"Lots of ways...if you're not closed-minded and just hate the game."

Good luck with that. Cheers to getting fully grown men running full speed to be able to stop on a dime and hit at precisely the correct spot all the while the opposing player is also doing his best to avoid the hit. As it is people are pissy about safety regulations regarding how people hit. There is no way you can legislate hitting to such a degree that it will minimize brain trauma.

"And you still haven't addressed the cheerleader question."

1. You never brought it up...? O.o You are the one that started this long digression on the NFL, and started by talking about domestic abuse?

2. I've already railed against cheerleaders but, AGAIN, that's NOT AN NFL-SPECIFIC PROBLEM.

The NHL has "ice girls."
The Lakers in the NBA have the Laker Girls.
You have card girls in between rounds in boxing.
And so on and so on.

You again just single out football on this issue because you dislike football.

"Wait--addiction would alter brain chemistry or otherwise impair or alter activity, yes?"

Yes, are you admitting now that football is the equivalent of drug addiction in terms of health for players?

"So either CTE doesn't fill the roll addiction does for other celebs, or it does,"

I'll happily agree to the point. Just let me know how acting causes drug addiction and the studies linking it. Thanks.

Yes I did bring it up. And I specifically linked you to a lawsuit.

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-buffalo-bills-cheerleader-lawsuit-20140424-story.html#page=1

"AGAIN, that's NOT AN NFL-SPECIFIC PROBLEM."

Do the LA girls have dunk tanks, jiggle tests, auctions, mandatory appearances at degrading "shows" at casinos, etc and do they not pay the Laker Girls for their labor?

Because that's what occurs with NFL cheerleaders.

"You happily embrace and adore the work of DH Lawrence, including and especially his most offensive texts, is your excuse for that that you can't be bothered to support non-horrible literature because patriarchy absolves you?"

1. How is admitting former great writers also had great problems preventing me from enjoying authors that are "non-horrible?" Also...

2. YOU are the Wagner fan here...so, yeah...does your ability to appreciate his music detract from your ability to listen to non-horrible opera (or at least operas not composed by raving Antisemitic sexist bigots?)

3. Before I defend the man...

Which texts of Lawrence's do you deem "most offensive?"

Because while Lawrence wrote some works that were pretty skewered towards men, he also wrote the sex-positive "Lady Chatterley's Lover" that celebrates a woman taking control of her own sexual destiny in an era of extreme Patriarchy...a work which was published in 1928 and not published in an uncensored form in the US until 1960, it was that ahead of its time (and oh, look, just before the Sexual Revolution took off in this nation as well, hm.)

So, yeah--

Which works in particular do you take issue with as "most offensive?"

Because there's definitely stuff he wrote that can be and in cases probably should be criticized, but I'd like to know which ones you're referring to first?

And I know, on the cheerleaders.

I believe we had a thread on this before...

I'm pretty sure I might have actually made a thread on it before, actually.

The Laker Girls and "ice girls" in hockey, even with more pay, still have to do plenty of things many wouldn't consider exactly progressive...

Again, it's systemic of a larger issue with Patriarchy, but you ignore the other cases unless and until I bring them up because you just don't like football, but like other sports and so are apparently willing to either overlook them or forgive them and just beat your anti-football drum instead.

"I'll happily agree to the point. Just let me know how acting causes drug addiction and the studies linking it. Thanks."

but...but you argued against MY arguing against "correlation is causation" about, oh, 75 posts ago...

So I should be allowed to take the simplistic correlation of high drug use by stars with domestic violence issues and instantly assume that their careers as celebrities MUST be the cause, right?

"Which texts of Lawrence's do you deem "most offensive?""

Women in Love, which you rated as your 4th most favorite book/play of all time. It's an anti-feminist rant if there ever was one.

It speaks volumes that you think Lady Chatterley's Lover is an empowering book. What, with Connie going off with Mellors and the strong female character (Hilda) ending up miserable. It's a wonder that you don't think Twilight was "empowering" as well!

