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How Was She

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Matthew Fluxington

14:49 / 27.01.04

Oh God, here we go again.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the only site on the internet that gives you the answer to one of life's most important questions: just how good is the sex going to be? And how hard do you have to work to get it? Now, using HowWasShe.com, that information is right at your fingertips. See what other people thought about the girls they've slept with, find out how easy she is, if she's into some of the kinkier things in life, and get advance warning if she has any diseases (can't be too safe nowadays).
Also, please remember that this site cannot function without YOUR contributions. So please, take, steal, or fake a picture of the girls you've nailed. Any and all submissions that you make are 100% confidental. Your name, and any other information about you will NEVER be revealed to ANYONE, not even the people who run the site.

Just appalling, really. What is it about some people that they will go out of their way to come up with new ways to humiliate, dehumanize, and compromise the privacy of others? Does the world really need new, innovative ways to be misogynistic?

gravitybitch

15:10 / 27.01.04

I don't even want to look.

It is appalling, I agree... Wonder if it would do any good to flood the site with pics of gay porn stars??

Smoothly

15:16 / 27.01.04

That is so depressing. Cheers Flux, you've ruined my day.

Kit-Cat Club

15:23 / 27.01.04

Good God, what a hideous site. Degrading, unpleasant, apparently started and frequented by people who have never graduated from a peculiarly revolting and puerile view of women, sex, emotions and sexuality.

Interestingly the site owners have pre-empted any immediate comebakcs in kind by registering www.howwashe.com and redirecting it to the original site.

Char Aina

15:52 / 27.01.04

i think someone should break into the designers house.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:19 / 27.01.04

Oh, lighten up, Fluxington, you turbodouche. And the rest of you bra-burning feminazis.

Don't you understand how importand a site like this is to red-blooded young men? (Unless they're whoopsies, of course.) Obviously, this site is a way for blokes to PROTECT themselves against splashing out on some bint in the hopes of bumping the lala at a later date, only to find out that she's a crap shag. Or that she's got scabby twat disease. OBVIOUSLY it's not going to be used to post pictures of that stupid cow in the office who turned you down at the Christmas party. Duh.

w1rebaby

16:34 / 27.01.04

Yeah, this is political correctness gone mad.

Matthew Fluxington

16:46 / 27.01.04

From their About section:

Mr. Schiros holds no personal grudge toward women in general, and would like to reccomend that any woman that finds this offensive go out and create their own website for ranking men. It just wouldn't be funny. But good luck to you. HowWasShe.com thrives off of user submissions, so please, add your ladies. They'll never find out it was you, because WE aren't telling, and how many women have high caliber detective/technology skills? Add their pictures, tell us about what makes them moan, tell us if they're slutty. You can use this site to help your fellow man in the quest that consumes so much time for all men: scoring poon.

Unfuckbelievable.

I'm sorry to wreck your day, Smoothly Weaving. Just be glad that I didn't send you off to read this article from this past weekend's NY Times Magazine instead. It's a million times more depressing than this How Was She site.

pomegranate

17:50 / 27.01.04

do i need to point out how inaccurate (in addition to everything else) this website likely is? the guy who fucked me on the third date could well be surprised to hear about me from the one who had to wait two months.

i think i remember hearing about some website that was for girls to post guys' names who were dicks, ostensibly so you could search for the name of the guy you met last night at the bar, or the guy in yr class who's foxy, or whatever.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:12 / 27.01.04

Oh God. Now I have to kill again. And again. And again.

Has anybody else found that they are just not prepared to discuss relationships, sex etc. with anybody they have not already spent some time evaluating? I live in fear of having to hack somebody's head off during a casual chat.

Matthew Fluxington

18:17 / 27.01.04

the guy who fucked me on the third date could well be surprised to hear about me from the one who had to wait two months.

Judging by most of those entries, the guys writing on this site aren't the type of guys who have sex with a woman twice, or at all. It's pretty clear that most of it is just a way to vent misogyny and insult people. Have you looked at the individual entries? For fuck's sake, a woman's vagina is being ranked by the number of cartoon dead fish.

