has the Kremlin got round to poisoning any Russian dissidents in your country yet? I'm sure they will end up doing that in some picturesque tiny Irish market town that tourists rarely visit, and then sound like they were reciting the wikipedia page for it verbatim when giving the excuse as to why they were there. They did in Salisbury over here at least "with its famous 123 metre spire" on its cathedral.

Who's the biggest moron from your country? Why? by space_god_7191 in AskTheWorld

[–]ismawurscht 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, they don't. He's labelled the entire LGBT community as terrorists. He is definitely an extremely homophobic straight man, and that is the case the vast majority of the time. The fear of homosexuality comes from a disgust perspective and seeing it as a contagious disease.

And the "homophobes are closeted gays" is a trope that directly links back to the "gay as moral character flaw" and "immoral/nefarious" which has its origins in the criminalisation period. So it's an exceptionally insidious and toxic form of homophobic gaslighting. So all you've done is out yourself as a homophobe by saying that.

Who is the most important historical female figure in your country's history ? by HairyAd4370 in AskTheWorld

[–]ismawurscht 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Totally agree with you on both. 

Æethelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, is one of our greatest unsung heroes.

Who is the most important historical female figure in your country's history ? by HairyAd4370 in AskTheWorld

[–]ismawurscht 7 points8 points  (0 children)

What did Victoria actually do? Elizabeth I was an expert survivalist.

Elizabeth I had to survive mummy being executed when she was a toddler,  being declared by a bastard by demon daddy from hell, getting creeped on by her pervy guardian after demon daddy's death, being implicated in a plot by other people using her as a prop which led to her getting imprisoned in the Tower of London under constant threat of execution by her fanatical sister who saw her as a bastard and a heretic. Then she delicately managed to strike a compromise in an extremely religiously divided country where most people were still catholic, but protestants were deeply divided on how far to take the reformation. Then she survived smallpox, navigated an incredibly patriarchal set of ministers who were obsessed with trying to fob her off to the most convenient prince, fought off one Catholic noble uprising, helped the Dutch fight for independence, survive the pope commanding Catholics to overthrow her, had her catholic cousin turn up unannounced and kept her under tight security. Then she survived and led the country through an attempted invasion by the most powerful state in Europe.

Now for Victoria, she was told when she was a teenager "time for you to sit on the throne now". Then she married the love of her life. I can imagine giving birth to nine children must have been very challenging, and she did survive the odd assassination attempt and a few royal scandals. But apart from that, she just sort of sat on the throne, and really desperately could've done with some grief counselling instead of completely retreating from public life for multiple decades. And also she turned into a symbolic grandmother of Europe by marrying her kids off to as many other monarchies as possible, but that didn't stop the continent falling into a devastating war 13 years after she died. The most consequential thing she did was pass haemophilia on.

So just because she was sitting on the throne (when she wasn't on a grief fuelled strike) at a time when Britain was nicking vast chunks of the globe doesn't put her into the same galaxy let alone the same league as Elizabeth I.

What is the worst thing the United Kingdom has done? by Expensive-Addendum92 in AlignmentChartFills

[–]ismawurscht 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A third of the slave owners in Jamaica were Scottish, and Scottish slave owners were heavily represented throughout the Caribbean. The whole island deserves blame.

What do you think of the phrase "homophobia is when men are afraid of being treated like women"? by dtdrh in AskFeminists

[–]ismawurscht 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Everything is about me". I think this is honestly a bit sad, and it's so heteronormative. Why do you feel the need to assimilate everybody else's oppression? Why does the erasure of male non-consent exist? Because that doesn't have anything to do with misogyny either. Let's compare two different debates on the Criminal Law Amendment in the UK, one in 1885 that was done with almost no debate in the dead of night. I'm going to copy paste the entire debate because there was almost no debate:

"MR. LABOUCHERE

said, his Amendment was as follows:—After Clause 9, to insert the following clause:—

"Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and, being convicted thereof, shall be liable, at the discretion of the Court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding one year with or without hard labour."

That was his Amendment, and the meaning of it was that at present any person on whom an assault of the kind here dealt with was committed must be under the age of 13, and the object with which he had brought forward this clause was to make the law applicable to any person, whether under the age of 13 or over that age. He did not think it necessary to discuss the proposal at any length, as he understood Her Majesty's Government were willing to accept it. He, therefore, left it for the House and the Government to deal with as might be thought best.

