/lit/ - Literature

Laurie Penny is a total cunt, but she is a fun and entertaining total cunt with a sharp wit and great writing style...

On A Game of Thrones:

"The stupendously popular swords-and-sorcery romp is a glossy smorgasbord of rape, gratuitous sex and ultra-violence. Its major plot points are so simplistic that they may as well have been scrawled in crayon on the intricate wallpaper of literary tradition.The whole thing is about as sophisticated as a sucking chest-wound, of which, incidentally, the series features a fair few.

Game of Thrones is, in short, about as much gory, horny fun as any pop-cultural artefact can be in a post-Fordist, post-crisis spectacle society which has not yet sanctioned hatchet-slashing death-matches between social outcasts and starving circus animals, although David Cameron has not yet revealed the details of his plan to tackle Britain’s housing crisis. No wonder everyone’s watching.

By ‘everyone,’ I mean almost four million people in America alone. The general awfulness of what passes for reality means we need least an hour every week where everybody gets lost in a crypto-Medieval saga of mythical beasties, heaving bosoms, court intrigue and buckets of blood. Which is probably why so many otherwise discerning liberal viewers choose to give Game of Thrones a free pass on its staggering race and gender problems and enjoy the shit out of it anyway.

As well as being mightily entertaining, Game of Thrones is racist rape-culture Disneyland with Dragons. To say that this series is problematic in its handling of race and gender is a little like saying that Mitt Romney is rich: technically accurate, but an understatement so profound that it obscures more than it reveals..."

Disgusting ugly jewish liberal feminist misandrist mentally ill bitch.

I would love to hate-fuck her then chainsaw her into little pieces a la Bateman.

>>4695373
U wot, privileged. Say that to me face n not online, n we'll see who gets checked.

>>4695373
Jesus Christ man...

>>4695373
Nigga, don't let her make you mad. When she makes you mad, she wins.

This goes for just about every interlocutor these days, by the way.

>>4695363
that's pretty funny. i'll have to read more of her

What does empowerment look like for young women today? That’s the debate du jour and, as ever, it stars a pretty young pop star in her pants. It all started when Sinead O’Connor wrote an open letter to the perennially half-naked sexpot of the moment, Miley Cyrus, advising her not to let the male-dominated music industry “make a fool” of her.

Cyrus responded, as she usually does, by sticking out her tongue and taking off her clothes. Other female rock stars weighed in: Amanda Palmer wants O’Connor to respect Cyrus’s integrity as an artist. Annie Lennox is disturbed by porny music videos. Whose camp are you in? And who is being exploited—apart from the millions of readers who have flicked guiltily through endless snaps of Miley Cyrus in her scanties just to check how shocking they really are?

Nobody has covered themselves in glory in this insalubrious episode. Not O’Connor, whose “motherly” advice strayed into slut-shaming, as she warned the younger singer about the dangers of being a “prostitute”; not Cyrus, whose response was a cruel jab at the older woman’s mental health history. Nor the rest of us, the clickbait hunters and tabloid outrage merchants rubbing our hands with glee.

This is a familiar discussion. On the one hand, the worried middle-aged woman lecturing the ingénue on the importance of wearing clothes in public; on the other, the girl who is sick of being cast as a pure and perfect princess, who wants to have fun and feel powerful and has limited options for doing so in a society that remains intolerant of women trying to claim space as anything at all except hot and half-dressed. Miley Cyrus grew up in public as the Disney Channel’s tame tween everygirl, Hannah Montana—a role every bit as artificial as the power-toolhumping sexpot pose. In a recent sketch for Saturday Night Live, Cyrus declared that Hannah Montana had been “murdered”—and her glee was obvious.

So, is Miley Cyrus empowered or is she exploited when she wriggles around naked on an enormous wrecking ball, smashing into a music culture already saturated with images of slender girls in tiny pants? Is Sinead O’Connor being selflessly brave, or is she a hectoring, prudish old hag? Are young girls better off stripping and twerking for money, or covering up for fear of being judged, exploited or attacked? Should they be allowed to make mistakes in public in a society whose horny hatred for young women’s real bodies is so treacherous to negotiate, or should we just lock them up for their own protection? On and on and on. The debate has been raging for years and it will continue for as long as we continue to treat young women as commodities, rather than human beings.

