R. Crumb on Adam and Eve and his deal with a publisher to draw a comic of all of Genesis.

The word "stupid" comes up twice...



... Adam and Eve were stupid and so was that deal (because there's a lot more in Genesis than the vivid tale of Adam and Eve... and he's not really happy with the way he decided to draw God). Nice little video with a view into his work space (in France (not the one in the great old documentary)). Not really safe for work, of course, Adam and Eve being naked (until they realized they were naked).

Here's the book in case you don't already have it.

AND: There's an interview here. Excerpt:

"The hippie culture of Haight-Ashbury, where it all started for me, was full of men doing nothing all day and expecting women to bring them food. The ‘chick’ had to provide a home for them, cook meals for them, even pay the rent. It was still very much ingrained from the earlier patriarchal mentality of our fathers, except that our fathers, generally, were providers. Free love meant free sex and food for men. Sure, women enjoyed it, too, and had a lot of sex, but then they served men. Even among left-wing political groups, women were always relegated to secretarial, menial jobs. We were all on LSD, so it took a few years for the smoke to dissipate and for women to realize what a raw deal they were getting with the ne’er-do-well hippie male. Men who acquired preeminence at the time were all frauds, fake gurus who were paying lip service to peace and love, charismatic cons who just wanted to fuck all their adoring disciples. Timothy Leary was like that. A big phony."

ADDED: I was interested that Crumb drew a cover for The New Yorker on the subject of gay marriage that the magazine never published.  I'd like to see it! And: "The America that I missed died in about 1935... In the U.S [in the 1920s] there were thousands and thousands of bands, dance halls, ballrooms in hotels, restaurants had dance floors, school auditoriums, clubs in small towns. A small town of 10,000 would have a least a hundred bands. In the mid 30’s radio spread very fast in America and the depression killed a lot of the venues where live music was performed. You could go to the movies for 10 cents. Then in the 50’s TV finished it all off. Mass media makes you stay home, passive. In the 20’s there was live music everywhere in the States.... The current pop music in the Western world is just plain god-awful. America is long gone. The ’80s killed it for me. The Reagan era, AIDS. It was an awful decade."

MORE: You can see The New Yorker cover here, and it's pretty obvious that it's not at the right taste level. 

"[New Yorker editor David] Remnick would not give the reason for rejecting the cover, either to the cover editor, or to me. For this reason I refuse to do any more work for the New Yorker. I felt insulted, not so much by the rejection as for the lack of any reason given. I can't work for a publication that won't give you any guidelines or criterion for accepting or rejecting a work submitted. Does the editor want to keep you guessing or what? I think part of the problem is the enormous power vested in the position of chief editor of the New Yorker. He has been ‘spoiled' by the power that he wields. So many artists are so eager to do covers for the New Yorker that they are devalued in the eyes of David Remnick. They are mere pawns. He is not compelled to take pains to show them any respect. Any artist is easily replaced by another. Fortunately for me, I do not feel that I need the New Yorker badly enough to put up with such brusque treatment at the hands of its editor-in-chief. The heck with him!"

Crumb said that back in 2011. In the new interview, he's still pissed off at Remnick.

"I was on a TV show, and Gloria Steinem didn’t even want to be on the stage with me. I was seen as a submissive slut."

"But I was a woman doing what I wanted to do. Isn’t that feminist? Some lady said to me, 'How could you shame yourself this way?' I said, 'I’m so sorry that you didn’t get to sleep with Mick Jagger and I did.' That shut her up."

From "Groupies, From Sex Symbols to Style Icons/When Pamela Des Barres and other backstage women came to prominence in 1969, the news media focused on their brazen sexuality. Now the focus is on their fashion" in the NYT.

"I'm here trying to clear her name and let them know I consented to that, I just didn't finish the job as you could say."

"Everyone wants to do something spontaneous. I'm not being disrespectful to you. Have you ever done anything spontaneous?"

A man defends his woman, who was arrested for after having sex with squatting on top of him when he was unconscious...  on a parking lot... in broad daylight.

