Females as males? (Objectifying "males")

Hmm in this case it's a little different for me because I have a girl that dresses as a boy. Not in a transexual sense, she's just more comfortable in boys clothes and it's her style. She wears only boy stuff. She knows she's a girl and is fine with it, maybe sexuality comes into it because she is a lesbian but that doesn't mean all lesbians like to dress as boys. My doll's character just plain prefers it I think if she were straight it wouldn't make too much differeance she'd still be the same. It's just how she is.

 

Just a reminder to make sure the discussion stays on topic: while personal experiences do play a large part in forming one's decisions, in the spirit of a debate, please keep the discussion to the topic, rather than just pointing out that your characters fit one category or another. We're here to discuss the topic, not doll character. Thank you!

 

Wow... I never really thought this through before. But being one of the ones who has girly men I might as well contribute.To be honest I really don't think much about it.. I mean, it's their dolls right? Even though sometimes I do feel for the dolls being the sweety I am ='(
I myself am very androgynous, I don't exactly look like a girl or boy and I don't see myself as either. I'm not an extreme girly boy making owner though >.< they are just as angrogynous as me, which appeals to me highly; it's nice in a sense knowing that I'm not alone with it even if they aren't living. Also I enjoy dressing them up as I do to myself (not exactly of course, they have their own little styles). Personally, my dolls are not highly sexualized like some others. They are like any other teenage boys with a different sense of style and way of thinking about gender.
I have a really open mind so most of the things people have don't usually bother me.
I think that... if they are going to highly sexualize and objectify their dolls it is their responsibility and they should be aware that not everyone will act in a positive way. I don't really think it's "okay" or "not okay", but personally I really wouldn't want to get involved since dolls are personal to each owner to a certain extent.
To be honest I couldn't do it... I love my dolls too much and I wouldn't put them through things like that.. but some people do.
And I respect their opinions and actions even if it isn't the way "I" would do it.

Also, reasons for this? My androgynous boys just sprouted from my way of living in the real world. Other people could have different reasons though, past expieriences, yaoi? and other things.

=) there's my 2 cents and a half XD

 

*Deep breath* I haven't read all 11 pages of this thread, just the first 3 and the last page, but I have no doubt that eventually I will read all the pages out of curiosity of what everybody is saying, but I just feel like I should put in my two cents as to "WHY all the gay males, all the males dressed and portrayed in female-like ways?"

I did not become interested in BJD's the first couple weeks I was researching them. I found out about BJD's via a Blythe forum when a user posted a picture of her Shiro and I thought it was the most beautiful doll I had ever seen. It was so perfectly sculpted and so detailed. However when I began researching Volks I found that their standard dolls consisted of 5 females, and I was rather disappointed (wow this was back when DoA was still a yahoo forum.) I thought that Megu was my favorite because she seemed the most versatile, the girl with the least girly-girl characteristics.

As a child, I was never very big into dolls. I had a couple barbies and an American Girl doll (Kirsten) but I never got into them. Barbies were good for riding my model horses, and my American girl doll I would dress once in a while but never really CARED for. For me, a male doll was a way to own and love a doll without the "little girl" stigma attached to it.

Playing with dolls is something that has always been attributed to a childlike mindset. Ken was only good for marrying Barbie (and kissing her, when children begin to realize sexuality) and never seems to be as important as the female doll. A sign of being "grown up" and bridging your way from childhood to adulthood is that you give up your dolls...you sell them, or store them away for your CHILDREN to play with once you have them. Many adults simply do not play with dolls.

My grandmother COLLECTS dolls, but she does not play with them. They are displayed around her house, and I know there have been a couple instances where I thought that all the porcelain eyes watching me have felt more than a little creepy. To have a female doll as an adult female is an oddity.

These reasons are why I think that male dolls are more popular - it's more "okay" to have a doll that is male because it seperates you from the child. Its not as childish to play and dress something that is, at its base, male. But somehow we can't get away from our feminine instincts to nurture, to dress, to have emotional openess, and those reasons combine with all the reasons stated previously for feminizing males...you have a combination that leads to a mass popularity of the male ABJD. While the childhood reasons may be a small reason, I think that nonetheless it does contribute to lots of teens, 20 and 30-somethings wanting to play with dolls without having it be creepy or childish.