Shes pretty good, has wit at least

>>4695416
>and it will continue for as long as we continue to treat young women as commodities, rather than human beings.

>"im going to keep writing because i'm jealous of girls who are prettier than me"

-Every feminist ever

>>4695416
>the clickbait hunters and tabloid outrage merchants rubbing our hands with glee.

>>4695424
Thats funny you used quotes for something she didn't say, and none for what she did.

>>4695424
>Miley Cyrus
>Prettier than Laurie Penny
All of my what

>>4695417
Go to bed grace.

>>4695425
does /pol/ still care about the Malaysian airline? Articles like this are mostly ignored, not "tabloid outrage," but it's possible you've been so inundated with "news" that you have no way of knowing what's going on in the world even as it's presented to you.

Reading this girl makes my phallus throb :(

>>4695416
Sinead O’Connor is right about one thing: The music industry does not care about young women. Society does not care about young women—not, that is, about female people who just happen to be young. Rather, it cares about Young WomenTM as concept and commodity, Young WomenTM as pose and performance, Young WomenTM and how much money you can squeeze out of them before they turn around and demand to be treated like human beings—which is still the most shocking thing an actual female person can do.

The problem is not that we cannot decide whether nearly-naked pop stars are empowered or exploited. The problem is that bland sexual performance is still the only power this society grants to young women, and it grants it grudgingly, rushing to judge and humiliate them whenever they claim it. Rather than condemn girls as they try to negotiate this strange, sexist society—a society that offers temporary, dazzling power to those who play the game—we should be supporting them as they grow up, make art and stick out their tongue at the whole stuck-up world—and that starts with a stand against slut-shaming.

>>4695442
>Articles like this are mostly ignored, not "tabloid outrage,
I think the gist was that tabloids are monopolizing on counterfeit outrage.

>>4695326
He tweeted something having to do with living in the U.S. once and she tweeted back "I THOUGHT YOU WERE IN SCOTLAND."


Also,

>author's name bigger than the title and she's not canonical

Uh-oh.

>>4695492
>author's name bigger than the title and she's not canonical
Foreshadowing.

>>4695363
>sharp wit
>great writing style

Jesus Christ, she writes likes a schoolgirl: her similes are insipid, her social commentary is banal and she repeatedly throws around terms from academia which she barely understands. She is also utterly incapable of presenting reasoned arguments, and when challenged by someone who can, she resorts to moral indignation to cover her ass.

She blusters and boasts and ultimately says bugger all. She's a left-wing Anne Coulter.

>>4695506
>>>/pol/

>>4695363
I love how none of that uses any textual support.

>>4695508
Shut up faggot

>>4695517
Probably because Game of Thrones is a TV show, and not the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire.

>>4695530
Text is a widely used term from literary theory. It encompasses all forms of sign, one of which is the image. If you like, we can say, I love how none of that uses any evidence from the show.

>>4695506
>she writes like a schoolgirl
boring
please level a serious critique

>>4695537
How can she talk about the show at all if she doesn't present evidence?

>>4695326
>>Irvine Fucking Welsh
>Ogodwhy?
Laugh at the outsider lit.

>>4695537
>>4695547
Perhaps try reading her whole essay?

"[...]To say that this series is problematic in its handling of race and gender is a little like saying that Mitt Romney is rich: technically accurate, but an understatement so profound that it obscures more than it reveals. Take, for example, one single sub-plot: a very young princess, a blonde and beautiful thirteen-year-old virgin whose remarkable fairness of complexion is a motif of the series, is sold off as a child-bride by her unscrupulous brother, a man who likes to have sex whilst talking about dragons in the bath[...]"