You always have to bring Wagner. You still haven't produced a single musical work of Wagner's that reflects his anti-Semitism. Deflect, deflect, deflect.

"but you ignore the other cases unless and until I bring them up because you just don't like football, but like other sports and so are apparently willing to either overlook them or forgive them and just beat your anti-football drum instead."

So you have nothing that compares to this lawsuit but you just want to continue with the "mean old Putin is picking on poor football" routine. Got it.

"but...but you argued against MY arguing against "correlation is causation" about, oh, 75 posts ago..."

Produce a single scientific study showing a linkage between acting and drug addiction.

And iPhone wants you to sing up for their Pay-By-Phone service.....even though they can't keep your nekid pics private.

Fuck off Apple. Everything you do is Sub-fucking-par...

"Women in Love, which you rated as your 4th most favorite book/play of all time. It's an anti-feminist rant if there ever was one."

Care to elaborate on your charge there, since 1. Sexuality period is sort of celebrated in that book (including some guy on guy action there, revolutionary for the time) and 2. The anti-feminist, controlling fuck Gerald Crich is the one that ends up DEAD.

Most anti-feminist figures don't give great lines to strong leading ladies like Ursula Brangwen (who takes control of her own destiny) and kills off the anti-feminist dogmatic prick who started to strangle the sister of said leading lady.

"It speaks volumes that you think Lady Chatterley's Lover is an empowering book. What, with Connie going off with Mellors and the strong female character (Hilda) ending up miserable."

May I ask what you have against women choosing their own sexual destiny?

How is Connie not a strong female character?

She knows what she wants, takes her life into her own hands and increasingly ceases to put up from the chauvinist shit spewed forth by her crippled husband Clifford--and since for Lawrence, more sexual activity is often a signifier of who the hero is...consider that the heroine and (comparatively) working class man are sexually-active and alive, while the chauvinist relic from Edwardian England ends up bitter, alone, and heir-less...

Tell me again how that's endorsing his chauvinism and standing against the sort of sexual liberation Connie Chatterley stands for?

"You always have to bring Wagner. You still haven't produced a single musical work of Wagner's that reflects his anti-Semitism. Deflect, deflect, deflect."

The fuck are you talking about, I've REPEATEDLY said I find, oh, just the Aryan-happy Ring Cycle fascistic and Antisemitic in code if not overtly so?

Fine, I'll take another author you said you liked...

Jack London? You know, the guy who just wrote an essay and a short story denouncing the Chinese and going off on an anti-Asian rant?

BUT, again, you LIKE London's writing, sooooo...you can sweep that under the rug.

And yeah, I'll bring up Wagner...

Because when you refuse to admit that someone can like a sport or artist despite social flaws, BUT like arguably the most bigoted "great figure" in Western music...

You kinda sorta maybe come off a teensy bit like a hypocrite.

Which is it?

Can I enjoy something/someone while admitting it/they has/have problems?
If so, then explain why I can't enjoy football and still admit to its issues as I've done...
If not, then explain how you can like Richard Wagner despite his, you know, kinda sorta being an Antisemitic sexist prick?

You haven't admitted shit. You parade around as some kind of women's liberationist while doing nothing but making excuses for football. You denied that there was anything specific about football that was problematic. You've insisted that if football is problematic, everything under the sun is problematic. You've laughed off the connection between head trauma and violence. You've dismissively compared it Mel Gibson and Chris Brown.

Meanwhile you, the literature expert, celebrate widely denounced misogynistic writers who portray women as control freaks and glorify male domination as your favoritist of all time but you want everyone to think you give a damn about any of this? (I haven't even gotten into your full throated defense of the Rolling Stones)

Hypocrisy? You give it a bad name. Hypocrite doesn't even begin to describe you.

"Ring Cycle fascistic and Antisemitic in code if not overtly so?"

Huh? The Ring Cycle is antisemitic? How? Is Tolkien antisemitic by extension?

You're losing it.

"Care to elaborate on your charge there, since 1. Sexuality period is sort of celebrated in that book "

Is that all that counts for you, celebrated sexuality? Nevermind that it is submissive sexualiy.

