Literary Clusterfucks 2013

Beginning to think maybe a rolling thread might be good. Anyway:

So Alisa Valdes just publishes this memoir about this cowboy of hers and how he's a man's man and now's she's a woman like never before and etc. That link's to Hanna Rosin's review, and she's essentially going "Um...you sure?"

And then Valdes publishes this today.

That said, a lot can happen in two years, especially when you’re in a relationship with a man as complicated and volatile as the cowboy.

"what I actually wrote was a handbook for women on how to fall in love with a manipulative, controlling, abusive narcissist."

just what the world needed. like a poke in the eye.

jesus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FORoSB5JxCU

"Cowboy up."

none of these people are really writers

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, June 4, 2010 1:18 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wtf @ that whole story

polo shirt under a jacket, tho

I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.
You see by my outfit that I'm a cowboy, too.
We see by these outfits that we are all cowboys.
If you buy a cowboy outfit, you can be a cowboy, too.

damn nm I just actually read this shit how f'd up

i keep reading her name as alida valli

jesus

I don't know if we do this around here but there's some srs abuse and sexual assault triggers in Ned's second link

it's probably a good thing that she's posting a picture of her rapist on the internet, now we can watch out for him

man that's a tough read

cowboyfucks

How much you wanna bet that Mr Cowboy is gonna be a MRA talking head

In 2001, Valdes emailed a 3400-word resignation letter to her superiors at the Los Angeles Times. The letter was widely circulated on the Internet[ and reprinted in the St. Petersburg Times. In the letter she accused the newspaper of racism and discrimination, especially in its synonymous use of the word "latino" with "Spanish-speaker", a practice she equated to genocide.

buzza are you suggesting that alisa valdes is hysterical or otherwise to be dismissed

this is not the elizabeth wurtzel thread

And so, even though I was 43 years old and have Lupus

WHY DO THESE FANFICCY CRAP ROMANCE NOVELISTS ALWAYS HAVE LUPUS OR FIBRO WTF.

hm prob should have read the whole post of hers before making light. still, this shit brings the whole 50 shades bullshit into its awful, true light.

Considering Valdes wrote one of the single most amazing demolitions of a horrible person ever, reading/seeing all this...yeah.

okay that was awesome. thanks for linking that Ned

still cannot get over her story with the cowboy. so fucked up. I mean, just that it reads so familiarly, is so sad to me.

this is not the elizabeth wurtzel thread

oh, okay then

“An irresistible, post-feminist Taming of the Shrew. Don’t be scared by the premise. This is not a story about a woman relinquishing her identity. Quite the opposite. It is a riveting tale about how a brilliant, strong-minded woman liberated herself from a dreary, male-bashing, reality-denying feminism.”

– Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys; How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men

a practice she equated to genocide

ugh fuck this, there is like a 100% chance she was referring to cultural genocide, a term used for decades and not meant to imply the actual murder of a group of people

http://www.sptimes.com/News/110300/Floridian/The_language_of_genoc.shtml

buzza idgi are you trying to damage the credibility of the woman who basically just announced she wrote a book about a man who raped her

apparently so?

it's tough when you can only speak in the form of revived threads

seemed like zachylon wanted the context of the wiki quote so i provided it?

thank you for posting it

she does make a clear distinction between the two types of genocide tho she doesn't mark it with "cultural" or something similar. she does 'equate' the two but that's sort of the idea, while the wiki editor left out any of that context and framed it like "she compared this one tiny linguistic choice with the holocaust", fuck wiki

"literary"

I have a lot of thoughts about this whole thing and also some feelings but none are organized enough to share except for, Jesus, Lady--at least when I did that I didn't write a book about it.

considering that one of the major goals of feminism was to protect women from the power imbalances present in domestic relationships, it's not super surprising that valdes' paean to how feminism got romance wrong and how there's something special about a real man turned out to be about an abusive asshole. i don't mean to suggest that she deserves what happened in the least, but there is a sort of irony that the very political principles she decried in the context of this relationship turned out to be especially relevant to her needs.

xp On second thought that makes it sound like my experience was as extreme as hers: it was not. I also didn't put it in those terms of submission etc or posit that it revealed anything about how feminism has failed us. And I didn't have to jump out of a moving truck although after getting hit by an actual car frankly I'd take another one of those accidents over another of those relationships.

there is a sort of irony that the very political principles she decried in the context of this relationship turned out to be especially relevant to her needs.

It's not like that's a coincidence. She decried them because she was being told to.

really want some blogger to try to get a reaction out of christina hoff summers

I usually assume "How I did X and Changed My Life" memoirists are flighty, superficial and unrealistic people, because shit just doesn't work like that. This is a particularly egregious example.

This is a horrible horrible story.

btw, I regret my above post, having apparently made it without really reading most of the story in her blog post.

However, the blog post is now gone.

?!

this just got a little clusterfuckier

without the followup blog post this is kind of incoherent

she wrote a fluffy romance novel that seems to spend half its time scolding modern feminism, then revealed that the man she was writing about raped and abused her and (this is where things are fuzzy to me) the whole novel was a double-feint?

it's a memior!

ergh

so, replace "romance novel" with "memoir"; is the rest accurate?

Yup.

huh

Given some of the things she was also saying about her publisher I wonder if that had something to do with it.

Was just wondering the same thing.

not really a double feint in my reading; the now-gone blog post says the memior was written a couple years ago while still under the heavy influence of the guy and (i think?) before the most egregious instances of abuse had happened

the memoir was finished 2 years ago and some shit has gone down since then.

she also previously blogged about her breakup with him without as far as I can tell mentioning abuse or rape, which of course doesn't mean it didn't happen. But she wrote things like,

I am grateful for this entire experience, and I do not view this breakup as in any way being counter to the message of my book. I still love Steve, and I am convinced that I always will. This breakup hurts more than my divorce, because the depth and intensity of the love was the most profound thing I have experienced, other than being a mother.

I probably should have seen it coming, given what little I knew of his dating/family/job/friendship history. I ignored the red flags, and I chose to live in a state of hope. That’s not a bad thing, really. It was a glorious 1.5 years. Best of my life. I would not trade them for anything. I have never felt more at peace, and more alive, and more on fire with wanting than I did at his little house in the middle of nowhere, lying next to him in the deathly quiet of night. I am a completely changed human being for having known this man, in every way, and so the basic message of the memoir remains true, and always will. This relationship changed me, and just because it has been taken from me does not mean I am no longer changed. I am forever changed, better, new, reborn, wiser. Should I someday ever get to that place again where I feel I’m able to have another relationship (seems unlikely right now) I’d like to think my future boyfriend will owe Steve a thank-you letter for the woman I became with him — a gentler, more compassionate, more thoughtful and womanly version of the person I’d always been.

when did the alleged abuse go down?

(blog post was October 2012)

The now-removed post also says that she sugar-coated things for her blog so that readers wouldn't know how bad it was.

redacted blog post

I’ve had more than a dozen books published, but never have I had a publication day come and go without so much as an email from my editor, wishing me well — until now. With the recent publication of my first memoir, The Feminist & The Cowboy: An Unlikely Love Story, I have had the odd experience of having been essentially shunned by my publisher, one assumes because the reality of my life more than a year after having turned in the final manuscript is different from the ending one might have liked to have seen if my life were the made-for-TV movie or fairy tale my publisher seemed to have hoped they might market my book as. I have been advised not to discuss any of this publicly, to just accept this cold shoulder and lack of support as my penance for the crime of being openly broken up with the cowboy when I should have just pretended we were still together long enough to sell books. I have tried to be cooperative, but as the early reviews come rolling in for the book I feel compelled to come clean — totally clean — with my readers. I do this because I think it will help to make sense of a book that in many ways just doesn’t make sense to healthy people, and because I believe very firmly that the truth is the only currency a writer has, and that if there is any hope of redeeming this book and making it meaningful it lies in the full story of my relationship with the cowboy and not just in the candy-coated version that appears in the book.

The first thing I think readers need to understand is just how much time it takes for a book to go from a writer’s computer files to a bookstore shelf. It takes more than a year, usually. That year is used for things like cover design, advance publicity for magazines, visits with book buyers from members of the sales team. So the version of my life that hit shelves last week is actually more than two years old.

That said, a lot can happen in two years, especially when you’re in a relationship with a man as complicated and volatile as the cowboy. There has been some confusion because in addition to the book I have also kept a sporadic blog about my ongoing relationship with the cowboy. Those who followed the blog understood that things changed, and they followed along with me. But for those reviewers who are new to the party, just learning about me from the memoir and then seeing on my blog that the relationship described in the book both wasn’t what it seemed, eventually, and is not in existence anymore, there is understandably a sense of having been the victim of a bait-and-switch operation. I am truly sorry for this, and I wish to reassure readers that no one in the world feels more the victim of bait and switch than I.

What I mean by this is that while I set out to write a memoir that was a love letter to a man I was deeply in love with, a man who challenged me in myriad ways, a man who changed my life profoundly, a man I respected and honored greatly at the time, what I actually wrote was a handbook for women on how to fall in love with a manipulative, controlling, abusive narcissist. The fascinating thing about the release of the book, for me, has been just how many reviewers have seen what I failed to see when I wrote the book: That the cowboy was controlling and abusive. I simply never saw it then. I admired and nearly worshipped the man. One reviewer described her disappointment in having learned that I was still with him at the end of the book, saying that she could not help but to think of cult members as she read my adoring account of a man who, to her eyes and through nothing but my journalistic descriptions of his interactions with me, was obviously a domineering abuser. It hurts to read reviews like that, but it is also empowering for me now. See, while I didn’t understand just what kind of man I’d fallen for at the start, and during the writing of the book, the longer we were together the more obvious it became.

That said, I want to come clean with something else. There is a LOT you don’t know about the cowboy and how he treated me. I kept a lot of it under wraps, because I had turned a book in and I was trying to be a good contract employee and not completely sabotage the book by telling the whole story on my blog. But with my publisher’s complete lack of support now, and with the reviews so clearly describing for me the fact that healthy women, whole women, are able to recognize in the cowboy a dangerous man that I was, in my blindness and lack of experience with abusive men, unable to see, I feel that the only possible way for any of this to make sense to anyone is for the entire story to be known. To be honest about it puts me in danger — real physical danger — so I am reluctant. But I also feel I owe it to my loyal readers and fans to be truthful now. It is the decent thing to do.

One reader wrote to me via a comment on this blog, condemning me for finding the cowboy’s behaviors abusive now, where I said they were wonderful before. This would be a fair condemnation if it were true. Though I have referred to the cowboy being abusive on my blog, I have never listed the reasons I believe this. If all you had to go on was the book, you could very well jump to the same conclusion my critic did. I don’t blame her, and I totally understand.

I have been working on a sequel about the cowboy and me, and though I am quite sure my publisher won’t want it I will likely self-publish it soon. In it, I plan to detail the ways I was fooled and manipulated, the mistakes I made in choosing to ignore red flags, the many unfortunate ways that I started to subsume and lose myself in order to please an unpleasable and controlling man. I hope that in doing so I will help to make sense of the first book, both for you guys and for myself. What I want to emphasize here is that the first book was NOT an attempt to sell a lie; it was a sincere, heartfelt memoir that came during the honeymoon period of an abusive relationship, before I understood just how much danger I was putting myself in, with me justifying the hints of violence through my own romanticized version of the American cowboy icon and, unfortunately, with me blinded by this man’s almost unfathomable physical beauty, which was almost impossible to reconcile with the brutality that this most handsome shell encased.

In the interest of retaining some respectability, I will tell you a few of the more painful moments, so that you can understand just how quickly things changed and just how violently they escalated. I do this as a warning to other women, too. For many years, I simply scratched my head at women in abusive relationships, unable to understand why they stayed, judgmental of them for not being smarter. What I didn’t understand was just how masterful some men can be at the seduction and honeymoon phase, just how ruthlessly perfect they can present themselves to be, before the screw begins to tighten, and tighten, until you one day wake up and don’t even recognize yourself anymore.

The worst of it began in April last year, when I discovered the cowboy and I had accidentally become pregnant. While I am pro-choice in theory, I am pro-life for myself. I could not abort that child. It went against everything I believed. And so, even though I was 43 years old and have Lupus, even though my pregnancy with my son had been a living hell 12 years before, I decided I would have the child. When I sat down face to face with the cowboy to discuss the situation, he was very kind at the start. He was supportive and said he wanted to help us sort out the best way to handle things. When I told him I was going to have the child, I expected he’d be supportive, even if he, like I, was overwhelmed by the idea of becoming parents to an infant at our ages (he was 53). Instead, his eyes grew snake cold. He glared at me, and moved away from me. He was angry, and told me very clearly: “Looks like you’ve made up your mind, but here’s what you need to know. You can have me, or you can have the baby, but you can’t have both.” I was stunned. I balked. “You don’t mean that,” I said. “You say you love me and my son, you wouldn’t just leave us because I’ve decided to have your child.” He smirked then, his eyes crueler and colder than anything I’d ever seen, and he said, simply, “Watch me.” With that, he got up, got the overnight bag he’d brought to my house in the city, and he walked out the door to return to the ranch, four hours away. He did not answer my phone calls or emails after that. I was dead to him.

