This morning I woke to a comment awaiting moderation on my Porn Is Good For You post from Canadian reader and fan Ashley-Anne Thompson. Being my biggest fan (sorry SFGate commenters!) she left her hotmail address, a link to her life through an antique lens YouTube channel and this message:
“please grow up. you’re not misunderstood, deep, dark, you fucking promote violence against women and you use your “orgasm” rhetoric to feel good about exploiting humans. you’re a disgrace to everything feminism tries to do.”
Then shit got real. She loved me so hard that she maded me a video. It’s above. Don’t bother fast-forwarding to the fap scene, because there isn’t one. That was the first thing I did, because the other girls in the frat told me to.
Now, I’m not going to insult Ashley-Anne’s acting skills because clearly this video came from the heart. When someone goes to this much trouble to show you their feelings, you just have to go wow. And I want to support that she might be shopping at Hot Topic now that she’s copped my style. It works for her. I also love the clever irony: getting ‘in your face’ about someone who ‘gets in your face’ about porn is brilliantly meta. Additionally, I want to point out that Ashley-Anne may not portray me as dramatically as I’d like, but she does one thing absolutely perfectly: she literally embodies the reason I continue to state that I am not a feminist. If you don’t feel like watching the video and soaking up Thompson’s brand of feminism, just close your eyes and imagine a bus full of angry old ladies bursting into flames.
Hopefully, Ashley-Anne Thompson’s message will reach all the right people. She really hit on something with her technique. Bait bloggers in their comments with insults and a link to the creepy video you made dressed like them, in which you make unsubstantiated claims about data and craft a very unsettling, mean-spirited attack on how they look, write, speak, and who they work with — this is GREAT for the feminist anti-porn argument. It helps everyone take it seriously. It’s getting so bad out there that women are doing violence to each other all for the sake of orgasms!
I think that Ashley is now my favorite amateur pornographer on YouTube. I want to introduce Antiquelens to my other favorite YouTube artist Dr. Steve Rooster in the hopes that someday they make a video together:
(Dr. Steve is via Dlisted)
Who says that I agree with men being rapists and women being sluts? I know I made a comment about sometimes women want to be used as fuck objects, but that was meant to be a joke. Well, a half joke. It was meant to clarify that women enjoy sex and there’s nothing wrong with that. Interestingly enough, not long after Antiquelens made this video whining about the comment I posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZDlQ5jJrHY – one of my videos got flagged. Uh-oh, drama! LMAO!
The reason why I posted the comment I posted here int he first place was because I checked out this page out of curiosity, then I find out the kind of shit that Antique was writing to Violet Blue. She supports violence against women because she likes porn? What the fuck? Ashley needs to grow the fuck up and stop acting like a child.
Yeesh. Nothing like a zealout to start your day.
Unfortumately, like IACB, I’ve battled her kind countless times before (though never to the extent of the extreme dwama gueen heights that Ms. Thompson seems to scale with ease). It does seem as if she’s more into trolling for attention and publicity, all the while playing the “damsel in distress being censored for her ‘radical’ views” card to the hilt.
It would be so easy to just ignore her and not feed her Messiah complex…but the sad thing is, her ideology concerning porn and sex work is slowly but steadily being digested and consumed by plenty of “progressive” and “liberal”, if not “leftist” intellectuals and personalities, and that is making the struggle for expanding sexual freedom and defending sexual expression that much more difficult. Far better to expose her to the light of day and then ridicule her extreme behavior than to let it fester and suddenly explode.
I should say, though, that I have an equal problem with the response of TheMadShangi, whose brand of “masculinism”/MRA lunacy feeds as much into and reenforces the equal lunacy of antiiquelens’ brand of antipornradfem madness. Sorry, but the answer to her claims that “all men are rapists, and any woman who likes and uses porn as a personal means of sexual pleasure is either an enabler of rapists or simply a brainless slut” should NOT be “Yes, men are rapists and women are sluts; that’s what we like about it!!! So what?”
Antifeminist MRA’s and antiporn radfems are more closer to each other than they are to the rest of the real world; maybe they should take their smackdowns to a far away island and leave the rest of us alone.
At any rate, good job refuting her madness.
Anthony
Huh. She reminds me of my grandmother, but younger and better dressed. (That’s not a good thing, just so we’re clear).
Relevant quote:
You are never dedicated to something you have
complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting
that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it
is going to rise tomorrow. When people are
fanatically dedicated to political or religious
faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s
always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
– Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
I have a strange feeling her zealotry is just a smoke and mirrors case of her needing to cling to something extreme, so she has something solid (if misaligned) to identify with. I hope that changes, but that’s like hoping the sun won’t rise tomorrow.
