Misandry – by Cedar Sanderson
When did it become ok to abuse men? I am a mother, and a daughter, and although I have no biological brothers, I have those who I am proud to boast as ‘brother’ to me. I have a beloved man who shares my life. I was, as a child and an adult, abused by men, but that does not poison the men whom I love and trust. In fact, I would rely on all of them to protect me should I need it. I won’t risk them having to do that through my foolishness, though. I maintain situational awareness, and keep in mind that which can be used as a weapon in a pinch.
But stepping outside myself, I see so much in the media and online that targets men as though they were animalistic creatures unable to curb their least impulse. When did this become acceptable? Men are fallible, but so also are women. Men, it seems these days, are a lot more patient than women. They bow their heads and endure the abuses and discrimination, even though they are certainly bigger and stronger than the waspish females who berate them for their perceived lacks. Foolish twits. If the men really wanted to do what you accuse them of, they would. In other cultures, they do, because they can, and you applaud those cultures-thinly-veiled-as-religions.
Bloggers are calling out the recent mass murderer as hate crimes against women, but there is a pattern of the same thing, women against men, which receives no media. Links here. “I mean, like, one guy totes magically means all men think it’s OK to kill women who reject them and it totes wasn’t mentally ill at all, but multiple incidents of women doing the same, somehow we understand that’s not representative of a pattern. Funny how that works.”
Women abusing men? Yes, it is a thing. This video went viral this week (or at least that is when I saw it).
It might seem to be something as age-old as the boys-against-girls schoolyard games we all took part in. But it is as snidely dismissive as this list of quotes (which I pulled from a blog, here)
- “I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.” – Robin Morgan, Ms. Magazine Editor
- “To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.” -– Valerie Solanas
- “I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.” — Andrea Dworkin
- “Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” — Susan Brownmiller
- “The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men.” — Sharon Stone
- “In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.” — Catherine MacKinnon
- “The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.” — Sally Miller Gearhart
- “Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience.” – Catherine Comins
- “All men are rapists and that’s all they are” — Marilyn French
- “Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.” — Germaine Greer.
Closer to home, literary women, who turn a blind eye to the reality that they are outnumbering their male colleagues increasingly, while shrilling that they are oppressed.
“Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?” “They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.’”
Margaret Atwood, Writing the Male Character (1982) (Quote from this blog)
Fail Burton collected the following and shared them below this blog post.
2014 SFWA awards attendee and writer Sunil Patel: “Curious: how many of you refuse to watch/read something if it’s about Yet Another Straight White Man?”
Reply from SFWA member and Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “Same is true of books. I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.”
Reply from SFWA member, co-editor of Long Hidden, and review editor at Publisher’s Weekly Rose Fox: “Alas, my job doesn’t let me refuse.”
*
SFF author and Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “Just read another call from a white man about the need for ‘nuance’ rather than shrill ranting.”
Reply from SFF fan and blogger Jenny Thurman: “as if they’d know ‘nuance’ if they tripped on it”
Reply from Kate Elliott: “nuance is when we are complaining about what they don’t want us to complain about.”
(Here is the post by SFF author Richard Morgan they are talking about:)
*
Consulting editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden at Tor Books, the largest publisher of SFF in English: “Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male.”
- Tempest Bradford: “Just… Fuck all you white dudes wagging your finger at the community on twitter. It’s not like most of you are helping. Sit your asses down”
*
Nebula and Hugo Award nominee Charles Stross: “angry old white men are angry, old, white, and male.”
NY Times No. 1 best-selling SFF author, Phillip K. Dick nominee Sean Williams on who wrote the Dave Truesdale SFWA petition: “A disgruntled white guy, of course.”
*
Blog post by the then president of the SFWA John Scalzi: “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.”
*
Blog post by the then president of the SFWA John Scalzi: “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.”
*
SFWA member and past official Jim Hines racially profiling a photo of white people consisting of past, present, and future WorldCon chairs: “After all, some white dude explained to me the other week that sexism and racism in fandom ended decades ago!” and “Someone probably just messed up the ‘White balance’ setting on the camera.”
*
SFWA member Charles Stross on Boston bombing before suspects ID’d: “my money is on crazy white guys with a political axe to grind: the provisional wing of the Tea Party.”
*
SFF author, Tor.com blogger, and ReaderCon fantastic literature convention panelist Alex MacFarlane: “I suspect the ability to push boundaries and not cause hurt requires the pusher to not be a middle class white straight man.”
*
SFWA member, NY Times best-selling author and writer for Marvel Comics Marjorie Liu: “White male privilege cares ONLY about white male privilege, and there is no goal except maintaining that position of power.”
SFF blogger, Foz Meadows: “…white patriarchy. …man, does it get into everything.”
*
SFWA member Sunny Moraine: “Well-educated white dudes with a lot of opinions and just enough smarts to think they have it all figured out make me so goddamn tired.”
Hugo and Nebula nominated author Saladin Ahmed: “I know that the Clarke shortlist (British SF Award nominees) is all male. Looks like it’s all white, too? Does that just go without saying?”
What happens if we changed every word for “Male” above to a female equivalent? Is that still ok, HMmmm?
No? But it’s ok for you to compare men to a bowl full of M&Ms, ten percent of which are poisoned, and ask why you’d still keep eating the candy? Are you not listening to yourselves?
Laurie Penny writes: “But if you think for one second, for one solitary second, that demanding tolerance for men as a group, that dismissing the reality of violence against women because not all men kill, not all men rape, if you think that’s more important than demanding justice for those who have been brutalised and murdered by those not all men, then you are part of the problem. You may not have pulled the trigger. You may not have raised your hand to a woman in your life. But you are part of the problem.”
I know not all women are like you. Thank goodness. I have dear friends who are women. You make all feminists look bad, my dear. I won’t take less than equality: you only want supremacy. No wonder men hate and fear you, you are the epitome of all that is wrong with the neo-feminist movement, and if you don’t stop, take a deep breath, and GROW UP, then you might just get what you are crying about. Not from men, but from those of us who are proudly female and proud to be mothers, wives, and sisters. Trust me, honey, women are the deadlier of the species. The men who won’t hit you are related to women who will use every dirty trick not found in the book.
And that would be a tragedy for all of us, male and female.
According To Hoyt 
◾“To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.” -– Valerie Solanas
Ah, gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘rage against the machine.’
So, when she has sex, would that be a “rage f**k”? (runs)
That would imply that we’re actually human. Can’t have that.
Interestingly the Universal Robotics Walking Dildo 9000 was one of the most popular consumer products of 2157 …
Physical violence by women against men has to be marginalized, just like Black on White hate crimes have to be swept under the rug. The narrative requires that one group is always the victim and the other group is always the villain.
One need look no further than news stories about female teachers having sex with their male underage students–how often is that described as sexual abuse or pedophilia? There is a smirking acceptance of a thirty year teacher having sex with a sixteen year old student.
In fact, if you look at the way sex between adults and minors is shown in the media, only one of the combinations–male adult and female child–is considered a heinous act.
Stories about adult males and boys are usually spun to manufacture consent and make the real villain not the pedophile but the homophobic parents who should be more accepting of their child’s “relationship” with an older man.
#YesAllBoys are at risk, too–the difference is that the culture is on the side of the abusers.
I had to convince someone in my life that what happened to him when he was 8 and the female babysitter was 16 was a horrible thing, not a jumpstart on his sex life. Yes, our culture is warped in this way.
There are those who passionately defend a child abuse victim having to pay years of child support to the abuser.
Which is disgusting.
Ugh– I saw that and was shocked.
I can’t believe someone would leave their flesh and blood with a known child rapist.
Too young to know better, which is why it’s child abuse. It’s the boy’s parents who ought to sue. Assuming they live in a civilized state where you can terminate parental rights on the ground the child was conceived in rape.
As best I know, all states allow that as grounds; there are a few states that have it automatically.
The rub is on if the rapist will have to pay for the child or not.
Link on that one? I must have missed that story somewhere along the line.
Has happened a couple of times, an adult woman rapes a teen boy and gets pregnant, and they leave the baby with the rapist, and later when the rapist applies for public assistance the father of the child is dinged for support of the baby.
Rape is evil.
Abandoning a kid with a rapist because one parent was a rapist is also evil.
I was just wondering if this was something recent or not.
Seems to be picking up these days, yes, but that may be a result of male-child-rape being more acceptable and/or common.
Greeeeeeeat.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-12-22/features/9612220045_1_pay-child-support-child-support-behalf
from ’95.
There is a logic to it– why should fathers who were 16 with a 16 year old mother-of-the-child be required to pay child support, when 16 year olds with a 20-something (or older) mother of the child not be?
If they did not use their parental rights to save their child, they clearly think their rapist is an acceptable mother for the child, and the kid should not be punished for having a criminal mother.
The problem being–THEY’RE ABANDONING BABIES WITH RAPISTS.
Yeah, but that whole “age of consent” thing has to kick in at some point. I mean, if he’s not old enough to consent to the relationship legally in the first place, he’s hardly old enough to “fight” for his parental rights.
Of course, in Georgia, 16 is the age of consent, so it would be irrelevant. I also realize that you’re not necessarily condoning such logic. 🙂
A friend of mine is a child of rape; the idea of her being abandoned with the nothing that raped her mother, just because the sexes were reversed…. I’m incoherent.
Not QUITE as bad as the notion she should’ve been killed for it, but getting there.
Understood.
<= big fan of, with due process, removing all visitation rights from rapists and still requiring them to pay child support until and unless the child is adopted into a family where the victim is not a member, either sibling, grandchild or parent.
Yeah, I’m down with that.
It’s kind of like how various states have lower ages for marriage without parental consent.
Implicitly, if you are leaving the child you are responsible for with the rapist, you are saying it was effectively licit sex without a license. Like a 16 year old marrying a 30 year old with parental permission.
Child support is for the kid, not for the rapist; if you left the kid with the rapist, then you’re saying you’re OK with that. (whoever has authority over the rape victim ‘you’)
Do you really think that the courts would take away a woman’s baby just because the conception involved statutory rape by her? Fat chance. Or are you arguing for vigilantism?
As a matter of fact a rapist’s parental rights are relatively easily terminated, the question of if they have to pay child support is what causes conflict.
The issue is the male rape victim’s parents pretending the child is not their grandchild– the dehumanization of the baby.
I read your exchange and i think there is just one little thing you are overlooking. Regardless of colloquial or rational definitions of the word, most of these women are not legally rapists.
In the eyes of the law rape is attempted or completed penetration since these women used their vaginas, which do not penetrate, their victims were not raped.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.44.040
Not correct, although frequently claimed.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.44.073
Then the law is wrong.
What, you think court would have any trouble enforcing the law?
As a matter of fact, yes.
Having just read The Story of Jim… I’m afraid I have to agree with bearcat. I’ve heard way too many stories similar to that one; family court, as far as I can tell, has common-sense detectors built in alongside the metal detectors at the entrance of the courtroom. They’ve heard of this concept and they want nothing to do with it.
My comment had a little thing called irony in it.
Whoops, I missed your irony completely. Sorry ’bout that. Lack of tone of voice in written text, etc., you already know the drill so I won’t elaborate.
I’ve read opinion pieces that say that it is anti-woman and “slit shaming” to criticize adult women for having sex with underage boys. Can you imagine what that says to the victims of female on male sexual abuse? “What happened to you was a woman’s self-expression–the damage done to you doesn’t matter.”
I have to say that if that’s a typo, it’s brilliantly vulgar, and so apropos. Yes, and a million times yes. Culturally we have been eating our young, telling boys they are of no value, and need to be drugged and abused into submission in school and out of it. We must stop that before more damage is done.
Culturally we have been eating our young, telling boys they are of no value, and need to be drugged and abused into submission in school and out of it. We must stop that before more damage is done.
And should we not stop we will find that we have raised a generation of young men who believe what they have been taught about themselves: that they are animals. While some may have the fortune to discover that they can be gentlemen, not beasts, and have fortitude to ‘go against the flow’, many, if not most, will starting acting on that assumption. Everyone looses.
Chivalry – an unseen prop of our modern civilization – is a two-way street. Without it, madness and death. But they can’t, or won’t, see it.
PUA are merely taking feminists at their word about the oppressiveness of chivalry.
I can’t agree. PUA is the most petulant way possible of responding to a woman’s request not to be singled out for chivalry. It’s not necessary for a man to do any more than treat her as an individual soul of equal worth with himself. The choice is not a stark one between “treat her like a fragile, limited princess” and “treat her like a disposable object.”
It’s modern feminism for guys.
Said with full disgust.
Look at the male homosexual “scene” and tell me the PUAs are treating women significantly differently.
And yes, I know that the “scene” I’m referring to is a minority of homosexual men. PUAs are an even smaller subset of nominally straight men.
In many ways PUAs ARE treating women as equals.
Still not buying it. It doesn’t help to treat women as equals if what that means is “all people are objects to me, whether male or female.” It’s a sick, subhuman way to live, and there’s nothing about it that says “turnabout’s fair play” to me. But to the extent that some gay men act like the PUA crowd, I agree it’s the same problem. The gay men of my acquaintance don’t act that way, or obviously they wouldn’t be of my acquaintance.
What does it matter whether it helps? It is unquestionably equal, which was the purported goal.
‘this is not chivalry, and never has been. The proper term for that little bit of nonsense is “patronizing”.’
Too often it’s bundled; to many who practice chivalry, patronization is the flip side. For what it’s worth, it’s far less prevalent a problem now than when I was young. I’m just not eager to see it return.
I have a serious confusion here. First, since when are individual women “singled out for chivalry”? and second, how is chivalrous behavior equivalent to “treat her like a fragile, limited princess” ?
How is it different? And perhaps I should have said “subjected to the fragile princess treatment whether she welcomes it or not.”
Chivalry is a weighted term, but many modern men take it as courteous deferment in social situations: Opening doors, ladies first, courteous address, etc.
These are not because women are fragile, or incapable, but because boys are boisterous and men should learn the vital lesson of restraint. Properly taught, and properly executed, they are not a comment on a woman’s weakness or ‘royal’ nature, but are the social expression of a man’s restraint and respect for women.
That they are often treated as an insult frays those self-imposed bonds and tosses sand in the gears of polite interaction. Particularly since the observant will note that this restraint is practiced between men, as well. Men (civilized men) do not frequently jostle for superiority at each doorway, or treat strangers with casual disregard, or address each other impolitely. Where they do, violence simmers below the surface and tension is high.
These are aspects of how men deal with their environment, biology, psychology and wiring. That women are not dealt with as men on these terms is a positive aspect of society and is not a matter of ‘equality.’
I wrote a story Go Tell The Spartan, which was what happened when men could have babies. (Okay, they were no longer men, but you know what I mean) I was groping for something, not sure what. I understood last night.
Chivalry, looking after “their own” is a male drive as profoundly seated as the female drive to have children. This is of course statistical and general, not individual. Some individuals might not have either, but the genders as a whole have those drives. The male drive to protect is derived from the male drive to POSSESS which yes, in our primitive days WAS er… savage. But chivalry tamed it into “protect.”
To deny males the right to protect those they love is the same as denying women their uniqueness as child bearers. I believe it is a psychological cancer that will destroy the foundations of civilization which is based in turning “possess” to “protect.”
Hm. This is an interestimg line of reasoning. I’ve thought about the protective instinct and social interaction, as well as species functions. I’ve even looked at the related chivalrous behaviors in the past, though I’d say my analysis was probably tainted by the modern interpretations.
But lately my focus has been on raising boys to be functional men in a civil society, I don’t think I’ve given enough conscious consideration to the male need to protect.
Which is silly, because it drives character motivations in some of my stories. I think I’ve dismissed a natural understanding which has played out in my writing without conscious forethought. Hm.
And now I think you’ve thrown a nuance wrench in my Baen story and I’ll have to pay attention…
I can’t answer your question, because I obviously don’t understand your interpretation of the phrase, “treat her like a fragile, limited princess”. You need to explain what that means to you for any kind of meaningful response from me.
“Opening doors, ladies first, courteous address”–Oh, you know, if chivalry didn’t involve a lot more than that, no controversy would ever have developed. The problem, when there is one (which is not always), is a tendency to shield women from the full force of life in all kinds of ways, which in itself would be fine except that too often the corollary is to conclude that women are too much of a pain to have around in all kinds of contexts because you have to protect them all the time. The price tag tends to be hidden, and to get sprung after the fact instead of negotiated up front, and some women wish the whole business would go away quietly. It’s very slightly like the problem of dating, where there are guys who make a big deal of insisting on paying for everything, but then complain they didn’t get their money’s worth. Who needs the “generous” transaction if it’s just a trap? Which it isn’t always, of course; lots of men are just trying to be courteous, but they’re undermined by the manipulative ones, which is the sad way of the world.
I’ll always hold doors and so forth for anyone in my vicinity who looks like he or she could use the help, and I appreciate it when men do the same.
Yeah, that’s why I tossed the ‘weighted’ in there. I think this is something in need of more serious discussion in our society, from all sides. The attitudes resulting from the mess we have no are damaging all parties with little gain.
From my perspective, the duties and responsibilities of men and the absolute necessity of learning and practicing restraint are the fundamental purpose of ‘cross-gender’ courtesies. That they are extended within the gender, for slightly different reasons, does not lessen the lesson, if you will. But these other attitudes, such as you enumerated, can be attendant with the lesson, and that’s problematic.
We must, I believe, sit down and rebuild the culture attendant on gender relations, and build it with modern understanding and expectations taken in to account. This is, of course, a long term project.
😉
The responsibilities of women need to be made plain as well. Social courtesy is the lubricant that reduces friction to a manageable amount.
The only thing I’d hate about going to old-fashioned ways would be the need to wear the full amount of female attire.
“I don’t like how folks observe a basic courtesy” is kinda a sucky reason to object– but rather common.
A LOT of the angst I’ve been in has been because I was being polite in not saying something like ” you are a moron,” and folks insisted on taking that like I’d SAID they are not a moron and were in fact right.
Had Elf read it over; he said– roughly– that if there was expectation of “payment,” then it wasn’t chivalry.
It you only do it for the reward, it’s not manners.
Me: if you’re trying to manipulate folks with manners, then blank you, you’re a rude blanker blanker.
Manipulation means negating manners.
Manipulation means negating manners.
Yes, indeed.
If you only do it for the reward, it not manners.
Absolutely. Reality is that those who use the pretence of manners to manipulate muddy the water. People learn from their experiences. If you run into several young men who you are forced to conclude only treated you with charm and apparent consideration because they had expectations of getting sexual favors then you begin to suspect everyone who treats you well.
In the 1960s as a society we rebelled against the rules. Some of the rules were unnecessary to the grand scheme of things, like ladies wearing hats, gloves and stockings when out into public. Some were necessary for the fabric of society. But, without examining the reasons for the structure thoroughly, we have thrown the baby out with the bath water, are reinventing the social wheel and, having kicked off all the traces, we are now headed for a cliff.
(I shall now have to examine myself, having broken the rules by so mixing my metaphors.)
“This is, of course, a long term project.” Well, for what it’s worth, we’ve actually made considerable progress. Things aren’t the way I remember from my youth, and I for one don’t miss them one bit.
“To deny males the right to protect those they love is the same as denying women their uniqueness as child bearers.”
I have no quarrel with my husband’s urge to protect me; that’s between him and me. Ditto for how other married couples agree to treat each other: nobody’s business but theirs. But it hasn’t a lot of bearing on how my business associates and total strangers should treat me. Consideration and courtesy, yes. Making a big deal of my “special status,” especially when it’s a thinly disguised reason for limiting my access to ordinary human pursuits, no thanks. I always got along just fine with my co-workers by carrying the same burdens, and exposing myself to the same risks, that they did. That way there was no reason for any carping about whether I enjoyed unfair advantages, or they did. We just dealt with each other as independent adults.
Weirdly, no your business associates shouldn’t do that, because there you’re a “business unit” not a woman. Also, presumably they know you. They wouldn’t rush to help you carry something heavy, unless they know you’re sick. And they’d know you’re sick.
So if you’re in your business place, that’s between you and your business associates.
But a stranger?
Look, if society gets to the point that no man gets up for a pregnant lady — and it’s already there — we’re in deep trouble.
Strangers who see you as a woman should accord you particular courtesy because to a stranger the ASSUMPTION you’re weaker is baked in, because you’re a woman, and how we treat the weak determines how civilized we are. It’s the instinctive averting of “she’s weaker, I can exploit her” to “she’s” Or for that matter he’s, in the case of elderly men or very slight men “weaker, I should assist.” It’s their noblesse oblige to open the door for you. It’s your noblesse oblige to say “thank you” even if you didn’t need it. In the same way, it’s your noblesse oblige to rush to help an elderly lady with her groceries, and it’s hers to say thank you. Even if she benchpresses your weight at the gym every morning. Because on appearance, the assumption is that she’s weaker than you, and it’s better for you to help a dozen elderly ladies who don’t need it, than for one who needs it to go ignored. And wise old ladies (and women) know that. This is because when dealing with strangers we go on the broad assumption. People aren’t telepathic.
This is important between strangers precisely because there they can’t know you, and you’re a broad category. Prevent you from doing things? No. But help with the little courtesies that lubricate everyday life? yes. That is civilization.
Women and children first. When a society forgets that, get out. You might save yourself, but the society is doomed — RAH
You keep throwing in these little bits of weirdness. HOW is it “limiting my access to ordinary human pursuits”?
I think you’re using WAY too broad an interpretation of the term, and applying it to things that have no business being included in the definition.
“Because on appearance, the assumption is that she’s weaker than you, and it’s better for you to help a dozen elderly ladies who don’t need it, than for one who needs it to go ignored.”
I don’t disagree with this, either. And it’s not the kind of old-fashioned troublesome chivalry I’m talking about, which is more like “You shouldn’t be offered this job, or this position in a university, because nice girls like you need to be protected from the harsh atmosphere.” Obviously people should offer to help someone who is demonstrably struggling under a physical burden that’s beyond them. Men should help women, strong women should help weaker women, young people should help old people–at least, up to the point where the person being offered the help signals that it’s become intrusive. Because it shouldn’t be about the “right” of someone to offer the help regardless of whether it’s welcome. And it should never be an excuse for exclusion.
Oh. Hey, I was turned down from a job because I intended to have kids SOMEDAY and also because having asked me about my parents in Portugal the twit interviewer decided because I missed them, I’d eventually go back to live. This was a secretarial position, so it’s not like they expected me to retire from it. It was six years before I had kids (and two before I intended to.) That type of thing is silly. Though I wouldn’t offer a woman a position as night guard, because of the way OTHER people would behave. Unless, of course, she were built like a brick sh*thouse or a martial arts expert, in which case I’d offer her the position and she’d be the intruders’ issue. 😛
And it’s not the kind of old-fashioned troublesome chivalry I’m talking about, which is more like “You shouldn’t be offered this job, or this position in a university, because nice girls like you need to be protected from the harsh atmosphere.”
Ok, at least here’s a concrete example, and it shows my last comment was correct, because this is not chivalry, and never has been. The proper term for that little bit of nonsense is “patronizing”.
“I don’t disagree with this, either. And it’s not the kind of old-fashioned troublesome chivalry I’m talking about, which is more like “You shouldn’t be offered this job, or this position in a university, because nice girls like you need to be protected from the harsh atmosphere.”
I believe I had basically the same argument others are having with you before, so I intended to stay out of this one, but then I read this statement. It made me realize that the whole reason we are arguing in the first place is that your definition of chivalry is so completely at odds with the definition the rest of us are using, that we may as well be speaking different languages.
From a standpoint of science (which many feminists claim to believe in) women are, in fact, more important to the survival of the species than men are.
If you have a population composed of equal members men and women and danger threatens having all the men risk themselves to protect the women will allow there to be a next generation roughly equivalent to the one produced by the original population, since one man can impregnate several women. (Granted, genetic diversity will suffer, which is why isolated people groups tend to suffer signs of inbreeding.)
If, on the other hand, equal numbers of men and women risk themselves then the next generation will be greatly reduced. This is where the entire concept of chivalry comes from–men who care about the survival of the human race will treat women as if they are more valuable because they are. It’s simple population biology.
The same argument applies to abortion and gay marriage–those are behaviors that decrease the next generation of human beings (the argument could be made that homosexuals wouldn’t reproduce even if homosexuality wasn’t widely accepted, but I think anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.)
Most left wing ideology can be traced back to a belief that that human race shouldn’t survive. It wears a lot of different masks, but the underlying message is “Save the Earth, kill yourself.”
I am an unashamed speciesist. I am human, and I love the human race. I want us to survive.
If the health care isn’t good enough to make almost positively sure* that the women will survive childbirth, the value of making sure as many women as possible survive goes up.
* interesting thing, at one point I was going through the death stats for a recent year and the number of folks dying from complications of childbirth was slightly higher than the number killed in firearm related accidents. IIRC it wasn’t a statistical jump or drop for either one when I poked around a bit more.
“the argument could be made that homosexuals wouldn’t reproduce even if homosexuality wasn’t widely accepted, but I think anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.”
Oh yeah. In The Symposium, you get the casual statement that homosexual men must be compelled by law to marry and get children. The idea that they were incapable of it was unknown.
It’s amazing the number of creationists you get among SF writers. The sort of people who extrapolate into the future the least fertile sectors of the population growing.
“I was turned down from a job because I intended to have kids SOMEDAY.”
That was one of the first things I heard in a job interview long ago as a sprout: “Why should I hire you when you’ll only get pregnant and quit?” Good times.
“your definition of chivalry is so completely at odds with the definition the rest of us are using, that we may as well be speaking different languages.”
You have a solid point there. Chivalry is quite difficult to discuss for just that reason. Human beings being what they are, even some things that are intended as kindnesses can have a dark side when they morph into a system for putting another group of people in a box, to be treated according to their assigned class characteristics rather than according to who they are. It is sometimes difficult to accept well-meaning gestures of chivalry without taking on the risk of being accused of hypocrisy or ingratitude the next time an issue arises over whether one is being unfairly excluded. “Well, I like that! We’ve been giving you the best seats and carrying your furniture for you, and now you complain that you didn’t get equal consideration for that new job opening.” Do you have any idea how common it used to be for hiring decisions to have been based almost entirely on whether a female applicant was either (1) attractive enough or (2) too attractive? And yet the men involved didn’t necessarily mean anything wrong; they thought it was natural that a woman’s sexual attractiveness, and place in the chivalric order, were the most important things about her–not realizing those were almost entirely their own preoccupations and had very little to do with what was important to her.
Does it seem unreasonable that very many people would act that way, and make the objects of chivalry want to opt out? Perhaps, but it was surprisingly common, and enough vestiges remain to make feminists like myself a bit jumpy.
Do you have any idea how common it used to be for hiring decisions to have been based almost entirely on whether a female applicant was either (1) attractive enough or (2) too attractive?
My understanding is that this still happens, but now it’s the female HR people deciding not to hire someone because she’s too attractive. Not sure about “not attractive enough”. Surrounding themselves with *less* attractive women would enhance their own desirability, so your (1) above might not be an issue anymore.
“Come the revolution we will figure out a way to have some version of male Chivalry for all women as well, so that when they are in positions of power or leadership in gov’t, academia, business, etc., they have already been exposed daily from childhood to the idea that they are not to abuse their new found power over others.”
It’s always a good idea to think about how to resist the temptations of power. I hope no one thinks I imagine this sort of thing is a besetting sin of men in particular. Lots of people get caught in one-up/one-down traps, all having to do with whoever happens to have power at the time.
“so your (1) above might not be an issue anymore.”
Hence my phrase, “used to be.” As I’ve said several times, much of what I’m describing was once much more common than it now is. I remain a little suspicious of old-fashioned chivalry, because returning to it too thoughtlessly risks returning to some of the ugly flipside that used to accompany it. I don’t miss a lot of that stuff, and I don’t mind changing my own flat tires if it means not having to return to it.
Yes, I’m glad that that particular hiring practice isn’t common any more in its original guise, and I’m no happier than you are that it’s cropping up in a new form, only with new victims. It all sucks. Male supremacy doesn’t work, female supremacy doesn’t work. It’s not a question of finding the right sliver of the population and granting them supremacy. No sliver is the right sliver. People should be judged by what they are and do, not by some preconception of their inherent superiority, or for that matter of their inherent inferiority or need for protection.
It has been observed that history is written by the victors, which is generally true. (Except possibly the Jews who insist on keeping their own history which is part of what has endeared them to so many over the centuries – not.)
For example we often hear about how benighted the people were during the middle ages, but if you look carefully this is the result of how the people of the enlightenment made sure you understood that they were soooooo much better than those who came before them.
Or the Russian sponsored schools post World War II which taught the people of the Baltic nations how much better off they were now they under Stalin’s protection and benevolent guidance.
Therefore keep in mind when you consider what we ‘know’ about old fashioned chivalry.
I’m sure you’re right, but I’m describing events during my own life, not propaganda from history books. I don’t need to rely on anyone else’s testimony to teach me what I don’t want to see coming back into fashion. Chivalry is a package deal that some may like; it’s not for me.
Chivalry is a package deal that some may like; it’s not for me.
Of course it wouldn’t be, if you insist on packaging things that aren’t part of it into your definition. But what you’ve been saying is roughly equivalent of saying, ‘I don’t like cars, because some drivers are maniacs.” In fact, it’s also the equivalent of people who want to ban guns because some people use them for nefarious purposes.
There is a definition for the term. You can’t add things to that definition simply because those things happen to have been coincident with it in some people. The words of Humpty Dumpty are not supposed to be taken as a guideline to communication.
I think it’s how she experienced it, which puzzles me a little, because Portugal as you know has a lot of Arabic tradition and what she experienced seems to be closer to that than to “chivalry” as such.
The problem I think is that people putting limits on her told her they were doing it for her own good and out of chivalry. So it’s imprinted that way. Like people who hate marriage because they were told in marriage the husband gets the right to beat you. When something is imprinted that deeply, you can’t uncouple it, but I think very few people went through this anyway.
*Sigh* And I’m not being particularly polite. I need to learn to control my reaction to people who insist on not only defining a word differently from common usage (without explaining this fact to anyone), but also seem to ignore it when other people point this out to them.
I suspect that we are facing a problem of definitions. You appear to place a much wider range of actions under the rubric of chivalry than most of the rest of us. I never mistook patronization for chivalry. Individuals, when called on their action, may have tried to excuse their patronizing or prejudiced behavior as chivalry. They may have even been taught that such actions were chivalrous. This does not make it so.
I am no spring chicken. I can also tell you that the history is being presently rewritten. I have experiences and a family history that contradicts much of what popular and scholastic social history is presenting
On my mother’s side of the family she was the first women in generations not to graduate from a post-high school program. The first few who went to medical school did not have an easy time of it. That was in the late nineteenth century, we are now in the early twenty-first. Momma’s mother was only a nurse, but she did rise to be an officer of rank in the Waves during WWII.
Grandma, who lived in New York City, had grown up in south Georgia, where she was raised by late Victorian/Edwardian maiden aunts. She believed in manners to the day she died and she expected those around her to behave accordingly. She also believed that women could achieve anything they wanted, so long as it wasn’t something silly, like writing their name in the snow as they relieved themselves. She also knew that many things come at a cost, often to be able to do one thing will mean that you cannot do another. You have to make choices, but that is true whatever gender, race, faith, country (or region) of origin you are.
The Daughter was presented with ‘facts’ in a graduate level anthropology class. The professor held the position that women had not been allowed to enter schools of higher learning until recently and were still having to fight to get in. The professor did not appreciate having her position challenged by our family facts. (The women got even angrier when The Daughter did not agree that all third world countries had no resources. I digress.) The silliest thing? This occurred at a state institution in the southeast that had started as a woman’s college over 100 years ago.
You are mistaken if you think our desire is for some mythical good old days. We know it is a myth, but so are many of the ‘truths’ presented to us now. For example, I do not think that a man holding a door open for a woman constitutes a public pronouncement that the woman is in anyway incapable.
And even in Portugal, as an older culture, and more “against women” in many ways, because of traces of Arab culture (and the Romans were not that great either, in many ways) mom only didn’t go to college because his dad had the bright idea that “all college women are whores.” She had a scholarship for college and she NEVER forgave her dad (though an amount of anti-intellectualism clung to her, I think in justification.)
Now, why did HE think that? Well, his mom had my degree, and she ran away with his dad’s best friend. (And after knowing the details of the case she was UTTERLY right. You can’t live with an evil madman, even if you married him.) BUT my grandfather’s mom must have got her degree in the late 1800s, which “history” tells us didn’t happen.
BTW, by the time I was of age to go to college, he’d come to terms with his prejudice and was very supportive, insanely proud, and paid for my student uniform and cloak.
“You can’t add things to that definition simply because those things happen to have been coincident with it in some people.”
“Some people”? Well, it’s always a good idea to avoid generalization when possible. So the idea that women are the natural childrearers because a double-X chromosome and childrearing instincts happen to have been coincident in some people probably should be dusted off and re-examined from time to time, too.
“I never mistook patronization for chivalry.” I never did, either, I only observed that accepting the latter often opened one up to the former. Why do the two get mixed up? Why can some people be honestly generous and others offer only a version of what amounts to a protection racket? Who knows. To be unaware that the issue arises, though, is a real surprise to me.
