Wait, let me play the role of the apologist to save people time on this thread. Ahem...

But that's not a woman! It's a pencil sharpener! It was built to be a pencil sharpener! And it's funny! You wouldn't say anything if it was a man!

Good enough? No need to debunk, guys. Every sentence of the above is pure bullshit.

wow.

what's worse is the link to the livejournal thread. most people think it's clever and funny!!

WTF????

I'm surprised Marge Simpson let herself get posed like that.

Disgusting. How much lower can we go?

I'm a "guy" and I think it sucks. M'kay?

Um, ew the fuck. (Also, where do the sharpenings come out of?) But mostly ew the fuck.

Jovan1984: I think we pretty much reached rock bottom when there were woman-shaped urinals. I don't think this is any worse than that.

And in the list of "attributes" to add to dismembered and pentrated, don't forget: nasty chompy bits hidden in the girl parts.

"But that's not a woman! It's a pencil sharpener! It was built to be a pencil sharpener! And it's funny! You wouldn't say anything if it was a man!"

YES I would! What imagery would it take for you to see the obvious? How about if the figure - male or female - was posed on its knees with its mouth as the sharpener? Offensive!

Let me say that again.

OFFENSIVE!

The varied reactions from the livejournal crowd vs. this crowd does bring up this point: how the hell is it that two different crowds, seemingly of the same age group and considering of probably the same number of male vs. female, can have such different reactions to it?

Surely, we don't find it funny, clever. In fact, we find it misogynistic. But THEY find it funny.

Now, only if we can find out how people see things differently than us, we can perhaps change some hearts and minds.

Who else is holding a breath for the "art" defense?

draghnfly, sgzax was being facetious. She finds it repulsive too. :)

Thanks, DrkEyedCagn. Yes, I was being facetious. But as to "What imagery would it take for you to see the obvious?" I've been giving this some thought, and I think that a real apologist would never concede the sexism inherent in something like this unless it came equipped with a manifesto carefully delineating the many specific ways the maker hates women. Or, in this case, an "I Hate Women" plaque attached to the base of the contraption. An explicit statement seems to be required, and even then they would probably try to say it was ironic.

Some people will deny misogyny forever. Maybe it makes them feel superior, to be the ones with the sense of humor and the clear-eyed perspective. Good for them.

I live in the real world, and when I see an image of a headless woman bolted to a board with an object rammed into her vagina or anus, I see hostility. And anger. And misogyny. I don't see funny and I don't see a good time. It's because I'm a humorless feminist, I guess.

"I live in the real world, and when I see an image of a headless woman bolted to a board with an object rammed into her vagina or anus, I see hostility. And anger. And misogyny. I don't see funny and I don't see a good time. It's because I'm a humorless feminist, I guess."

Or because you're simply not willing to make lame excuses for what is clearly hateful.

All of these things - the sick urinals, the billboard joking about murdering one's wife, this sick thing, rape jokes all the way to anti-choicers and MRAs - all fall on a continuum. They are not happening in a vaccuum.

The people( like that person on the billboard thread) who are just so darn concerned that we might even incidentally be seen by outsiders as personifying the "humorless feminist" stereotype simply refuse to admit this. The billboard isn't funny, rape jokes are not funny, this creepy and hateful piece of crap isn't funny, because there isn't a moment of any day at any time on this planet that these very crimes aren't being acted out on women.

Those who laugh at these things, think they're clever, or who simply don't understand why others don't agree, are those with sufficient privilege to deny or ignore that fact.

THey need to wake the fuck up.

is it really necessary to reprint this? i'm an avid feministing reader, but this past weekend has made me reconsider my practice of frequenting the site. when the top image on the site for at least 2 days is horribly misogynistic and painful to even look at, i have to wonder whether coming to the site is worth it. this is also a problem with the flickr pictures, since half of them are edgy and feminist and erotic, and the other half are simply sexist, and sometimes it is hard to tell the difference when they are in thumbnail form...

