Western “tourists” in Cambodia
Today, a look at an appalling apologia for domestic violence and abuse from everyone’s least favorite creepy expat, the anonymous “game” blogger behind Random Xpat Rantings. Oh, and he also offers a handy rationalization for child abuse as well.
Xsplat, is, by his own description, an expat in his late 40s living in Indonesia and “dating” a teenager considerably less than half his age. Well, not just dating: apparently he feels that he “owns” her.
He starts off his post by arguing that parents have the right to spank their children because the children are, in essence, their property:
Society as a whole remains agnostic as to the value of judiciously spanking recalcitrant children. We remain agnostic because at a fundamental level we realize that the parents have the right to choose. Their children are THEIR children. They literally belong to them.
He then extends this metaphor to relationships between adult men and women in perhaps the creepiest way possible:
Much of sexual love is an add on and re-working of mammalian Daddy/daughter love, and also mother/son love. Men who want to retain sexual tension in the long term must keep the relationship as Daddy/daughter.
You have a right to punish, if she accepts that you have the right to punish.
Xsplat thinks that women find his “pimp hand” sexy:
Laying ownership claims is brute force sexy. Women at a fundamental level understand that while they will always struggle to be a free agent, that when properly owned she can be an entirely different king of person. A deeply sexually charged, constantly submissive and sexually engaged, better woman. A woman with direction.
He argues that women need this sort of “discipline” — which, he makes clear, can involve physical violence — because they are essentially children.
Children and women need boundaries. They will test and act out to the limit of those boundaries. Some children respond well to a gentle word. Some wind up in juvie despite every best effort. Some pimps and parents reward and discipline purely psychologically, while others get physical. Some children learn and behave well under gentle conditions of subtle hints and direction, others have stubborn negative habits that require more forceful re-direction.
A woman who is owned is a very different creature from one who considers herself a strong independent woman.
An owned woman will give you her all, just for the opportunity to remain owned.
He ends his post by boasting about how he applied his “pimp hand” to “N18” – that is, his 18-year-old girlfriend – when she “acted out” at a night club because, he says, she was jealous of the attention he was paying to another woman.
I’m in Bali now with N18, a 32 year old ex who I met when she was 23 … and a potential new intern/partner. We were out clubbing and N18 started to get jealous of the attention that the older woman was getting. … So she started to act out a bit and attention whore on the stage and the dance floor. I’d had a lot to drink, and so by the time we got home my emotions were unrestrained. I called her out on her behaviour, and was not gentle.
In his mind, this assertion of his “ownership” of her only brought the two closer together:
As usual I was awoken with blowjobs and the day was filled with constant attentive behavior. Plus. This is not a reaction out of fear, it is a pure bonding reaction.
That’s what he wants us to think, anyway.
Or maybe he’s trying to convince himself that he’s not, you know, an angry, jealous asshole living in a country with a per capita income less than one-fifth that of the US who’s using his money to exploit and possibly abuse a teenager who wouldn’t give him the time of day if she weren’t poor and he weren’t, at least relatively, rich.
Xsplat is not the most influential manosphere blogger by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s enough of a celebrity in that little world that he had his own “Ask Me Anything” thread on Reddit’s Red Pill subreddit last year.
The blockquote monster has shown hir disapproval of katz not liking Pratchett sufficiently.
That’s what I get, with some extra unintentional bolding.
Firmly in the “don’t really get Pratchett” camp here. I’ve read maybe three of his books. I liked The Last Continent, although a lot of the attraction to me was due to Rincewind, a character I had wanted to read about after the Discworld point-and-click adventure game. A good story, but didn’t really put me in the mood for more. From what I’ve gathered from my friends who are fans, Pratchett should be right up my alley, but meh.
Go figure.
This is how I feel about Emilie Autumn too (please don’t kill me, fans). In theory should be right up my alley, and I approve of her lyrics, but the actual music? Meh.
RE: Arctic Ape
Based on this, a casual observer might think that you are, technically speaking, a Pratchett reader.
Enh, it’s like Neil Gaiman: I keep reading his damn books hoping I’ll get what everyone’s talking about. I’ve read… six Discworld books and Good Omens, and if I only liked two… well, that’s not a very good success rate for me. Sorry, I know folks love him, just none of it has made much impression on me. (Neil Gaiman has a similar success rate; I’ve read something like ten volumes of comics and four of his books, plus Good Omens, and I only liked two of his kiddie books.)
