Letsrun Depresses Me

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

You seem to confuse forgiveness for advocacy. Of course I think she did wrong. She hurt her family, friends and herself. That doesn't give me the right to say disgusting, degrading things about her.

As for Tiger, Arnold, etc., despite what you assume, I feel bad for them as well. I feel bad for anyone who has to lie, cheat and so on to fill a void in their life. That doesn't mean I think it's okay. It means I see them as human beings. No one deserves to be treated like a piece of trash.

Okay, that's all fine and well, but I wonder if it really how think and act in real life (obviously, a message board discussion is not real life.) If your Dad cheated on your mom, embarrassed her, broke her heart, and broke up your family because he refused to reform and continued his adolescent fantasies of banging every women with a pulse, again, I wonder if you would feel so sorry for him that he couldn't control himself and had a "void" that needed to be filled, and be so sympathetic towards him, or would you be angry, and mainly feel bad for you Mom and you and your siblings? I think the latter. And if your husband (if you were married) did the same ( as I outline above), ruining your life and your family, again, would you have this big sympathy for him?? No, you wouldn't. You need to stop pretending you are someone who doesn't "judge" people, because you do, like everyone else. You need to put yourself in the shoes of the people hurt, and feel less bad for the perpetrators of the bad behavior, and more bad for those that they hurt.

So sure, it's sad that Suzy chose to become a dumb slut when she had everything going for her (let's tell it like it is), but I think I will feel bad/sad for her husband and daughter and parents first, not her.

Either that, or say: no one is to "blame" for what they do, and we can all start feeling bad Hitler and for that mass murderer Adam Lanza, who both obviously had "problems." (and no, I am not comparing SFH to them, but simply stating: people do dumb, hurtful things because of their "issues," every day: where do YOU draw the line and say: okay, that was too bad/evil of an action for me to feel bad for them?)

outta here wrote:

I've been watching and occasionally posting for years. Less and less about training appears on the boards.

The responses to the Hamilton threads have become something of a last straw.

Mommy playing Russian roulette with murder and disease by whoring with strangers; it's all a big joke or twisted female empowerment to the nihilistic, perverted Letsrun audience.

I am no better if I continue to visit this site.

Just letting the owners know that there is one freakish customer who is going to a differen store.

I was also disturbed by some of the Sandy Hook responses and the general hate against people of faith and the way they mock people's beliefs is astounding.

Not to mention the fact that an actual running relic came out in the form of Bekeles 5k record and letsrun didn't cover it at all.

Prostitution is a system under the auspices of which rape is legitimized by introducing the element of monetary compensation as a mitigating factor. In other words, that prostitution is pay-per-rape.

The word “rape” rankles those with a heavy investment in the status quo. Likewise it rankles the prostituted ladies because they are sex professionals, not victims.

The patriarchal set-up has it fixed so that the practice of commodifying women’s bodies necessarily creates a rich and fetid growth medium for violence and exploitation. The persistent condition of women as an underclass of rape-receptacles relies on this concept of bod-commodification. Abuses are not limited to prostituted women, but extend to the entirety of the sex class.

$600 / hour cmon people thats alot of money.

Who wouldnt whore themselves out for that kind of cash? (Bible-thumpers go away)

But im being serious here. I mean professional distance runners, even if well-known Olympians, arent usually rolling in the dough, what if SFH just wanted more $$$ to better her and her familys personal financial situation? Isnt that what all Americans want anyway? A couple (hundred) extra grand could go a long way in terms of bills, childrens education, mortgage, and yes even some fun (new cars, vacations, etc.)

Who gives a f**k that this intelligent woman found herself a good entrepreneurial venture?

true,

got to make hay while the sun shines. In 10 years this won't be an option and the only thing available might be $8.50/hour at Walmart.

So if $600/hour is there then, as Bill Russell would say, "you take the open shot, don't pass it off."

redux wrote:

Is txrunnergirl leaving?

Maybe so. I'll join the many others. You can find me on Facebook, or better yet, in person.

Prostitution is a system under the auspices of which rape is legitimized by introducing the element of monetary compensation as a mitigating factor. The word “rape” rankles those with a heavy investment in the status quo. Likewise it rankles the prostituted ladies because they are "sex professionals", not victims.

The men who use prositutes treat these women as toilets. By this, I’m describing the institutionalized, enpornulated male contempt of the sex class. It applies to the unknowable legions of women and girls who have been coerced into the life of prostitution by thugs and drugs and who remain abused and marginalized by misogynist cultural mores and antediluvian jurisprudence. It applies to all exploited women and girls for whom the bitter, grinding reality of misogyny as a human rights crisis cannot be glossed over with fantasies about women’s empowerment and delusions about agency and choice.