Birkin, who speaks for Lawrence, compares women to horses.

And of course,” he said to Gerald, “horses haven’t got a complete will, like human beings. A horse has no one will. Every horse, strictly, has two wills. With one will, it wants to put itself in the human power completely—and with the other, it wants to be free, wild. The two wills sometimes lock—you know that, if ever you’ve felt a horse bolt, while you’ve been driving it. And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition."

The theme of his work is that women who "bolt" end up miserable. For example, Hilda in your Lady Chatterly's Lover, and Gudrun in Women in Love. DH Lawrence celebrates female submissiveness, and an essentialist dichotomozing of men and women.

Why you're wrong about London's views on people from Asia.

https://www.asian-studies.org/eaa/Metraux-14-1.pdf

"Is that all that counts for you, celebrated sexuality? Nevermind that it is submissive sexuality."

I don't see Ursula as submissive at all...that's sort of the point--Gudrun is more submissive, and her submitting to Gerald ends in disaster for both, whereas Ursula DOES NOT submit.

And while Birkin's comment is problematic, again, this is Lawrence--comparing women to something that's generally seen as very fast and powerful and (when romanticized) free isn't exactly Aristotle musing that women aren't even human.

"The theme of his work is that women who "bolt" end up miserable. For example, Hilda in your Lady Chatterly's Lover, and Gudrun in Women in Love."

1. Connie bolts as well sexually...

2. But by contrast, men like Gerald and Clifford who try and utterly control women are depicted badly, the former dying in disgrace and the latter left paralyzed, impotent--as bad a punishment as there is for Lawrence--and left without an heir or really a future or purpose, while Connie and Mellors have or will have both, having "fucked a flame into being."

So I think you cherry pick quotes...to take the ending of "Women in Love," a fantastic ending:

"Gudrun went to Dresden. She wrote no particulars of herself. Ursula stayed at the Mill with Birkin for a week or two. They were both very quiet.

‘Did you need Gerald?’ she asked one evening.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Aren’t I enough for you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.’

‘Why aren’t I enough?’ she said. ‘You are enough for me. I don’t want anybody else but you. Why isn’t it the same with you?’

‘Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It’s an obstinacy, a theory, a perversity.’

‘Well —’ he said.

‘You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!’

It seems as if I can’t,’ he said. ‘Yet I wanted it.’

‘You can’t have it, because it’s false, impossible,’ she said.

‘I don’t believe that,’ he answered."

THAT is what Birkin wants in the end...what Lawrence champions--

Not a simple dichotomy the way you put it, but an essential man and essential woman--and here, Birkin speaks of the two EQUALLY.

He wants BOTH, because to him, and I'd argue to Lawrence, Men and Women are two very different but--vitally--EQUAL AND EQUALLY IMPORTANT BEINGS.

The ideal sexual power structure for Birkin is having an Ideal Man and Ideal Woman, both of which are equal to him in his affection and esteem.

THAT is the Lawrencian view, I'd argue...one of equality brought about by sexual liberation (which he allows for in his heroines and that was huge in 1920, sometihng you don't give him credit for--his women have a LOT more sexual agency than many of his contemporaries.)

"Meanwhile you, the literature expert, celebrate widely denounced misogynistic writers who portray women as control freaks and glorify male domination as your favoritist of all time but you want everyone to think you give a damn about any of this?"

Yeah...which denounced authors?

Lawrence?
He's still widely read and has a new "Lady Chatterley" miniseries in the works...as I just said, he has some problematic passages, but as I quoted, he has inspired ones as well which you don't give him credit for, and he was WAY ahead of his time in actually letting his heroines have sexual agency.
Shakespeare?
Literally performed and read every day of every year.
Eliot?
Taught on every college campus in the English-speaking world.
Shaw?
Far from a misogynist, obviously.
Dostoyevsky?
Yeah, he's not exactly "denounced," is he?
Woolf?
SHE'S a Founding Mother of First Wave Feminism in English Lit.