TX99 I think honestly SOME People used chivalry to control you — but it’s not — TRUST ME — a widespread practice. Might be local or regional, for all I know, but it really doesn’t apply most places. They do try the “it wouldn’t be decent” where I come from as in “it wouldn’t be decent for you to work with a man you’re not married to” (or they did) but that’s not chivalry. That’s the local code of honor.
I’m sorry people corrupted the concept for you. I beg you to believe it’s not a widespread thing.
It was not universal, but by the same token it was not inconsequential. I’ve been around a long time, and seen a lot of things. To this day, there’s a strong, sour note in a lot of public discussions to the effect of, “You feminists will get what you deserve when society collapses and you need our protection again.” It’s a dark side of human nature that there’s no point in denying, even though, as I stress repeatedly, I understand that it was never something that could be attributed to 100% of guys, and it’s better now than it used to be.
In some ways chivalry is just a little like affirmative action, something that we should all know should be carefully considered before it’s embraced. It can very easily come back to bite the recipients.
…it’s better now than it used to be.
You’ve said this multiple times. I have to finally say, “No, it’s worse now than it used to be, because the entire concept is being destroyed by feminists.”
OMFG of course there is that note. And yes, that’s exactly what they’re courting with their misandria.
Look, you can say what you want — men are physically stronger. In times of danger, confusion and destruction, we DO need them.
Actually this is true for EVERYTHING relating to what is going on in Western society, like minorities screaming they want not equality but supremacy. They’re only getting away with it, because western society is self-consciously “nice” — if pushed past that, we’ll get a pendulum swing no one wants.
WHAT do you want them to do? Ignore reality? The lunatics that Cedar quoted are courting JUST that pendulum swing. this is NOT a threat, it’s a WARNING. Heed it. You don’t want that? Control them, not the men (and women) calling alarm.
I want to make clear what I’m saying here, lest it be misunderstood:
1- I’m not saying women and minorities shouldn’t have civil rights.
2- For women and minorities to get civil rights, they need to persuade a majority of men/majority people to grant them.
3- Number 2 is not optional. Most men are stronger than most women. En Masse, men are stronger than women, period. IF a majority of men wanted us in the house, barefoot and pregnant, that’s where we’d be. The minority of men standing with us would have no shot. Ditto if all white people wanted minorities to shut up and go away, they’d do so.
4- What rights we have and what rights we retain are contingent on our acting rationally and rationally convincing the majority that our having these rights is what’s best for EVERYONE.
5- Fantasies about a queer future, a colored future, a female future, a purple poka dotted future are just that. The majority is the majority and rumors of its demise are mostly tricks of statistics. The same with relative physical strength of men and women. If it came to a show down and men didn’t fight with both hands tied behind their backs, we’d be toast.
6- but we have intellectual/mental/moral/legal power. All that and $3 will buy you a cup of coffee. Yeah, you do. BUT you have that power because men/majority are convinced it’s best for them for you to have them (i.e best for society as a whole.) They’re also convinced this is the moral/rational thing to do.
7-This means every time those arguing on behalf of women and minorities are PATENTLY AND INSANELY NON-RATIONAL and display the delusion that they can get what they want by force and that, btw, what they want is supremacy, they make it more likely a majority of men/majority race/ethnicity/culture will decide that “these people are neither moral nor rational.”
8- If that happens, we’re toast. No, there can be no reprieve, and this is not a well-meaning fantasy like the idea that civilization could collapse and women not need men. This is not a fantasy or wish casting. THIS IS REALITY. Men are stronger than women and minorities can be overpowered by majorities. Fact of life. Period.
9- If you disagree with the above, you don’t merely have a philosophical quibble with opponents. You are at war with reality. Reality isn’t fair. Reality sucks. Reality is not how things “should” be — nor how I’d like them to be — but reality IS and it always wins. Reality is a stone-cold bitch.
10- Therefore it behooves those of us who are in the minority/weaker position and who think that we should have civil rights to argue persuasively and MORALLY and to convince men/the majority that we deserve this as human beings, and that as human beings we can contribute more if we’re granted these rights. This means that we have to be persuasive and sane. And we have to keep in mind we can’t impose our will by force, and barring a highly specialized disaster, supremacy isn’t in the cards. Pushing it is a good way to end up in the kitchen, or in a burka. And the same with pushing unreasonably or violently.
Perhaps I missed this point having been made — I lack time to review all comments. But it is worth considering that chivalry was not, not simply a code for the protection of women. At its core it was a philosophy about self-restraint by the strong. It taught that strength (a limited resource for us all, in that almost all of us will spend time lacking sufficient of it) should not be used for personal benefit but for the protection of others — females, yes, but also children (which all of us were), the elderly (which all of us hope to be) and for men of lesser strength. Chivalry asserts that strength is not a blessing to be employed for personal benefit but for the benefit of the family and the community.
Chivalry is, at its core, a philosophy about self-restraint and about helping others.
Does that mean that at all times and in all places Chivalry lived up to that measure? No more than Religion or Government have in all times and all places been forces for benevolence. Leave us please not throw out the baby with the bath … speaking of which: ought we consider banning Motherhood, given the incidence of bad mothers over human history?
What Texan99 has decried was never Chivalry even if those practicing it claimed it was, anymore than McDonalds’ primary product is a hamburger (for the imagination impaired: in my eye should be perceived an ironic twinkle.)
[cough]
Strike: chivalry was not, not simply a code
Insert: chivalry was not, not, simply a code
Odd error as my normal tendency is to over comma, although theere was that time during the Great Comma Shortage of ’96 when I was forced to resort to breaking semi-colons in half and disposing of the excess periods through ellipses …
What do I want men to do, knowing that they’re physically stronger? The same thing I want anyone to do who has a natural advantage: look to his ethics, offer help to the less fortunate freely if at all, and keep in mind the need for mutual respect even between people of sharply different abilities. Which is another way of saying, don’t let something like chivalry get too mixed up with something like patronization, which is a natural temptation.
This discussion has been going on for a long time, but I can’t remember anyone advocating supremacy so far. The revulsion for the supremacy approach seems to be one of the few points of 100% agreement here.
It’s in the post.
“It’s in the post.” Well sure–the post is about how awful the misandry/supremacy is. And I think the comment board is pretty unified in its agreement.
What I meant is that it behooves us to keep them in control — men can’t, not without swinging the other way.
But I also think your claim that if things go south we won’t need men to protect us is a claim of disconnect with reality. I’m sorry, weaker men will need stronger men to protect them, too. If we break the bonds of nobless oblige and it’s everyone for themselves, either we have death wishes, or we have magical vaginas…
I didn’t mean to suggest that realistically women would not need men to protect them in a societal collapse–or even in today’s world, frankly. My point was only that there’s an ugly strain of male-female relations that causes some men to crow over this reality, and to predict gleefully that uppity women will be sorry one day. It’s not the respectful relationship I’d like to see between two groups, one of which has a certain advantage. No group has a complete or permanent advantage over any other, and even if they did, a crowing dominance is not a good way to behave. Unfortunately, people are not perfect, and not everyone who enjoys a power advantage can be counted on to exercise it well. Even some people who are trained in chivalry as a means of curbing their basest instincts will give into the temptation to couple it with patronization; I’m sorry about that, but in my view it’s inescapable human nature. Some of us, such as myself, are uncomfortable with the price tag of conventional chivalry, knowing this human tendency.
I would be sorry if anyone thought I was trying to insult the chivalrous. I hold in high regard the willingness to stand in solidarity with someone who’s being mistreated. But any social contract of protection is fraught with difficulties in a world where too many people are engaged in one-up/one-down games, and I don’t see the point of denying the difficulties.
“ … any social contract of protection is fraught with difficulties in a world where too many people are engaged in one-up/one-down games, and I don’t see the point of denying the difficulties.”
Well shucks, let’s just reject all social contracts, then. O know of none that is not fraught with difficulties.
Or perhaps a more nuanced recognition of trade-offs require we not focus solely on “difficulties” while ignoring positive aspects. Making the perfect the enemy of the good typically leaves us “enjoying” the worse.
I guess at this point my question is: What is an acceptable price to pay to inculcate in the strongest and most dangerous members of society a sense of respect and duty to those less powerful than they, and to turn some instincts to a duty to protect?
I’m not sure a few arseholes with a tendency to patronize is sufficient reason to scrap concepts designed to foster restraint. Particularly when those patronizing tendencies are widely panned by the supporting culture.
My point was only that there’s an ugly strain of male-female relations that causes some men to crow over this reality, and to predict gleefully that uppity women will be sorry one day. It’s not the respectful relationship I’d like to see between two groups, one of which has a certain advantage.
I pull this quote because it’s illustrative of the problems that arise on both sides of the male/female dynamic in the absence of a system of restraint. The behaviors of ill-raised men are not the only consequence of the destruction of chivalrous systems, women bear blame as well. And I have significant concerns for the direction of our society when I see women verbally abusing and physically assaulting men, because this is not a tenable position. Nor is crowing about no longer needing men.
A chivalric system of some form, one with modern adjustments as I noted previously, would remove the crowing and the reason for the crowing and take us much closer to a respectful relationship.
Listen, I understand you have personal experiences that have informed your opinions, and that you have dealt in a very personal way with the negatives of a patronizing system. I make no call for a return to such absurdity.
But I have personal experiences as well, of the consequences of a feminism run wild while enjoying the restraint of men. Does that sound patronizing? I hope not, because the restraint of men is key. I have been shouted at for holding a door. I have been harangued about equal pay working side by side with a female cook who made more than I did, and who then asked me to lift the heavy bucket for her. I have seen a woman lay hands on a man and bodily shove him about. Each of these behaviors empowered by a skewed belief about feminism and equality. And each of these only possible because of the restraint of men.
These experiences give me a somewhat different view than yours, and because I know something of men, and something of the difference in instinct in confrontation, I have concerns.
A bit laden with the burdens of it Time, but a useful point — perhaps more so in this day of Interwebz argumentz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbWCjQ5L0ZY
As Oliver Cromwell plead: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”
I’m comfortable in the certainty that I have been wrong before, and I will be wrong again. Having no doubt removes a degree of stress.
I don’t suggest that self-restraint by the strong as an ideal should be scrapped. Nor do I suggest that all social contracts that incur a cost be scrapped. I do think that it’s completely reasonable for a group of people to decide that a trade-off doesn’t work well for them, and to decline it, even if the deal is intended to be benevolent. Adopting the benefits of a protected position also entails adopting a dependency; not everyone thinks it’s worth it. It should be possible for some of the proposed protegees to decline, without their proposed benefactors taking it personally, or concluding that generosity as a concept is under attack.
Most of us have experience in our lives of opportunities for accepting what amounts to charity, and with the double-edged sword such an opportunity can be. It ill behooves anyone to insist that someone else should accept charity. Kindnesses should be offered, not imposed; if it’s necessary to impose a kindness, or to criticize anyone for declining it and bearing the consequences of doing without, maybe we should re-examine our premises.
I get that many here think there is no important tradeoff involved in acquiescing in a chivalrous system. It’s not necessary to agree; none of us is entitled to decide that issue for another. I’m certainly not demanding that anyone else decline chivalry. I’ve only tried to explain why I’m not comfortable with it. What a surprising response this has been.
Is it your contention then that Chivalry, as a code of male self-restraint, is yours to accept or reject? Certes, a chivalrous man would not force you to accept the benefits of his restraint, nor would he eschew such restraint on account of your rejection of such benefits. An unchivalrous man, of course, would not actually be offering you any benefits for his supposed social contract, nor denying benefits upon your rejection — either way you are being played.
Ultimately, of course, for either man, it is not about you.
I’m certainly not demanding that anyone else decline chivalry. I’ve only tried to explain why I’m not comfortable with it. What a surprising response this has been.
Except that what you have been saying you are not comfortable with is not what others are talking about, yet you are using the same name.
If someone told you they don’t like mint chocolate chip ice cream, and you asked them why, and they complained that they don’t like the parsley in it, would you simply accept that explanation, or would you try to explain that mint chocolate chip ice cream doesn’t have parsley in it? And if they then told you that it’s because some people add parsley to it that they don’t like it, would you then say, “Ah! I see why you don’t like mint chocolate chip ice cream now.”, or would you continue to try to explain to them that what they are rejecting the product for is not a part of the product?
If you would agree that they are perfectly valid in their rejection of the base product because of what some people add to it after the fact, then that would at least explain a lot about your points in this thread.
If a man is only restraining himself from using his superior strength to do something wrong, then of course it’s not up to me, nor would it occur to me to presume to object. If I am being offered special favors, however, in a situation where the favors mark me as separate from others (as in a workplace), or under circumstances where the normal social expectations imply that I’ve taken on a reciprocal obligation (as in the dating context), then of course it’s up to me whether to accept. It’s very much like affirmative action, and carries many of the same risks for the recipient.
I wonder if you can imagine what it’s like to have this kind of traditional special treatment thrown in one’s face. How many jokes did we grow up with about how women claim to want to be treated as equal adults, but give them half a chance and they’ll expect you to pick up the tab, or they’ll con you into moving their furniture, or they’ll get in trouble and expect a rescue? Is it so hard to understand that someone might find it important, as far as possible without creating huge scenes and offending people, to make it clear she doesn’t want these things? That she wants to stand on her own feet, make her own living, and be expected as much as any man to help herself and others to the limit of her own strength and ability? Do you really not know that men often are quite touchy about accepting help and favors, or letting other people pay their bills, and that the impulse of self-respect and dependence that spurs them to act this way is an impulse also shared by many women?
I wonder if you can imagine that people can have experiences similar to yours and yet reach a different conclusion? Implicit in your argument is the assumption that others can only disagree with you because they are ignorant or lack imagination.
Most of the examples you offer are either instances when people offered in the guise of chivalry that which is not actually chivalrous (a man paying for dinner is not chivalry, it is the obligation of the host, male or female), or an expression of your own social awkwardness deflected upon another?
Do you really not consider that use of the phrase “do you really not know” is arrogant, condescending and rude? Its employment (along with such phrases as “Is it so hard to understand”) is a rhetorical deployment of multiple logical fallacies? Such arguments are an attempt to deny agency to any demurrer, premised on the idea that their disagreement is only because they are more ignorant or less empathetic than you.
Of course, I s’pose that I will now be instructed that the word “fallacy” is a tool of the patriarchy.
Of course they can have similar experiences and reach different decisions for how they would behave or feel. The idea isn’t that the same experience would force them to agree with me, only that imaginatively putting themselves in my shoes might induce them to accept my decision for myself without so much resentment. They might recall a time when they responded to similar motives, and found them to be ordinary and acceptable human motives, even though a man feels them in one case and a woman in the other.
I hope you will take a fatigued expression like “Don’t you understand” in more of the “cri de coeur” spirit in which it was uttered, rather than condescension, which is indeed obnoxious, and should have been avoided in order to prevent misunderstanding or inadvertent insult. After all, what has this whole exchange been about, but the dangers of well-meaning condescension?
And because the tone put you off, it’s not clear whether you tried the thought experiment I was proposing. That’s a counterproductive way for me to argue. I probably should have gotten a good night’s sleep first!
[W]hat has this whole exchange been about, but the dangers of well-meaning condescension?
I was mostly out of this conversation, having said my bit.
But this line seems to indicate you not only don’t understand what I and others have been saying, there is something in the way you look at the issue that means you won’t understand.
For the historic record, this conversation has not been about well-meaning condescension. The only condescension brought in has been the patronizing attitudes you associate with chivalry. Also, I’ve had no resentment, merely concern that your blanket association matches many others and undermines the social construct.
I’m sorry, there’s something about strength, the human animal and the training thereto which you will not acknowledge, but is key to the discussion as formulated.
“The only condescension brought in has been the patronizing attitudes you associate with chivalry.” Yes, that’s the entire subject of the sub-thread I’ve been participating in here for days. I understand that others don’t associate patronizing or condescending attitudes with chivalry. I’ve been explaining why I do, and why as a result I determined a long time ago to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” I’m hearing in response that I shouldn’t make this connection, but the explanation is lacking. I’m trying to provide information about why I see a connection.
I get why you see the connection. I think everyone here gets why you see the connection. Honestly, I think everyone here is sophisticated enough to have understood the connection before the conversation started.
Two things that I see missing in your expressed understanding (which is not to say they aren’t there):
The connection is not the system, and declining the system as a result of bad actors has serious complications for our society. It is not simply a matter of you opting out. Feminists opting out (regardless of how you may have handled it) have undermined the system, because they opt out via mockery and condemnation.
The ability to opt out of a system of courtesy is entirely dependent upon that system of courtesy. I don’t say this as a threat, or to crow, or in arrogance. I say it because I have been in societies in the absence of such a system.
I would be more comfortable with your argument if you had been arguing for a modification of a chivalric system to account for the tendency to patronize, or for more social consequence for those who patronize despite the dictates of courtesy. All I have seen (please forgive me if I have missed something) is your desire to decline to participate.
To me, that desire indicates a lack of understanding about half of the society, and about power dynamics. The patronizing attitudes you’ve suffered are bleed through. It’s the merest hint of where unrestrained power leads.
You want to opt out of a system that suffers such bleed through, what system do you want to opt in to?
And how do we get there?
You see it, perhaps, as a lesser of two evils: one is unrestrained brutal power dynamics, and the other is a restraint that includes condescension as an unintended but frequent side-effect in relations between the weak and the strong. How would I get to a world in we accepted neither one nor the other, but something better? By trying to persuade people, one at a time, that condescension is neither desirable nor inevitable, and that they should not expect other people to swallow what they would find intolerable themselves. While I’m engaged in that effort, I don’t think I have any choice but to decline the benefits offered by a dominant/dependent relationship, if I don’t think they’re worth the price. It would be like crusading against affirmative action while accepting appointments for which I was unable to compete on the merits: it might be philosophically justifiable, but I could neither live with myself nor reach any audience, because the hypocrisy would drown out any argument I might make.
There will always be power differentials between people, and I believe (as you may believe also, if I understand you) that civilization depends on addressing these realistically. In the nature of things, I often find myself one-up on the power scale in one context or another. Should I assume that I’m entitled to rely on my advantage to force anyone else into a dominant/dependent relationship? I reject it as a strategy, and I’ve always found there’s another avenue open to me that’s consistent with my conscience, with the duty to help my neighbor, and with mutual respect for fellow souls. That being the case, I don’t find that, when I’m one-down on the power scale, as in the case of physical strength, I have a duty to accept a dominant/dependent relationship in order to hold back the barbarians at the gates. It’s possible for men and women to complement each other in their strengths and weaknesses, without condescension on either side. Or at least, so I’ve found in my home life and work. It’s not as though I’d ever had to impose this kind of relationship on anyone; it seemed to work as well for the others as for me. Far from being socially corrosive, it suited everyone directly involved.
I’m afraid we may have to abandon the conversation as lost due to an essential disconnect.
While I understand and largely agree with the idea of advocacy you’ve posited, I’m unclear where the ‘dominant/dependent’ dynamic comes from. You seem to be assuming a dependency inherent in the courtesies, and I see no such thing. Resolving this would likely stretch an already ridiculously long thread to absurdity.
So, I guess we’ll part, and perhaps come at the issue from a different angle at some point in the future.
Well met, and well parted (one hopes).
I trust you appreciate the irony of your decrying binary analysis (“lesser of two evils”) while you insist on a binary interpretation of human relations.
Chivalry does not incorporate such dominant/dependent relationships as you decry — that is a binary analysis that is flawed. Chivalry is premised on personal restraint — not simply for the male but also the female, although common interpretation tends to focus on physical strength, it also entails eschewing psychological and emotional manipulations (an area in which females typically outperform males.) It holds that strength, power of any sort, ought be employed for more than personal short-term benefit.
Somebody’s restraint does not entail accepting a dominant/dependent relationship because establishing such an order is a contradiction of restraint. Rejecting Chivalry based on such a component is akin to rejecting elves because you have known orcs, rejecting ents based on your experience with trolls.
While it might be reasonable to reject the Chivalric Code as an unattainable ideal which invariably corrupts its adherents, you have failed to make that argument. Instead you have attributed to the code a corresponding requirement imposed on you (again, a principle contradictory of Chivalry) and used your projection as cause for rejection.
Of course, if that makes you happy it would be unchivalrous to deny your privilege.
RES: “eschewing psychological and emotional manipulations (an area in which females typically outperform males.” A fair complaint about a stereotypically female strategic response to dominance, and one reason why I decline the whole system.
“Somebody’s restraint does not entail accepting a dominant/dependent relationship”–I agree wholeheartedly that it needn’t, in fact that it is very wrong to link the two, though the temptation is constant. I was responding to the implication that accepting the downside of that particular linkage is an inevitable price we have to pay to prevent the decline and fall of civilization.
Yes, it would contradict the spirit of chivalry to argue that it should be imposed on me. Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? I’m not trying to rob anyone of chivalry if they like it; I just don’t accept it for myself. I find that I do very well without it, and so do all the people who interact with me personally, socially, and professionally. All the people who believe there’s no invariable contamination of chivalry by condescension can very well go right on enjoying the system. Who am I to tell them how to interact with each other if they’re happy?
“I’m not trying to rob anyone of chivalry if they like it; I just don’t accept it for myself.”
If you can accept or reject it, it is not Chivalry.
Chivalry is a code of self restraint, not restraint of or by others. If you and all those with whom you interact eschew self restraint I suspect I would prefer to avoid y’all.
Your argument has been against a straw man.
I think I’ve made it clear I’m rejecting the benefits of a system in order not to be presented with the bill that I associate with it. Others are free to continue to offer the benefits as they see fit, but my decision remains my own. It doesn’t have to be the decision that makes the most sense to you.
Tommyrot. You accept the benefits. They constitute the restraint of people physically, emotionally, psychologically more powerful than you who nevertheless do not use their superior strength to abuse you. How is that something you can reject? You might as well reject the weather.
You reject the bill, but fail to recognise that the bill is a violation of the code, a hypocritical contradiction of the code. Your error is in thinking that bill is part of the package when it is not. It is as if having attended a wedding dinner and being asked to split the tab you reject wedding dinners.
Yes, there is reciprocity involved in the Chivalric Code: all parties ought refrain from bullying, respect the rights of others and not take such restraint for granted.
But on second thought, maybe this is a more sensible way of resolving the argument to our mutual satisfaction: if there’s nothing for me to decline, then I’m not declining anything, and no harm done.
So I incur a debt when someone restrains himself from doing wrong? And since I can’t control his decision to restrain himself, I’ve “accepted a benefit” whether or not I choose it.
Well, it’s a philosophy.
Do you incur a debt when you accept an impersonal gift?
As for accepting a benefit, perhaps derive is more accurate than accept, since your acceptance is irrelevant. You benefit, will-ye or nill-ye. If you do not believe you benefit from a culture of self-restraint, well then, by all means, encourage others to act on their desires unhindered by consequence.
Yes, I thought you might want to reformulate the sentiment once you looked at it in print for a moment. It’s really not a good approach.
“I thought you might want to reformulate the sentiment once you looked at it in print for a moment.”
“Accept a benefit,” “derive a benefit” — the distinction is functionally immaterial in the context used, except some people seem to find it easier to understand one rather than the other. The latter formulation allows beneficiaries to more easily deny their receipt and obviates any duty to consider their benefactors as anything more than suckers.
BTW – if it had escaped your notice, this conversation having hit the right-hand wall, it becomes rather difficult to determine the specific comment you are addressing. For those of us accessing comments via email the reply function is readily accessed for a specific comment, but if you are commenting on “the board” the context becomes lost. You might consider whether your clarity would be desirably enhanced by including in your responses the specific comment you wish to address as a quote your response. Alternatively, clicking the “Notify … via email” would allow you the convenience of the reply function thus provided. Whether or not you accept these options you might find you derive a benefit from their utilization.
Yes. I’m not sure why–maybe it’s a Safari thing–but although I use the “Notify by email function,” it doesn’t reliably put me in the right place in the queue.
“Deriving a benefit from civilization” is a concept I have no problem with. I don’t reject civilization, so it appears there’s no remaining issue.
I do have to wonder about the idea of being presented with a bill at the end of a party to which one was invited. At least, when I offer hospitality, I don’t present a bill at the conclusion. If I did, I wonder how many people would respond to my next invitation? That’s more like a “restaurant.”
I suppose you have decided to ignore me. I would really like to at least know if you have understood my “mint chocolate chip ice cream” analogy, or if it was confusing. I confuse people a lot, and having feedback helps me figure out how to reduce that going forward.
Re your ice cream analogy: If I told you I’d stopped attending a restaurant because I’d gotten food poisoning there too often, and you said there was no food poisoning at that restaurant, I’d say “That’s interesting, but I think I’ll judge by my own experience.” I might persist in this inexplicable act of self-determination even if it meant you were offended on behalf of the unjustly maligned restaurant–which, by the way, I ate at and you did not. Other people can keep the restaurant in business if they like the food. I don’t have a duty to like it just because you do.
“I do have to wonder about the idea of being presented with a bill at the end of a party to which one was invited”
Perhaps you missed my earlier point about wedding dinners?
If someone hands you a bill for services rendered he was not, in fact, being chivalrous.
OTOH, if you benefit from a social custom it ill behooves you to exploit it unfairly. That is as crass as feigning generosity in anticipation of compensation (aka, sucking up to granny in hope of inheritance — which to a naive observer may be indistinguishable from being a loving grandchild, Alas, the human mind often hides our motivations even from ourselves.)
Yes. If someone presents a bill after implying that the meal was a gift, he is not being chivalrous. If I know he’s in the habit of doing this, I’ll decline the meal from the outset rather than get dragged into it again. In that case, I’m not rejecting chivalry. Again, no problem. Maybe our terms are clearer now.
If you think that a young, healthy man opening a door for someone or giving up their seat on a bus for someone equates to treating them “like a fragile, limited princess”… then do you actually think Chivalry considers elderly men or disabled men to be “fragile, limited princesses” too? Or are you unaware that Chivalry constrains the actions of a young healthy man in more than just his interactions with womenfolk?
And before you accuse me of saying that I am implying that women are in the same category as elderly and disabled men… let me say “yes.” That category is “people who are generally weaker than a young, healthy man”. If you think otherwise then you have read too many fantasy books, and been too far removed from law-of-the-jungle reality. But even if women bristle at being reminded of the fact that they are generally weaker* they should be gracious enough to endure it for the benefit of the young man. You see, Chivarly isn’t ultimately about politeness. It is about teaching those in society who are naturally the strongest that their natural strength does NOT permit them to run roughshod over anyone else. It forces them to defer to those weaker than them on a regular basis as a subtle but constant lesson against the NATURAL feeling among the stronger of “might makes right.” It is designed to make humbleness a habit of mind among those who most need that lesson.
*If it bothers them that much they should carry a gun. A .45 slug shot by a woman kills just as dead as one shot by the biggest, toughest guy.
“[Chivalry] brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another. It brought them together for that very reason. It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson. It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop…If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections–those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be “meek in hall”, and those who are “meek in hall” but useless in battle–for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed. When this disassociation of the two halves of Launcelot occurs, history becomes a horribly simple affair… it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable.” -C.S. Lewis from The Necessity of Chivalry (read the whole thing)
Do I think people are always holding another class of people in contempt when they automatically jump to help them? No, but it’s a very common human failing among people who are following a rigid code without being naturally thoughtful and generous. It’s not always nice to be fussed over excessively, particularly if the fussing comes from people who are also likely to say “You can’t participate in this activity; I’m excluding you for your own good.” As you get older, I’ll bet you’ll start to get a whiff of the problem for yourself. Handicapped people report problems of the same kind, even at the hands of quite well-meaning people.
No, but it’s a very common human failing among people who are following a rigid code without being naturally thoughtful and generous.
The cure to this is not to abolish the rigid code, as you appear to be advocating. The cure is to teach people to be thoughtful and generous. Nobody is thoughtful and generous merely by nature: the behaviour of any two-year-old should be enough to put that idea to rest. Thoughtfulness and generosity are learned behaviours; they are acquired by training and precept and practice and cultivation. It would be best if everyone learned those behaviours, but since that is not humanly achievable, the rigid code is a helpful pis-aller. It should not have been tossed aside lightly.
I gathered at some point in the process that chivalrous courtesy mean that youth and fitness should give consideration to age and disability; which might mean, for example – that it was perfectly OK for a young and fit woman to give up a seat on a crowded bus or subway to an aged male war-veteran, or to open a door for him. And that it was acceptable for a fit male (or female) of any age, to give a seat to a pregnant woman.
YMMV, of course.
Same thing I got.
Thank you. You explained the “noblesse oblige” of strength better than I could.
Yes, I’d prefer that the rigidity of the code were cured by people becoming thoughtful and generous instead, at some point. In the meantime, it’s still dangerous sometimes to be caught up in it, so I tend to opt out when possible without causing a big scene or hurt feelings. In the post-war world, however, all will be different.
” In the post-war world, however, all will be different.”
Yes. Come the revolution we will figure out a way to have some version of male Chivalry for all women as well, so that when they are in positions of power or leadership in gov’t, academia, business, etc., they have already been exposed daily from childhood to the idea that they are not to abuse their new found power over others.
one of the problems is that it’s ever so easy to continue onward after dropping the chivalry.
Burke can hold forth: “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles, and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. . . . I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. . . .
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!”
But that leads rapidly to the situation where “a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order.”
“I gathered at some point in the process that chivalrous courtesy mean that youth and fitness should give consideration to age and disability; which might mean, for example – that it was perfectly OK for a young and fit woman to give up a seat on a crowded bus or subway to an aged male war-veteran, or to open a door for him. And that it was acceptable for a fit male (or female) of any age, to give a seat to a pregnant woman.
YMMV, of course.”
Yes, that was the right way to go. Chivalry of that kind would never show its ugly flipside of patronizing.
Momma called it manners. You gave up your seat on the bus to senior citizens or a pregnant lady or a mother with a small child in arms or to someone on crutches. You held open doors for people carrying burdens, whatever your or their sex. You offered to carry a load for the elderly woman. If she said yes, you did with a smile and if she said no you accepted that with a smile. Where these and other little acts of institutionalized kindness made the texture of life pleasanter.
Now, like as not, you will see a bumper sticker on the car that cut you off proclaiming Practice random acts of kindness. Then you will be forced to conclude that for that moment you weren’t random enough to qualify. Sigh
“Momma called it manners.”
Yes, assisting one’s weaker manners is good manners. In a perfect world, it would never lead to patronizing or pigeonholing or exclusion. It’s good practice for all of us to see that it doesn’t.
PUA?
Pick Up Artist
Ahhh, thanks for that.
What’s QUILTBAG?
Answered elsewhere on this thread, but damned if I can find it.
Basically, it’s yet another name for LGBTWTFBBQ. It’s a name they have chosen for themselves (not something one of us cooked up to call them). Honestly, it’s a catchall term for anyone who isn’t cisgendered heteronormative.
Heh, that helps a lot. O_O why would they want to choose that as a name for themselves? *puzzled beyond belief*
It stands for so many different terms, and I guess it was the only way they could arrange the terms into a word.
Of course, that doesn’t really answer the real why, and I’m afraid I don’t really have an answer on that one. I mean, if they meant it ironically or something, maybe, but it’s not even that so I’m completely lost.
…is there a glossary somewhere? I know SJW is likely “Social Justice Warriors” or similar, but it can get confusing. 😮
Social Justice Whiners. 😉
Ah, so my definition describes what they think they are and yours describes what they really are?
There might be, but usually I have to figure it out via context.
Culturally we have been eating our young, telling boys they are of no value, and need to be drugged and abused into submission in school and out of it. We must stop that before more damage is done.
And should we not stop we will find that we have raised a generation of young men who believe what they have been taught about themselves: that they are animals. While some may have the fortune to discover that they can be gentlemen, not beasts, and have fortitude to ‘go against the flow’, many, if not most, will starting acting on that assumption. Everyone looses.
The phrase “self-fulfilling prophecy” springs to mind.
It’s often struck me that all too many of these idiots on the left wing seem to be hell-bent on making their fantasies a reality. Do you feel oppressed? By all means, let us create a class of oppressor, the better to justify our war against them. You see this in economics, where the left wing does its level best to suppress the small businessman and enable the corporate conglomerate, all the while decrying the situation.
If they declaim, and point, I generally look back along the accusatory finger, and find that I often discern a set of actual circumstances that are the opposite of the accusation. Valerie Plame is revealed as a CIA employee? Horrors… We must jail someone, anyone. Incompetent White House staff “accidentally” out the Afghanistan station chief? All in a day’s work, my friend… These things happen.
When the time comes, I’m not going to feel the least little jot of sympathy or disgust when these people are put against the wall. Likely, I’ll have already made a visit there, myself, having resisted them, but it will be fun to watch, from whatever afterlife, as these knaves and fools have their comeuppance.
I am not sure about the idea that they are trying to deliberately create a ‘better’ class of oppressors to justify their indignation. This would suggest that they operate under some sort of logic and planned in the long term. (Evidence says otherwise.) I suspect that they are simply lashing out without clear thought.
(Like wounded animals…which might explain why they view other’s motivations as those of animals, too. Oh, wait a minute … this goes eith the proposition that humans are simply another animal …)
My bad. Working with unfamiliar key board of different size: with not eith.