ADDED: The way the article (in The Daily News) is written, I pictured them on the surface of the parking lot, but — after I said they both should have been arrested — Meade says, "They were in a car!" Public lewdness is a crime, but when do the police actually arrest people for it? How exposed to other people were they? Have you ever done anything spontaneous? If so where? Perhaps in a car. Probably not on the surface of a parking lot.

Now, I've clicked through the link within the link, and I can clearly see that they were on the surface of the parking lot. They were also fully clothed. And the woman was charged not with anything in the realm of sexual assault, but only public drunkenness.

UPDATE: I've been pointed to the Daily Mail article and, as a result, crossed out "They were also fully clothed."

"My older sister once told me about 'Finals Friends With Benefits,' people you had sex with only during finals week to deal with the stress of exams."

"I never thought I would be the type until I asked Kam over on the last day of winter classes, and soon 'Want to take a study break?' became the sexiest of booty calls. Kam asked me if I wanted to watch a TED talk he had been assigned as homework...."

The ellipsis marks the place in a NYT "Modern Love" column where I had to stop and laugh. Something about the combination of "sexiest" and watching a TED talk. And it gets even unsexier. The TED talk is Malcolm Gladwell on the topic of marketing. If you do continue reading, you'll find that the author Sophie Dillon — "a junior at Yale" — uses Malcolm Gladwell's TED talk on marketing to explain different labels for sexual relationships. There's a "wide spectrum" that goes from "single, talking, friends with benefits, hookup buddies (all physical, no friendship), cuff (a temporary, reliable cuddle buddy for wintertime, when it’s too cold to go out and meet people, a special favorite of Northeasterners), exclusively hooking up (all physical with the same partner), dating, and then the finish line: 'in a relationship.'"

In the end, the young woman wants "a relationship" with Kam (a male), and after a drunk friend calls Kam "a coward" for not being willing to call what they have "a relationship" and she realizes she's "scared" to confront him about it, she finally confronts him with "Are we going to do this thing? Or does he want to chicken out?" Notice all the fear words.

Anyway, they end up at the so-called "finish line," "in a relationship."

Now, why doesn't this NYT column have a comments section? Young Sophie must be protected from the mean things people might say. Speaking of fear. But what is there to say about this? I have 6 things:
Click for more »

"My little girl stood up to this entitled young man. She stood up to the entitled culture at St. Paul’s School."

"She stood up to the rape culture that exists in our society and allows ‘boys to be boys.’"

Said the father of sexual assault victim. The victim herself said: "What he did to me made me feel like I didn’t belong on this planet and that I would be better off dead.... Without just and right punishment, I really don’t know how I’ll put one foot in front of the other. I don’t want to feel imprisoned for the rest of my life. I want to be safe again. And I want justice."

The judge sentenced Owen Labrie to 1 year in prison, 5 years of probation, and a lifetime of registering as a sex offender.

The trial jury’s acquittal of Mr. Labrie on the main rape charges, three counts of felony aggravated sexual assault, led his lawyer, J. W. Carney Jr., to refer during Thursday’s hearing to what his client and the girl had engaged in as “a consensual encounter between two teenagers.”

Labrie was also convicted of the felony of using a computer to lure a minor, and for that, he received a 7-year suspended sentence.

The hearing closed a dramatic trial that illuminated the clubby sexual culture among some students at St. Paul’s School... the existence of secret keys, passed among boys, to private spaces on campus, as well as a list of girls Mr. Labrie had compiled, with the victim’s name in capital letters.

Both sides agreed that Mr. Labrie, then 18, had invited the girl, then 15, to join him for a “senior salute,” a practice in which younger students met seniors for a romantic encounter before graduation....

The linked article, in the NYT, used the word "girl" to refer to the victim 10 times. The word "boy" only appears twice in the article, in that quote from the father about our "rape culture" that "allows 'boys to be boys.'"

The word "man" also only appears in the article in a quote from the father, who calls him "this entitled young man."

But he was 18, and he did operate within a culture of entitlement that included preying on young women — girls. It appears that there were many other boys... young men... around him who did much the same thing and left their prey too hurt or embarrassed to come forward.

