VALL's Misogyny and Cruelty

by KC (kcwriter@angelfire.com)

http://www.anzwers.net/hot/bakeneko

Once again I am writing in protest against the Virgin Anti-Lemon League, (http://www.geocities.com/virginantilemonleague/) but this time, I'm writing for slightly different reasons. In my previous essay, I mentioned that VALL is quite misogynistic (woman hating), but I must admit much of that was drawn from close readings and feminist critique of the angel/monster dichotomy of their legion of Mary Sue stories. This time they have shown their misogyny and arrogance in such glaring terms that I felt physically nauseated as I read.

This essay comes on the heels of VALL reaction to a passionate, perhaps overly passionate, email sent to them by Burned Vamp, someone who dares to disagree with them in non-deferential terms. I say non-deferential because often in a debate we are exposed to courteous debate or argument. We are socialized to accept this type of disagreement and respond in like kind, but when someone dares raise their voice, often we assume their message is hateful. This becomes important in VALL's response because while the emailer did indeed sound angry and resentful, her tone caused them to miss her message, and to her credit, her message has a valid point.

As this is a more focused examination of a VALL response, I suggest that readers take the time to read the message itself (in italics), along with VALL's reactions. My comments will likely make much more sense then. (I must ask that if you do email her, please do so courteously.)

Body Of Email:

End Email

----------------------------

Granted, this email rambles somewhat and lacks cohesion, but this does not necessarily come from any ignorance or hatred on Burned Vamp's part. Rather, this comes as the desperate cries of someone seeing an ugly monster rearing its head once again and feeling helpless to do anything to stop it. While I hate to lecture, this is actually a good lesson to everyone. Just because a person is shouting does not mean they are violent or hateful. They shout because they think they won't be heard. They see a problem, they have a solution in mind, but no one will listen. The frustration builds up and they shout for anyone to listen. Sadly, VALL has decided to turn up volume of their headphones.

In case anyone could not immediately grasp Burned Vamp's message (or skipped ahead like I would), she believes that banning lemons has several direct and implied consequences, mainly that it is reminiscent of the Nazi's rush to burn undesirable books, that believing that lemons alone encourage minors to have sex is arrogant at best, and that it has the potential to spiral out of control. Burned Vamp is not raving mad, she is pointing out the legitimate fact that banning anything deemed morally repulsive starts society on the slippery slope towards banning beneficial material, like educational materials on reproduction, human or otherwise. It leads to society banning minority niche books, such as homosexual literature.

Any undesirable literature, indeed any undesirable art, could be banned on VALL's sweeping proclamation of responsibility, not on assuming responsibility for your own actions, but for assuming responsibility for the actions of others. Banning ideas and information ultimately leads to fascist totalitarian regimes like the Third Reich and the Taliban. While this may seem an exaggeration of the intent of one internet group, remember that these people may grow to assume positions of authority or pass on their restrictive notions to others without allowing for the opposite view, harmful in their eyes.

This explains Burned Vamp's emphatic statement that "EDUCATION IS IMPORTANT." Of course she understands that a lemon is not the proper source for sexual education. No one would believe this unless the child was extremely stupid or psychotic (in which case they have a lot more problems than reading lemons) or unless the person had an inflated idea of their own influence. I doubt I could convince someone to do the kind of things I put my characters through. Give readers credit for some intelligence and realize that, even as almighty authors, we are not behavioral gods. It is arrogant to believe that I can make someone fuck just because I write a lemon where Duo and Heero get it on.

As you begin banning, however, the definition of what should be banned broadens. Burned Vamp has seen the consequences of a lack of education in the form of frequent and extreme domestic abuse. Censorship of any kind can lead to a lack of education. Burned Vamp is not just seeing VALL's actions, she is seeing the logical extension of their actions. Of course she will shout that VALL's stance is ludicrous. She will shout because she sees the problem but no one is listening. She is quite correct when she mentions that VALL will not help because "a good cause is only good if it's easy." What could be easier than tagging your name to a group and riding on their coattails? Or easier than designing a website? All of us can agree, it's not rocket science.