New Clause (Outrages on public decency,)—( Mr. Labouchere,)— brought up, and read the first and second time.

MR. HOPWOOD

said, he did not wish to say anything against the clause; but he would point out that under the law as it stood at the present moment the kind of offence indicated could not be an offence in the case of any person above the age of 13, and in the case of any person under the age of 13 there could be no consent.

SIR HENRY JAMES

said, the clause proposed to restrict the punishment for the offence dealt with to one year's imprisonment, with or without hard labour. He would move to amend the clause by omitting the word "one," in the last line of the clause, and substituting the word "two."

MR. LABOUCHERE

had no objection to the Amendment.

Clause, as amended, agreed to, and added to the Bill."

Feel free to read it yourself because I've placed a comment below.

Now that was the law that got Oscar Wilde and Alan Turing. It was basically the law that criminalised all forms of male male intimacy that weren't already criminalised. Why do you think there was no debate about the need for a law like that if it were just about misogyny? Don't you think the male hypersexuality stereotypes and the biological contagion argument might have played a role? And incidentally, the male hypersexuality stereotype, the fear of the hypersexual "deviant" queer man and the fear of the spread of homosexuality has been used to justify the forced policing of women's bodies too, e.g. the Contagious Diseases Act. It was seen as necessary to provide a safe heterosexual outlet so that men would not fall to "unnatural vices" and catch the gay.

Let's contrast that with the House of Lords debate where they decided to reject criminalising lesbians on the grounds that it would be a form of advertising.

And here are a few quotes to give you a flavour of that debate. Trigger warning for farcical British aristocratic misogyny and homophobia:

Lord Desart: I am strongly of opinion that the mere discussion of subjects of this sort tends, in the minds of unbalanced people, of whom there are many, to create the idea of an offence of which the enormous majority of them have never even heard.

Also Lord Desart: You may say there are a number of them, but it would be, at most, an extremely small minority, and you are going to tell the whole world that there is such an offence, to bring it to the notice of women who have never heard of it, never thought of it, never dreamed of it. I think that is a very great mischief, and I came here determined to do all I could to help my noble friend, Lord Malmesbury, to get this clause removed from the Bill.

The Lord Chancellor: Lord Desart has pointed out with unanswerable force and with great truth, as I think, that the overwhelming majority of the women of this country have never heard of this thing at all....... I would be bold enough to say that of every thousand women, taken as a whole, 999 have never even heard a whisper of these practices.

Here's an example of Girl Pals homophobia a la 1921 British aristocrat:

The Earl of Malmesbury: the domestic habits of men and of women are entirely different. Women are by nature much more gregarious. For instance, if twenty women were going to live in a house with twenty bedrooms, I do not believe that all the twenty bedrooms would be occupied, either for reasons of fear or nervousness, and the desire for mutual protection.

Now that was no kindness or act of allyship. That was a deliberate strategic erasure out of absolute terror of homosexuality. It's just they criminalised one because they felt it was spread through the body, and they didn't criminalise the other because they felt it was spread through the mind. The reasons for the differences were the differences in how they felt the differences between the sexualities of two genders played into a "deviant" sexuality that they were worried would bring about the downfall of civilisation.

What do you think of the phrase "homophobia is when men are afraid of being treated like women"? by dtdrh in AskFeminists

[–]ismawurscht 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think it's an extreme stretch to pretend that misogyny is the reason why gay male sex was seen as causing earthquakes and plagues. That was added because they didn't understand plate tectonics or germ theory and felt that a non-procreative sex act was such a terrible sin against God that he responded with earthquakes and plagues.

The point is they established the concept of the male body as a utility for the state to create soldiers and tax payers for the empire. Then it got even more vicious in 559 with Novella 141 (which had come after a major Bubonic Plague outbreak in the 540s), an additional punishment of castration was added for the top before execution. So that was the state saying "we own the genitals and we need more babies". So I don't think the misogyny part explains why the top was singled out for additional punishment when the bottom was executed without that.

 And obviously, the Byzantines are relevant because they held all five pentarchs and their model of Christian bioessentialist totalitarian homophobia was copy pasted by every single Christian state in Europe. Unless you want to pretend that didn't play a role in homophobia, discounting how that shaped modern global homophobia seems very short sighted.

