Cyber Flashing

[Zero Gravitas]

JESUS! @Zero Gravitas NSFW Spoilers please next time.

Strongly seconded - and I'm not even at work.

You can dish it out, but can't take it eh?

Maybe this little learning experience will change the way you behave on dating apps and social media?

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Maybe this little learning experience will change the way you behave on dating apps and social media?

Well I can't speak for Brundles, but I have certainly never sent or posted a picture like that nor would do.

[idunnosomename]

Post Hog.

today's wank sorted

[Zero Gravitas]

Well I can't speak for Brundles, but I have certainly never sent or posted a picture like that nor would do.

I've never been in the position where I've had to deny sending dick pics in my life.

Think on it.

[touchingcloth]

I don't know if I think it is necessarily a power thing, just a general huhuh she might hate this.

What's that if not power?

*I could tell him that that's all ancient history now. He probably wouldn't like that joke.*

"Oh well. That's all ancient history now!"

[Zero Gravitas]

The form factor of modern smartphones structurally reinforces taking photos of phallic things.

There's an interesting counterfactual to consider if the Nokia 7600 had become the dominant conglomeration of plastic and metal.

[touchingcloth]

The form factor of modern smartphones structurally reinforces taking photos of phallic things.

There's an interesting counterfactual to consider if the Nokia 7600 had become the dominant conglomeration of plastic and metal.

Non-chode chauvinist.

[Jittlebags]

Back in the seventies, female factory workers would consider it rude not to

The form factor of modern smartphones structurally reinforces taking photos of phallic things.

Not so good for chodes though.

Edit. Beat me to it. If you pardon my French.

[Zero Gravitas]

If that's not physical lack but symbolic realization I don't know what is!

Imagine how easy it would be to take a photo of that and send it on a S23 Ultra.

Now imagine the reverse - Bet you can't even find the shutter button.

It doesn't mater what half lubed tangle you've contorted yourself into with the S23 Ultra.

[gilbertharding]

[Brundle-Fly]

You can dish it out, but can't take it eh?

Maybe this little learning experience will change the way you behave on dating apps and social media?

Dating apps, schmating apps! You've had me thrown out the Edgeware Vegan Society.

[FeederFan500]

What's that if not power?

*I could tell him that that's all ancient history now. He probably wouldn't like that joke.*

"Oh well. That's all ancient history now!"

Perhaps I interpret 'about power' differently, because sexual assault is often talked about in power terms. Is it because it is about power, or is it because it's uncomfortable for it to be about sexual gratification for whatever reason?

I think there is a difference between doing stuff for titillation or amusement that you can get away with, and doing things that are about demonstrating power. A boss ordering his staff to do petty things for no reason is a power move, a boss touching up his younger waitresses is probably about sex, but the power allows him to get away with it. I would class dick pics more as amusement on the sender's part that is virtually risk free.

[madhair60]

never sent a dick pic because my dick is absolutely rubbish and also all the relationships i've been in i've just fallen into without having to put any effort in whatsoever

of course they all ended when they found out about my dick, which you may remember from earlier in this post is rubbish. sad.

[touchingcloth]

Perhaps I interpret 'about power' differently, because sexual assault is often talked about in power terms. Is it because it is about power, or is it because it's uncomfortable for it to be about sexual gratification for whatever reason?

It's about power.

[BlodwynPig]

It's just pigs

Just 2 giant hogs and a wee one. The pearl clutching here!!

[AllisonSays]

Perhaps I interpret 'about power' differently, because sexual assault is often talked about in power terms. Is it because it is about power, or is it because it's uncomfortable for it to be about sexual gratification for whatever reason?

I think there is a difference between doing stuff for titillation or amusement that you can get away with, and doing things that are about demonstrating power. A boss ordering his staff to do petty things for no reason is a power move, a boss touching up his younger waitresses is probably about sex, but the power allows him to get away with it. I would class dick pics more as amusement on the sender's part that is virtually risk free.

I feel like sexual assualt (including a boss sexually assaulting a waitress or someone sending an unsolicited dick pic) is obviously in part or in full about the exercise of power. How could it not be? All of those examples are about you doing something to someone who doesn't want you to do it to them. In general I think the various words you use there (power, gratification, titillation, amusement) are probably all connected in more complicated ways than you're allowing for, especially in the context of men being fuckin horrible to women.