I grieved harder than I have ever grieved in my life, absolutely astonished that any human being could contain within him the capacity to be so mean and selfish. I called many friends and family, and they got me through it. I tried to forget the cowboy, and kept the breakup and pregnancy a secret for the sake of my publisher, continued to post cheerful blogs about my supposed relationship. It was hell on earth. I tried to figure out how I was going to make it, how I was going to be a single mother while enduring what promised to be a painful and difficult pregnancy, how I would raise a newborn while still caring for my adolescent son, who would likely have to step in to be a mini-daddy for his sibling. It was truly awful. But I made my choice. The baby. Not the cowboy.

Then, at my first prenatal ultrasound appointment, the technician told me something terrifying. There was no baby anymore. The blood tests said I was pregnant, but there was no detectable sack or embryo. They rushed me to the hospital, thinking I was having an ectopic pregnancy. After observing me for a week, they concluded instead that I had miscarried. My father contacted the cowboy to let him know how distraught I was, how much I was suffering. This is because my father truly had sympathy for the cowboy, whom he saw as “a tragic figure,” because the cowboy had his shining moments, where he clearly longed to truly connect and love, but was unable to do either meaningfully because of severe abuses he had suffered as a child. The cowboy rushed to the hospital, full of apologies. We reconciled, because I was weak and stupid and wanted him to be the man I had once believed he was, the man I wrote about in the memoir I’d turned in months before. I wanted to make the fairy tale come true again. I wanted things the way I’d thought they were.

Things changed for good then, though. We tried to muddle through, but it just got worse and worse. There were certainly moments of great beauty and love, I cannot deny that, but underlying it all was this unrest, this unfortunate beast that would raise its head now and then, and more and more frequently. There were signs of physical violence to come, textbook signals. The cowboy bragging nonstop about all the fights he’d been in, all the men he’d put in the hospital, while polishing his guns in front of me, letting me know just what I might be in for if I got out of line again. There was the time we had an argument, the time I dared to challenge him and insist that I was right about something, when he, furious with me and so much bigger than me, simply dragged me down the hall to the bedroom, bent me over, and took me, telling me as he did so that I must never forget who was in charge, that I must learn to be nicer, that I must learn…to obey. Yes. I am not proud. I was so beaten down by then, from the constant daily criticisms, from the constant erosion of my self esteem, that I just took it, and wept, and apologized, and promised to do better. I did not think I would become someone like that. And there was a part of me hidden away inside, kept safe, that watched it all and waited for my chance to escape… There was the night we argued at my house, and he was going to leave, as he always did, stonewalling and locking me out being his favorite weapons, his silent treatments going on sometimes for weeks on end, the emails finally coming in which he said he was willing to come back as long as I changed a long list of things about myself, and me always caving in…but that night, he was brutal again, when I tried to say I was sorry, when I tried to stop the inevitable stonewalling, he glared, called me a mouthy cunt, told me to get to my side of the bed and not touch him, told me that he couldn’t stand the sight of me, told me that if I really wanted to impress him then I’d be a good girl and just shut the fuck up, and his finger poking me in the chest, and then wagged in my face, telling me that my biggest problem, the reason he would never marry me after all, was that I was a woman who just didn’t know when to shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, and me saying I would, that I would be quiet, and turning my back to him so he wouldn’t hear me cry, and him feeling the bed shake anyway and yelling at me that I was pathetic, that if I wanted him to stay then I better stop fucking crying, and me running into my closet with my phone to fall in a heap on the floor and text myself so that in the morning I’d remember that this was NOT okay, that this was NOT love, and him pretending the next morning that nothing had happened.

The last day I saw him, I jumped out of a moving truck to get away from him. He was in a rage. He’d called me a useless cunt this time, a mouthy bitch, all manner of names. He’d told me what a terrible mother I was. He’d attacked, attacked, attacked, all because I didn’t say hello to him the right way when he came back from running the dogs on the ranch. He was convinced I was being bratty because I didn’t react with enough enthusiasm to his return. This unleashed an avalanche of hatred. I stood there in the sun, disbelieving, trying to reason with him. He told me that I needed to leave. “Get your shit and let’s go,” he said. It was getting late, and he knew I hated driving home from the ranch in the dark because so much of the rural highway out there had no cell service. If I got a flat tire or something I’d be doomed. I asked if I could just stay in the guest room until the morning. “You can either get your shit and put it in the truck yourself,” he said, “or I will drag you by the hair, beat your ass to the ground, hog-tie you with duct tape, and throw your ass in the back of the truck. One way or another, you will be leaving. You decide.” He meant it. By this time, he had raised his hand to me on at least three occasions, but had yet to strike me. He always blamed me for this. I drove him to it. Anyway, I got in the truck, and we started to leave. I was hysterical, and afraid, and he began to talk about how much he wanted to beat my ass down. The truck was going slowly, and the look in his eye was terrifying. I really believed he would kill me. He’d hinted at it. So I opened the door, and I jumped. I thought I’d land on my feet. I didn’t. I landed facedown on a bunch of rocks, nearly crushed under the back tires, dislocating my shoulder, badly cut and bruised everywhere, my hip filling with blood. I screamed. He stopped the truck, walked over, looked at me on the ground as I begged him to call an ambulance. “Only you would be stupid enough to jump out of a moving truck,” he told me. He did not help me, or come near me. Instead, he said he was going to the hunting lodge to get some witnesses, in case I tried to tell the police he had done this to me. In that instant, I finally fucking understood — this man did not love me. He could not love anyone. He was alone in his anger and paranoia. I pushed my shoulder back into joint, struggled to my feet, and terrified he’d kill me, I got my dog out of the back seat, and my purse, and I ran for the hills. I hid in ravines and canyons, behind juniper bushes, and walked the 16 miles back to my car. I drove away, and never saw him again.

That is what’s going on. That is why the release of this memoir is so bittersweet for me. The book was true, when I wrote it. But life changed. I didn’t try to fool anyone, or to exploit anything. Rather, I believed in a man who didn’t deserve it. I fell for the incredible charm and manipulations such men are capable of. I failed to see what women who are wiser than I was are clearly seeing as they read my book — that this man was “a jerk,” as one reviewer said. I didn’t know. Worst of all, I wrote about my love and my flexibility and compromises in so glowing and beautiful a way as to secure a book deal from a wonderful publisher, an elite publisher, and now the same publisher is treating me like I have the plague, all because, I feel, I have saved my own life. I didn’t set out to deceive them. No one wanted the fairy tale more than I did! Ironically, being “punished” by the publisher feels a bit like the abusive emotional stonewalling the cowboy would do to me when I didn’t knuckle under and do what HE needed me to do for HIS needs…it’s familiar territory, only now it’s being done to me by a progressive woman in New York. I’m not a commodity. I’m not an object. I’m not a thing to be sold. I am a human being, a writer, an artist, a work in progress, and real life is messy sometimes, especially when it comes to love and abuse. I am deeply wounded by the stonewalling from my editor, as wounded as I ever was when the cowboy did it to me…

I’m sure I’ll get shit for posting this. I’m betraying my publisher, who would have liked for me to be the next Ree Drummond. Hell, I would have liked for me to be the next Ree Drummond. But I wasn’t. I was the only Alisa Valdes, learning as I went along, living honestly and hopefully, trying to love. The only way the memoir works is if it is allowed to be what it IS rather than what others might like for it to have been. What is it? It is a guidebook for women on what falling in love with a controlling abuser looks like. It is a handbook on what NOT to do, what to run away from. I did not know it then. Then, I felt safe and thrilled, impressed with myself for having secured such a hot, strong, strapping, manly man. It was an illusion. Underneath it all was a scared, insecure boy, who talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk, a man who only felt good enough when he was making others feel badly. The memoir is important, and it is valuable, but not without this afterward. The message of the book, as I see it? Even smart, educated, self-sufficient, thoughtful women can get sucked into abusive relationships, and it will happen slowly, a little at a time, like a frog in a pot of cold water that is placed over a low flame, that even someone like me can, sometimes, be slowly boiled to death, that maybe we will write beautifully about how relaxing the warm water is, at first…

Finally, I want to say that I do not blame ranch life or cowboy culture for any of what the cowboy turned out to be. He could have been an accountant and it would have been the same. He was what he was because his own mother and father failed to love him. He was an abused child himself, and that was perhaps the hardest part of it all — that I saw glimpses of that little boy, the boy who so desperately wanted and needed to be loved, and sometimes he was playful, and joyous, and sweet, and happy, sometimes he loved, sometimes he allowed others to love him. Sometimes, we were happy. Blissfully happy. And that’s the part I never understood about abuse — that it doesn’t always feel like abuse. Sometimes, lots of the time, it felt like heaven.

I’m grateful to have gone through it. I learned a lot. I grew a lot. And now I know what so many of you who are reading the book already know — how to spot a controlling, abusive man from the get go. And I assure you: It won’t happen again.

In his own words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5jqqChQ3RA

that seems plausible I guess

whatever is going on here seems sad and not good and I kind of feel like I want to stop gawking at it now

"seems plausible I guess" = the sugar-coating part xpost, I wasn't commenting on the story in the blog

O_O jesus

I wish ppl would stop using "feel badly."

She's on the air right now!

--

Alisa Valdes Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa

About to go live on the radio with Amy Oliver on 1310 KFKA in CO to talk about #feministandcowboy. @gothambooks http://ow.ly/gHCCF

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa

Listen in! I'm on live. http://ow.ly/gHEeG

Seems to be talking about language issues right now.

I can see why that post was taken down; actually putting up a video of the dude along with naming and shaming the agent at the publisher seem conducive to getting your ass sued

also I hate myself for this but her idea of physical perfection is a Gelfling cowboy?

I wish ppl would stop using "feel badly."

― grossly incorrect register (in orbit), Thursday, January 10, 2013 11:09 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

unless they have a congenital insensitivity to pain

Natch.

her publisher should probably just pulp the books at this point tbh

The radio interview is annoying but I think it's the interviewer's doing.

did the deleted post come up at all?? crazy if not

Nothing yet, but the interview is continuing.

So far they've agreed that cowboys are hot and alpha-male behavior is understandably attractive to women because evolution. So this is definitely a good use of my time.

so she basically had a 24-hour window of saying her book was a lie and her cowboy was a rapist? wtf is going on here

Oh okay now she's saying her new boyfriend wrote the cowboy a thank-you letter for having tamed the shrew. Verbatim, btw. We're done here.

Yeah this is VERY weird. What the hell.

Ugh. The most dispiriting thing about this is she's confused fuck-worthy with actually interesting for a relationship. Not only does she paint him as immensely unattractive (to me) in her deleted blog post but I immediately shy away from women who tend to be attracted to brutes as they invariably tend to be tedious. If you're attracted to assholes, fine, but don't expect me to listen to you complain that they're assholes later.

WTFFFFFFFFFF?

This is all very, very weird to me.

ned, how did you run into this initially?

So far they've agreed that cowboys are hot and alpha-male behavior is understandably attractive to women because evolution. So this is definitely a good use of my time.

― grossly incorrect register (in orbit), Thursday, 10 January 2013 17:36 (17 minutes ago) Permalink

lol

Oh okay now she's saying her new boyfriend wrote the cowboy a thank-you letter for having tamed the shrew. Verbatim, btw. We're done here.

― grossly incorrect register (in orbit), Thursday, January 10, 2013 12:40 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this was on her blog as well

Rod Dreher. He had just posted earlier in the day yesterday on the Rosin review, and then he noticed or was forwarded the blogpost.

Setting aside other things, his take on it -- as he has a book due for release soon, a memoir of his sister -- was this:

To be fair, what would you do if, between the time your book was finished and it was published, its whole raison d’etre collapsed? You’d pay the advance back, is one thing. Surely, though, the publisher must have grasped that this story, and the storyteller, were both extremely unstable. What is Valdes supposed to have done? If it’s true the editor and publisher stonewalled her, then that seems to have been a really bad idea. Boy, I can’t wait till the real story comes out. What a mess.

Valdes is right about the long lead time between turning in a manuscript and the book coming out. The MS for The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming locked sometime in September, but was essentially finished in August. The book won’t come out till early April — and it’s not because everyone at the publisher’s is sitting on their hands waiting. These things take time. What happened with The Feminist And the Cowboy is a nightmare for everybody — but it sounds like it ought not to have been a big surprise, given the characters involved.

(Responding to Goole's question.)

huh, thx

"Try my delicious chocolate cakes!"
*blogs* "THE CAKES ARE ACTUALLY MADE OUT OF SHIT!!!"
*erases blog post*
*goes on radio*
"Yes they're so rich and moist"

Slate, with the embarrassing title, "Ride 'Em Cowboy!"

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/books/2013/01/alisa_valdes_the_feminist_and_the_cowboy_reviewed.html

First line: "Every era’s liberated woman gets the good fuck she deserves."

That interviewer was just a terrible speaker and story-teller, she could barely think of a coherent idea to put into words, I don't think any one sentence finished the way it began. This is who gets a radio show?? In Colorado, I guess?

Oh okay now she's saying her new boyfriend wrote the cowboy a thank-you letter for having tamed the shrew. Verbatim, btw. We're done here.

I'm trying to be kind -- maybe she really needs the money from the book so is doing her best to sell it, but her comment is making me want to vomit.

