But I am open to persuasion. Several women including
altariel have told me (if I understand correctly) that if I read it I'd find it was satirising these people and their attitudes. They have almost persuaded me that the joke is on the men who don't realise they are the object of the satire. So, yes, I can see this might be the case. I can see that there could logically be a book like that, and Lolita It's hard to get past the crap that's written about it though. And there's so much of it.
Amanda at Pandagon (Lolita is her favourite book) has found a particularly loathsome example, whom she eviscerates here.
John Derbyshire is a conservative writer who famously complained that Jennifer Anniston was too old and ugly for him (links to pics of John and Jennifer for comparison). In the same article he said that women were only 'interesting to look at in the buff' between the ages of 15 and 20. He really did - read an extract here.
So - what do you think about Lolita, John?
Ah, the realities of life! Was there ever a civilization more uncomfortable with them than ours is today? Humbert Humbert is a monster and a sociopath. He was a human monster, though, and a human sociopath. His monstrousnesses are hypertrophied growths of our own flaws; and His sociopathy consists in breaking rules for which, if there were not some fairly widespread propensity to break them, there would be no need.
Ah! The realities of life! How sadly we note them. But can it be true that men are naturally most attracted to twelve year olds? John says it is true, and he has the stats to prove it. This by the way, is some of the most offensive garbage I have ever read, but I think it needs quoting.
Biologist Razib Khan... (the only people with interesting things to say about human nature nowadays are the scientists) decided to look up some actual numbers. Reasoning that a rapist is inspired to his passion mainly by the physical attractiveness of his victim, Razib went for rape statistics.
Not the vulnerability of the victim, nor the power relations of society then, or the cruelty of their rapists, not the physical and social weakness of little girls, but simply their darned physical attractiveness. I'm going to keep quoting this man, even though it makes me feel physically sick.
Sixty percent of the women who reported having been raped were aged 17 or less, divided about equally between women aged 11 to 17 (32 percent) and those under eleven (29 percent)... If you histogram the figures, you get a peak around ages 12-14, which is precisely the age Lolita was at the time of her affair with Humbert Humbert. My own “15-20” estimate was slightly off. An upper limit of 24 would be more reasonable. The lower limit really doesn’t bear thinking about.
OK. This is evil. The widespread rape of children does not prove they are more sexually alluring than adult women. it proves that rapists are cowards and weaklings. (I leave aside for now the difficulties adult women have in establishing non-consent, an issue which does not legally apply to paedophilia and therefore biases the stats).
And let me say it, as a feminist, all men are not rapists. It's because they are not that men have to stand against these cretins and say you don't speak for me.