“While some may have the fortune to discover that they can be gentlemen, not beasts, and have fortitude to ‘go against the flow’, many, if not most, will starting acting on that assumption. ”
Already well begun. Even in the “good” middle schools of the public school system where I work, every year brings us a little closer to recreating the Visigoths.
The Visigoths had a highly sophisticated culture in which one’s standing was largely determined by one’s own unswerving adherence to a strict code of personal honour. Find any of that among your ‘good middle school’ kids, and I’ll allow you to smear the Visigoths by association. Go on, I double dog dare you.
Of course, the Visigoths probably never went unarmed. . . .
So that’s why they’re so fanatic about gun-free zones for schools. Nevermind the dead kids, the important thing is that they learn to bully untrammeled.
yes on the typo. I thought that too.
I was going to say the same thing about the typo. Sometimes they have a brilliance all their own.
I think the damage is more than slight– I am seeing quite a few of the drugged boys now who are in their twenties– and who are going in in the drug trade. Sad.
Yeah, ’cause you know boys have *never* turned into drug dealers before the advent of SSRIs and overmedication.
To be less sarcastic, one of the kids from my Boy Scout Troop was arrested with over 2 pounds of pot. The kid across the street when I was growing up was (last time I knew) serving time for similar quantities.
Boys do sh!+ like that.
AWK Will less boys turned to drugs– I think you missed years of chatter between me and friends who used to work in special education. Many of the boys who were diagnosed with ADD and ADHD for the last few years are growing up. The meds are sometimes stopped and the boys are now looking for a drug to give them the same feelings as the meds used to–
There are more now than when I was a young girl– and yes, in the 70s I knew of a small group who did drugs. BUT– it is miniscule compared with the drugs taken today (both amount and potency).
When I went into the Navy, if you even worked for a drug dealer (and didn’t know it– some of the drug dealers then in 1988 had store fronts for laundering money and their employees didn’t know they were working for drug dealers… I met one who never did drugs, but couldn’t get a security clearance because he worked for a drug dealer unknowingly)– you either didn’t get into the military or you didn’t get to work in sensitive areas. Nowadays there are so many who have experimented or more with expunged records and can get into the military. What does that tell you about what is happening to our young adults today?
Once again drugged to compliance and then used. If I was of this generation I would be mad as h*ll.
Also I want to mention that the drugs for ADD and ADHD stop emotional growth in the boys (and sometimes girls). IT should only be used on extreme cases imho.
Girls are now getting drugged as much as boys in school. In fact, probably more. Also with prozac. While in middle school.
The whole thing makes me want to scream.
I can believe that. I’ve heard (either here or elsewhere) that young girls are taught two opposing ideas in school. First, they’re taught that they can “be whatever they want to be because they’re just as strong as boys (not just physical strength)”. Second, they’re taught that they are frail helpless beings who must be protected from boys. If the first is true, then the second is false (and visa versa). You’d need drugs to believe both ideas. [Frown]
You read it here, but I’m not the only one saying it.
Cognitive dissidence
From the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary on-line:
psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously
(medical dictionary):
psychological conflict resulting from simultaneously held incongruous beliefs and attitudes (as a fondness for smoking and a belief that it is harmful)
(concise encyclopedia)
Mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The concept was introduced by the psychologist Leon Festinger (1919–89) in the late 1950s. He and later researchers showed that, when confronted with challenging new information, most people seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists. Cognitive dissonance is nonetheless considered an explanation for attitude change.
Cut kids off from all emotional support– boys are hit first because they NEED guys to model on, but girls are warped as well, and two or three generations in you have guys who feel worthless and girls who have panic attacks because both are getting all their social support from their classmates.
If I hadn’t had my family (with their moral, philosophical, historical and religious EVERYTHING baked in to that) and had actually needed interaction with my classmates to have a place, I would’ve been crazy as a loon and possibly dangerous.
My sons both say their classmates “live in each other’s pockets ALL THE TIME.” It baffles them.
They’ve probably been pushed to “socialize” like that since they were tiny.
…
Gotta say, the timing on this topic is crazy; I’ve been angsting because I know I’m not normal, and my daughter is a little social butterfly, and I was considering sending her to school next fall.
Going to do a test-run on home schooling instead. (Princess is just slightly too young to qualify for school this fall.)
You have no idea how bad schools have gotten. I didn’t know till my nose was rubbed in it over younger-son’s trouble. There should be phonics games for the computer? The ones we used would now be unsupported, but I suggest starting with that. You’d be amazed what they learn when they think they’re “just playing”.
Starfall.com
Princess is able to read– sounds stuff out, will say the word until she gets bored (about two seconds) and is learning to type, and we’re slowly working on writing.
Duchess, at almost three, knows almost all the letters on sight just from watching her sister play.
They also have a v-tech tablet. *Blush*
Then school is superfluous. They’ll try to unteach them, as they did with my kids. Instead, get them books. Cool books. As bad as the idea that “school is fun, whee” these days is, Robert loved Magic School Bus games and learned EVERYTHING from them that he needed (he says) through middle school.
Miss Frizzle is my role-model. 😀
I would second the observation of issues in the public school system.
Pikers. I have seen preschoolers on mood drugs.
Foe Heaven’s sake why?!
Also younger. I’m currently having the “discussion” over whether or not my youngest daughter needs Ritalin.
She’s in Kindergarten.
Kids that young should only be getting meds if they have a physical illness.
Kindergarten? Why wait that long? Two-year-olds are getting Ritalin after ADHD diagnoses.
Going for a horticulture Merit Badge?
M
I don’t know how much teh drug trade is a part of this. I do know that the brain continues to develop until 25 years of age, and meddling with the neurochemistry interferes with that.
Brain chemistry is a delicate thing.
I think I may have said enough in the past how terrifying I find some of the neurological risks people take for fun.
Yes, it’s a typo. The praise or blame for that phrase goes to my Kindle’s autocorrect.
Are late-pre-teen boys who are introduced to the Mysteries by older women actually all that damaged by it? Reverse the sexes and you have physical trauma and, later on, a risk of pregnancy (boys and girls really are different, even before puberty). But boys, even at age eight, are going to be curious, and barring S&M games are unlikely to suffer physiological damage.
I was collecting porn at that age (dumpster diving was very productive!), and probably would’ve welcomed some hands-on instruction from a cute girl of suitable age (mid- to late-teens). Experimentation at an even earlier age with a same-age female friend didn’t seem to do either of us any real harm. Just kids playing doctor.
So, honest question here, have there been any studies of the psychological impact of early sexual encounters between young boys and older women?
I don’t know if any studies have been done. I do know that at least some of the boys who have been molested by adult women have suffered from the experience.
Honestly, I don’t believe that is relevant, though. There are women who will tell you that their sexual experiences with an adult male while they were underage were entirely positive.
It’s a crime for an adult to have sex with a child. It doesn’t matter how the child feels about it–a child cannot legally give consent.
I believe that in America this crime is treated differently in both the courts and the media based on the sex of the criminal and the sex of the victim.
I think that’s wrong. I think that children should be protected from sexual predation, even if the child doesn’t want to be protected.
I’m going to be a little bit more personal now. One of the reasons that I so seldom talk about my own history of sexual abuse as a child is because so many–both men and women–react as if it is something good that happened to me. I realize that people are reacting to the fantasy rather than an understanding of the reality, however, I find that reaction very hurtful, no matter how often I get it.
I was violated by someone whom I should have been able to trust. That’s not fun, that’s not sexy, that’s not getting lucky. It’s rape.
I am so sorry that that happened to you. Invasion of one’s private autonomy stinks. Betrayal of trust stinks.
And that idiotic reaction that so many have (can you tell I wouldn’t have been one of them?) is one small part of why society is so ****ed up these days.
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about what happened to you. It was evil, it was wrong, and it shouldn’t have happened. Not that my expressing this can in any way go back and change the past… but at least you know there’s one guy who doesn’t think you were “lucky” for being abused.
Depends on if you think being able to relate to women as anything other than a REDACTED is important.
Less crudely, there is immense variation in how people develop. What wrecks one may not touch another. What interests one at one age may be entirely off the radar of another.
Some general things that can be said.
Pre teens have less experience in the world. So early experiences different from those of their peers will have more impact on shaping their world views.
Power disparities. Okay, you maybe aren’t talking about so great a power disparity as a 25 year old to a 5 year old. Children have very little power, and there are many ways to bring pressure to bear on them. Some of them may have yet to grow out of the habit of saying stuff to please the powerful, regardless of what they actually think. Even a 13 year old girl may easily be enough more powerful than an 11 year old boy to be rape, regardless of what the individuals say.
The folks who go after folks younger then them, and under the age of consent, have at least a strong correlation with dysfunctional, predatory, and just plain sick. Such first experiences are not particularly improving.
Furthermore, even if you disregard the sexual issue, stuff that happens to young kids can absolutely leave lasting baggage.
I am calmer now, and hopefully can choose my words better.
That you didn’t work out the answer ‘Yes!’ from first principles causes me to wonder if your analytical ability for this subject was impaired by exposure to porn while at that level of mental development.
Your comment didn’t seem particularly intemperate to me. As for damage to my analytic ability, I couldn’t say. I have my own psychological shortcomings, but I don’t think they stem from looking at pictures of naked women before I hit puberty. Usually I blame television:-P.
My question largely arose from the implicit equation of boys and girls in the context of early sexual activity, and the apparent assumption (unless I was reading more into it than was intended) that such introduction by an older girl would severely traumatize a nearly-pubescent boy. My own memories of the time, generally revolving around substantial curiosity about the subject and even earlier physical explorations with it (though nothing beyond childish looking and *very* limited touching), suggest that I wouldn’t have found such an introduction particularly damaging. Impossible to tell at this point of course, and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that teen girls experiment with pre-teen boys. At the same time, our culture is often hyper-sensitive on subjects sexual, and, I think, often makes a trauma of what in reality is little more than an awkward experience. Especially in the case of children and minors.
Regardless, it’s not a topic that I’m sufficiently concerned with to argue about. Hopefully I haven’t too much offense.
Point or order. I was not the one she had to explain that to.
Right, but the person in question I can’t identify.
It was William O. B’livian
Actually – me too… I was talking and William answered me– so I have an explanation *sigh
Erm… I suppose I should be clear. The man who was molested as a child is not someone who reads or comments on this blog.
Ah– I misread– running on low caffeine this morning–
A massively ridiculous proportion of my male geek group were molested by teachers. They uniformly acted like it was no big deal….
Researching for this was physically sick-making. I realized it too late to include, but the new thing going around, where you’re not allowed to say ‘but not all men are like that!” strips men of their ability to defend themselves. Well, these quotes mean now we will have to say “not all women are like that.” Because some are, evil, vile, despicable…
Ran in to this on another author’s blog Sunday, and while the responses were (for the most part), polite, particularly from the author himself, there was a distinct resistance to the idea of a man being able to say “Not all men.”
And I got someone to tick off items 1-3 on the checklist in so many sentences, and I count that as a net win.
I’ve only recently seen it, but while researching, ran across an article that claims it dates back to 2011 (which is still recent!) I think it’s hitting hard right now as they have figured out it’s a tool in suppressing arguments against their insanity. What they don’t seem to realize is how much it looks and feels like a slap across the face, even to men who are trying to support them.
I actually don’t like the statement “not all men are like that,” but for a different reason. It’s like saying that there are exceptions to the rule.
Of course, this just shows how unthinking they are. If they really wanted to marginalize almost all men, they would embrace that statement, and reply, “that’s like saying, ‘Ebola is not always fatal.’ ”
The response to these twits should be, “Only a small minority of men are like that, because if that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t even be able to say that in public.”
Yes – only a fraction of men are willing to harm women. But they would have women turn our backs on ALL men, because of those few. I am unwilling to lump all men together, any more than I will say all women are like these viragos.
DO NOT call them viragos. In Latin Viragos has a good pedigree. Women who fight like men, maidens who go to war. These aren’t. They’re harpies.
Very good point. Nasty habits and scavengers of the battlefield, yes? I was running out of synonyms for unpleasant female. And I am trying not to stoop to vulgarity, tempting as it is!
We haven’t used shrew yet.
That one works, even if the real thing is sort of cute, and useful by eating lots of bugs.
Thank you.
Off topic: I happen to like dogs. I have thought it unfortunate that bitch, a proper term for a female dog, has become b.tch, an improper term for a female human with a less than stellar temperment.
My dear man likes to say that he got lucky – he has two females who are happy to see him come home. One is a bitch, the other one is me… She’s a sweet dog. 🙂
The Spouse, on being told of the discussion suggests that there is also termagant.
I’m with Sarah. “Virago” isn’t bad. What these women are is spelled B.I.T.C.H.
which goes some distance in explaining why they think all men are dogs.
There is an appropriate term for them, but it is a four letter word that would be inappropriate to use in mixed company.
Yes, and God help decent women when the decent men turn their backs on all women. As is happening now.
I can actually defend the dislike of the “not all ___” thing, because I have had a lot of liberals use it when we were not talking about all anything.
But… these folks ARE talking about men-as-a-group.
They laughingly claim otherwise, even as they do it. Read this Storify of the Tweets of one of SFF’s PC ringleaders with a train of logic that indicates a mind that simply doesn’t work. Unsurprisingly, the PC look up to her as a source of wisdom, and she’s a Hugo nominee for fan writing this year.
https://storify.com/ImpyMJ/foz-meadows-on-the-not-all-men-qualifier?utm_campaign=&awesm=sfy.co_rWNq&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_content=storify-pingback
This author writes YA.
She writes YA with a sales rank of #839,666.
It always tickles me to see one of the know-it-all’s that are lagging so far behind me in sales ranking. 😀
Thankfully. Maybe the loon’s not infecting too many minds.
Given that I am currently ranked 13K overall, and about 4K for ‘teens’ and 1K for SFF, color me unimpressed indeed. I’m a relative unknown with very little push, and only three novels out.
But you have customers.
This comment of yours sufficiently interested me to make me go and find out how to look up my own rank. I’m substantially lower than you – a couple of sales will spike me up to about 75k overall, 2k in SFF – but due to ill health, I haven’t had a new book out in almost a year and a half. (I was just preparing my fourth book for market in April, 2013, when I fell down a flight of icy stairs and got whiplash and concussion. I am still suffering from debilitating headaches, and at a friend’s suggestion, I plan to go to the doctor tomorrow and ask to be checked for bone fragments.)
I can only imagine how urinary-tract poor an author’s sales must be to rank below 800,000.
It was brutal enough for me to read, Cedar. Thank you for doing the really hard part.
QUILTBAGs are insane. They got Elizabeth Moon kicked out of Guest of Honor at WisCon 35 over her blog post about the 9/11 mosque and tore into Moon’s disclaimer in defense of Muslims that not all Muslims are like THAT. Had Moon written about white men the mental hospital orderlies would’ve arrived and declared a new form of logic rules the land.
PC QUILTBAGs are the first ones to call someone racist for pointing out black crime stats or Ann Coulter’s assertion that black men rape white women to the tune of 1700 a year while white men raping black women is statistical zero. Reverse the race and watch the inquisition and approval of such characterizations begin.
The PC can’t imagine what it sounds like to have a single binding principle to address “not all black folks, gay folks, Arabs are like THAT” It’s one thing on Friday and another on Saturday, and depends on race and gender, which is the PC’s moral ethos.
The PC are mental cases and too stupid to understand that “not all [blank] are like that is the basis of ALL LAW. I am not an accessory after the fact while sleeping a world away, thank you.
I wanted to thank you for accumulating all the quotes, since I took advantage of that aggregation. I appreciate the time and thought involved in gathering them.
And I agree, insane is the right word. We throw that around, but truly, this is outside what any functional member of society can wrap their mind around, and they expect it to be accepted and followed.
Those quotes need to be shown as well as the other mainstream ones you found. No one thinks about human beings like that unless they have severe mental health issues.
The remarkable part is they’ve been very, very clever in attaching their bizarre hatreds into anti-oppression narratives like Jim Crow and feminism. That’s why you see so many gullible “allies” buying into their pathetic arguments and passing them along either because those “allies” are naked opportunists or dumb enough to like anti-baldness creams.
But these aren’t feminists – these are sick people. Traditional feminists aren’t sick in their minds and hearts, but women who wanted to live more expansive lives. Anyone who’s read “Jane Eyre” or “Sense and Sensibility” can see that legitimately expressed in literature.
This isn’t Bronte and Austen – these are irrationally sick people who need to be told to get help and leave this genre alone.
I beg to differ.
I think madness and culture can cover some of the same space.
I do not see anything about the current bunch that does not fit what I figured out about the sexual revolutionaries before puberty.
So, I’m more inclined to view it more as a cultural matter than a mental illness matter.
Most of the feminism I’ve been exposed to in my life seems to fit the model.
I covered that in mentioning gullible allies; it’s mainstreaming madness and doing that within a social justice pretext is why it happens. I believe that’s what happened in Nazi Germany. I don’t think anyone believes an entire nation suddenly went nuts. You had a tiny group of sociopaths who took power and then cleverly mainstreamed their race-hatred and sickness into the general populace. Hitler was flat out nuts.
The Nazis used fear when necessary, appealed to race-pride, misplaced compassion and sheer hatred. They then used that mandate to institutionalize their madness into law. I don’t see how anyone can read those feminist quotes and not conclude the worst of them have mental health issues, nor fail to see those people are actively engaged in mainstreaming their hatred. To conclude it’s a cultural matter begs the question of where then does that culture originate from. When it comes to that level of hatred and suspicion, and even paranoia, you must have ringleaders, because no rational person is going to conclude America is a virtual internment camp for non-whites and women.
My favorite examples of cultural ‘madness’ are America and early Rome. Both did some things that seemed fairly sensible to them, that their peers seem to have agreed were stark raving mad.
For NSDAP, I’d credit somewhat the ordinary tendency towards madness of the normal person, and the immense stressor of having the USSR as a close neighbor.
Where am I saying it came from? In the short term, the ‘sexual revolution’ of the sixties or so. Long term, human nature. Sex is a powerful drive, so humans, who are sometimes evil, are sometimes powerfully motivated to evil by it. People who are not willing to dedicate themselves to the ethical level of self restraint have been in every society. I see in the sexual revolution a defense of lacking restraint.
I was very young when I started working on this model, so the most concerning sort of unrestrained sexual actor was the murderer of children, which remains an analytical yardstick. So when I compare these moderns with the hippies, I am also comparing them with child murderers.
In this model, there needn’t be any reason that the activists must be being honest about their goals or reasoning. Humans are not known for analytical rigor when it comes to decisions about sex, and apparently not for honesty.
As for ‘gullible’ allies, I would note that the sexual revolution seemed to come at the right time to replace the cohorts who would vote on the basis of Sherman’s march to the sea. If ‘men are evil’ has the political carrying capacity of ‘tyrant Lincoln’, why not use it? A politically useful falsehood, one that brings more voters for one than against one, is still politically useful.
The seemingly inexorable slide from being an apparently civilized and tolerant, and forward-thinking country – as happened in Germany – to one which seemed to turn on a dime to murdering ‘the other’ in job-lots is one of the ongoing concerns at one of the political blogs where I post – chicagoboyz.net.
It’s scary – all the more because we can now really ‘grok’ how it happened. How it became expedient and popular to ‘otherize’ the designated ‘out’ group. How the media, the intellectual set and the bureaucracy were brought along by stages into going along with it for their own reasons.
I like to believe that it wouldn’t be able to be taken this far in the US … but I wake up at night, seeing how it could happen. And happen almost overnight.
You and me both, sister. ChicagoBoyz is a terrific site.
There’s a difference: I don’t think the average German could see it coming or predict where it was going. We can.
And as I said under another post, it’ll happen here when I’m dead and my honor guard gone before me. I don’t think I’m alone in that conviction.
Forgot this: Unless I’ve underestimated the detrimental effects of pot, and they are almost as bad as my worst suspicions.
Have you discussed it with Speaker to Lab animals?
If I have, years ago, on the bar.
I wouldn’t mind talking with him about it more.
Clayton Cramer has laid hands on research that teenage Pot use, while not a cause of Schizophrenia by itself, will activate it in those who have a predisposition to the condition.
It is pretty safe to assume that I am taking that sort of thing as a given. I’ve even read the abstracts to some of Speaker’s academic articles.
At least one of the spree killers of the past six years spent time as a pot smoker. I’m sure that didn’t improve his mental issues any.
The uncertainties I had most in mind for that statement were impairments to types of intelligence that might be hard to measure at all.
Its not ‘quiltbags’ and I really wish you would stop using that term. If you think it IS ‘quiiltbags’ then you need to GO LOOK UP WHAT THE ACCEPTED MEANING OF THAT TERM IS. Has nothing to do with hyper-feminists hating on men and their resultant warping of our culture, in fact, most ‘quiltbags’ (at least 50% of them… j/k) rather like men.
The idea that feminists think women gained moral points from a tragic murder, and all men somehow lost them, is a deliciously stupid form of bigotry and supremacy.
Distinguo: ‘Supremacy’ means the state of being supreme. What you want here is a word that means the state of falsely believing that one belongs to a class of people who are (or ought to be) supreme. The English word that most nearly fits this definition is ‘megalomania’. If you want to be more precise than that, you need to work with periphrases.
“Supremacism”, perhaps. In the same way that the KKK were “white supremacists”, far too many modern feminists are “female supremacists”. The ones who are sane tend to want to distance themselves from the supremacists, hence why a lot of people who believe in the concepts of equal rights for women and men, etc., are running as fast as they can away from the term “feminist”.
Female supremacists is a good term, not only because it’s accurate but because it evokes the narcissicistic whininess of the other supremacist movements. “I belong on top, but no one lets me get there!”
I’m not seeing anything obvious in this mess that a really complete analysis couldn’t have found traces of ten or twenty years back.
Mark me down as a grouch, but I am increasingly of the opinion that the answer is “well, that’s what you get when you dismiss “Male” concepts like Honor and Integrity, and teach all girls to be horrible harridans with the personalities of so many coke-snorting civet cats.”
This is what the Progressive/Radical/Feminista front worked to bring about. This is where they have been going since the late 1950’s. And now they are up in the trees because the only men left who will TOUCH them are as nasty as they are.
Re: the lowest difficulty setting. Yeah right. I heaped scorn on it then, and continue to do so, Of course, the real question is if Scalzi, et al, are playing on the “male” setting. . . or the “neutered” one. . . .
I think it’s safe to say that if a male name is included in the quotes above, they are ashamed of the body they were born into.
I have a lot of sympathy for victims of brainwashing, and a lot of the crazier liberal schoolteachers and professors seem to think classes should be nothing but reeducation sessions and brainwashing.
In their minds, what they’re wanting is different than how those things were implemented in the past. After all, they truly believe they are simply purging out the unenlightened thoughts and teaching students how to be decent members of society.
A rose by any other name and all that.
I remember a made-for-TV movie in ’84 or ’85 that addressed the issue of classroom brainwashing. Told from the pov of a grade-school boy. I didn’t I didn’t see it, but I recall everyone trumpeting about how this warned of what Reagan’s followers wanted to do to our kids. Funny, I DO recall the new, state-approved grade-school teacher wearing a more fashionable version of a Maoist uniform.
You’re probably thinking of “The Wave” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083316/). They made us watch that in school.
Not quite. The movie I’m thinking about was kinda-sorta science fiction, near future.
Do these women know what they’re actually accomplishing with their misandry?
For a long time, I was sympathetic to “feminism”. I’m the kind of guy that believes all people should be equal. None of this “Some animals are more equal than others” crap either. I believe in true equality of opportunity.
However, I’m also a realist. Men are physically stronger on average than women. There are outliers, but as a rule, men are stronger. It doesn’t make men superior, in part because the good Lord balanced the scales by giving women, on average, better hand/eye coordination. In this day and age, it means women can shoot my ass before I can get to them and physically overpower them.
As it should be.
For a long time, I considered myself pretty enlightened. Then I started picking up all this misandry. Maybe I was just oblivious, but I never saw some of the stuff like the quotes above.
Since I’m seeing it, and I seem to be seeing a lot of it, I feel disgusted by what I see. Women, who are oh-so-oppressed, suffered the softest oppression in recorded history. There were serious problems in the past, don’t get me wrong. The idea that women shouldn’t own property if they were married? Really? Ridiculous.
However, in all those eras, there were women who became great. In all those eras, there were rules about how a man was supposed to treat a lady, and those rules didn’t include raping and pillaging across the bedroom. They were to be treated with love, tenderness, and respect. Wow. If that’s oppression, I could deal with it.Not to say that time was perfect, because it wasn’t. But it’s wasn’t some horrible dark age like slavery or Jim Crow either.
Today, we have these women, one of whom is expressing a desire to see me or someone like me beaten to death with a shovel for no more substantial reason than because I happen to have a penis, who are screaming about how horrible we men are. What have we all done? I’m sorry, but if you’re tired of being victimized (which I certainly understand), you’re not going to stop it by turning me into a victim. I’ve never done a damn thing to you or any other woman.
So now, I’m finding myself looking down on these women with disgust. Me, a potential ally to their cause, now sees them as petulant children screaming for a toy in the store that they have no reason to expect. It’s hard not to look at all women like that, except that I also interact with women like Sarah, Cedar, and the ladies here and other right-leaning SFF blogs.
You ladies are the reason I am able to keep from swinging into full misogyny, despite the shrieking violets’ best efforts. Thanks for that. My wife and daughter don’t deserve that in the least.
Oh, just a note. The times/places women couldn’t own property were very limited and, like with not being allowed to work, usually only mattered for the upper classes.
You’re reminding me how I feel about harangues against me for my presumptive racism. After a certain number of years of it, not only do I tune it out, but I probably become more and more deaf even to legitimate appeals for attention to real racism. All I can think is, “Enough. You’ve lost my attention with the crazy talk, and now I don’t even want to waste time listening to see if today’s rant has any basis.”
(By “you,” I meant T.L. Knighton.)
That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
When you screech at me long enough about your fantasy of oppression when there is little to none, I’m not likely to listen when you come across a case of real oppression.
The little boy who cried wolf is applicable in so many more ways than some people comprehend.
Well, we’re in kind of a silly season: everything is the crime of the century, rape of the Earth, injustice punishable by death. As C.S. Lewis said, people natter on about trivial psychological pain until a bout with toothache snaps them out of it. I think treating people as objects is the mistake that serves as the foundation for all the most serious sins, as well as the stupidest and most easily avoidable societal rot, so I tend to be hypervigilant–even quarrelsome–about it. But considering an approach to be a mistake is a far cry from believing I (or anyone else) has been subjected to abuse on a par with Auschwitz.
Here’s hoping the toothache snaps them out of it soon!
They’ll blame it on patriarchy.
Of course, because despite everything, we are monolithic.
But just don’t lump all Muslims in together, despite them all sharing a similar set of principles. Nothing is monolithic except the patriarchy.
That reminds me, it’s my week to bring cookies to the patriarchy meeting.
Snickerdoodles, if you would.
But Larry brought those last week. I was going for Oreo’s…the whole, chocolate outside with white inside just seems too ironic to pass up…
…and piss some people off in the process. 🙂
Okay.
Also, snickerdoodles.
(What? I likes ’em.)
How about watermelon? Green on the outside red on the inside.
Not in the Patriarchy meeting, since people like Van Jones have never been to a meeting. They are apparently far to enlightened to join us in subjugating women under our collective boots.
I just want you guys to forbid me from making a living. Then I can stop fighting this book and go eat bonbons. Yes?
Nah. Too many of us like your books, so you’re out of luck there.
Mutter, grumble, grumble. Yells at characters “Back to the salt mines, kids.”
NO! Never! Gasp…
1) I like your writing, and many others of us do as well.
2) You have left too many loose ends.
a) I want to know how E grows up.
b) I want to know what happens to Kyrie and Tom.
c) I want to know what happens in the worlds of the darkships.
d) Does the magical empire ever get it together and are dragons no longer suppressed?
e) What happens to Seraphim, Gabriel, et. al.?
3) If you (and your friends) stop writing your blog where would we ODDs congregate?
4) If you don’t keep writing, and therefore having a reason to go to far reaching cons how will I ever see you again?
(I could probably go on if you forced me to…)
(Gesticulates at emily61) She’s not supposed to be making suggestions, anyway! This is the Patriarchy meeting! How are we supposed to subjugate them if we let them make suggestions? Sheesh!
Emily is on the right, so she’s technically a male. Deal.
Gentlemen, I’ve been told that culinary decisions are the proper preserve of the fair sex.
Sshhh… I’m gesticulating, here, and making myself look silly. My gesticulations are legendary.
No, no, no! Here’s how it works. See, first, we listen to the suggestions from women, because we want them to believe that they have a say in the culture.
Then… stay with me… we really subvert the paradigm by following the suggestions of women! See! We’re doing what the women say they want us to do, but it’s still patriarchy no matter what!
See! This guy gets it. We’re the patriarchy, we can do whatever we want, we’re still the patriarchy!
So, sir, join me for some snickerdoodles and root beer?
I still don’t like snickerdoodles. Or Thin Mints. But if you have some plain sugar cookies, I’m in.
(Stares in awe,speaks like stoned hippy) Whoa… Dude… That’s like… Totally insidious. You make them think they’re telling us what to do… Wow…
It involves work in the kitchen, so it’s all good. 😀
And really, how are we supposed to discuss manly domination over everything if we’re eating a cookie with such an unmanly name? I mean, really?
Here, have low-carb, dark chocolate brownies.
dark chocolate brownies?
I’m down with this as well.
low-carb dark chocolate brownies?
Oh my. I missed this on the previous passes. I’ll take them, along with some of those chocolate covered marzipan things as well, then go in the corner with my spiced rum neat, my knitting and watch you all.
We already have the manly domination, that’s what all these people keep saying. So we can have snickerdoodles and nobody can do nuthin.
And I like petunias. So pppbbth!
Following the example from our leftist friends, we will now conduct a purge of anyone who likes things like cookies named snickerdoodles (unless simultaneously complaining about such an unmanly name) and petunias. 😛
I like waffle cookies. You know, those really thin ones? Pizelles, yeah. And I like callah lillies. (hides.)
The calla lilies are in bloom.
*Scuffs the floor with shoe*
Dude. I’m always getting purged.
What if I brought bourbon….?
HEY, this is my blog. He brings bourbon, he can stay in. But not Buffalo Trace. I don’t care if the stuff has won awards, it’s NASTY.
Urm…Haven’t tried that one. Sounds like the marking behavior of cats/dogs, only from something bigger.. Who’d want to drink that?
Chances are good that your bourbon would also be purged from the bottle. Though I’d prefer if you brought a nice draft root beer, personally. For purging purposes.
How about something from one of those micro-bottler’s? Something with a touch of natural honey and real sugar? Mmm. Root beer and snicker….
What? I didn’t…
Make it Irish whiskey (Jameson’s or Bushmill’s), and you’re golden. 😀
You smooth guys and your smooth whiskey. Okay, for your delicate palate I’ll bring a bottle.
Sarah and I will be in the corner with a good bourbon that fights back. We’re not snickering at you, promise. These aren’t waffle cookies, either. Carry on.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I like bourbon also. Frankly, I haven’t met a type of whiskey I didn’t like to some extent.
But being part Irish, I call to my cultural heritage. If you don’t respect that, then you’re a hateful bigot and should be purged.
Again. 😛
Aww….man.
Hey, it works for the racial left, so we thought we’d try it for a month or so.
Don’t worry though, I expect to say something purge worthy in the next month or so.
I’ll be watching! In a desperate attempt to re-ingratiate myself by casting you out and jumping up and down to show how re-educated I am.
‘Cause that’s the model, yes?
Yep. And then the tables will switch again.
It’s cyclical, so we’ll get to go through this a dozen times at least, all while not really combating anything meaningful. It’s just awesome!
Or…we could just go down to the pub and split a bottle. The headache would be milder.
Sounds like a plan.
Just no girly named cookies, mmkay? 😀
Pub food?
I’ll save the girly cookies for when you’re too “enamored of the whiskey” to notice…
Fair enough.
However, if they’re Girl Scout Thin Mints, bring ’em on. 🙂
*ques his own purge*
PUUUURGE HIM!
And then, the pub.
Works for me.
Apologies to all and sundry for the silly sidetrack. But, on a topic like this, in the absence of levity there’s only anger and sadness.
Slainte!
We’ve got to be a little silly. If I didn’t, I’d probably be so furious about all the ways I’m being portrayed by people who’ve never met me that I’d be useless.
Who’s complaining? [Wink]
We are NOT purging the pub. That’s one step too far, Mister.
I just wanna kick somebody out! *wail*
Maybe those folks in the corner table? We need it for the bourbon and snickering. What’s Dan drink, I’ll grab him a bottle…
Shandy.
Hm. I’ll get a bigger bottle of bourbon, we’ll hide his bottle behind ours…
Yes, I know, I’ve tried to get him to drink like a civilized person, but… no luck. He is mostly Irish, you know…
So, you two have a bulimia thing going on here? (runs)
That would mean…losing this precious golden nectar?! Egads, no, man!
Once I’ve got me on the outside of some bourbon, on the outside I am staying. Least ways until it’s essential bourbon essence is sucked clear, then it may make its way back out into the sad world.