>>4695547
that was an excerpt. that's what the ellipsis indicates.

here is the full article
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/tv-and-radio/2012/06/game-thrones-and-good-ruler-complex

also, the anon that quoted her skipped her first sentence:
"I love Game of Thrones, but it’s not subtle."

>>4695547
By using assertions like the show is problematic, racist, sexist, supportive of rape culture, as she's doing. Her writing's worthless if she says it's problematic but doesn't actually show the problem. Let's take a look.

>The stupendously popular swords-and-sorcery romp is a glossy smorgasbord of rape, gratuitous sex and ultra-violence.

>stupendously popular
The one thing she supports with "four million."

>glossy smorgasbord of rape,
Not one episode or scene citation. This could be very effective if she showed how many episodes contained rape, as in, six episodes out of however many contained mentions of rape.

>gratuitous sex
No citations of sex, let alone any attempt to show how the sex is gratuitous. Gratuitous to what?

>ultra-violence

Again, this would be great if she compiled some information on the show in following paragraphs. The show is also a, in her own words, "sword-and-scorcery" fantasy. No violence in a battle genre? Even one that's popular for incorporating "realism?" (I know the realism is questionable, but she doesn't even go for this easy hit.)

Instead of digging into her claims, she just makes more and more

Admittedly, this is an excerpt, and she could back this all up, but there's so much of this kind of labeling going on in this one paragraph she'd almost need a book to honestly support all the properties she's ascribing to the show and society.

>>4695578
I don't deal with genre fiction so you'll have to tell me how this is inaccurate or irrelevant

I would like to advance the thought that it is pointless to talk about Laurie Penny on /lit/. The fact that she's a woman, and her public persona, make that impossible. Both defenses and critiques of her are going to have more to do with feminism and her image as a celebrity than with any substantive merit she might have as a writer. You may have the occasional person with a serious point to make but the conversation as a whole is going to be utterly pointless and we might as well just be honest about it and not even pretend that we're talking about Laurie Penny and just say "quirky nerd feminist girls" instead of "Laurie Penny".

>>4695593
I would like to advance the thought that it is pointless to talk about Tao Lin on /lit/. The fact that he's an autist, and his public persona, make that impossible. Both defenses and critiques of him are going to have more to do with internet realism and his image as a thing than with any substantive merit he might have another thing. You may have the occasional person with a serious point to make but the conversation as a whole is going to be utterly pointless and we might as well just be honest about it and not even pretend that we're talking about Tao Lin and just say "meme" instead of "Tao Lin".

>>4695363
What makes a unsophisticated wound, unsophisticated? How does it change its behavior to be accepted by discerning liberal wounds?

Are you as a discerning liberal wound as Laurie Penny is, /lit/?

>>4695778
She's hardly a liberal

r9k and reddit red pill philosophy are both more advanced and true to life than any of the stuff in mainstream media

>>4695781
wut

>>4695781
She's not a Marxist, and old-Torydom ended with the corn law. And almost all the Labour Lords (like Penny Dreadful) were liberals.

>>4695810
She's a socialist.

>>4695811
And tell me, dear chap, what "socialism" has to do with the value form. Like the labour lords it seems like a cloth to hide the value form behind, like a posing pouch with a massive flopping wiggly man-package, shimmying along with the dance of the self-interested presenter.

The very fact that Penny Dreadful claims celebrity indicates that there is no opposition to the value form in her politics. She is a giant jiggling cock concealed beneath the red flag of a Gruandiad posing pouch.

>>4695817
There is opposition, seeing as how she critiques capitalism through socialist theory.

>>4695832
You may as well suggest that Mainline protestantism is socialism then, because "socialist theory" is recursive in your attempt at a definition.

>>4695811
Presumably some kind of 'democratic socialist' since she hasn't bothered to make her position clear.

>>4695849
She's made her position pretty clear. She's a radical leftist, but with a concern about sexism without within the left and without.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/12/swp-rape-implosion-why-i-care

>>4695578

She can't even seem to decide whether she's criticizing the books or the tv series. Danaerys is 13 in the books, in the tv series she's significantly older (15 - 17), but that scene with her brother having sex while talking about dragons happens in the tv series, but not in the books. Which one is she attacking?

