I’d probably ask if he works in a funeral home.

Guess dead girls are the only option for a dead dick!

That’s a good comeback. If I’m ever unfortunate enough to see that shirt, I think I’ll use it. I wonder how the wearer will feel hearing it from a pudgy, grey-bearded, balding 40 year old guy? I might even follow it up with a “go get em tiger” and a friendly chuck on the shoulder.

It’s almost not worth getting mad over, because it’s advertising that you want to fuck corpses.  Necrophilia is not going to get you many chicks.  I guess my other question would be, “Why are you here and not at the cemetery with a shovel and a six-pack?”

Okay, I feel a rant coming on ...

What’s the deal with guys who think their best option for scoring chicks is to make themselves as repulsive to the opposite sex as possible?  Are they so tied to their homosocial frat guy friendships that they’d rather actively repulse women than, you know, have sex?  If so, why go out to a bar where you presumably want to meet women to have sex with instead of staying home with your buddies and watching porn together?

It reminds me of something Roy at alicublog spotted from Instapundit, where it’s apparently a laff riot that a checkout girl thinks a guy is a pathetic, paranoid loser when, um, he obviously is, and one with a serious lack of self-awareness.

While shaming one man in a t-shirt probably won’t accomplish much in the long run, it’s fun!

And, yes, I was going to say the same thing as Mnemo (as usual, goddammit…).  “Been on any hot dates in the morgue lately?  Oh, wait, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mock your kink.  Cold dates.  Been on any cold dates in the morgue lately?”

The best approach to these situations is through humor.

What’s the deal with guys who think their best option for scoring chicks is to make themselves as repulsive to the opposite sex as possible?  Are they so tied to their homosocial frat guy friendships that they’d rather actively repulse women than, you know, have sex?

I think part of it is that they’ve actually bought into the notion that women like men who treat them badly, so by wearing that sort of t-shirt, they’re advertising. If they do manage to hook up, they’ve proven their theory, and if they don’t, it’s because they were around a bunch of uptight feminists who wouldn’t have been good lays anyway (by which I mean, they wouldn’t have let the choads come on their faces a la the internet porn they watch). The cognitive dissonance is strong with this crowd.

Well, you’ve got to hand it to the guy. He managed to get his message across in just five words. A T-shirt saying “I’m a repulsive asshole with a strong tendency toward violence, and no self-respecting female should get within 20 feet of me” would take more effort to read.

Well, according to the shirt-selling website, the intended owner is someone who cannot relate to live women at all. So the wearer truly is saying “I am so repulsive that the only people I can get to fuck me are dead.”

If your not so much into the -wining and dining- part of dating and conversational skill not a must, than a Dead Girl is just what the mortician ordered! They dont judge you or want to meet your mother and if they are cold and fridged, thats not necessarily a bad thing!

@ Mnemosyne 7:48

For one of the best analyses of the asshole approach to wooing women, I highly recommend Julia Serano’s essay in Yes Means Yes (Why Nice Guys Finish Last). Fucking brilliant.

fridged

How much you want to bet that’s not a clever spelling?

I recently got into a spat with an ex that I’m still on good terms with otherwise. He’s a good guy, but recently very inclined to a deadly mix of Nice Guy(TM) tendencies in addition to his Manly Man Metal Listener ones. He was complaining to me about how he hadn’t had a girlfriend since dating me in high school, nearly eight years ago. As he said this, all the while lamenting that women are shitty, etc, he sat there in an over-sized, faded black t-shirt he’s had since high school that read, “I <3 PORN”. After hearing enough of it, I finally blurted out, “Look at you. Of course no woman wants to date you. You’re wearing a shirt you bought ten years ago that’s as stupid as it is worn out. It’s obvious you love porn. You haven’t had a date in eight years. Why advertise it?”

It was cold, I know. But I hope in the end I did the guy a service. I tried explaining that I looked askance at some of his clothes in high school at age 16 while dating him, and asked him to imagine what most other women are doing now, not knowing him, at 25. Sadly, I’m pretty sure it’s a lost cause, and he’d probably love that stupid shirt above. He was great when we were younger but he started hanging around a bunch of idiotic good ol’ boys when I moved and he’s never been the same. Shame.