It looks like you’ve discovered everybody’s favorite anti-porn drama queen. I’ve had run-ins for several months now with her and her YouTube buddies, who are for the most part pretty nasty pieces of work toward anybody who doesn’t buy into their odd combination of conservative sexual ideology and half-understood more-radical-than-thou marxism/feminism. Having seen a number of her videos where she talks about her background, its clear just how lost the poor girl is – she’s basically a combination of an extremely sheltered upbringing (basically, from some tiny jerkwater in British Columbia where she was the only person who wasn’t an xtian), zero sexual experience and outright fear of the larger sexual culture, mental illness (alcoholism, depression, etc), and an obvious need for attention (she had largely burned through trolling YouTube before moving on to you). Now she’s found fundamentalist feminism and is absolutely running with it. She’s largely in the irritating-but-harmless category, except for her occasional talk of bombing porn shops.
The only thing I’d fault in your response, Violet, is that you gave her a blog post and link at all, because its largely succeeded in generating publicity for her video channel, which is probably her intention to begin with. But you probably know this.
As could be predicted, she’s posting numerous followup videos trying to milk this for all its worth. She’s accused Violet of “censoring” her for not posting her responses here in the comments. Highly ironic, since this is AL’s exact m.o. vis a vis blocking pretty much all critical commentators on her channel, but then consistency between what she dishes out and the kind of treatment she demands from others has never exactly been AL’s strong suit.
Okay sure we’ve heard the argument before and most of us disagree with it, but I actually thought the video was kind of funny. And let’s face it, she’s not the most offensive imitator of VB out there — there’s that porn actress going by the same name who expresses racist anti-immigrant sentiments in interviews and is occasionally mistaken for Our Own Face of Innovation by those who make sense of the world through Google searches.
But I think the satire really falls flat when we have the corrective voice of the “real” Ashley Anne. To compare great things with small, it’s as if Jonathan Swift cropped up in the middle of “A Modest Proposal” to earnestly declaim, “No! The eating of children is WRONG!” It would have been more effective to stay in the VB persona and make the satire work purely on the merits of the mockery. But that, I’m afraid, is where the talents of Ashley-Anne stop unceremoniously at the water’s edge.
Thanks for posting the link to this, VB, and thanks for your always thoughtful writing on the many subjects you tackle.
Some women wanna be used like fuck objects. So what the hell’s wrong with that? Holla!
Ad hominem attack = inability to argue their point like a grown up = ignore.
I found myself wondering what it means to be Anti Quelens. Leave the Quelens alone!
Hello there. On YouTube I call myself The MadShangi. I make anti-feminist videos and I’m quite familiar with the antiquelens character. She’s a nice girl, if a bit misguided by her feminist buddies. I never heard of you or this blog, until she made those videos about you. I was curious enough to leave a comment. I asked her, “What exactly do YOU know about sex?” It was an honest question, because I know that she’s a virgin. Nothing wrong with being a virgin, but she got angry at me for posting that comment on her channel for all to see. I wonder why. Not to attack antique or anything, but I find it odd that someone with no sexual experience would have the nerve to attack someone else’s supposed knowledge of sexuality. I also find it odd that given Antique’s taste in movies – she would be so anti-porn. I do not see pornography as violence to women. It would have to depend on the porn and the intent of the filmmakers. Here is a vid I made PWNing one of her anti-porn buddies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOyMX0v-1SI
She’s right about one thing, dopamine is the reward neurotransmitter that activates in your brain when you have an orgasm.
Er, but how does that affect a relationship negatively? Probably depends on the person, but never undervalue the power of human reasoning, which is also an important function of the human brain. If anything, a failed monogamous relationship “affected negatively by porn” is likely just the result of a lack of common sense, devotion, or intimate compatibility, and not the porn itself.
By the way, I do get the impression that despite the hate messages and poorly supported counter-arguments, that she is indeed a big fan of yours, since she apparently seems to enjoy cosplaying you. ^_~
You should have put some quotation marks around the word “Feminist” while describing her. She is so catty.