But how many poor boys have analogous stories of getting involved in gang behavior? Do we ask why the one boy who gets caught should go to prison and have his life ruined? I think we do not. We want the risk of the criminal behavior to be there, hanging over everyone, caught and uncaught, especially when so few are caught.

In her statement, the girl spoke of the isolating, suicidal thoughts and panic attacks that followed the assault. The trial itself, she said, traumatized her further.

“It’s terrible to say, but I know why people don’t come forward,” said the girl, who described feeling “physically and verbally violated” by Mr. Carney’s cross-examination.

"Like any self-respecting individual would, I found this to be a massive, painful, bitchy slap in the face."

"To be invited to such a waste of time was the biggest insult I’ve received in a good few years. It implies I have an insufficient understanding of what does and does not constitute consent and that’s incredibly hurtful. I can’t stress that enough."

Said the U.K. college student, who posed for a picture holding a "This is not what a rapist looks like sign."



I don't find the sign very convincing. Why would a rapist look a particular way? Rapists smile for photographs. Rapists wear shirts and sweaters. Rapists can be young white men. Rapists deny that they are rapists. Anyway, I'm willing to assume the anti-rape training session was long, tedious, and pitched at a low intellectual level. But "massive, painful, bitchy slap in the face"? The "biggest insult ... in a good few years"? "Incredibly hurtful"? To be fair, perhaps the training session was too successful in teaching him how to be super-sensitive. I hear the old REM track playing, everybody hurts.

I'm reading this over at Think Progress, where the headline is "Male Student Says He Doesn’t Need To Be Taught Not To Rape. Here’s Why He’s Wrong." First, I'd like to say that I find there to be something microaggressive about headlines like "Here’s Why He’s Wrong." So controlling. I feel stifled. Why not "Here's why I believe he's mistaken"? Acknowledge the existence of other people and their perspectives. It's taking me a while to settle down and read this column, which was written by a woman named Casey Quinlan.

[George] Lawlor asserts that he doesn’t “look like a rapist.” But what, exactly, does that mean? Lawlor never describes what a rapist should look like. 

That was my reaction too.

And, unlike the stereotype that sexual predators are strangers who jump out of the bushes, most rapists are actually people who the survivor trusted or at least knew....

Good point. 

Plus, despite the fact that Lawlor assumes most students know what consent is — even in what he calls “nuanced situations where consent isn’t immediately obvious” — the evidence suggests that college students aren’t entirely aware.

True.  But Quinlan doesn't take account of how long the training session was or how patronizing. I don't know either, but Lawlor's original blog post is available. It's called "Why I don’t need consent lessons," which suggests that he'd object even to a short presentation on a sophisticated intellectual level. Lawlor, "summoned to this year’s 'I Heart Consent Training Sessions,'" was "overcome by anger." The idea of any training at all — not just tedious, patronizing training — made him so mad he was overcome. To be overcome is to be defeated, as if by an enemy in battle. That's the nature of his anger. That's a mental state at odds with the simpering image in the photograph.

Let me explain, I love consent. Of course people should only interact with mutual agreement, but I still found this invitation loathsome. Like any self-respecting individual would, I found this to be a massive, painful, bitchy slap in the face. To be invited to such a waste of time was the biggest insult I’ve received in a good few years. It implies I have an insufficient understanding of what does and does not constitute consent and that’s incredibly hurtful. I can’t stress that enough.

Oh! For the first time, I realize that his intense reaction was to not to a long, patronizing training session, but to the invitation. He objects, strongly, to any training at all, including anything about the subtleties of consent:

I also know about those more nuanced situations where consent isn’t immediately obvious as any decent, empathetic human being does. Yes means yes, no means no. It’s really that simple. 

So it's nuanced... and yet it's really simple? Isn't it possible that the training session would open up some complexities that you hadn't thought about? Do you really know how drunk or nearly drunk your partner is allowed to be before you're doing something wrong?

... The only people who’ll turn up will be people who (surprise, surprise) already know when it’s okay to shag someone. No new information will be taught or learned....