Seabrook, I'm sorry you feel disheartened coming to the site. The reason the site wasn't updated for two days was because of the holiday weekend (even feministas need a break every once in a while!)--but I do think that as a long as gross ads, products, etc exist that we have to post them. I know it can get depressing, but I do think that we post encouraging items as well!

(As for the Flickr, I'll look into it...but I haven't seen any shenanigans as of late.)

WTF?? Who is responsible for creating and selling this piece of violence? I'd love to know so I can send a letter.

"Woman-hating" is the wrong label. I think the real problem is more subtle, and more insidious: dehumanization. People who look at this and don't find it objectionable are being drawn into the mindset which allows others to be seen purely as objects. This is not hatred. It is far worse. It is a mild case of the same inhumanity which allows torturers to function, bigots to lynch, and warriors to kill babies.

This is an emblem of the cruelest humanity has to offer. It is a gateway drug to sociopathy.

A Baskin Robbins full of wrong. Ugh.

@dondo

People who look at this and don't find it objectionable are being drawn into the mindset which allows others to be seen purely as objects. This is not hatred. It is far worse. It is a mild case of the same inhumanity which allows torturers to function, bigots to lynch, and warriors to kill babies.

which makes it even more unnerving that so far the comments on the livejournal page consist entirely of "lol i want one too."

I think the figure is only headless to make room for the crank.

It isn't necessarily misogynistic or violent.

It's just sexual.

I've seen a pencil holder that resembles a man getting anally penetrated (that's where you put the pencil) and I don't think it's "violent" or homophobic. It's just a lighthearted suggestion to gay sex.

Um, I think "woman-hating" is PRECISELY the right label- the urinals, jingle boob things, all this garbage serves to dehumanize women in particular. Why try to de-gender the issue at hand?

Why did I think I could shame the apologists and thus head them off at the pass?

Welcome a_human. You've missed the point admirably.

dondo: your comment made me feel really sad because you hit the nail on the head, and what you described is what makes it so hard for me to ever feel completely comfortable with other people. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking among the living dead. I want to shake everyone and scream, "WAKE UP! IT COULD BE SO MUCH BETTER FOR EVERYONE!"

Ah yes, misogyny is "lighthearted" to those who are never the targets. Just like people who despise rape jokes just need to get a sense of humor. The whole world is just a laughing-stock to those in privileged positions.

Um, I think "woman-hating" is PRECISELY the right label- the urinals, jingle boob things, all this garbage serves to dehumanize women in particular. Why try to de-gender the issue at hand?
Exactly. When people make these kinds of products, they have two choices: Should this product have masculine or feminine features. It's not a coincidence that 9 times out of 10, these products are supposed to look like women. If dehumanization was their only goal, around half of these products would look like men. That's obviously not the case here. This pencil sharpener isn't an example of hating and dehumanizing people in general. It's only an example of hating and dehumanizing women. Anyone taking gender out of the equation really doesn't get it.

Half-assembled female Terminators don't bother me.

Walls of boobies and urinals shaped like women mildly annoy me.

But this makes me cringe the way guys cringe when they see circumcision scenes in movies. She has a *pencil* shoved in her *vagina.* (Or possibly her anus; hard to tell from the angle.) Proportionately this is like the stakes Vlad the Impaler used to *kill* people on. If you took a sharp wooden stake the width of a woman's vagina and shoved it in there you would *kill* or seriously injure her. The imagery here doesn't just say "disembodied woman", it says "sadistic serial rapist/killer who likes to murder women by impaling them."

There is no way in which this is funny, cute, or even merely a sexual reference. Because a penis, at least, is a *soft* object, even when it's hard. Penises are not pointy pieces of wood.

And given that the purpose of the pencil sharpener is to grind the tip of the pencil off, how can *men* not have the same squick reaction I do? I mean, if that's a penis and not a stake, then she's grinding it to bloody gobbets. So either she is being hideously murdered or she is shredding her sex partner's naughty bits. Either way, how is that funny, cute or sexy?