We shall leave aside any possibility of purging a snickerdoodle. They are not snorkerdoodles.
There are few things more manly than buying stuff because of cute girls.
*deliberately conflates two uses of cute*
I’ve bought a lot of stuff because of cute girls. Girl Scout cookies, however, are simply because I love Thin Mints and could care less who’s selling them. A hairy fat guy named Sven could be selling them, and I’d still buy.
The stuff I’ve bought because of cute girls, however, was because I thought it would help me out in different ways (and the girls were much older than Girl Scouts).
A long time ago and far, far away at an overseas AF base, I was also a Brownie Scout Troop leader for a couple of years, (until duties contingent on the First Gulf War intervened.) One of the colonels commanding the air base group had the undying devotion of all the Girl Scout troops on base (I think there were six or seven troops, all told) for buying a case of Thin Mints from every troop. He had a chocolate-mint-cookie jones that could only be assuaged by Thin Mints… he also had a deep freezer sufficiently roomy to store his stash — also a very indulgent wife, or maybe they had separate freezers. Six or seven cases lasted him all year … until the next year’s sale.
This place was, I swear, the only venue where the Scouts didn’t have to search out customers. They came to me and the other troop leaders – “Hey, you got the cookies yet? When they gonna be on sale, huh? Put me down for three … no, four boxes of Thin Mints, or Savannahs, or whatever! As soon as you have ’em, ‘kay. Checks OK … or do you want cash?”
Good times, Girl Scout-wise. Now – not so much.
Heh. Around here, we seek out Girl Scouts as well.
Of course, we take our cookies VERY seriously.
Except for snickerdoodles. No one can take a cookie by that name seriously. 😛
Take “snickerdoodles” seriously? I don’t take any cookie seriously. All that matters is “do I enjoy eating them?” Oh, I do enjoy eating them as well as soft sugar cookies. [Wink]
I take them nummilly.
I don’t take them seriously. I take them warm.
Now with root beer.
Fair enough. 🙂
How do you feel about Samoa cookies?
“Do you want Samoa cookies?” “No thanks; I have enough cookies and don’t need any more.”
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD man.
Not a fan personally, but no issue with the name in the least. 🙂
Have some Orange Milanos for me. I’m forbidden chocolate.
How about Maker’s Mark?
Bourbon, nice and smooth (for bourbon values of ‘smooth’). Not my fav, but if somebody’s pouring I’m not complaining.
Approved!
Wait, you want him to bake them?
I thought it was required to have woman make them for him– to keep with the theme, you see.
Blast! I can’t seem to get this patriarchy thing right.
As long as the patriarchy involves cookies, whiskey, and not much else, I’m all for it. Because cookies. And Jack.
Yeah. Me too. I’ll bring the low-carb cookie goodness.
Well, it’s this bunch so — cookies, whiskey and tall tales. Somewhat taller as the whiskey levels get shorter.
“And really, how are we supposed to discuss manly domination over everything if we’re eating a cookie with such an unmanly name? I mean, really?”
The last few Christmas seasons, the comic strip “Penny Arcade” has had readers send in photos of snickerdoodles cut into shapes the Romans would have found useful as good luck charms.
Um… Contemplates some of the god luck charms given to her as an infant. Oh. My.
I don’t like Snickerdoodles. I’ve been hoping for oatmeal raisin for weeks!
shhhhh. They’re just looking for someone to purge!
Mr. Blackburn — how do you feel about bourbon? *narrow-eyed stare*
I’m good with most beverages containing a significant percentage of ethanol.
Except Jagermeister. (Shudder)
Jagermeister. We shall shudder together.
Peppermint schnapps, not as bad Jager, but not a pretty story.
We shall delay your purging.
Wait, I thought once we got this weeks purge done, we can go to the pub.
Can’t we just set up a schedule or something so the pub part happens faster?
We could set the purge on auto and just go to the pub. Those being purged would get a text. The next round buys your way back in. Alternatively, screw getting back in and buy a round for yourself to drown your sorrows…
I’m going to set up a cookie table over there, but nobody tell Tom the names, it messes with his testosterone levels. And you can’t tell Foxfier I procured them myself, she’ll yank my patriarchy card.
All these rules!
And… I just got a text.
I just want you guys to forbid me from making a living. Then I can stop fighting this book and go eat bonbons. Yes?
…but, we’re supposed to enslave you or something.
So… write! 😉
I can’t believe I read all that. But I get the gist of it.
Summary: Come to the Patriarchy, we have cookies. And hard liquor.
(Personally, I enjoy Tullamore Dew.)
Yep. Also, gender traitors (by which I mean, interesting women.)
“And really, how are we supposed to discuss manly domination over everything if we’re eating a cookie with such an unmanly name? I mean, really?”
And here I thought you guys LIKED challenges.
Remember, this is practice. You don’t want to go out into the wide world and have to back down before snickerdoodles like a vampire before the crucifix.
True.
But — if they fixed all their problems, what would they do? Do you really expect them to settle down to earning their own bread and indulging in such quotidian goodness as donating to charity, telling the truth, and being kind to their neighbors? That’s work. So much more fun to get your moral egoboo from being an arrogant bully.
Yep. How silly of me. 🙂
I think female on male violence happens more often than is commonly reported, and I think men often take the legal blame in family confrontations. I don’t speak so from personal experience, but what I’ve observed.
I’ve seen a guy go to jail because his wife flew into a rage because he just held a door open for a woman. And all he did was try to defend himself against her physical attack. He went to jail with bruises, scrapes and scratches on his torso and face and arms – she broke a couple of fingers beating up on him; and that was the justification for his jailing.
And I’ve heard of other, similar stories.
There’s always a wide swing of the pendulum, and it never rests in the center. The misandrists should remember this. The pendulum is on their side now, but it’s still swinging.
I hope to gawd he never went back when he got out of prison.
The real predators use the laws against their victim.
Male and female; my sister has to have joint custody with the guy who bounced her off of walls, because when someone finally said “Hey, he just tried to bean you with that ’80s phone in front of me, THIS IS NOT COOL” she finally listened and didn’t leave in an emergency vehicle.
I work in an attorney’s office. Men being brought up on domestic violence charges because they were defending themselves against an abusive woman? Happens ALL the time.
Thank you. This is a beautiful post. It is also a very sad one. There is no dialogue to be had on this issue. They’ve made it clear this weekend. What I find most disturbing is that this bigotry, this misandry is allowed to stand without opposition, and how dare you! if you do oppose or criticize their hate mongering. I’ve watched the tweets and speeches and FB updates this weekend and it feels like a separate bubble where different rules and logic apply. So, I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this. Ignore it? Maybe. Thank God I’ve got a wife and kids. I don’t know how I’d do if I had to date again–carry a laminated Police Clearance Certificate with a star rating indicating my lack of potential for rape?
My son is 8. I worry about what he will find in ten years or so when he is ‘adult’ and I worry now about my daughters who are older than he, one old enough to begin dating. This is warping male-female relationships in subtle and unhealthy ways. Without trust, how can you have love?
Precisely! What happened to innocent attraction? It might get even worse where guys will start to feel guilty for being attracted to a girl if this behavior continues.
My three kids are still small, my oldest is turning seven in a week’s time. How will the world work in twenty-five years when she is allowed to date? :-p
I suspect smart young men will start to avoid women whom they do not already know and trust. It will make their options smaller, but better that than being accused of rape, whether anything happened or not. And I think we will see the return of the age of chaperone and duenna, whether by those names, or even conciously, I don’t know. The kids will want a witness…
Wouldn’t it be amusing / sad if the result of all of this is a return to “arranged” marriages and family chaperoned dating?
I think for a wise young person, this is going to be a safe outlet. Marriage for love is a recent development culturally, and love is something that can be cultivated, contrary to popular media. So marrying someone you can trust may become better than marrying because you fell in lust but didn’t dare have sex lest she say you raped her.
I suspect the group dates I read about in manners books from the 1950s will become more common, and chaperoned social mixers, and youth events sponsored by places of worship will become popular again. It protects the young men from false accusations, and “protects” the “women” from the (purported) behavior of young men. [irony quotes aimed at the nasty wymynists]
It’s my understanding of current teen culture that they DO effectively go on group dates. I’ve read several places that today’s teen is almost always in a group activity, due to the way they were raised.
I haven’t been paying that much attention as mine are minimum 10 years away from that, and I know society will swing again (no pun intended.)
I have seen some of it with young men and women entering the workforce. They have been working in groups their whole lives, and are shocked to discover that they will be working alone and solely accountable for their results.
For a good look at how society has changed in 30 years, watch any of the hit movies from the mid eighties. Many of us here will have fond memories of the time. I watched Revenge of the Nerds (1984) last night. I was quite surprised by what was considered appropriate (or at least NOT PROSECUTABLE). Particularly the activities around the “hair pie” scenes. It revealed to me that even MY sensibilities have been influenced by the constant drumbeat from the left.
See also any of the John Hughes movies. Mainstream entertainment, showing activities that would have you thrown in jail, ostracized, and abused now.
zuk
Makes it harder to pressure either side into doing something dumb, too.
I’ve thought for a long time that chaperoned courtship (not dating) would probably be a good idea. My reasons had more to do with keeping young people’s purity for marriage, but all this feminist misandry is another good reason for it. Cedar can tell you that she and her next sister weren’t allowed to run around loose when they were teens (though it would have been difficult anyway, since we lived quite a ways out of town). They may not have appreciated that at the time, but it was for their protection.
And arranged marriages are not as horrible an idea as many people nowadays seem to think, IF the parents involved have a degree of wisdom and good sense to choose partners for their children carefully and with their child’s best interests in mind. Our attitude towards the situation is what makes the difference.
It might get even worse where guys will start to feel guilty for being attracted to a girl if this behavior continues.
I was put into that exact position over thirty years ago. Why are you writing this in the future tense, and watering down even that with a weasel word like ‘might’?
Because I haven’t felt guilty yet and nor has any guy I know. However, in light of this post and the #YesAllWoman tweets over the weekend it appears to me that it might happen.
Your experience is different, clearly. I used my “weasel” word because it is not yet common practice for men to feel guilty about being attracted to women, plus the future is not yet so certain. (Weasel word? Really?!)
Saying something ‘might’ happen when it is already happening, yes, that’s weaselling. To borrow an example from xkcd, it’s like saying the Gateway Arch is ‘one of’ the best-known arches in St. Louis. Or worse yet, ‘arguably’ one of them.
Anyway, I was taught to feel that guilt in my teens, and I still feel it. I am not the only man who has been made to feel this way. So I can tell you straight up, the thing cannot start to happen in the future, because it already started many years ago.
Probably one of the reasons you don’t know any men in my position is that many of them, perhaps most, have ended up by becoming radical Leftists or even radical feminists in a misguided attempt to make restitution by sucking up. I was spared that option because the people who taught me to be ashamed also made it clear that I would not be accepted among them no matter what I did, so there was no point in sucking up to anybody.
I see what you are saying. However, it only applies if I had prior knowledge of it happening and I stated I did not. Secondly, if, for the sake of argument, I had prior knowledge and chose to use “might” anyway, then sure, your insult applies. It assumes my intention was to purposely use that word while knowing it was factually incorrect. It also means I was dishonest, and to that I take exception. Your persistence in accusing me, even after I explained my comment was based on my own experience, is insulting. It attacks my credibility. Are you saying I’m lying?
As for the second part of your reply, I’m sorry you were made to feel that way, and that you still do. None of us share the same experiences. You projected your own feelings and exposure onto me and my comment and assumed I shared same. I clearly don’t. I was taught to respect women, but never was I made to feel ashamed or guilty for being attracted to them, which brings us back to my original comment and my reason for making it.
I trust this clarifies the matter.
I see what you are saying. However, it only applies if I had prior knowledge of it happening and I stated I did not.
You might have made an effort to seek out that knowledge before making a dogmatic assertion about the matter.
Your persistence in accusing me, even after I explained my comment was based on my own experience, is insulting. It attacks my credibility. Are you saying I’m lying?
No, I’m saying you don’t know what you are talking about, and that the thing you merely fear happening in the future has already happened in the past.
You projected your own feelings and exposure onto me and my comment and assumed I shared same.
I did nothing of the kind. I said that my feelings and exposure had happened, when you explicitly denied that such things had already happened by stating that they were things that merely might happen in the future.
I trust this clarifies the matter.
It does make it clear exactly what you are failing to understand. You are arguing like a perfect Leftist – mind-reading, imputing motives, claiming the privilege of opinion when someone calls you on your erroneous facts. So long as you view this matter through that kind of ideological lens, I am very much afraid that neither I nor anyone else can make the facts of the situation clear to you.
This is getting ridiculous. You are pushing an issue for the sole purpose of wanting to be right. Is it that important to your ego that you would insult a guest here?
“You might have made an effort to seek out that knowledge before making a dogmatic assertion about the matter.”
Ludicrous! Feeling shame for being attracted to a woman is not common practice. That is your experience. Not mine. I did not assert anything. I postulated a future happening. That is far from dogmatic. As for making an effort to seek out knowledge, what knowledge? There was no reason to research the matter any further than what my own knowledge provided.
“No, I’m saying you don’t know what you are talking about, and that the thing you merely fear happening in the future has already happened in the past.”
Thanks for being so condescending. As for the rest, see my reply above.
“I did nothing of the kind. I said that my feelings and exposure had happened, when you explicitly denied that such things had already happened by stating that they were things that merely might happen in the future.”
No. You said your experience. I said my experience. So we have two different frames of reference. However, it is clear that you view yours as the more informed one, and thus I must be talking nonsense. Clearly we live in two different worlds. At least I don’t insult people I don’t know if I disagree with their opinion. If you ask me, this is precisely what a Leftist does, isn’t it? Bite the heads of those they disagree with?
“You are arguing like a perfect Leftist – mind-reading, imputing motives, claiming the privilege of opinion when someone calls you on your erroneous facts.”
Apart from your continues insults and accusations, the one problem in your paragraph above is your insistence that my facts are erroneous. By what authority? Yours? As far as I am aware we still have a thriving Romance and Erotica book market. Romance is still a draw at the movies and on TV, and clubs and bars still seem to host the same social interaction they did twenty years ago. So, I postulate that it might change in the future, that at some point things will get worse, but for now, it’s not yet common practice for men to feel ashamed for liking women.
I didn’t want to fight. I just wanted to participate in the discussion. I don’t mind debating, I don’t mind arguing either, but look what we are arguing about: my experience versus your experience. I’ve explained things the best I can. I’m surprised it went this far, honestly. My statement shouldn’t have warranted such a reaction from anyone because I had framed it specifically for debate, not attack. You can reply, I won’t answer you back. I don’t want to drag this out even more than it already is, and I don’t want to spoil the discussion for the rest of the people here.
If you are willing to accept my offer of peace, I’ll post a smily face.
This is getting ridiculous. You are pushing an issue for the sole purpose of wanting to be right.
There you go, mind-reading again. You have no idea what my purpose is. At present I am pushing the issue because you insist upon escalating your insults. You are presenting yourself as my enemy, and I do not find it safe to back down from my enemies. In short, it appears to me that you want a fight, and since it is too late for me not to give you one, I must see the thing through to the bitter end – win or die trying.
Is it that important to your ego that you would insult a guest here?
Apparently it does not occur to you that I, too, am a guest here, and you have been rather freely insulting me.
Ludicrous! Feeling shame for being attracted to a woman is not common practice.
I did not say it was common. You said it DID NOT OCCUR. You were wrong. I informed you of that fact. You then moved the goalposts repeatedly, whilst taking each occurrence as an occasion to take greater offence. Again, you are arguing like a typical Leftist.
That is your experience. Not mine.
Now you are saying that my experience does not count; only yours does. If a thing did not happen in your own experience, then you do not believe it has ever happened to anyone, and that you are somehow justified in talking as if it had never happened.
I did not assert anything. I postulated a future happening.
To postulate that something is ONLY a possible future happening is to state that it is not a past or present happening. This is precisely what you did.
As for making an effort to seek out knowledge, what knowledge?
The knowledge that what you thought of as only a hypothetical future event was already happening and had been for many years.
There was no reason to research the matter any further than what my own knowledge provided.
Yes, there was. Your knowledge was critically incomplete. You did not know what was happening. You are still trying to deny it.
Thanks for being so condescending. As for the rest, see my reply above.
See my reply above to your reply above. If I condescend to you, it is because you have richly earned it. You are clearly not understanding why the existence of one person’s experience categorically overrules the claim by another person that no such experience can have possibly occurred. This is a serious error, and a very elementary one.
No. You said your experience. I said my experience.
You only began saying ‘my experience’ when I called you on making a generalized claim. You are moving the goalposts, and I will not have it.
However, it is clear that you view yours as the more informed one, and thus I must be talking nonsense.
Right, because you say that X never happened, and I know that X has happened TO ME. I am in possession of information that you did not have; and now, having been so informed, you simply explode and argue petulantly that the information is irrelevant. You would do better to profit by it instead.
Clearly we live in two different worlds.
No, we live in the same world. But you refuse to admit that certain things are going on in that world. You are, in effect, sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, ‘La, la, la, la, I’m not listening so it never happened!’
At least I don’t insult people I don’t know if I disagree with their opinion.
This is a lie. You have been insulting me pretty steadily right along, and you are escalating your insults with each comment you make.
If you ask me, this is precisely what a Leftist does, isn’t it? Bite the heads of those they disagree with?
Yes; and that is PRECISELY why I accuse you of arguing like a Leftist.
Apart from your continues insults and accusations, the one problem in your paragraph above is your insistence that my facts are erroneous. By what authority? Yours?
Yes, mine. I am the person who had the experience that you insist has never happened. You have no right to say that, and no grounds. You had only the excuse of ignorance, and when I moved to take that away from you by informing you that you were incorrect, you exploded and began to blame me – and you are still doing it.
As far as I am aware we still have a thriving Romance and Erotica book market.
What does that have to do with the question of whether some men are being taught to be ashamed of their own heterosexuality? Nothing whatever. It is purely irrelevant. It is comically irrelevant when you consider that the ‘Romance and Erotica book market’ caters overwhelmingly to a female audience. Further, you have not excluded the possibility that some (or even all) of those straight men who are consumers of romance or erotica books are doing so in order to secretly and privately indulge the desires that they are ashamed to reveal to another human being directly. Without such exclusion, your conclusion does not follow from your premises.
Romance is still a draw at the movies and on TV,
Also irrelevant, for the same reason.
and clubs and bars still seem to host the same social interaction they did twenty years ago.
Still more irrelevant, because ‘clubs and bars’ have only ever been used for purposes of sexual encounters by a minority of the population. Please note that I at no time claimed that all men were taught to be ashamed of their sexuality: it was you who claimed that none were.
So, I postulate that it might change in the future, that at some point things will get worse, but for now, it’s not yet common practice for men to feel ashamed for liking women.
No, you postulated this (your exact words in boldface):
It might get even worse where guys will start to feel guilty for being attracted to a girl if this behavior continues.
You said nothing about ‘common practice’. You said it might ‘start’ to happen, and I informed you, and repeat to you now, that it started to happen a long time ago and has not yet stopped. I am a living example of it, but I assure you, not the only one. In the unlikely event that you want to know more about this phenomenon, I can recommend to you the book Shyness and Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment, by Dr. Brian Gilmartin. In spite of the title, the book deals as much with shame as with shyness; and it was published in 1987.
I didn’t want to fight. I just wanted to participate in the discussion.
Right, that’s why you said:
Are you saying I’m lying?
Which is a stock way of starting a fight. Discussion, my eye.
I don’t mind debating, I don’t mind arguing either, but look what we are arguing about: my experience versus your experience.
Right: I am saying that something has happened in my experience, and therefore it has happened in the world. You are saying that the same thing has not happened in your experience, and therefore that I am wrong to say it has happened in the world. These are not symmetrical claims. My claim, if valid, invalidates yours, and not vice versa.
I’ve explained things the best I can. I’m surprised it went this far, honestly.
You shouldn’t be surprised that things go this far when you tell people that their experiences never happened.
My statement shouldn’t have warranted such a reaction from anyone because I had framed it specifically for debate, not attack.
Why shouldn’t it have warranted such a reaction? Because you didn’t expect it? Because you didn’t want it? The fact is that you didn’t frame anything for debate. You made a statement that something might begin to happen in the future, and I informed you that it already had happened in the past and was still happening in the presence; and instead of accepting the new data, you took umbrage. The more appropriate thing to take in such a situation is not umbrage but notice.
You can reply, I won’t answer you back.
Another typical Leftist arguing tactic is to proclaim that the argument is over and that one has already won. This is one of the forms that that tactic takes.
I don’t want to drag this out even more than it already is, and I don’t want to spoil the discussion for the rest of the people here.
You’ve already dragged it out to the point where I cannot fall silent without appearing to concede and thereby losing all intellectual honour. I shall not, I must not allow matters to rest at the point where you have cast your aspersions upon both my honesty and the validity of my experiences. You have attacked my honour, and I will defend it, unless Mrs. Hoyt sees fit to ban me.
If you are willing to accept my offer of peace, I’ll post a smily face.
You have made no offer of peace. The most you have done is to offer to accept my surrender, and to slap me in the face while doing it. I do not thank you for such an offer and will not lower myself to accept it.
What I want, in any case, is not an offer of peace, but a retraction and an apology. I do not expect to receive one; but then, I am thoroughly used to not receiving what I want. I am well acquainted with the experience of asking for bread and having someone give me a stone just to humiliate me for confessing that I was hungry. So far as you have shown yourself to me, you have given me no grounds to hope that you are not the kind of person who would do just that.
Good time to drop it, Mr. Simon. From the outside, you’re being WAY oversensitive.
Tom has this issue — and when he hit this issue it gets… odd. I suggest this be dropped. Now.
My apologies for only now replying. New Zealand is 16 or so hours ahead. Consider the matter dropped like a hot potato.
Ah. New Zealand. Um… Kate Paulk totally make uncouth comments about sheep when NZ is mentioned. Or if she does, pardon her, she’s Australian!
Good to know, thanks. We do have a lot of sheep. :-p
😛
Weirdly we called NZ colleague as exchange students “Kiwi” so much I never knew his name. he had a set of t-shirts taht said Kiwi.
Yep, the kiwi is our national bird and rugby is an obsession. 😉
Good time to drop it, Mr. Simon. From the outside, you’re being WAY oversensitive.
Acknowledged, Ma’am, and agreed out of courtesy for you as my host; but if Mr. Dietrich continues the matter, I shall feel ill-used.
I used to be a feminist – what I call the old-fashioned, small-‘f’ kind; equal political rights, equal access to educational and vocational opportunities — that is, if one was qualified for them. And I too have male friends and coworkers, and fellow writers who were and are fine with all that, and good on them, too. I also have brothers, a father and grandfathers whom I also respect and love. Alas, it appears that a lot of women just took feminism as an excuse to be nasty, stone-cold b**ches. I daresay that the women who Cedar has written about – the stone-cold man-haters – are feeling all righteous and justified, but the thing about hate is that most often it destroys the hater, more than it harms the hated.
feminism and civil rights are no longer about equality, and are trying for tyranny.
I’m still a feminist, I’m still about equality, and I’m not trying for tyranny.
then the movement has left you WAY behind.
The movement’s not my personal concern. I acknowledge there is a movement that calls itself “feminism” what I would call “special pleading” or some kind of resentful affirmative action, which I lump in with unionized anti-management or black separatism and all that garbage. But I’m not going to be scared off of feminism for that reason.
The problem with using the word after they’ve corrupted it, is like everyone who is “liberal” in the mold of Jefferson and says he’s a “liberal” — you’re lending word-support to the crazies in their own mind, and misidentifying yourself to others.
Also — equality? Mandated equality — spits.– unless feminism means JUST “equality under the law” it can go hang with all the sick isms of the 20th century.
By “equality” I don’t mean sameness, only a willingness to look at ways men are women are different, and decide which might be better in one context or another without assuming that the male pattern is the standard human pattern, while the female pattern is a lesser aberration. Well, that, and a willingness to judge a woman by her actual performance, not preconceptions about what her performance was likely to be.
both of those I would stand behind, but you don’t need “feminist” for that — you need “constitutionalist”
Overbroad in that it doesn’t address the special conceptual problems people encounter over fraught gender issues, and overnarrow in that it’s limited to government action. I’m not concerned with government action at present, or at least not in this context–only with a common cognitive error I find ridiculous, annoying, and needless.
“Constitutionalist” to me means, well, the Constitution. The document that limits what the government can do and leaves the rests to the states or the citizen. I’d much rather leave the (or any part of) government out of gender issues, as it is far too blunt an instrument.
Treating people as ends and not means, as worthy of respect in and of themselves instead of widgets with boxes to check (male, warm beige, redneck, one each) is far preferable to me to any movement, governmental program, article of faith, or doctrine. The former strikes me as simple common sense, the latter as needless meddling.
Gender issues — treat people as people and they go away. Heck, Cedar and I are friends, and I have more in common with some male friends than I do with her, despite the fact we both have vaginas. Yes, brains are different, but it’s a continuum and again, being intensely political, which Cedar isn’t, I have more in common with some of my guy political-columnist friends than with her.
WHY ON EARTH is the determining thing “we’re both female” and not “She’s fifteen years younger than I and miles prettier and not political, and a performer, and…”
To be honest, I’d say you were more humanist in outlook, rather than feminist. My wife held the same outlook but was unaware of the more strident side of what passes itself of as feminism these days-an interesting discussion during a long road trip changed that.
“I’d say you were more humanist in outlook”–well, sure, it’s the same principle, but in practice, it’s humanism in the form of feminism that engages my attention, because it’s the only way the issue comes up in my own life, and it’s the one I’m most passionate about. But I apply the same standard to my own interaction with people in different groups from myself, whether that’s blacks, men, or anyone else.
The movement’s not my personal concern.
It damned well is your concern as long as you want the credit for calling yourself by the same name that they use. If you call yourself a feminist, then you are explicitly associating yourself with what the feminist movement does and says.
If you don’t disown them, then you get to own them. There is no middle position; they themselves will not permit it.
I don’t want any credit for calling myself anything. The name is accurately descriptive of a movement that goes back to my early youth, if not longer, and of which I am clearly a member. Now and then I point out to people that the mere fact that some feminists have crazy views does not mean that all feminists do. I have feminism in common with them even if we don’t share the crazy views.
But the crazy views are feminism. They are what feminism has become; they were the cutting edge of feminism more than thirty years ago. (Look at the quotes compiled by Fail Burton. Those from McKinnon, Dworkin, and French, and possibly others, date back to the 1970s or early 1980s.) If you want to count yourself as a feminist, be my guest; but as they say, qui tacet consentire videtur. If you have gone on calling yourself a feminist for all those years, despite what the leaders of the movement and custodians of the name have been doing and saying as noisily as ever they could, then you have been proclaiming your support for them.
Feminism long ago stopped being about the femin- part of the word, and became all about the -ism. And the ism has metastasized until there is not an organ of the original host that has not been invaded. The word has become the name for an ideological disease: so that the younger generation of women is full of those who say, ‘Of course I believe in equal opportunity and equal rights for women – but I’m not a feminist.’ Those women are merely using the word in its correct current sense.
To me, that’s like saying “That’s what men have become, so all men need to apologize or start calling themselves something new.”
It’s not like I belong to the Feminist Party, you know, and vote straight ticket. 🙂 Nevertheless, there can be no doubt I’m a feminist and have been for many decades now.
If you haven’t kept up with the Movement, then you’re not a feminist by the modern meaning of the term. The language has changed, and you haven’t changed along with it; so a label that once applied to you does not apply any longer. By claiming that it does, you are giving aid and comfort to those who use the term in the much more destructive current sense.
Oh, and by the way, a further distinguo:
To me, that’s like saying “That’s what men have become, so all men need to apologize or start calling themselves something new.”
No, because one is born a male, and if so, will inevitably grow up (if at all) to be a man; the thing cannot be helped, except (questionably) by sex-change surgery. One is not born a feminist, but chooses to become one. Also, the word ‘man’, in the narrower sense of ‘adult male human’, is still used exactly as it was a hundred or a thousand years ago; it refers to a natural object and that object has not changed. The term ‘feminist’ has not a natural but a cultural referent, and that referent has changed markedly over the course of the last half century. Therefore, the analogy does not bear up under examination.
It’s not my habit to accept guilt for what other people do. And I doubt that the man-haters of the feminist world would consider me to be giving them any aid or comfort, if indeed we ever had any contact with each other–unlikely, given my tendency to avoid conversations with people stuck in stereotypical thinking.
They keep publishing surveys of how many people self-describe as feminists. with much gnashing of teeth when the number drops.
Yeah, it’s equivocation, but they do use all the “women should be legally equal to men” sorts to pad their numbers.
Indeed, when you go to nail them down, they often insist that feminism can’t be defined, which makes you wonder why they think we’re so dumb we would sign up for a movement that hides its own goals.
When they don’t have vapors about your assertions about feminism, apparently under the impression that they can really convince you that a movement that publicizes blogs and books and mission statements and marches is really the Eleusisian Mysteries, with all its components wrapped in secrecy.
I don’t know about “them.” I haven’t got any problem defining feminism. I’m also patient about receiving slings from one side saying “If you’re a feminist, then you must believe A,B,C,” and arrows from the other saying, “If you don’t believe A,B,C, you’re a traitor to the feminist cause.” I feel m only responsibility is to speak up when I read/hear something untrue. It’s always good to get more accurate information out there to people who may never have heard it.
Like Pres Reagan said: I didn’t leave the Democratic party they left me.
yes, but its leaders are not listening to you except to condemn you slipping from the true path
Leadership believes that females are superior, and stronger than males, but so fragile that improper thoughts spoken aloud or read will render them into quivering piles of jello
Cry out that all Men are evil then complain they cannot get a good man to associate with them.
Someone like you is not the problem outside of the fact you and those like you cannot get the ‘leaders’ to stop at equality … what ever that truly means in this day and age
I confess I don’t make any effort to approach them as “leaders” and get them to do anything. They’re not leading anything I’m a member of. I will engage them one-on-one, just as I engage people one-on-one who view women as lesser people of some sort (and they are surprisingly common, in part because of a predicable backlash against misandrists).
The irony is that the “nuance” article they are criticizing is indeed problematic since it follows the standard issue line — nuance=GOOD, no nuance=EVIL — which, you may notice, lacks nuances.
But, hey, why miss a chance to abuse just because you could make a rational counter-argument.
“Only the Sith deal in absolutes!”
“Um, Ben, that’s kind of an absolue statement.”
“Dang it!”
But, hey, why miss a chance to abuse just because you could make a rational counter-argument.
It’s difficult to make a rational counter-argument, or a rational anything, when you have been taught all your life to despise and fear rationality, and have never been taught the first thing about actually using it. A doctrinaire Leftist of this generation can no more make a rational argument than a New Guinea tribesman who never heard of baseball can steal second base. I mean, such a thing could occur by pure happenstance, but how would he ever know he had done it?
Part of it is the normal US cycle system. Mexico and the US in the early 1900’s began the path to Socialism. Ours was more subtle but theirs stabilized quicker. That is, in that Mexico is a stable country (outside the drug corridor into the US) Number 14 in economics and little public debt. They knew when to stop when they were ahead. We instead, move to another level by spurts, overreaction, and when we do get normalized, it’s no where close to where it should be. Civil Rights still are a mess with people still trying to work affirmative action into everything. As Cedar and Tom mentioned, Feminism to correct inequality was a good thing, now we are in extreme over reaction. It’ll settle down, but we won’t be better for it. I don’t fear feminists because of their screeching, I simple remind them that if they want the right to be a man, they have to be willing to take the lumps that come with it. It usually ends with them fading out in the background with screams of “Racist” or some other “I lost and you’re a bad person.” comment. They can go back to their little warren and squee in the comments section. I will still treat a woman like a lady as long as she behaves like one.
I simple remind them that if they want the right to be a man, they have to be willing to take the lumps that come with it.
As Brian May put it over forty years ago, in the song ‘Son and Daughter’ (apologies, language not necessarily SFW):
Tried to be a son and daughter rolled into one
You said you’d equal any man for having your fun
Now, didn’t you feel surprised to find
The cap just didn’t fit?
The world expects a man
To buckle down and to shovel shit
What’ll you do for loving
When it’s only just begun?
I want you to be a woman
(He’s still catching flak for that one.)
This makes me sad. I have known some pretty awful people in my life, some were men, some were women. I have neither rejected women or men as a class because of this. I have rejected awful individuals.
To believe that because some men have behaved like weasels all men must be weasels is a sad place to be in your life. It is said that abuse often produces abusers. This is an example of it — in the warped thinking of these men haters whose personal anger and anxiety so color their world view as to justify what they would recognize as abuse if it were directed toward any other group of people.
To Sunny Moraine, who stated, ‘Well-educated white dudes with a lot of opinions and just enough smarts to think they have it all figured out makes me so goddamn tired.”: I am so tired of anyone who thinks they have it all figured out. We are finite beings, and therefore our understanding will always be finite. I hope you find a way to get over it. We’ll all be a great deal happier, including you.
This makes me sad. I have known some pretty awful people in my life, some were men, some were women. I have neither rejected women or men as a class because of this. I have rejected awful individuals.
