Hersehele: “If this is these peoples’ sexual fantasy — if they get off on violent mutilation — it is orders of magnitude better that they get dolls for that purpose, and stay far the hell away from real women.”

Of course it is better to do creepy things or brutal and violent things to a realistic-looking doll than it is to do them to a real woman. But (1) just managing to be better than a rapist or serial killer is not enough to guarantee that you’re not a creep; and (2) I don’t know what evidence, if any, you have for the implicit claim that men who indulge in violent or pedophiliac fantasies with RealDolls will substitute that for acting out, or trying to act out, violent or pedophiliac desires on real people. This is a standard argument that you get from porn-liberals and prostitution-liberals, but the number of rapists, serial killers, and pedophiles in the real world who use violent pornography or child pornography to “prime” themselves (and, in the case of pedophiles, often to groom and then control their victims), and the number who begin their careers by using and attacking women in prostitution, ought to at least make you pause before suggesting this kind of substitution theory.

I’d be glad, personally, to make any kind of RealDoll that any man wants for any purpose at all, if I could make it a condition of ownership that the new owner had to go and live on a private island of my choice in the South Pacific, where he could enjoy the RealDoll to the end of his days but would never come into contact with human beings besides his fellow RealDoll Islanders. Barring that, though, I have trouble regarding this as obviously positive.

Vivid: “Why is it that if a man does not want or can’t have a relationship with a real woman, he must hate them? Maybe he simply doesn’t want the bother, because he doesn’t think it is worth the effort?”

Because it suggests that, at best (1) he thinks of his sexuality as a matter of “release” for an undifferentiated appetite, (2) thinks of intimacy with a a real woman as merely “bother” or “effort” that you have to go through in order to get that “release,” and (3) that therefore he prefers a lifeless tube for the purposes of “sex” that’s hard to differentiate, in any relevant respect, from necrophilia. If a man thinks that way, I’d certainly rather that he do it with a doll than with a real woman (but see above on substitution theories); but that doesn’t keep me from thinking that his attitude towards women, and towards sex, is profoundly creepy and anti-woman — indeed, anti-human.

Pick any of: F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Todd Browning’s Dracula (1931—the one with Bela Lugosi), or Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (1979), in comparison to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

(I think good film adaptations of plays are a bit of a cheat, incidentally. It’s not like “the book” was meant to be primarily read as a book in the first place.)

This one’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Fun fish in a barrel.

The Lord of the Rings, Part I. No, not that one. The one by the dude who did Fritz the Cat. If you haven’t seen it, it’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s unimaginably worse. There are lengthy stretches during which it ceases to be anything that could be described as a “film,” let alone a successful adaptation.

The Name of the Rose. I actually don’t hate the movie. There are a lot of things that it does right. But considered as a version of the book, it’s just terrible.

And, of course:

The Ten Commandments. “Where’s your Messiah now Moses?” Enough said.

“Amanda: I figured it was something like that. But wouldn’t the thought cross his mind that, “Hey, if I shoot her, then both her AND the baby would die?”. It’s the absence of that thought that makes me wonder.”

It seems like it would have to have crossed his mind. But I think the conclusion to draw from that is simply that he did not care, when he shot her, whether or not the fetus died. It wasn’t about saving the fetus; it was about taking revenge on his ex-girlfriend for refusing to obey his orders about how to use her own body.

As Sheelzebub put it on her blog, he ain’t pro-life; he’s an abusive sociopath. (I’d like to add only that in that respect he’s no different from the vast majority of the so-called pro-life movement.)