[touchingcloth]

I feel like sexual assualt (including a boss sexually assaulting a waitress or someone sending an unsolicited dick pic) is obviously in part or in full about the exercise of power. How could it not be? All of those examples are about you doing something to someone who doesn't want you to do it to them. In general I think the various words you use there (power, gratification, titillation, amusement) are probably all connected in more complicated ways than you're allowing for, especially in the context of men being fuckin horrible to women.

It's like posh kids literally pissing on homeless people before throwing them a fiver and telling them to wipe themselves off. Sure on some level they're doing it for the lols, but you don't see homeless people pissing on rich kids, or rich kids pissing on the deans of their schools.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

"about power" in these cases is about as good of an explanation as "its about right and wrong" and means functionally the same thing. which is the risk - allowing one notion ("power" or "pleasure" or "life" or what have you) to subsume all moral expressions. single term explainers get weaker the more one tries to see things in a political and not strictly interpersonal frame. terms used to reduce or disavow moral language, or neutralise it tend to preserve most of what is implicit, especially if one uses a term which is supposedly morally innocent or neutral itself, which is the most popular argument for using nonconcepts like power in the first place.

if men as a unit harassing women as a unit is "about power" then a specific man harassing a specific woman can't be "about power" in a way that preserves anything useful or descriptive. whats more it tends to obscure whatever connects the two cases by offering one explanation that neither are can lapse out of. im not a fan of "its not about sex its about power" for this reason.  the only way to really make it work is you make desire a somehow a category or annex of power, which is a problematic thing in itself since the implications of that aren't good - eg. in this case it would associate men with force, intent, production, action and women with being acted upon, resisting, responding, reproducing. thats an old saw tho

the contemporary notion of "power dynamics" as a global explainer for everything from dick pics to elections to modern day slavery is pretty much useless, not least in the implication that awareness somehow solves the issue. great im aware of power now, what changes? well we have to talk about what things are really about in order to answer that. in the case of posh kids pissing on homeless peoples - homelessness and public schools would be a good start. personally i'd prefer "its about masculinity" to "its about power" for this reason. since the "power" argument in part owes itself to things like sex-positivity, the liberal side of queer theory, etc which do need there to be a basic innocence to forms of life like gender expressions and sexual orientation. but the issue is that masculinity, specifically heterosexual masculinity, isn't just a gender expression like any other, and this distinction isn't solely explaned by the argument that it holds a situational power or perspectival privilege over the others. nor the argument that it manifests as fixed identity in the midst of a flux of differences (although this is much more useful). any distinction one makes about it would necessarily include real and historically actual things like dick pics and sexually harassing female employees.

to be glib, there has to be something a little better going for the moral discussion of online and workplace harassment than the anti-moralist language bequeathed to us by a dead german who also said "everything that can be wrong with a woman has but one cure: pregnancy"

[touchingcloth]

the contemporary notion of "power dynamics" as a global explainer for everything from dick pics to elections to modern day slavery is pretty much useless, not least in the implication that awareness somehow solves the issue. great im aware of power now, what changes? well we have to talk about what things are really about in order to answer that. in the case of posh kids pissing on homeless peoples - homelessness and public schools would be a good start. personally i'd prefer "its about masculinity" to "its about power" for this reason. since the "power" argument in part owes itself to things like sex-positivity, the liberal side of queer theory, etc which do need there to be a basic innocence to forms of life like gender expressions and sexual orientation. but the issue is that masculinity, specifically heterosexual masculinity, isn't just a gender expression like any other, and this distinction isn't solely explaned by the argument that it holds a situational power or perspectival privilege over the others. nor the argument that it manifests as fixed identity in the midst of a flux of differences (although this is much more useful). any distinction one makes about it would necessarily include real and historically actual things like dick pics and sexually harassing female employees.

I read them in much the same way. A load of lads hopped up on testosterone, showing and hosing people down with their penises.

If a male baboon is slighted, e.g. you point out how bald his blue arse is and how tight his foreskin is, then he'll do some displacement and start slapping the lower-ranked males in his group around. Waving wangs at women or pissing on a panhandler are just slightly more sophisticated manifestations of those same power dynamics, I reckon.