I’m glad someone else mentioned the Leonard Cohen thing. I really don’t *need* to watch this, it’ll just make me bummed – but I will add that it’s her brand of thinking that influenced mine to be INSUFFERABLE for like, four years. I was on hormonal birth control and had NO libido, but decided to blame it on all the “misuse” of myself in previous years. If I could just be good enough, “female” enough, feminist enough, I would stop wanting all these horrible influences and my libido would magically come back, one sexuality, “acceptable” desires and none o’ that WEIRDNESS that made me go all dry.
another asshole who wants to control what consenting adults do with their bodies. but she does look good dressed as you. I’m sure mine wasnt the only negative comment on her video that she deleted. pathetic.
What a repressed lunatic. She appears to be quite obsessed with Leonard Cohen, which is pretty hilarious given her hatred of BDSM.
http://www.sadtrombone.com was made for this girl’s life.
There’s the solution to our problems – an antidote for dopamine!
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but a bunch of strawmen, ad hominem attacks, slippery slope fallacies, and laundry lists of buzz words convinced me!!
Seriously? It’s so much easier to blame an object. It was the porn, the games, the chess, the D&D, the Beethoven, whatever the moral-panic-of-the-moment may be, it always looks ridiculous over later decades, yet even now people can’t stop.
I little more (already too much) thought, and now I think she’s actually an astoundingly skilled troll. Her video contains personal attacks to inflame, easily refuted factual mistakes to insure *some* response, fuzzy facts to provide maneuvering room, and stereotypes to invite return personal attacks. As a work of troll art, her video is perfect.
You are hilarious Violet… this posted response is great!
Wow. She is vitriolic.
People like this give others the impression that psychology is based on anecdotal evidence rather than statistically significant research. Even if she hasn’t taken a behavioural neuroscience class (obviously), shouldn’t she have enough of a basic grip on human behaviour to realize that enjoying one slice of pie isn’t enough to make me immune to the wonders of other sugary desserts? I emphasize with Xavier, since my libido is much higher than my husband’s and porn keeps me from feeling frustrated and unfufilled (when we aren’t watching it together). There are lots of problems with the pornography industry, but the argument that it destroys relationships isn’t one of them. That’s a failure in communication, honesty, and understanding. Violet, I hope the outpouring of support that always comes when you post about another of your trolls reminds you that your work is important and needed. To add another relevant Herbert Prochnow quote, “many people mistake opinions for thoughts.”
this is *awesome* is ashley-anne thompson (as violet) available for birthday parties, events, bat & bar mitzvahs? violet, you’re a busy person – you can speak at every even or go on every tv show. see if you can hire her to and have her go in your place. it would the best art project ever.
Wow…. I haven’t seen that much hatred and immaturity on YouTube in a while… and that’s saying something!
That was awful. Really saddening and a little frightening. I am so glad that I discovered Tiny Nibbles and Savage Love before I became this hateful towards sex bloggers. I really don’t understand how Ashley-Anne considers herself a feminist. The point at which she says ‘What’s more feminist than judging a women on her appearance?’ made my eyes bulge. How do you say that line sarcastically in a video where you personally attack someone instead of constructing a counter argument? I don’t think that Ashley-Anne represents the majority of those who identify as feminists, but of course I have no evidence either way. This post serves as a good response to those ‘why don’t people identify as feminists?’ articles. I’d be really interested in knowing how many of the negative comments you get come from anti-porn feminists.
Miss Blue, I’m a raging feminist and you Empower me in all *sorts* of ways….whereas AAT just pisses me off with all her flim-flam hate-ration.
I am offended!… at the poor impersonation and lack of Alex in this video. Couldn’t she dress up her dog, rat, or pet ferret up as Alex?
I was looking forward to seeing the humor in this video but I’m disturbed by her hatred towards you and it’s amazing how hatred can really create a passion in people that makes them incoherently speak when making youtube videos. When she addressed how people have emailed her and said that porn has destroyed their relationships, i was concerned that people relied on her for counsel and advice on relationships when clearly she isn’t in the space to provide such counsel and support. I was also wondering if her “research” is based on these select group emails that she receives from her fan base of victorian style feminists.
I also wanted to say thank you Violet for all your information and knowledge on the subject of sex. I appreciate your positive perspective on sexuality and it has contributed to my ability to appreciate sex and to love my own body more.
Thank you again!
Civilization hit a high point with the internet. It started its decline with Youtube.
Second the comment of VB being better example of feminism than self-identified feminists.
Ashley-Anne is to feminism what PETA is to animal rights activism. This attitude isn’t the norm for third-wave feminists. It isn’t even the norm for anti-porn feminists, most of whom would actually try to engage in a coherent dialogue rather than going straight to YouTube with a black wig and zero data to support their arguments.