(And I do feel like I have to defend myself with my next doll...he's (hopefully) going to be a boy head on a modded female body (boy bits added on) because part of his story is his job as a dancer in a professional troupe. As a dancer he's going to have a slender and slight build as well as being short. His sexuality has little to do with his girly body and more to do with...ah...dolly genetics XD I was taught dance by a male with girlier legs and body than mine, and he has been happily married for ages.)

 

I think it might have something to do with across history in art, the female figure is more often portrayed then the male figure. I fing the female figure more athsetically pleasing to the eye. Most artist I have spoken with agree that they prefer a circle to a square (an abstract psychology project I did once) As the male figure is more the embodyment of streight lines and the female form is made up of curves, I wonder if that base preferance has something to do with it. By putting the male in a more female form through clothes, looks, hair style ect. we are almost making the male more athsetically pleasing to the eye and thus more desirable. Otherwise, most of the males I have seen so far in photos are dressed like the atchtypical 'bad boy' image. I haven't seen too many of the 'nerdy boy types' (A la Daniel Jackson or Dr. Who *which if I had the money I'd so mane a Dr. Who BJD* or any of the other geeky-boys out there)
The accepteable styles for females are much more varied than the styles of males which can also play a part. In real life a guy can get mocked or looked down upon for wearing a skirt (*get's glared at by fiancee* yes, I know it's a kilt >_>) so that leaves pants and shorts and not much else to choose from. With female styles you have so many different variations of dresses, skirts, pants, tops ect. Thus females have more variety and dressing males in female clothes and so males end up wearing female clothing *chuckles*

 

It seems to me that having a male BJD that has a more female appearance is liked by alot. (I haven't read all 11 pages so forgive me if I'm leaving a point out.) But in a way that male BJDs that have a soft almost look to them is something that can be seen through the desires of their owners. (?) I mean in this society one rarely sees a man walking down the street in lolita (unless you're at an anime convention or you see a j-rocker) And to see man walking down the street wearing lolita and actually looking good is something not known to many (like previous statement j-rocker pull it off well). But the style of female looking men is something thats just not common, something maybe different. And having a BJDis something that is unque and special. And it is through the eyes of the owner does the doll become truely theirs.

 

I'd like to start off by addressing a point that was brought up where someone wondered why the debate kept being centered around yaoi fandom. "It happened throughout history" is not an argument that explains why it is happening here and now nor does it explain the particular form that the "feminization" takes in the here and now. However, its relationship with yaoi subculture in Japan, Korea, and other parts of Asia where the dolls are being made as well as in America, Europe and elsewhere where the dolls are being modified, dressed, and so forth, may very well have a direct bearing on why it takes the form it takes right here and right now. Therefore, it is more productive to look at the yaoi subculture if it's influencing certain people. On the other hand, if a particular individual or group is being influenced by an appreciation of representations of gender in Greek society, then it might be particularly useful to look at gender representations in Greek society. Does that make sense?

I've lived my life between several different cultures and subcultures and I can assure you that what is considered "feminine" or "masculine" can differ significantly from one place to another, even within the same country or culture. I came into doll fandom after I'd spent a significant amount of time in Japan and to me, the supposedly feminine doll sculpts (as well as the bodies of the men in yaoi, shoujo manga, etc.) look like perfectly reasonable male bodies (although admittedly ones that are falling into a certain image of masculinity.) Things that would be considered "feminine" in our culture, such as taking particular care of one's dress or appearance, are definitely not considered feminine in Japan. They are considered both masculine and heterosexual because they are being done by men in order to appeal to women in a similar way that men in America might buy a certain kind of car in order to appeal to women. For more on this, I suggest Laura Miller's book Beauty Up. Alternately, I suggest going to the Shijo-Kawarmachi intersection in Kyoto, sitting down there around six o'clock at night, and observing what the men who are working as call boys for host clubs are wearing. They're using their bodies, clothes, and hair as an advertisement and they're trying to appeal to heterosexual women's desire for men. There is no gay involved in this transaction.