[FeederFan500]

I feel like sexual assualt (including a boss sexually assaulting a waitress or someone sending an unsolicited dick pic) is obviously in part or in full about the exercise of power. How could it not be? All of those examples are about you doing something to someone who doesn't want you to do it to them. In general I think the various words you use there (power, gratification, titillation, amusement) are probably all connected in more complicated ways than you're allowing for, especially in the context of men being fuckin horrible to women.

I think I have acknowledged that power comes into it, but then relative status governs an awful lot of behaviour outside of sex as well. Unless you twist definitions, voyeurism isn't about power, and if the victims found out they would be pretty horrified. I don't think the Big 4 director going around Birmingham taking upskirt pics until he got caught was exercising power either*, there is a lot of sexual behaviour that doesn't rely on the victim having power asserted over them. I suppose it comes down to whether you see an abuse of power as an end in itself (which could be through sex or forcing a partner to stay at home all day), or whether a powerful position allows you to do more of what you want free of consequence, and brazenly rather than covertly. I tend towards the latter personally when it comes to dick pics. If it somehow works, great, if it doesn't, lol she might hate this and nothing will happen to me.

What makes sex particularly difficult to discuss in this context though is that it has a huge, real emotional impact on victims. So who am I to say to a woman I don't really think it's ultimately about power, ackshually.

*All trace of this appears to have disappeared from searches.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I read them in much the same way. A load of lads hopped up on testosterone, showing and hosing people down with their penises.

If a male baboon is slighted, e.g. you point out how bald his blue arse is and how tight his foreskin is, then he'll do some displacement and start slapping the lower-ranked males in his group around. Waving wangs at women or pissing on a panhandler are just slightly more sophisticated manifestations of those same power dynamics, I reckon.

But masculinity is useful exactly because its not a natural category, and implies several relations to maleness without being wholly determined by any in particular

There's obviously something different going on in human social groups to animal groups, and "power" tends to be either inflationary or deflationary. You're either deflating human relations to just the same as lion eating a gazelle or you're inflating it so "power" has an entirely social specificity, so animals and inanimate objects don't get described that way.

The problem with the former is that it gets us to an elaborate version of the Alpha and Beta understanding of social groups which has been debunked so many times. Or social darwinism at worst. With the former it its unnecessarily anthrocentric because it suggests there's some metaphysical distinction between humans and the world we live in, so that whatever transcendental term like "power" or "life" apply to us in some potent way that they don't to when a big plant smothers a small plant, or a virus makes a person sick.

I don't think there is anything particularly "natural" involved in power play as it manifests in human society, but neither is it entirely free social construct either. The instinct to form into hierarchical groups might somehow exist in all human males but its a social fact, not a necessarily biological one, that means that instinct translates to harmful or politically awful behaviour. I think its helpful to hang on to these things as socially contingent rather than necessary (and that's my reason for rejecting "power analysis" of gender, especially in textual study where I'm familiar with it, since it proposes itself as an account of socio-historical contingency but ends up washing out that contingency into appeals to greater necessities and allomorphism - esp. in the argument that power is transhistorical and global in a way that nothing else can be)

[touchingcloth]

You're either deflating human relations to just the same as lion eating a gazelle ... The problem with [that] is that it gets us to an elaborate version of the Alpha and Beta understanding of social groups which has been debunked so many times.

I wouldn't compare it to a lion eating a gazelle, but a primate pissing on another from the same species seems close enough.

or you're inflating it so "power" has an entirely social specificity, so animals and inanimate objects don't get described that way.

It's fair to say I've been using power in a social sense. I'd describe animals as showing those dynamics sometimes - I mentioned baboons specifically before because their social relationships and hierarchies are studied by primatologists interested in early hominin behaviour.

So not a lion eating a gazelle, but do baboons getting fighty, men showing off their cocks and people stepping on kittens with stilettos all exhibit similar forms of "power" for want of a better word and involve the same hormones? 