Hmm – can I suggest the Pratchett-gnostics give this a try? Funny in a different way, and more meaty.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Gone-Away-World-Nick-Harkaway-ebook/dp/B001EL6R9W
Does this mean the blockquote mammoth is related to the Fifth Elephant?
LBT: I couldn’t get into Neil Gaiman either. I read Neverwhere and it didn’t do anything for me, partly because the “protagonist who’s a fucking idiot” trope always irritates the hell out of me.
I did like the pun of the name The Angel Islington, but that was about it.
Nope, sorry, didn’t like Gone-Away World either, in part because I’m skeptical of Big Plot Twists and deconstruction. I appreciate what he was trying to do, but it just wasn’t quite as tightly written and plotted as something like that needs to be.
@ LBT I have a terrifically broad sense of humor, I guess?
One of my favorite minor characters: Hodgesaaargh. Yes, things bite me.
The ex-wife kept custody of the Pratchetteria, mostly, I was too drained to care.
I liked American Gods and Anansi Boys, it’s been too many years since I read Neverwhere. Post breakdown my attention span hasn’t recovered.
Someone who liked “Feet of Clay” for the golems might appreciate “Going Postal” and “Making Money”.
American Gods and Anansi Boys were both far better than Neverwhere, IMO, in large part because Richard was such a bland protagonist. But yay for diversity of taste! We all like different things!
I have this weird thing with Pratchett wherein I enjoy his books, but when I put them down I have a really hard time picking them up again. It took me like a month to read Small Gods, ditto Wyrd Sisters. I’m in the middle of Feet of Clay and I haven’t picked it up in like two months and Hogfather’s just sitting on the shelf collecting dust. I finished Thief of time pretty fast but that had as much to do with the fact that I got it for the trip to Australia as anything else. The only book of his that I just couldn’t put down was Making Money (LBT, if you enjoy his golem works I think this one will be up your alley).
Helen K. Krummenacker ninja’ed me on Making Money
Also, has anyone read the last two Christopher Moore books? I’ve been meaning to pick them up but decided I should finish the unread pile before I pick up new books
WAT
You should have been reading The Last Continent for that trip!
I love most of the Discworld stories, at least from after Mort – I couldn’t get into Colour of Magic at all and wouldn’t bother with the early ones again. I haven’t read the YA ones, partly because I don’t like the Nac Mac Feegle much. The books featuring Vimes are my favourites, followed by the Death ones, or Hogfather and Reaper Man, at least. Those two are way my favourite characters.
(Favourite main characters, I should say.)
Pratchett: his writing style has changed a lot over the decades, and I don’t like his early stuff nearly as much. I’ve reread a lot of the books, and there are many I never get tired of, but I absolutely could not get through Soul Music a second time. Some of his books just aren’t that good. This becomes a problem when recommending them to people, because his later stuff builds on the earlier stuff, so if I want to recommend my favorites I have to be like “but you need to read X, Y and Z first”.
Gaiman: Has some really great stuff and some stuff that doesn’t do anything for me. My intro to him was American Gods, which speaks to me as a Pagan for obvious reasons, but I didn’t care for Neverwhere (maybe it’s better if you’re familiar with London?) and I can’t get into Sandman. Anansi Boys is good, and he has some memorable short stories (particularly Chivalry, which has one of my favorite first lines ever).
I liked the Gone Away World. It has some fun moments, and some genuinely good attempts at mystery and terror. Although it does all teeter a little towards the end, because the structure has some cracks.
Pratchett’s a matter of taste, though. His books are also all oddly similar and yet a little different, because a lot of it depends on the characters in them. I personally quite like Men At Arms and Feet of Clay.
Neil Gaiman, though? I thought Anansi Boys was good-ish and Neverwhere was fine every time the main character just shut up and got out of the way, since he was essentially a blank slate. American Gods was all right too, but it all just got kind of… “Look at my amusing whimsy! Isn’t it amusingly whimsical? Ha-ha!”. Same thing with Ocean At The End of the Lane. It’s good stuff, I don’t doubt it, but it’s the kind of good stuff where I’m not entirely sold.
“I can see this is supposed to be good, and I can also sort of suss out why it might be good, but it’s just not doing much”
Gaiman is REALLY fond of the bland blank slate protagonists. Sometimes it works for me (Coraline, though it takes me half the book to overcome the, “Why is she still fucking going in there? Seriously, the place might as well be a creepy van with ‘Free Candy’ spray-painted on it!”) but most of the time, I just find it really, really boring. (It doesn’t help that blank slate characters are overwhelmingly straight white etc. etc. etc. so they all feel the same even cosmetically.)