At the same time, I think it's pretty clear from people's responses that at least in the context of the DOA boards, the way that people are dressing the dolls *is* considered feminine. But this is something that confuses me. How do people go from, "These girls like dressing their male dolls up as women" to "these girls are intimidated by masculinity." What exactly are we using as evidence that the girls are "intimidated"? A lot of the responses that I see seem to be implying that girls who are into certain subcultures where men are made more "feminine" have some kind of problem or issue they need to work through. The fact that this is more often being stated by people who lack a direct experience or who have conducted any sort of extensive evaluation of the people they are analyzing makes me a little upset. I mean, I understand everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I'm entitled to be hurt by opinions that are based more on a desire to find a better reason to hold contempt for something you don't understand rather than some form of evidence. And yes, I understand that not everyone who is providing an analysis hates or pities the people they are analyzing. However, I noticed one or two people who definitely were and it upset me. The fact is that the way we analyze something tends to be more a reflection on how we want to see other people rather than the way that those people actually are.

But getting back to the issue of women who attempt to "feminize" their boys, maybe it would be safer to say that they don't particularly like the certain representations of maleness that exist in present day American society? Assuming that this is due to intimidation seems to be stretching things. There could be a number of reasons for it, couldn't there? I personally find the American "macho" ideal to be ugly. Not just on a physical or visual level but because I feel like it encourages people to be mean, sarcastic, and hurtful to each other. Also, to get drunk and throw bottles filled with excrement at each other at the end of football games (please, dear god, why does this happen?) I suppose that yes, I am intimidated by behavior that is harmful to myself and others. And I am sure that there are many positive aspects to this "macho" ideal. It's empowering to the individuals who subscribe to it, for example. But from my personal perspective, the negatives far outway the positives.

I want to make something clear, though. This isn't at all about individual men or American men as a whole or anything like that. What I'm talking about is people whose lives are strongly and uncritically influenced by one of the ways (and there are many) that our society encourages men to behave. And it does have a strong connection to a certain image of masculinity. Even though I would be very happy to get a doll with broad shoulders, a strong jaw, and other stereotypically "manly" features, I probably would not dress him in a way that I associated with that particular macho ideal (i.e. baseball caps, sloppy uncoordinated clothes with stains on them, etc.) Also, I would love to have female dolls made with these features as well, but that's largely because I feel that it signifies strength and power rather than manliness per se.

Oh, and while I do make a strong connection between visual appearance and personality in my dolls, I want to assure any men (or women) who wear baseball caps or sloppy uncoordinated clothes that while I may not find your manner of dress physically attractive, I'm not going to write you off as an uncaring oaf off the bat. I wait until someone acts like an uncaring oaf before I decide that they are one. What bothers me is that a certain masculine ideal encourages people to act like uncaring oafs.

But here's a question that's been niggling at me. Are a lot of the things that we consider feminine inherently feminine or is it just that we've come to consider them feminine because they're so often linked to images of women? I've found that my conception of certain things as feminine has changed a lot after I started consuming "feminized" images of men. I started to see a lot of things as neither feminine nor masculine but genderless with the intention of stirring a certain emotion (for example, sexual desire or that warm snuggly feeling you get when you see something cute or the wonderful uplifting feeling you get when you see something that you find beautiful). The push towards androgyny may be a desire to isolate the emotions without having to consider the gender politics of it all. This might also explain why there is a preference for a cuter rather than sexualized female look. Maybe cuteness tends to be more genderless, as it is associated with childhood where little boys and little girls can both be cute, rather than big breasts and hips which are more definitively and sexually female?

 

Oh, I realized I hadn't addressed the objectification of males part of the question.

By making dolls, you are objectifying the human body, that is to say, turning a representation of it into an object. However, I'm pretty sure what the original poster was referring to was sexual objectification, right?

I think we first have to consider this point: why is sexual objectification bad? I think this is something that a lot of people take for granted without considering the why but that can be a dangerous thing to do. If sexual objectification results in you looking at other people as objects rather than as human beings and you live in a culture where a distinction between object and human being is made in such a way that you treat objects with disrespect whereas you wouldn't treat human beings (not all cultures do this), then I think it is definitely bad. Assuming that most of us are coming from mainstream American culture or even many Western European countries' mainstream culture, I think it's pretty safe to say that objects are not afforded the same respect as human beings, though. This may not necessarily be the case with this particular doll subculture, though. I think many of you may have noticed or personally felt that dolls are equal to humans or if not equal to humans, then at least worthy of more regard than just any old object.

