Literary Clusterfucks 2013

theres a piece coming out in a little bit on a nick cannon website that more or less confirms that this thread has talent

i'm perfectly willing to believe that cowboy abused her. he seems skeevy from the youtube clip i saw of him. it certainly wouldn't surprise me. but if he did, i think she has a responsibility to disavow the book that is, according to her, a primer about and love letter to falling in love with a manipulative abusive man. that's all i've ever believed.

even if no one itt has specifically said that she is "clearly lying about what her boyfriend did to her in private"

p. sure no one here thinks this, actually

well horseshoe, mordy's explained that this woman is responsible for perpetuating abuse, i mean she's RESPONSIBLE for it, do you see. if someone reads her book and then ends up in an abusive relationship, well then it's the fault of the author for not adequately warning her. i mean, abusers are gonna be abusive, that's just HOW THEY ARE, how could we ever hold THEM to account?

in short, mordy, you're taking the long way around to blame the victim and it's super weird and gross.

yeah, that's bullshit elmo

oh okay, that was what made me mad. people talking about what her responsibility is.

yeah the reliance on responsibility in Mordy's account is worth digging into but idk what to think about that yet

xps!

then we're on totally different wave-lengths. i don't see why she doesn't have a responsibility for the literature she writes.

yeah, that's bullshit elmo

― Mordy, Friday, January 11, 2013 4:39 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://hiphopwired.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/sad-elmo.jpg

seems like a sad story. would prefer to see it as a postmodern stunt about utter futility of sex and romance.

it would be one thing if i said she deserved to be abused or that she was asking for it or that she was in some other way to blame for the abuse, but that's obviously not what i'm suggesting and i would never say or think that

holding her to some kind of standard of integrity when she's clearly not really in control of a whole lot right now is weird to me. Like I understand that those principles might be important to you personally but to decry her whole situation because she doesn't adhere to some predetermined notion of How She Should Behave In This Situation is, well...I get it, but I don't get it and I don't get trying to be all DO U SEE when the 'evidence' is so murky that no one knows WHAT the fuck her real story is and that's the whole point of this thread!!

ugh

ppl aren't acting at all times w/in a vacuum where they have absolute agency, or like, "shit is complicated sometimes" idk

you just had your psyche and body violated for years by a man who felt like he owned you! here's what you should be doing about that experience! substitute my judgment for your own!

like i am pretty sure i hate woman-penned anti-feminist tracts more than all the next guys but can we not proclaim loudly and authoritatively what people should do after such things on a rihanna-is-so-irresponsible-think-of-the-young-girls tip? let's keep an eye on who's really responsible, you know?

TERMINATOR
Why?

JOHN
Whattaya mean, why? 'Cause you can't!

TERMINATOR
Why?

JOHN
You just can't, okay? Trust me on this.

Terminator doesn't get it.

<3

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

― Mordy, Thursday, January 10, 2013 11:45 PM (Yesterday)

it's okay to just be generally grossed out by the entire situation though right?

ha i'd never really considered that exchange from T2. pretty profound, tbh

xpost yep, that's kinda why I'm here

I think everyone is generally grossed out by the entire situation

How does her book compare to "getting back together with chris brown" on the responsibility scale? It seems that some posters think it's ok to criticize rihanna for her situation but not Valdez for hers?

not if one of the ppl you're grossed out at is valdes apparently

yeah i mean, i stopped reading the thread early on, i think a bunch of stuff about how this lady is unappealing was eventually posted, which i have no trouble believing. fuck a bunch of things that people dub "post-feminist" i was just mad at all the long-ass this probably never happened also she's doing abuse survival wrong shit.

xxxxp to maura

I'm with mordy, who knows how many books-a-million customers alisa valdes is raping right now, why doesn't anyone care

so if this author was abused, then publicly disclosed it, then recanted that disclosure, then she's responsible for perpetuating abuse, according to you're logic. qed?

i mean, if that's not "blaming the victim" then i'm not sure what you'd call it

your. ugh.

I used the word "gross" A LOT OF TIMES up-thread, above the fold. The grossness of a lot of the general situation doesn't preclude a less blamey and insistent take on...well, anything, though.

you skipped a step "if she continues to market and promote a book that depicts an abusive relationship as healthy and natural"

well, then, that changes EVERYTHING

it's okay tho bc it's a part of her survival process

If this hadn't turned out to be an abusive relationship I would still be pretty unhappy with a book like this being written, being as it's more warmed over "MEN DOMINATE WOMEN BECAUSE OF BIOLOGY" garbage. I find a person who would write that kind of book to be of pretty poor intelligence, character and judgment, and at least upthread I thought things had kind of come to an understanding that it's not mutually exclusive that she's a person who got trapped in a horrible situation that is deserving of sympathy and also that she deserves criticism for her book in the first place. A book that she got paid $400,000 to write, btw, a lot of fucking money. That said, I recognize there may not be any easy course of action for her to take at this point.

And then Valdes publishes this today.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, January 10, 2013 1:15 AM (Yesterday)

since (Yesterday) she has yet to clarify things to my liking so i will judge her a rape enabler

let's say that someone else wrote the same book but as a biography of valdes based on interviews, and then it turned out that valdes was being abused and the interviews were lies. should that person continue to promote a book that is now clearly about abuse written in the idiom + context of an abuser knowing what they now know?

should they, no. should valdes, in a world where she's not a potentially emotionally messed up abuse survivor, i guess not. however

that's all then. if you believe she doesn't have a choice bc she is still recovering from the abuse, fine. i'm not denying that might be true. but she should stop promoting it. that would be the right thing to do.

however

it's been like a day and she's not mordy.

i don't know what she is or isn't and neither do you

lol obv i know she's not a mordy

strictly speaking i can't be that certain, but i take you at your word

fwiw i don't have a history of claiming i'm not other people who i then turn out to be

I freely admit that idgi.

To me it is one thing to understand that abuse can render a victim into a place of extreme confusion about themselves, their relationship to their abuser, and what love really is, or what is true any more, leadnig them to appear wildly erratic in their actions, and self-contradictory from one day to the next, until they have finally undergone a long and difficult process of healing. My wife was abused as a child and it still affects her at age 60+. I get that part.

It seems to me to be another thing entirely to expect everyone to refrain from pointing out that the person is contradicting themselves from one day to the next, acting erratically, completely confused about their feelings, themselves, and their relationship with their abuser, because as we know the poor victim cannot help acting that way. What way? Oh, we cannot say that there is anything wrong with how they are acting or that it would be better to act any other way. Or that their frequent self-contradiction is any different from being clear-minded and level-headed, because this shows a lack of empathy. It is expected behavior, therefore it is beyond reproach?

That is what some of the angry ilxors seem to me to be saying here. That's what I Don't Get.

it's a HUGE leap between saying that promoting the book is unethical and the conclusion you've reached, accusing her of PERPETUATING ABUSE

ok, get over it. i think it's a shitty book that puts some toxic ideas out into the culture but if you think i was being hyperbolic then i will agree

yet again a conversation about abuse accusations has turned into a conversation about the moral character of the accuser. i see u rape culture ;)

i think that is sanctimonious ^

you would