The verbal instructions the cowboy gives Valdes once she agrees to submit to him are a guide to daily living. No back-talking; no second-guessing; no sarcastic, smart-ass remarks. She must never exit the car unless he opens the door for her. She must never walk on the street side of the sidewalk. In one especially creepy scene, Valdes has just overheard another woman leave a voicemail for the cowboy saying she wishes he were joining her in the shower. The cowboy lies about the voicemail, and Valdes knows he is lying. But then she remembers some article she read saying that women were “biologically programmed” to find cheating men more attractive. “I was hurt, sad, and turned on.” He unbuckles his belt, and she throws her arms around his neck. “Biology,” she writes with a shrug.

I'm trying to be kind -- maybe she really needs the money from the book so is doing her best to sell it, but her comment is making me want to vomit.

― Solange and thanks for all the fish (Nicole), Thursday, January 10, 2013 1:23 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I kind of feel like she has a moral responsibility, at very least, to NOT promote this book assuming the erased blog post is true, whether or not she needs the money

http://www.guiltypleasuresbookreviews.com/2013/01/arc-review-the-feminist-and-the-cowboy-an-unlikely-love-story-by-alisa-valdes-rodriguez.html

The Feminist and The Cowboy is a wild ride through a time that I both remember and, am happy to admit, I was never truly involved in. Yes, I believe in woman’s rights, I even tell my husband that I didn’t need him before and I don’t need him now, but, I WANT him in my life. There’s a difference. I love when he opens the door for me, when he offers to help with the housework, when he cooks dinner. I think it sets a wonderful example for our sons to see that Dad isn’t just sitting around expecting to be waited on hand and foot and is willing to be “there” for me. And, also for my sons to see that I am still an independent woman that does not always depend on the “man” for everything in my life. It took a lot of convincing on the part of “The Cowboy” to get Alisa to see that for herself.

So, yes, I enjoyed the book. It was nice reliving those days when the name “Gloria Steinem” put fear into the eyes of men and when woman stood up for what they believed in. But, I would never have gone to the extremes that Ms. Valdez did. Now, I know that most of you are too young to remember or even know about the woman’s movement but you can thank people like Alisa for opening a lot of doors for us today. This book was refreshing, witty and a fun read. It was written with a little bit of humor (her description of her dates were hysterical) and lots of deep, inner thoughts. I give her a lot of credit for admitting to her faults, for seeing herself for how she was, for finally submitting to “The Cowboy” and giving herself up to him and be willing to change for “love” even if all that she ever knew was being threatened. I wish Alisa and “The Cowboy” many happy and fulfilling years together and honestly hope that they both get their Happily Ever After. God knows that “The Cowboy” deserves it and Alisa has earned it.

@MizAlisa

Did you miss my radio interview with Amy Oliver this morning? No worries. Here's the podcast! I had such fun. Cool lady....

“An irresistible, post-feminist Taming of the Shrew. Don’t be scared by the premise. This is not a story about a woman relinquishing her identity. Quite the opposite. It is a riveting tale about how a brilliant, strong-minded woman liberated herself from a dreary, male-bashing, reality-denying feminism.”
—Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys; How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men

“This is a real-life romance novel, as they are truly written, where a handsome, but flawed hero enhances the life of a woman battling her own demons. He doesn't save her. She doesn't change him… The book is insightful, sassy, sarcastic, intelligent, emotional and will challenge the preconceived concepts about conservatives and liberals and everyone in between.”
–Julie Leto, New York Times bestselling author

“Valdes has written a thought-provoking exploration of her own missteps and the tremendous obstacles she has overcome to achieve happiness in the second half of her life.”
—Publishers Weekly

Such fun. xp

Valdes talked glancingly about those rules in the interview but edited/elided to make them seem reasonable: instead of "never exit the car" it was, "let him open my door when we're in his home area, because in that environment it's a sign of respect." It seems to me like she's still editing the story of her experiences for each audience to get them on board, and I wonder how much of the story she's willing to admit and stand by, even to herself.

Sometimes it's too soon to look clearly on how wrong you were and how hurt you got, I can grok that, but I wish she wasn't doing it/didn't have to do it in public.

We have an answer:

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa

To those of you asking about the disappearance of yesterday's blog post: I was asked to take it down by my publisher, and did. The end.

jesus

oh man I hope there isn't a tragic libel suit in the near future

This is some bleak shit

fucking shit

fucking rapist-enabling patriarchal bullshit

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa
@PerezHilton Hi. I need to talk to you!!! (Dirty Girls Social Club author) please email me? al✧✧✧.val✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧
10:43 AM - 10 Jan 13

It is a riveting tale about how a brilliant, strong-minded woman liberated herself from a dreary, male-bashing, reality-denying feminism.

alpha publisher

this whole thing is horrifying

Jezebel should pick this up. They ran a story on her last month.

But Valdes is a scold: She pauses the story for extended explanations of just how little fun those of us who are not sleeping with cowboys are having. Feminism has ruined us all. In denying biology, it has thrown men into crisis. As her friend tells her, “They want to be men, but hate themselves for wanting to be men, so they push it all down and act like freakin’ Prince,”

uh

Prince is the ultimate dude IMO, like how much pure swagger must you have to flaunt high heels and cover yourself in lace and still get women to fall all over themselves for you?

I wish more men acted like Prince, tbh.

"hey girl, how you like my assless yellow pants?"
"AAAAIIIIIE!" *throws panties*

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa
To those of you asking about the disappearance of yesterday's blog post: I was asked to take it down by my publisher, and did. The end.

Holy shit. I guess there might be some sort of contractual thing where by giving the book negative publicity they're entitled to ask for the advance back or something? In which case, the publishers are evil. Otherwise, I just can't comprehend why you would make such a strong stand and then pretend nothing happened.

abusive author-publisher relationship :(

The Jezebel review: http://jezebel.com/alisa-valdes/

The New York Post is harsh: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/books/taming_of_the_shrewd_4mC0IDcGGPNlKquCYVz15O

What about those feminist ideals she once so highly prized?

“Freedom would never come from trying to force men to be women and women to be men, as so many radical feminists seemed to believe it would. Freedom came when I connected to this ancestral feminine womanhood that I carried in my DNA and stopped feeling guilty for all that it spoke me.”

In return, he offered her this: “Never thought I’d say this about you, but you might make a handy little ranch wife someday.”

The cynical among us might say that this all sounds too good — or too absurd — to be true.

The bestseller list is chock-full of books on “traditional values.” Perhaps this is her way back into the bestseller club that might no longer want her as a member?

Valdes admits that despite receiving a reported $400,000 advance for “Dirty Girls Social Club,” she is flat broke and nearly homeless. Her Lexus had been repossessed and her half-million-dollar home was short-sold.

“I had badly mismanaged my promising literary career a few years before, by being a woman without proper boundaries, an angry woman and self-destructive on a grand scale,” she writes.

Is this her mea culpa? Or is it merely link bait, a calculated bid to drum up controversy and a way to ensure a coveted talking-head spot in the media?

Either way, she might have some trouble with the marketing.

This October she wrote a blog post called “Saying Goodbye to the Cowboy.” In it — and probably despite her publisher’s hesitations — she writes about their breakup.

The cowboy’s last words to his feminist lover are downright brutal: “Stop. It’s over. This isn’t your home. It will never be your home. I don’t want you. Goodbye, Alisa.”

She followed up with few harsh tweets about her former paramour: “Things he now says he didn’t like about me? My ethnicity (!), my friends, my son (!), my parents, my tweeting unflattering truths like this.”

Valdes might be down — but she’s not out of the game just yet.

She’s started yet another blog devoted to love letters sent between her and a much younger writer, 29-year-old Michael Gandy, a fellow bleeding heart and founder of the nonprofit organization The Benevolence Community.

Do we smell a sequel?

^ The New York Post review was written before her now deleted post went up

It appears to be published by a Penguin offshoot. I'd hope the request was made for legal reasons and not for evil ones but it's difficult to tell sometimes.

I don't think you have to look very hard to find legal issues that a publisher would want to protect/distance itself from in a blog post where the author accuses the man in the book she published with your company of rape and then posts a video of him.

I also don't think you can really divorce those legal reasons from the evil reasons.

Well at least I know what one of our sister "big" houses is doing today--getting lots of emails from their CEO/publisher telling them not to talk to the press or offer any comment in a public place.

I think the publisher is evil because they agreed to publish this in the first place.

but agreed to publish this knowing how much?

The major difference I can see between this clusterfuck of a relationship and hundreds of thousands of similar clusterfucks is that one of the two people involved has written about it at great length and sold it to a publisher and founded a blog around it. The fact that she is a published author may carry a certain prestige, but it is no guarantee that she knows what she is doing, understands herself, or understands her lover. It only guarantees that she knows how to write declarative sentences.

I'm sorry her relationship with that cowboy turned out so horribly and his actions do not appear very creditable or kind, but I also can't say much in favor of her judgement, which seems to land her in an endless series of fuckups which she feels she must broadcast to the universe, first asserting then retracting many fundamental ideas with an equal passion and conviction of her rightness.

well, I mean, yeah xp

That night they disagree on nearly every subject, but “that kiss was so flippin’ good that I didn’t want to risk not getting another one by, you know, arguing or making unreasonable demands.”

So she holds her tongue. And gets in bed with the cowboy. “Angels sang arias. The earth moved,” she waxes on.

After only one night, she’s seemed to undergo an entire political change of heart.

“Maybe I didn’t know that I thought I knew. Maybe the world wasn’t as simple as they made it seem on the Rachel Maddow show,” she says.

With him, she’s in heaven, finally “free” of the feminist dogma that had defined her.

“The dirty little secret of feminism, I suddenly understood, was that it could never go as far as it aimed to, because we were, all of us, fundamentally shackled to our own biology,” she writes. “Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution could not be erased in one bra-burning decade, just because Gloria Steinem or Alice Walker said so.”

Now the idea that women are capable of doing anything that men can do — one that defined her earlier career — is almost overnight damned as mere “craziness.”

In man that's called thinking with his prick.

I have a lot of issues with serial memoirists, but this is just horrifying. And it'll probably only get worse when antifeminists pick up her book as a cause célèbre and ignore the context.

Ugh ugh ugh.

i think it's interesting that the 'cowboy' is also an actor

the whole situation, the handling of it...everything is really terrible

it'll probably only get worse when antifeminists pick up her book as a cause célèbre and ignore the context.

Or dismiss it as the crazy feminist being bitter and trying to get revenge for being dumped. The whole situation is really fucked up.

this whole thing is 10 kinds of fucked up - just from the excerpts available online, the relationship depicted in the memoir is clearly, unambiguously, abusive.

'the passion letters' are also super creepy and OTT

xxp Apparently per the radio interview some casting person was looking for a "cowboy, a real cowboy" type and kept asking around and ppl kept saying, "You've really got to meet {this guy}" and they did, and he got a bit part in something, and then more bit parts, etc, but when agents told him to move to LA to get more work he dissed them.

The Atlantic review: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/woman-rejects-feminism-continues-to-disdain-femininity/266889/

Valdes insists that through her relationship with the cowboy she grew and learned to reject second wave feminism, and to instead embrace the feminine. In practice, though, her book is suffused with a visceral loathing for the feminine. It's just that this loathing is mostly directed at men. She repeatedly sneers at the guys she's dated for being "emasculated," or, in one memorable phrase, for being "sniveling little boys, with crow's feet and online-porn addiction." She says that the reason her first marriage broke up was that she was the bread-winner and she couldn't respect her husband for staying at home and cooking and cleaning. And finally, in a remarkable display of homophobia, she sneers at pop stars from Prince to David Bowie for not projecting a sufficiently normative vision of masculinity. " A tiny little man with no body hair, running around in fucking thigh-high stiletto heels, singing in the highest falsetto in the world about how you were a 'Little Red Corvette'? Are you fucking kidding me?" Thus, before her transformation, she was a ball-breaking second waver who spent a lot of time verbally castrating men—and after her transformation, she's a ball-breaking non-second-waver who spends a lot of time verbally castrating men. The difference just doesn't seem that profound.

bam

obviously not reviewed by caitlin flanagan

Prince is the ultimate dude IMO

What kind of knuckle dragging heteronormativity do you have to buy into to deny this?

Her article in Huffpost last week: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alisa-valdesrodriguez/liberals-vs-conservatives_b_2397259.html

I was a city progressive who had managed to fall in love with a tall, stoic, smart yet very conservative cattle ranch manager from the rural part of my state. We were talking about maybe having my son meet him, and he was explaining to me his reasons for wanting my then 10-year-old to call him "Mr. Lane" and "sir."

"That's ridiculous," I told him. I had grown up with hippie academic parents on a college campus, calling all adults by their first names. "He's not used to having to do that. He should call you Steve."

"I don't care what he's used to," said Mr. Lane. "It's about respect."

So began our discussion about the meaning of "respect." To me, respect meant tolerance for differences. To Mr. Lane, it meant deference to authority. Same word. Totally different emotional meaning and reaction.

The more I listened, the more I understood that in spite of all the supposed "research" that says conservatives and liberals have brains that are wired differently (they, for "fear," we, for "shades of gray"), we might actually just be speaking different emotional languages with the same exact words.

I shared this idea with Mr. Lane, and watched his eyes light up as he understood.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said. "You might be on to something here."