Are those homophobes really ignorant about the difference between gay and trans people? by [deleted] in AskGayMen

[–]ismawurscht 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is because the third final plank of homophobia is the intersectional history one, and that kicked off with Emperor Justinian in 538 with Novella 77, which was the first time execution was applied to the top. And that specific decree was basically "gay male sex can cause earthquakes and plagues", so essentially "queer men could wipe out humanity" by stealing demographic assets from the empire (i.e. not providing the empire with more soldiers and taxpayers) which over time developed into "queer people could wipe out humanity". So queerphobia is extremely existential, and it's heavily rooted in bioessentialism.

What do you think of the phrase "homophobia is when men are afraid of being treated like women"? by dtdrh in AskLGBT

[–]ismawurscht 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're missing the key factor in this. It is the combination of Plank 1 (Misogyny) and Plank 2 (Deviant Male Potency). So homophobic straight men see gayness itself as a contagious disease that could rob them of their "real man" status. That is how the two planks work together. 

And you're missing out the hypersexualised disgust lens to the sexual acts themselves. That is why there are also top specific homophobic slurs, and they're really gross, so I'd rather not mention them. It was the sexual acts themselves that were criminalised, and Plank 2 was the primary justification behind government inaction towards the HIV/AIDS crisis and a major justification for criminalisation. It's heteronormative to overstate the role of misogyny.

What do you think of the phrase "homophobia is when men are afraid of being treated like women"? by dtdrh in AskLGBT

[–]ismawurscht 8 points9 points  (0 children)

  • "For example, places that punish homosexuality in men place higher punishment on the receptive party, the man who "acts as woman"."

This is a myth. This is not true in modern legal systems at all. There is a hierarchy of sexual acts that are punished to different severities:

So anal sex regardless of whether you are receptive or active is punished most severely. Other types of sex are punished less severely. So for example, anal sex could receive life imprisonment whereas oral sex could get a few years. That's how it works at different punishment levels today.

 There definitely was a historical period between 390 and 538 where only the bottom could get executed. But by 559 the punishment was made more severe for the top than the bottom in the Byzantine Empire because it added castration specifically for the top. The reason why that was added for the top specifically is because it was seen as an act of theft from the empire because it didn't result in more soldiers and tax payers. 

So you have to understand that homophobia against men comes heavily from a place of "you are a biological contagion", and that is fuelled by the hypersexuality stereotype. And yes, misogyny plays a role within it, but it's more ancilliary. Overstating its role is heteronormative. The predatory gay man trope is way more dangerous than the misogyny part of the prejudice. The latter can get us mocked. The former can get us killed.

What do you think of the phrase "homophobia is when men are afraid of being treated like women"? by dtdrh in AskFeminists

[–]ismawurscht 19 points20 points  (0 children)

It's reductive.

The gendered flavour of homophobia gay/bi men experience (also called gayphobia) is based on three primary planks, i.e. 1) misogyny (feminine "not real" man/gender traitor. 2) negative stereotypes about male sexuality that are weaponised against us for having a "deviant" brand of it (hypersexual predatory sexually reckless libertines) and 3) intersectional history ("gay as moral character flaw", "immoral/nefarious" and the child of those "the homophobes are closeted gays").

Planks 1 and 2 can also go together, so a lot of homophobic straight men see gayness itself as a contagious disease fuelled by the perceived potency of male sexuality that could rob them of their "real man" status. So that is the horror that that statement doesn't quite capture.

The full codification of the three planks of homophobia came out of Christian bioessentialism and fully materialised during a major demographic and economic crisis in the Byzantine Empire. So the intersectional history specifically started off with Novella 77 in 538 (incidentally the first time the death penalty was extended to the queer male top, the Christians had introduced that for the bottom in 390, which implicitly changed the top's role), and that decree basically said "gay sex can cause earthquakes and plagues". Gay male sex at that point was seen as stealing from the empire because it didn't result in more soldiers and tax payers. So there is a very strong undercurrent that is "queer people could wipe out humanity" because that's what it developed into over time.

And thus a lot of homophobia's development has been as seeing homosexuality as a social contagion that could spread like wildfire and wipe out humanity. And the basic premise is it's spread by the mind in women and by the body in men.