Where the fuck do you find people who think they’re ” trendy ‘progressive’ hipsters” and also find that funny? I don’t think that shirt would go over in a Jersey biker bar (I would know), or an Arkansas honky tonk (not so much). It’d be seen as either you like to fuck corpses or you’re looking to kill my sister/girlfriend/niece, which might go over good with the cellblock H crowd, but that’s why they’re kept on the upper floors. If he comes to the east coast I love to hear about the female who kicks his ass.

Somewhere along the line virility got equated with arrested emotional and cognitive development - that is, young men became subject to the same enslaving cultural imperatives as young women. (Observe: Young men are now being sold “body spray.” wtf?)

You know, I’ve said of various guys they couldn’t get laid in a morgue, but I didn’t really believe it!

I think part of it is that they’ve actually bought into the notion that women like men who treat them badly, so by wearing that sort of t-shirt, they’re advertising. If they do manage to hook up, they’ve proven their theory, and if they don’t, it’s because they were around a bunch of uptight feminists who wouldn’t have been good lays anyway (by which I mean, they wouldn’t have let the choads come on their faces a la the internet porn they watch). The cognitive dissonance is strong with this crowd.

The desperation to have an excuse - any excuse - so as not to deal with the fact that they don’t get laid because they’re just not very interesting people is what’s strong with this crowd.

Semi-OT: When I hear something described as “hilarious,” I immediately know that it isn’t going to come within a country mile of funny. And I’m almost never wrong. Is it just me, or has something happened to that word?

It’s the shit we’ve been fed in movies, where ‘meet cute’ means guy insults girl, wittiness ensues, and blah blah. But guys like this—-or PU artists—-really do mean those insults.

The Pale Scot said: “Where the fuck do you find people who think they’re “ trendy ‘progressive’ hipsters” and also find that funny?”

Anywhere people gather who enjoy marking their in-crowd status by being outrageous and transgressive (I live in the queer/goth/punk neighbourhood with the socialist clubs and the 3 body-piercing studios per block). I believe, by looking at the shop where this t-shirt is sold, that this is a particularly hideous extension of the fairly popular I Heart Zombies/Emily Strange/Living Dead Dolls sort of a meme. That doesn’t make it NOT an active threat of violence and a support of rape culture, mind you, I’m just placing it in the cultural context where people might be able to read it without exploding with rage at the clear message.

I appreciate & am enjoying the comments here (I was the original letter-writer to Twisty), but I want to note that using humour in this situation felt very much like we would just have been assimilated as being ‘in on the joke’, even if that humour was directly and harshly targeted at the man in the t-shirt. Using anger meant we WEREN’T ‘in on the joke’, and were therefor ugly humourless lesbians. Given that the man in question is very much of the ‘I Heart Zombies’ school of personal style & cultural reference, references to his getting laid in a morgue or a graveyard would probably have made him very happy.

That’s the point, sadly. He can wear shit like that because there is no reaction anyone can have that he can’t spin to his advantage. That’s the privilege of the choad.

(Observe: Young men are now being sold “body spray.” wtf?)

No matter how much Axe they pour on, I can still smell the choad emanating from them.

No matter how much Axe they pour on, I can still smell the choad emanating from them.

Axe doesn’t cover up choad.  Axe is Eau de Choad.

“You can’t hear them, but their ghosts are screaming ‘No!’”

What’s the deal with guys who think their best option for scoring chicks is to make themselves as repulsive to the opposite sex as possible?  Are they so tied to their homosocial frat guy friendships that they’d rather actively repulse women than, you know, have sex?  If so, why go out to a bar where you presumably want to meet women to have sex with instead of staying home with your buddies and watching porn together?

Who says he’s there to score chicks?  Who says he’s there to meet women?  He might just be there to enjoy homosocial company - having a beer with other male morons.  Since he’s not trying to score, he doesn’t have to bother pretending to, you know, act as anything other than a dickhead.

Which suggests that the answer is to conspiciously take his picture with your cellphone and make loud comments about websites…

Another comment - Twisty’s writer commented that she *ordered* him to turn it inside out or leave the pub, and then got uptight when he “used his privilege” to ignore her.  Unless she’s management, I’d ignore her too.  If anyone, other than management, ordered a woman in a pub to “do up her top or leave the pub”, then I’d assume she’d ignore him or her as well.  You get to call the moron a douchebag; you don’t get to assume you have the rigjt to order them around - there’s more than one privilege on display in this story.