It dawned on us both that day that we (and our sides) were much more alike than we were different, but that neither of us had ever taken the time to try to truly understand what the other side was saying in their own language. There weren't two kinds of brains out there, or two "kinds" of people, as our media would love for us all to believe in this most splintered time in American history. There were, rather, just... Americans... people who were all basically wired the same, who want the same basic things for themselves, their families and their communities, but for whom the same words and phrases symbolized something different. We simply could not connect because we were speaking different languages.

As the memoir I wrote about my love affair with this unlikeliest of partners for me hits shelves this week, The Feminist and the Cowboy: An Unlikely Love Story, I find people asking me how I was able to love a conservative cowboy for two years, given our enormous ideological differences. My answer is simple: Once Mr. Lane and I learned to speak to one another in each other's emotional languages, we got along great.

It's a lesson that I truly believe might be useful to our nation's leaders right now, too. Until we all learn to truly hear what the other is saying, I fear that we are all doomed to continue to misunderstand -- and by default loathe, mock and thwart -- one another.

I am legit grossed out that she referred to him as Mr Lastname right there.

I am pretty sure we figured this exact same thing out some time in high school

" A tiny little man with no body hair, running around in fucking thigh-high stiletto heels, singing in the highest falsetto in the world about how you were a 'Little Red Corvette'? Are you fucking kidding me?"

Nope.

http://culturepop.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/prince-extra-loveable-2011.gif

As the memoir I wrote about my love affair with this unlikeliest of partners for me hits shelves this week, The Feminist and the Cowboy: An Unlikely Love Story, I find people asking me how I was able to love a conservative cowboy for two years, given our enormous ideological differences. My answer is simple: Once Mr. Lane and I learned to speak to one another in each other's emotional languages, we got along great.

once democrats let republicans have their way w/ them and don't leave the car until boehner opens the door for them our country will do much better

"Well, I'll be damned," he said. "You might be on to something here."

sometimes plain-spoken actually means "idiot"

also in what universe does Prince have no body hair?

http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p294/cozikitten/My%20Prince/Princeshirtless.jpg

flood her inbox with lovesexy promo pics

"AH DON'T KNOW WHUT YOU JUST SAID"

(xp)

Veronica Saucedo @verosauce
@MizAlisa my friends and I can't get enough of your blog! And after today's post... We're buying the book. Love #love #neverblindagain
Retweeted by Alisa Valdes

No one has forced her to continue to support this sham of a book and that she continues to do so should tell you plenty about her character imo.

sadly at this point i don't feel entirely certain accepting the full truth of anything in the book OR in the subsequently removed blog post

not that i DISbelieve any of the things she has said happened, which are all horrible, just, well, who knows wtf is going on here at this point

mordy and goole otm

No one has forced her to continue to support this sham of a book and that she continues to do so should tell you plenty about her character imo.

Excuse me?? I'm sure her publisher is doing exactly that: they paid her a huge advance ($400,000 iirc from an earlier link???) and she's almost certainly contractually committed to a tour or tours, a certain number of speaking appearances and author signings and discussion groups and on and on. And not to libel her publisher in print, probably, also. Legal departments usually object to that kind of thing.

Her publisher is going to take her huge advance away if she doesn't retweet ppl's tweets? I doubt it.

yeah i don't think i agree with mordy there either. we have no idea what her continuing support of this book means or what motivation is behind it.

She doesn't have to lie during interviews either. She can say "It was a tumultuous love affair that ended poorly," and withhold publisher-unfriendly details. She doesn't need to lie. There is no "you must lie" provision in her contract I am positive.

It is mildly interesting how, in that HuffPo article, she casts herself as a heroine whose brilliant stroke of insight could lead to The Peaceable Kingdom among "our nation's leaders", and she gives every appearance of earnestly believing this scenario. This is more evidence, if any were needed, of the dismally low level of knowledge and experience required to set oneself up as a pundit and parade your ignorance about, garbed in bulletproof self-confidence.

OR in the subsequently removed blog post

Extremely cheap yet effective viral marketing

^^^

There is a definitely a way to sell this book for her publisher without defending + praising her rapist. "I've learned a lot over the last few years," "I am not the same person who wrote this book," etc there are thousands of writer cliches that she could trot out to create some distance between herself and her material.

garbed in bulletproof self-confidenceutter bullshit.

They can certainly take her to court to pay it back if they determine she's crossed over some line of unhelpful or libelous or unsupportive, which after that blog post and all this mishegas that line is probably already somewhere behind her if we're being honest.

Sorry, that's like xxxxxxxp somewhere, the phone rang.

Guys, I think she really wants to sell this book. I don't think that's necessarily in conflict with the truthfulness of her now-deleted post. Because of people are fucked-up.

I mean, would I have ever read her or bothered to spend one breath thinking or chatting about her w/o this? I don't know what her motivation(s) are, of course, but if it is a stunt, a cynical and ultimately malevolent stunt, it has most certainly worked.

the fact that, as i said, i "don't feel entirely certain accepting the full truth of anything", also means i'm not comfortable outright calling her a liar either.

i really wish someone out there would ask about the substance of her publisher's demands and follow up about the content of her blog post.

If the publishers were smart they'd have her write a new forward about what has happened since she wrote the book and market the fuck out of the new narrative.

yeah goole FYI I'm not arguing w/ u

The curious thing is that half of her redacted post is about how her publishers are a bunch or jerks. This could mean a lot of things to us encyclopedia browns.

http://blog.shankbone.org/2009/02/13/alisa-valdes-rodriguez-bipolar-disorder-bisexuality-and-wikipedia/

http://www.afterellen.com/2009/2/visibility-matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNjX3tQMygk

Hmm, methinks she's an immensely manipulative fabulist with a handy capacity to believe whatever bullshit she happens to be peddling.

Either that or I am just blinded with loathing for her highlights in that afterellen photo.

Um, yeah. I don't think this is helpful, guys. You're basically parading around a bunch of ad hominem crap in light of the fact that an alleged victim of serious abuse is not comporting herself *properly* in your own little worldview. There is a bunch of stuff none of us know about this story, and it would behoove you not to behave like utter utter wankers about it.

emil.y otm

there's more to this and anyone posting itt surely knows that

ppl who have suffered from abuse are likely not to act as predictably as others, so who knows really.

Thanks for the links, estella. xposts

We don't need to make any judgments about her claims of abuse to call bullshit on her and her publisher for bringing this opportunistic, anti-feminist memoir to market.

it's hard to believe this story of abuse, given how often this woman has opportunistically mined for attention by claiming membership to various vulnerable or minority groups.

Honestly I don't know which is worse - if she made up the abuse on the blog post to get some cheap, exploitive publicity or if she didn't make them up and is pushing this book despite knowing now that it's a narrative in which she defends an abusive rapist.

i hope it's not too lighthearted at this point to say i hope that her gallagher takedown was true

xp Hey now, easy on the publishing house/imprint. Only university presses and indie issue-specific companies can afford to only publish books by liberal people with liberal credentials who only like 20% of America has ever heard of.

Fine, coddle her emil.y. Did you read that afterellen piece? Maybe I'm an utter, utter wanker, but I smell narcissist rat, desperate for attention (publicity, whatever). I really do. If you claim to have squared some imaginary circle about feminists and thuggish cowboys and write a book about it and it's finally going to be published and then post that you were raped by your cowboy beau and then make that claim disappear and then, when confronted about said disappearance, say your publicist said to take it down and by the way my present boyfriend wrote and said, "Thanks for taming my shrew!" to your putative rapist and you want me to be more circumspect about ad-feminem wankiness when I feel like pulling my hair out and bewailing humanity even more than I did this morning, I apparently just don't get it.

Honestly I don't know which is worse - if she made up the abuse on the blog post to get some cheap, exploitive publicity or if she didn't make them up and is pushing this book despite knowing now that it's a narrative in which she defends an abusive rapist.

Yes, if only there was any other possibility between those two extremes.

It's hard for me to imagine that any self-respecting publisher, especially not an arm of a giant like penguin, would want to silence accusations of rape and try to preserve a sham narrative about a memoir all so it didn't have to eat a whopping $400,000 advance (which, let's face it, they are not going to get back from her even if they spend the money to take her to court)

Orbit, what would be one of those possibilites? I honestly cannot see how she could publish this w/o amendment at the very least if she stands by the rape charge.

If she doesn't stand by the abuse/rape charge, it's despicable that she made it.

the worst case, in my view, might be what's happening: it's possible that the cowboy was an abusive rapist, but valdes really does now believe all that crap about women being happier submitting to a real man, despite that.

but in general i don't like filling in with speculation what nobody has yet found out by asking.

Well first of all the release date was January 3 so the text has probably been final since sometime in November at the very least. And most of the first printing qty is probably already sold to distributors and amazon.com and bookstores and so on.

I mean it's out there, they can't get it back (except by a massively expensive recall which could happen I guess but is maybe a long shot).

I haven't seen where Valdes isn't "standing by" the rape allegations, there could be LOTS of reasons to take that post down. Has she issued some kind of 100% retraction of everything in it that I haven't noticed?

I guess the publisher could think "WE HAVE TO COVER THIS UP SO WE CAN SELL BOOKS" but it's hard for me to believe that the publisher would think that way, not least because it would be stupid of them. I'd think it'd make much more sense to get out in front of this and cut losses. But only after figuring out for sure what the heck is going on. So I don't see "please take this blog post down" as particularly nefarious under the circumstances.

no, which is why the lack of follow-up is so maddening

but it appears that only our little corner of the internet seems to give a rat's

xp

Also: It will not be up to the author whether to recall or scrap or amend the books, most likely--that will be up to the publisher.

I guess the publisher could think "WE HAVE TO COVER THIS UP SO WE CAN SELL BOOKS" but it's hard for me to believe that the publisher would think that way, not least because it would be stupid of them.

I'm sorry, what country do you think you live in?????

this is the most believable/least surprising portion of this whole thing; institutions react to bad new by attempting to bury it

xxxxp

emil.y, if we say that this woman's words and actions throw her into a very poor light, entirely apart from whether what she said about the man is true or false or somewhere in between, then we are only pointing out the obvious. Trying to justify her known words and actions, based on some hypothetical set of facts about which we know nothing, is an interesting thought, but a rather insubstantial one.

I'd ask you to notice that 98% of the story that we know so far has been completely under her control and put before us by her choice. So, it is not accidental that she became the subject of our discussion. If we have been misled about her, she must bear some responsibility for that.

DJP otm, for pete's sake, don't you think that's why we all have legal departments?

If she had brought this to their attention earlier I would think they'd rather scrap the book than have a scandal waiting to happen. Publishers like this publish a lot of friggin books - they're not going to be so attached to a single one (which, incidentally, did not exactly debut on the bestseller list it turns out) that they'd take that kind of risk.

she doesn't actually accuse him of rape - although it's clearly implied in her description of the situation

For what it's worth (per goole's comment) we aren't the only ones to be talking about this:

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/the-real-cowboy-the-real-feminist/267053/

Her Gallagher takedown: http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2008/03/gallagher-es-muy-mala.html

Hmm. How to put this delicately? We'll simplify: Mime-like, stringy-haired man in black hat smashes food with mallet on stage for living. Man, who no espeakey no Spanish, hears Spanish, thinks Spanish good, Spanish muy muy dinero. Man spends one month learning important Spanish words such as cerveza, caca and culo (butt). Man invents Spanish words, such as "sperm-o" and "embarazamante." Man decides this is enough Spanish to put on show for Latinos. Man smashes pinatas, wears giant sombrero and shakes keg-sized maracas. Man mocks Jews and gays and women and constipated old people. Man thinks he is muy funny comedian-o.

"There was the time we had an argument, the time I dared to challenge him and insist that I was right about something, when he, furious with me and so much bigger than me, simply dragged me down the hall to the bedroom, bent me over, and took me, telling me as he did so that I must never forget who was in charge, that I must learn to be nicer, that I must learn…to obey."

she doesn't use the r-word, but that is a rape accusation plain as day

Ned published the link yesterday afternoon. It was gone by the time I ambled along to see it early this morning. I don't find it hard at all to believe that the publishing house crossed their fingers and hoped that 10 or 15 hours of internet exposure might be salvageable. What I find truly odd is the timing of her post given that she could have torpedoed the book some time back before it went to the printers, if she had misgivings but now that it's out or almost out (unsure about the exact timing here) she's thrown a massive wrench into the book's very reason for being.

I don't think Valdes' post really changes my reading of the book—though it does make that reading significantly more depressing. The fact that the abused often identify with their abusers isn't news, of course. Judith Herman and Lisa Hirschman in Father-Daughter Incest (one of those second-wave feminist treatises Valdes says she's moved beyond) talk about how victims of incest often admire the "competence and power" of their fathers. The identification is part of the abuse—and, of course, enables it.

In comments on her post, Valdes insists that she still rejects the feminist ideology that prevented her from trusting men. She insists she still stands by her claim that "feminism stole my womanhood."

