“I’m not ready for a relationship right now” means “I don’t like you all that much; please go away already.”

So does “At this point in my life I need to concentrate on my career.”

I want to share this with you because it’s too good to be missed:

Choice feminism is not feminism: it’s patriarchy in a fancy dress.

Yes, our identities shouldn’t solely rest on our status as wage-earners.  But the reality is that the ability to provide for oneself is integrally connected to one’s FREEDOM as a HUMAN BEING, at least in a capitalist society.  The moment one gives up one’s ability to provide for oneself – however excellent the reasons for that might be – one does give up one’s autonomy, and, at least in part, one’s status as an independent human being.  There’s a reason that women are grouped with children and not with men, and it ain’t because they are conceived of as “equal” to men.

The quiet desperation of the most recent posts on “opting out” is proof that more and more people are seeing the truth of what this brilliant quote tells us. Soon, an embarrassed silence reserved for the particularly clueless will accompany any public mention of choice feminism.

One reason why I hate The NY Times is its readiness to thrust its tongue deep into the ass of whoever is in power. These days, it is trying to help Obama look less ridiculous in the aftermath of the Snowden debacle by publishing silly articles about Russia.

You’d think one could find a million legitimate reasons to criticize Putin. The NYTimes journalists, however, are so inept that they have to manufacture something stupid instead.

In today’s completely idiotic article titled, in the best traditions of the Cold War, “Open the Gulag Gates”, the paper slams what is probably the greatest achievements of Putin’s regime and the main reason why he has such an overwhelming support in the country.

In the 1990s, the FSU countries were engulfed in the bandit wars. Criminals organized themselves in actual armies and fought for control of the newly available private property, claiming the lives of many in the process. There were no authorities in place that could even try to stop them.

Since Putin came to power, the bandit wars ended. There is still a lot of corruption because people insist on paying bribes even when nobody is soliciting any. Still, many of the criminals were put to jail and the corrupt oligarchs were forced into exile.

The NYTimes article stupidly bemoans a higher incarceration rate in Russia for what is called “economic crimes” than for burglary. The country, however, was not ravaged by burglars in the 1990s. It was torn apart by people who were trying to get a slice of the state property that was now being privatized.

The article ends with an egregious attempt to defend Khodorkovsky, an oligarch, a murderer, a mafia boss and a vicious animal who terrorized half of the country until Putin put him in jail. If there is one thing Putin should be praised for is putting an end to this criminal’s freedom. Instead of explaining who Khodorkovsky is, however, the NYTimes journalist suggests that the mafia boss is some sort of a political dissident. Khodorkovsky’s lackeys pay good money to dirty journalists who maintain the myth that he is incarcerated for political reasons. I’m wondering if the author of this article defends corruption because he has a personal reason to do so.

The article takes a very unimportant development (13 people being paroled for their minor crimes) and presents it as some sort of major news. All of this seems to be done to kiss Obama’s ass and possibly get a handout from Khodorkovsky while avoiding doing any actual journalism.

If there was ever a stupid rag, NYTimes is it, people.

I asked cleaning ladies to come in for a deep cleaning of the house to prepare it for the baby’s arrival.

“When are you due?” the cleaning ladies asked the moment they saw me. “Will this be a natural birth?”

People are very obsessed with this “natural birth” crap.

From a dialogue with my relative in Ukraine who has never had anything resembling a romantic relationship with anybody in all the 60 years of her life and as a result feels compelled to teach everybody how to attract men:

Relative: Women should be modest and submissive to men because this is an eternal truth taught in the Bible. If you don’t agree, that is only because you are possessed by Satan. But I’m sure that 20 years from now you will agree with me.

Me: Don’t worry, I will never become a religious fanatic. My personal life is too happy and fulfilling for that.

Yes, that was a nasty thing to say, but if there is anything likely to aggravate me is the fake religiousness of a Soviet person.

This is a question that has been posted on Feministe.

I find the question to be quite weird, to be honest. People who react to visual (other than, say, verbal) stimuli seem to be singled out here as especially worthy of control. The article quoted in the post seems to narrow the field of pornography even further to videos featuring actors and actresses (as opposed to, say, pornographic cartoons or computer-generated images of human beings.)

This is, of course, nothing but a projection of the controlling partner’s sexuality. The controlling partner does not know how to manage the arousal this particular kind of pornographic material evokes in him or her and is trying to prevent the controlled partner from experiencing the same kind of arousal. The Controller disregards, however, the likelihood that the Controlled might be aroused by a completely different set of stimuli.