This type of thing is why I almost never go to bars anymore.  It’s way, way, way more fun (not to mention cheaper) to drink at home.  Plus, you don’t have to breathe second-hand cigarette smoke or run the risk that some douche is going to hit on you or puke on your shoes or both. 

Slashy, all I can say is, if you must go out to bars, maybe it’s time to find a different bar and a different crowd.  You can’t get away from the patriarchy, but you can at least get away from this one shitbag dude.

Wow.  Rape culture defined.

“Dead girls don’t say no.”

Do they say “yes”?  If not, then it’s rape. 

We so need to redefine sex as something that happens between actively involved participants.  It’s not what you can do to someone else, or what she ‘allows’ you to do to her impassive, non-responsive body while she lies back and thinks of England.

Even if it’s some weird zombie love thing, the rape culture is there in full—if she doesn’t say yes, it’s rape.

What’s the deal with guys who think their best option for scoring chicks is to make themselves as repulsive to the opposite sex as possible?  Are they so tied to their homosocial frat guy friendships that they’d rather actively repulse women than, you know, have sex?

Scoring with chicks is, like, totally gay.

The message on the shirt is very plainly offensive, even if fortified with irony.  What’s sad is that the shirt is so purposefully restrained from its obvious message possibilities.  Either it means “I’m a necrophiliac”, in which case there are some far-more humorous ways to promote that particular fetish (see McSweeney’s book Mountain Man Dance Moves* and its “Necrophiliac Pick-up Lines” list.) Or it means “I don’t take no for an answer”, and the wearer is clearly self-identifying himself as someone to stay away from.  I can’t see where there’s much room for a “just kidding” response from anyone wearing such a shirt, but that’s why I’d rather just read the outside rather than try to get inside someone’s head if they’re wearing such a thing.

I agree with PiatoR, however, that asking someone to turn clothing inside out is a management decision.  My being offended with something doesn’t immediately give me the right to demand that it be hidden.  I can choose not to associate with people who are offensive, as I often do, but I (at least as a fellow customer) can’t tell someone to change his clothes any more than I can ask someone to leave because I find him or her ugly.  I can tell the bartender why I’m leaving, and then leave, but I can’t enforce my standards in public.  I can only live by them.

Which still leaves ridicule intact, of course.  Public discourse is allowed, and you or I or anyone can point and laugh at the idiots.  We can talk to them to try to figure out their reasoning.  We can ask those arch-browed, mocking questions.  We can make snappy attacks and snappier comebacks.  But we can’t just tell people their message is offensive and must not be displayed.  We can tell them to go away from us, to the other end of the bar/away from our table.  But we can’t make them leave.  We can make them want to not wear the clothing, and we can make them want to leave the bar, but we can’t make them actually do it unless we own the place.

I often see women in outfits with messages and wonder if they really are that owned, if they really are sufferers of princess entitlement syndrome, or if they really want to advertise that they are bitches?  But mostly I ignore them since they tell me too much by what message they convey.  This isn’t to say that there’s an analogous direct female version of the tshirt that is the source of this thread, as I really can’t imagine anyone demanding that a stranger reverse her “I’m the princess, that’s why” tshirt at a bar.  And that’s in a country that Constitutionally prohibits such things as princesses.  Mostly I’m asking, What’s up with those people?

*It’s an amusing and quick read.  Ask your friendly local librarian.  Also available for purchase.

“But we can’t just tell people their message is offensive and must not be displayed.”—me, a bit ago.

Actually, we can.  But we can’t expect good results.

3letterjon, you’re comparing somebody labeling themselves as a princess to a guy proclaiming he might be a murderer? How does that work, exactly?

Choadery, yes, but I think there is a bit too much being put on this particular bit.  I suspect that it was a halloween thing gone too far or a shot at emo people.  Or maybe just to shock people with a taboo, not realizing that the dead part isn’t the worst part of it.

I don’t think it was threatening murder - I think it was more trying to represent gross opportunism.  Either way, I don’t see how it could be considered an attractive shirt for a guy to wear to a bar, unless he was planning to get down with the sperm liberation front and circle jerk with his buddies for a night cap.