Spatula Clarke

18:26 / 27.01.04

There's a guestbook on there, for those who're in the mood.

Hint hint.

pomegranate

18:30 / 27.01.04

re. that ny times article, i can't believe it wasn't until the year 2000 that we had a law saying that people brought in against their will to this country are victims, not illegal aliens.
this article broke my heart. it's horrifying, and then it just gets worse as the pages go on. i feel like giving up my whole life to try to find these young people and rescue them. i wish i had superpowers or something.

pomegranate

18:32 / 27.01.04

haus, i'd like you to elaborate on yr last post.

pomegranate

18:39 / 27.01.04

incidentally, this is such the great disclaimer:

HowWasShe.com is a website devoted to satirical commentary on the nature of sexual encounters in the modern era. All claims made by users on this site, or by this site are fictional and are unrelated to any real people or events. People depicted by photograph on this site are there for the purposes of entertainment, not for identification. The comments on any one woman's sexual history are not presented as fact, but as hypothetical concepts. Just in case you weren't sure, we don't claim that any information on this site (except this Disclaimer and the Privacy Statement) is true. If you choose to interpret it as true, that's your decision, not our intent. We are not responsible for any incorrect conclusions you draw from your interpretations.

even better than banksy's "everything on this site is a joke."

Matthew Fluxington

18:40 / 27.01.04

re. that ny times article, i can't believe it wasn't until the year 2000 that we had a law saying that people brought in against their will to this country are victims, not illegal aliens.

Yes, it really is one of the few things that the Bush administration has done that I can really get behind.

Ethan Hawke

18:42 / 27.01.04

There's a large controversey over that sex slave article, largely because the evidence seems anedotal at best. See this Slate article for examples of questions people have brought up. The "andrea" parts are almost reminiscent of the "Satanic abuse" scares of the 80s... Of course this is not to imply that sex slavery does not exist in this country etc.

Dead Cartoon Fish? This must be a joke, right? By the makes of Vice, perhaps? I can't see the site at work here.

grant

18:49 / 27.01.04

It's basically an extension of putting yer ex's name & number on the bathroom wall. For a good time call....

pomegranate

18:51 / 27.01.04

if that article is only 25% true, it's still horrifying.

Matthew Fluxington

18:52 / 27.01.04

I'm with Sasha Frere-Jones about the Slate article:

Why doubt Landesman? Is the piece fully void if the numbers are slightly off? Shafer and Radosh leap up to confront the horror by suggesting we hold our repulsion until we're SCIENTIFICALLY SURE people can be this terrible.

Shafer gives himself a pass by admitting sex slavery is a terrible reality and that it's hard to research--no fucking duh--but still wants to douse the fire. And what the fuck does Radosh mean by "the Internet=scary trope...is so 1997"? Is that like "the murder=bad trope is so 1945"? Sounds like the blogosphere hewing to the cynical baseline attitude: whatevs, we did everything last year. And that's how we figure out if it "matters." Next story, please=fucked ideology.

Matthew Fluxington

18:57 / 27.01.04

I'm sorry, my mistake, they aren't DEAD cartoon fish. They are regular, "living" cartoon fish.

bigsunnydavros

19:00 / 27.01.04

Ugh! That site may be "an extension of putting yer ex's name & number on the bathroom wall" but as such it's intensely creepy and just plain fucking wrong - the "For a good time call..." thing may be stupid, pathetic and deeply unpleasant, but this is way more nasty and idiotic than that. It's on a whole other level of wankerdom.

grant

19:06 / 27.01.04

It's got pictures. And comments.

Matthew Fluxington

19:11 / 27.01.04

I'm not sure if I understand where you're coming from Grant - are you okay with this? Are you just playing devil's advocate?

passer

19:14 / 27.01.04

I feel torn about this site. If I accept it as satire? Hilarious mockery of the people stupid enough to want or participate on such a website. The problem is that feels like an overly optimistic stretch.