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Human power has questions of authority, legitimacy, intent and desire attached to it. Its "legible" in some sense. Dominance in the natural world only has those things by way of analogy, a baboon might engage things to gain influence over other baboons but its a bit absurd to talk about stuff like establishing letigimacy, inspiring awe, etc. in that way. Its the problem with popular forms of evolutionary psychology: there might be something to it on a scientific level, but its problematic because it seems to be that we're understanding human behaviour by looking at the natural world, when really we're not doing that, we're anthropomorphising animals by seeing our intentions in them and talking metaphorically.

[The F Bomb]

Is there such thing as a cunt pic? I never heard of it. Obviously, not as catchy as dick pic but I can't think of a better alliterative or rhyming alternative. Cunt crop? Cunt cap? Cuntaroid?

[FeederFan500]

Flaps snaps but that's a bit of a tongue twister

[touchingcloth]

Is there such thing as a cunt pic? I never heard of it. Obviously, not as catchy as dick pic but I can't think of a better alliterative or rhyming alternative. Cunt crop? Cunt cap? Cuntaroid?

Iminges.

[madhair60]

Is there such thing as a cunt pic? I never heard of it. Obviously, not as catchy as dick pic but I can't think of a better alliterative or rhyming alternative. Cunt crop? Cunt cap? Cuntaroid?

pussy pic, obviously

[Deano]

Perhaps I interpret 'about power' differently, because sexual assault is often talked about in power terms. Is it because it is about power, or is it because it's uncomfortable for it to be about sexual gratification for whatever reason?

Yeah, I also think the "it's about power" thing is a way of giving non-offending men distance from it also. I think it's about power for serial offenders, those who abuse their position and such. But a majority of sexual assaults come from people close to the victim, often friends. I don't believe those are mostly about power. They're about guys who lust after a woman, and fail to keep themselves in check.

I think it's actually a fairly small leap from "god I really fancy this woman and want to do things to her" to deciding to actually do it. Especially when drinks and drugs get involved. It's a danger point that we should be making men aware of, because the more awareness there is of that, the less likely it is to happen.

The "well it's all about power, actually" narrative is damaging because most men will go "oh, well I've never felt the desire to exercise power over a woman for the sake of it, so I'd never commit an assault, I'm just not that person, I could never be part of the problem."

Sometimes it is just about lust and desire. Sometimes men touch women inappropriately because they're horny and really wanted to touch that woman, and in that moment made a judgment that their horniness overrides her consent.

I do think dick pics are different. I'd imagine they mostly are about power, because there's no inherent sexual gratification for the man in doing it (although sometimes I do think they're a pretence to then go "your turn"). But I don't think you can apply that to sexual assault universally.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Yeah, I also think the "it's about power" thing is a way of giving non-offending men distance from it also. I think it's about power for serial offenders, those who abuse their position and such. But a majority of sexual assaults come from people close to the victim, often friends. I don't believe those are mostly about power. They're about guys who lust after a woman, and fail to keep themselves in check.

well yeah, exactly

"power" and "awareness of power" is a language of distancing oneself, as if an awareness of something global and unrelated to any specific inequality or injustice would enlighten someone and make them above the question. when men online talk about these things in terms like "its not about desire, its about power" what they're really doing is distinguishing men as a whole from this specific man here, me.

i think this is why "power analysis" happens to be so popular in institutions and social situations where abuses of power are most common. its not a coincidence. its a way of leveraging awareness to make the current situation seem like an exception to the norm in some sense. its not just virtue signaling in the sense of using awareness to flag the speaker as better informed, and thus better intentioned, but creating some kind of hierarchical split between the unaware and the aware. to me talking about things in terms of "power" is very culturally middle class, very comfortable and liberal, hand in hand with appeals to complexity and authenticity. its definitely becoming a marker that of education level that seeing the world in terms of power and awareness of power signals a college or uni education, whereas talking about universal fairness or morality is uninformed, plebbish and to be condescended to.

i think it would be good to look at the contrasts between the idea "all sexual assault or harassment is structural in nature" (the political thesis), and "its about power" (an apolitical thesis)- and why the latter won out in the long run, what the sources are, what kind of people are drawn to each, who sees them as compatible or incompatible statements, etc. 

[Zero Gravitas]

Is there such thing as a cunt pic? I never heard of it. Obviously, not as catchy as dick pic but I can't think of a better alliterative or rhyming alternative. Cunt crop? Cunt cap? Cuntaroid?

Snatch Snap