The interesting issue here is what it is that the Controller actually wants to prevent. What if the Controlled doesn’t watch porn but fantasizes about images s/he saw in the past while masturbating to the fantasy? What if the fantasy / masturbation takes place not to a set of visual images but to pornographic readings? What if it is a result of reading a completely PG-13 novel and getting aroused? Human sexuality is complex and it is ridiculous to believe that only a very small segment of pornographic material will produce arousal. What if there is no fantasy / masturbation but the partner has powerful sexual dreams about readings / images / other people? What if the partner gets aroused whenever s/he sees a cucumber? Or hears a particular song or sound? What if the participants in a porn video look like human beings but are actually computer-generated images? Is it OK to watch such videos?

In short, how does the Controller transmit his or her objections to “pornography” to the Controlled? There is such a variation in what might trigger sexual fantasies that I don’t think anybody could create an exhaustive description of what kind of fantasies s/he doesn’t want the partner to have that would not sound completely psychotic.

As a result, we can conclude that the question that gave the title to this post cannot be answered. If this question is one you ask yourself, I suggest finding responses to the auxiliary questions I offered here. This will help you figure out what it is that actually bothers you about pornography.

There is nothing more engrossing than self-discovery. Instead of the “I am who I am and who cares why?” attitude that informs the linked article, I propose an approach that can result in interesting revelations about oneself.

I personally believe that anybody is entitled not to be in a relationship with anybody else for absolutely any reason. However, if one chooses to continue a relationship, any attempts at controlling that person are abusive, wrong, and highly aggressive. To illustrate, if you find it unacceptable that a person should peel a soft-boiled egg on the pointy side, you are absolutely entitled to stop seeing this person. However, if you continue the relationship and structure it around the endless, “Here you go again peeling the egg in this intolerable way,” “How many times did I ask you not to. . . ,” “Are you sure you didn’t peel any eggs in my absence? And what if I look in the trash?”, then you have a serious problem that it is your duty to resolve.

P.S. The answers to the question on Feministe demonstrate such a lack of basic sexual literacy that one loses all hope for humanity.

A blogger writes the following:

If kids 10 and older need to be accompanied by adults when walking to school, at what point do they have any autonomy? Kids differ and if parents aren’t comfortable letting their kids go somewhere without supervision I’m fine with that, but there are tremendous cultural pressures to monitor children up to the day when they get sent off to college. A typical 10-year-old in a decent walking environment can get him/herself to school.

This is a useful observation that rings true to many of us. The same blogger doesn’t seem to remember writing the following just a couple of days ago, however:

If you’re the kind of person who wonders why kids today can’t put themselves through college without any debt, you probably think they’re living with their parents because they’re pampered and lazy. Of course, if you’re that kind of person you’ve completely blocked out any memory of what people in their 20s would actually like to do if they had the resources.

Or maybe he simply isn’t capable of making the connection between young people not being allowed to develop any autonomy or maturity by their parents and these same young people remaining dependent and immature after the age of 18.

Blaming the economy is an easy, knee-jerk response of those infected by vulgarized Marxism. I, however, came of age in an economy which was so bad that no American 18-year-old can even begin to imagine it. And in that economy, some people allowed their parents not only to keep them but also to wash their underwear, cook their food, and take out their trash until “the babies” turned 30 while some looked for any opportunity to make money and become independent.

Of course, these distinctions were not and are not about being lazy and pampered. They are always about being raised in a way that deprives you of autonomy and prevents you from growing up.

OK, what kind of a sick fuck calls a line of breastfeeding covers “Udder Covers”? Like one needs to feel even more of a cow at this point in time.

Check it on Amazon if you don’t believe me. It’s the very first breastfeeding cover to come up. They are also as ugly as sin.

I thought I would eventually get used to the idea that I have a head, and feet, and fingers in my belly, but I’m not getting used to it. It still feels extremely weird.

What is even weirder is considering that this will end up to be a person. A human being with opinions and stuff.

This is the weirdest weirdness ever.

Courtesy of reader el (this is a slightly edited Google translation):

Millions transferred to prevent assimilation
In spite of cuts and decrees, the Israeli government, particularly the Ministry of Religious Services – continue to transfer funds abroad campaigns and projects, whose aim is to prevent assimilation.

Imagine, millions invested into preventing the existence of people like me. As representatives of the racist Sokhnut explained to me 20 years ago*, the greatest tragedy of assimilation is that Jews have children with non-Jews (or, rather, Jewish men waste their precious seed on non-Jewish women.) Color me stupid (yes, I definitely deserve that today) but I had no idea this was an official policy of the Israeli government**. I thought that a bunch of fanatical idiots were just being holier-than-thou as a result of their new-found post-Soviet Jewishness.

Imagine the government of a country investing tons of money overseas with the goal of preventing more Jewish people from being born in other countries.  What would we call that? So what shall we call the practice of investing money into preventing the existence of people like me?

* These were the same people who tried to measure my nose. This isn’t a metaphor. There was an actual attempt at nose-measuring. I was underage at that time.

** Yes, it was willful blindness. Like you are always 100% self-aware.