That’s because, at least to some extent, you’re an individualist. You see people as individuals.
However, most of these see people as collections. As such, they can’t seem to grasp that traits they find abhorrent are attributed to individuals rather than groups they happen to be members of. They blame the entire group…
…unless it’s inconvenient for their favored politics to do so, which is why if a black man commits a crime, it’s that individual, but if a white man does something, it’s an indictment of all white men.
When my wife and I worked as therapeutic foster parents, one of the things we were taught was that the vast majority of child abusers had been abused as children, and didn’t see anything wrong with their behavior. One of our jobs was to try to break that cycle. Sometimes we succeeded, other times we didn’t. I fear the people pushing this “all men are evil” routine will create the same self-perpetuating system of abuse and hatred.
I want to see all people treated equally under the law: given the same opportunities, provided an equal path to knowledge and learning, equal opportunities to find meaningful employment. Equality of RESULTS is the exact opposite of all that, and those that push for that type of equality are the vilest kind of tyrant imaginable.
I echo the sentiment that I’m married now, and no longer in the “dating scene”. I pity children between the ages of 10 and 35 these days — their lives have been turned upside down, not from what they’ve done, but because a few idiots have loud voices and little true intelligence.
To be evil, eh?
How much more evil would a man be who embodies all of the vile tendencies and inclinations that the paranoids ascribe to all males… and doesn’t act on them? Thousands, if not millions of rapes fail to occur a day. Often there’s not even the dreaded PIV sexual intercourse in a day in the life of an adult female. There are near as many men as women. And yet the acts of aggression are few in proportion.
How malicious that “Miss” or “Ma’am” must be when we open a door or greet a fellow human being. What sinister purpose must we men have when we look upon mothers, sisters, daughters and even unrelated female humans not with anticipatory lust but with love and respect? It cannot but be some wicked plot to keep the patriarchy in perpetual power (over the checkbook, the house, the wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters themselves no doubt). *shakes head*
To be a man is to stand between the women in your life and danger when it comes. That’s just something we do, along with getting stuff from high shelves (if we are tall) and opening stuck jars. Woe be unto he that does not respect “Women and children first” when disaster looms. A male who forgets these things is often shunned and seen as less than a man (and should be).
There is a precious and sacred bond built in living up to those ideals. When the women in your life trust you with their safety, that trust can be a great source of strength. As ever, a loud and belligerent few are seeking to poison the relationship between men and women for their own ends. It is a shame and a travesty that some out there choose to mock and belittle that trust with their callow words and deeds.
Thank you Cedar, for reminding us that #NotAllWomen buy into this anti-male crap.:-)
The older I get, the more I see that people are almost never rational. Some people never seem to use reason. Others reach the rarefied level of using it occasionally.
Some of these people are the same who would be outraged if someone were to say: “because some blacks commit violent crimes, blacks as a group share guilt.” But somehow saying: “because some men commit violent crimes, men as a group share guilt” is totally okay.
The cognitive dissonance, it burns. I guess shared outrage is an addictive drug, where you have to keep upping the dosage or you don’t get your fix.
Here’s one for you:
“Frankly, I think men ruin everything.” — John ONeill (Commenting on the Nebula Awards over at The Black Gate.)
Okay, let’s test that. Men ruin science. Men ruin automotive mechanics. Men ruin agriculture. Men ruin mathematics. Men ruin science fiction. Men ruin carpentry. Men ruin science fiction. Men ruin small unit tactics. Eh… sorry, I just don’t see it.
You know, I try. I really try to see things from their perspective. But I honestly can’t imagine how what they say makes any sense. It’s almost like… they are completely ignorant of history and reality. Or maybe it’s just that guys like this think the girls/women he knows will like him if he repeats the idiocy he hears from them back to them. Sometimes, though, I think these people merely want to destroy civilization.
The destruction of civilzation is another post… I plan to put my artist goggles on, and talk about how destroying beauty has led to all this vileness and hatred.
And if you don’t do it here, I’ll reblog it.
To accept beauty as a possibility, one must also accept its opposite – ugliness. And that’s just hurtful.
But it’s more than that. Beauty inspires us. It stirs something inside of us. And I can’t help but think that some people, under who knows what kind of influence, can’t bear to have that stirred in themselves, and can’t bear the thought of having it stirred in others.
Talking about the destruction of beauty….My bank has been bought by another one. The bank used to have several really beautiful paintings of boats, ships, and such hanging on the walls. (I really wish I knew what happened to one of them — I’d love to buy it!) Now they have a big mural on the wall behind the tellers that looks like it came from a communist propaganda poster. I’ve seen a LOT of that type of ‘art’ in the last few years (or decades). Music has been going downhill for the last couple of generations….
There are certain commonalities: fine art photography and painting got a kick in the pants because they became nothing more than texualized and intellectualized conversation pieces around which to talk about larger issues, and those issues quickly froze into what we mockingly call “social justice.” That is exactly what is happening with the QUILTBAGs and SFF. SFF is nothing more than an almost irrelevant conveyor of QUILTBAG narcissism and supremacism they lyingly pass off as “diversity.”
That’s why QUILTBAGs have no interest in Golden Age SF: it doesn’t contain their message or themselves, and instead defaults to more classic visions with race largely stripped out or completely irrelevant. QUILTBAGs wrongly interpret that as white male narcissism and racial supremacy. In fact it’s more like a tabula rasa in SF’s higher literary pretensions combined with the commercial marketing one might expect in what has often been boy’s adventure fiction in its lower expressions.
BTW, there’s another reason for it, from the “artist” (not that I consider myself one. I’m a craftswoman) side from the belly of the beast. you can’t write what you REALLY care about, because it will mean the end of your career. And I don’t just mean if you’re conservative. If you’re even mildly “deviationist” the establishment will kick you. Of course, you can’t know what’s “deviationist” — witness what happened to Resnick.
So you end up writing pap and derivation, and that’s all.
The irony is that when they do deal with race, it’s generally with the observation that everyone is descended from everyone on Earth, and we have astounding new combinations.
Once online saw a complaint that the Foundation trilogy had no non-white characters — and saw it get torn to shreds by people ridiculing the very notion, because Asimov had provided exactly zero physical descriptions.
Slight quibble: At least one of the characters in the Foundation books is described as having a beard. Nothing said, however, about the colour of the beard, or of the skin from which it grew. In the context of popular fiction at that time, this silence is as significant as Holmes’s dog that did not bark in the night.
And what’s the continual big complaint there from QUILTbaggery: that those characters default to white. Writers like Asimov pretty clearly meant for them to default to nothing in order to enhance larger principles. So who’s fault is it, and how surprising is it that idiotic racialists say they default to white because blah, blah, blah? In fact, a lack of descriptions allows one to put in whatever one wants, a thing you’d think is great according to the supposed principle a PC clown will state on Monday and reverse on Tuesday. There is no end to the wonders of the mind of an idiotic racist. Since they don’t have an actual definition of what a racist even is, there’s no telling what explanation a PC QUILTBAG may give tomorrow, other than a straight white male will be on the wrong end of it.
http://www.ts.fi/kulttuuri/nayttelyt/634411/Hiiteen+kukat
*sigh*
The text praises that artist for his originality, and the power of expression those paintings show, and the artist’s talent for visualizing the inequality in society… and the stuff looks like what I sometimes end up with when I lose my patience and just start messing up the canvas or paper, and what then ends up in trash.
Maybe I should give those failed paintings fancy names and try to get them shown somewhere.
I was at the local art museum with my oldest brother and mother, and while in the “modern art” (which, BTW, doesn’t seem to have changed much in the last 60 years) section spotted what, from across the room, reminded us of a plowed field covered in snow.
Up close, well, the actual title was something meaningless — something neutral but attempting to be deep — and the execution was disappointing. I realize I have no formal art training at all, but much of what we saw as furrows were actually runs and drips.
The Art Museum in Richmond, VA has this one painting of the entrance of a diner. At about ten feet from it, i would actually get a sensation like vertigo because the floor was at the wrong angle(i.e. I’d have to be leaning over to see it like that)
the effect fell away when closer, and at five feet i could see brushstrokes. To heck with ‘deeper meaning’, I like a realistic painting.
Just remember to attach a funky cause-of-the-day explanation of the piece’s ‘deeper meaning’ (“I was trying to draw a horse” is not a deeper meaning, I am told.) and you’ll make a fortune.
Maybe I can frame a piece of printer paper and title it: “Polar Bear Trapped In A Snowstorm — Due To Global Warming”
I might make millions. Muahahahahaha-*cough**wheeze*
Maybe, if you could also b***s**t well and talk the lingo, and maybe do something ‘controversial’ from time to time to draw attention to yourself. Part of the game nowadays seems to be performance art, not just paintings or whatever. Get on newspapers and television as the hot new thing, and empty papers and your kid’s first attempts of finger painting really might end up in museums or collections.
Another local artists who has gotten attention here paints realistic, perhaps a bit too pretty traditional scenes and does it well, but he always inserts Elvis – usually dressed like the later Las Vegas era Elvis, but with the face and figure he had as a younger man – in the paintings. Without that Elvis he probably would have no career, but with Elvis in them they are supposed to be profoundly deep. 🙂 Clever fellow. Would be nice to know if he actually is trying for something ‘deep’, or if he just likes to paint pretty pictures but has figured a way to sell them as art to the art circles.
Oh, put a bit of mottling on it. then you can copyright it.
This might interest you:
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/TheReal19thCentury/thereal19thcentury.php
Thanks. Interesting.
Tangentially:
Anybody familiar with Jacob Collins?
My wife has often said that she believes men who parrot the man-haters’ idiocy are just trying to get points with those women, in the hope that they’ll be more likely to get laid. I’m inclined to believe her. 😛
I suspect she’s right. They also remind me of the woman in the book “Eighth Moon,” who flattered and courted one of the (young and physically unattractive) Communist Party cadre leaders. He took the bait and helped her get into a safe position within the Party, then she dumped him. He hated all women and trusted no one after that.
Sometimes, though, I think these people merely want to destroy civilization.
Actual chant by student protesters at some demo at an American university a few years ago:
‘Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go.’
And no, they didn’t mean from the curriculum at that university; they meant altogether – expunged from the universe and from the historical record.
That probably explains the popularity of all the modern zombie stories, these ones where you follow the survivors and it seems they have a good chance of winning and getting the chance to rebuild the society – people like that finally get what they want, but then get promptly eaten or turned, and the people with guns and the knowledge to use them are the ones who remain. 🙂
I mean, however loud and prominent those people are, they still are the minority, and most of us can see their stupidity. And Schadenfreude is a delicious feeling. Now, if we really got something like a zombie apocalypse I would probably be able to feel sorry for them, especially since I probably would not fare any better than most of them (probably worse, especially since some of them are well protected by hired guns, and many of them are young and in a lot better shape than I am) but in fiction, yep, love it.
O’Neil’s another one who just doesn’t get that racial defamation is always wrong. He’ll give a platform to one of these QUILTBAG ditzes who think “middle-aged white man” is a self-explanatory term for an act of stupidity but if you say that’s brainless to do you get some smug remark and deleted. I think we can take it on faith that any remark about “middle-aged lesbian” as being a qualifier for stupid will get deleted. I honestly don’t know how a living breathing adult can get that intellectually buried and not know it.
Exactly how old do you have to be to understand racial defamation is – surprise – race-neutral? 10? 11? The two words put together is not a tricksy act of irony.
Exactly how old do you have to be to understand racial defamation is – surprise – race-neutral? 10? 11?
Exactly so. It takes many years of education at an (il)liberal arts institution to so deform the mind that it is unable to grasp such obvious truisms. Some people are born stupid; some, unfortunately, go out and spend years making themselves stupid, and attain a state of idiocy not findable in nature.
I am really glad to be safely married, and not having to try to date any more. If I were, I’d most likely do my best to stick to openly conservative women, who generally aren’t going to loathe me because I find them interesting. Sadly, I have to say I’ve met many of the man-hating variety on the internet, and have cut ties with them as quickly as possible. You can’t even be friends with these women, let alone, be interested in asking them out. Sometimes, you can’t even be friendly to them without risking something.
I know one woman who freaked out because a man SMILED at her in the mall. Didn’t speak to her; didn’t touch her; didn’t even walk toward her; simply SMILED at her as he passed by. That heinous action caused her to shrink in terror and spew multiple facebook posts about how utterly creepy he was, and how she was sure he wanted to rape her/have sex with her. What this ultimately came down to, that she was unable to identify in herself, was that she found the man unattractive. Because later, she posted about a guy openly flirting with her, even touching her without her permission, and was all SQUEE!!! HOW SEXY! because–surprise!–she found him “hot.” Apparently, only “hot” guys can smile, be friendly, or flirt with women, and not be accused of mental rape or worse. The trouble is, no guy can ever know if he meets that particular woman’s standard of “hot,” so any kind of friendliness toward any unknown woman is a great risk. So much easier to just pretend you don’t even see them, and have nothing to do with strange women, only interacting with ones you already know or have been introduced to by someone you trust.
I used to be the biggest innocent flirt in the universe, but no more. Even if I were still single, I’d not flirt with anyone, unless I knew them already and knew how they’d react to it. Really, what a bunch of killjoys those harpies are! 😦
There was a Saturday Night Live skit (with Tom Brady playing the “hot guy”), on how not to commit sexual harassment.
1. Be Handsome
2. Be Attractive
3. Don’t Be Unattractive
But it goes beyond that. Some of the things these women react to are really there.
The difference is this — if I’m about to get in an elevator with a guy and I get an “off” feeling (something shifty around the eyes, something not quite right) I suddenly “remember I left something in the car.” Because I do recognize that #veryfewmen are dangers, and trust my instinct. But if you’re wedded to the idea that there are no real criminals, they’re victims of society, etc, you have to justify your feelings of danger with #allmen.
In the last week I’ve had two very different “possibly dangerous” interactions.
In one case I made sure to not back down in the least, faced him, and he stuck with screaming obcenities, trying to startle us like you would chickens (half-charge but never get anywhere near close) and threatening to call the police… until I did, at which point he ran away.
In the other… I’m not entirely sure it happened, but I was coming out of the store on Friday a bit after five, and noticed that a tall form had moved across the isle to follow me. I didn’t have anything heavy. I did standard “vary your course to see if they follow” things, which incidentally meant I walked through a LOT more cars full of people getting ready for Memorial Day Weekend.
He followed me, but did cut back to the other side of the row of cars. Changed his course three different times.
So I called my husband and did a short rant about whatever it was that I’d gone in for and couldn’t find, loudly, and when I noticed that a nice middle aged couple pulled up near my van I walked a bit faster and got my tail in there.
Seventy degrees, guy was wearing a hood, and I didn’t turn to get a because if someone is crazy enough to stalk someone in a crowded parkinglot they might be crazy enough to try charging me– so knowing it’s coming is a better defense. Especially since the most likely attack would be “wait for her to open something and start to load, bumrush, steal car and/or kidnap target.”
How the heck do folks not get taught basic Navy briefing “how to not be a target” stuff!?!?!
I use those moves too–
Gut instinct is your friend. But yet again, a lot of people have been trained to mistrust and ignore gut instinct, and to secondguess themselves.
Was it you who suggested that “trust your instincts” book?
The one buy that poor guy who grew up in a horribly abusive house and thus hates guns, now makes his living trying to get people to pay attention to what they see even if it’s subconscious attention?
Man, I can’t remember names to save my life today!
The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker.
Valuable little book, but I wish he’d put a little more into it about what to do when it turns out that the object of your fear can’t be wished away, intimidated, or negotiated with.
I’m afraid that would break him.
For people to actually recognize who is a real threat, though, is a major step– I was never trained to ignore threats, although I still might rationalize them away, so my reactions to Mr. spook-a-chicken were almost exactly what a cow would do with a dog that wants to scare it. Face the threat and be prepared to make it cost.
Almost all the situations he covered, from memory, required victim cooperation in some level.
How about the 3 s’s? Shoot, shovel, shut up.
Could it be The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker?
I believe in situational awareness– it has saved me a few times.
Because “how to not be a target” = victim blaming. 😩
(Interestingly, your post and others on this thread fit the purported aim of the #YesAllWomen hashtag, but if you subscribe to #VeryFewMen I suspect you wouldn’t be welcome.)
Not a clue what the goal of the YAH one is, but I’ve got about a one in four female/male pretty-sure-they-wanted-to-do-me-dire-physical-harm thing, and a nine in ten for female/male wanted to do me NON-physical harm. Well, not counting spreading broken glass where she thought I would step on it…..
If I understand correctly, #YesAllWomen get harassed by men.
Subtext: So it doesn’t matter that #NotAllMen are harassers.
(’Course, it didn’t take long before the twits turned on each other, explaining that complaining of this sort of harassment was actually just a cover for committing that sort of ——ism/——phobia, and Check Your Privilege. :roll:)
*head hurts*
I got harassed by a man once. Well, older juvenile. I don’t remember his age exactly, but he was full grown and had been held back a number of years at my middle school. (I’d guess at least 18.) I was eleven. He stole my art project, which we were supposed to take home and finish. When I came back at the end of the day, he was waiting in the empty classroom. I berserked out. I don’t have a very clear idea what I did, but he had cracked ribs. I lived in fear of being expelled. I don’t know if he ever mentioned it, but if he did, no one cared. It was never mentioned.
Later, on getting harassed, I learned to use stuff to hand before berserking. At one point dictionaries.
You know, I don’t believe anyone can make me safe, so I make myself safe. I never wanted to pound all men, but I did make sure the ones that were bad actors thought twice before trying anything funny again. Because #ResponsibleHumanBeing
“I know one woman who freaked out because a man SMILED at her in the mall. Didn’t speak to her; didn’t touch her; didn’t even walk toward her; simply SMILED at her as he passed by.”
That woman must not be from the South or in the South (US). If you walk by someone here and don’t smile, wave, say hello, or something friendly, you are in serious trouble. ‘Course, I’m talking about the rural South, where people still know their neighbors and assume that the stranger at the grocery store must be somebody they know and they’ve just forgotten.
I have been seeing this attitude since we came back to the US in 2003, but in the last four years the attitude has become accepted– I find it horrendous. It was very hard to read many of the statements without wanting to cut of tongues and hands.
YES!
I agree — hard not to think there are SOME people this world would really be better off without!!! However, even some of them may come around in the end, and if they do change their minds later (as liberals have been known to when they gain some maturity) they can be good witnesses against that mindset.
Yes– but– *sigh
It’s this kinda stuff that makes me want to turn my back on the 21st century and live in 1905 or so, in a Steampunk fantasy world or Western with manly, polite men and women who are womanly but strong in their own way. I want to be a lady among gentlemen, not a cowering, shrieking wymyn among eunuchs. The stuff Cedar posted makes me queasy, because I’m torn between retreating to a fainting couch or showing up at a NOW meeting with a large Nerf bat and a sack of hyperactive Abyssinian cats. (Because plunging these females’ heads into a horse trough until they see reason is probably illegal as well as messy.)
Me too – I think that’s why I love taking refuge in the 19th century – brave men and strong women, chivalry, optimism and enterprise. Certain disadvantages, of course … but from here, it looks pretty good.
Yeah but a lack of technology and certain advances in medicine. Maybe we can bring back 19th century manners?
I suspect the desire for 19th century manners is why Steampunk has exploded onto the scene, all jokes about “Goths in brown” aside. I’ve been told that Steampunk Cons are some of the most fun, politest cons around, because everyone acts “up” to the standards they associate with the Victorians.
yes. they are, and yep, I think so too.
Around these parts, ‘steampunk’ mostly seems to mean ‘fat women who think they can make themselves look HAWT!!! by using corsets as outerwear’, and it has no connotation one way or the other about manners.
On the other hand, we have no steampunk cons around here that I know of. Never had a Renfaire, either, and no longer have any traditional cons. We do have a whacking enormous comic con of recent vintage, but I’ve never been because crowds of that size make me physically ill. (Especially when they are crammed into a space far too small to be permitted by the fire code.)
You actually get that at all cons, not just Steampunk.
And yes, while that leather bustier MAY be your cup size, the 10-inch span between the eyelets in the back means it’s definitely not your size.
You actually get that at all cons, not just Steampunk.
Well, yes, it was at ‘all cons’ (if you take my meaning) that I observed this phenomenon. (Also among female fans outside of cons.) As I said, we haven’t got any steampunk cons in my neck of the woods, and I have never actually been to one. I don’t profess to say anything about what goes on at those, and I would be very happy to believe that they rise far above the low level of the self-styled steampunk fans I have happened to meet.
Oh, that reminds me: the other thing ‘steampunk’ makes me think of, in terms of things local to my area, is silly hipsters who wear waxed moustaches and ride penny-farthing bicycles on suburban streets. I have only seen that the once, but I am told by some of my friends that it is a tolerably frequent occurrence.
Around these parts, ‘steampunk’ mostly seems to mean ‘fat women who think they can make themselves look HAWT!!! by using corsets as outerwear’, and it has no connotation one way or the other about manners.
I am involved in the business of conventions and have seen some people make some pretty unusual and unsuitable choices in their costumes. ‘Sailor Bubba’ is legendary in anime circles, but he has gained the status of a beloved in-joke – beard, potbelly, stogie and all. Then there are others, as in the ‘300 lb. Faye Valentine’ in her mustard halter top and hot pants outfit. She may have only weighted 250 lbs., but really, the sight was unpleasantly memorable.
The Steampunk sub-culture is not about corsets worn on the outside, although many of the newbies and hangers-on might lead an outside observer to think so.
That’s one of the advantages to the steampunk subculture. They actually tend to do just that.
And then there’s chintz.
Nope, calico. The smaller pattern is more flattering. Especially for skirts. All I’ll say is that there are some places upon which one does not need depictions of large cabbage roses.
I’m white. Please don’t tell me my business when it comes to oppressing people with my colonialism and racism and making a profit. I know what whites like and need – all of them. You too.
Thpppppth! 😛
*SNORT*
I don’t know what to call myself – I have severe farmer’s tan, so I’m white and brown at the same time.
You are a privileged racist. You need only examine your privilege to know this. Plus, having the brain of a shrill paranoid donkey doesn’t hurt in these examinations.
Should I keep that brain in a zip-loc, a Tupperware container, or a pickle jar?
This may be why my favorite novels are Regencies. Most contemporary romances make me cringe, because they try to hard to be politically correct. I got turned off from sci-fi and fantasy for the same reason — if I knew which authors were more Conservative, I’d happily read them!
Freeholder, one way to find more conservative authors is to look for “Human Wave” tags on Amazon and a couple other places. You’ll find everything from space opera to alt-history to romance to westerns.
You’d likely find my own books, too – which are, if I say so myself, guy-friendly, even if large parts of them do deal with women’s concerns in the old West.
And Mom, you really should get Sarah’s new book, Witchfinder. You will like it. Fantasy and regency romance, and other stuff, too.
I’m intending to write regency romances, too — but will probably be next year. #wheredoesallmytimego.
Oy. Don’t read contemporary regencies. They’re just like modern people in costume dress. Pardon me, and those of delicate mind, avert your eyes, but a Regency took flying lessons when the main character, purportedly a virgin, went from virgin to anal penetration at a party, with a man she’d never met before. SERIOUSLY.
And yes, it’s why when I read Romances I read regency as well.
I’ve decided that I don’t for a moment believe the young virgin would let herself be talked into oral sex either… maybe eventually, but not any time soon. I realize that that is the “thing” in fat Historical romance (as opposed to thinner category Historical romance) but I decided that if I ever wrote it, my virgins would be… virginal.
I don’t know about being talked into it, but I’ve known a couple of young virgins who did it quite voluntarily before going further.
Of course, one of my problems with so much of the romance genre is that it’s less about romance and more about sex. The two aren’t mutually exclusive by any means, but sex isn’t a requirement of romance either.
I don’t know about being talked into it, but I’ve known a couple of young virgins who did it quite voluntarily before going further.
In the Regency?
Oh sure, bring relevancy into the conversation. 😛
I can verify that modern young virgins would be more easily pressured into it after about four years of required brain washing on the subject.
Not me, but someone near and dear that I wish to God I’d had the sense to beat the @#$#@ out of the thing pressuring her.
Now, I don’t get that. Why would pressure be necessary? If I found that particular act unappealing with a guy, I wouldn’t want to have anything else to do with him, either.
Why would pressure be necessary
Same reason pressure to have sex works.
While I’d much rather shoot the @#$# from last week, his assumption that everyone is having sex wasn’t unfounded, just wrong.
It’s exactly what I was told in every “sex ed” class I had.
The assumption is that if you are willing to be relatively alone around someone or a group of someones of the opposite sex, then you are having sexual relations.
I was accused of this by a chief in the Navy– a classic “girl in every port” guy– because I regularly hung out with the geek group. Since I wasn’t alone with any of them that he knew, I must be f*ing all of them. He REGULARLY burst into the classroom to try to catch us.
I think the raciest thing he caught us at was when my now-husband was playing Peach on Mario Brothers Smash (or something) and the other gamers were trying to mess him up psychically.
For F*sake, everybody in our geek group assumed that Elf and I were sleeping together BEFORE WE EVEN STARTED DATING.
Before he applied clue-bat that he thought I was cute.
The assumption breeds the act; if you let yourself be in a small group with a guy, then you’re having sexual relations, etc.
Makes me sick.
OK, I get you. If the idea is, “I’m not trying to force you to have sex, just oral sex,” then I’m with you. But originally we were talking about whether it’s plausible that an inexperienced young women would suddenly want to have oral sex–and sure she might, once she’d taken the step to try sex at all, and might even prefer it because of the pregnancy risk.
If I understood the original, it’s why someone who had never had sex mumble at all would suddenly go “OK! Anal!”
You have to be conditioned to think that random sex is something the guy has reason to expect in a non-marriage situation.
(The sorta-marriage situations, AKA “he promised he’d marry me” stuff, is sorta-marriage.)
Well, or adventurous and comfortable with the guy.
…I don’t think you quite understand the pressure I’m trying to explain to you, that all NORMAL people are going to be having sexual situations….
I happened on the back seat of some girls who were theoretically “comfortable and adventurous” with a guy.
They believed that they were REQUIRED to give sexual satisfaction, as part of the “dating” of a guy.
Don’t do it, you’re a cock tease or worse.
Only a dishonest person would date and not bring a guy to orgasm.
Graduation ’01.
I remember watching a Gidget movie (Gidget goes Hawaiian), where the main story line is Gidget accidentally saying something that the other girl takes as meaning she went “All the way” with MoonDoggie, then spreading that word all over to everyone.
I compared that to modern day shows, where the scandal isn’t if you’ve gone all the way, but if you *haven’t*.
On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 6:27 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> Foxfier commented: “…I don’t think you quite understand the pressure > I’m trying to explain to you, that all NORMAL people are going to be having > sexual situations…. I happened on the back seat of some girls who were > theoretically “comfortable and adventurous” with a guy” >
At some point before 16- because I couldn’t drive myself yet– during a Teacher Ordered exercise, my classmates found out that I had a purity card in my wallet.
The kindest of them told me to burn it, get drunk and fuck the first guy who would take me.
I believe someone on this blog or MGC called this “virtue shaming”.
I am so glad that I went to parochial school. If I went to that school I’d never talk to those people again. I’m sorry that those hyenas were your schoolmates. I’m sorry but girls are not prostitutes.
“I’m sorry but girls are not prostitutes.”
Of course not, prostitutes expect to be paid. Girls should do it for free. [Sarcasm]
I finished high school in 1980. by that time I’d learned not to admit to being a virgin, because it would just bring scolding about my “hangups” and “repression.”
I don’t see how our socirty could get any more decadent.
Ewwwwww! Admittedly I graduated High School in 1979 but still! You have to have sex with a guy or you’re a cocktease? I’m sorry but I’d smack the guy and tell him to guy to go buy it from the streetwalkers I don’t do that sort of thing!
You have to have sex with a guy or you’re a cocktease?
From what I’ve read from multiple sources, that is indeed the attitude in a lot of places, and not just from the young, hormonally-charged, guys, but also from a lot of the girls as well.
Not certain that all teenagers want to rush into … well, what has been presented to them in the various media as the typical conventional teen experience. I did read a long story (In the Daily Mail, of all places http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2629664/A-glimpse-inside-Mormon-prom-students-respectable-distance-short-skirts-banned-parents-party-nearby-room.html) about an LDS-sponsored prom, where the kids had to wear modest dress, dance modestly, and refrain from drinking, spending too much and generally running riot. The kicker was — this particular prom is open to all denominations — and it was started by kids themselves, distressed over the excesses expected of them by participating in a ‘regular’ prom.
I have to say that it tracked with my daughter’s HS prom experience, which is more than a decade ago. She and her friends drew a line at spending excessively, a couple of the parents and I carpooled them all, they went as a group (my daughter wore a re-purposed bridesmaid dress, when I was an attendant at my sister’s wedding) and her circle of friends walked to a nearby restaurant after the prom for a late supper. Really, teenagers are tender creatures, underneath – most often they do wish for careful handling, and to be protected, even if that protection can’t be obvious.
I had an agreement with my daughter as a teenager – if anyone every pressured her into doing something she didn’t want – all she need do was to say, ” Oh – I couldn’t – my mom would KILL me!”
Oh sure. The local LDS kids do that every spring, and next year my daughter will be old enough to go.
Yes, exactly. This was a regency in which she met the guy at party x and “his kiss made her feel so good” and suddenly– Look — I wasn’t that protected, but I was protected. Anyone suggesting that at 16 or 17, even if it were a boyfriend (I didn’t have any till 18) would have got hit with the nearest dictionary.
The one time it was suggested to me I was in my twenties and it was met with a clinical explanation of the results and a suggestion that the suggester could go do that on his own time if he felt the need, but I wouldn’t be dealing with it for his pleasure….
I agree it’s contemptible to pressure someone into having sex–of any kind. Of all the pressure techniques I hated most was the idea that dating someone meant owing sex. One whiff of that and I’d never have anything else to do with the guy; there was definitely no future for us. For me, sex is freely given or it’s not happening at all. It was one reason I never much cared for “dating” culture in the sense of having things bought for me: you never knew which guys could wrap their minds around it and which couldn’t.
“Admittedly I graduated High School in 1979 but still!”
I graduated from high school in 1974, and it was a reasonably common attitude. Not among all boys, thank Heaven! I never found guilt an effective aphrodisiac, and anyway it was impossible to stay interested in a guy who looked at the world that way. Fortunately there were better choices out there.
Try A Return To Modesty for a sampling of the problem.
YES.
Steve Miller and Sharon Lee write Space Regencies.
Conservative Writers
David Weber
John Ringo.
Try Princess of Wands and Queen of Wands.
Troy Rising series
Try the Baen.com site. They have a Free Library.
If you like mysteries I highly recommend the Miss Seeton series especially the ones by Hamilton Crane. I’d also rec the mysteries she wrote under her own name: Sarah J. Mason.
Anything by Baen should do you. They could care less about the politics of a book – the only requirement is that it’s a fun story. For some reason, their most popular authors are all unabashed conservatives or centrists (the exception, of course, is Eric Flint, who, though a Communist, writes one hell of a story).
Stop in on Saturdays – we have the world-renowned (hey, we have a couple of international readers) Promo Post, with all the latest releases from the writers who hang out here. Not all Conservative as such, but this lot tend to be rather liberty-inclined.
…just a Nerf bat?
The interesting thing is that when you do a breakdown of the rabble-rousers in the newly hatched SFWisCon, of the 60 people, half of them are straight up bigots and half opportunists/allies. Of the bigots, they are almost all women and all of them QUILTBAGs with a visceral hatred of straight white men they take no pains whatsoever to hide. Evidently no one has ever confronted this group with the Las Vegas odds one ethnic group and one sex are immoral 100% of the time, which would be zero. The only places those odds seem reasonable is in regards to Jews by Nazis and blacks folks by Stormfront, so let’s call this what it is.
Fail — what is QUILTBAG? I’ve seen it everywhere and have clue zero what it stands for. (Sorry, I’ve been mid-book and my head doesn’t correlate these things.)
Urban Dictionary helps. LBGTWTFBBQ, more or less.
I wonder if it has a similar origin as BATFEIEIO. 😉
It’s the latest and more inclusive acronym with which that community self-designates itself. It is not an insult. Apparently LGBT was getting mixed up with sandwiches.
“Queer/Questioning, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Trans (Transgender/Transexual), Bisexual, Asexual, Gay”
ICK. GAHCK MEEP. if you need that absolutely ridiculous acronym to identify all pieces of your community, you don’t have a community. You have pieces. Time to pick up the pieces and go home.
And it SOUNDS like an insult, which makes me chortle, because I’m low-minded.
Since I consider the term as used in SF as interchangeable with KKK, it IS an insult.
It seems to me LGBT was already a good diversity sandwich but then olives said #notallbacon and avocados said “QUIERO ENTRAR!!!” and black beans said “PORRA! SUA MÃE É PALHAÇA, ABRA A PORTA!!!
Rsrsrsrs
Oh dear dog… it’s a non-insult self-designation?
Fitting, fitting… 😀
Well, you have to keep on changing the terminology so hoi polloi can still be sniffed at for not knowing it. You quickly run out of sane language.
Sad, ain’t it?