And those are my six, my oft-repeated Six Favorite Authors.

Not a one among them "denounced" to the extent that they cease to be read or to inspire new adaptations and charm new readers.

"Not a simple dichotomy the way you put it, but an essential man and essential woman--and here, Birkin speaks of the two EQUALLY."

What the hell are you talking about? I'm now convinced you cannot read. The ending is all about Birkin talking about his love for *Gerald*, you know, the person you called a 'controlling fuck', how this about Lawrence's supposed gender egalitarianism? Are you serious?

"Gudrun is more submissive, and her submitting to Gerald ends in disaster for both, whereas Ursula DOES NOT submit."

Uh...Gudrun had an affair Loerke and as a result Gerald commits suicide.

Ursula gets married to Birkin.

What are you talking about?

I ask AGAIN, though, since while I can talk about literature forever...we're kinda, you know, off topic again...

Why can't I like something/someone and still admit it/they has/have problems?

I can't like Shakespeare without disliking some of the worst lines regarding Shylock, Aaron, and--to get back on topic--Kate?

I can't like football without acknowledging that it has problems?

You once again turn yourself into an absolutist, it's all or nothing for you...

EXCEPT when it's an artist or ruler YOU like, and then *suddenly* you're ready to post in their defense and explain any fault away.

"What the hell are you talking about? I'm now convinced you cannot read. The ending is all about Birkin talking about his love for *Gerald*, you know, the person you called a 'controlling fuck', how this about Lawrence's supposed gender egalitarianism? Are you serious?"

Are YOU serious?

Birkin is the BALANCE between Ursula and Gerald!

Are you so much of a literalist you can't see that...

That he says he wants the Perfect Woman (Ursula, a woman who challenges him intellectually quite a bit, by the way, she's NOT submissive with Birkin) and what he sees as the Perfect Man, the uber-masculine Gerald?

You can't see the bisexual Birkin as symbolic of the balance Lawrence is celebrating there?

"Uh...Gudrun had an affair Loerke and as a result Gerald commits suicide."

Yes...hence my saying it ends in disaster for him?

And Gerald--to bring this full circle--abuses Gudrun, hence why I said that relationship ended badly...since you know, we're talking about how domestic violence is a bad thing in this thread?

The point dumdum, was that Lawrence sees women as either submitters or bolters, and Gudrun was clearly the bolter, not the submitter. Ursula fell completely in love with Birkin, who didn't reciprocate (she's not sufficient for him, he needs a man too), whilst Gudrun didn't give a damn that Gerald died.

Far from demonized, Gerald is the object of DH Lawrence's mouthpiece's affection. That's how he ends the book for crying out loud.

"Why can't I like something/someone and still admit it/they has/have problems?"

You never admitted it had problems. You're the king of repetitious nonsense. You said there is nothing special about the NFL and domestic violence. It's on par with (insert false equivalency here...hockey, actors, etc). You repeatedly and emphatically rejected the idea that football via head trauma *causes* domestic violence.

I'm not going through this again. You have not once acknowledged football has problems. Instead you glorify it on a weekly basis, and we're supposed to take you seriously when you say stuff like "OMG doesn't it seem like our culture is getting more misogynistic. Aren't these people monsters...blah blah blah".

It's so forced, it's so contrived. It's exceedingly annoying.

"The point dumdum, was that Lawrence sees women as either submitters or bolters, and Gudrun was clearly the bolter, not the submitter."

That is NOT how Lawrence sees women; you once again oversimplify.

That's not how he views the mother in "The Rocking Horse Winner."

Connie isn't "a bolter," she stays true to her husband until both he's too much of a prick and she decides of her own volition it's time to move on and create LIFE...she isn't fickle at all.

Nor is Gudrun or Usula.

That's not how he views Gertrude Morel, who is repeatedly abused by her husband, which Lawrence both condemns and has the guy admit to himself he's been a prick over before HE dies in "Sons and Lovers"...