As I admitted in my review, there is something to the argument that feminism doesn't sufficiently respect femininity. But...good lord. Surely the answer to that is not abusive relationship as growth experience. Valdes's stereotype of feminism may not be right that all men can't be trusted, but clearly this asshole shouldn't have been. Can't there be some kind of reconciliation between feminism and femininity that doesn't involve women being terrorized by controlling, violent cowboys?

careful guys, some of you are coming pretty close to sounding like men's rights activists, i mean do you really have to bring up the spectre of the false or opportunistic rape allegations to make your point

the situation is fucked up for certain but nobody here has all of the facts so maybe stop being gross

just let the disappointing human frailty and misery wash over you, shit is fucked up and always will be

I have no opinion on whether she is making a false accusation or not but it's kind of fucked up that objecting to the idea of a false accusation of rape automatically makes you a men's rights activist

like, you should be able to voice the opinion that a specific person may not be trustworthy without being painted as a woman-hating dick

just let the disappointing human frailty and misery wash over you

solitary posts that effortlessly sum up etc

I think the accusation of rape is generally accepted here as well within believability, but that Valdes's actions make it difficult to see much integrity in her handling of... the whole situation. The most charitable explanantion is that she is extremely confused and that her confusion inevitably leads us all into a similar confusion about her motives. All we can do is point to the multitude of contradictions that are painfully apparent around her behavior. She is the only one who could possibly clear them up.

There's a lot of anger at the author as a person and a comment about her appearance and way too much animosity coming to the surface from some ppl itt. Gotta tell you, it makes me really uncomfortable about continuing to talk about it (more than I already was/am from the sheer distastefulness of the whole spectacle).

I don't want to make any judgments about Valdes. Her level of objective accuracy doesn't concern me w/r/t each individual event depicted, if she used the "r-word," if she writes over-dramatically by my estimation, if I would want to be besties irl, because to me the absolute most convincing parts are the most banal:

I was so beaten down by then, from the constant daily criticisms, from the constant erosion of my self esteem, that I just took it, and wept, and apologized, and promised to do better. I did not think I would become someone like that. And there was a part of me hidden away inside, kept safe, that watched it all and waited for my chance to escape…

when I tried to say I was sorry, when I tried to stop the inevitable stonewalling, he glared, called me a mouthy cunt, told me to get to my side of the bed and not touch him, told me that he couldn’t stand the sight of me, told me that if I really wanted to impress him then I’d be a good girl and just shut the fuck up, and his finger poking me in the chest, and then wagged in my face, telling me that my biggest problem, the reason he would never marry me after all, was that I was a woman who just didn’t know when to shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, and me saying I would, that I would be quiet, and turning my back to him so he wouldn’t hear me cry, and him feeling the bed shake anyway and yelling at me that I was pathetic, that if I wanted him to stay then I better stop fucking crying, and me running into my closet with my phone to fall in a heap on the floor and text myself so that in the morning I’d remember that this was NOT okay, that this was NOT love, and him pretending the next morning that nothing had happened.

I don't get the impression that anyone in this thread is angry. I'm certainly not angry.

You may be projecting a little bit.

Very interesting -- so that Atlantic article I linked? She's RT'd the announcement of it and replied:

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa

@hoodedu I find this piece very even-handed, compassionate, and spot-on, and suppose that will get me sued or something.

and a comment about her appearance

Alright, despite my disliking her highlights that was merely a lame attempt at levity and if she wants to call me a mincing, fasetto-voiced sheep fucker, I'll take it in good stride.

All I can say, is that if my guy called me a mouthy cunt, they would pretty much be the last two words I ever heard from him.

Addendum: Because Valdes wants us to accept her book as full of insight, beauty and wisdom about how women should think and act toward men, this obviously tortured clustefuck pretty well discredits any pretensions she had about that, which at the very least means the book is full of crap.

Man, what if goole's worst scenario is true?! *Sigh*

Final addendum, I would hope.

Perhaps, as several here have said, we ought not judge her, but it is fairly clear to me that she had no problem judging feminists and feminism and stating those judgements in clear, harsh, outspoken terms. So, if we choose not to repay her in kind, it is a courtesy she was disinclined to extend to others.

All I can say, is that if my guy called me a mouthy cunt, they would pretty much be the last two words I ever heard from him.

It's pretty easy to say what you would do in an abusive situation until you're in one. I'm not comfortable making judgements on what I would or wouldn't do.

I don't know this lady or know that she was someone I would have found convincing BEFORE the cowboy incident, but being abused changes you even if you thought you were done becoming yourself or defining yourself or w/e. Even if you like to think that who you are is done now, that you have a firm basic nature that can't be swayed...it can. And it takes a while to dig out afterwards. You're not, like, cured from the time you decide to walk away.

Oh boy the part of the ilx clusterfuck where make judgment call on other ilxors, awesome.

I blame Ned for invoking it in the thread title

(Aimless painstakingly divides a lump of blame into a myriad of tiny bits, so they can be correctly apportioned to the proper recipients)

I don't get the impression that anyone in this thread is angry. I'm certainly not angry.

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 9:40 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm fucking furious, to be perfectly honest. The vast majority of you are making me feel pretty disgusted.

Sorry that post of mine wasn't particularly helpful and definitely not needed, just, get sick of when these threads turn into ilxors sniping at each other (no matter how obliquely). I think we can all just agree that this is incredibly fucked up and that I guess be grateful that, no matter where things go now, she's out of that relationship.

I'm trying to stay emotionally disengaged and I don't have the energy to get into this today, maybe try another crack about how I'm projecting tomorrow and see if I'm up for it then.

Why wait until tomorrow?

I just assume that her claims of abuse are true. What she went through with that guy was horrible.

Before she went through this, she told an LGBT publication, via email, that she was bisexual, made the claim in her blog and on Wikipedia that they got it wrong, impugning their credibility, implied they were bigoted against her because she was straight, claimed that the LGBT community was out to get her, and then in another blog post claimed that she *was* bisexual, but that she was in physical danger from right-wing Cubans who wanted to kill her because this LGBT publication published that she was bisexual. She subsequently deleted that post.

Then she wrote this anti-feminist book.

http://i.imgur.com/nPPgO.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im8Z34fUuuY

Mordy, do you even have a point here or are you just trying to be an ass?

For the record I don't need to try to be an ass. I need to try not to be an ass.

Seriously, though, maybe ppl who find this kind of thing triggering should walk away from the conversation rather than demand all the angry posters just stop talking about it.

welp

How dare we discuss the post that this author posted on her public blog and the book that this author published with a publishing house! Who the fuck do we think we are?

god forbid any restraint or tact be exercised

I think we can all agree that this has gone from literary to literal.

Hmm, lovely, now we've got John Podhoretz and James Taranto spreading the word among others.

As far as I'm aware, nobody has asked people to stop talking about it. I personally have said stop talking about it like a bunch of fucking poisonous cuntstains who I would happily see dangling from a tree by their frenulums, but I haven't told anyone to stop talking about it.

Maybe you should work harder on that trying not to be an ass thing.

Welp, level "cuntstains" attained. Well done ilx.

Give me a break, emil.y. What was the most fucking poisonous cuntstain thing I said on this thread? That if it turned out he was an abusive rapist maybe she shouldn't be promoting this book in interviews as a love story?

As usual the self-righteous outrage eclipses anything that was actually said. Was it when Michael criticized the highlights in her hair? Was that when everyone became poisonous cuntstains?

Mordy, dude, you obviously haven't read all the articles Ned has helpfully provided if that's your cursory take.

I read the article about her lying about her bisexuality and her bipolar disorders, threatening wiki w/ lawsuits, I read her blog post in full, I read the slate book review of her book, and a few other book reviews. Which link in particular do you feel I missed?

That if it turned out he was an abusive rapist maybe she shouldn't be promoting this book in interviews as a love story?

This part indicates that you're glossing over quite a bit about how she is choosing to promote this.

Like saying on the radio that the cowboy "tamed the shrew" for her new boyfriend?

So far they've agreed that cowboys are hot and alpha-male behavior is understandably attractive to women because evolution. So this is definitely a good use of my time.

― grossly incorrect register (in orbit), Thursday, January 10, 2013 12:36 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh okay now she's saying her new boyfriend wrote the cowboy a thank-you letter for having tamed the shrew. Verbatim, btw. We're done here.

― grossly incorrect register (in orbit), Thursday, January 10, 2013 12:40 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

brb, gonna go back my head against a wall now. more productive and fulfilling than trying to continue discussing this with you. also, to try to just extricate myself from this cluster.

hahaha you mean you missed that part of the thread. no worries dude, go start a race war somewhere.

is it possible for you to disagree with someone without making a needlessly provocative personal jab?

yes, obviously. 99% of my posts disagree w/ someone without making a needlessly provocative personal jab.

like that one ^

you might want to consider exercising that restraint here because right now you just look like a total dick

and, since I know you are NOT a total dick, it's disheartening

dangling from a tree by their frenulums

Colorful image. Thanks for injecting something very similar to what you say you deplore itt. Bye!

Mordy, your argument about how she is promoting this is really oversimplified and conveniently ignores a lot of levels here. But clearly given your last post direct towards me, I no longer need to respect you or take a single thing you ever type seriously again.

Hey jon, if you want to make an argument that anyone takes 'seriously' why don't you actually make your argument. What am I oversimplifying? What levels am I ignoring?

I understand. $400,000.00 is a lot of money to give back to your publisher, especially in the current publishing industry. Is that the subtlety I have failed to acknowledge?

It seems obvious to me that she was threatened by her publisher and that is drastically affecting the tack she is taking in promoting this book, let alone anything that got bent in her worldview as a result of going through this relationship.

So, it seems we are all talking about a woman who was most likely victimized and abused, who went on to say and do some pretty spectacularly foolish and inappropriate things in regard to her abuse and her abuser. Ilxors, to best of my reading, have mostly been saying that those spectacularly foolish and inappropriate things appear to be both foolish and inappropriate.

This is not to say the poor woman wasn't abused or she was not a victim, but only that it is highly inadvisable at this point to take all those foolish and inappropriate things at the face value that she placed upon them when she said them, wrote them, or did them. And it looks like she is continuing to sell her book based on the idea that it ought to be taken at face value. Which is wrongheaded at best.

imo, there is nothing wrong with saying this. even if it makes a few ilxors angry., because they think this is the same as taunting or ridiculing a victim of abuse for being a victim of abuse. it is more like trying to divide the wheat from the chaff. God knows there is enough chaff in all this to keep us well occupied.

DJP OTM

Fwiw I said I thought the interview sucked partly b/c of the interviewer, which I can expand on: I thought the intviewer/radio show host led Valdes to some of those unsavory places where she said those things...and all through it I thought Valdes was giggly and light and insubstantial-sounding, and seemed eager to please, that she could be led to agree and to tailor her story to meet with the approval of the host and/or her presumed listeners (being fans of the host's regular show). We know that she DID tailor it because, like I also already posted, she put a different slant on some objectionable things for the radio show than she had in her writing.

The eager to please and agreeable part, like I said I didn't know anything about her BEFORE this, but you don't just get over that when it's been your survival mechanism for some time. I'm okay with just calling this sad and wishing her a healthier life in the future.

Like I said above, there is a space between completely declaiming the material and apologizing for it. She doesn't have to repudiate all of it. She also doesn't have to talk about how women are naturally attracted to dominant alpha men during her book promo. There are other ways to promote this material. xxp

I'm not going to bother to respond anything more than that to you Mordy, you're a bully and an asshole who deserves zero respect or time.

imho the issue at hand is not whether we are able to determine some objective history of events here (because we obviously won't), MY concern is that this story doesn't get flattened into "crazy woman is crazy and falsely accuses rape because she wants attention" even though that has been lightly suggested itt and is already making headway into coservative blogs

cry me a river, jon.

Mordy, I wasn't particularly singling you out in my remark, but the problem with you is mostly one of tonality, constant devil's advocate playing about stuff you don't even care about, a misguided belief that you actually have any handle on philosophical logic, and utterly below-the-belt shit like "why wait until tomorrow?" to a clearly exasperated in orbit. And you always have to get the last word, no matter how fucking stupid, pointless or childish.

M White, where on earth did I say I deplored hanging people by their frenulums? Why, I hear tell that it is a most invigorating experience. Pip pip!

My misguided belief that I actually have any handle on philosophical logic?? Now you've cut me to the core.

Mordy, just go the fuck away. You are a worthless poster.

Yeah, elmo, I was thinking that, too--the word "crazy" is already being pointedly used in that special way, which is always extra-special gross.

I've been watching this discussion unfold, and it all feels so familiar.

Fwiw I said I thought the interview sucked partly b/c of the interviewer, which I can expand on: I thought the intviewer/radio show host led Valdes to some of those unsavory places where she said those things...and all through it I thought Valdes was giggly and light and insubstantial-sounding, and seemed eager to please, that she could be led to agree and to tailor her story to meet with the approval of the host and/or her presumed listeners (being fans of the host's regular show). We know that she DID tailor it because, like I also already posted, she put a different slant on some objectionable things for the radio show than she had in her writing.

The eager to please and agreeable part, like I said I didn't know anything about her BEFORE this, but you don't just get over that when it's been your survival mechanism for some time. I'm okay with just calling this sad and wishing her a healthier life in the future.

I think the thing that's troubling is that the "tailoring the message to the perceived audience" thing came up in the AfterEllen interaction as well, making it semi-difficult to tell as an outsider just hearing about her now if this is something she just does or if this is an expression of a coping mechanism she learned in this abusive relationship, or even worse if she has been in abusive relationships her entire life and this is just the first one she's written about.

Hey Jon, how about I leave after you make good on one of your a thousand threats to quit ilx?

Shut up. You turned this into a needless personal attack.

Did I? I seem to remember reading this before I said anything personal:

"brb, gonna go back my head against a wall now. more productive and fulfilling than trying to continue discussing this with you. also, to try to just extricate myself from this cluster."