>>4695508
wow nigger

Laurie Penny's song,12 Days of Revolution. A must watch for all LP fans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1PGN_DChZs

>>4695877
>She's a radical leftist

I don't see any evidence of that in that article.

>>4695363
>post-crisis

Is she talking about comic books?

>>4695578
>"[...]To say that this series is problematic

Problematic is one of those code words that just guarantee that whatever comes next is going to be completely retarded. It sits just below "I'm not a racist BUT..."

>>4696054
I'll see you your problematic, and problematise the very problem of "problematics".

wow, back in the day when all you retards were obsessing over this nobody i found it hard to give a fuck

but after reading her holy shit, she's got chops. i don't think you guys know how rare that is these days. she's nearly reversed my views on all women being retards. nearly. still need to read more

everyone needs to pick up this book for the sake of humanity

>>4696162
>wow, you retards were obsessing over someone who's actually good

Wow, sorry, who's the retard?

Drop trip and get real.

>>4696168
i don't give into hype so easily
especially the 4chan variety

>>4696162
>Hey guys I used to be an atheist just like you. You should really try this religion thing.

From the book of scientifically proven ways to convincingly lie.

>>4695501

She's making money with this filth?

>>4695501
>we are fighting for your children

>>4695501
I love the power of that final sentence.

>>4696247
I used to think protestfags only LOOKED like total idiots

>>4696237
you're wasting your time on filth
you are filth

>mfw blogger tier female "intellectuals" get all this attention despite being completely mediocre because their being female makes men arbitrarily more likely to take note of them, and society more likely to congratulate them for comparatively minor achievements due to progressive culture
>mfw this is annoying at first blush, but it ironically leads to an atrophy of what little talent they have because being a media darling for mere precocity stops that precocity from maturing
>mfw you can intuit their dim awareness of their own inauthenticity and resultant angst as they confusedly butt their heads against the glass ceiling created by their own undeserved success
>mfw laurie penny will remain an 18 year old marxist-feminist blogger for eternity, forever watching men bypass her pathetic efforts to maintain her notoriety (by actually creating things of enduring substance)
>mfw modern feminists are walking mockeries of everything feminism stood for

>>4696586
who stands for feminism
it certainly isn't you
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/03/the-view-from-somewhere/

>>4695877
>radical leftist
>votes lib dem

>>4695452
>>4695416
Why is "slut-shaming" objectionable? Sluts ought to be shamed.

>>4695363
>Game of Thrones is racist rape-culture Disneyland with Dragons

lel

>>4696586

>mfw modern feminists are walking mockeries of everything feminism stood for

Not really. Feminism has always been about an elite of butch lesbian chauvinists making a mess by recruiting via insidious propaganda many regular women to their cause. Feminism is, at its core, rebellion against the traditional family and gender roles; the "we just want to have equal rights :(" shtick was for the useful idiots on the outside of the Inner Party.

>>4696613
I despise Feminism but she's more or less right about that show.
Every episode is a pornography dressed in a medieval context with bits of plot and melodrama thrown in.
It's not really that anti-feminist though, as there are plenty of powerful women in the show.

I like (to imagine) Laurie Penny (naked) but a lot of what she writes is bad.

>>4696603

Why?

>>4695506
>Jesus Christ, she writes likes a schoolgirl

"The problem is not that we cannot decide whether nearly-naked pop stars are empowered or exploited. The problem is that bland sexual performance is still the only power this society grants to young women, and it grants it grudgingly, rushing to judge and humiliate them whenever they claim it. Rather than condemn girls as they try to negotiate this strange, sexist society—a society that offers temporary, dazzling power to those who play the game—we should be supporting them as they grow up, make art and stick out their tongue at the whole stuck-up world—and that starts with a stand against slut-shaming."

Perhaps you went to a better school than I did. But, given your lame-ass critique, I doubt it.

