It amazes me how these skeevy asshats are scratching their heads "duh what wrong with touching boobies?" Yech. And as I said on another friend's journal, a few comments I've seen have bordered on "If it was X celebrity, the wimmins wouldn't care!!ELEVENTYONE!" Uh, yea, they would. Not every woman is jumping to have Johnny Depp / Wentworth Miller / whoever feel 'em up!

And they are shooting themselves in the foot just by their own words, they aren't coming across as "women's empowerment through de-sexualizing their bits" just "hehehe BOOBIES" Like the whole By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. "My breasts," they asked shyly, having heard about the project. "Are they... are they good enough to be touched?" And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry. I want a scrub brush and bleach just reading that!

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God, I missed the celeb tie-in. Links? Unfortunately that scenario is not all that uncommon either. It's happened to me: I'm working some event & famous actor leers at boobs and asks to touch/squeeze/lick them. I'm willing to bet it's happened to a lot of women who live/work in LA.

That line was REALLY telling, wasn't it? All those WORDS he used before were distilled into the true vision; theferrett's kingdom of boob, where he and his knights of the round table were offered the bounty of boob in return for their protection and approval. Seriously deluded vomitcakes there.

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This response (if you haven't seen it already) won the intranets, as far as I was concerned. And shows once again that brevity is the soul of wit.

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I had not seen it, and yeah that's made of win :D. I also liked this one from erestor.

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I agree with you wholeheartedly. Just...it's not doing anything good.

You know any feeling of safety is nullified by the idea that any man thinks that this sort of thing empowers anything. That you can desexualise my sexual bits. That any part of my body is fair game for anyone touch. That I have to turn it down instead of people waiting for me to invite them to touch in the first place.

And even if my favourite star/actor/actress/whomever asked me, it'd be no. It'd make me uncomfortable. It would make me uncomfortable if someone walked up to me asking to touch my ANYTHING.

Also, this idea is bad on the pretext that there will be people that hear about it that don't want to follow the "rules" and don't ask to find out and think that any woman's body is free for touching, you know, because it's there.

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Just...it's not doing anything good.
No, it isn't. This is when the true allies are separated from the men who think calling themselves feminist is a good way to grope meet women. Theferrett is self-selecting himself into that latter category.

Thats the second time I've seen "your favorite actor" brought up. Did someone actually make that argument? Cause WOW...

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ugh ugh ugh ugh UGH

You know, reading that just reminded me of all the sweaty creeps that hung around me back when I was a jailbait flower child. Oh, yeah, man, everything is beautiful, let me give you a massage, I'm touching your soul, you're so open and free.

I do not miss that scene.

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omg yes. He's constructed the elaborate excuse to grope women, without seeing that ALL creepy gropers have elaborate excuses to justify themselves.

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Somehow I managed to miss the open season on gropage. How special.

I cannot list the ways this bothers me.

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Luckily there are some great posts written by some very articulate people on why it bothers. They resonated with me - and being basically lazy I didn't bother to rehash their topic. Just reading and thing YEAH THIS was enough for me.

I recommend reading them though, unfunnybusiness of JF has a great set of links.

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The problem with identifying yourself as an ally or a “good guy” (and as a white woman interested in racism/social justice I do get this) is the danger of developing a blind spot to your own privilege.

Yes - this. . .

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That's what got me off my ass to post. Because wow, this guy still thinks he's one of the good ones. Lots of creeps have elaborately constructed fantasies that allow them to harm women *~for their own good~* His are not special or different because he thinks he's an ally.

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If he wants to deny his own asshattery, that's on him, but when he implies that I "just don't get it" because I object to being groped, I'm ready to administer the smackdown.

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He's all over the place doing just that. He keeps trying to separate what happened at the con from women's reactions to it. From his perspective this was a beautiful empowering thing (although dude, why he's making the female empowerment argument is a whole other issue) and he is an empowering female ally type of person. Therefore women who object are a) taking it out of context (because REALLY, we women have difficulty IMAGINING a situation where men try and fondle us) or b) taking HIM out of context, because he'd never ever do something harmful, only empowering. Even if it's exactly the same to the woman being fondled, because she should magically understand his motives are pure.

Dude someday I'm going to track down an online copy of this and rickroll it into every thread where I see guys making this argument.

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So that means he's totally cool with Judo-punches and eyegouging for grate justice too, right?

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I certainly am. Upthread has two of my favorite responses - though I personally favor shunning.

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The problem with identifying yourself as an ally or a “good guy” (and as a white woman interested in racism/social justice I do get this) is the danger of developing a blind spot to your own privilege. That’s what I see happening here. theferrett sees himself as an ally; therefore it is impossible that her would/could participate in something demeaning or harmful to women.

