Startled by bukkake, columnist blames feminism

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media, Uncategorized 7 Comments
Award-winning author Joseph Dobrian reads at Prairie Lights.

Award-winning author Joseph Dobrian and his pocket square at Prairie Lights

At the risk of feeding the outrage machine, I urge you to read this column by Joseph Dobrian in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, “Feminism does not empower women. It infantilizes them.” Mad props to Justin, Den Man for the link. The first paragraph goes like this:

I saw a revolting image on Facebook the other day: a nude woman on whose face and torso several men had evidently just ejaculated. The caption said, “Feminism. Because being a housewife wasn’t degrading enough.” That accusation — that feminism encourages such conduct — might sound counterintuitive, but there’s something to it.

I’m going to stop you right there, bro. You saw an image of a nude woman covered in ejaculate on Facebook? Facebook content is vetted by automatic and human moderators. That’s why you don’t see hardcore pornography in your News Feed. Maybe Dobrian confused his browser tabs.

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On the ethics of keeping ethics to yourself

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 7 Comments

Nietzsche in a cowboy outfit for some wonderful reason

The people I know who do not believe in god tend to wind up with the same ethical systems as the people who do. Maybe it’s the beneficent influence of a traditionally religious society; maybe it’s biological, but people of all creeds enjoy consensus on basic altruism. You don’t need the Bible to tell you stealing is bad, for the same reason that you don’t need a referee to play backyard football. Ethical systems are based on actions, results and sometimes motives. Provided they agree on what’s right and what’s wrong, two ethical systems can be functionally congruent while totally disagreeing on why wrong is wrong and not right.

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Annals of Lying: Priest’s PC autoplays gay porn during presentation

By Dan Brooks in lying 2 Comments

Father Martin McVeigh, who has no idea how gay pornography even got on his computer.

Once, when I worked as a tutor for prep school kids, one of my students woke his laptop from sleep and went to use the bathroom while it was starting up. Pretty much as soon as he left the room, the computer began playing blowjob footage—grainy and extremely loud, in that sensory-assault style where pornography meets the industrial film. I went for command-Q like a damn mongoose, only to get the spinning beach ball, at which point I panicked and shut the clamshell. That was no good, of course; my student would inevitably return, open it and have even more reason to assume I had fired up the hardcore porn while he was gone. I woke the laptop and waited for Closeup Wailing Blowjob 6 to start again—watching the bathroom door in terror the whole time—and then did a hard shutdown. My point is A) no pun and B) even the shrewd tactician is at a loss when a machine suddenly begins emitting pornography. I can understand why Father Martin McVeigh of Pomeroy, Ireland just got the fuck out of there.

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How your Valentine’s Day will likely differ from Don’t Tell Daddy 2

By Dan Brooks in social problems 9 Comments

Sunday is Valentine’s Day, which means that if you haven’t made dinner reservations yet, you will likely spend the rest of your life alone. You’re cooking a lovely meal for her at home, aren’t you? That’s a terrible mistake. When a woman looks at you, the last thing she wants to see is a lifetime of romantic holidays spent at home, repeatedly setting her forearm down in the sticky spot on your kitchen table. Chances are, your perceptions of what Valentine’s Day is supposed to be like have been warped by the defining medium of our age: internet pornography. Even if you did manage to make dinner reservations, you are probably still laboring under a lot of misguided expectations. As my father used to say, the only thing that can really hurt you is hope, so you should be prepared for the kind of evening that doesn’t come to you via a fiber optic network. With that in mind, here are several ways in which your Valentine’s Day will probably be different from Don’t Tell Daddy 2.

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