I have to admit I was always under the impression that the whole point of trans-ness is that once an individual has “transitioned”, that individual should be considered as and treated just the same as any other individual of the assumed gender, whether born that way or likewise assumed — “transwomen” and “ciswomen” are supposed to be just thought of as “women” together for all intents and purposes, aren’t they?
It would seem to me that if it’s necessary to maintain the “trans*” aspect of one’s identity as a separate sociopolitical quality, that in itself is an admission that whatever the “transition” experience does to the individual, a complete, seamless, undetectable, and all-intents-and-purposes reclassification as one’s new purported sex is not it.
It’s like how POC means everybody but Whites. QUILTBAG and every other acronym (changed regularly to help make it clear who the heppest cats are) are basically defined as “Everybody but straights”,
And like all umbrella terms, it fails because the problems of Asians are nothing like the problems of blacks, and are likewise different from the problems of hispanics.
Well, in ordinary usage POC means ‘black Americans, who are the only other kind of people in the world besides white Americans’. It fails as an umbrella term simply because the people who use it forget about the existence of any other people under the umbrella, by a deliberate act of doublethink.
You’re dead on about ‘Asians’ and Hispanics; and that is to say nothing of the two billion people who live in Asia (or descend from such people) but are not ‘Asians’ by the usual American usage of the term. The average American, alas, thinks that ‘Asian’ is the polite way of saying what used to be meant by ‘Oriental’, and nothing else; and therefore has no handy way of referring to the set that includes (among many others) Iranians, Turks, peninsular Arabs, and the peoples of the Indian subcontinent.
“POC” definitely does NOT mean black Americans. These folks are intersectional, postcolonialist, and non-Western inclusive. It means anyone QUILTBAGs say is not white. In real world terms, there is no such thing as POC. It was created based on the idea ALL POC suffer at the hands of white global oppression, and so share that experience.
These folks are intersectional, postcolonialist, and non-Western inclusive.
Which is why they blame the U.S. for quite literally everything that goes wrong in the world. Because, you see, Only America Is Real™, and only Americans have any kind of agency. On these terms, yes, ‘all POC suffer at the hands of white global oppression’ – but white Americans are the sole and sufficient villains of white global oppression, and black Americans’ experience is the paradigm to which all other ‘POC’ experience must conform – any other experiences are simply not part of the narrative. So when a Korean shopkeeper gets beaten up by black gangbangers, that simply never happened; and when thousands of Chinese are slaughtered by the Japanese Army in the Rape of Nanking, that never happened either. From what I hear, the war of Tutsi vs. Hutu in Rwanda may have happened, but of course it was all the fault of white Americans, perhaps because it was instigated by the CIA.
I would amend that to whites, but you have it correct. The PCs disinterest in any empire they consider non-white is obvious considering how they never shut up about such things. Within the PC worldview, the Aztecs are no more an empire than a convenience store that got robbed. The Aztecs are innocent proto-humans with large sad eyes hanging out minding their own business when foreign conquistadors landed they were not only unable to enslave but who enslaved them. You will hear about the Spanish savaging their slaves with dogs as much as you won’t hear about the Aztec ripping out the hearts of their neighbors who, for completely unknown reasons, kept their hearts and helped the Spanish.
Ironically enough “Oriental” first meant Iranians, Turks, peninsular Arabs, etc., just as “Occidental” first meant Greeks. (The orient is where the sun rises; the occident is where it sets. Unsurprisingly, it first meant locations where someone could see the sun rise over one and set over the other.)
Reading some older authors required a bit of deduction before I could fathom their use of the term.
Since the presiding assumption is that everyone is or wants to be having sex with someone, something or other otherwise they must be somehow being suppressed, the Asexual is functionally an outcast.
What a nice rant. I just bought the ebook of Pixie Noir as pre-thanks for you killing a feminazi for me later!
Killing… never, I’m too ladylike. Now, I may have a really nice compost bed and flowers some summer… 😉
Hope you enjoy the book, I had a lot of fun writing a man who is unashamedly male in that one!
I certainly enjoyed it!
Loved it! Want more.
Trickster Noir is out,isn’t it Cedar?
Trickster Noir is available in fine booksellers everywhere, and, you know, Amazon…http://www.amazon.com/Trickster-Noir-Pixie-Cedar-Sanderson-ebook/dp/B00K031TV6/ref
And having just finished it, I will attest and confirm that Trickster Noir Rocks! Great job Cedar!
I guess the answer is simple:
#NotAllWomenAreLikeThat
no #mostwomenaren’tlikethat. Just like #mostmenaren’tlikethat. And to distort the whole to deal with the outliers is insane.
A note though, these are RESPECTED “feminist” voices. Rapists and murderers are respected by no one, certainly not other men. And this is a big difference. What Cedar is saying is “Don’t make me come back there and give you a clue” to the “feminists.” And increasingly we, other sane women are backing her up. It’s about time.
This is one of those posts that I think is going to rock a few boats, so do try to read through it, and understand that I’m not writing this in support of either racism, sexism, or misogyny, but instead as a commentary on what I’m observing in society around me.
So, read the whole thing, take a deep breath, and try not to take offense where I’m not meaning any. Well, I do mean offense, but not to the average person who might happen to be black, female, or gay–Just the “activists” espousing for those groups. Namely, the Social Justice Warriors, those of Glitter, and anyone else who refuses to take responsibility for the evils that their self-selected groupings are responsible for.
Nonetheless, I am preparing the asbestos underwear…
Does it ever strike anyone else that there are an awful lot of these idiots in all groups which we may describe as “activist/transgressive” that seem hell-bent on justifying every evil they claim perpetrated upon them by men/The Man/whites?
Stop and think about it. What did the KKK and other white supremacists use as a justification whenever they lynched a black man for looking at a white woman wrong?
“They’re animals that have to be kept in their place…” “They don’t know how to be civilized…” “They have natural criminal tendencies that must be kept in check…”.
Google up the Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome murders. Read through that whole ugly, sordid mess. Now, take a look at the incidence rate of things like “Polar Bear Hunting”, and the “Knock-out Game”. Do please be noting the near utter lack of any condemnation from the so-called “leadership” of the black community, individuals like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. If they’ve had one self-criticizing word to say, I’ve missed it. Most of what little I’ve heard about this incident from the black community leadership has been to justify what the criminals in question did, because of their “oppression”–Particularly on the national level. Quite a few of the local leaders even claimed that the pair of victims were trying to buy drugs, instead. Somehow, that justified two rapes, and a pair of drawn-out, disgusting murders by their fellow blacks. Go figure.
Examine the official rates of black-on-black crime, along with those of crime between the races. The rate of black-on-white crime is considerably higher than that of white-on-black, and that’s with the justice system putting a very heavy hand on the scales. You hardly ever hear anyone in the black community actually making a fuss about these things, especially when it is something high-profile–It’s generally all self-justifying bullshit, instead of honest discussion. If someone does say something, like Bill Cosby, he’s shouted down by the majority. Instead, we hear volumes about how we’ve incarcerated a huge swathe of young, black men–Mostly, for crimes they committed against other blacks.
By contrast, when there were lynchings during the latter half of “the bad old days” era, there was near-universal condemnation by the vast majority of white “community leaders” on the national level. Today? I’d suggest that what happened to Christian and Newsome was as bad, or worse than what happened to any lynching victim, yet we hear… What, exactly? Near-universal silence. Were there any vigils held by the black community? Did any “activists” threaten the perpetrators, as they did with the Zimmerman case? The news media studiously avoided covering that whole sordid affair, and if you wanted to learn about it across most of the country, you had to go looking for it.
Right along with this, we see the same thing happening with feminists.
What were the justifications and rationalizations used to decry the idea of letting women into public life, and giving them the vote? That they were “too emotional”, wasn’t it? The accusations were that they weren’t rational, ruled by their emotions, yes? The old-style consensus was that women were too delicate, too fragile, for the rough-and-tumble of normal civil life, and had to be protected from it, no?
And, what do we see today? The feminists are seemingly hell-bent on justifying every single one of those accusations and stereotypes. You look at much of what these foolish harpies have produced, and what they’re trying to bring about in the civil sphere, and if you miss the irony, you really have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to the entire concept of irony. Trigger warnings? From the same group of assholes who decry the falsity of Victorian mores and values, laughing at them for reputedly covering table legs with skirts? All the while trying to bring about and enforce a set of rules in civic society that would make even the most diligent Victorian go “Now, that’s a bit ridiculous…”?
What was the old conventional wisdom about gays? That they were deviant perverts, who had no place in polite society, and who needed to be suppressed, for the good of all? I remember hearing that they were, as a group, unable to control their sexual impulses, and that was why they had to be kept “in the closet”.
I offer the vision of San Francisco, during any one of its many “Gay Pride” events, or for that matter, nearly any other public venue where the gay community puts itself on display. Not too many wholesome images there, are there? When we have heterosexuals committing acts of sexual intercourse in public, we arrest them. Or, we used to–Kinda hard to enforce rules about public decency, when you’re allowing fetish costumes, nudity, and actual sex acts as part of publicly licensed and approved civic functions, now isn’t it? I don’t see how on God’s green earth that the cities where these things go on are able to make a single case for public indecency, after what they turn a blind eye to when it comes to a Gay Pride event.
When you consider the broad spectrum of things, you find yourself wondering. I’m not going to say that the old-time racists and misogynists were right, but… Holy crap, is it weird and disturbing to see their prejudices and the supposedly rational justifications for them, which we were mostly raised to consider extremely and profoundly ir-rational, brought to life before us. Makes you wonder what’s going to happen, when the pendulum swings back the other way, because there is now going to be an awful lot of very real evidence to justify the oppression.
I can hear the arguments now: “Well, we tried giving them civil rights, and treating them as equals, and look where it got us…”. Spread that across all the various little groups of highly visible “activists”, and it doesn’t look good for those of us in the middle, now does it? As always, the people of good will in the middle are going to be the ones taking it in the shorts, while the extremists have their ways with each other.
And, make no mistake about it: The pendulum will swing back, even if it requires the destruction of all we recognize as current civil society. The restrictions and repressions of the Victorian era were largely a reaction to the excesses of the perceived libertine excesses of the Georgian and Regency eras. As far as these idiots have pushed the damn thing, I really dread the backswing. Newton’s mechanics apply to the social scene just as much as they apply to physics. The only real difference is that there is usually an exponent effect applied to social situations that isn’t usually present in physical mechanics…
Yes, this. The social justice warriors are destroying their own causes.
The Irish were also described as “animals.” The Spanish were “animals.” The French were “animals.” The Germans were “beasts.” White people in the North were “animals.” The only people the old-timey KKK liked were themselves, and they didn’t like all of themselves because some of them were “white trash” or “no account.”
This is not a good argument.
Any group that doesn’t teach its kids morality and good behavior, and doesn’t enforce it on its adults, is going to experience a breakdown of civilization. This trumps any genetic influence. Post-Civil War and up to about 1965, the black community in the US focused on education and pride in what they could do, and black churches were pretty much all powerful. Radicalization and the “Great Society” welfare money re-focused large numbers of young black people on rioting or selling drugs or otherwise messing up. The difference between Harlem in 1935 and Harlem in 1975 was not genetic.
You miss the point that I’m making: That the various “activists” involved in all these things have been very effective at creating the exact same conditions and “facts on the ground” that were once used against the groups they claim to be advocating for. There aren’t any “feminists” who are looking at women like Ms Lierre Keith, and calling her out. Instead, they look the other way, or quietly nod their heads in agreement. The movement’s advocates are discrediting themselves, and enabling insanity by doing this, but they still do it. Same-same across the other great immune classes. They’re all doing it, to a greater or lesser degree.
I am not, emphatically not, saying that “blacks are animals”, that women are “weak and unable to handle real life”, or that gays are “deviant sex maniacs”. What I’m saying is that the irony here is that there are all too many of the people who are advocating for these groups who seem to be completely blind to the fact that they are enabling and defending the exact behaviors and syndromes that were cause for those negative stereotypes in the first place. And, because the “unengaged middle” of these groups that won’t actively rein in the radicals is unheard in public discourse, there’s going to be an equivalent reaction with the general public when it comes time for that pendulum to swing back. Which will leave a bunch of folks who’ve had nothing to do with the excesses getting mangled in the machinery. The quiet gay couple down the street is going to get burnt out in the same pogrom that torches the pederast exhibitionists in San Francisco, when the time comes for things to shift again. The women who aren’t misandryist are going to suffer the same fate as their insane sisters who incite the counter-revolution, and the law-abiding good citizen blacks who’ve had nothing to do with the street crimes of their peers are going to wind up dealing with the same automatic suspicions and persecutions that their criminal peers are engendering.
The activists have been very successful at changing things, in most cases for the better. What they need to do now is consolidate, and cease trying to shoot the metaphorical survivors, or the counter-reaction they’re almost willfully inciting is going to be both massive, and very ugly.
“The men who won’t hit you are related to women who will use every dirty trick not found in the book. And that would be a tragedy for all of us, male and female. ”
Were females treated differently ? yes. was it right ? no. is what is going on now the correct answer ? how should I know. I’m the old straight white male, my opinion is automatically wrong. On Every Question.
The pendulum swings and for every radical, extreme swing it makes, it will make an equally extreme swing back in the other direction. in this and many other cases, I fear that Newton’s laws will equal politics and not just physics.
The trend began when woman, and many men, began making jokes about men acting like Boy Scouts. Began complaining about men treating females like Ladies. that spiral began then and we are getting quite near the bottom now. Grandpa taught us to treat every woman as a Lady unless she proved otherwise. Today, Grandpa would have been in the re-education camps right alongside me.
All I can do is treat people like I believe is the correct way.
So now. I’m hunkered down, keeping my head down, watching my flanks and back and trusting no one that I don’t know well. no closed doors, always someone else around as a witness, record everything.
Trust is a thing of the past. My career, my future, my family, are all at risk every day because of this. My wife will not associate with people because of how she is treated because she is does not profess allegiance to the ‘true faith”. She was told once that she should divorce me and clean me out, that way she would never have to suffer being touched by me again. She ignored the female that said that, then came home and cried in my arms. If I dare say anything, I am subject to penalties and sanctions. I’ve already had to attend the short form Re-Education seminars as part of my job or as punishment for something I said that “offended” a female. as just one example, the last time, I am the boss here and I was running that meeting, yet when I attempted to get “her” to be quiet, I was the one in the wrong and required to attend the training.
Men are not able to fight this ourselves. We will lose. Period. lose our jobs, lose our homes, lose our personal freedom, lose our retirement, unless you think being put in prison is an acceptable form of retirement, but short version is, we lose everything.
If woman want something to change, ya’ll will have to do it. We can’t afford it anymore.
I know, Doug, I know. I see what my Dad – and there is no kinder, gentler man I know than him – has to go through in order to work. I see what my beloved has been through, and fears. Normally, I’d be sheltered by them against whatever eventuality. But in this fight, I have to take point, and I am. I don’t know how much help I am, and I’m being very female right now and crying a little because my heart is full. But I’m too angry and afraid to stay silent any longer. There’s no excuse for this kind of behaviour, and I won’t put up with it any more.
Aaand guess who is making hay with the hashtag YesAllWomen? http://washingtonexaminer.com/yesallwomen-how-a-twitter-hashtag-dies/article/2548913
And they say the universe doesn’t have a (warped) sense of humor.
Yes, we have no bananas, and #YesAllWomen cannot watch soccer games in Iran, and no, not all men watch soccer games, but yes, all men can if they want to.
Well.
That’s a lovely bunch of examples of why dehumanizing the individual is a sin.
Good heavens… how does the rant about justice for women who were hurt make any sense if you recognize humans as people, not group members?
*remembers to subscribe this time*
because they’re self-idolaters. they see their god every morning before the make-up mirror. When you’re like that, empathy means nothing.
That’s the thing- our modern sociopathic society, in whence I’m a person, and everyone else is just an object.
I don’t recognize most of the names from that list of quotes, but Andrea Dworkin is a borderline sociopath. She pretty much hates everything and everyone.
One of the things I’ve learned about the extremist movements (all of them) is that the nutjob core is very sheltered. You have to seek out the sources of the lunatic ideas — and often, you’re shocked to find them being cited approvingly by the “mainstream” elements. Robert Stacy McCain has done some of the digging into the origins of some of the crazier “feminist” “thinking”, and, yeah, the “mainstream” cites these people approvingly.
Anyone else remember Buckley writing Buchanan out of the conservative mainstream? Anyone holding their breath on the left doing anything equivalent?
I had actually seen the “female on male” abuse at age 13. I had known a girl who ended up dating a guy I had a slight crush on, but was always too shy to walk up and talk to. He was a very masculine guy for his age, but was also quiet. I guess the old-school women would have called him “strong and silent.” Sadly, he let his girlfriend boss him around. She got so pissed at him one day that she actually just started laying in on him. Then she gave him a hard punch that bloodied his nose. He just stood there, taking it. He never once lost his dignity. Instead, he looked like an honorable gentleman just letting her get it out of her system before administrators took care of her.
I’ve never respected males who beat up on women, but I don’t respect females who beat up on men. It isn’t about gender. It’s about someone weak who pics on someone else who seems weaker, and bullies that person to make him/herself feel powerful. It’s a pathetic excuse to feel powerful.
If I am guilty of rape and oppression of women simply because I am a man, then what is my motivation for not being the evil bastard you claim I already am? If I am to be sentenced to death for simply having a penis…do you really expect me to quietly and bloodlessly?
Honestly, I think that all of this crap come from the bastardization of the concept of Equality found in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Equality, as used in those documents, is equality before the law, equal availability of opportunity. NOT EQUALITY OF OUTCOME. It is the right for everyone/anyone to try to become an author, not the right for for everyone/anyone to become the best author of all time. Take that bastardization away, you take away any pretense of a leg for these people to stand on.
It’s good to be back from vacation…but I wish I was still on vacation.
I fear the darkness if this becomes mainstream, and not just loud.
There are things that follow naturally from this sort of vitriol and dehumanization, and they are not pretty or nice. They are not swayed by the mistaken notion that a measure of cultural and political power is equal to physical power. They are not interested in the hierarchy of victimhood, or in self-flagellation.
Fortunately, I believe this remains marginal. A tiny percentage of women and men are like this, and that leaves me some hope.
But, man, are they LOUD.
It’s not just the loudmouths with an ax to grind that are influencing society. Commerce, and it’s handmaiden advertizing are doing a bang up job too.
I think it started with the “Dr Mom” ads. Moms know best. Better than dad, and even better than the MALE who gave up 8-10 years of his life to actually learn about medicine.
It quickly made it’s way into sitcoms. “Married with Kids” or “Simpsons” anyone? Remember that those were MASSIVELY popular shows. People used to meet in bars to watch the Simpsons together. Or the Raymond nonsense. In the few scenes I’ve seen, the big goof is barely tolerated by his family and treated patronizingly by his WIFE. It’s gotten to the point that, between white males being the only acceptable target of abuse, and ‘girl power’ gone crazy, that there are NO ordinary mainstream males on TV. Show me ONE sitcom where the father is an intelligent capable respected man. Show me ONE advert where the DAD solves the problem and is respected.
And anyone who still thinks TV doesn’t affect people should consider that if that was the case, why are advertisers spending billions on ads? Or try whistling the Jeopardy theme, or sing Gilligan’s Island. That stuff gets in your head and stays there.
And yet in the face of the constant attacks, subtle and overt, we get up every day and continue to build things, raise our families, love our wives, stay out of trouble, and live our lives. Rarely do we “get our whine on.” Rarely do we do anything but show restraint in the face of abuse, because we know that if the monster is ever let out, there will be a lot of damage done to society and the world before the monster is satisfied.
Racist, sexist, violent, rapist, oppressor– eventually will come the straw that breaks the camel’s back and look out world. You don’t want to see those things played out for real.
zuk
(and I don’t want to see them played out either. but oh my do I see it coming. (like Kratman’s “Caliphate”, what will society look like if people finally have enough of black violence, or welfare dependency, or muslim expansion, or whiny feminist agitators) )
It’s gotten to the point that, between white males being the only acceptable target of abuse, and ‘girl power’ gone crazy, that there are NO ordinary mainstream males on TV. Show me ONE sitcom where the father is an intelligent capable respected man. Show me ONE advert where the DAD solves the problem and is respected.
Part of why I like anime.
Can’t remember the show, but this kid has the King of Demons and the King of the Gods living nearby, and their daughters are…well, it’s a Harem Anime.
Anyways. It’s played for massive laughs. The King of the Gods gets smacked by his daughter all the time, and the King of Demons is cool but also gets massively threatened.
Much, much later in the show there’s a sub-story where they were trying to make the perfect being or something, and there were a lot of test subjects. All sick little kids that they tried to make stronger.
One of the secondary characters is the only surviving one of these.
Officially, they are required to capture her, and try to fix the process.
They walk past her in the street… and have a loud conversation about how that woman who they TOTALLY couldn’t possibly know reminded them of someone they had wronged, and they wish they could apologize, which of course they can’t because she’s dead.
It was a lovely example of the “being goofy is not a weakness” theme, although I’ve done a horrible job of explaining it.
They are goofy to smooth things; like I flutter to make folks more comfortable.
It was…nice to see that recognized, even if it was a Japanese youth sitcom.
*****
Oh, and– NCIS. There guys are pretty normal. Not perfect, just… normal.
Shuffle or Shuffle!, I forget which, is the first one that comes to mind. Never seen it. IIRC that one was one of many that was originally a pornographic visual novel.
Given Japanese standards, that doesn’t narrow it down much….
http://shuffle.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Male_Characters
But yeah– here’s the page with the Standard Issue Buff Hearty All American type guy as the King of the Gods, and the… Snape with a better family life and social skills King of Devils.
We watched it with fansubs, so some of my words for stuff are wrong.
Well, there was a briefly-shown sitcom on Fox, “Surviving Jack” which had a very strong, no-nonsense and authoritative dad; responsible father to teenage daughter and son (and to sons’ feckless friends as well,) AND a loving and supportive partner to his wife. The Daughter Unit and I watched it, courtesy of Roku, and marveled at how … fresh and original the concept seemed.
The Middle does a pretty good job, I thought – the mom and dad do have their doofusy moments, but they back each other up. YMMV, though.
I think it started with the “Dr Mom” ads. Moms know best. Better than dad, and even better than the MALE who gave up 8-10 years of his life to actually learn about medicine.
My dad nearly died because they listened to doctors.
They ordered him to cut salt, because from what he told them he was eating too much of it– not from any indicators, just that was the theory.
Thank God he figured out that he was having heat stroke and stopped the tractor before passing out, and that my Godmother noticed the tractor wasn’t moving.
Yeah, doctors have training. You still have to understand why they do what they do, or you’ll kill yourself or your loved ones following their “designed for standard issue idiots” orders.
‘Major Dad” and “Evening Shade” are two of the last ones I remember that had strong male characters. And strong female characters, just strong in their own way.
TxRed, and when did those go out of production?
I know the goofy male has been played for laughs for a long time. I know that SOME of the modern shows continue in that long tradition. But historically, there were always counterexamples of the competent man. In fact, most men that anyone would have become aware of were competent. Real life and the media of the day were full of examples- explorers, businessmen, scientists. Men could play goofy and take a good-natured drubbing precisely because in every other venue they were acknowledged for what they really were. In the same way that you never had a roast of someone who was NOT successful, this was a way to say “see, I’m not so scary after all.”
My issue is that now there are very few, if any, examples in popular media of the type of man we KNOW exists, and is probably in the majority. There is instead a sneering condescension and sense of barely tolerating the presence of men.
Foxifier, I knew when I mentioned doctors that someone would have your reaction. I’m glad that your family did not lose a loved one to incompetence or complacency or overwork on the part of an authority figure. I didn’t mean to suggest that only drs have the responsibility or authority to manage a person’s care. I only meant to point out that an advert that grants a woman superior authority based solely on her having a womb and having used it, is wrong and diminishes learning and science, and in this particular case, men. As to the power of ads, the Dr Mom meme is still strong.
Media of the day has and had a powerful effect on the population and the direction of society. When the novels and serials are about exploration, natural science, your get more of those things. When they are full of the wonders of science, Heinlein’s competent man, space travel, and industrialization, you get more of those things. When they are full of dreamy languid stories of the lives of special snowflakes, you will get more of them.
And the corollary holds true, when there are no real men, only caricatures, you will get fewer. I’m not sure our society as it exists can survive without the continued effort and engagement of the type of men who BUILT it.
zuk
My issue is that now there are very few, if any, examples in popular media of the type of man we KNOW exists, and is probably in the majority. There is instead a sneering condescension and sense of barely tolerating the presence of men.
I wonder if this is (part of) why Duck Dynasty became so popular. It was meant to sneer at these “weirdos” by portraying them as they really are (Bible-thumping, redneck, patriarchal, all the things that the media establishment thinks are horrible). But because it portrayed them as they really are (which includes characteristics like loving their wives, trying to do the best they can by their understanding of God, and most relevantly to this conversation, being really good at their jobs)… people identified with them and wanted to see more of them. Hence why the network didn’t dare take Duck Dynasty off the air even after Phil Robertson’s controversial comments about homosexuality. Because the show portrayed them as they really are, it was immensely popular, and because it was immensely popular, he could say things that would have been the kiss of death to almost any other show.
It’s also the only show I can think of in recent decades that portrayed competent, happy housewives with no dark undercurrent suggested that they were trapped or oppressed. These are mothers and fathers really acting like mothers and fathers instead of overgrown children. The show itself treads lightly on any trauma the teenaged family members may be going through, but there are interviews available in other sources. Although the kids certainly aren’t immune to serious problems growing up, it’s also clear that they have strong, healthy family resources, including religious faith, to get them back on track as soon as they’re ready to stop experimenting with self-destruction.
The problem really wasn’t Robertson’s controversial comments, the problem was that his comments really weren’t controversial; no matter haw badly the media wanted them to be. Of course the fact that the original goal of the media establishment was to sneer at them for being “bible-thumping, redneck, patriarchal” Neanderthals kind of undercut the media establishments ‘moral’ high ground.
You have obviously missed the
indoctrinationfundamental point — that which the MSM decrees controversial shall be controversial, that which the MSM deems uncontroversial shall not be controversial*. It is the MSM, not the public nor rational argument, which has the power to define controversy and your resistance to acceptance of that fact is more than a little controversial.*Examples of this
hypocrisydichotomy are too abundant to require provision.You had the Sonny and Cher show in the 1970’s – where one of the routines consisted of Sonny saying stupid things while Cher slammed him verbally. Then you had the Donny and Marie show, where one of the routines consisted of…… It has been mainstream for a while now.
“Life with Riley”, “Fibber McGee and Molly”, “The Great Gildersleeve”, “Our Miss Brooks”, “Phil Harris and Alice Fay Show” — off the top of my head. All classic radio sitcoms where the main male character was a bit of a dolt. Well-meaning and basically good, but slow and goofy and the comic foil.
Not sure where I’d put Jack Benny — everyone on his show was at the same time the comic foil and the straight man — but Dennis Day was certainly the dolt there *AND* on his own show.
Against that there was Gracy Allen and Lucille Ball — who were the goofy comic foils of their shows.
It’s nothing new. Even Chaucer had foolish men playing the butt of the jokes. Heck, even Apuleius. It’s as much a part of our culture’s sense of what’s funny as fart jokes.
“Oh, you nasty, nasty white people. Go look in a mirror and you’ll see your pale powder puff privilege staring you right back in the face. C-I-L-L my editor. RACE WAR!!! Yoo-hooo!” – CisCon Guest of Honor Speech
Pfui. I’m warm beige with olive undertones. And if I bothered to tan I’d be darker than Obama. So, there.
SFF blogger Natalie Luhrs today: “he’s older and white, do i even need to mention that?”
I’d have liked to ask “Is he Jewish? Maybe that explains it.” The level of cluelessness of these people is all the more astounding when you consider they think they are really up on all the issues about anti-racism.
Who’s Luhrs going on about today?
Nevermind. I had someone link me to it over on Twitter.
Oh dear Lord. There’s just no way to satisfy these people. They want diverse viewpoints, and damned if they don’t complain because some are trying to make it happen.
Fill me in? I don’t twit…
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/4956875.html
Basically, Natalie Luhrs (same person who basically called for no one to vote for anyone on Larry Correia’s Hugo ballot) is taking issue with Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s call for short stories for an upcoming anthology.
Of course, he’s leaving open several slots for foreign native writers and is apparently calling for stories about first contact (which gives the left lots of opportunity to get preachy…though he specifically asks for politics to be left behind), but it’s not good enough because he didn’t say it in a way Luhrs approves of.
Frankly, I disapprove of her existence. Not because she’s female, but because she’s a leprous cancer on fandom who has contributed nothing except hate and misandry masquerading as a noble fight for social justice.
It’s really rather disgusting.
All in favor of making her read the collected works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez until she upchucks.
(No, she hasn’t. BET you money. No one reads that crap unless forced. they just claim they have. Let’s force her.)
I’m down.
I tried to read “Living to Tell the Tale” for our book club. Read the first quarter or so, and the ending, and gave up on it.
The person who disagrees with me on everything at our book-club kept going on and on about how wonderful the editing in it was. (Ugh.)
On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 3:06 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> accordingtohoyt commented: “All in favor of making her read the > collected works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez until she upchucks. (No, she > hasn’t. BET you money. No one reads that crap unless forced. they just > claim they have. Let’s force her.)” >
“The person who disagrees with me on everything at our book-club kept going on and on about how wonderful the editing in it was. (Ugh.)”
When someone (other than the author) keeps complementing the editing in a book, it’s not well edited; a good editor would have round filed it.
Never read any of it. Bad? Horrible? Unspeakable?
He’s Fidel Castro’s BFF.
*Gack!*
WITH literary pretensions.
*Gurk!*
Aye.
These people. I read part of the fellow’s submission guidelines, he’s twisting himself around in funny shapes trying to prostrate before the glorious SJW’s. And getting slapped down for it. Be funnier if it wasn’t sad and disgusting.
[S]he’s a leprous cancer on fandom who has contributed nothing except hate and misandry masquerading as a noble fight for social justice.
Yes.
Did you catch that Jemisin quote on her page?
blockquoteAnd from here on, wherever you see bigotry in the genre? Attack it. Don’t wait for it to come directly at you; attack it even if it’s hitting another group. If you won’t ride or die for anyone else, how can you expect them to ride or die for you? Understand that there are people in this genre who hate you, and who do not want you here, and who will hurt you if they can. Do not tolerate their intolerance. Don’t be “fair and balanced.” Tell them they’re unwelcome. Make them uncomfortable. Shout them down. Kick them out. Fucking fight.
Um. Okay. You may not like it, going forward…
Stupid WP (couldn’t be me). From “blockquote” to “fight” is the quote.
Yeah, I caught that. Been trying to make myself read her speech today, but can only stomach small bites of it as I go.
But yeah, she wants to attack bigotry? She does realize that bigotry can be directed toward white folks, right?
You’re trying to read the whole thing?!? Better man than I, I like those little squiggly vessels in my brain just as they are.
It’s slow going.
Mostly, I want to see all the ways I’m evil this week. After all, I’m sure next week it’ll be something different.
Awe. Me standing in.
You can pick the cookies, you’re just that kind of tough.
Fair enough.
Next week is your week, so you can bring your girly cookies if you want.
Girly cookies, would those be the ones from the curvaceous molds?
Those too.
Okay, give. Where do get the mudflap girl cookie cutters?
We’re working on it 🙂
Yeah. My eczema is ALREADY killing me.
Nope, I’m pretty sure the collective has spoken on this one and only white people can be bigots.
so, being warm beige with olive shades, I’m not a bigot? Good to know.
No, you’re just a sellout and a traitor to both your race and gender, according to the guidelines.
I believe you’re officially classified now as a “White Hispanic”, which means “any person of Latin descent who doesn’t hold the correct political views”.
Yeah, but since most people have something that makes them “other”, it’s not hard to hit them on something other than race.
For example, being ADHD and dyslexic, I can always hit any attack on me as “ableist”, just for the fun of it. 😀
Actually she formally and ideologically denies such a thing is possible. It’s all about the power. That convenient bit of sleight-of-hand gives them a free-fire zone against all whites.
Must be nice to create no-lose scenarios.
AND that ignores places like [everywhere outside of North America] where the people who have actual power are NON-white.
I wonder who she thinks are oppressing the masses in India or Japan? Maybe the Bilderburgers………
Or more likely she is so self-centered in her world view that THOSE brown skinned people don’t even get considered.
zuk
Asians don’t. This is why the universities can discriminate against them.
Nah, those Asians are stupid enough to think that they don’t need Liberals help. So they have to be punished. [Sarcasm]
No, the Asians have managed to get into schools in such numbers in spite of their non-white status, so as to upset the demographics and put the lie to the myth that minorities don’t have a chance. Therefore they must be punished.
As long as they’re suitably punished, does it really matter *why*?
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 12:09 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> CACS commented: “No, the Asians have managed to get into schools in > such numbers in spite of their non-white status, so as to upset the > demographics and put the lie to the myth that minorities don’t have a > chance. Therefore they must be punished.” >
She does realize that bigotry can be directed toward white folks, right?