Self-appointed teachers of consent: get off your fucking high horse. I don’t need your help to understand basic human interaction. 

If you don't go to the session, you don't know that you won't learn something and you don't know how "basic" the information will be. And why so angry? Why use the word "shag" and "fucking" in this context?

Next time you consider inviting me or anyone else to another bullshit event like this, have a little respect for the intelligence and decency of your peers. You might find that’s a more effective solution than accusing them of being vile rapists-in-waiting who can only be taught otherwise by a smug, righteous, self-congratulatory intervention.

Again, why is this man so angry? The invitation was to the "I Heart Consent Training Sessions." Where is the accusation that he's a "vile rapists-in-waiting" or that those leading the sessions are "smug, righteous, [and] self-congratulatory"? How does he know the event is "bullshit"?

Now, maybe this exaggerated language is his idea of satire. And maybe he's trying to give back the kind of rhetoric he feels he's heard from the anti-rape activists and the point is to crank up other students and get them into the mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore mode.

I'm done reacting to this character. What do you think?

"Why sex that’s consensual can still be bad. And why we’re not talking about it."

I know: newsflash. But the fact that consent is not enough to make sex good is received as news by anybody is what's interesting. It's also valuable to understand how some people got stuck on the consent/nonconsent distinction when there are so many other issues to examine.

The article, at New York Magazine, is by Rebecca Traister.

It may feel as though contemporary feminists are always talking about the power imbalances related to sex, thanks to the recently robust and radical campus campaigns against rape and sexual assault. But contemporary feminism’s shortcomings may lie in not its over­radicalization but rather its under­radicalization. Because, outside of sexual assault, there is little critique of sex. Young feminists have adopted an exuberant, raunchy, confident, righteously unapologetic, slut-walking ideology that sees sex — as long as it’s consensual — as an expression of feminist liberation. The result is a neatly halved sexual universe, in which there is either assault or there is sex positivity. Which means a vast expanse of bad sex — joyless, exploitative encounters that reflect a persistently sexist culture and can be hard to acknowledge without sounding prudish — has gone largely uninterrogated, leaving some young women wondering why they feel so fucked by fucking.

"Or maybe your soul is telling you that sex is supposed to mean something, that, in fact, sex is supposed to be the accompaniment of love — the type of love that commits for a lifetime."

"Could be that your soul is sane in a culture that is not."

That's the top-rated comment at a NYT "Modern Love" column by a young woman named Ali Rachel Pearl who's trying to understand why she hasn't had sex in 2 years:

Maybe my secondary abstinence...

Secondary abstinence is abstinence by someone who has been sexually active in the past.

...  isn’t in allegiance to God but to my own broken heart and the fear that seems to produce a kind of magnetic repellant [sic] whenever I come close to someone I desire.

My friends don’t seem to understand my secondary abstinence. They ask if I’ve had sex yet. “How can you go so long?” they ask. “I can’t imagine.” They say: “You have to lower your standards.” “Go to the bar more.” “Join a dating website.” “Make really good eye contact.” “Get rid of your hang-ups.” “Be more open.” “Stop being afraid.” “It’s just sex,” they say. “You have to stop refusing to sleep with people just because you don’t immediately want to marry them.”...

Every night that I go to a concert or a party, every day that I walk around the neighborhood, I find my secondary abstinence trailing me like a sad ghost or an unwanted dog.

"I identify as grey-asexual (can't bring myself to call it greysexual) and for me it's a useful term."

"I experience sexual attraction vanishingly rarely and when I do it's often not strong enough to even act on, more of an intellectual curiosity. Some folks in the asexual community can be absolutists about the identity, so that a person with my history, for instance, wouldn't be considered asexual, even though my lived experience is more in line with asexuality than not. Grey-asexual identifies those who fall between asexual and non-asexual and can help those of us who fall on that part of the spectrum understand ourselves. It's not a term with an exact definition and people who identify with it often have their own interpretations, but it's functioning in an area where the language is evolving rapidly as people work to more accurately express their feelings, hence the host of identities in the article."