I guess it's different when you're the one dishing it.

you know you two could do this with baseball bats irl, it would be so much more fun to watch

Would you two mind creating your own "Mordy and Jon Wuv Each Other Very Much" thread, please?

I didn't bring up an entirely unrelated argument that has already been hashed over months ago to bring it out of the context of the thread though.

xpost

It might even be kind of telling to see to what extent the rape aspect is fastened on as being the real or most substantial or most damning part of the story? It was abuse of several kinds that went on for a long time, it's not like the fact that he didn't wait for her to consent to sex is better or worse than not waiting for her to consent to having every facet of her action and personality micro-managed by breaking her down until she was nothing.

Focusing on his being a rapist or her story being primarily an allegation of rape puts her sexuality ahead of her person-hood imo and is not a good place for anyone to be hastening toward.

Oh okay. So you have an excuse for being the first person to write something unrelated and nasty. xp

Oh stop being so disingenuous, you knew what you were doing with the "race war" comment.

I was going to say that the women posting itt are otm and some people disagreeing with them have come disappointingly close to accusing them of being shrill, hysterical and manipulative for not immediately condemning this clearly shrill, hysterical and manipulative woman, but we may be done with discussing now various nuclear options have been taken

PS I will agree that this book as originally envisaged by the author and publisher sounds completely horrible, and it's depressing that both of them are fixed in a charade of pretending nothing has changed since that, and of course there are many possible reasons why that might be and ways to apportion blame for it (all of which remain depressing)

xxxp in orbit otm again

Jon, as far as I can tell, you jumped into this clusterfuck to score some easy points against me and then tried to back out quickly before anyone noticed. I suspect this is your MO in general. Saying nasty things and then getting hurt when people respond to them.

Dude, nothing I said was "nasty", I just said you were being very frustrating itt.

hi

You didn't give any reason for that. You just said that banging your head against a wall is more productive than talking to me without actually responding to anything I actually said. xp

Would you two mind creating your own "Mordy and Jon Wuv Each Other Very Much" thread, please?

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, January 10, 2013 2:46 PM (3 minutes ago)

omg seriously can you both just stop

Mordy, dude, you obviously haven't read all the articles Ned has helpfully provided if that's your cursory take.

― HAPPY BDAY TOOTS (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:24 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read the article about her lying about her bisexuality and her bipolar disorders, threatening wiki w/ lawsuits, I read her blog post in full, I read the slate book review of her book, and a few other book reviews. Which link in particular do you feel I missed?

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:25 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You still haven't answered this btw. You've just decided to make this about a perceived injury to yourself, maybe bc you can't answer my question.

Sitting in a tree.

K

I

S

etc

What if everyone just got up and went for a nice walk

No, I won't stop. I'm sick of everyone just hushing up when ilxors start bullying each other. Mordy pulled out an obviously inflammatory comment to provoke me that had nothing to do with this thread. I'm sick of that treatment. I did nothing to deserve that kind of personal attack.

It might even be kind of telling to see to what extent the rape aspect is fastened on as being the real or most substantial or most damning part of the story? It was abuse of several kinds that went on for a long time, it's not like the fact that he didn't wait for her to consent to sex is better or worse than not waiting for her to consent to having every facet of her action and personality micro-managed by breaking her down until she was nothing.

Focusing on his being a rapist or her story being primarily an allegation of rape puts her sexuality ahead of her person-hood imo and is not a good place for anyone to be hastening toward.

I think, for a lot of people, there is a hierarchy of cruelty:

mental abuse < physical abuse < sexual abuse

Like, if you polled a bunch of people and asked them "order these people from best to worst", I would expect someone who said cruel things to come out better than someone who beats people up, and someone who inflicts sexual violence on others would be deemed the absolute worst; I don't know that it has anything to do with the personhood of the victim as much as it has to do with the perceived level of inhumanity necessary to commit the act. Practically everyone has said mean shit about other people and a lot of people have gotten into a physical altercation but I think a lot of people would balk at self-identifying with a rapist.

I don't dismiss your argument out of hand, though; it's kind of weird to not really consider the victim of the attack in this.

Yes, you do. You say mean things and then try to cute your way out of them. Why don't you stand up for what you wrote? xp

first comes love

then comes marriage

...

'poisonous cuntstain' is the name of my dog

You guys should relax. Jon and I are both adults posting on a message board. No one is threatening harm. We are having a discussion. If he or I decide that we don't like the conversation we can stop it at any time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0Fpl67p5qk

"adults"

My "DJP OTM" comment was intended to convey that he effectively summarized what I was trying to say. If you were actually trying to engage in a real debate with me, I'd bother to address your comments. But as soon as you threw your "race war" comment out, you immediately revealed yourself as a bully with no actual interest in the topic at hand. You're not worthy of my time nor respect and I'm disappointed in myself for engaging with you even this far. I'm going to flat out ignore every single one of your posts on any thread from now on, unless you feel like issuing an apology for your "race war" comment. You knew that was a sensitive issue for me that has already been beaten to death, you brought it up solely to provoke me with no real intention of fostering a legitimate discussion.

I assume we are at the very most both above bar mitzvah age. xp

best new rolling thread

I apologize for my race war comment. Now jon, would you like to respond to my question before 'race war' ever came up? I'll remind you:

Mordy, dude, you obviously haven't read all the articles Ned has helpfully provided if that's your cursory take.

― HAPPY BDAY TOOTS (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:24 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read the article about her lying about her bisexuality and her bipolar disorders, threatening wiki w/ lawsuits, I read her blog post in full, I read the slate book review of her book, and a few other book reviews. Which link in particular do you feel I missed?

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:25 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

brb, gonna go back my head against a wall now. more productive and fulfilling than trying to continue discussing this with you. also, to try to just extricate myself from this cluster.

― HAPPY BDAY TOOTS (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:29 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

ned i love you for that youtube

Like, if you polled a bunch of people and asked them "order these people from best to worst", I would expect someone who said cruel things to come out better than someone who beats people up, and someone who inflicts sexual violence on others would be deemed the absolute worst; I don't know that it has anything to do with the personhood of the victim as much as it has to do with the perceived level of inhumanity necessary to commit the act. Practically everyone has said mean shit about other people and a lot of people have gotten into a physical altercation but I think a lot of people would balk at self-identifying with a rapist.

I don't dismiss your argument out of hand, though; it's kind of weird to not really consider the victim of the attack in this.

True, and only the victim of this particular narrative could speak for herself in this. But I believe that being an abuser who keeps someone around as an emotional punching bag, who digs down for the things that are most foundational to that person's sense of self and then pressures them with digs and criticism sessions and withholding affection and giving affection but only for a price and all kinds of cruel manipulation, to deform them until they're willing to give up whatever they love either to win some kind of love from you or just to make you stop. And all of this effort on your part is just to see if you can make them do it, like as a TEST? That is fundamentally different than saying mean stuff about someone.

Sorry, that long sentence didn't arrive where it was supposed to, but I think you can figure it out.

You guys should relax. Jon and I are both idiots posting on a message board. No one wants to read our posts. We are having a shitfit. If he or I decide that we don't like the thread we can derail it at any time.

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 5:57 PM

Oh no, this poor thread being derailed.

True, and only the victim of this particular narrative could speak for herself in this. But I believe that being an abuser who keeps someone around as an emotional punching bag, who digs down for the things that are most foundational to that person's sense of self and then pressures them with digs and criticism sessions and withholding affection and giving affection but only for a price and all kinds of cruel manipulation, to deform them until they're willing to give up whatever they love either to win some kind of love from you or just to make you stop. And all of this effort on your part is just to see if you can make them do it, like as a TEST? That is fundamentally different than saying mean stuff about someone.

I agree completely but I don't think that's a perspective one is going to arrive at unprompted without having experienced that in a situation they felt they couldn't escape, such as a romantic relationship or sibling/parental abuse. It's one of the reasons why "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me" is such a popular little saying.

Defining verbal abuse as saying mean things is sort of like...it's basically the same as defining rape as just wanting to have sex with someone? Or something. I don't know. But it leaves the POWER aspect out, and since power is the whole point, you can't accurately describe the abusive behavior without it.

I'm grateful that we can now have to a public conversation about rape that in general acknowledges that it's not a crime of sex but one of power/dominance. That is a more accurate direction to go in, better for identifying contributing factors, better for prevention, better for diagnosing the social ill, etc. Verbal and emotional abuse have exactly that same quality, and we should be having that kind of conversation about them as well.

Okay now my head is spinning a bit even more because NOW she's deleted the tweet (and FB post) explaining why she deleted the blogpost.

xp: Again, I agree; what I am trying to say is that it is easier for an external onlooker to disassociate the power aspect from verbal abuse than it is to disassociate it from physical or sexual abuse, largely because there is an overt, tangible expression of that power in the form of physical violence, and I believe that impacts the "seriousness" for lack of a better word that people in general impart to verbal abuse. It's part of why people get so cruel in comment sections or on messageboards, or why some people really don't believe some forms of bullying are a serious problem.

I know, we agree! :) But like I said, it is interesting to see who picks up on that aspect and who sticks RAPE right up at the top of the pile of problems with just everything about this situation.

I get the three different levels thing but to read about that level of sustained and premeditated emotional abuse going on for so long and then go "whoa we should totally not assume that any sexual abuse happened just because this woman said so" like the former was just fine (both for the guy to have done and for the reader to take at face value, if you really feel the latter claim must be protested) but it's some kind of crazy leap between the two... that seems weird and uncomfortable.

xps sorry, just wandering in late and agreeing with everyone while sounding like I disagree

I think it's pretty obvious right now that her publisher is putting mad pressure on her not to put out anything negative about this book.

the thing that was so chilling to me about her situation was his insistence on keeping her away from her family and her son --- that motivation comes from such an infuriatingly weak ego, and yet it creates a space for so much more power to be wielded once that's achieved. I mean, I've heard stories from friends over the years and when that is part of the narrative, you know that it's going to get really bad, really quickly from that point onwards. divide and conquer, etc.

What I am having most trouble with is the fact that she obviously has, at best, severe misgivings about both this relationship in particular and the type of relationship it represents more generally -- and yet she is still gamely going out promoting this book that presents this relationship and this type of relationship as something revelatory and fulfilling. From all the reviews it sounds like she's being prescriptive -- ladies, you need a cowboy! -- but she has acknowledged that what she's prescribing is unhealthy and maybe dangerous. That's not just dishonest, it's irresponsible.

^ OTM

My problem also, hence way way at ths start where I said I hated the idea of the book because of this whole 50 shades submissive bullshit. It has to stop, because its reality is what she's (purportedly) gone thru as a result!

tipsy, I would hazard a guess that her options right now are either continue to play along on some version of the publicity & promotion agreement or be prepared to break contract and deal with the consequences, possibly involving demands that she return all or part of the advance. I think the blog post from yesterday was her attempt to break with the viewpoint of the book, it certainly read like it was?

Yeah I'm still having a hard time with the fact that here is a 43-year-old educated liberal woman and longtime professional author who has even been married before (supposedly to a perfectly nice, non-abusive guy) who suddenly decided to buy into an absurd domineering cowboy fantasy, pitched a book about it, and then when the relationship turned out to be horribly abusive (which I am not doubting) did not feel any responsibility to pull the plug on the project or at least try to change its dimensions. The fact that she was victimized by this man (or that she has financial needs) doesn't absolve her of all responsibility whatsoever here.

As far as the advance, ok, well it's an advance. Why should she keep it?

To pay rent

my guess is she's spent it already and can't give it back

I'm still having a hard time with the fact that here is a 43-year-old educated liberal woman and longtime professional author who has even been married before (supposedly to a perfectly nice, non-abusive guy) who suddenly decided to buy into an absurd domineering cowboy fantasy, pitched a book about it, and then when the relationship turned out to be horribly abusive (which I am not doubting) did not feel any responsibility to pull the plug on the project or at least try to change its dimensions.

fucked up situations fuck people up

some of you guys seem to be ignoring that if she doesn't promote the book in some way, this will affect her ability to earn money. this isn't the (sexist imo) "this is about money!" trope that people sometimes push around controversies like these - it's "if I take the moral high road, it will have a material effect on me." people will do/say all sorts of things where their health and well-being are concerned - just renouncing the book and saying "don't buy or read it" would be an honest and moral decision, and would also be working tangibly against self-interest.

imo there's probably also pressures on her besides the economic/publishing ones, as evidenced by the backlash against her blog post (i.e. the same pressures faced by all survivors of rape/abuse)

Mordy I actually think you are cool poster on a lot of topics but please shut the fuck up maybe walk away from this thread

Hurting 2, have you ever been in an abusive relationship? Serious q, not meaning any condescension/card-pulling. Finding oneself in such a relationship and having all kinds of personal fallout as a result have literally nothing to do with one's intelligence, experience, etc. It is a very complex dynamic.

I have been advised not to discuss any of this publicly, to just accept this cold shoulder and lack of support as my penance for the crime of being openly broken up with the cowboy when I should have just pretended we were still together long enough to sell books. I have tried to be cooperative, but as the early reviews come rolling in for the book I feel compelled to come clean — totally clean — with my readers. I do this because I think it will help to make sense of a book that in many ways just doesn’t make sense to healthy people, and because I believe very firmly that the truth is the only currency a writer has, and that if there is any hope of redeeming this book and making it meaningful it lies in the full story of my relationship with the cowboy and not just in the candy-coated version that appears in the book.