However, if all the sexual objectification does is make it so that you can begin to perceive either male bodies or female bodies as potentially sexual, I do not think it is necessarily bad. Perceiving a body as sexual does not necessarily mean you don't respect it. We happen to have a history that goes back to the Victorian period where sex was considered harmful to one's health and anything related to it very very bad which continues to influence our current perceptions of sex and sexuality. (This is not a Puritan concept, as many people mistakenly assume. The Puritans actually viewed sex in the context of marriage as a wonderful and beautiful thing and celebrated it.) We also have the legacy of certain strands of feminism (but certainly not all!) where any depiction of sex or sexuality was linked to the literal or figurative rape of women. Looking at male and/or female bodies as sexual, though, doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't going to respect each and every person you meet as an individual, regardless of how sexually appealing you find their body to be. It's quite possible to do both. The fact that we're taught that it's impossible does make it rather difficult, though, since I think it ends up becoming something like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, I personally believe that the sexual objectification of men in the sense of making their bodies into something that has the potential for sexual appeal is a good thing for a lot of young women. It creates the possibility for them to view themselves in a myriad of ways in sexual situations. The trick is to have the whole thing managed responsibly and I feel that right now, it really isn't. One thing I've noticed as a result of the spread of yaoi fandom in American culture, for instance, is that there is an increase in the sexual harassment of young men at anime conventions. This is terrible. Admiring something as sexual and/or beautiful is one thing. Making demands that someone act in a certain way (such as going up to a complete stranger and telling them to "do yaoi" or kiss another boy) is another. The first is perfectly fine as long as you aren't making another person uncomfortable. The second is deplorable (unless it's in the context of a relationship where it's been pre-established that such demands are permitted. Lots of friends tease each other with sexual jokes without anyone getting hurt.)

I'm not sure how widespread this kind of behavior is in yaoi fandom. Of course I don't act that way and none of my friends who are into yaoi do. Either way, I hope it doesn't enter into doll fandom. By this I mean, I hope that we don't end up with situations where people go up to someone who owns a doll and try to take a picture or handle the doll in a sexual way or in any other kind of way that makes the doll owner (or the doll?) uncomfortable.

And dag, my posts are long...

 

I've been following this thread as a lurker, but I have to say, this was maybe the most poignant thing I've read here to date. It speaks not only to the BJD Community, but to society as a whole. Very well thought out and very thought provoking!

 

Interesting thread, and it has been going on for quite awhile!

I recently shot some pixs of Elfdoll K, which were kind of male model/fashion magazine-ish, in my opinion. I showed my boss at work and she asked if this was a boy or girl doll. I consider K to be masculine, and he was wearing pants, shirt and a jacket in these pictures.

I consider those male models in the mags to be "pretty" and they often pose in a provocative way like female fashion models, but I have no difficulty telling which are the girls and which are the boys.

This leads to the complicated topic of gender specific identification. I don't really feel like being too philosophical, I'll just say I'm glad we aren't baboons who have to rely on spotting a great big red posterior to tell the girls from the boys!

 

Well, I am posting here because I kind of started thinking on the subject when I saw the girlxgirl topic in the general discussion.

I have to say that, personally, objectification isnt ok for me in either gender and so I rarely read ANY relationship or sexuality oriented photostory or photoset. When I draw my characters, they typically have whatever personality I feel calls to them. They develop themselves and I allow them to manifest themselves as a visual being and eventually physical. There are relationships, but what develops develops and I don't instantly start making hentai slash bdsm humiliation pornography out of whoever seems to hold an interest in another person.

I know this might come off as sour.. and I apologize in advance. But from experience on the board, and reading a lot of gallery things.. Yaoi relationships and male depictions on the board in general tend to get dirtier and messier faster or more often than anything else. I don't know why, but more and more I see one male doll as another's slave, and of course being a slave he must be naked with only harem jewelry and a leash tethering him to his master, depicted in photos always above him and sometimes threatening.
Maybe I am exaggerating, but I do recall having seen one or more photostories with just that content.
If a female was in the slave's position, it'd be discriminatory. The set would probably get fewer comments. But with it being two men, it is called hot, sexy, and mysterious.

Why is this? I don't know.. I really don't. I'm not a psych major. I do wish I knew sometimes. I don't think that way, so it'd be somewhat of a revelation to me to know the mystique of it, the appeal..