No, she does not. In her system of definitions, bigotry is what white folks do to Persons of Colour, and by PoC she means black Americans like herself. As nearly as I can determine, she has the typical American Leftist attitude about race: There are ‘African-Americans’, aka ‘Persons of Colour’, who are always right because they are Noble Victims, and there are white Americans, who are always wrong because they are oppressors and (all) of them) the personal legal heirs of slaveholders.
It’s like the nice lady at Bob’s Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers. Asked what kind of music they usually played there, she said: ‘We have both kinds – country and western.’ Except that when she did it, it was funny, because the writers knew it was a joke.
“She does realize that bigotry can be directed toward white folks, right–No, she does not.”
I run into this a lot. It seems obvious to everyone here, probably, that if you’re dealing with something who hates bigotry and you give him incontrovertible proof that he’s engaging in bigotry, he’ll stop and reconsider. But there’s a tradition of bigotry in this country that’s strictly one-way: it only counts if it’s animated by the traditional hostility of white against black, with a long history of grievances behind it. I’ve reluctantly concluded that it’s not possible to talk to them about black-against-white bigotry; it’s a contradiction in terms, and they’ll just think you’re willfully missing the point. The same goes for “racism” and “sexism.” Reverse bigotry is just “getting their own back,” kind of like affirmative action.
There are those who propound, with a straight face, that what makes racism is the historical power in the hands of the race that said racist belongs to.
“… even if it’s hitting another group.” She’s calling on them to attack themselves. Well done, N.K. Jemisin, Miss Orwell 2014.
Yes. Is why I thought it was delicious that Jemisin said it and Luhrs picked it out for a special quote.
Fools.
I don’t think that’s what the qualifier meant. The “it” in her original quote, I think, means the bigotry rather than the response to it; more clearly phrased it would be, “Attack the bigotry even if that specific example isn’t directed against your group” — calling for women to speak up on behalf of PoCs, for PoCs to speak up on behalf of LGBT, and so on and so on.
Tell them they’re unwelcome. Make them uncomfortable. Shout them down. Kick them out. Fucking fight.
That doesn’t sound like attacking the bigotry.
Again, you have to keep track of what the pronouns connect to. The “them” in the sentence you quote means the “people in this genre who hate [us], and do not want [us] here, and will hurt [us] if they can”. Those — the bigots — are the people to be made unwelcome, uncomfortable, shouted down, fought, and the call is for people to do this to bigots even if those bigots aren’t against your particular group personally.
What disturbs me in that call is not just the ease with which it can be converted into a classic witch hunt model of social exclusion based purely on spectral-evidence testimony about one out-of-context quote or unverifiable report, but the fact that Jemisin doesn’t appear to realize this, nor does she realize how easy it is for such “calls for action” to create the hostility they purport to be trying to eradicate simply by assuming it’s already present. For a group of people who doubtless despised the slogan, “Either you are with us or with the terrorists,” it’s astonishing how much that sort of impulse dominates this school of thought.
I — think — I see where the misunderstanding is. I’m parsing the pronouns as you are. My contention, and I believe Fail’s, is that if we all take this as a call to action I’ll be calling her and her fellow travelers out for their bigotry. Because it is massive.
“My contention, and I believe Fail’s, is that if we all take this as a call to action I’ll be calling her and her fellow travelers out for their bigotry. Because it is massive.”
Fair enough, but the problem is that the PC-ist mindset here will never concede that bigotry against bigots is still bigotry, so any such call will only be seen as further examples of the bigotry they are attacking.
I believe this is known as a “kafkatrap” in rhetorical parlance these days.
My contention, and I believe Fail’s, is that if we all take this as a call to action I’ll be calling her and her fellow travelers out for their bigotry. Because it is massive.
Of course not; because only white people can be bigoted, and all white people are bigots, automatically. Just as only men can be sexist, and all men are sexists, automatically. And so forth. If a QUILTBAG intersectional feminist with all the victim boxes checked were to go on a massive killing spree and destroy a whole city, she would not be as evil as each and every straight white Christian male in the world is for simply existing.
What planet have you been living on, that you were not instructed in the universal catechism?
I may be obtuse, or perhaps just resistant to instruction.
🙂
That sounds very restrained for the ignorant little half-savage. I wonder if she is learning restraint in her old age?
Does this women really think I’m going to support her instead of my brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins and male friends?
I think she really does.
She’s crazy.
Oh — yes. Very much, yes.
Just don’t call her a Half Savage. They’ll never let that go.
no, no. Savages can survive. She’s full idiot.Or toddler. Whichever.
Oops, should have scrolled down before making my sarcastic comment above. If I would have read your warning first I never would have considered calling her a half-savage, honest.
Of course she does. If you don’t, you’re a traitor to your gender and therefore not a real woman at all; just a Patriarchal Oppressor in drag, like Margaret Thatcher or Sarah Palin.
But as a gender traitor, I can attend the Patriarchy meetings! And they have cookies!
Yes, indeed!
*psst* Mr. Knighton, we’re gonna need a bigger room.
*ears perking up* Hey, I guess that I am a gender traitor myself, so can I come to the cool Patriarchy meetings? I can bring cookies, too – I have an awesome recipe for pecan-coconut bars, from the 1970s edition of Joy of Cooking. We made them for our neighbors last Christmas, and put a card with the recipe on it in each tin. Some of the neighbors were still talking about them, weeks afterwards…
*puppy-dog eyes* May I… may I have this recipe? Pretty please? I promise not to oppress anyone but my minions for… for a whole week! Pleeeeease?
Especially if you have good cookies. They help us — take up space.
Well, I can always bring chocolate chip.
And bourbon. I realize, religiously speaking, you can’t have any, but I volunteer to have your share.
Bourbon-hawk. Swooping in and snatching up unsuspecting little bourbons. I may have to hide the waffle cookies.
nooooooooooooooooo. Did I mention I’m the high lady of evil? I get bourbon AND waffle cookies.
Mmmm…bourbon-flavored waffle cookies. Yums.
What were we talking about?
Don’t be thinking I don’t see that little hand sneaking over to the bourbon-cookies. It is being seen.
om nom nom nom nom.
D’oh! She has two hands! Watch the sneaky one, miss the stealthy one.
Bourbon-hawk.
Pardon folks, seems I must go make some more bourbon-flavored waffle cookies.
Mmm… speaking of bourbon-flavored things, I made some bourbon BBQ sauce for Li’l Red Smokies a couple weekends ago. Oh, my.
recipe?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dJX9VJzZvqcw7bWA27ojKtXdzEJ7DHuEgmhrCaiHuRY/edit?usp=sharing
I don’t think the actual text it would fit very well here…
For Free-range Oyster and all the other minions – the recipe for lemon-pecan bars: (the original author of Joy of Cooking swore that this recipe had sold awesome numbers of copies of the cookbook –
Pecan Angel Slices
(from Joy of Cooking – 1975 Edition)
Cream together until well-blended: ½ cup butter and ¼ cup sugar
Beat in well: 1 egg and ½ teasp vanilla
Combine and add to the above: 1 ¼ cup sifted flour and 1/8 teasp salt
Pat dough evenly into a greased 9×12 inch pan and bake at 350° for fifteen minutes. Remove from oven.
Combine: 2 beaten eggs, 1 ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup flaked cocoanut, 1 cup chopped pecans, 2 Tbsp. flour, ½ teasp double acting baking powder, ½ teasp salt and 1 teasp vanilla.
Pour over cookie layer and return to oven for 25 minutes
Combine 1 ½ cup sifted confectioner’s sugar with sufficient lemon juice to make a smooth, runny glaze. Pour over warm cookie/pecan/coconut layer and allow to set.
When cool, cut into bars or squares.
It’s wonderful, gang. Trust me – and trust my neighbors.
Eamon,
I was going to get us Madison Square Gardens, but then I remember New York City has that stupid law about guns. So how about the stadium the Cowboys play in?
Is that still the largest high-def screen in the country, or is it now only top three?
That would make… for one MOTHER of a Patriarchy PowerPoint Presentation.
runs
The 7 P’s:
Prior Planning Prevents Patriarchy PowerPoint Presentations.
And what do we call the individual items in a Patriarchy PowerPoint Presentation?
We call them bulletpoints. HE-LLoooo!
continues to run, now zig-zagging
I — stand here without a rejoinder. *hangs head* I concede.
Get that man a root beer!
Hm. Dicey. Are we a sporting event? If so, illegal. If not, still prohibited privately by the owner. *grumble*
Maybe we should just take over the Stockyards in Fort Worth? 98 acres…
*For the unaware, the Stockyards aren’t, anymore. Cultural district of Fort Worth, lots of good food and silly tourists. Nobody’d bat an eye at this group.
Prohibited? For the Patriarchy? We run everything. How is anything prohibited for us?
Jerry Jones is an idiot? A rich idiot?
Have you seen how he runs the Cowboys?
As I said…
Oh, I was agreeing with you. 🙂
My standard line:
“The Cowboys would do all right if Jerry would just fire his general manager…”
I said pretty much the same thing about Al Davis.
Great! So I can attend as well.
As long as you don’t mind be oppressed. It’s kind of our thing.
“I’m oppressed, he’s oppressed, she’s oppressed, wouldn’t you like to be oppressed too?”
Hey, everyone needs a hobby. Here at Patriarchy International, we provide just the right hobby for you!
Thank you no, not really.
And now they’ve dragged in Baen as somehow tainted.
Of course. Baen publishes all the evil people, and are therefore evil.
They never think about how Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey’s presence might actually impact their “facts” about Baen.
I somehow have the impression that Misty was a member of the Oklahoma Democratic Party in the eighties or nineties. Eric apparently grew up in West Virginia, and also seems to have a history of going with the Democrat in some cases.
Eric Flint is a self-admitted Communist (but IMO a sane one). IMO Mercedes Lackey is somewhat Liberal but not to an insane degree. I’ll admit that she has some themes that I dislike but not (as I said) to the insane degree as the idiots that we’re talking about here. IMO Mercedes attempts to put out an enjoyable story.
Misty and Eric have both written books I’ve enjoyed.
Baen does not cut at the political line.
IMO Eric Flint writes good reads. While I don’t read as much of Mercedes’s work as I used to, she can have enjoyable stories/books. She’s an author that YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) was created for. That is, even when I dislike one of her books, I can’t blame others for enjoying that book. [Smile]
Eric is a card carrying member of CPUSA. Misty is more… er…. uncoordinated left.
That was my point. Both are among Baen’s top talent, and swing on the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, Tom Kratman.
Baen, unlike many other publishers, make it clear that they don’t care about what your politics are, but what your writing is like.
I was highlighting ‘attack’ vectors rather than trying to claim that they were beyond reproach.
Eric has spent his life in a way that would be particularly ineffective at promoting a white supremacist agenda. Even if we do treat the Confederate States of America as just another bunch of leftist revolutionary nutjobs.
Gotcha. Wasn’t sure where you were going with that.
I get the impression they don’t think things through in general. Besides, “facts” is just some nuisance thing that gets in the way.
Most likely.
They never think about how Eric Flint and Mercedes Lackey’s presence might actually impact their “facts” about Baen.
I’m actually still rather snooty about how “Misty” ran the Elemental Masters series with Baen first (Fire Rose) and then switched it to other publishers.
That is really not nice.
Yeah, I agree. It was pretty crappy.
Well, it publishes ALL political povs so, tainted, natch. Also Nazi and “Right Wing”
Sigh. I’m relatively new to the online writing community and have enjoyed the majority of my time on here, and I’m thankful for finding like-minded people like you, cedar, Larry, and others where truth and reason (and the love of a good story) still matter, but damn, some circles here are messy–like high school messy.
The difference is, high school has adult supervision. 🙂
That’s true. :-p
That may be more of a distinction without a difference. Most of the soi-disant adults in the high schools have never been out of an academic environment; they went from high school to a university Department of Education (the most juvenile and least intellectually demanding place on campus, except for the departments of XYZ Studies and possibly Communications) and then straight back to high school again. The best one can say for most of them is that they are poachers turned gamekeepers.
Theoretically.
Fair enough.
Woelf, just a quick note here (I’m trying to get the word out better): when you have books you’d like promoted – like say, when Morrigan comes out – make sure you email me a link at freerangeoyster at Google’s free mail service. We compile reader’s books every week (at least every week that people send me stuff), and eventually I’ll have a master list of everyone’s stuff.
PS Love your covers!
Thanks, that is mighty generous of you. I will do that.
send them to book.plug.friday@gmail.com, too, and we’ll put it on the Friday book plug at PJM.
Awesome, thanks! 🙂
Also, you can add it to our group on goodreads, on the huns shelf:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/104359-hoyt-s-huns?order=d&per_page=30&shelf=huns-as-authors&sort=date_added&view=main
(Sarah’s stuff goes here:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/104359-hoyt-s-huns?order=d&per_page=30&shelf=sarah-a-hoyt&sort=date_added&view=main
)
“Also, you can add it to our group on goodreads, on the huns shelf:” I did, thanks for inviting me. And wowzers regarding Sarah’s books. Prolific much? lol
It’s been thirteen years.
I’m actually way behind….
It’s still amazing. I’ve waited too long, had too many excuses, which, at the time felt valid enough, but I’ve woken up now. Ha! Typical me to start a writing career with a house full of screaming kids. :-p
Hey, that’s when I started taking it seriously. Take heart.
Ah, see, I knew my instincts were on the ball. Thanks.
“…but because she’s a leprous cancer on fandom who has contributed nothing except hate and misandry masquerading as a noble fight for social justice.”
You’ve just described sooooo many “modern” career choices. And not a few scams. There is good money in hate and misandry masquerading as social justice these days.
True.
They want diverse viewpoints
What ever gave you that idea? What they want is for people of all different skin colours and sexual kinks to have exactly the same viewpoint. That’s what ‘diversity’ means in their lexicon, and they will explain it to you at the drop of a hat. And if you haven’t got a hat to drop, they’ll tell you anyway.
My bad. I meant to say that they say they want diverse viewpoints.
Oh, but in my experience they never do say that they want diverse viewpoints. They say they want diversity, which they define in the way I described above. You may have had a wider experience of these folk than I, but I have had more than was good for my health (physical, mental, or financial), and I cannot recall that any of them ever used the phrase ‘diverse viewpoints’ or anything to that effect. ‘Diversity’, to the ones I have known, is all about race and gender, never about ideas.
They say they want diverse viewpoints and experiences, sometimes. But only in courtrooms.
Where any judge worth his salt would laugh it out of court because they tried neither to test directly for it, nor to find a racially neutral proxy for it. sigh
Stupidity….
Oh, yes, the GERMAN chick who called me Nazi! She’s the gift that keeps on giving. When G-d gave out brains and situational awareness, she was hiding behind the girl’s restroom door.
That was Cora Buhlert. Luhrs is Radish Reviews, and much worse. And she’s talking about her boss in that quote I left. She make a couple other cracks about whites in that thread so the difference is nominal.
She’s got the IQ of a radish!
Turnip. Radishes are sharp by comparison.
Baldric!
No, no. Baldric’s turnips looked like thingies (and vice versa); this is an inside-out turnip. ( 😯 )
On the other hand, she ought to get the same response as Baldric did, mutatis mutandis.
Oh. Eh. I find them all equally annoying. “They all sound the same to me.”
You’re thinking of Cora Buhlert—but Luhrs is a German name, too. And the hat I wear as a chareidi (“Ultra-Orthodox”) Jewish man offends them both…
How can a hat offend? Is it a fur hat?
It’s the eeevil fedora in my avatar, don’t you see? (I coined the phrase argumentum ad petasum for this particular brand of illogic.)
I get plenty of that in bananas.
I rather like it. Older son wears a fedora 9 months out of the year. Not for religious reasons. He’s religiously …. troubled.
He’s working out his faith in fear and trembling. Don’t see much to criticize there, really. Also, the fedora is an excellent choice. I own a couple, myself.
This is a joke I’m sure but I don’t get it. The fedor5a looks cute. Are you a black-hatter? I know that you said that you’re hareidi. May I inquire as to what flavor of ultra-Orthodox you are?
Argumentum ad petasum is as close as I could get to “argument to the hat”; compare argumentum ad hominem, an “argument to the man” rather than his words.
I’ve used the blue fedora icon for years. (Yes, I’m a “black hatter”, but the blue looks better on the screen.) It’s only recently that I’ve learned about hipsters and MRAs/PUAs using the hat as a symbol—or is it people mocking them attributing it to them? I don’t care enough to research this—and apparently it’s good for a cheap shot from certain corners: #5 on the checklist is almost a free square.
As to flavor, I’ll repeat the joke I’ve made for years in answer to that question: type 32A class B-6. (Nobody has yet invented a classification system compatible with that designation; when they do, I’ll change it.)
Robert wears a hat because his soul is dislocated to the 30s. We don’t know why. His rebellion involved listening tot he oldies station (REALLY oldies. World War II music) and wearing thirties clothes. I don’t think he’s a PUA. I WISH he’s pick up one and bring her– Oh, wait. He’s only 22. Never mind. I have an adopted grandchild, meanwhile…
If it’s any consolation, most of the hipsters who think they’re using the fedora as a symbol are actually wearing trilbies. They are being properly mocked not only for wearing the wrong hat, but for calling it by an incorrect name.
On Larry Correia’s Facebook page, someone explained that a trilby is undeniably a relative of the fedora. And we all have relatives who shouldn’t be allowed out in public. 🙂
I remember that discussion, and agree wholeheartedly. The fedora is one of the few hats that works with my head shape. Oddly, the other is the bowler.
A trillby is perfectly acceptable if you are, say, a dapper older fellow who has it in a tweed that matches his coat, which incidentally has leather patches on the elbows……
But it must have a red feather in the brim, too.
I believe Jeeves would disagree with you, Ma’am. When Bertie Wooster insisted on wearing a very similar garment (with a feather in the brim, too), Jeeves gave out that he was actually the infamous criminal ‘Alpine Joe’, who was known far and wide for his abhorrent taste in hats.
Agreed. Trilbies … well, the best that can be said for them is that they’ve got heart. They’re trying SO HARD. Someday they’ll grow up and have a nice inch and a half, two inch snap brim and a fine, grosgrain hatband. Until then, they really shouldn’t be allowed out in public. At least not without a minder.
Hey now, I happen to wear a trilby now and then, and I’m inclined to think it looks fine on me. ‘Sonly decent hat I’ve been able to find ’round here that’ll fit my giant head (about size 7 3/4″), regardless. There don’t seem to be any decent brick-and-mortar haberdashers in Utah, and I dare not attempt buying a style online that I’ve never seen on my head. If I could pull off a cowboy hat I’d be set here, but I’m not that kind of fellow.
And should they claim they simply meant to dismiss anything I said assuming it was a MRA/hipster/PUA fedora, I stand prepared to accuse them of “goysplaining”. 😈
(If you have to ask, don’t. Sarah posted a link to a spectacular display of radfem [TERF, to be specific] “logic” a few months back, and I climbed down the rabbit hole and came back with some shiny new vocabulary just itching to be unleashed. In other words, it’s all Sarah’s fault. 😇 )
Yes, but WHEN isn’t it?
Because it’s the sign of his religious observance.
So what’s the big deal with that? He doesn’t proselytize.
The mere possession of faith oppresses them. its all far too complicated for me to understand.
Wrongfaith. As long as you believe in an unsubstantiated past of peaceful matriarchy, an insubstantial present of hateful patriarchy, and an unobtained future of utopian …
anarchy*mumblemumble* you’re doing fine. Their strength is as ten, because their faith is pure…way off topic, but how did you get the strike thru to work? I tried the S tag, but no luck.
z
[del]insertscripthere[/del], but with the more awesomer angledy brackets.
I hadn’t seen Dave’s way before. Let me
try itand see how it works.OK, that works, so now I know two ways:
<del>your text here</del>
and
<strike>your text here</strike>
There are nice quiet padded rooms where they won’t be oppressed or bothered. I’m sure that we can find a few.
I’m not sure about the rules, but may I hold my middle finger at them on your behalf?
I am not at all surprised to see the media at large seize on anything they can try to spin into a morality tale about misogyny. Just as the dog whistles have all been about race since Obama entered the scene as a presidential contender, now the whistles will be all about gender as Hilary is the new candidate. Never mind the fact that the latest high profile atrocity (I’m speaking about the Santa Barbara rampage) saw more men as victims than women– what are the dead bodies of a few young men in the cause of stirring up more misandric outrage?
It’s also not shocking that the QUILTBAG’s jump on whatever bandwagon is presented to them– it’s basically what they do.
Fail Burton pointed out this quote from N.K. Jemisin recently somewhere else, but I kind of figure it’s pertinent to the subject at hand.
(Incidentally: Mr. Various Diseases, Mr. Civility, and Misters and Misses Free Speech At All Costs, if you represent the civilization to which I’m supposed to aspire then I am all savage, and damned proud of it. You may collectively kiss my black ass.)
[Emphasis mine]
Jemisin and other SJW’s argue that free speech at all costs is some kind of a negative, that people should be prevented from saying certain things. Honestly, I understand where they’re coming from. There are certain hateful things that I truly wish would never be uttered by another human being.
However, there’s an aspect that these women aren’t getting.
It was the idea of free speech for all that permitted abolitionists to speak in the North and sway opinions until the day that enough other people stood with them to change the course of this nation.
It was the idea of free speech for all that permitted the suffrage movement to expand beyond a handful of women into a national movement that garnered enough votes to amend the Constitution of the United States of America.
It was the idea of free speech for all that made it possible for people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to march in places like Selma, Alabama, despite what the majority of the local citizens thought.
Every one of those movements had moments when they were unpopular. It was the idea of free speech for all that made it so those voices could be heard. If not for the idea that they hate so much, the idea of free speech for all, that made it so slavery ended, women can vote, and killed Jim Crow.
But hey, as long as the “right people” don’t have to hear mean words.
She’s not a savage. I disagree with Vox. Savages have to have some survival value. She’s ALL idiot. What price “Idiot identity” embracing?
Fair enough.
I suspect even Vox would agree with you on that front.
It’s more than simply not wanting to hear mean words, to be fair; it’s a fundamental difference in perspective, I think.
Classic liberty recognizes the power of speech to influence society, but operates on the assumption that the free marketplace of ideas will allow people to choose which speech they accept and which they reject, and that most people are sane and rational enough to separate healthy from unhealthy ideas for themselves. Post-Marxist PC-ism doesn’t believe this; its adherents believe that the idea likeliest to win, left to its own devices, is not the healthiest, sanest or most self-evidently moral but the most emotionally/venally appealing and/or the most loudly and frequently repeated. In this mindset, “free speech” is no likelier to be a “fair” or “worthwhile” tool of public discourse by itself than a boxing match is likely to be a fair fight without a referee to penalize fouls or a league to match fighters by weight — it *might* be a fair contest, by sheer chance, for any two opponents, but overall the vast majority of fights will be dominated by those lucky enough to have advantages of strength and height that no lightweight training and skill can overcome, or by those willing to use below-the-belt tactics against those not so willing, or by those who have enough audience popularity as to secure financial support that new fighters or unpopular fighters cannot acquire.
So for Jemisin and those of her mindset, there *can* be such things as words and ideas too socially harmful to morally be permitted via free expression, in the same way that in real life there are weapons deadly enough even the 2nd Amendment does not permit private ownership or use of them. In fairness, even the most liberal free-speecher usually agrees with the criminalization of active calls for treason or insurrection, so it might be said that the SJW crowd simply has a much stricter definition of what constitutes “harmful social influence” in certain areas, even to the point of simply considering not getting *enough* time themselves on the podium to equate to “harmful oppression”.
Of course, the key questions they will never ask themselves is whether their definition of what amounts to “harmfulness” is *wrong*, or whether there might be some other reason for losing in the battlefield of ideas than the purported unfair advantages of those who disagree. But to be fair, if everybody regularly reconsidered their positions this way, what would we have to argue about on the ‘Net?
Another quote from her speech:
Maybe you think I’m using hyperbole here, when I describe the bigotry of the SFF genres as “violence”. Maybe I am using hyperbole — but I don’t know what else to call it.
Is it just me, but do you find it a little odd that someone who considers themselves a writer, and has published works, can’t comprehend any words more appropriate for perceived bigotry than “violence”? The only “example” she gives is Vox and what he said…after Jemisin spent considerable time attacking him via social media.
I’m going to get a concussion from all of the facepalms I’m giving myself while reading this crap.
That struck me as well. First of all, if one were rejected from a community and prevented from writing about rockets and elves, that’s not violence. When you throw in the fact that nothing remotely like that purposeful Jim Crow-like exclusion ever occurred, that tips quite a long way into delusion. The problem is those folks accept these urban myths cuz they don’t fact-check them; I presume because their emotional investment is so high. They don’t dare puncture their own motivating bubble. The reality is this: in the last 100 years everyone who’s really tried to break into SFF, has, and often right off the bat. There was a great vacuum of talent in those old pulps and any decent writer got their shot. You’ll notice Jemisin didn’t make a case using facts, but innuendoes. That’s because she has no facts. Delany was a phenomenal success from age 20 and got the awards that went along with that. His own maudlin whining is a disservice to himself, and the colorblind people who admired his work and went to bat for it and read it.
I won’t say that everyone who tried broke in, but that’s because some people write so poorly, no editor is going to touch it to save their life. I’ve done that with non-fiction. I needed content, but some was just so bad it wasn’t worth the hassle.
However, as I haven’t looked at what was accepted versus what wasn’t back then, I’m not going further than that.
Other than that though, we’re completely on the same page.
I was talking about the old days, the era the PC are whining about – 1910-60 – when there were few women and virtually no black folks. After that, you can’t make an argument for exclusion because a lot of folks started coming in. I used to own all 83 issues of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, all the Fantastic Novels, long runs of Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling stories and a few hundreds of others from Weird Tales to bedsheets of the ’20s. Trust me, I know what was in there, and the filler was terrible. If you had fingers and any kind of determination you had a shot. There are no stories of good SF writers who tried and failed. How could they have with the dreck that was published? Anyway, fandom would’ve known about those stories. There is zilch about that from Sam Moskowitz, SF’s greatest historian. Black writers weren’t there because they weren’t there. There are some black SF authors from that era, but they weren’t genre authors any more than the King Kong movie tie-in novel, Titus Groan, Lost Horizon or Topper was genre. Ever hear about retro-Hugos for that stuff? No. That’s cuz they don’t count in the minds of fandom.
“Delany was a phenomenal success from age 20 and got the awards that went along with that. His own maudlin whining is a disservice to himself, and the colorblind people who admired his work and went to bat for it and read it.”
Is he doing a lot of whining today?
I remember him writing without any apology that he hates white people, and that policies that harm white people are “turnabout is fair play”.
However, I haven’t bothered to follow him lately.
Delany died some years ago.
According to Wikipedia, he is still living. Of course Wikipedia is not a scholarly source, but it usually does get basic biographical data right, such as dates of birth and death.
Of course it is possible that Delany really is dead, and that his magnificent beard just refused to lie down and be buried, and is now living a zombie afterlife using the rest of his body as a sort of puppet. But I am rather inclined to disfavour this hypothesis; which makes me sad, because it would be a splendidly sfnal thing to see happen.
Sigh. I shall be sad along with you.
Be of good cheer, Ma’am. It may yet come to pass. When Mr. Delany finally does die, I can hardly imagine that beard going gentle into that good night. Something terribly interesting deserves to happen at that point.
The last thing I’m going to quote from her speech, broken up for me to fisk a la Larry Correia.
SFF are dedicated to the exploration of the future and myth and history. Dreams, if you want to frame it that way. Yet the enforced SWM dominance of these genres means that the dreams of whole groups of people have been obliterated from the Zeitgeist.
First, where the hell is this “enforced SWM dominance”? Honestly, I’m just not seeing it. I really wish she hadn’t turned off comments, because I’d really love to see where this is “enforced”.
Second, “obliterated from the Zeitgeist”? And yet, Heinlein made Johnny Rico the hero of Starship Troopers…a Filipino protagonist. No, not a black character, but this was also during a time when no one pushed that boundary. Heinlein did. He also had strong female protagonists, including warriors in a futuristic setting.
Sorry, but does she deal with a different science fiction than I do?
And it’s not as if those dreams don’t exist. They’re out there, in spades; everyone who dreams is capable of participating in these genres. But many have been forcibly barred from entry, tormented and reeducated until they serve the status quo. Their interests have been confined within creative ghettos, allowed out only in proscribed circumstances and limited numbers. When they do appear, they are expected to show their pass and wear their badge: “Look, this is an anthology of NATIVE AMERICAN ANCIENT WISDOM from back when they existed! Put a kachina on the cover or it can’t be published. No, no, don’t put an actual Navajo on the cover, what, are you crazy? We want the book to sell. That person looks too white, anyway, are you sure they aren’t lying about being an Indian? What the hell is a Diné? What do you mean you’re Inuit?”
Honestly, I don’t have a huge issue with that. I really hate anthologies describing authors as “Hispanic” or “African-American” or whatever adjective they’re using. They’re writers. They’re writing science fiction. If that shit’s not good enough to get my attention, then maybe you suck at compiling anthologies.
The thing is, it’s not “our” side that’s in favor of that. It’s the Left – you know, Jemisin’s friends – who push things like “Women Destroy Fantasy” and “Women Destroy Science Fiction”. It ain’t us. Hell, we usually decry such things.
Of course, someone like Jemisin might think we oppose them simply because we’re not included. Damien Walter implied as much to me about my feelings about the Nebulas. The reality? I think authors should stand or fall based on their work. I don’t give a damn what plumbing they have or how much melanin they possess. Write well and put together an interesting story? I’m in.
What’s really fun is that while Jemisin is lashing out about the genre, she’s completely missing who here real adversary in this is. Oh, she despises Vox Day, and probably hates Larry Correia, Tom Kratman, John Ringo, Mike Williamson, etc. She’d probably hate me if she knew who I was. However, we’re not the problem. Yes, most of us are white males, but we don’t have the power she’s raging against.
No, the adversary is the same one many of us on the right side of SFF have. The adversary isn’t other writers, even if she disagrees with them. We lack the power to affect anything except our own writing and, if we’re fortunate, our readers. Her adversary are the publishers.
They are the arbiters of what gets published and what doesn’t. Think there aren’t enough PoC being published? Tom Kratman and Larry Correia can’t do a thing to fix the problem. The Nielsen Haydens are probably far better equipped to fix the problem than Tom or Larry.
Those same publishers are the ones pushing message fiction rather that story driven fiction. Of course, they’re also the ones not sure why SFF is such a shrinking part of fiction while SFF does so well in other mediums.
Not that Jemisin will challenge them on that. It’s much better to launch into diatribes about bigotry without confronting the bigotry on her own side of the aisle.
Her speech is nonsense from beginning to end, and the fact it is being acclaimed by the PC is disturbing, and typical. The reality is that Jemisin has been affirmative actioned to the front of a line far above her abilities, not thwarted. If Correia swam in that sea he’d be discriminated against unless he parroted feminist dogma. If Jemisin were Correia, by that I mean her being a white guy but doing almost nothing to carve out a space for herself besides whining about white people, you’d never have heard of her. Add to that she is not a prolific writer. Now look at Correia: a guy who invented himself on multiple levels, aggressively seized the day, and is a prolific writer with more than double the novels than Jemisin though about 5 years younger and each having published their first novels about the same time. And Correia writes far more online than Jemisin. Corriea’s an animal, an energizer bunny, and with a plan – Jemisin’s artistically and professionally lazy and not at all ambitious.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with just about everything you said. I won’t agree with her being “affirmative actioned” or anything, because I haven’t read any of her stuff.
What’s funny is how Jemisin talks about having to deal with bigots every so often, as if that excuses her lack of production.
Meanwhile, Larry not only deals with his own attackers (because he couldn’t possibly deal with “bigots”), but picks enough of his own fights, yet still cranks out an impressive amount of work.
Honestly, I’m a little jealous. I can’t come close to what he churns out right now, and I damn sure don’t have the ability to balance work and goofing off like he does either.
I’ve read enough of Jemisin’s work to concede that she is, at least in terms of basic prosecraft and storytelling, a skilled and imaginative writer. That she has exploited her online political activism to boost her presence and, most likely, sales is undeniable, but that in itself would not be a mark against her and I don’t think it can be dismissed as “affirmative action”. If anything, the real injustice of this situation is that she has become so affiliated with her political activism that her legitimate skill as a writer has become almost beside the point — I would have been perfectly willing to give her books a try before the politicization of her fanbase made not doing so an admission of unconscious racism, a browbeating tactic I highly resent and try generally not to reward.
Buddy if you think the SFWA crowd hasn’t been pushing Aliette de Bodard, Saladin Ahmed and Jemisin because of their race, you haven’t been reading what I’ve been reading. First of all, in what world were Heinlein and Poul Anderson given pats on the back for being white and setting their novels in non-Western locations? Read contemporary reviews of those 3 AA darlings and first thing mentioned is race and geography at least 80% of the time. They’re all still online. Then read contemporary comments after they were nominated – there’s a whole lot of “What?” And that was at io9 – a pretty friendly home stadium. Secondly, I can’t present all the quotes by SF institutions that congratulate the Nebula nominee line-up for looking good, as in women and race – stories last. Third, Jemisin with 3 Nebula nods in a row? Uh-hu. Not in my book. And how often have you heard of Ahmed as the Arab Muslim this and that as opposed to being half-Irish? Try 0. He eats pork for crying out loud – no Muslim does that. Ahmed promotes himself as an Irishman and he’s no one from no where. Same with de Bodard’s worse half, the European one she says zilch about amid a welter of Vietnamese this and that. After the Nebula winners this year, I’m surprised you need convincing. They were winners alright, but not for writing. Hell, I’m not even a writer and I could write better than Kaftan. This is a question of homework, and when you dig and find Kaftan’s editor wants to see her own little girls see themselves in SF… well. I say fine – get yourself a shoehorn and get them in there. Race and gender, buddy. That’s where it’s at.