VALL does indeed live in a world of sheltered, unrealistic notions to which they cling. As I have written before, anyone who is willing to confront VALL is automatically ridiculed and condemned. Likewise, so is Burned Vamp. While this is normal in a flame war, this response went beyond mere name calling. This took a turn straight into misogyny, and unfortunately it is probably the same misogyny Burned Vamp has seen and heard in the abuse around her.

Following are VALL's responses to Burned Vamp's letter. First are the opening and closing statements with her letter, then the replies on their message board. To expedite this process, I put their comments in bold and write my critiques in between.

VALL's opening to the letter:

This section highlights the contempt VALL holds for whoever disagrees with them. They call her irrational. Random. Out there. The implication is that she is insane and therefore does not deserve to be listened to. History will teach us that this is one of the best methods of discrediting your opposition. The Nazis would not take Einstein seriously because he was Jewish and therefore his science invalid, not worth studying. We wonder in this who was truly insane.

They also assume that Burned Vamp's email is indicative of the mindset of everyone who does not agree that censorship is good. Prejudiced, maybe bigoted? And make no mistake, they are indeed pushing censorship. Censorship can be benign, in the case of a parent monitoring their child's reading, but it is certainly malignant when one group forces their definitions of morality on others.

Finally they state that she was trying to be witty. Again, condescension. She was not trying to be witty. She was trying to be heard and was obviously angry when she wrote. Who among us would like to be judged by how we acted in anger?

VALL closing comment:

Again, more ridicule and snide comments. Why is her age something to make fun of? Perhaps because they expect her to be the soul of eloquence. Perhaps they think she should be more composed. I would have liked to see the second email. If we stop listening to Burned Vamp's volume and listen to her ideas, we may not find her so easy to criticize.

Ironically, yeah. That is Burned Vamp's point. They simply don't want to toss this idea around in their heads and perhaps draw the conclusion that she may have a point. Burned Vamp isn't entirely concerned with their current actions, but rather what she has seen those type of actions grow into. VALL does not consider the full impact of their actions, no matter what their intentions.

Again, ironically, even Burned Vamp mentioned that she does not hate VALL. Anger and frustration do not equal hate.

Next, the two replies so far. I edited these for brevity. In case you suspect I altered their meanings, their messages are unedited on their message board.

Normally I don't resort to name calling or vulgarities if I can help it, but in this instance, I am pissed. Deleria is a cruel, judgmental, hypocritical bitch. I wonder if she knows that dork is a slang term for penis. If she's a dork to the tenth degree, she truly lives up to her reputation as a major prick.

1. The link between banning lemons and domestic abuse comes in Burned Vamp's idea of the slippery slope, that once you begin banning, you can spiral into mass censorship. This isn't difficult to grasp.

2. Deleria gives a mild rant about how Burned Vamp does not know her, but jumps to the extreme conclusion that of course Burned Vamp had an accidental pregnancy because she is a loose woman, a perverted writer of smut too stupid to understand that fucking can lead to pregnancy. This is truly hateful and misogynistic. Deleria takes the righteous road, not unlike that which virtuous Victorian ladies took with the fallen woman. Information on pregnancy is only good for girls having sex?

3. Yes, "wouldn't've" can be construed as a word, especially if the author is Mark Twain. Anyone using dialects in their writing can use a double contraction. It's possibly more correct that "wouldn't of," the usual dialect form, and in a few more years may actually be added to the dictionary. Deleria shows her own ignorance here.

4. She states it is not a parent's responsibility to register lemon sites on cybersitter programs, and indeed it is not. It is a parent's responsibility to monitor their children's actions online. Anything less can be taken as neglect. The internet is neither a babysitter nor a place for the unwary. The internet is dangerous, and there are worse dangerous than lemons. A parent who does not monitor their child online leaves them at risk of molestation, identity theft, kidnapping and worse.