If only to speculate, I'd say it was because the person objectifying the males MAY have been disappointed or mislead, possibly even mistreated or controlled by men in their life. Maybe they want to exact some control on men by projecting, subconsciously of course, the image of their controller onto the dolls and then humiliating them or bending them to their will.

That is only speculation though.. And this is only my opinion. Please please don't think I am trying to be rude, I'm not. I am just trying to figure this out myself really

 

I agree that it depends on who you are, as to what you think or believe. I think that a lot of these more androgynous characters stem from the owners desires to bring a femininity to their male character. I think also if you are going to look at male dolls in specifically feminine clothing such as a dress or skirt, it might be a thought to ask why it's ok for female dolls to wear pants and shirts that are traditionally male.
Also, in a lot of cases, owners interests in BJD have come from thier interest in Anime/Manga/etc. and in Japanese culture in particular, and with those who read shonen-ai and are into the Visual Kei and related scenes, I think its also a part of their fantasies (?) to have this male doll dressed as a girl.
As to the sexuality of the doll or the dolls traumatic past, I don't understand putting that upon a doll and don't wish to. However, its their doll and I want them to enjoy and love that doll and if that is what it involves then so be it.

 

I have a boy that dresses as a girl.
I don't have any boy dolls. Just find girls more fun!

 

Yes, that is exaggerating. That is also generalizing. That is lumping most yaoi content together under a sub-sub-genre of kink, which you encountered "one or more" times. [Boldface emphasis mine; content as quoted.] This is akin to viewing 10 minutes of 1 obscure bondage movie, and then coming to the conclusion that "all pornography" is the same. This kind of generalization is exactly what you want to avoid in a debate.

(No denying that the harem-jewelry S/M gay couples are out there, of course. That's just so far from being all there is. If you view that sort of thing regularly, you'll find that warm-and-fuzzy G-Rated snuggly gay romance shows far outweigh the kink, at least here on DOA.)

It may also help to actually VIEW some heterosexual or lesbian doll erotica, first, before jumping to the conclusion that "this would be viewed as discriminatory". If you check out what is happening on the Yuri or Hetero forums at ControversialDoll, for example, you won't find many people complaining that the girls are being exploited. Oh, indeed, quiiiite the opposite. ^^

But it is true that the Yuri threads are outnumbered by the Yaoi threads, even on ConDoll; this definitely reflects a more common community desire to sexualize male dolls rather than females, but by no means an absolute one.

To help set your speculation on a firmer path: Perhaps the reason that so many folks in the BJD community aren't turned on by Hot Girl-Girl Action, is because that material is more often the aegis of the straight male world of mainstream erotica. I.e. Girls Gone Wild, i.e. *yawnsville* to a community whose majority is female. Perhaps that's where your "exotic hot sexy mysterious" slant comes in, and also may help explain why so many people here are more comfortable sexualizing a male than sexualizing a female.

 

The harem S/M was what made me stop looking at that. Yes there is a lot of fluff, but before the rules were changed to allow only tasteful things there was a bit more kink as you may expect.

Now that there are other places for it to go, it goes.

 

I'm actually not very fond of S&M stuff myself, but my LJ's friendslist is pretty wide and varied. I have to say that I have seen a lot of people with crossdressing dolls on my friendslist, but not a lot of them are actually into S&M.

What I find more likely is that when people dislike S&M, the impression is more likely to stick in our heads, so we tend to assume there's more than there really is being posted. I know I tend to remember S&M dolls more vividly but when I actually think to count how many I've seen since 2005 on this forum, it's not actually as much as it seems.

 

Well this topic was really something. The comments are brilliant. As an female artist who happens to draw very 'girly' boys and plans to dress up my bjd the same way. I've always been asked why as if I was the only person who'd do this. Or has. But I'm not it's been done before in the past and is even being done know in real life. (we just call it emo, goth,glam rock. Not that I have any thing bad to say about it. I'm into really pretty emo boys.)Why I dress them up this way is I like to. To me it seem that the world has said boy must be rock hard and show not sign of softness. Why? I mean most men are sweet, kind, fun, etc. but don't/can't show that soft side of them selfs. So I as an artist am showing it in my art... (ok so maybe I didn't have to go as far as putting a boy in a girl dress.) But what can I say I read Shakespeare,manga, look at anime, and think it's kinda hot. (What's crazy is that I have girl friends that agree with on my last point.) At the end of the day I love to see what was it... someone said "how far I can go before people say WTF" or better yet I like the science of the mind and body. To take that and blur the lines a little. It's not like nature hasn't done it...Don't know where I going with this know... I like my pretty boys.