My first impression was not that it was a joke about necrophilia (as in, raiding the grave yard for a lay), but a “joke” about how, if you say no, he’ll kill you and rape your corpse. 

Of course the shirts are offensive and morons think that’s funny, but I agree with what was said about - such t-shirts are a handy labeling system. They say clearly and unequivocally “i’m a misogynistic douchebag.  Don’t bother talking to me”.

btw - I could totally see this totally spoiled rotten choad I grew up with - a guy whose parents owned a funeral home and were both morticians - really going for that shirt ... not murder, just gross and sexist.

Gypsy Lee - look at the font.

Ooh, gotta love how the lack of dissent means consent.  I guess you really have to put up a fight or you want it?  Or would no man ever have sex if women actually had to want sex because women don’t ever like sex, at least with choads who don’t care to make it worth their while?

I’m just placing it in the cultural context where people might be able to read it without exploding with rage at the clear message.

Yeah, I can see it being contextualized in the Horror Con world.

That said, I left that world because it was fucked up specifically with regard to glorifying violence towards women.  I think it was the day I realized that a lot of my friends oh so coincidentally thought Takashi Miike’s film Audition was a horrid piece of trash, but that the scene in the same director’s Visitor Q where a man fucks the corpse of his daughter in the ass, was Teh Ahsum.  It suddenly dawned on me that what like 99% of them thought was entertaining about the horror genre was the very same part of it that chilled me to the core. 

Re whether humor is appropriate here or not—to me, you’ve got to make it clear that you’re not laughing with him, you’re laughing at him.  Yes, the appearance of clever repartee might make him think you’re flirting with him.  Then again, the sort of guy who’ll wear this shirt is the sort of guy who thinks eye contact is the same thing as sexual consent.

To people who have suggested we/I/my friend specifically (I spoke to him via email later, but not at the venue) had no right to suggest he change his shirt or leave, I wanted to note that it was a matter of trying giving him a path forward, also known as offering positive steps to resolution. As in, so perhaps you managed to leave the house without somehow realising that your t-shirt is going to upset a lot of people. You have now realized that you’re upsetting a lot of people, and you’d like to take steps to stop upsetting them. What is your next move? As the upset people, we present to you these options: you could leave the venue, or you could obscure the words on your t-shirt by turning it inside out.

It wasn’t a matter of feeling like we owned the bar (we certainly didn’t- my friend was all too aware of how physically unsafe it was for her to confront him directly), or could order him about. It was a matter of giving him an option to respond in a way that would defuse the situation, if he chose to. If I’m calling someone out on problematic behaviour, I’d rather give them a course of action they can take to improve the situation (if they’re willing to engage) than just yell at them and assume nothing I say will make any difference at all.

Of course, they could just completely ignore the options, as he did, but I’d rather actually give them concrete suggestions for actions they could take than rely on their obviously sub-par powers of reasoning to figure out what they should do next.

“Gypsy Lee - look at the font. “

. . . I’m not following.

It wasn’t a matter of feeling like we owned the bar (we certainly didn’t- my friend was all too aware of how physically unsafe it was for her to confront him directly), or could order him about. It was a matter of giving him an option to respond in a way that would defuse the situation, if he chose to.

Fair enough.

Gypsy Lee - notice how it’s all oOo Horror, not unlike something that would be used on the poster of one of those Saw movies.

On the other hand, that doesn’t actually help it at all.  It just makes the horror context clear.

Even as some sort of horror/macabre joke the shirt still earns an “ewwww”  not to mention a WTF for wearing it in public.

“On the other hand, that doesn’t actually help it at all.  It just makes the horror context clear. “

And doesn’t change my mind about the first impression I got from the shirt.  I see a much more violent and misogynistic message played for Teh Funny.  Its not just a tee-hee necrephilia “joke”, it’s a threat “joke”.

“queer/goth/punk neighbourhood with the socialist clubs and the 3 body-piercing studios per block”

Sounds weak, people today, Huh..

My perception of what progressive’ hipsters are anarchists/squatters/artists/dealers I encountered in Alphabet city once upon a time. The place is all yuppies now.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04EFDD1F3DF932A1575BC0A9649C8B63

http://acid-trip.org/secure/ceasar.htm

goths?...WEAK

Addendum,

I would say the subject is an example of “a little education is a dangerous thing.”