"It isn't necessarily misogynistic or violent.

It's just sexual."

Pornification achieves its goal. A headless female with something shoved into her body isn't misogynistic or violent, it's sexxxxaaaayyyY!!

Get a fucking clue.

I hope the responsible for this "brainwave" gets colon cancer and dies a long, painful death.

I agree with Boondoggle, pornification has achieved it's goal. No one can distinguish between sex and violence anymore.

@ a_human: For the sake of argument, I'll pretend that this is just a reference to sex from behind (anal or vaginal, doesn't really matter). It would still BECOME misogynistic when the designer decided to lop the head off. The head is symbolic of having a mind of one's own, not to mention you could easily have designed this so that the handle came out of a head. But instead, now you can fuck her in the ass with a pencil, AND she has no head to use to talk back to you about it. Women are only their bodies anyway, right? They don't actually have thoughts.

The question is: what product is this? The link is just to a livejournal post, and the image itself isn't from any outside site. It's hard enough to influence the market; it's next to impossible to exert any sort of meaningful restraint on disturbing human imaginations.

hrm.
(allow the nit-picking to commence...)

i don't understand how someone could wish colon cancer death on someone just because they made a hateful, ridiculous product.

if that person were to die of colon cancer, nothing would change. just their family (who probably had had nothing to do with the conception of that hideous thing) would have to deal with the grief and loss.
no revolution would come to the misogynistic industry that panders to the fantasies of a few who (for whatever reasons) have really fucked up views of women.

a tangent, no doubt, but one i wanted to make.

What got me was that the forms hands and legs are bolted to the frame, I have no idea how else they could have done this, but that just seems to me a form of slavery as well, or S&M gone horribly wrong.

With all of the horror stories about police officers assaulting innocent people by forcing blunt objects into their anuses, and rape, I honestly don't see how someone could think that this is amusing in it's current form (no head, bolted down). I don't want to encourage any more of these, but maybe if it did have a head and the woman had a, i dunno, sexual satisfaction look on the face *maybe* (big fucking maybe). But as is it just seems sadistic and insidious.

I'd hate it anyway--it exemplifies the "woman as passive object waiting to have something stuck up her hole" attitude that pervades and perverts our sexual culture.

I have to say I am slightly less offended by the fact that this exists (and I'm pretty fucking offended) than I am about the thought of someone pulling off bringing this crap to their office and setting it on their desk. Somehow I can just imagine some of my old jerk coworkers with this, like nothing is wrong, and not getting in any trouble because sexism was so rampant and unmodified.

And as if the thing isn't offensive enough... those screws in her hands and ankles really stand out to me too. Like permanent restraints, or something. I mean there has to be a reason that they're so obvious like that, neither hidden or painted over.

Answers the question of what to get our favorite chauvinistic boys over at the faux site though. They'd adore it. *barf*

oops... what Ultramagnus said...

Alara: with you 100%.

My first glance on seeing this was "ugh. That's horribly disgusting and degrading."

My second glance was "vagina dentata much?" I mean, we're talking an arrangement of sharp edges shaving off layers of the item placed into the device.

I don't get who this is made for. Degrading to women and emasculating to men. Nice.

Wow, I really, really, really hate this. I hate it. If I saw this in a shop I am 100% certain I would be very tempted to throw it across the room. Would probably settle for hiding them somewhere in the shop though. I think I'm going to get banned from WH Smith some day for chucking all their Nuts and Zoo magazines around.

This post is sharp and on point.
(/bad_pun)

Really, though: gross. out of the infinite universe of potential pencil sharpeners, they had to pick THAT?

Sailorman, the phrase "the infinite universe of potential pencil sharpeners" is completely delightful. May I steal it for use in a short story someday?

Jessica:

re: Flickr Site

It's not an issue of someone playing games by adding gross images, but that the people who moderate the group put both wonderful, empowering photos with photos of awful stuff that's supposed to piss women off and anger us into action. Although that sort of stuff has a purpose, I don't like seeing it when I'm looking at pics of protests or Mikhaela Reid cartoons. I don't mind that someone is collecting and tagging these images, I just wish they had their own area.