5. Again, more ridicule.

6. WORST OF ALL, her free advice: Less self-gratification in front of the computer, more husband-seeking. Not only does this imply Burned Vamp is protesting VALL purely for physical satisfaction from lemons, but the old misogyny again rears its head by suggesting that a woman needs a man to satisfy her sexually. All the lesbians and feminists and men say it with me, BULL SHIT! Women and men do not need each other, and the suggestion that women should have husbands and actively seek them out is at best a gross insult and at worst, shows her to be a traitor against her entire gender.

The second response:

So, what the hell is she ranting about? I don't get it...

1. Masquerade first lists several offensive comments (sorry, I don't buy that she doesn't mean to offend) that are only hearsay. She has never visited Alaska, and yet she implies that the people who live there are people paid to live in filth and pollution, or criminals. Perhaps she made the leap that because a few service workers are paid to live there, that everyone is. Well, down here in El Paso, visitors often see a bunch of brown-skinned people and assume we're all lazy, thieving Mexicans, not that we're brown and white and black Americans and Mexicans trying to work out a living, just like everyone else. I assume the same goes for everyone in Anchorage and Nome. She simply makes a gross prejudicial statement about an entire populace. Let's not even get into the slur against Native Americans on this one.

2. Of course she doesn't understand Burned Vamp's point. She's already talking in terms of decent and indecent literature and banning smut because it offends her sense of morality. Burned Vamp's point is that having such a black and white view of morality leads to even more problems and pain, and that VALL is unwilling to support causes that actually help people. She has a point that few people volunteer at shelters and in movements. This is understandable now, though.

Some people don't get it.

Another message simply listed more of the same, and then we come to the longer post from Lee, yet another prick.

And yet, what else is someone's view in a debate but a personal opinion?

Never mind that this is Lee's PERSONAL OPINION, but this is a misrepresentation of lemon fics in general. Many of them do not center on rape or incest, and I think this is her prejudiced idea of what a yaoi lemon is. We see the latent homophobia again that I mentioned before in my previous essay. And I suppose it's somewhat sad that I need to point out that lemon fics do not lead people of any age to believe that incest and rape is all right. The people who write and read these know they are breaking social taboos. Again, Lee is betraying her extreme arrogance that fanfiction is life and perception altering. Fanfiction is simply not that influential.

This is the best instance of their idea of forcing their morality on others. They strive to teach the proper behaviour patterns, but what are those behaviour patterns? Are her ideas of misconceptions things like lesbianism, gay sex, femdom, bondage? I would go so far as to suggest that anything beyond idealized romantic love and missionary position sex is beyond her idea of propriety.

Again, more arrogance regarding her idea of her own influence, and she also dodges the issue of parental responsibility. She actually sounds like she is advocating peer pressure, as long as it is her peer pressure.

More arrogance, more prejudiced attitudes towards lemon writers (notice how she stops calling them lemons and calls them smut? This implies that she truly considers anything with sex in it "smut" and "porn." Close minded, maybe?) Again, she also misses Burned Vamp's point, like the rest of VALL does, that banning one form of sexual text leads to banning other forms. They continue talking about their own PERSONAL OPINIONS and not the point Burned Vamp is making, that their actions could have consequences they aren't even considering.

More of the same. I have to wonder how closely they read Burned Vamp's email. I must admit, it was somewhat long. Perhaps they lost interest when they realized they couldn't convert her. Every time they repeat that Burned Vamp makes no sense or they misconstrue her words, they show their own inability to comprehend a critical viewpoint.

Isn't this the group thatcheered the BAN on NC-17 fics because of their morals? She is flat out lying here. Her notion that people have a free choice, as long as it's not to write lemons, is like Ford saying people can buy his car in any color as long as it's black. This is exactly the view Burned Vamp is shouting against, the facist view.