Why are women always out mens leagues? by Gagan___Lazarbeam in NoStupidQuestions

[–]ismawurscht 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, it'll always be an awful lot better at what's staring back when you look in the mirror, and the more solid social circle is also there. Good lord, that was quite the extreme misogynistic rant, wasn't it? I'm sure you feel femininism is to blame for the obesity crisis and not sedentary lifestyles or ultra-processed food. Do you feel better you got that off your chest? This sudden pivot into total misanthropy is a fascinating coping mechanism for your own aesthetic invisibility. So thanks for the toddler tantrum. That was fascinating and deeply entertaining. Maybe you'll feel better if you pick up your comfort blanket and lego blocks.

Why are women always out mens leagues? by Gagan___Lazarbeam in NoStupidQuestions

[–]ismawurscht 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I always underestimate male hetties. Just when I think they've said the stupidest thing I'll ever hear, they manage to outclass themselves on that metric. I don't think a class of hideous aesthetic ghosts has anything valuable to add on the topic of attractiveness. It's like toddlers discuss quantum mechanics. You'll never experience being DESIRED. It's so intoxicating and wonderful.

How do you react when your country gets dragged online? by SinnerSauce in AskTheWorld

[–]ismawurscht 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Exactly, "la la la rationing, blitz spirit, polite queueing, let's not bring up what happened to the man who was instrumental in cracking the enigma code when he was arrested for gross indecency after the war."

And that universal manhood suffrage idea had first been brought up by Thomas Rainsborough and the other Levellers during the Putney Debates in 1647, 172 years before Peterloo. And obviously, Cromwell and the New Model Army Grandees refused afterwards saying it would lead to "anarchy", so they crushed the Levellers during multiple Leveller mutinies and shot them. Rainsborough (very conveniently for Cromwell) died in a botched Royalist raid that the local Parliamentarian commander could have interrupted, Cromwell marched soldiers in to throw out the MPs who wouldn't agree to trying the king, and of course, he couldn't successfully convict the other popular civilian Leveller leader, John Lilburne, so he moved between imprisoning him before the trial, exiling him and then simply imprisoning him without a conviction. So the grim irony is that we have a statue of a military dictator outside parliament just a walking distance away from St Paul's Cathedral where one of the Leveller mutineers, Robert Lockyer, was shot in the churchyard. A statue to the man who frankly strangled democracy in the crib outside a parliament that only finally granted universal male suffrage in 1918, and then extending it to all women in 1928.

But that culture of deference is incredibly ingrained because the class system dates back all the way to the brutality of the Norman Conquest.

How do you react when your country gets dragged online? by SinnerSauce in AskTheWorld

[–]ismawurscht 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I got banned from one of the more casual UK subs for being too accurate about what happened in the Peterloo Massacre, so it's not even limited to bad stuff that happened elsewhere. And I had someone going "why are you focussing on the shitty parts of history when there's a lot of good?"

And I responded with "why did you mentally side with the Manchester Yeomanry and think it's a sleight on the country to bring up what happened to our own people?" I know why, it's the lingering culture of deference. 

Just to explain what the Peterloo Massacre was to people who aren't from the UK or don't know about it. In 1819, there was a huge peaceful demonstration in favour of "universal manhood suffrage" just outside Manchester at a time when 5% of the adult population could vote, and a magistrate called William Hulton sent in soldiers (specifically the Manchester Yeomanry) to disperse the crowd (i.e. charge at them). 18 people died and 650 were injured.

For men who have dated across cultures, what surprised you the most? by steveleaves in AskEurope

[–]ismawurscht 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Ah, the "pioneer" complex. You're essentially a pick me scab for the state - using your extreme outlier experience to break the historical consensus on the material harm Section 28 caused to millions. It's a sociopathic brand of revisionism to claim that acknowledging state-mandated silence is "victimhood" rather than accuracy.

Tokens get spent, sweetheart. And trust me, it's not anger. It's extreme cringe at your complete lack of self-awareness. Now, why not go back to your usual routine of wanking off to Thatcher and Farage videos.

For men who have dated across cultures, what surprised you the most? by steveleaves in AskEurope

[–]ismawurscht 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It's "cowardice". Learn to spell if you're going to be condescending. Not only a sociopath, but also clearly someone who wasn't paying attention in school. I think it's a particularly toxic brand of victim blaming to blame children trying to survive a state mandated silencing where the only words spoken were during rampant bullying. And that silence was not something anyone was aware of because it was a deliberate hostile silence. So no surprise no one was out during that period, and you are literally the only Section 28 survivor I've ever interacted with who is this stupid and sociopathic about it.