Ok, you know what would be a cool pencil sharpener? One in the form of a vampire that you stake through the heart with your pencil. I would snap that up, and I don't even use pencils.

One of the comments on the LiveJournal page says something to the effect of, "LOL Laughed until I started coughing."
...really? I mean...seriously.
Call me a cold, humorless bitch(tm) if you want, but I don't see what is even slightly funny about that. Har har har penetration har har har.
If I saw that on someone's desk, I couldn't even consider being friendly with them anymore.
*headdesk*

I'd like to take a moment to clarify why the comments seen in the livejournal community are the way they are.

The community in which this post was made (wtf_inc) was created specifically to showcase strange, unusual, and/or generally offensive stuff. It is NOT a serious blogging community.

So, to answer your question ProFeministMale, the reason why people in that community (not to be confused with people who use livejournal as a whole) find this kind of thing funny is specifically because the community was built around stupid and offensive things like that.

"No one can distinguish between sex and violence anymore."

marytracy9, well put.
this really resonated with me.

I was appalled so I did some Googling on this, and from what I can find no one seems to know where this is actually available. Some think it's not a real item, and I've seen it several places listed as "Official IRS Pencil Sharpener," har har. Anyway for what it's worth here are Google results on that:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=sXo&q=irs+pencil+sharpener&btnG=Search

I think that often times this site and its commentors DO go too far when damning things "mysoginistic" or disgusting. Especially when they rarely know the context surrouding the controversy (which, contrary to the belief of many here, DOES matter when determining whether or not something is anti women). With this, the context is clear. It's not art, not kitsche and it's in extremely poor taste. I do find this offensive. I would find it less offensive as a woman (but the same as a person with good taste) if they also sold male ones. I do wish the world would grow up a little and stop letting this type of humor reign supreme.

"I do wish the world would grow up a little and stop letting this type of humor reign supreme. "

I think dirtybug, that would involve evolving.

And last I checked, I don't think our 'democracy' offically supports that theory anymore. It probably didn't foster a nurturing environment for The Childrens' self esteem to study real science anymore... Or something like that anyway.

Not much I can add on the actual subject that has not already been said. However, I would like to respond to user AlaraJRogers's interpretation of the designer's mindset.

I believe the "wooden stake" is not supposed to be taken literally, but rather as a phallic image. This would apply to only the initial image of the pencil inserted into the hole and not the actual functionality of the pencil sharpener. It also looks more like something to have on display rather than actually use.

The thing that bothers me the most about this, is when it's a male novelty figure, they usually have a face of ecstasy and usually pleasuring themselves. With women their usually faceless or expressionless and always having something done to them.

er should be "they're"

You know what *is* funny? This sharpener that was featured on Cute Overload recently. Headless, nailed-down woman sharpener? Not so much. There's a way to make gag items without being violently misogynist.

It reminds me of urinals that were shaped like women-offensive, much?

As part of the Livejournal crowd [though not a member of that community], let me just say:

Ew. And uggh. "Dehumanizing" is exactly the right word for it.

Seeing this* on Shakesville reminded me of the pencil sharpener.

Then I read the comments and was intrigued by the dehumanization vs. misongyny debate. Isn't dehumanization gendered?

I listened to a programme on the Stanford Prison Experiment

Can't it be both? Dehumanization and misogyny? And this is where the Stanford prison experiment comes in. Because this particular kind of dehumanization is masked as humour there will be many people (men and women) who will simply go along, because of an instinctive disinclination to rock the boat.

Very frightening...

*for the squeamish: don't click the link. It shows a sexualized plastic doll with a pink hole. It is a battery powered pen holder that says things like "do it again" when you stick a pen in this pink hole.

Vagina Dentata. Looks to me like the pencil (penis) is taking the most abuse in this case.