Yes, I just commented in darkrosetiger's journal with the same concern (only you did it 10x clearer). He's so completely entrenched in his own privilege that I'm still not sure if he understands the many reasons why it was wrong.

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He really is. He reminds me of those guys who took Women's Studies because they thought it would be a great way to get dates. And I don't think he sees what he did was wrong - his update warned others from continuing the 'movement' because mouth-breathers would get their grubby paws on it and ruin it. But not HIM, Oh no. He couldn't possibly be a knuckle dragging mouth breather. He's on our side.

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Possibly the best post on the subject that I've seen thus far.

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Thank you <3
I was surprised to read people giving him a pass after that half-assed, not-me-pology.

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I had never heard of this jerkwad before this and all he had done is confirm that scifi geeks are hormone-driven, selfish, adolescent twits who think women exist for their judgement and pleasure. I don't care what his opinion is of my body. It is MINE.

I am so angry I could hit someone and I am about as nonviolent as a tulip.

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I posted a link to unfunnybusiness which has a great link round up. I dunno, I'm finding reading other women's CAPSLOCK O RAGE very cathartic

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I saw his original post but did it ever get reported on Fandom Wank or anything?

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It's on unfunnybusiness because wow, that's really where it belongs.

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WOW. I mean, srsly, WOW.

I missed this whole thing, and I'm kinda glad. I am not going to go read all about it, because it'll just make me go ballistic and he's too self-absorbed (an aspect of, as you say, privelege) to have it make any difference.

I think the thing is that fanboys is that they haven't got much chance to commodify women -- not up close and personal. Magazines and tv, yeah. And the thing about voluntary (as opposed to the more common involuntary) commodification of ourselves is that if we're willing, we WANT something for it.

Money. TV time.

Neither of which a fanboy is able to provide. I mean, I don't think the majority of men hire prostitutes. It takes a certain determination or mindset even to go looking for them.

So this really is a new and exciting idea to him.

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think the thing is that fanboys is that they haven't got much chance to commodify women -- not up close and personal. That reminds me of that hoax (I think it was a hoax?) post of a woman willing to exchange sex/cosplay for some epic weapon in WoW. Then someone pointed out that the weapon was worth something like $800 if bought on the free market, and the entire conversation devolved into how much WOULD you pay. I think that's an interesting observation, and it seems likely that those men had not had much of a chance to commodify women before. Didn't take them long to catch up, though.

As for theferrett - I see this as male privilege, and as a by-product of his self identification as a "good guy" AND the delusions of grandeur of BNFyness.

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His wife is seriously started to piss me off. She is all over other people's posts defending this shit and saying she wasn't victimized and anyone complaining can't read/is brainwashed/drank the kool aid.

You know because naive utopian thoughts about sex should trump actual history and current sexual politics.

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His wife is defending him wanting to play Tune in Tokyo? With other women?

Her and Horsefucker's ex(?) girlfriend should start a club.

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As a (queer!) male feminist:

Oh Jesus.

The fail (really degrading, oppressive, misogynistic faux-allied, invalidating "false consciousness-har-boobs" fail) is strong with this one.

Christ, I should have been a lesbian.

Pirate Yoda wants to hack this guy to shreds.

Edited at 2008-04-23 07:35 pm (UTC)

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It's a great big basket of fail. I'm happy to see so many people saying OMG NO online. It's a comforting contrast to the sexism and misogyny in the mass media.

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I made the mistake and did some background reading on his website and in his LJ. Let me just say I want to lovingly open-source his balls with a chainsaw.

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I believe you will need to stand in line :D

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Well I'm coming in late on the subject, so just let me say that rubbing a dog's nose in pee accomplishes nothing. Praising her for going outside works much better, and saying it's okay to grope women because you're a feminist is like saying it's okay to rape kids because you're a child therapist. Wrong is wrong no matter who you think you are.

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Agree on rubbing a dogs nose in pee. Rubbing MENS noses in pee however has many benefits, from therapeutic to entertainment.

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Full of win as always. And you have the perfect icon for it.

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Going down to 5 icons really made me pick and chose. I love this one, and the whole craziness that spawned it.

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He doesn't see himself as a friend to women, he presents himself as one in the hope that we are all too stupid to recognise a grubby little pervert when we meet one.

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god, YES. I'm probably giving him too much credit by assuming he's a self delusional asshat.

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YES.

That's been something horribly grating in this larger ridiculousness, that he thinks he's a friend of women. It's very much a, "I care so much about your safety and well-being and sexuality and wonderfulness, so. Let ME care about it, and tell you what to care about, m'kay? And if I say it's all right, then it is. Shut up."

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