If I take it seriously? I become enraged that culling the stupid is still murder by all legal standards.

I can't bring myself to consider the banner ad for his other hilarious site am i black or not. Instead, I cheered myself up by visiting one of my favorite ambiguous satire sites: Black People Love Us
(Much happier times than the NY Times article, if one needs a dose of humor to dispell the distaste.)

Matthew Fluxington

19:18 / 27.01.04

If you've read through some of the entries on that site, it's pretty obvious that it's not Vice-style shock humor for the people posting on the site. It may be for the creep who put it together, but there's not much irony to be found in the misogynistic humor in those profiles. The whole thing seems very hateful to me.

grant

19:39 / 27.01.04

I'm not sure if I understand where you're coming from Grant - are you okay with this? Are you just playing devil's advocate?

Well, it's not that I'm "okay" with it as much as I just can't see it as anything more than idiocy. I don't think it's a new level of wankerdom as much as just an extension of the same level of wankerdom. I mean, after briefly perusing the site, I basically felt kinda like you feel when you walk into one of those bathroom stalls, only maybe grimier on the inside. It seems, in other words, like a collection of unpleasant and crude fictions. With extra snickering and bickering in the comments section for diversion.

Char Aina

20:21 / 27.01.04

well, yeah, its an extension of the number in the cubicle.

but with pictures, and comments, as you say.
and a much farther reach.

you must realise how easy it would be for someone to find such information were you to become more famous or important, and how damaging that could be.
not only that, but you can change your number.
its a lot harder to change your face and your name.

someone needs to act for your number being in a toilet to be a problem, and as soon as you see it you can remove it.
with this site, you have no control over it, and the pictures are up there without any real shove from anyone perusing the site.

these are my first thoughts, so feel free to tell me where i am going wrong.

Tezcatlipoca

20:54 / 27.01.04

I don't know whether it will be permanent, but as of the time of this post, the webdomain www.howwasshe.com appears to have been suspended.

w1rebaby

21:51 / 27.01.04

That's a terrible, terrible shame. I don't see why anyone would suspend a site for publishing pictures of people without their permission, along with libellous comments.

I tell you, it's the PC Thought Police. Littlejohn was right.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:51 / 27.01.04

the webdomain www.howwasshe.com appears to have been suspended

[Nelson] Ha, ha! [/Nelson]

Isn't this whole premise a bit shaky, legally speaking? The much-vaunted poster anonymity is basically an open invitation for libel. Can't think the company hosting the site would be terribly happy with that.

sleazenation

22:31 / 27.01.04

I'm not sure how useful the libel laws would be in prosecuting a site like this - how do you prove a negative such as a claim that you never had sex with someone?

The Return Of Rothkoid

00:41 / 28.01.04

how do you prove a negative such as a claim that you never had sex with someone?

I'd imagine they'd just have to get a look at the people posting the reviews...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

16:23 / 28.01.04

Well, people do prove similar claims all the time. I belive that the onus is on the person making the allegation to prove that it is true, rather than on the person who is the subject of the accusation to disprove it.

Besides which "I had sex with girl X" wasn't the only accusation being made here. The posts I read were... rather more detailed. I'm pretty sure that if you accuse someone of fucking their pet dog, they don't have to prove they didn't.

Mr Tricks

17:25 / 28.01.04

Tangent:
Just to touch on the Times article, there's currently a situation in california with a Maria Suarez who was sold as a sex slave at age 16 (for $200) and kept for 5 years by her 68 year old tormentor Anselmo Covarrubias. After his murder by a neighbor Maria was told to hide the murder weapon; a table leg. This got her sent to prison for some 21 years on conspiracy charges.

In April, California Gov. Gray Davis granted her parole but delayed her release for nearly another year; to keep her time served in line with what he considered appropriate. After he was recalled, the parole board let Suarez out earlier. The Govenegger declined to review her case, allowing her release on December of last year. She was then immediately taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and now faces deportation.

article here.

People are trying to help her here.

/end tangent

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