Thursday News: Austrian law student sues Facebook, Romance novels and “fisting,” interview with OkCupid’s Christian Rudder, and a “pro-gun” children’s book
More than 20,000 people are now suing Facebook in Europe over privacy – Austrian law student Max Schrems claims that he has gotten 20,000 people from 100 countries to join his lawsuit against Facebook for a variety of privacy violations. Schrems and his attorney will keep the class to 25,000 in order to manage the claims verification process. In Austrian suits of this type, one litigant stands in as a “proxy” for all the litigants, who are seeking a total of €12.5 M.
The suit attacks Facebook for multiple violations of European data protection law and, because every user outside the U.S. and Canada has a contract with Facebook’s Irish operations, most of the world is able to join in. Issues covered by the suit range from Facebook’s surreptitious tracking of people’s web use and weak consent requirements to its alleged participation in the NSA’s PRISM scheme. –Gigaom
ROMANCE NOVELISTS DON’T KNOW WHAT FISTING IS, AND IT’S HILARIOUS – Romance novels get a lot of undeserved crap. And then there are some pretty embarrassing instances of poor word choice and proofing out there. Here’s a piece that seems to be making an earnest argument about the allegedly incorrect uses of the term “fisting.” However, given Webster’s definition of fist as a transitive verb, meaning “to grip with the fist,” and “to clench into a fist,” I’m not sure Romance novelists are quite as hilarious as Mike Pearl thinks they are, although I’m not sure I’d defend some of the examples he offers as great writing, either.
Romance authors know exactly what they’re doing when it comes to hair tugging and florid descriptions of the first moments of old-fashioned, penis-in-vagina fucking. However, they have a serious blind spot where fisting is concerned. They don’t seem to know that “fisting” means putting your whole hand in someone’s vagina or butt.
The first few examples are the most common mistake: using “fist” instead of “grab.” This just isn’t used in modern parlance, except when someone places something pointy in her fist to make a weapon, as in, “When the assailant got close, she fisted her key, preparing to strike.” Outside of clueless romance novelists, that’s literally the only time people fist things other than butts and vaginas anymore, and it’s still pretty rare and weird. –Vice
On the Media interviews OkCupid’s Christian Rudder – Speaking of not so hilarious, check out this 15 minute interview with Christian Rudder, the CEO of OkCupid, and the guy who continues to brag about the way they lied to their users and then undertook completely unscientific, unmonitored experiments. He doesn’t seem to understand the difference between not disclosing to consenting subjects the nature of an experiment and not disclosing to people that they are being experimented on. And in that context, his self-righteous defense of ‘we are just trying to improve our service, so we are MORE ethical than if we didn’t lie to and manipulate people with absolutely no ethical boundaries or scientific controls’ sounds more and more arrogant and crass.
I have friends who’ve done the online dating thing, and it was a leap of trust for them on a number of levels. I think people who are willing to put themselves out there online to find love are already making themselves vulnerable enough, so the idea of screwing with them in such a haphazard and cheeky way strikes me as indefensibly icky. –On the Media
This Children’s Book Wants to Teach Kids About the Open Carry of Guns – Written by the authors of the Michigan open carry legislation, this little book is intended to fill the vacuum created by the lack of “pro-gun” books for children. It and the anti-feminist book mentioned below are published by Whitefeather Press, whose tagline is “Making the world a better place, one reader at a time.” Suuure.
If you order now, you get My Parents Open Carry for the discounted price of $9.99. But wait! There’s more! For a limited time you will also get a free copy of a book by some dude named Doug Giles called Raising Boys Feminists Will Hate! We wish we were making up that book, but alas, it is very, very real:
Parent, if you have a young son and you want him to grow up to be a man, then you need to keep him away from pop culture, public school and a lot of Nancy Boy churches. If metrosexual pop culture, feminized public schools and the effeminate branches of evanjellycalism lay their sissy hands on him, you can kiss his masculinity good-bye because they will morph him into a dandy. Yeah, mom and dad, if – if – you dare to raise your boy as a classic boy in this castrated epoch, then you’ve got a task that’s more difficult than getting a drunk to hit the urinal at Chili’s. Read this bold and hard-hitting guide by Doug Giles, the politically incorrect master, on how to raise your son in a world which more and more seems to hate masculinity. –E! Online
I heard about “My Parents Open Carry” a few days ago. The Amazon reviews are hilarious.
As a non-US citizen, American gun laws completely baffle me. So with regard to those books: no. Just no.
It makes me sad. I will never understand why so many equate being pro-female with being anti-male. They are not the same thing.
“To clench into a fish” should probably be “to clench into a fist.” Although I do like the typo – it sounds like something from a stuffed fish recipe for stressed people. :)
There was a reply to that Vice article on Jezebel. Some of the comments are pretty awesome.
http://jezebel.com/um-yeah-romance-novelists-know-what-fisting-is-1617149178/all
@Lin: As an American our gun laws completely baffle *me*. Our Supreme Court can’t even seem to correctly diagram and comprehend a basic sentence with two clauses.
Also, some guy’s ignorance is now MY problem? To quote my friend Danny: “Crack a fucking book.”
@cayenne: I am destroyed by CaptainBromerica in the Jezebel link!
Re: “fisting” I have to admit that when I first started reading contemporary romance a few years ago, I was taken aback by the way writers were using the word. There are other verbs that seem less silly—grasped, clutched, entangled—and would call less attention to themselves. I guess that there is a sense of tension associated with “fist,” that makes it appealing to writers doing sex scenes. I don’t think that I was ever confused about who in the story was doing what to which body part, but it isn’t very tidy usage.
Colbert did a sweet shredding of the open carry book the other night. Now I’m going to check out those Amazon reviews.
@cayenne: oh that was so awesome! Thank you!
The Carry and the other book scare me, frankly. I live in a fairly conservative state, and I can easily see people going for them.
Let’s have a race to see who can be the first one to find a copy of one of these fun kiddie books at a thrift store!
@library addict: I think some in power equate being pro-female with being anti-male in a disingenuous way, not because they necessarily believe it, but because pro-female-ness (not a word, I know) takes power from the Patriarchy, which they want to reinforce at all costs. That’s what these books are to me. Same shit, different century.
@Karenmc: Yes– it was hilarious. Here’s a link to that Colbert clip for anyone who missed it and wants to catch it.
@LG: Hahahaha, I’m not even going to correct it now.
@Janine: Yes; Sendek would surely have appreciated “Where the Wild Things Were”.
The Colbert clip was good :)
@Karenmc: Yes! I also loved what he had to say about the clothing descriptions in My Parents Open Carry!
I’m late to the discussion, but just last evening I came across the phrase, “I fisted the fabric. . . .” in a UF novel. Honestly, right or wrong, I see this usage with some frequency in numerous genres and it doesn’t even faze me anymore. It’s probably on its way to becoming an acceptable alternate usage. That’s how language evolves–the same way the term initially evolved to include the definition Mike Pearl uses. He may not approve of that, but it certainly seems wrong on many levels to single out romance writers for ridicule.