From the Metafilter comments on a post about a HuffPo article collecting a bunch of words that purportedly identify various sexual conditions. The HuffPo article is not good. It seems like it could be a joke, but if so it would be: 1. not particularly funny, and 2. disrespectful toward some people you'd expect HuffPo to swath in dignity. The HuffPo article can be experienced as funny, as Metafilter commenters point out, if you concentrate on why the various stock photos were chosen to illustrate the particular sexual conditions. Why is the "graysexual" a man in a hat walking down the middle of a country road?

The serious question — the one that made me choose the quote above — is whether having more specific words for feelings helps people understand who they are and what they are doing with their lives? Off hand, I say it depends on what you do with that word once you learn it.

Imagine being 12 years old in a world where everyone was reading about your father giving some woman who is not your mother the best sex she ever had.

Politico has a story this morning about Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, "The Quiet Power Behind the Trump Throne/Ivanka Trump is her father’s most influential adviser, his most powerful surrogate—and his total opposite." Excerpt:

The caution and composure Ivanka brings to business is applied in every corner of her life and is, in part, the product of growing up as the child of a mother and father who often made tabloid headlines, including the New York Post front pager—“Best Sex I Ever Had”—about her father. Looking back at that time, when the whole world seemed to be taking sides in her parents’ divorce, she says, “You can’t control for other 12-year-old girls bringing a copy of the newspaper to school. People knew. They heard their parents talking about it at the breakfast table, so they would ask me.” Ivanka sounds like she’s straining as she seeks the most positive light for this dark moment. She says the scandalous episode probably made her appreciate her parents more. But in the end, she concludes, “I actually view it, all in all, as a thing that obviously was negative.”

I was curious about "Best Sex I Ever Had." I couldn't call up the original story, but I found a Post piece from 2012 titled "Worst ‘lust’ Trump ever had":

Marla Maples famously gushed “Best Sex I Ever Had” in a Post Page One headline when she started her affair with Donald Trump back in 1990 — but The Donald wasn’t as thrilled, according to a gossipy police confession tape.

Chuck Jones — Maples’ shoe-fetishist former publicist — has recorded a video statement for Manhattan cops and prosecutors.... “I said [to Trump], ‘Did you love [Maples]?’... He thought about it,... And it’s not like he said, ‘I’m madly in love with her.’ He said, ‘You know . . .I think it was lust . . . and had I the opportunity to do it over, I would have stayed with my family,’ ” meaning Ivana and their three kids.

Interesting... not that there's much reason to believe Jones, who convicted of "burglarizing Maples’ home and stealing 70 pairs of shoes, which he admitted he was having a 'sexual relationship with.'"

Trump is now married to his third wife, and I suppose I think more highly of a man who's on his third wife if I know that he regretted ever leaving his first wife. But how awful to be 12 years old and to see everyone reading about your father giving some woman who is not your mother the best sex she ever had.

"A new survey says more than a third of vegetarians eat meat when they've had too much to drink."

"What's more, they're sneaky about it, with 69 percent saying they don't fess up...."

This isn't surprising. Drinking loosens inhibitions and reduces impulse control. Vegetarians eating meat when they've been drinking is in the same category as: 1. having sex with someone that the sober you would decline, 2. having one or two more drinks than the sober you was planning to drink, and 3. driving while drunk, something the sober you considers unacceptable (but is never put in the position of having to decide not to do).

"I am icy, certainly, but I am not uptight."

Writes Alana Massey, complaining about "the troubling ease with which men dismiss women as prudish if they are not immediately open and enthusiastic about sex."

It is cruel tool in a culture that was infiltrated by a certain brand of blasé sex positivity long before achieving true gender equality and, by extension, before we’ve decentralized men’s orgasms as the ultimate purpose of sex between a man and a woman.

We pathologize women’s entirely rational reactions of “nah” and “meh” to sex as the result of antiquated values. Often, these reactions are because sex might be perilous to a woman’s well-being – and often, if we’re honest, a physically substandard experience. This attitude wants sex to be a fundamental good so badly that it puts it in a vacuum, and ignores the snares that still surround it....

Why is it so hard to understand and say that bad sex is bad?