>>4696710
>The problem is that bland sexual performance is still the only power this society grants to young women

It grants even less to young men.

>>4696710
I guess society doesn't grant women the power to make arguments in support of their positions, either.

>>4696717
It is bizarre that women are so fixated on the pros and cons of having immense sexual capital that they never think to look at what it's like to have none.

For all the trials and tribulations of being objectified, men are just totally fucking ignored and assumed to be self-sufficient. Suicide rates for men are four times higher.

>>4696737
>For all the trials and tribulations of being objectified, men are just totally fucking ignored and assumed to be self-sufficient. Suicide rates for men are four times higher.

that's not because more men want to kill themselves

it's because men use guns and women use pills

also, i'm sorry
1) you assume all women have immense sexual capital because you don't even pay attention to women who aren't conventionally attractive because i guess women aren't people
2) you don't have any sexual capital, it's not because you're a man, it's because you're unpleasant to be around and no one wants to fuck >that guy

>>4696787
>it's because men use guns and women use pills

The countries with the highest suicide rates often have the strictest gun control legislation: South Korea, Japan, Hungary, France, Australia, Poland, etc. In countries where guns are essentially completely illegal to own, the trend of roughly 4:1 male:female suicides is undisturbed.

>>4696787
>you don't have any sexual capital, it's not because you're a man, it's because you're unpleasant to be around and no one wants to fuck >that guy

Also you don't understand sexual capital, or capital for that matter. Capital's existence is predicated on disparity/privation.

Sexual capital is also essentially universally agreed to exist by sociologists (i.e. it's uncontroversial), and to be mostly pertinent in discussing women's sexual resources.

>>4695926
>LP fans

>>4696815
but what if LP did a series of Let's Plays
what could go wrong???

>>4696813
>Also you don't understand sexual capital, or capital for that matter. Capital's existence is predicated on disparity/privation.

>disparity/privation

you do realize that every time a woman engages in hetero sex, a man does too, right?

men have just as much sex as women. there is no fucking disparity.

the problem is that
a) you think every man is as desperate to get laid as you
b) you think any woman could just offer sex to a dude and get it because a) you think every man is as desperate to get laid as you and c) you only pay attention to attractive women

plenty of men have sexual capital, plenty of women (ie fat women in most social circles) don't

women don't have power over you, the idea of woman does, and that's fucking pathetic

>>4695363
Like a teenager who has found a thesaurus

>>4696890
>there is no fucking disparity.

Again, misunderstanding sexual capital. You can disagree with its proponents, but it's a fairly well covered topic in concept.

It's not about a woman having "power over me". I'm gay. Stop resorting to calling people virgins or pathetic or whatever it is you feel the need to include in every post.

>>4696897
then explain it you dolt

>>4696897
I don't think you understand what 'capital' means.

>>4695391

Never in my life have I seen a more cringe-worth and forced use of the word "interlocutor"

>>4695452

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is a good album.

>>4696710
>The problem is that bland sexual performance is still the only power this society grants to young women

Since when has society been granting young people power? She's also ignoring, you know, the tons of exceptions to her rule, like Lorde, who is barely sexualized. Also, you know, plenty of young male musicians are being made to assume sexual roles in their music as well. Rappers are sexually dominant. Pretty boys croon and pout and take their shirts off for album covers and Abercrombie bilboards. It's part of being YoungTM.

>>4696890
>you do realize that every time a woman engages in hetero sex, a man does too, right?

Except it's a much higher proportion of women having sex with a much lower proportion of the men. You can quibble about the exact numbers, but the old adage that '10% of the men have 90% of the sex' is more or less true.

Men have a higher sex drive overall (and despite what feminists will tell you, this is indisputable, if you want evidence, just look at the LGBT community - there's a reason gay men are the major at risk group for HIV in the western world, and there's also a reason the phrase 'lesbian bed-death' exists, men just want more sex than women do), which means they're willing to lower their standards more to get laid and they're going to do it more often, meaning that while an average woman can have sex with an above average man literally effortlessly, an average man has to put in an excessive amount of effort to have sex with even an average woman.

