Comments on: Sex and Power

By: Sally

Sally — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:07:34 +0000

Sorry, since when can women consent to group sex with animals? These “men” are horses, right? This does not depict consensual sex, since animals cannot (as I understand) consent to sex with humans. So, your argument is null. If the shirt showed two men having sex with a woman, it could easily be subverted and shown as empowering. But people can’t have consensual sex with animals, so this is not consensual sex. Argument over.

By: bailey

bailey — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:04:36 +0000

Bite and get a hoof to the head no doubt. Assault with a deadly weapon or manslaughter?

By: Keeley

Keeley — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:42:34 +0000

I may not be turned on by two men celebrating their luck or whatever at getting to have sex with simultaneously, I also wouldn’t have a problem with it, assuming the sexual act was something I’d consented to. I’d certainly rather they interact ins ome way rather thane ach pretend the other isn’t there.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:58:47 +0000

If it were rape, the cheerleader might bite…

perhaps the idea is that the cheerleaders for the Spartans are “sluts” who want to be “f*d up” by the opposing team, thus emasculating the men of the team they’re supposed to be supporting? Still very misogynistic and retrograde, but not rape.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:54:09 +0000

I’ve never done this, but I wouldn’t find it disturbing and might enjoy it. Please stop projecting your own sexual preferences onto the rest of the (female) world, ok?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 19:46:29 +0000

“Sexual degradation is bad”

Is sexual degradation of sexually submissive people who explicitly ask for it still bad?

Still, I’d say this doesn’t really apply to the photo, since the “f*ing up” text below and the context strongly suggest that the woman/Spartan doesn’t want to be “f*d up”.

By: Teresa Schryver

Teresa Schryver — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 02:28:35 +0000

So this is a little late to comment on, but I found the site and have been ‘thumbing through’ (if that phrase could be used with this technology. But anyhoo, I really REALLY with I could find a picture of a t-shirt from Monmouth College When I was an undergrad there I heard a story from a few students and profs of an epic shirt created by some students about a year or two before my freshman year there. You see, Monmouth College and the neighboring Knox College have one of the oldest rivalries in the nation and we duke it out every fall at the Turkey Bowl. (a testosterone driven football game full of drunken vulgar exclamations of superiority) One year students designed and printed a shirt depicted Monmouth’s Fighting Scot standing proudly and manly as a Knox cheerleader figure was bent on her knees in front of him. The students swore it was only a bow of submission…which was exactly what it was, only with some other extracurricular actives going on as well. Well, long story short, no student faced discipline, but the shirts were banned from Monmouth’s campus and the Turkey Bowl game.

By: Tumor

Tumor — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:48:00 +0000

So like, black is sometimes associated with badness, dominance, and negativity where white is sometimes associated with purity, goodness, blahblahblah, ect. Knowing that, I think its interesting that its the white sheep thats buttsmexing the black sheep. Maybe its the logo for the fraternities or colleges or whatever the shirt is for, but that just seemed like something worth mentioning.

By: Tumor

Tumor — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:42:14 +0000

I read through most of this and it seems like you guys didn’t mention the text at all. I am a teenager. I use slang in my everyday rhetoric. Fucking up (or “f’ing up”) means to beat up. To damage. To dominate in a nonconsensual way. The horses are fucking up the cheerleader. They are doing sexual shit to her without her consent. The cheerleader is not interested in sucking horse penis or being sodomized by horse penis. GOOD DAY TO YOU, SIR.

By: WUWT

WUWT — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:37:31 +0000

I am dumbfounded. That people weren’t suspended over this – and what seems to be an ongoing trend, given the previous design – is beyond my understanding.

By: Chelle

Chelle — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:12:25 +0000

I’m going to try and not to echo some of the thousands of people above me.

So. Yes I agree that sexual degradation is not rape (ex. A man disses women), but that yes, rape is sexual degradation (it’s for power, not the actual experience of sex).

The scariest part of this t-shirt is not that the kids didn’t think the female was a symbol of yadda yadda, but it was that this was in their culture, which was WHY they didn’t think it was a symbol of some huge long list of derogatory things. In their culture, it’s considered funny and accepted among them that girls are subordinate and that they’re just sex objects instead of actual humans.

I still consider this image as rape because the Spartans don’t want to be in a position as that cheerleader. Rape, in its most basic definition, is sex without consent, right? So following those two premises, it must be that the Spartans (as depicted by the faceless cheerleader) are victims of a rape. If anyone actually goes against this, then I’m going to have to question the intelligence of humanity.

By the way, did you know that “Wow I totally raped that noob” means “I totally owned that noob”, which in turn means “I totally beat that guy at a game”. “Fuck”, as well as “rape”, have similar double meanings. Which just increases the creepiness of this shirt.

“Towers over”: They didn’t have to put a picture of a faceless female cheerleader, but why did they? A possible explanation is that they view females subordinate to men. Sexism?

By: Endor

Endor — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:39:42 +0000

Eh, what’s the problem? A couple of clueless dewds say it’s not rape and it’s not offensive, so it totes isn’t!

By: tina

tina — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:09:37 +0000

Glad to see that the moderators have totally ignored *multiple* requests for trigger warnings. I guess the visceral, often traumatic, reactions that this post has triggered in a number of its viewers, isn’t serious enough to warrant any action (a better question: how did the moderators not see, and deal with, the triggering potential in the first place?)

Way to go for being a “safe space,” Sociological Images.

By: Tiffani W

Tiffani W — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:33:24 +0000

@karinova: Your post is hilarious. I absolutely agree with you.

Since someone asked a college student – 3 meanings of “to get fucked up”:

1. To get drunk/high (which is the only ‘positive’ connotation I can think of). “Dude, we all got so fucked up on Skittles last night.”
2. To get beat up/assaulted. “Man, Jeff really fucked Lucas up after he caught him stealing his beer.”
3. To be a faceless woman that a d-bag had sex with. “Bra, I totally fucked that bitch UP last night!” This is kind of an extension/metaphor of #2.

By: Tiffani W

Tiffani W — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:27:14 +0000

@Travis: Lol, you just said in three sentences what it took me an essay to write. I agree with you. :)