And then you have Paul, who's a dick to Miriam (who's quiet and passive) and ruins things first with her, and then doesn't have things work out with Clara (a feminist) and so Paul goes back to his mom, and when she dies, is left alone to realize what a fool he's been.

Lawrence gives a full range of different women, and in case you weren't keeping track:

Sexually-liberated women, like Connie, Ursula (to an extent) and Clara fare FAR better than women who submit, the way Miriam and Gertrude do, meet worse ends.

I'm sorry that you seem to have a huge problem with sexual liberation, but that was a big deal in 1920, and remains one today...and that's an area where Lawrence consistently has liberated heroines turn out better than non-liberated ones, but no, of course he prefers "submissives" only...

Why, he's just GLORIFYING the ultimate submissive, Clifford Chatterley's elderly caretaker, isn't he? Isn't the sex-happy Lawrence positively gleeful at the disgusting display there between that simpering submissive caretaker and a man who is impotent, chauvinistic, and increasingly-cruel to everyone he meets?

"Far from demonized, Gerald is the object of DH Lawrence's mouthpiece's affection. That's how he ends the book for crying out loud."

Yes, he ends the boom by lamenting the BAD END that affection came to...that gee, maybe being an uber-masculine abusive prick who in the end stifles rather than encourages sexual liberation is a BAD thing.

Birkin is far more his mouthpiece--he ends the story with his words, he represents the balance Lawrence seeks between the genders, and not only encourages sexual liberation, but brings it to a whole new level when Lawrence dares explore homoerotic-ness in the book, something Birkin is far more open to than Gerald, despite both participating.

And again, contrast the ends of "Chatterley" and "Women in Love"--

The latter features a frozen, stiff, dead Gerald, whereas the former features a final reference to fiery-hot passion ("fucked a flame into being") that features more than a passing reference to something ELSE stiff in the human anatomy, but where Gerald represents death and the failure of not realizing the Lawrencian ideal, Connie and Mellors together DO represent that ideals fulfillment...

A flame, passion, heat, and, in an earlier scene where a parallel is drawn between their intimacy and a newborn baby, LIFE.

Lawrence ultimately celebrates life, sex, and (gonna say it again) sexual liberation, which is the result of those two things, and NOT the result of types like Gerald or Clifford, hence why they meet bad ends.

I'm sorry you can only reference a couple of works, fleetingly, with a literalist approach...

And that your best defense is to call me "dumdum"...

But you're going to have to do better than that if you're going to try and argue that the man who, for all his problems, did as much to promote sexual liberation for women in his writings as any Modernist of his era was anti-liberation.

"I'm not going through this again. You have not once acknowledged football has problems."

I have now said the NFL has problems at least 3 times now.

How can you remember what my 4th favorite work is, but not remember what I typed in this same thread?

Man, that selective memory's really something...

Are you still insistent that your namesake would never ever take over Crimea, too?

Is this still going?

"I have now said the NFL has problems at least 3 times now."

You say it in one breath and in the next say there's nothing special about the NFL and domestic violence, it's the same as society's at large - blah, blah, blah.

It can't be both. Either it's a real problem or it's just a symptom of "patriarchy" or whatever *anything but football* excuse you can come up with.

"Is this still going?"

Your bible spam has been going on for far longer.

"It can't be both. Either it's a real problem or it's just a symptom of "patriarchy" or whatever *anything but football* excuse you can come up with."

This is what I can't stand about you...well, I should clarify, ONE of the things...

Why?

Why are you always black/white, good/evil, either/or, absolutist all the way?

Why can't it be true that:

1. The NFL has some in-house problems, but that
2. The greater cause of those problems is, indeed, Patriarchy (which ISN'T an "anything but football excuse"...it's a fucking reality--are you denying that the Patriarchy is a thing, and pervasive enough to be responsible, at least in part, for the attitudes in the NFL which we've been criticizing?)

I'm sorry you can't view things a little more complexly than "Either it's this or it's that."

And I'm definitely sorry you don't seem to see Patriarchy as the problem here...

Once upon a time, there was a woman named Emma Watson. But that was a long, long time ago.