promethea.incorporated

ilzolende:

theungrumpablegrinch:

galesofnovember:

The more insufferable parts of radfem tumblr seem to be into rehashing arguments about body odor this week.   And to be accidentally copying this amazing #iconic #formative Crimethinc essay.  Please read the whole thing and tell me your favorite parts. Mine is:

“ Those who find me disgusting for enjoying the scent and taste of my lover when she hasn’t showered or rubbed synthetics all over herself, when she smells like a real human being, are probably the same ones who shudder at the idea of digging a vegetable out of the ground and eating it rather than eating the plastic-wrapped, man-made fast food that we have all been brought up on.”

1. Body smells are erotic and sexual. Capitalists don’t like that because they are impotent and opposed to all manifestations of sensuality and sexuality. Sexually awakened people are potentially dangerous to capitalists and their rigid, asexual system.

I’m on a horse.

Even if they agree about the questionable nature of today’s sanitation products, most people today would still argue that sanitation is still healthier than filth. To some extent this is true—it probably is a good idea to wash your feet if you step in shit. But, aside from obvious cases like that, there are a thousand different standards of what is clean and what is dirty across the world; if you look at different societies and civilizations, you come across health practices that seem suicidal by our sanitation standards. And yet, these people survive as well as we do.

Um. Have you heard of infant mortality rates? And how they vary? And the prevalences of various diseases?

People in Africa a few hundred years ago lived comfortably in a natural environment that destroyed many of the very prim and polished Western explorers that came to their continent.

I am skeptical about “comfortably”.

Human beings can adapt to a wide variety of environments and situations, and it seems that the question of what kinds of sanitation are healthy is at least as much a question of convention as of hard-set biological rules. Try violating a few of the “common sense” rules of Western sanitation some time, and you’ll find that going a few weeks without a shower and eating out of garbage cans aren’t really as dangerous or difficult as we were taught.

Sure, go a few weeks and you’ll probably be fine. Go a few months or a few years and you almost certainly won’t be. And why is food from garbage cans sometimes safe? Because it’s prepackaged, and other people have erred on the side of caution when setting best-by dates. You can only safely break the common-sense rules because other people have followed them for you.

6. Deodorants hide the damage that capitalist products cause your body. Eating meat and other chemical-filled foods sold by capitalists makes you smell bad. Wearing pantyhose makes you smell bad. Capitalists don’t want you to stop wearing pantyhose or eating meat.

I totally know some capitalism-supporting people who want me to not eat meat.

7. Deodorant-users are insecure. Capitalists like insecure people. Insecure people don’t start trouble. Insecure people also buy room fresheners, hair conditioners, makeup, and magazines with articles about dieting.

Um, everyone looking to manipulate people likes insecure people. Frankly, I suspect that you like insecure people. Hence why you’re also trying to get us to feel bad about having basic, natural human traits, like being disgusted by indicators that something could be disease-carrying, rotten, or otherwise hazardous (especially in the ancestral environment).

EDIT: Also, voluntarily choosing to smell viscerally repulsive to most people and then demanding that they interact with you nonetheless is probably an attempted power grab of some kind.

They went full anarcho-primitivist

You never go full anarcho-primitivist

Look at this fucking genocidal social darwinist asshole

Liberal arts eschatology in action: when one has never been able to think in nuance, separating the evil from the good is impossible and the only possible separation is between reality and fiction; and reality, containing the evil, must be rejected altogether. All that is left is a battle of fictions and narratives, comfortably segregated from the material facts that underlie the very possibility of having such a solipsistic contemplation, and the only definition of victory is outsmarting the narrative of the Other Side in one’s own mind.