Again, they call her a flamer, even after she told them she wasn't. It is another means to discredit Burned Vamp. She also preaches to a woman who deals with domestic abuse on a daily basis that she is herself a bully. This is sick, cruel and utterly foolish. VALL seems to love to leap to conclusions about other people's lives, at least when those people disagree with them.

As long as you don't post where VALL doesn't want you to.

VALL cannot deal with disagreement. If they cannot ridicule it, they cannot say anything.

More ridicule. More name calling. More condescension. And more lies. And simply because your movement is diverse (though I would questin 50+ out of the thousands of writers online as diverse) does not make it right.

Another lie. VALL has helped the ban on ff.net, gleefully. They are censors, whether they admit it or not.

One last, ironic lie.

But of course Lee's comments aren't flames, are they? She isn't flaming Burned Vamp, is she? She's just telling her how off-base, stupid, and hypocritical her remarks are. Worst of all, based on copies of these emails that Burned Vamp herself kept, we discover that VALL did indeed edit those "unedited emails" and that the true reason they did not display the second email was that they completely failed to defend their position. Following are VALL's pathetic response and Burned Vamp's final word, showing their hypocrisy better than I could ever tell it.

I suppose that when Bucky, a VALL member and practically their spokesman, said in one of their forum threads that they displayed Burned Vamp's message so they wouldn't only have pro-VALL opinions, she neglected to mention how they would make sure any anti-VALL opinions would be castigated and maligned.

This was VALL's reponse to the email as a whole (with notes from Burned Vamp).

*the following exerpt in Ò Ò was a direct quote from their home page: "Side Note: There seems to be some who would like to pigeonhole us as the scapegoats for everything wrong in their lives. If sending us hate mail makes you feel better about yourselves, then go ahead. You'll elicit nothing but pity, (and depending on the nonsensical nature of your flame, maybe a bit of laughter.) Remember, if what we have to say makes you that uncomfortable OR angry, then you are not truly confident in what you write OR read to begin with. And that's your problem. Not ours." You make me sad, Burned.

(My [Burned Vamp's] response back) I'm sorry too. I'm sorry that you can sit there and listen to praises about yourselves, but you can't take a little constructive criticism. Which there was, I made valid points and had them back by facts. And that's not the makings of a good writer, btw. I'm sorry that you obviously aren't fair enough to read and contemplate my whole letter, which you obviously haven't, or maybe you just skimmed the paragraph on my definition of hate mail and how my letter was anything but. I'm sad that you guys proved me right.

I mean, I expected an intelligent response would've been along the lines of a reiteration of what your 'mission statement' does entail along with valid points, clarity on those points, and your feelings that brought you to those points. Every time you get a letter like mine, it's YOUR time to shine. I'm sorry that instead of showing what a mature and intelligent group/movement that you are, you responsed to facts, and educated opinions, with an insult. Wow. You certainly changed MY mind about your group. I've met groups that had purposes to which I did NOT agree. But I've respected them for the way they treat NOT only members, but the general public that doesn't agree with them. The way they treated me. And I don't suppose my letter will be going, untouched and unaltered, onto your 'public opinion' page. After all, that is my opinion and I am part of the public.

I'm sorry also, that you have no respect for the written word. I hope you get newspaper reporter jobs. It's obvious with your strong discrimination issues, that you don't have one already.

And finally, I'm sorry that it was more important to you to insult me rather than show an ounce or a lick of pity for the poor souls who I spent half that email going on about. You know, the abused and the raped. I'm sorry you can't feel anything at all for the self that I was before I discovered the safe world of smutty fanfiction. And I thought I was supposed to be protected by you? I mean, I was underaged, and smutty fanfiction was the root of all evil, even though neither I nor my attacker read or even heard about it way back then. Okay, education counts for jack shit, so I suppose personal experience does too.