I don't think there is a way of reconciling these words, that she said, with the consequent coverup. Apparently truth is not the ONLY currency this writer has.

ranger than fiction

I hope she has a lawyer at this point

Mordy you too could maybe benefit from thinking a little harder about the dynamics of abusive relationships and their many effects of the survivor

y'all are barred from ilf btw

on the survivor

I don't get the impression that anyone in this thread is angry. I'm certainly not angry.

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 1:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also I am very angry! I am angry about a culture that makes excuses for rape and abuse and silences its victims.

I'm sorry silby, but this is - despite emily's assertion to the contrary - a serious issue for me. It goes to the heart of honesty in writing and journalism. I don't know that she is or isn't lying about the abuse but I do know that this is a writer with a memoir reviewed in major serious literary review outlets that has undermined the validity of her (on its own controversial) book w/out staying true to that assertion.

Xps, Penguin also publishes this:

http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781405910644,00.html

It's what sells, though. Any agent coming along with the cowboy book and a pitch of Ree Drummond meets EL James would get their hand bitten off by most publishers.

The best course of action would be to cancel her engagements for a few days and work out a way forward everyone is comfortable with. It's not as though they can put the cat back in the bag.

I don't want to silence her! I want her to stand up for what she wrote on her blog. Not go on the radio and pretend that she had a great love affair with this cowboy!

my guess is she's spent it already and can't give it back

She probably got the advance like two years ago, how much do you think is left now? Probably not much.

I keep telling myself "man, if someone gave me hundreds of thousands of dollars, I could make that stretch so far" but in the back of my head I know that I'd basically pay off all of my outstanding debts and then go on a wildly expensive gambling trip to Kuala Lampur

Abuse is not an excuse for perpetuating abuse, which is what pushing this book on her audience is doing.

If she doesn't stand by the abuse/rape charge, it's despicable that she made it.
― Canaille help you (Michael White), Thursday, January 10, 2013 9:09 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post

this is a while along in the thread but just so we're clear: this is a fucking inexcusable thing to say.

Maybe she claimed to be bisexual for attention; maybe, given that her 'i am not bisexual and you are lying, please take it down' phase seems to have happened during the cowboy relationship, it was important to her to deny it because of the relationship she was then in. We don't know! But "this woman has in the past claimed things about her identity and then retracted them" is not a solid reason to accuse her of lying about abuse.

I agree with you mordy but I think what aero is trying to point out is to understand what her motivations might be here, considering what she's been thru (as someone who has been myself, I know how it can fuck up how you deal with everything else)

xp to self - my two paragraphs are not related to each other btw

the timeline on that is very fuzzy to me; the relationship she mentions during that entire back-and-forth is her 12-year marriage, not her new relationship with the cowboy

this letter is sitting at the top of her personal blog right now:

Hello Miss. Valdes I’ve never written anyone famous before, especially a writer; so please be gentle with the way I write. On Wednesday my 14 year old daughter informs me at 7p.m. e.s.t. that she needs a book for school, so I take her to Books a Million. We find the book she needs and I tell her that I’d like to look around for a while. I move over to the new arrivals and start looking around and low and behold is your book. The title catches my eye and I begin to read the inside jacket. I’m a little stunned and unsure about the book, for one thing I thought it was Romance Novel and quickly find out it’s your memoir. I think I should tell you, that, yes I’m a conservative, but one who detest the Republican party. I’m also the only conservative, who is male, but loves to read Romance novels. It’s my guilty Pleasure. Anyways, unsure about what I’m reading, I start the first chapter and am immediately blown away. I bought it! I haven’t been able to put it down. I laughed, I cried, (that’s a little embarrassing, so be merciful) I shouted nooo, I cheered, and I fell in love with your writing. I don’t think I’ve connected with anyone like I have with you. You made me feel like we were old friends and I appreciate that. You gave me hope that people with different points of view, can bridge their differences and simply be nice to one another. I was so moved by this book that I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed it. I was sorry to hear about your break up, but I am happy to read you’ve met someone new. I know how bad it hurts when you love someone so much and that love is lost. I pray that this new one works out for you. You deserve it. Miss. Valdes, what ever happens remember, you have a new friend, one of millions who love your writing and hope for the best for you. You brought joy to my heart with this story and I thank you for it. Your friend and fan, Sam

i'm so happy we can understand the motivations of someone who is proud to be shoveling this abusive crap to 14 year olds.

sorry, i misread that. i don't think the 14 year old read it.

I was about to say!

http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/577/002424_14.jpg

Finally, I’d like to thank my post-cowboy boyfriend, Michael D. Gandy, the man I am pretty sure I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, for being supportive of me as I embark upon a tour for this book. It can’t be easy watching the woman you love read from a book that was written as a love letter to a different man. It takes a very strong man indeed to handle a thing like this with grace, and that is exactly what Mike is doing. He even wrote a thank-you letter to the cowboy for making me a better woman, a woman who might have scared an incredible man like Michael off, had I never been “tamed”…

ftr there was basic unanimous agreement that everyone thinks that comment is gross

Yeah barf. and who writes to their partners ex? ffs.

ppl under the sway of charismatic and magnetic sociopaths probably

hopefully now that it's being covered by the atlantic the publishing company is going to give her free reign to discuss it - i don't think they can bury it at this point

tbh she should probably lawyer up, she can probably expect an adversarial relationship with her publisher at this point

and the ex-bf

i'd guess she wants this book to sell and then she wants the book she is presumably currently writing, about how the previous book was founded on a lie, to also sell.

Her youtube of "Steven" is still there. Under her name. Interestingly.

tbh she should probably lawyer up, she can probably expect an adversarial relationship with her publisher at this point

I was going to say that it's like when a book is about to come out (or has already come out) and then is found to be a work of plagiarism and agents and lawyers get involved and the legal dept emails the whole company about not telling outsiders anything...but actually it's not like that at all because one thing this woman is (inexplicably?) not being attacked for is being a pretty bad writer so SOMEONE will be willing to take a chance on her next book, although I would guess not to the tune of this last one.

imho the publisher should pulp this book james frey style and let her keep the advance as an advance on the follow-up book.

awful story

as someone from the southwest, i can attest that cowboys are pretty much invariably total douches

you can't brand them all like that

get off your high horse, daargh

don't make me call stet, son

now THIS is my kind of thread hijack, mane

sometimes you meet one who bucks the trend

cmon mane

I think what tends to separate this particular case of abuse from the typical case is that the abused woman wrote a book and a publisher has published it, wherein she speaks as one with authority and that authority has been legitimized to a large extent, and from that position of authority she speaks not just about herself, but makes broad positive assertions about men, about women, about what their relations should be, and about how her relationship with this cowboy can be taken as a model or a template from which to draw many positive lessons.

Under that circumstance, you cannot simply say that abuse victims often identify with their abuser, often protect them and excuse them, and often assert that they love their abuser and because this is typical, it is excusable, even something we ought to empathize with. Although all this is true enough, it doesn't go far enough, because it doesn't contradict the authority which she has assumed and has been loaned to her by her publisher. One has to point out how toxic her conclusions are, how irrational her actions are, and how utterly bankrupt her recommendations are. Because they are, and they need to be exposed and repudiated.

That isn't being mean or ugly. It is refusing to enable her.

someday we'll look back on this thread and laugh, as if it were a dave chaparral sketch

xp Oh well as long as it's for her own good that's okay then, it can't possibly also be mean or ugly.

Literally Clusterfucks 2013

The only mean and ugly thing is the pro-abuse propaganda currently being sold as a charming memoir about cowboys.

No! It is GROSS and wrong and sad but it is emphatically not the only thing wrong about her situation, the presentation of this continuing story on the internet, or this thread. There are lots of things intersectingly wrong and mean and sad and part of what makes you/ppl sound "angry" or like they have some axe to grind is insisting that of all the things going on, only this woman is in the wrong or being bad.

The publisher is obviously being wrong too, but we shouldn't give a pass on this thing being sold in Borders as non-fiction to spare her feelings (and her bank account). It's sick.

This all could have been avoided if anyone had paid attention to Paula Cole.

Cathi Carol ‏@CathiCarol
@hoodedu @MizAlisa .... A missed opportunity to write about how a normal person can be taken in by an abuser; how to recognize it and leave.

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa
@CathiCarol @hoodedu This is exactly what I want to do. I am passionate about it now. Never thought I'd be "one of those" women...but I was.

She wrote this half an hour ago on her twitter. If this is how she feels she has an obligation to her readers and herself to disavow the current book and ask her publisher to withdraw it from the marketplace.

Borders hasn't existed for a while, son, you musta slept on that one.

damn

lol @ "this terrible woman! why won't she stop perpetuating domestic abuse?"

Uh, wait, what? Part 2? If you are asking the reading public to dip in again, you have to earn our trust the first time. And yet here you are, publicizing a book that is encouraging women to submit themselves to a romantic formula whose end sum is “painful, controlling, emotionally abusive, crazymaking.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/01/10/the_cowboy_and_the_feminist_turns_out_to_be_a_story_about_abuse.html

I imagine Valdes took the post down because her publisher made her. Not really good for sales if it turns out that the message of your love story is setting people up for something close to rape. Believe me, I understand what it’s like to put your heart and soul into a book, particularly if it’s a memoir where you bare the worst of yourself. But as the cowboy would say, Alisa: Stop. It’s over.

This is how I feel, 100% ^

It's good that we cleared that up at least.

But as the cowboy would say, Alisa: Stop. It’s over.

hmm

It seems incredibly shitty to use the language of the person who abused her against her

Yep.

I think defending her right to push this morally abhorrent memoir, even if stemming from a place of understanding and sympathy, ultimately leads you to an untenable ethical position.

Why are you acting like her publisher is being strong armed into pushing her book?

there are subtle variances in the realm of understanding and sympathy that don't involve specifically defending her right to push this memoir.

It seems like the CW itt is that she can't be expected to not push this memoir because the advance was a lot of money.

book publisher wants to sell book shocker.

I'm not surprised that the book publisher wants to sell the book. I'm surprised that Valdes is willing to go along with it.

Basically what you are saying is that she should have destroyed herself professionally in the way you approve of rather than the way she chose without knowing the details of what went down between her and her publisher that is generating all of this weird doublespeak.

It seems like the CW itt is that she can't be expected to not push this memoir because the advance was a lot of money.

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 4:45 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm 1000% sure that this is the position of nobody in this thread

this is like her eighth book. it's not going to destroy her career.

Is it more likely that she is doing her press tour for her book because she still thinks it's awesome or because a VP of Legal is telling her she has to or she will get sued into oblivion and she hasn't retained counsel yet

tbh i think it's very unlikely that the VP of Legal is threatening to sue her for writing that she was abused. it's certainly possible, but would be such a huge PR fuckup for the publisher if it got out.

Penguin Threatened to Sue Author for Saying She Was Abused

^ this is not a headline that Gotham/Penguin wants to see

Abuse is not an excuse for perpetuating abuse, which is what pushing this book on her audience is doing.

yeah man...it's like she's committing genocide with her dishonesty

A little more:

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/alisa_valdes_anti_feminist_romance_not_so_romantic/

In an email, Valdes tells me that, although she doesn’t dispute the truth of what she originally wrote in the post, she removed it at the request of her publisher. Speaking of her publisher, in the blog post in question, a cached version of which is still searchable online, she claims that her publisher has “essentially shunned” her as a result of the inconvenient real-world demise of her written fairy tale and writes, “I am deeply wounded by the stonewalling from my editor, as wounded as I ever was when the cowboy did it to me.” (I have yet to get a response from her publicist at Gotham Books to an email request for comment.)

all this becomes much easier to take if you come at it with the perspective that everyone is abhorrent from jump

In an email, she tells me, ”The relationship with the cowboy was rocky for most of 2012, with moments of great beauty and talk of marriage, to moments of tremendous and painful conflict.” She describes it as “on-again, off-again,” but it finally ended in September of last year. “I do think the relationship continued longer than it should have in part because I wanted to make it at least to the publication date,” she explains. “I eventually had to recognize that this was not a good reason to force something that didn’t work.”

It’s not that she’s entirely changed her mind, though. She considers herself a “Difference Feminist” (i.e., she sees men and women as having equal worth but as “not being necessarily the same or having the same abilities in all things”), and maintains that the cowboy helped her “to embrace my own female-ness in a way I had been trained to subsume.” She ended the email with a nod to her alleged abuser, “As the cowboy often said, there is the way things are, and there is the way we would like for things to be,” she tells me. “The only one that matters, ultimately, is how things are. We might not like it, and it might not be fair, but that doesn’t make any of it less true.” She has a new boyfriend now and, she says, he “wrote the cowboy a thank you note, for having ‘tamed’ me and made me a better woman, which I totally agree with.”

I think it is entirely possible to think her promo tour is nagl without letting either the publisher or the cowboy off the hook.

Which is to say, strongo otm.

