I agree, all men should learn about women’s sexuality by reading My Immortal.
Hi friend! Foz here. Just a couple of points:
- I’ve specified good fanfiction in literally the first tweet. While this is, obviously, a value judgement wherein YMMV, My Immortal is famous for being arguably the most terrible fanfic ever written, and is therefore demonstrably not what I’m talking about. Similarly, I’ve seen other responses to this post bring up 50 Shades, which, despite its popularity in mainstream circles, is pretty much universally regarded as being not just terrible fanfic, but an excruciatingly bad and dangerously inaccurate portrayal of BDSM that romanticises abuse. So no: these are not the droids you’re looking for.
- Here’s the thing, though: you already knew that. The decision to respond to this post with a flippant reference to a fic that’s notorious precisely because of its poor quality is exactly why I used up precious Twitter characters to specify good fanfic, even though I shouldn’t have had to. Every mode of artistic expression is composed of good, bad and mediocre works, but when it comes to genres that are traditionally viewed as less worthy or literary - like fanfiction, or romance - we have a reflexive tendency to conflate the bad with the whole, such that the good is implied to be either exceptional or nonexistant. I specified that I’m talking about good fanfiction, not because I think such fics are an exalted minority, but to pre-emptively combat the assertion that they are, and then you’ve gone and made it anyway. So, thanks for that.
- But while we’re on the subject of quality, let’s make a very important distinction. Though fanfic is a largely unmediated medium, it’s not bad; it’s amateur, in the very literal, dictionary-definition sense of engaging or engaged in without payment; non-professional. While there’s a stereotype that lots of ficwriters are teenage girls - which, why is that always wielded as an insult? oh right, misogyny, carry on - a lot of us are, in fact, grown-ass adults of varying genders, some of whom also happen to write professionally in other contexts; like me, for instance. I’ve read fanfics that are unquestionably as good as, if not better than, many professionally published works I’ve read, some I’ve simply enjoyed or felt meh about, and others where I’ve mounted up on my Nopetopus and ridden off into the sunset after the first paragraph. It’s a grab bag, is what I’m saying, but if you think that’s an inherently different spectrum of enjoyment over quality than applies to any other medium, then I’d politely invite you to reconsider the matter.
- In conclusion: fanfic might not be your bag, but it has its own culture of editing, collaboration, publication, criticism and dissemination, its own conventions and subversions of same, its own extensive history and trope awareness, and, yes, its near-unique status as a medium invested in female sexual desire. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other things straight dudes can do to learn the mystical ways of What Women Want like, oh, say, talking to them, always bearing in mind that women are not a goddamn hivemind, but given that there are a frightening number of guys out there whose first or primary exposure to any type of porn is whatever degrading mainstream het they can scrouge up for free without virusing the hell out of their PCs, then yeah: I’m gonna go out on a fucking limb and suggest they maybe balance it out with some fanfic.
This might be the best summary of the power of fan fiction and its inherent lessons about women’s sexuality that I’ve ever seen.
theactualcluegirl, have you seen this yet? I seem to recall some conversations with you along these very lines. Or I could be imagining them because it just seems like a very you thing.
WHOA WHOA WHOA. excuse me. But the minimum wage is set for teenagers with first jobs/ college students TO GET EXPERIENCE. Because a higher paying job isn’t going to higher you unless ypu have experience. AND YOU GET THAT EXPERIENCE BY WORKING AT MINIMUM PAYING JOBS. and the higher paying jobs are harder jobs which is why they get more money. If you raise the minimum wage, then companies wont have the money to pay more employees so they look for the people with the most experience… So if companies can only higher people with experience and you dont have any because companies DONT HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY YOU?? well then you are never going to get a job. And when the minimum wage goes up, the price of everything goes up. And then we have the minimum wage earners complaining again. So stop saying that the minimum wage needs to be raised because it doesnt. What needs to happen is we need a better economy and thanks to obama, thats not going to happen for a while because obama doesn’t know what hes doing. So if you want to make more money, get experience and a better paying job.
You’re a shitty economist buddy.
Less than 15% of minimum wage worker’s are teenagers (age 14-19), the rest are adults aged 20 and over (85.7%). So lets stop pretending that these jobs are meant for students. The economy is shit and unfortunately, people have to settle for low wages because the alternative often is unemployment.
Higher paying jobs doesn’t equate to ‘harder jobs’. Often, the higher a position is, the less labor you are required to do.
“And when the minimum wage goes up, the price of everything goes up.”
Inflation doesn’t necessarily work that way. Obviously, you’re just regurgitating the bullshit theories conservatives spew out while disregarding the statistics and history that proves otherwise. But since you’re using that argument, why not raise the minimum wage with the rise of inflation? Or productivity even?
And raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will raise 1.7 million families out of poverty and reduce the need for them to use public assistance, saving the federal government $7.6 billion per year. Would you say you’re you against that?
The minimum wage used to be able to keep a family of 3 above the poverty line. Now, the minimum wage can’t even keep a single parent working 40 hours a week, for an entire year without a single day off, above the poverty line.
When you raise the minimum wage, you’re putting more money into the pockets of the lower/working class. Their money is directly put back into the economy when the buy food, pay bills and generally spend their money. As oppose to higher paid people who have the luxury of saving their earnings. That means that businesses will generally make more money because the working class has more money to spend.
That’s my argument for raising the minimum wage, I would love to see your attempt to counter it.
This
I worked in a car financial company in the debt collector center for 7 months. I literally cannot tell you how many people were struggling trying to pay their cars and houses and food while they had two shit jobs. The places of employement I remember seeing the most were mcdonalds and walmart. Sometimes both.