That didn't really explain anything did it? Oh well that was my two cents

 

Too right-- that stuff is VIVID, so of course it'll stick in the popular mind. In this way, it's all too easy for a deviation to be perceived as the norm by a mainstream that doesn't understand it. There's really not all that much kink floating around here, but boy, when you see it, you can't un-see it. ;; I mean: How many of you anime-fans out there have tried to explain anime to a Mundane, only to have them say, "Oh yeah, that's that Japanese stuff with the big tits & tentacles, right?" And I shouldn't even have to ask if anybody has ever been pre-discriminated-against as a Crazy Doll Person, because of the perceptions of those by the mainstream.

Yes indeed-- and once those rules changed, hallelujah that there IS a happy welcoming place for it to go, too, & out of the general public's hair. ^^ The question I hear voiced lately, now that the scene is so much bigger, is whether or not even the general girly-boy content should get lumped in with the rest of the "Inappropriate For 13+" content. That kind of stylistic discrimination is still widely [thankfully] viewed as unacceptable (and unnecessary)... because then you'd have to disallow pictures of girls wearing pants or children playing dress-up. Those queeny skimpy harem-jewelry-and-Jrocker-outfits are no more Inappropriate than the halter-dresses people put on their boobarific Unoa girls without sanding the nipples down first.

No, I hear you! Somebody else in this debate, way back, once brought up the proposition: "If you're going to make a guy THAT feminine, sheesh, why not just get a girl doll?" The reply was: "But then it'd wouldn't be an incredibly queeny boy doll, which is special. It'd just be a girl."

While many people turn their noses up at those who push the envelope, & seek shock value for its own sake, there is a lot to be said with doing things just because you can. I think you should keep blurring those lines until people go WTF. I like it when art makes me go WTF.

 

I also go to convention and have a slight distaste for Yaoi- mostly its popularity annoys me like pokemon or beanie babies.

I feel like I could be narrow minded, not be normal too. I supose I just dont find it, or at least rarely find it acttractive to make a male a female, or super girly. I supose mostly because I feel like, and please dont get angry with me, but I think its just a way to get attention. You can flame me, but I think there are people who just crave any attention, for example when someone calls their doll a "whore" or "slut" as if they really are those, and do just want to be like that for attention, sometimes will admit that too. Those words are so degrading to start with, and to want your dolls being that way too? Or even saying they just are that way. (Maybe it does stem from fantasy or being unable to do it yourself for fear of what people think?) This is what annoys me about it. It annoys me even more when humans are the same way. I feel like everyone has choice and is in control of how they, or their dolls act. But, everyone is different, thats life. It is my personal opinion. I will admit I can be a hypocrit about this too though, for example I love the anime "Loveless", and the brotherly love of the twins from "Ouran Host Club". I love sort of girly asian boys to, but when they get more girly then me- it starts to annoy me again (gotta love how deep rooted in it is our society to man up). I do like it when males seem to "feel" I think a big part of it is also in defiy-ing our own society where boys arnt suposed to cry, or show feelings. making them a bit feminine makes them more personable.

With that said- I had my own boy fall for a very girly-boy. I never thought I would have a gay boy, Even though it was hard for me to understand my boy falling for another boy. Because of my own personal prefernces, I saw a genuine love between them and they had to be together. I looked for an andro-body ( boobs sanded) because even though he was a male, he was girly, and didnt seem to be defined by a gender to begin with other than the fact his head mold was male. However after getting to know her better, she wanted to be more female. In the end, the girly boy became a girl because it ultimatly suited her personality better.

sorry its slightly off topic-

 

Goodness Cornstarch, I have to admit, your post is rather hypocritical. You believe that yaoi and creating feminine boys are just a way of getting attention. But you like Loveless and Ouran Host Club, which is pretty up there when it comes to feminine boys and Yaoi. Do you see yourself as attention seeking then, since you're fans of these things?

I have to admit that the workings of other people's minds are very much beyond me, which is why I sometimes feel compelled to ask blunt questions. Sorry for the OT, but I really am curious.