(also, what kind of feminist doesn’t know who Sappho is?)
haven’t watched the video yet, but it really saddens me that this mindset still exists, and that it does so under the banner of feminism. Especially since I don’t know anyone who identifies with the term and actively organizes against patriarchy and oppression who believes this. I’d also say that hopefully these viewpoints are on the decline, at least judging from the very positive reactions to the workshop my partner helped put on at the NC rising(http://ncrising.info/) and Unity conferences(http://unityconference.webs.com/workshops.htm) on sex work.
Violet~
I just wanted to say, that even if you don’t consider yourself a feminist, for me, you are what feminism is about. People like this are living in the past. I grew up not wanting to be a feminist, but discovering sex-positive feminism led me to you, and led me to loving my body and learning what it means to be a fully realized (and sexualized) person. I know feminism is a long-tarnished label for a lot of people, but I just wanted to put a word in for all the feminist ladies out there who really consider your work central to a new better kind of feminism.
I understand if that’s not the way you see your work, and certainly I don’t mean to suggest a limitation on it by calling it feminist: I think it’s good for all human beings. I just felt drawn to comment, it’s sad for me to see someone like this . When I think of the positive impact you’ve had on my life… Mostly just thank you. I’m so glad I encountered your work and was able to appreciate it for the wonderful thing it is, and I feel really sorry for the other young feminists out there who want to make themselves feel bad rather than embracing something that provides so much joy and empowerment.
You’re changing so many lives for the better Violet. Thank you.
Hi Violet,
I am not sure what she (antiquelens) was trying to say. Her comedic take in you (violetblue) would, I think, have more persons laughing at her that with her but I guess that she has followers.
I am a little confused, What is a feminist? or rather who is a feminist? and what is such a person’s function? May be I am being rhetorical.
I may not agree with everything porn wise but i do believe in the right for persons to be what ever they are as long as they don’t infringe in the rite of others to be what ever they are (think I said that right).
Blessed all the time.
Well.. wow. I think her parody of VB (whom I read and enjoy) does have some merit. I imagine it is difficult to both portray human sexual desire(s) as positive and at the same time recognize the often inhumane practice of the sex industry. It does seem overglossed on this blog at times. At the same time, most industries operate inhumanely to some degree. I’d mostly just hope that no-one ‘learns’ what feminism is from this dialogue – it needs to be more inclusive and useful than a sexual consideration. For the record, I’m a feminist, I like Porn and I’m a guy. Yee-haw!
What frustrates me about this person is that she’ll argue this point of porn being terrible and a crime against women. So what does ashley anne think is sexy or stimulating? Ponies? clean panties? laundry soap? Pornography has been around as long as we have had the ability to put image to surface. Then my other problem is that as a woman who actively enjoys pornography, is she saying that i should feel bad about watching wonderfully kinky and having orgasms? If so, how feminist is it to tell me, a woman, that my having orgasms is profoundly wrong? BTW violet, you are so dark and mysterious. i think that all the time. so spooky.
Sorry for typos and I don’t mean all Feminist. Just ones like Miss AA.
It stuff like this that won’t allow me to take the current Feminist movement seriously . Their are a ton of real issues , like freedom of choice and rape laws. But, instead, the majority of them go after porn or Japan. Was the first wave feminist movement about Sexual Freedom? Do any of them note the fact that at least two major porn companies ( Belladonna and Burning Angel) and hundreds of indie studios are owned and operated by Women. This is why feminist are taken seriously in this day and age. They play on the same social mindset of old Victorian maid. ” A Woman having sex on film. Sure she was forced in to it, has no self respecting female would actively participate in dubious act .” They’re almost as bad as conservative christans.
I’m sorry, I almost hurt myself laughing when she said Sapphic Erotica sounds like 2 dragons doing it on a bed of hot lava, She should actually look up the meaning of a word before commenting on it.
I have been happily married for 2 years and together with my husband for 12 years, we both watch porn, we both like it and we have a happy, healthy relationship.
He loves porn and at the same time has a greater respect for women than any man or woman I have dated in the past that didn’t.
Wow, I totally thought that’d be funnier. The only thing I thought was really amusing was the fact she told you to do research and then presented a bunch of anecdotal nonsense about how she gets emails “all the time” from people in relationships about how bad porn is/was for them. What an ironic tragedy.
Now, now. Please don’t be too hard on dear Ashley-Anne. Anyone who feels the need to resort to mockery and shame, who can’t face the person they’re opposed to in rational debate, but instead feels the need to *argue against herself,* is obviously at her very wit’s end. Who can blame her, though, really, since she has been given hearsay and isolated first-person accounts to report as her facts? Perhaps some original sapphic erotica will help broaden her horizons. I wonder, do you think she reads ancient Greek?