It's true that its 100% inconceivable that her publisher could be like the Catholic Church or Penn State or any other massive institution when faced with a reputation-destroying scandal

right now no-one looks v good at all. wish there was some more clarity here, hope it comes out in the coming weeks. not that life ever gets tied up in a bow but I'd like to understand more of what went down and how etc

or what strongo said

it's not 100% inconceivable but it's Penguin. you think they've never dealt with an author promo crisis before? xxp

I gotta say, this bit:

“I do think the relationship continued longer than it should have in part because I wanted to make it at least to the publication date."

also not totally a great comparison being as how in the catholic church / penn state metaphor that makes valdes a pedophile.

which I totally agree withwhich I totally agree withwhich I totally agree withwhich I totally agree withwhich I totally agree withwhich I totally agree with

wow this thread

emily and elmo totally otm though at a certain point i had to start reading

oh great she's a pedophile too

i am resisting the urge to tell ilxors i think are probably decent people to fuck off, but some of you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

lol i had to stop reading, i meant; i'm a little het up

Is it more likely that she is doing her press tour for her book because she still thinks it's awesome or because a VP of Legal is telling her she has to or she will get sued into oblivion and she hasn't retained counsel yet

― autistic boy is surprisingly good at basketball (silby), Thursday, January 10, 2013 6:54 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is it? I suspect it's more complicated on both sides. It's possible that she wants to sell the book despite her desire to make public what she published in the post. Find a way to tell the whole story and make money in the process. Why not? That doesn't make her any less of a victim of abuse. Her post seemed to be 50% shaking her fist at her publisher for giving her "the cold shoulder". Who knows if a lawsuit is even being threatened? Why are we taking sides over who is the villain, between her and her publisher? We're making stuff up based on the most palatable narrative. They both wanted to publish this POS book.

all this becomes much easier to take if you come at it with the perspective that everyone is abhorrent from jump

― let's go do some crimes (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Thursday, January 10, 2013 7:03 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup.

yup.

wow this whole thing

what a sad fascinating totally unsurprising story

What I mean by this is that while I set out to write a memoir that was a love letter to a man I was deeply in love with, a man who challenged me in myriad ways, a man who changed my life profoundly, a man I respected and honored greatly at the time, what I actually wrote was a handbook for women on how to fall in love with a manipulative, controlling, abusive narcissist.

i mean

also as far as all the detectiving going on itt one point that it seems is being under appreciated is that she was already beefing w her publisher before the now deleted come clean blog post, what exactly was that about

she said it was bc they were disappointed that she broke up with the guy before the book came to press

That's always seemed like a hazard of the stunt memoir -- you sell the idea of having the experience while you're still having it (or even before you've had it), and then it has to live up to whatever your pitch was.

yeah i guess they couldve been on ellen or w/e together displaying their superior post feminist love

I have learned just how fine the line is between being an alpha male and being something else altogether.

also on a side note can people finally just stop it w this shit already, an alpha male is like not a real thing

excuse me! my mother was an alpha male

apologies not trying to start a race war

http://lhslive.com/images/alpha.jpg

lol @ jho. hi jho!

sup hs how u doin

ime alpha males are more like zephyr males or w/e

estela vmic otm as per usual ; )

I have learned just how fine the line is between being an alpha male and being something else altogether.

also on a side note can people finally just stop it w this shit already, an alpha male is like not a real thing

― lag∞n, Friday, 11 January 2013 01:58 (1 hour ago) Permalink

excuse me! my mother was an alpha male

― let's bitch about our stupid, annoying co-ilxors (darraghmac), Friday, 11 January 2013 01:59 (1 hour ago) Permalink

apologies not trying to start a race war

― lag∞n, Friday, 11 January 2013 02:01 (1 hour ago) Permalink

amazing

1234

literary racewars 2013

i admit in the midst of this rather dire thread i irl lold and sort of did a little celebration when i realized jonviachi was still engaged in fully defending himself against any and all race war accusations

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/01/10/the_cowboy_and_the_feminist_turns_out_to_be_a_story_about_abuse.html

ah, posted above n/m

lol same, it's the rift that keeps on giving.

xp to lagoon

Alisa Valdes ‏@MizAlisa
"It's amazing how many idiots have access to the Internet." My son, 11

He's not wrong.

So last month she started a blog of love letters between her and her new boyfriend.

http://thepassionletters.wordpress.com/

I mean...

Jesus H Attentionseeker.

Teardrops often remind me of children. They see a paradise that NO NO STOP IT I ALREADY HAVE DIABETES JUST FROM THAT OH GOD.

I'm getting echoes of Liz Jones and Nirpal Dhaliwal

why men and women have nothing in common except sex (according to the daily mail)

if i were getting echoes of liz jones, i'd move

Yikes, those letters

This inner calm was the very first thing I noticed about you the first time I met you in person. Do you remember? We met for coffee at a Starbucks near the Cottonwood Mall, ostensibly to “network”. You’d friended me on Facebook several months before, and we had an acquaintanceship based upon writing. I’d always known you were breathtakingly beautiful; that much is obvious from your photos. I know I had an interest in you that was probably inappropriate, given our age difference. But I also knew that you wrote beautifully, and I wanted to be your friend…at least your friend.
I almost didn’t show up that day, because I felt like such a predator. We’d been friends, but never flirted until I started that avalanche. You played back. It was fun. But we had yet to meet face to face. I texted you en route to that first meeting, told you I felt weird, like a creepy cougar lady. You LOLed back and reassured me. “It’s just networking, right?” you half-joked. Right, I thought. Riiiiiight.

execrable.

Alisa Valdes, June 14, 2011: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alisa-valdesrodriguez/christian-fiction_b_875112.html

Christian book publishing is flourishing. The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) reports an increase in sales from 2009 to 2010 of 4.6 percent, according to a November 22 article in Christian Retailing magazine. Eight of the 15 member houses reporting to the ECPA reported an astonishing growth rate for that period of 14.5 percent.

My sociologist father taught me well that in American society there is a constant pendulum swing back and forth between what Max Weber and others called "traditionalist" and "modernist" values. In fact, the red-state, blue-state divide in the United States could also be interpreted as the ongoing conflict between these two distinct and yet both very American values systems.

At times of economic hardship, such as the one we are all living through now, people gravitate toward the traditionalist values, in search of something stable, predictable, and certain. It is no surprise then, that as the nation's economy continues to fumble and fall, that readers are drawn more and more toward stories that speak of simpler times, traditional values, and selflessness.

In other words, long gone are the days of Sex in the City and other consumerist "chick lit," as readers turn en masse toward Amish romances and romances set in small rural Western towns. Many in publishing say chick lit is dead. I don't agree. Rather, I think chick lit has given up Friday night cocktails for Sunday morning services.

My sociology professor father compiled a list of values that are in constant conflict between traditional and modern societies that I as an author find of great interest at this crossroads in our nation's history. Reading through it is almost like reading a list of plots and themes that worked in women's fiction in the 1990s and early 2000s (modernist) versus those that intelligent writers would be wise to utilize now (traditionalist).

Under "economic structure" we find the following differences:

* Modernists (like Carrie Bradshaw) create goods for exchange or sale; traditionalists (like the Amish heroines) create goods for their own use or for their community.

* Modernists function within a national economy and are city-based, whereas traditionalists function in a local economy and are rural-based. (We see the first hints of the power of the traditionalist Christian book market's emergence in the success of Twilight, which was written by a devout Mormon, set in the forest, and featured no sex before marriage.)

* Modern society sees a complex division of labor where everyone can do or be anything they like; traditional society has a simple division of labor set by sex and age -- meaning the Sex in the City girls (or the women in my own "chica lit" novels) are ambitious businesswomen and go-getters, while the new heroines tend to teach sewing or care for children.

The contrasts become even more fascinating when you look at the differences in social structure between modern and traditional societies.

* Modern relationships tend to be transitory and impersonal (think Samantha's many sexual conquests) whereas traditional relationships are long-lasting and genuinely intimate. Readers are actively seeking out these more satisfying stories, with a deeper level of connection.

It would be a mistake for Manhattan publishing to simply roll their eyes at the "wacko evangelicals" in the "fly-over states" who are reading the new traditionalist fiction by the trainload. The hunger for deeper meaning in relationship and life is not limited to the religious, necessarily, and these stories are finding widespread audiences.

The list goes on.

* Modern society has high and constant social change, and little dependence upon others for approval; traditional society offers a static society where people conform, or depend upon others for approval.

* Modern society embraces and exalts individuality; traditional society holds alternatives to a minimum (thereby offering comfort in belonging, during times of economic uncertainty.)

* Modern society's families are small; traditional society's families are large.

* Modern society emphasizes "achieved" roles, where you can be whatever you like; traditional society demands "ascribed" roles, that you are born into or inherit. In modern society, the individual is the center of it all; in traditional society, family is the center of it all.

This last piece, about self versus community, is key. We are living through a time of unprecedented greed in America, a time when bankers went haywire (resulting in record foreclosures and homelessness) and big business shipped our middle class overseas.

Is it any wonder, then, that romance readers are scooping up books that, while simplistically defined as "Christian," are in fact offering us an alternate view of life and society, one where selfishness and vulgarity have been replaced by community and decorum?

If economic indicators are to be believed, we are probably just seeing the tip of this particular iceberg. Hard times are here to stay for a while, and with them, traditionalist fiction isn't going away.

Explains all the Mormon vampires.

Weirdly explains 50 shades, too. Like some sort of crossover genre.

The soft light did not hide the obvious, which is to say your intense and masculine beauty. I just sort of gasped, and listened to the gentle come-and-go of your breath, and I wondered, again, how it was that I, of all the women in Albuquerque, got so lucky to have been found by you.

Magnificent.

xp This is news? As someone said on here recently, she has a very high words-to-ideas ratio.

By she, do you mean Valdes, James, or Meyer?

Valdes seems pretty sharp to me, despite eye-rolling crap like:

Alisa Valdes @MizAlisa
Ironic: When the same folks taking me to task for challenging extreme feminism try minimize my intellect with: "She just a romance writer".

Alisa Valdes @MizAlisa
A word to reassure my loved ones: I have thick skin, emotionally. The criticism was expected. I questioned feminism. Sacred cow. I'm fine!

if I start using the phrase "scared cow" will people get the joke or will they just think I'm dumb

Teardrops often remind me of children.

I associate both with dampness and screaming.

Ha. In what context, DJP?

teardrops keep fallin on my head
reminds me the child has probly wet the bed
he's such a little shit
those teardrops keep fallin on my head they keep fallin

Valdes. Sharp? This is ridic: "It would be a mistake for Manhattan publishing to simply roll their eyes at the "wacko evangelicals" in the "fly-over states" who are reading the new traditionalist fiction by the trainload."

"Manhattan publishing" is doing no such thing, they're making money off "bonnet books" and women's fiction directed at calming the fears of religious Middle America as fast as we, I mean they can. Points for strawmanning though.

Ha. In what context, DJP?

Maybe I'll start on Twitter, taking on the scared cows of our day

tbf they still may be rolling their eyes xp

YESSSS xpost

Orbit, we totally agree, but there are plenty of examples of intelligent people who are capable of writing well who churn out drivel and bad, lazy, reactionary ideas. *shrugs*

i admit in the midst of this rather dire thread i irl lold and sort of did a little celebration when i realized jonviachi was still engaged in fully defending himself against any and all race war accusations

If you had actually taken time to read the thread, you would've seen that I was not defending myself against any accusations, I was calling out Mordy for a needless personal attack. But considering you are one of ilx's bigger bullies as well, I don't expect much different from you.

^ racist warmonger

^ bullying asshole

lol

(sorry)

*bullies erica*

can't wait for 3.0

The Bully and the Race Warrior

kind of interesting that a thread about a situation where a person was constantly belittled and marginalized contains a bunch of posts where several posters belittle and marginalize another one

also gives some excellent examples for my point to in orbit about how easy it is for people to slip into being abusive with words

it is not at all interesting

can't wait for the bullying tag team of am0n and lag∞n to grow the fuck up.

*tags lag∞n*

oh jon

kind of interesting that a thread about a situation where a person was constantly belittled and marginalized contains a bunch of posts where several posters belittle and marginalize another one

also gives some excellent examples for my point to in orbit about how easy it is for people to slip into being abusive with words

― Solange Knowles is my hero (DJP), Friday, January 11, 2013 10:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on

I mean do you guys not seriously think you are pushing this thing a little too far? You think its okay to continue to needle me after I've explained several time that I don't find the "race war" shit acceptable in the least? Grow the fuck up.

its kind of interesting... how i was right all along

oh jon jon jon whatre we gonna do with you

i'm more puzzled as to why your bullshit is tolerated and i'm painted as the bad guy.

something to think about i guess

I've now transitioned from resisting the urge to poke at Mordy to wanting to poke at jon/via/chi 2.0.

It's nothing personal. There's just this compulsion, like in the red button gag.

I think this is the rush bullies feel when some red-faced kid is sputtering in indignation.

p sure 98% of this board wouldn't be satisfied until someone uploaded my suicide video to youtube.

poke away at me. i can take it. xp

ha jon you are being very dramatic

probably, but i'm sick of the fucking pile-on after i explicitly explain how tired i am of the goddamn "race war" bullshit. i wish the mods would sack up and do something about bullying on this board for once.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a1/Jimmy_and_Gary.png/220px-Jimmy_and_Gary.png

for me the thing thats funny about isnt how easy it is to send jon over the edge, its the absurdity of how easy it would be for him to end the race war, instead he fights on

i am totally ignorant of what race war means w/r/t jon so this is all kind of bizarre to me

can we get back to talking about how this woman is completely shameless