So lets say you have 10 men and women, rated in attractiveness from 10 (most attractive) to 1 (least), and lets say, to pick a fairly arbitrary number, the men want sex twice as much as the women do.

For the male 10, his obvious first choice for sex is the female 10. If female and male sex drives were equal, this pattern would continue all the way down, the male 7 would be paired with the female 7, the male 4 would be paired with the female 4, etc etc. But because the male 10 wants twice as much sex as the female 10 is willing to give, he also starts having sex with the female 9, who, having access to the 10, is no longer interested in the male 9. Now male 9 wants to have sex, but female 9 is already taken, so he's going to end up with female 8, but, because female 8 only wants half as much sex as male 9 does, male 9 is going to start having sex with female 7 as well. Suddenly male 8 and male 7 are left without their equivalents, and so they end up taking up the next 2 women available, male 8 ends up with female 6 and 5, male 7 ends up with females 5 and 4, etc etc. Male 6 ends up with F3 and F2, male 5 ends up with only female 1 because that's all he can attract, and the rest of the men don't get jack shit.

Obviously that's a vast oversimplification, you have to adjust it to take into account a broader population, varying sexualities, social institutions, etc. but the core statistical issue caused by the discrepancy in sex drive (aka supply and demand) remains.

There's an excellent graph somewhere illustrating this point, but I can't find it on google, hopefully someone will post it.

>>4697071
Occupy sexual intercourse!

1% of males control 99% of the sex. We are the 99%.

>>4697071
not this poster but here's some scholarly literature i guess, if anyone is interested in the topic

>Is there a gender difference in strength of sex drive?
http://www.csom.umn.edu/assets/71520.pdf
>Sexual Economics: Sex as a Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions
http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71503.pdf
>Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality
http://www.femininebeauty info/suppression.pdf
>Who’s chasing whom? The impact of gender and relationship status on mate poaching
http://www.synergy-pr.com/files/JESP72009%281%29.pdf
>The dark triad: Facilitating a short-term mating strategy in men
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/per.698/abstract

>>4697100

Meh. I'm just debunking the idea that men and women have equal access to sex, because it's blatantly false and blatant falsehood annoys me. I'm not judging the situation, or saying it should be changed (which would be futile), just that that's the way it is. Supply and demand, thems the breaks.

>>4697071
Hi robot.

>>4697135

what

>>4696237
I doubt that book made much money, i think it was her Eng Lit dissertation that she turned into her first book. I think she makes quite a bit from her major columns in New Statesman, Vice, and The Guardian - mainly book reviews, heavy left-wing politics, feminism - and a lot from her more recent books.

>>4695326
>>Irvine Fucking Welsh
>Ogodwhy?
because he's not a neckbeard?

>>4697124
That's because we're economically set-up as a prostitution society; for thousands of years prostitutes were common, abundant and utilized for most men for any purposes other than procreation; with relatively recent curbing of prostitution, both legally and as something socially acceptable, most men now no longer patronize prostitutes; massed produced video pornography has gone toward filling this gap, but it can't, of course. So now you have the same degree of men who desire casual sex, but the stigma against non-prostitutes engaging in random and repeated sex still remains, and furthermore sex remains as a woman's greatest economic asset and if she is to free with it, it is less scarce and so devaluates. Women, of course, desire casual sex too, but the lack of scarcity on the part of offered male sex makes it less intensely desired.

>>4695363
What's the point of saying that there are gender and racial issues in something if that's the whole point?

The book and the show are set in a largely medieval fantasy world, except that it takes historical areas and brings them into a new setting; i.e. white people in the north, black people where its warmer. It even has muslims in where Spain would be.

Is she mad at the portrayal of reality?

>>4695363
If that is an example of her wit and style, then I'm really disappointed that /lit/ was talking so highly of her...

>>4700830
Historical dragons

>>4700852
Are you actively trying to misrepresent my point?