The patriarchal set-up has it fixed so that the practice of commodifying women’s bodies necessarily creates a rich and fetid growth medium for violence and exploitation. The persistent condition of women as an underclass of rape-receptacles relies on this concept of body-commodification. Abuses are not limited to prostituted women, but extend to the entirety of the sex class.

Unless patriarchy is smashed, prostituted women will always be oppressed, because all women will always be oppressed.

I cant say I feel sorry for her or blame the posters for going a bit over the top on this one. She made her bed, some people were hurt by it. But life goes on. The only problem with this site is when the moderators play politics, other than that it's posters being posters. We're not perfect. We, as runners are not perfect either. We're just like everyone else. A little more oxygen to the brain, a little less weight. Other than that, we're just people, like everyone else.

when it comes to rape, women are currently considered to exist in a state of perpetual “yes!”. This is because “yes!” is consistent with global accords governing fair use of women. Victims of robbery or attempted murder don’t have to prove that they said no to being robbed or murdered; the presumption is that not even women would consent to being killed. But because penetration by males is what women are for, if we are raped we have to prove not just that we didn’t say yes, which is impossible to prove, but that we specifically and emphatically said no, which is also impossible to prove.

There are rules about what sort of woman can even attempt to make the “I said no” argument in court. Women who typically are not eligible to opt out of consent include: women who drink in bars, women who walk alone, women who walk at night, women who use drugs, women belonging to certain castes, women who dress a certain way, women who don’t dress a certain way, women who are married to men, women who have had multiple sex partners, women who may have said yes last month, women who may have said yes at the beginning but who, three minutes in, found it disagreeable and changed to “no,” women who didn’t fight back hard enough, women who didn’t tell anyone or report it right away, women whose physical similarity to pornulated women aroused the defendant, women whose behavior at the party aroused the defendant, teens with a “reputation,” and prostituted women.

Prostituted women are indistinguishable from sex itself. This is true to varying degrees of all women, but prostituted women particularly are imagined to manifest so cavalier an attitude toward being used at any and all times by any and all comers that it is considered impossible to rape them. Prostituted women can never say no to sex because they are sex.

I (and all my monikers) will also be leaving, at least for the rest of the year (wow, eight days!). I'm not po'd, just bored--and I think I may be adding to the boredom.

Later.

Or not.

wtfunny wrote:

Sure, sex sells. Not a word of the Bekele 5000m wr, and 23 articles on SFH on the home page? Dude .. that's outta control.

THANK YOU!

You know, I'm pretty stunned at how little stur there has been over the Bekele 5000m WR video surfacing. Kenenisa Bekele is arguably the greatest distance runner we've ever seen on the track. He's set multiple world records indoors and outdoors, won 3 olympic gold medals in stunning fashion, is 5 times world champion on the track, and has a dozen other medals in cross country. Just look at his wikipedia page and he has a long column of golds medals.

Until now, we've seen all his great achievements except one. Now we can see them all. This was a chance for LRC to take Kenenisa's WR and reflect on his career and achievements and even make predictions as to what he might be able to still do in the future. But the opportunity was wasted, and overshadowed by SFH.

There's nothing wrong with LRC covering the SFH story in itself, but to obsessively cover it with 25 links, pictures, videos, quotes, and what not, while not even mentioning this uncovered running relic shows a certain amount of degression that has occured in this site.

I amazed by some of the posters.

How long does it take you to scan threads titles? I think I can scan the first page of titles in about 20 seconds. Avoid the crap if you want more training threads. Click on the threads you want. Posting about your annoyance takes more time than reading subject lines. Do you people watch Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shore by accident and get pissed that you don't watch Nova? Don't click on the threads! Bunch of idiots.

/

yet another possible theme song for those leaving the letsrun.com forum:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxNEiZhpinY

- We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Eric Burdon and the Animals

Some of these post make me facepalm. Prostitution is not rape... This is a huge shocker to some but some people, even some women, actually enjoy sex. Some of them even like it when their partner enjoys having sex with them! Don't you think such women would be more likely to become escorts? There may be cases where what seems to be prostitution is actually rape. Lets just not obscure the truth even more by pretending that two different acts are always the same. I know the world isn't black and white, but it isn't a single shade of gray either.

Sometimes it seems like the goal of an online feminist post is to throw the words misogyny, rape, sexism, patriarchy, ect, into the least comprehensible blur of words possible. You know what I learned feminism means in state college? Gender equality. That's actually a very sexist definition, but I also learned that sexism is only ever men, oppressing women. I realize that such people and those posting above do represent an extreme, vocal minority though.