Chimpanzees do read Nietzsche Otto, they just don’t understand it.

bet he’s an avid reader of the doughy pantload.

not realizing that the dead part isn’t the worst part of it.

That’s the worst part of it.  The “joke” only works if you understand rape culture.  In a society where women were respected as human beings, where sex was something actively engaged in by all participants and not something done to someone, this “joke” would make no sense.  It needs the context of “good girls” who won’t have sex with you unless they’re dead or you kill them.  Make no mistake, the choice of “girl” instead of “woman” is purposeful; the “joke” is about removing all agency whatsoever.

The font looks like typical horror ransom-note, blood-spattered, Supernatural font.  That actually makes it seem more threatening to me, since the raped dead girl must be recently dead for her blood to be splattered on his shirt.

What’s the deal with guys who think their best option for scoring chicks is to make themselves as repulsive to the opposite sex as possible?  Are they so tied to their homosocial frat guy friendships that they’d rather actively repulse women than, you know, have sex?  If so, why go out to a bar where you presumably want to meet women to have sex with instead of staying home with your buddies and watching porn together?

With some, it is the thrill/satisfaction from rebelling against what they perceive as stifling/conventional social norms and/or authority/establishment….along with satisfaction from pissing off those they perceive as having more power of any kind than they. 

At least this was the reason why middle/high schoolers such as myself deliberately did things we knew would piss off teachers we hated and/or the cops….even if it came at the risk of being sent to the principal’s office, having disciplinary marks entered on the permanent record, failing the class, or even being suspended. 

Another dynamic is the feeling among some males is the feeling that ANY accommodation to increase one’s chances of a date and/or a hookup is either too much work and/or the equivalent of completely surrendering his autonomy to the women.  I’d like to say this is limited to the adolescent set…..but this spans all across the age spectrum IME.

Reminds me off when I saw “Abre los Ojos” in Spanish class (I think the English version is “Vanilla Sky”?) At one point the main character is having sex with a woman, and then he freaks out and smothers her to death with a pillow in the middle of it. While discussing the movie I mentioned the “rape/murder scene” and everyone in my class was dumbfounded that I considered that a rape. “She said yes originally, though!” and “she didn’t tell him to stop!” (her mouth, obviously, was covered)...I basically ended up pointing out that halfway through the suffocation it’s a good bet she was no longer interested in having sex right then, so yeah, it became rape. But they seemed to think that somehow *murdering* someone could be part of *consensual* sex… yick.

More to the point of the T-shirt, my first impression was definitely “if you try to say ‘no’ I will kill you and then rape you anyways.” Makes murder sound like an acceptable pick-up strategy…

I would have thought right off that it was the name of a crappy band, and never thought twice about it. Whatever: it’s his friend’s band, or the tshirt was free.

Or maybe it was a comic book, something wanna-be edgy. Or a third-rate Tarantino wannabe. Some other options were mentioned above, but “band name” would have been my first and probably only guess. The guy’s a fan of art that’s probably crap, but not obviously a supporter of rape or necrophilia. Probably a douche, and maybe kind of a choad, but not the first guy I would want thrown out of the bar.

But then again, I’m a big, mean-looking straight guy and as such generally not directly threatened by rape or choads, so my opinion probably isn’t all that relevant here.

This got me doing some some nostalgia reading and I came across…

East Villagers Renew Calls for “Yuppie Scum” to Die
http://gothamist.com/2008/06/16/east_villagers_renew_calls_for_yupp.php

and a reference to pandas!
http://gothamist.com/2008/06/16/east_villagers_renew_calls_for_yupp.php#comment-1386197

“Every time you mention y*ppies, h*psters, etc… I have to laugh. These terms are relics of the 80’s and 90’s respectively and should be retired. Try and come up with a more interesting derogatory term… we call these people “Space Pirates”.

They come, they take your space. Maybe they blow up your planet. Who knows. They’re Space Pirates, they do what they want and the dress like assholes.

By the way, do you like my avatar? It’s a panda. I picked it out myself.”

Apparently hipsters are larval stage republicans.

