I would like it noted for the record that throughout all of this, all the different bills, the procedural votes, the amendments and so on, not a single Democrat broke ranks once. If you genuinely think they’re neoliberal sellouts, this should mean something to you.
Hell yes tag comments. Republicans in Congress came this close to knowingly voting for a bill that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would lead to hundreds of thousands of American deaths and yank away health care from millions. At this point, the GOP is an existential threat to the lives of all non-rich American citizens. Go to hell with “both sides are the same.” I’m sorry we don’t live in a country with an organic cage-free grass-fed progressive party, but that is no excuse for sticking our thumbs in our eyes and crying “I don’t like the people who voted to kill me or the people who voted against killing me! Why aren’t they more inspiring?”
I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.
If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be breached.
shout out to those people for whom mother’s day is not traumatic or sad but just kinda mildly uncomfortable
shout out for those people whose moms aren’t “toxic” or anything of the sort but just don’t conform to the loving, affectionate, encouraging, supportive mom-type that is so vehemently advertised on mother’s day
shout out to those people who can’t make the kinds of gestures that abound on mother’s day without feeling fake and deceitful, but who at the same time don’t want to ignore the whole thing either
shout out to people who remain mildly uncomfortable and feel inadequate because they can’t do like everyone else, posting about their wonderful amazing moms without whom they would be a mess and who is their best friend that they tell everything to
shout out to people who are uncomfortable posting lovey-dovey mom-appreciation messages because they aren’t true, but they can’t be claiming any of the harmful, negative aspects of mother’s day either
shout out to those people with mediocre moms, cause they do exist, and people who only have “thanks for giving me life and raising me but thats pretty much as far as it goes” to say on mother’s day
When I first encountered the literary classic Lolita, I was the same age as the infamous female character. I was 15 and had heard about a book in which a grown man carries on a sexual relationship with a much younger girl. Naturally, I quickly sought out the book and devoured the entire contents on my bedroom floor, parsing through Humbert Humbert‘s French and his erotic fascination for his stepdaughter, the light of his life, the fire of his loins — Dolores Haze. I remember being in the ninth grade and turning over the cover that presented a coy pair of saddle shoes as I hurried through the final pages in homeroom.
Although I remember admiring the book for all its literary prowess, what I don’t recall is how much of the truth of that story resonated with me given that I was a kid myself. Because it wasn’t until I reread the book as an adult that I realized Lolita had been raped. She had been raped repeatedly, from the time she was 12 to when she was 15 years old.
As a young woman now, it’s startling to see how that fundamental crux of the novel has been obscured in contemporary culture with even the suggestion of what it means to be “a Lolita” these days. Tossed about now, a “Lolita” archetype has come to suggest a sexually precocious, flirtatious underage girl who invites the attention of older men despite her young age. A Lolita now implies a young girl who is sexy, despite her pigtails and lollipops, and who teases men even though she is supposed to be off-limits.
In describing his now banned perfume ad, Marc Jacobs was very frank about the intentions of his sexy child ad and why he chose young Dakota Fanning to be featured in it. The designer described the actress as a “contemporary Lolita,” adding that she was “seductive, yet sweet.” Propping her up in a child’s dress that was spread about her thighs, and with a flower bottle placed right between her legs, the styling was sufficient to make the 17-year-old look even younger. The text below read “Oh Lola!,” cementing the Lolita reference completely. The teenager looks about 12 years old in the sexualizing advertisement, which is the same age Lolita is when the book begins.
And yet Marc Jacobs’ interpretation of Lolita as “seductive” is completely false, as are all other usages of Lolita to imply a “seductive, yet sweet” little girl who desires sex with older men.
Lolita is narrated by a self-admitted pedophile whose penchant for extremely young girls dates all the way back to his youth. Twelve-year-old Dolores Haze was not the first of Humbert Humbert’s victims; she was just the last. His recounting of events is unreliable given that he is serially attracted to girl children or “nymphets” as he affectionately calls them. And his endless rationalizing of his”love” for Lolita, their “affair,” their “romance” glosses over his consistent sexual attacks on her beginning in the notorious hotel room shortly after her mother dies.
This man who marries Lolita’s mother, in a sole effort to get access to the child, fantasizes about drugging her in the hopes of raping her — a hypothetical scenario which eventually does come to fruition. Later on as he realizes that Lolita is aging out of his preferred age bracket, he entertains the thought of impregnating her with a daughter so that he can in turn rape that child when Lolita gets too old
Lolita does make repeated attempts to get away from her rapist and stepfather by trying to alert others as to how she is being abused. According to Humbert, she invites the company of anyone which annoys him given that the pervert doesn’t want to be discovered. And yet, he manipulates her from truly notifying the authorities by telling her that without him — her only living relative — she’ll become a ward of the state. By spoiling her with dresses and comic books and soda pop, he reminds her that going into the system will deny her such luxuries and so she is better off being raped by him whenever he pleases than living without new presents.
