I mentioned this further down but I'll point it out again here: she stipulates that the amount of sex and nudity is there for male viewers, and the rape scenes are there purely for shock value. She does not connect the latter to the former. A good transition would have made that point more clear, but you can parse…

David, I've agreed with the substance of your statements along this whole mini-thread, but I don't think calling the other person a basement-dweller is justified or helping. :)

You're right about the distinction between something causing/endorsing behavior and mirroring the presence of that behavior already in society.

If I could continuously upvote this I would. Thank you.

Mehhhh, both the author of the piece and Michael are saying that consent in the book is ambiguous at best. You, meanwhile, are taking an ambiguous scene from a book and painting it in black and white terms (while ignoring the full context) and using it to beg the question and claim that feminists are hypocrites. If…

Mehhhh, I suspect that you are disingenuously defending your position based on statements like "We can dance around her refusal all we want and paint it a million different ways but I've seen enough signs saying "No means no" to understand the feminist position on the issue" and "Never ending moving goal post once…

Probably; then I would have something concrete to defend :)

And instead of a substantive response you call my words ugly.

I was going to let that pass, but I can't because you've implied that I'm attacking her, which I have not. I only pointed out problems in her argument. I never once took a shot at her or demeaned her because of her views.

Dude. I have stated two weaknesses in her argument that are outlined in fundamental principles of logic. How much more do you want? No she never mentions the author by name, but her critique of feminism is clearly connected to the article above. That's also a fallacy: straw man. Attacking a vague idea (feminism)…

Two fallacies: generalization (the idea that feminism is this rigid idea rather than a pluralism of different views) and black and white (that it is morally bankrupt because people are outraged at this because you can't be equally mad about both and discuss them in different venues). Those are textbook fallacies.

Hey, I don't disagree that both are important, but when someone makes a broad statement based on a egregious fallacy, what good does it do to just let it pass? Also, she may never mention the writer in her post, but the philosophies of the writer are clearly under attack under the banner of "bankrupt feminism."

If you read those passages and piece it out (it isn't separated very well) she says that the added sex is for men but the rapes are for shock value. I got the same interpretation as you the first couple times.

Conceded. Alter my criticism above to reflect her assertion that *feminists* in general should be more upset by one than the other. She's still implicitly claiming that one area of criticism and feminism is less valid than the other.

Both can exist. I agree with you there. My objection to the original poster is her criticism of the author for writing about this (and people for reading it) instead of focusing on things like Nigeria, because it fallaciously assumes that you can't be outraged by both at once, or that this area of critique is any…

Black and White fallacy. Both critiques can exist at once. As relates to the author's topic, the Nigerian incident is a non-sequitur.

I think you're confusing two separate issues: one is depictions of things that actually happened/are happening in human history (child brides, sexual slavery) that came from the book. You can object to those scenes in Martin's text, but they're written in a way that doesn't exploit or endorse them, and he tries to…

This is a website devoted to critiques of art and related culture. While it would not be completely out of line if the author *did* invoke incidents like the one mentioned above, there are other forums that address those issues more directly.