I’m actually with Phoenician in a time of Romans who said “Who says he’s there to score chicks?”

My personal theory of this kind of choadery is that men grow up convincing themselves that women ultimately *don’t* want to have sex with them.  Whatever reason we *think* we buy shirts like that, the real reason is we’re trying to prove it’s true.  Call shirts like that a really, really extreme version of the classic self-defeating but also *belief-fulfilling* invitation “you don’t want to go see a movie with me on Saturday do you?”

Even better?  Once he’s “proven” the twin theorems that it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for men to be sexually desired, and that it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire, he’s got carte blanche to squeeze sex out of women by other means—straight-up boy-scout worthiness, gifts, cash exchange, seduction, intoxication, extortion, or force.

—-

As it happens I got this no-win idea from something Twisty said about everything contributing to the patriarchy and there being no possible way out of the Patriarchy.  Short of complete extinction of the human race.  A point she and I disagree upon.  Anyway, it seemed like for her assertion to be true then even arch-radical separatist feminist bloggers from wherever she’s from in Texas had to be contributors to the patriarchy.  And it occurred to me that Twisty’s separatist advocacy of sex strikes… further reinforces men’s belief in the twin theorems… which in turn further justifies, um, adversarial male behavior designed to extract sex.  Which would demonstrate Twisty’s principle of no escape from patriarchy.

Which would be the end of that if that was all there was to it.  But Twisty also strongly advocates the radical proposition that women are human beings—a proposition that t-shirt guy pretty clearly doesn’t accept.  Or, as I optimistically like to put it, a proposition t-shirt guy pretty clearly doesn’t accept *yet.*

Oh yeah, and just to be clear, even if I think t-shirt guy, and choads, NiceGuys, and the rest of us including me are as indoctrinated and oppressed by patriarchy as anyone else I don’t think it’s a very good excuse.  It’s our mania and it’s not going to stop till we get over it.  Being NiceGuys about our mania, being kinder and gentler and “oh I’d never wear a shirt like that” about it, is still manic and therefore still part of the problem.  Being sardonic/cynical/hipster/ironic about the mania is also still part of the problem.  For that matter trying to keep up with Twisty when she loses focus on her human being thesis and starts going on about sex strikes and extinction is probably also part of the problem.

—-

So, to make a *really* long comment finally come back to the point, Amanda, I’d say the best approach would be to say “Man, if I was so repulsive that the only people I could get to fuck me were dead, I sure as hell wouldn’t advertise it” and add “seriousl, dude, if you paid attention you’d notice there are women in this bar… in *every* bar… who’d say yes.  But that shirt says you’re either not ready to pay attention or you don’t want to hear it.  Either way that makes it your problem, and your loss, not theirs.”

figleaf

p.s. I think the problem is that if you take to long composing a reply there’s some kind of timeout in the server software that swallows comments.

“This isn’t to say that there’s an analogous direct female version of the tshirt that is the source of this thread”—3letterjon on 02/25 at 07:47 AM

“3letterjon, you’re comparing somebody labeling themselves as a princess to a guy proclaiming he might be a murderer? How does that work, exactly?”—ginmar on 02/25 at 08:40

Uhhhh, I don’t know.

Well, when I was 18 I had a friend who use to say this all the time, my reaction being “are you really so unappealing that no girl will say yes?” (He certainly wasn’t becoming more attractive to me) and “dude, gross, really? Sex with dead people?” But he just loved being shocking and outrageous and wrong.

Is that only a (privileged/white) dude thing? Because it feels like the people saying the grossest things, and 20ish yr old boys say some really gross things, are in fact all dudes, with some of us “guys-girls” facilitating. The day I can express my outrage in the moment rather then half a day later! That will be a good day.

Anyway, I didn’t make the connection to rape then. I thought it was more gross-boy humour and he would probably think the shirt was funny, treading on taboos and sacred cows, but I don’t really speak to him anymore.

I wanted to think y’all took this the wrong way, because I couldn’t imagine anyone wearing such a shirt except as part of a zombie, killer or necromancer costume. Ideally you’d wear it while portraying one of the last two and escorting a zombie, which could mean many things but not a threat of violence to random female passersby.

But it sounds like this guy just wanted to play a douchebag.