And thanks for the recs, but I think I really am done with Pratchett. There’s only so many books I can read without interest, only to try again with another. I have writers I LIKE to check out.
(Speaking of which, I reread Patricia Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons. Man, that book still holds up great, despite the 90s-ness of it!)
That book! I bought a copy a while back, and it made me feel eleven again in all the best ways. I’ve been wondering if my daughter would like it, too; I’ll have to try it for bedtime reading soon and see what happens.
Oh man, I just found our copy last night. I need to read it again!
RE: Flying Mouse and Falconer
Dealing with Dragons is great. Amusingly, as kids, we HATED the sequels, and refused to read them. I think Tiny Us was indignant that the series wasn’t Cimorene working with Kazul and being single forever. No, fuck Prince Whatshisface! Bring back Kazul!
Congratulations, you’ve found a book that we all agree was awesome! (The sequels were a big letdown, though.)
Aww, man, I have an omnibus of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles in my (admittedly large & overwhelming) stack of “Books I Need to Read.” It sucks that the sequels aren’t as good as Dealing with Dragons. I picked up the omnibus because I really liked that book!
I think I made it through one chapter of “Searching for Dragons.” Didn’t even bother with the rest. I had wanted to read the rest of the series since I was a kid, and was thwarted by my rural library system’s funding woes (they had one copy of the first book, which unfortunately was a later edition that had more titles tantalizingly listed on one of the forepages). The long wait from ten or eleven to thirty made the blandness extra disappointing.
That woman in the pic looks really uncomfortable. I feel kind of sorry for her.
Yeah, would love to hear the story behind that picture, if there is one.
Late to the thread, and just my opinion, but…
I find with the first few Discworld books, Lord Pterry really changed tone somewhere between The Light Fantastic and Mort. The first two really feel to me like Pratchett was trying to write a classic fantasy series while trying to parody the genre at the same time.
By the time he wrote Sourcery it’s pretty clear he’s just taking the piss, and I think the writing improves for not trying to do too many different things at once. I’m a big fan of all of the early Discworld books, but I don’t feel like the series hit its stride until at least book 4.
I’m familiar(ish) with London and that was the only thing I liked about Neverwhere.
@strivingally, yeah, I didn’t think he’d got his formular right, or hit his stride, whatever, at least until Mort. I only got a few pages into The Colour of Magic: the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser parody characters just had me rolling my eyes, and the style – nope. I’m glad I’d already read a few others – Lords and Ladies was the first – or I wouldn’t have bothered at all.
Here’s a photo I took of
” rel=”nofollow”>PTerry about 1997, when he was here for a book signing tour. It was before Carpe Jugulum came out and he talked about how rebellious vampire kids dress (I was in my Goth phase at the time).
What in the hell would possibly be wrong with this dude dating an 18-year old?
Good for him: I hope I’m dating 18-y/os when I’m his age.
For the record, I (obviously) don’t endorse physical violence towards women, except when part of the judicial system, and if this fellow is guilty of that then by all means call him out for that. I don’t see how *who* he dates has anything to do with it.
Thanks for stopping by, Hector. Do let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
I’m not entirely sure what part of your 3 comment mess would have made it obvious that you’re not a full-on proponent of violence against women, but hey, congratulations. Throwing a party for you out back.
So, Hector sees absolutely nothing wrong with preying on desperately poor teenagers and physically “disciplining” them.
Hector is an asshole.
Piss off, Hector.
For the person asking about Christopher Moore books – I really liked Lamb, but Bite Me and You Suck I HATED, and stopped reading any others. Any others worth checking out?
As for Pratchett, I really enjoyed Nation and liked The Long Earth enough to be interested in reading the rest of the series. Discworld – enjoyed everything I’ve read so far, but wow have a long way to go (will check out Feet of Clay next!)
RE: Hector
Good for him: I hope I’m dating 18-y/os when I’m his age.
You may hope, but I take solace in the belief that you won’t succeed.
I (obviously) don’t endorse physical violence towards women, except when part of the judicial system,
The hell does this even mean? We don’t lock people into stocks anymore. This is the 21st century. Get with it.
Also, you realize this guy expressed having a boner for his infant son, right? This is really the guy you want to be emulating? That’s pathetic.