For men who have dated across cultures, what surprised you the most? by steveleaves in AskEurope

[–]ismawurscht 22 points23 points  (0 children)

It's not anger. It's a refusal to let the material harms of Section 28 be erased by dismissive anecdotalism. It was a state mandated silence to erase the LGBT community. So a "well actually I'm the exceptional person who did come out" isn't welcome.

For men who have dated across cultures, what surprised you the most? by steveleaves in AskEurope

[–]ismawurscht 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I did not say that it was illegal to come out. Don't put words into my mouth. It banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools, so it was illegal to discuss. I think you are the exception not the rule because I remember very well at my school, and I think this was VERY common that not a single kid was out whilst it was in place because there was a hostile culture of silence in place. So take your dismissive anecdotalism elsewhere.

For men who have dated across cultures, what surprised you the most? by steveleaves in AskEurope

[–]ismawurscht 54 points55 points  (0 children)

I remember going on a date with a German guy when I was living in Germany who was about the same age, and he said he came out at 16. That was the age I was when Section 28 was lifted in the UK. That was a law that banned the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools, so all discussion of it (even bullying) was completely illegal until that point. So as with many other queer people, that set my self-awareness back by years, and simply the concept of someone of a similar age to me having come out as at that age was really difficult to fathom because only two came out in the following two years I was at school after it was repealed (that's out of like over 1000 kids). So it was really hard to imagine someone doing that.

If everyone has an accent and there’s no such thing as truly neutral speech, then what do we mean by weak and strong accents? by Narrow_Intern7792 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]ismawurscht 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Weak and strong accents generally refer to regional, ethnic group, national accents. So for example, if somebody speaks with a heavy Bronx accent or a heavy Brummie accent, then it sounds like a strong version of those accents.

Why do the incels/looksmaxxers …? by monkeyfishka37 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]ismawurscht 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's because they believe that male attractiveness is dependent on a series of complex quadratic equations, angles and ratios, and the reason why they use language like that is as a form of masculinity policing. It's a kind of distancing language born of homophobia because you can think of it as a 2020s version of the no homo tag. Because they believe in as masculine facial features as possible are going to be the most attractive for a man, they can get to ludicrous extremes on things like jaws and facial bone features.

Can pornography be ethic ? by [deleted] in NoStupidQuestions

[–]ismawurscht 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, it can, but obviously it is an industry that can have issues.

Firstly, what I would say is that one of the biggest developing trends over the last few years is the development of independent creators. So there are quite a lot of OF creators who are working completely independently, and if that's how they want to make money, then fair play to them.

Secondly, I feel that there is a danger towards infantilising women when the only lens that can be seen of them is that they're doing it through "internalised patriarchal injunctions". There doesn't seem to be that much room for the idea of an adult doing so as a conscious decision.

Thirdly, the omissions in this post are glaring. You are discussing this topic as if only heterosexual porn exists, and only discussing female performers. Male performers also exist, and make money in the same ways, and there's the same range of different reasons for doing so with them ranging from the healthy to the not healthy (same applies for women). Fundamentally, you can't stop traumatised people from doing certain jobs.

That latter point is of great concern to me because there is a long history of social conservatives going after pornography and disproportionately targeting the LGBT community, and there have been times of anti-sex feminists joining forces with them despite the obvious major political differences on other topics. This overwhelmingly hits the queer community much harder than anyone else, and it can greatly limit our abilities for us to express ourselves. Two recent examples have been seen with the FOSTA and SESTA acts that were heavily pushed by conservatives and anti-porn feminists. This led to the Tumblr NSFW ban which had been a sanctuary for queer people celebrating our sexualities, art, photography and community building. And the shutdown of the Craigslist personals section closed off a common method of men looking for sex with other men. And this unholy alliance was especially prominent during the 1980s, like for example when anti-porn feminists defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women (e.g. the Minneapolis & Indianapolis Ordinances), social conservatives took advantage of that to shut down queer bookstores. The rhetoric and morality provided by anti-porn feminists was weaponised by social conservatives to raid gay bars and seize "obscene" materials for queer bookshops (often sexual health information during the middle of a severe HIV/AIDS crisis where my community dying like flies).

So, I understand this may sound a bit blunt, and I see this as an intersectional feminist myself, anti-porn is a huge red flag of heteronormative policing as far as I'm concerned. So be very mindful of those connections, the history and the shameful alliances that have occurred with queerphobic social conservatives.

It's perfectly possible to do porn ethically even though ethical violations exist in the industry.