Given that Humbert is a pedophile, his first-person account is far from trustworthy when deciphering what actually happened to Lolita. But, Vladimir Nabokov does give us some clues despite our unreliable narrator. For their entire first year together on the road as they wade from town to town, Humbert recalls her bouts of crying and “moodiness” — perfectly understandable emotions considering that she is being raped day and night. A woman in town even inquires to Humbert what cat has been scratching him given the the marks on his arms — vigilant attempts by Lolita to get away from her attacker and guardian. He controls every aspect of her young life, consumed with the thought that she will leave him with the aid of too much allowance money or perhaps a boyfriend. He interrogates her constantly about her friends and eventually ransacks her bedroom revoking all her money. Lolita is often taunted with things she desires in exchange for sexual favors as Nabokov writes in one scene:
“How sweet it was to bring that coffee to her, and then deny it until she had done her morning duty.”
Lolita eventually does get away from her abusive stepfather by age 15, but the fact that she has been immortalized as this illicit literary vixen is not only deeply troublesome, it’s also a completely inaccurate reading of the book. And Marc Jacobs is not alone in his highly problematic misinterpretation of child rape and abuse as “sexy.” Some publications and publishing houses actually recognize the years of abuse as love.
On the 50th anniversary edition of Lolita, which I purchased for the sake of writing this piece, there sits on the back cover a quote from Vanity Fair which reads:
“The only convincing love story of our century.”
The edition, which was published by Vintage International, recounts the story as “Vladimir Nabokov’s most famous and controversial novel” but also as having something to say about love. The back cover concludes in its summary:
“Most of all, it is a meditation on love — love as outrage and hallucinations, madness and transformation.”
“Love” holds no space in this novel, which details the repeated sexual violation of a child. Although Humbert desperately tries to convince the reader that he is in love with his stepdaughter, the scratches on his arms imply something else entirely. Because the lecherous Humbert has couched his pedophilia in romantic language, the young girl he repeatedly violated seems to have passed through into pop culture as a tween temptress rather than a rape victim.
Conflating love or sexiness with the rape of literature’s most misunderstood child is dangerous in that it perpetuates the mythology that young girls are some how participating in their own violation. That they are instigating these attacks by encouraging and inciting the lust of men with their flirty demeanor and child-like innocence.
Let it be known that even Lolita, pop culture’s first “sexy little girl” was not looking to seduce her stepfather. Lolita, like a lot of young girls, was raped.
I was going through this at age 11 when i got my hands on the book, and i never read it as sexual. I cried and related to her on such a deep level. Anyone who thinks lolita is a love story is gross.
Too real. Lolita means so much to me, because I was raped by an older adult man when I was 15 and years later when I came forward about it people said it was my fault because I flirted with him. A friend of his even teased me with the comment “weren’t you his little Lolita?” Lolita. Is Not. A love story. The continuous sexual abuse of a teenage girl is not love.
What chaps my ass is that NABOKOV didn’t see it as a love story. He found Humbert repugnant and went out of his way to make him so.
He hated that people saw it as romantic when he’d meant to write a fucking horror novel.
Nabokov literally wrote Lolita to show how disgusting these abusive situations are but nOOOOoooooo pop culture decides to immortalize the scared little girl as a SEX ICON and call this messed up “relationship” LOVE.
I find that, for me, the work is a safe place to put all the stuff you don’t want to put in your real life. I don’t want to be a crazy, manic asshole. I don’t want to have an affair. I don’t want to have a fucking gunfight. But! There’s a part of your brain that wants to experience everything, and so work’s a safe place to explore it all. Both in the writing and in the performing. I get to write about an affair. I get to have the guilt and the feeling of that without having to fuck my life up. [laughs]
Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you, because the side you want to bring home is the side that wants to be a good father and be a good husband and be a good son. In art we can be fucking nuts
Lin-Manuel Miranda pretty much nailing why all art and means of creative expression is so important (x)
While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.
More and more I’m beginning to think that a lot of wank
about problematic “ships” comes from the fact that we’re collapsing an entire spectrum of how people approach fandom pairings into a single word. (To keep the language
simpler here I’ve only talked about “pairings”, but this also applies
to poly ships.)
At one extreme, I’m personally reluctant to use the word “shipping” at all about
pairings I read and write, because I don’t think “shipping” really
describes how I approach fandom. I don’t have strong feelings about who
characters should be paired with. When I read or write a pairing it’s because
that pairing has a dynamic I’m interested in, not because I think it would be good for the characters.
At the other end of the spectrum, I know people for whom
“shipping” really is believing that two characters should be together, because they have such a great relationship dynamic in canon. Who believe that being together would be better for both characters.
When people say that nobody should ever “ship” or create fanworks about a pairing because
they have an unhealthy relationship in canon, those people seem to be assuming that
literally everyone who creates fanworks about a pairing “ships” them in that second sense. That the only reason to create fanworks about a pairing is because you believe the
characters have a great relationship dynamic in canon, and would be better off together.
Fandom is about so, so much more than that.
Sometimes we want to read or write about unhealthy relationships. Sometimes we want to explore what circumstances might
make a relationship healthier, or unhealthier, than what’s depicted in canon.
We “ship” characters with unhealthy canon dynamics because we believe these are interesting and important stories
to tell.
Not all relationships are healthy. It’s absurd to insist that we should only ever tell stories about completely healthy relationships.
….
Crap, that makes a *lot* of sense.
I mean, this is an actual quote from an anti post I saw today: “If you ship an abusive ship, you condone that ship automatically. There’s no way around it.”
This person clearly understands the word “ship” to entail some sort of moral endorsement – they’ve said so outright!
But that isn’t the only kind of “shipping”, and that kind of “shipping” certainly isn’t the only reason people create or enjoy fanworks about a pairing.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 