I admit, I riddle my comment with sarcasm because otherwise I’d have to think about the number of people who spend that much time and effort uselessly attempting to undermine people who have made enormous steps in levelling the gender playing field , when the could actually be doing some good (or maybe, at the very least, some research) because that train of thinking might just make me extremely depressed.
I think I’ll go read some sex-positive, consensual woman-written, female-positive smut. I just know it will destroy my relationship, and then I’ll have something better to worry about!
There’s more than enough to criticize about this video without resorting to “hurr hurr she just needs some cock” type insults.
Wow. I’m not often moved to comment but “what a fucking bitch!”. Mocking someone to make an argument against them just makes you look stupid and petty, Ashley-Anne. I would love to see her reaction if someone made a video mocking her style.
Just…wow. For what it’s worth…1) Porn is what keeps me from going insane since my libido is MUCH higher than my wife’s, and 2) Women like Ashley-Anne (Coulter) are also why my wife separates herself from the “feminist” camp.
Never forget VB, Dan Savage loves ya (check out his podcast 181, Mr. Savage STARTS by talking about how awesoe you are), and he has a lot more pull that Miss Anne.
Wow. I’m stunned. I wish *my* intellectual adversaries were this well put together.
Since she’s so into research, maybe she could read some… after she gets done making such swell videos, of course. SSSS has produced an excellent, scientifically sound – and short (wouldn’t want to tax your busy schedule, Ashley) – pamphlet on the subject of pornography. It’s at http://vb.ly/26ju.
In my 38 years on the planet as a member of the oppressor race (white male) I have enjoyed the sperigng out of insane women like this one by telling them all they needed was a good deep dicking to straighten them out.
I love how she tries to get all sciencey by saying dopamine and orgasm over and over. Like somehow that proves seeing a naked person having fun with another naked person and it arousing you is addictive.
Her assertion that if you orgasm and release dopamine while looking at a moving picture with naked folks in it causes something bad would mean a lot of couples would be addicted to the face of their partner from doing plain old missionary sex. Or really bad sex partners could be addicted to staring at the ceiling. I mean if you orgasm while doing something other than watching things you will be just as addicted if that’s all it takes right?
I really wish I was good at expressing myself properly. There are so many things wrong with people who identify themselves as feminists these days. Feminism has turned away from equallity towards revenge for perceived evils. You can’t be a feminist unless you over analyze everything and then find a way to blame the guy gor it.
I remember my first encounter with a college feminist. I was on a computer BBS system and she registered with the name Sappho. In the small town of Lawrence KS she hit every bbs in town and basically dared the entire nerd population to say something anti-feminist to her. So I too her to get off the computer and stay in the kitchen this is the man world.
Far as I know to this day she still thinks I was serious, even after I finally said it was a troll to her clearly antagonistic post. They don’t find anything funny
She seems rather attractive in the dressed-as-you sequences.
Unless it’s video compression working in her favor.
But seriously, I can’t see how someone can get this upset and so invested in time and effort over this. She’s got a lot of anger… or maybe she just wants the hits on her channel.
Holy crap! That girl needs an orgasm bad. Your blog response was incredibly awesome. I nearly fell off my chair at your video response. Ha!
Wow she’s really ticked. I feel like I need to vomit after watching that hate filled video…. if she doesn’t like you, why does she read/watch your material, and dress like you? If I don’t like something I simply change the channel.
I really think that if she wants to make a point she needs to be tolerant and talk well. All the hate speech won’t get the point through and just makes her look like a fool. It would be interesting if there’s ever an good debate about it, with respect for the other part.
And definitely she needs to read a bit more and understand a bit more. I’m no expert but I know i need to listen to various POVs and understand the whole picture to form and opinion.
Dr Steve is awesome.
I thoroughly enjoyed my 1min 33sec course, but would like to return the 7:29 worth of negativity, hate, and anger to the kitchen.
Hahahaha! Does she expect anyone to take her seriously with this? How childish. Ashley, if you’re reading this, here’s a Lebanese Proverb for you: “Lower your voice and strengthen your argument.”
you know, I’d be willing to have constructive arguments with these people if they could refrain from getting all Mommy Dearest while stating their points.
Whoa. Citations much? Perhaps you should send her the works of Sappho?
But perhaps… She is so incredibly stereotypical. She refers to no one except you (and Oprah). She never ends a sentence with “eh”. Is she real?