I don't think I do represent an extremist on this subject. I actually agree with Texas Runner Girl on this one, more or less. I don't feel sorry for SFH for the work she chose, but I do feel sorry for the way people judge her for it. I first saw the story on runnersworld. Why does it belong there? It's a Gossip piece, not about running at all. Only reason I've ever heard of SFH, and I follow the sport of running a lot more than most people.

(1) FALSE. Not everyone judges people in this manner to which you refer. You would be wise to stop trying to speak for 'everyone'. Try speaking for yourself.

(2) NO, you do NOT "need to put yourself in the shoes of the people hurt". It is better to stay in your own shoes, recognize that you don't really know jack about these people in the "news", and avoid judging that which is not a single step above typical town gossip.

(3) Drawing the line is very simple. Ask yourself one simple question - IS IT ANY OF YOUR DAMNED BUSINESS? If not, try to grow up - nothing to see here.

Femininity, the practice of femininity, and the fetishization of femininity degrades all women. That femininity is not a “choice” when the alternative is derision, ridicule, workplace sanctions, or ostracization. That femininity is a set of degrading behaviors that communicates one’s level of commitment to male authority and women’s oppression. That femininity is coerced appeasement, regardless of how successfully it is now marketed to young women as feminism.

Dove, a brand of femininity products manufactured by global conglomerate Unilever, has already earned a couple of Ditwuss Awards for its adroitness in preying on women even as it pretends to give a crap about them, most notably with its supremely bogus “Campaign for Real Beauty.” Apparently the concept is working like a charm; like a race of maniacal overlords, they keep spewing the same poisonous self-esteemy propaganda year after year.

I complain about this company’s stupid ads all the time, not because they are the most outrageous (which they’re not), but because they are the most insidious. Insidious because Dove sells butt cream by telling an increasingly funfeminist audience what they want to hear. Dove knows that beauty standards are impossible, Dove is the first to admit that models are all fotoshopped, Dove agrees that being super-thin isn’t good for you. So, for you “real” ladies out there, Dove piously continues to take a stand against all this phony beauty nonsense, by gum. Beauty is now healthy and clinically therapeutic and desirable and attainable (through Dove products) by regular women.

This confidential-yet-authoritative “we’re on your side” tone is so transparently calculated to erode consumers’ defenses against the actual message, it makes me want to pull my own head off. This actual message, which has remained unchanged since the dawn of time, is the same for all purveyors of femininity swag:

“Beauty is your sacred duty.”

No matter how the beauty industrial complex defines it, as a member of the sex class you are obligated to concern yourself inordinately with the pursuit of it. Of course, by universal decree, you’ll always be a day late and a jar of carcinogenic, ecotoxic butt cream short.

I'd like to air a grievance with the dudely habit deliberately misunderstanding refusal. You know, when men suddenly experience an utterly confounding ambiguity in standard modes of refusal that, in all non-boink-related contexts, are completely transparent? This purposeful denial of women’s humanity, it’s pretty much the nub of patriarchal oppression.

I’d like to ask the reader to do a brief mental exercise. (If you’d rather not, just skip to the next paragraph.) I’d like you to remember the last time you found it difficult to give an explicit “no” to somebody in a non-sexual context. Maybe they asked you to do them a favour, or to join them for a drink. Did you speak up and say, outright, “No”? Did you apologise for your “no”? Did you qualify it and say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t make it today“? If you gave an outright “no”, what privileged positions do you occupy in society, and how does your answer differ from the answers of people occupying more marginalised positions?

This form of refusal was analysed in 1999 by Kitzinger and Frith (K&F) in Just Say No? The Use of Conversation Analysis in Developing a Feminist Perspective on Sexual Refusal. Despite the seeming ambiguity in question/refusal acts like, “We were wondering if you wanted to come over Saturday for dinner”, “Well, uhh, it’d be great but we promised Carol already”, they are widely understood by the participants as straightforward refusals.

K&F conclude by saying that, “For men to claim [in a sexual context] that they do not ‘understand’ such refusals to be refusals (because, for example, they do not include the word ‘no’) is to lay claim to an astounding and implausible ignorance of normative conversational patterns

Especially intriguing is the notion that the unequivocal “no” is the exclusive purview of privilege.

/

an additional theme song possibility for those leaving the letsrun.com forum page.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N4Da9wynUI

- Get Out and Don't Come Back, The Who

Nappy Roots wrote:

The racists and insensitive comments have been on this site for years. Recently, however, they seem to be increasing in frequency, filth, and pervasiveness.

Agree. So I'll be leaving this place too. WOT. Good luck Brojos. Really.