Yes. They write the stories that are expected of them, and that’s why they’re pushed.
After the Shakespeare series tanked (not the most commercial series ever, but also wounded by the first book coming out a month after 9/11) I was told that if I wanted to continue working in the field I should continue writing in the field. Something like I, Rigoberta Menchu, they said, or Isabel Allende, they said. No, not they. My EDITOR. THE ONLY EDITOR I worked for at the time.
I thought I’d NEVER work again, and to be fair, if I hadn’t been recommended to Baen by David Drake, I migh tnot have. BUT I couldn’t do that. Because a) I don’t have any kind of anti-American story to tell. b) If I did “portuguese schtick” stories, I’d never know if it was my writing or my ethnicity they were acclaiming.
Which I think is the greatest pain these people feel. They suspect they’re not worthy.
“…if you think the SFWA crowd hasn’t been pushing Aliette de Bodard, Saladin Ahmed and Jemisin because of their race, you haven’t been reading what I’ve been reading.”
Oh, agreed, absolutely. I’m simply pointing out that they are also being pushed because they are good writers, and I’ve read enough of all their work to confirm that this is in fact true.
Now: are they getting pushed more than they probably otherwise would because of the demographic boxes into which they fit? Almost certainly. Would they be getting less push than their ability deserves if, in fact, they were all Caucasian? I am less certain of this (and who can know what level of promotion an author “deserves” by quality?) than the first point, but it still seems likely to me. Which in some ways proves both our points: you, that representation has become far more important than ability in determining who SFWA promotes, and me that this emphasis undermines the worth of promotional hype not only for bad authors but for good ones, and that in some ways the good authors will suffer more from such representation-based hype because it taints the legacy that would otherwise be earned by their actual craft.
I think Jemesin would be a better writer if people weren’t telling her so. Her first was good, but the rest have been a slog for me.
And I am looking forward to more of Ahmed’s work. I rather enjoyed Throne of the Crescent Moon, and I hope the sequel is better.
“obliterated from the Zeitgeist”
Translated into plain English, what that means is that she resents the fact that white males are not yet extinct.
Apparently. Especially when one of the seminal texts of the Zeitgeist has a non-white protagonist in an era when that was a damn hard sell.
Although I believe you are not allowed to say “seminal” anymore–very sexist. You must emulate Samuel R Delany and say “ovular” instead. 🙂
Yeah.
.
.
.
Not gonna happen. 😀
How about “tubular”? 😀
o, like totally
“The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.” — Sally Miller Gearhart
Wasn’t this a Star Trek episode? IDK, but I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be a dystopia. 😛
How much of this is selective sampling of insane people. I’ve never heard half this much crazy out of someone in person.
(I have heard some craziness – completely unfair standards of evidence presented as justice, etc, but nothing quite this hysterical.)
Other than being absolutely nuts, what is really going on with these people?
Didn’t get to read all the comments yet, but I’d like to point out that the nutbar who did the latest shooting, FOUR of his Six victims were Male. Yet it’s a misogynistic attack (because of his rant)
I’ve also seen black pundits say that “He had mental problems” in an excuse, and only whites get it.
And of course, the REAL problem is Guns. (eyeroll).
My take from the Rodgers business is not that he was a misogynist; he seems to have hated men as much as women. My take is more that he viewed women as his rightful property, so he was equally angry with the women who “rejected him” (and who wouldn’t reject the little creep? he probably affected them all much as a rattlesnake would have done) as with the men who wrongfully appropriated the women who should have been his. “It’s not fair!” It’s the same kind of thing I described earlier as treating people as objects. So yes, the story is in part about sick attitudes towards women, even though the violence was equal-opportunity. As for the gun angle, well, we knew better than to expect rationality there.
I finally sucked it up and watched part of his video.
If that is how he spoke regularly (and I don’t know, don’t really care enough to find out), then I’m really not surprised he had trouble with girls. He spoke in a rather odd manner for a man of his age. Frankly, I thought he sounded a bit like a two-bit Bond villain.
However, based on his inflection, etc, I’m not surprised to find that girls weren’t interested. Of course, it would be interesting to find out how much of it was women weren’t interested in him, or more a case of the women he wanted to be interested in him weren’t.
Either way, he was a sick puppy and that’s what doesn’t need to be lost.
I wonder, also, if his Asperger’s may have contributed to his ultimate tantrum — not in the way most people would think, but on a slightly less obvious note.
One of the qualities that a lot of people with Asperger’s and other autism spectrum conditions share is a profound frustration with contradictory data or instructions, especially once they grasp the idea that people will sometimes be *deliberately* dishonest — lying or disingenuousness can be much more infuriating to people on that part of the spectrum because it is a deliberate taking away of one of the only tools they have to work with in navigating human interactions. This, to me, seems to resonate quite disturbingly with the base protest of the “Nice Guy”, which, as a former Nice Guy myself, I have to admit I understand: not just that girls weren’t interested in me, or that the guys they *were* interested in weren’t like me, but that the guys they actually went for *did not match what society promotes as the general criteria of selection*. To use TVTropes terminology, the Nice Guy realizes that many girls who *present* themselves as “Single Women Seeks Good Man” are in *fact* more “All Girls Want Bad Boys”, and it’s the *disingenuousness* in this that is the real trigger, even more so than the rejection.
Now that said, the only way to move from whatever anger may be justified by that to killing people over it is to be both (a) essentially so morally stunted and selfish that you can’t grasp anybody’s pain except your own, and (b) so unself-conscious that you can’t look at yourself honestly to see how you’ve contributed to your own failures with arrogance, insecurity, resentment or entitlement. Even Asperger’s-magnified indignation is only a slightly larger blasting cap; the C4 of Rodger’s emotional immaturity and selfishness had most likely been built up his whole life, and the things that transmute that fulminate to safe steel — firm but loving discipline, engaged parents, close real-life friends, moral instruction — all seem to have been tragically lacking. People like Rodger terrify and dismay me, because I look at them and see more of myself as a teenager than I am ever comfortable thinking about.
I don’t know what to think about the possible Asperger’s angle. I’m that way myself, as is my husband and many members of my family, and many of the people I’m most comfortable with. And none of us gives off the vibe that this guy did. What rings more of a bell is growing up in a sick Hollywood culture where power and influence buy you beautiful people you can use like Kleenex. Maybe he never did understand that other people are real.
And yet there’s this chilling passage in his manifesto:
“I walked into the range, rented a handgun from the ugly old redneck cashier, and started to practice shooting at paper targets. As I fired my first few rounds, I felt so sick to the stomach. I questioned my whole life, and I looked at the gun in front of me and asked myself ‘What am I doing here? How could things have led to this?’ I couldn’t believe my life was actually turning out this way. There I was, practicing shooting with real guns because I had a plan to carry out a massacre.”
That sounds like a man who still had a shred of humanity in him, if only in memory.
I MIGHT be in the spectrum. I suspect one of my kids is. Tons of my friends are. BUT imagine that… curious lack of instinctive response, coupled with hollywood raising. Yeah… could be a problem.
True. We want to pathologize evil because we can think of it as something that can be prevented or cured that way, but the eternal mystery is still this: Sometimes people will just choose to give in to their dark side, even knowing it’s wrong.
The Church obliges us to pray for all sinners, even the worst (who, after all, logically need it the most), but I will fault nobody who chooses to pray for the victims first and much more so.
He absolutely is in my prayers, and is an object of more pity to me than even his victims are. Everyone dies, but not everyone turns himself into something irretrievably corrupt, something that’s literally better off dead.
That’s why I find that reminiscence so chilling: he can still remember a time when there was enough left of his soul that he might still have chosen to turn around and accept the grace that’s offered even to the most debased. He remembered it, rejected it, and jumped into the pit with both feet.
Two years ago on Friday, a man named Ian Stawicki walked into the Cafe Racer in Seattle, Washington. He’d been a bit of a problem for them, so they asked him to leave. However, they also offered to get him his coffee first. (pretty nice considering they just kicked him out). Stawicki walked toward the door to leave, but instead of walking out of it, he pulled two pistols, turned and fired. He killed five people, then killed another while trying to carjack a get away vehicle.
One of the victims inside the Cafe was Kimberly Lynn Layfield. To most people, she was just a name on a list. To me, she was a hell of a lot more than that. Kim was one of my dearest friends on Earth, a beautiful creature who had a soul to match the exterior.
During her funeral, of which most of my recollections are tear-filled and hence a bit fuzzy, a family member of hers stood in front of hundreds of people and publicly forgave Ian Stawicki. It was one of the most Christian things I have ever seen in my life.
Since that time though, I’ve had a morbid fascination with people like this. Not because I have any respect for them, or because of anything positive. I want to try to understand these people so that I can figure out if there are clues that this behavior is coming. I want to understand how someone could flip from a relatively normal appearing member of society into a monster.
FWIW, I still haven’t forgiven Stalwicki. Is it the Christian thing to do? Absolutely. But I’m also realistic enough to know that of all my shortcomings as a Christian, this one ranks pretty low in the grand scheme of things.
You know, this really isn’t all that relevant to the topic at hand when I think about it, except that I lost a friend to a madman similar to this Rodgers guy. Sorry about that.
Still, I’m sorry for your loss. Death is a hard thing to process and it takes a long time. I do understand what you’re saying. I don’t know how people can forgive murderers and rapists, though I’m aware that it helps with the healing process and I know it is the Christian thing to do, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.
Yeah, you’re right. Every part of me knows that forgiving him would be the right thing. Unfortunately, there’s a large part of me that understands that vengeance is the Lords’, I just want to arrange the meeting.
Did the killer repent?
We’re required to forgive a hundred times– if the person recognizes they were wrong and asks us to.
Doesn’t mean one should hate, but forgiveness without repentance usually devolves into enabling. (Imagine if the Prodigal Son’s father had kept “forgiving” him and sending money.)
He killed himself, so who knows.
No matter what, I’ll always wish he’d just offed himself and left Kim out of it.
Amen.
Doesn’t mean one should hate, but forgiveness without repentance usually devolves into enabling. (Imagine if the Prodigal Son’s father had kept “forgiving” him and sending money.)
If he forgave him the Prodigal’s father would not be required to continue to finance his son’s downfall. There is never an obligation on one’s part to enable another to continue in a wrong path. On the contrary, we are obligated, as best we can, to not aid and abet someone’s downfall.
Human forgiveness is not the same as approval. As I understand it forgiveness is something I do for myself, to release my soul from any harm that lingering bitterness, anger and pain the unforgiveness can cause. On the upside, when you forgive you deny the one who wrecked havoc on you lessen their continued power over your life. It requires nothing on the part of the one who harmed you. They may never repent, but you can still be freed.
Problem is that forgiveness has a couple of meanings in English– for example, forgiveness of debt is the closest to the one I’m looking at, while the one you’re talking about is more like not hating someone.
Yep, that I understand. I considered whether changing Vengeance to Justice would allow it, but I suppose it wouldn’t.
Not for me.
Since the guy killed himself before the cops got him, I have to trust in God that justice has been served. I can do that easily enough.
It’s the rest that’s a problem for me.
Don’t be. Grief is a hell of a process, and it’s often lengthy and deceptive. This is a safe place for that. Also, thread drift: that is the way the Hoyt’s Hun do.
As Dave said. For this, never apologize.
True enough.
I’ve never really learned to forgive people, except for things that frankly weren’t all that bad upon further consideration, after some time had passed. Which of course means I wasn’t really forgiving at all. It’s a harder task that many people suppose, and this one surely qualifies as a lifetime ambition for you. What an awful thing to have happened. I’m very sorry.
I think forgiveness, by the way, is quite different from condoning. There will never be a reason to excuse what that murderer did. The question is whether we can ever stop enjoying the prospect of his suffering. It’s particularly hard to do with someone who doesn’t repent of the horrible thing he did–for me, at least so far, impossible.
I don’t understand the commonly expressed need to forgive.
I understand the Christian basis for it. I understand that I am altering my own life by continuing to not forgive. I understand that I am giving them room in my head. And I DON”T CARE. Some things are NOT forgivable. 9/11 being one. The deliberate torture and murder of a child being another. I will not forgive evil, and I won’t feel bad for not doing so.
I don’t dwell on these things, but I don’t forgive them either. And I don’t think anyone should feel bad about not forgiving a heinous act.
I am sorry for your loss TL.
zuk
The theological answer is that holding onto the pain and anger poisons one’s own spirit and soul. Forgiveness is letting go of that part of the equation; it’s taking what action you can as applies to your own heart. On the other hand (the one with the knife in it) we’re not to allow perpetrators of evil to escape the consequences of their actions. I can forgive the … individual who calls me evil, says I’m to blame for all of civilization’s ills, and that I’m a serial rapist because I’m happily married, but I don’t have to let them get away with it.
Aside: I think this is where “turn the other cheek” gets misinterpreted. It’s not playing the milquetoast who won’t fight back. It’s giving the offender an opportunity to repent of their evil. Of course, I’ve only got the two cheeks (shaddap, ye wisenheimers), and when they confirm their nature, it’s on like the proverbial Donkey Kong.
I think forgiveness, by the way, is quite different from condoning.
No argument. I’m well aware of the difference. I just don’t think I can forgive. I know I’ll never be able to condone.
Forgiving him is the right thing. Condoning it will never be. Ever.
Forgiving is more about the Forgiver, than the Forgiven, then.
Yep.
Someday, I might even be able to do it.
Maybe.
One of the qualities that a lot of people with Asperger’s and other autism spectrum conditions share is a profound frustration with contradictory data or instructions, especially once they grasp the idea that people will sometimes be *deliberately* dishonest — lying or disingenuousness can be much more infuriating to people on that part of the spectrum because it is a deliberate taking away of one of the only tools they have to work with in navigating human interactions.
This is a disturbingly familiar sentiment. I read fiction stories where the character is being lied to, knows it, and is merely amused. I’d be wanting to pull the other person’s tonsils out their posterior with a salad fork.
What freaks me out is a lot of the clips I’ve heard sound like the far-other-side crazies on “Men’s Rights” blogs. I use to follow several, but since I made it so my icon is obviously female (about eight years back) the real nut-jobs started making it just too annoying, even if the main posters had OK points.
….
@#$@#.
His age is right for him to actually be the guy who broke up my first raiding guild.
He did a big long sob story to me, as a male 14-15 year old, and I gave him a lot of help. I got tired of every minute I was on being dedicated to him, and left for a month or so.
Came back, he’d morphed into a she… that was macking on several of the guild leaders and making accusations against my husband and I. Some of them physically impossible, since my husband was deployed at the time.
Chances of it being the same manipulative blanker aren’t that good, but wow that’s creepy to realize, and the 14 hours a day gaming time matches.
What’s scary to me is the one roommate I had — first roommate I ever had to kick out — whom this guy reminds me of. He had no understanding of why he was coming across as creepy to women. I can’t tell if he truly couldn’t understand it, or if he wasn’t willing to admit to his own share of responsibility for his social problems. (He had a victim complex, and nothing was ever his fault. Got fired from another job? Boss hated him, that must be it.) But years after I kicked him out, I got an email out of the blue from him asking “Do you still hate me?” I decided not to reply, because nothing I said would have been able to persuade him that I never hated him, and had been genuinely trying to help him when I told him to seek professional counseling.
At least my former roommate isn’t someone I would ever expect to read about in a newspaper headline. But it’s creepy how much I got reminded of him when reading about this guy in California.
Bryan Suits kept playing a clip where he TOTALLY sounded like Synaps or whatever the Incredibles villain was. Eeeek!
Syndrome, but Synaps would be a wicked cool villain name. Do it. WRITE IIIIIITTTTTTT. (that is all)
I may have my new supervillain’s name.
When the VA Tech shooting happened, the profs in my department at Flat State wondered if it had been a former Flat State grad student. Apparently the guy had a whole bunch of problems, and everyone who remembers him still half-expects him to show up in the headlines, and not for winning the Pulitzer or Bancroft prizes.
Manly names for Snickerdoodles- OK, less “girly.”
Cinnamon Sugar Cookies.
Sweet Fire Cookies.
Hot sweet snacks.
SHC-nikker-doodles, if you say the first syllable with enough force it’ll distract from anything else.
Since the topic is snickerdoodles, and I feel silly:
On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 4:43 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> Foxfier commented: “Manly names for Snickerdoodles- OK, less “girly.” > Cinnamon Sugar Cookies. Sweet Fire Cookies. Hot sweet snacks.” >
All three can easily be approved.
Could be the SNICK is the sound of BunBun’s switchblade actuating. Could be.
Except that’s a KA-CLICK!!!
So we start calling ’em ka-klickerdoodles?
Just a question.
Is the vitriol aimed at the #Notallmen meme in fact being used as a justification/excuse for certain women making bad choices?
We all know that women are in fact ‘the gatekeepers’ to acceptable behaviour between the genders, no? If a mans behaviour results in his being ‘sent to Coventry’ by other men – meh, so what. But to be shunned by women – big deal, he changes … maybe, but that shunning definitely affects the behaviour of other men (treat a lady badly, or even rudely in the past, and you aren’t ever going to get a lady yourself is a powerful motivator towards ‘better’ behaviour).
From reading about (and meeting a few of the ‘rise of feminism’ seventies feminist ‘leaders’) they appeared to have been, originally, very close with the extreme leftists (read: rabid socialist/communists). They distanced themselves (a little) following their experiences (the expectation that they would be ‘available’ for sex with any ‘man’ who wanted it, whenever, wherever and however he wanted it) with the men of that type – ‘and judge all men as being similar’!
So, these women have made the deliberate choice to choose a certain type of man to have a ‘relationship’ with, and, predictably, it didn’t go well. So to excuse ‘their’ bad decisions they rationalise it as ‘I wasn’t in the wrong in choosing a bad man as all men are like that’. To do otherwise would mean that they would need some introspection, objectively view their own actions and ‘admit their own culpability’ – something they seem unable ever to admit. (It’s a common theme, apparently, amongst women. Over years I have watched as friends, colleagues and acquaintances have waxed lyrical about the qualities they want in a man, and who then go out and consistently choose to date the exact opposite – ‘because he’s fun/exciting/dangerous’ – and then blame the man for being exactly what they chose him for).
The sad thing? The very behaviour demanded by the ‘men’ (the demeaning of women) that they so despised (sufficient to turn them against all that is male) is …. the very thing they now encourage all women to act like?!? Is it more ‘cover’ for their fragile egos – ‘see I’m not the only one who acts in a wantonly stupid fashion’ whilst building support by exposing more young women to such behaviour? (Their aims/recommendations/ideals are actively rewarding the behaviours they claim to abhor – go figure).
As to this latest ‘scums’ actions? He presents as being exactly what some women seem to view as the ‘ideal man’ – a self-absorbed, entitled, pretty, mad/dangerous/bad, leftist, rich boy – makes me wonder why they weren’t falling over themselves to get to him, and it explains their vehemence in part – it’s one of their own going off the rails as per usual.
One other point which bears repeating. Having a mental illness does ‘not’ remove either cognitive abilities or morals! I’ve worked for years (A&E) with considerable contact with sufferers of all types of (diagnosed) mental illness, and you know what? The vast majority are law abiding, moral individuals who just happen to have ‘issues’. Even the most ‘extreme’ paranoid schizophrenic stops ‘acting up’ when I (6’5”, 245 lbs, ex-military), as opposed to petite, female colleagues walk in. Fear? No! Recognition, reasoning, understanding of consequences and the implicit understanding of right and wrong. So if they choose to commit a crime, they do so because they wish to do so (whilst some tiny minority of crimes could be explained by delusional behaviour the vast majority cannot).
Yes (based on ‘apocryphal’ common-knowledge amongst law-enforcement and judiciary here since exact data is specifically ‘not’ gathered here) most violent and drug-related crime (and even thefts) are committed by those with mental health issues, but that both neither reflects the majority and is partly explained as both ‘after the fact diagnosis’ (hey he has to be mad to beat the old lady up) and ‘excusing’ (he only did that because he’s a poor misunderstood victim). Well that and it always results in lesser consequences (if nothing else a nice comfortable hospital bed, rather than hard-time).
‘Mental illness’ (like feminism, racism, homophobia, ….) have all gone way too far in excusing behaviours that are inherently ‘evil’ (before someone goes off on one I mean female against male violence/legalised theft, black on white crime/spurious offence/rent seeking, and gay pederasty not any of the ‘real’, legitimate grievances all now long dealt with) has become a means to allow behaviour which would have been punished (and was thus rare) to be excused (and has now become common as a consequence). Who’d have thunk it?
That’s part of it.
Like this:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_3_oh_to_be.html
I must speak of two things that may cause an overestimation of the correlation between mental illness and crime.
One is that if crime is properly disincentivised, criminals will correlate more with those having weaker judgment and impulse control. Extremely weak judgment and or impulse control may count as mental illness.
Two, if you have a population of drug users, they will create mental illness in themselves even if they start out fine. Unless you as a society do something like stick these people in a concentration camp, and supply them with drugs until they OD fatally, they will commit crime to fuel their suicidal joyride.
I’ve picked up all these terms from the culture itself; it is how they identify themselves. They self-identify as intersectional third wave QUILTBAG feminists.
Intersectional refers to multiple vectors of oppression as opposed to the old men vs. women: postcolonial, queer culture (their term), class, race, immigrant, non-Anglo, non-Western.
First wave is women’s suffrage against institutional discrimination – law – up until the ’60s. Second Wave addressed societal discrimination – ’60s to the ’80s. Third Wave dates from the ’90s and has a specifically non-white and class emphasis.
QUILTBAG is every vector of queer culture.
This brand of feminism has no interest in equality, but in completely tearing down white patriarchal structures on a global basis of oppression. They have no interest in living with you or tolerating your views. Of course this crosses from equality to racism and moral supremacy, which is why they are little better than segregationist neo-Nazis. Their rhetoric is at all time bitterly and endemically hostile to straight white men. It’s all a delusion, because on a civilizational level, their sole products are ideological mechanisms of complaint, institutional segregation, and the behavior of a leech which cannot survive one day without its host. That’s why QUILTBAGs hate white men but flock to their societies for the protection without which they cannot even exist. The fact these people state principles and then ignore them, e.g., not complaining about Islam, shows this resembles more of a mental health issue whose unhealthy focus stalks Western white men than an actual comprehensive dogma. For example, their notions of diversity are a sham since it is only cultures from large to small of white straight men who need it. The short version is they are crazy failures.
You know, this is so insane. In the third world they’d die screaming and not because of WHITES of any kind.
“intersectional” — the epicycles of the system.
Faced with problems that do not fit nicely into their -isms, their only response is to pile on more and more and more groups and -isms, because central to their theory is that there are no personal problems, and no problems that are simply the human condition.
All this talk about “male oppression” has gotten to me. Which of the ladies here will allow me to oppress them? [Very Very Big Evil Grin While Flying Away Very Very Fast]
I am married!
My husband would be hurt if I let anyone but him oppress me. For curiosity’s sake what would be the nature of this oppression?
Why am I reminded of the Castle Anthrax sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?
Moved down because we hit the wall.
emily61 | May 28, 2014 at 10:09 am |
Ewwwwww! Admittedly I graduated High School in 1979 but still! You have to have sex with a guy or you’re a cocktease? I’m sorry but I’d smack the guy and tell him to guy to go buy it from the streetwalkers I don’t do that sort of thing!
And, according to popular culture, he would then be justified in hitting you.
Just ask Whoopi.
I might omit the slap if I thought about the possibility of him hitting back. I might, on the other hand, ask my brother to have a few words with him.
One winter shortly before the Six Weeks War my ciscat, Ru the
Paul, and I lived in an old farmhouse in Connecticut, due to my anti-privilege ration cards.
I’m sorry I normally don’t confer this honor on relative newcomers, but I have to say it — you are a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad man. (I was just reading The Door Into Summer, too.)
Conflating white and male in the phrase “white male privilege” is such a neat psychological and linguistic trick of the feminists. “you’re male privilege is just like your white privilege, and our female oppression is just like the oppression of the blacks”.
Oh really? Let’s play this game then. Three characters, a white male, a black male, a white female. Now rank them in order according to the following questions:
1) Rank them in order of who is most likely to be made homeless?
2) Which is most likely to be used as cannon fodder in a war situation?
3) If a crime is committed rank them in order of who is most likely to be a suspect?
4) If said crime goes to court rank them in order of what level of leniency they can expect from the jury?
5) If convicted rank them in order of likely time spent in jail?
6) Rank them in order of who is most likely to grace the cover of a magazine?
7) Rank them in order of most likely to succeed academically?
8) Rank in order of life expectency.
In all these examples we find that white males do indeed enjoy privileges over black males, and white females enjoy that very same privilege to an even greater extent, so why are we calling it white MALE privilege exactly? Men are four times more likely to commit suicide than females; gender reassignment is four times more likely to be male to female rather than female to male; and yes, most crazed misanthropic killing sprees are perputrated by men – that is absolutely true, but since when has going crazy and killing people before turning the gun on yourself being a sign that someone is in a position of power and feeling in control of their lives?!
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yeah, racism is better than sexism. It’s more glittery. Do you listen to yourself?
You’re holding the fact white people are born white against them. There is a perfectly good word for that and it’s NOT white privilege.
As to your list…
1- Rather depends where, when how, no?
2- In America? No one. We don’t have the draft.
3- Well, if you’re going by raw statistics, black. But raw statistics are an ass. Where I live? The white guy. The black families we have mostly came in in the last century as tech workers. In any case more pertinent to this is: In the region who is more likely to commit a crime? I think you’re going on statistics that take in account places like Detroit which are hell on Earth AND predominantly black. Note I’m not implying causation, but that overlap accounts for a lot of statistics. Also, btw, most of the crimes are black on black. Would you like them to arrest a random white guy for them? In a black community?
4- Depends on the color of the jury. And the racial makeup of the region. Oh, yeah, and little things like proof.
5- Depends on the nature of the crime. Violent crimes get more time in jail. Look, if there were serious discrepancy in sentencing, Eric Holder would be all over that.
6- A black woman is the most likely to grace the cover of a magazine. Followed by an Hispanic woman, followed by various exotica. Americans like pretty and exotic. You are aware magazines are NOT charitable or public institutions, right? they do what they do to sell magazines. Period.
7- The Asian. Look, if the black community wants their kids to succeed academically, they should stop talking about “acting white” i.e. studying and getting good grades as being a bad thing. Also, they should stop voting for politicians married to the Teachers Union.
8- Genetics determine that more than anything else. Also, to an extent diet. Again, look to the mote in your own eye.
This concatenation of completely unrelated points to prove racism is racism straight up. You want to blame all difficulties of blacks on white people. Because that will surely advance you, just as it has the last fifty years, right? You know what will advance you? Stop buying the agenda of people who want your vote, and start noticing that there are things you can do to change your lot.
Also, start noticing that there’s no “white Privilege” for a white boy born in Appalachia to a crack addicted whore. While Tore, of MSNBC is pouring it out his fingers. If it were “privilege” it would always apply. It’s circumstances. Want to better the lot of black people? Volunteer with the young, beat back the teacher’s unions, make workfare a thing making it less convenient not to have a father in the house, and talk about the failings of the black American culture — not some imaginary privilege. Culture isn’t race. Culture isn’t sacred either. It’s hard to change but it can be changed. Start working at it.
I think he was trying to indicate that white females have privelage over white males equivalent to the privelage white males have over black males, thus why white male privelage.
That said, his points were full of holes and fallacies you’ve already skewered right proper. Perhaps a reformulation of his argument would serve him better?
Besides, the argument amounts to “I’m victimized, too!” and that just saddens me.
Yes. The competition of “most oppressed” makes me ill. Tie your shoes, wipe your nose and soldier on. NO ONE GETS ANYWHERE FOR FREE.
I think, with regards to point number eight, there is some validity. There isn’t a single nation on this planet where the life expectancy of men even equals the life expectancy of women.
Now let’s go spend billions more on addressing female specific health issues and at the same time scream “War on Women”.
Oh, sure, of course, but white men don’t have a better life expectancy than white women. And as for black men, there’s cultural stuff there too. Remove all the kids shooting each other in the streets of Detroit, etc.
“Oh, sure, of course, but white men don’t have a better life expectancy than white women.”
Can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not. The 2011 census data indicates that in 42 of the states plus DC woman have a life expectancy of over 80 years. Of the remaining states, female life expectancy never drops below 78 years. Only one of the 51 locations sees a male life expectancy over 80 years, and that’s DC. Only 7 locations see male life expectancy above 78 years.
As far as the violence is concerned, I think this is a far point when you consider that the vast majority of all violence is done to males, as these life expectancy numbers support.
I didn’t qualify that this data is forwhite males and white females.
And honestly, I couldn’t care less.
Sigh. I wasn’t disputing your point — I was disputing his “hierarchy of victimhood, according to Marx.”
As far as the violence is concerned, I think this is a far point when you consider that the vast majority of all violence is done to males, as these life expectancy numbers support.
Who commits this violence upon males? Generally it is other males. Usually males of the same race and the same socioeconomic class. Young males are more likely to die in an accident caused by intoxication. How often were the subjects of Jackass other than young males? In other words, young males are more likely to put themselves at mortal risk.
In the name of equality, should we encourage girls to start participating in activities that can shorten their lives, or should we try to stop boys from ending their’s needlessly?
Looking at life expectancy as a proof that women are not suppressed is a mistake of thinking that equal outcomes should be the measure, without considering the contributing factors/causes.
Wow! Would anyone ever think that the correct course of action is to encourage girls to commit violence? How about we devote some time and effort toward men’s mental health issues, which considering males make up 80% of suicides and are much more likely to do violence to others in the course of their suicide, might have a side effect of preventing the deaths of women.
You see what I did there? I spun it in a way as to show the benefit towards women. That seems to be a much better way to get funding for something. Point out how it helps the ladies.
And does nothing else indicate that our society puts more into the health and wellbeing of our females than pouring massively more funding to assist with female only health issues and female only social programs while the males of our society are dying and average of six years earlier the them?
But I guess dying earlier is one of those male privileges.
Okay, I must ask this: DID YOU READ THE POST? Everyone here, pretty much starts from agreeing with you that there is no male privilege.
You’re trying to pick a fight with people who agree with you, I guess by thinking we don’t? It’s mind boggling.
HOWEVER using life expectancy as a way of explaining why there isn’t one is borderline insane. Women’s life expectancy is longer in EVERY SOCIETY and you’re not going to convince me Islam privileges women, right?
Several reasons for this have been posited, because it holds even if you remove “risky behavior.” There are theories that it involves hormones and “burning faster.” Or “stress’ which is greater for men in most societies. (which might or might not explain it.) BUT the point is, that’s a stupid point to pick. There are tons of reasons that show there is NO male privilege, like how most women get preferential treatment in school these days, shown by numbers of college entrance and also the style of teaching.
Male life expectancy vs. female life expectancy is a stupid point to pick, though. Correlation is NOT causation.
You see what I did there? I spun it in a way as to show the benefit towards women. That seems to be a much better way to get funding for something. Point out how it helps the ladies.
I’m gonna do one of those things men do between men, and call you on your behavior. There are a number of women here, and it is my strong belief that none of them need things spun to show female benefit in order to care about the men in their lives, their health and well-being or their treatment in society. Your sarcasm and misdirection are an affront. Do stop.
As to your life expectancy point, it’s been addressed in a variety of ways to invalidate the notion that life expectancy is not a valuable gauge of privilege, benefit or — anything, really.
But let me make it clearer: Physiologically, men and women are different creatures with distinct processes. These processes change throughout life with distinct stages creating more differentiation. A sole comparison of male and female life expectancy yields zero useful information.
Women are not living longer than men because of an exceptional benefit of our society. Sorry.
Edit: …invalidate the notion that life expectancy is
nota valuable gauge of privilege…You read it over, and yet…
Life expectancy reporting is rife with error, assumptions, faulty data and missed controls.
Normalizing the data (also rife with error, etc.) starts to flatten a lot of the discrepancies.
I’m not actually offended when we spend a great deal of time and money looking for solutions to female specific pathologies. There are a number of women in my life and I’m not eager to see them die from preventable or potentially preventable illness.
The solution to the imbalance in addressing, say, breast cancer vs prostate cancer is not to concern ourselves with how much money is being spent on breast cancer research. The solution lies in taking those steps to raise awareness and seek funding for male specific pathologies. Grass roots funding is no more a zero sum game than any other branch of economic endeavor. And there’s a lot of women with men in their lives they’d rather not see die of preventable or potentially preventable illness.
“If you are a man ages 18 through 25 and living in the U.S., then you must register with Selective Service. It’s the law. According to law, a man must register with Selective Service within 30 days of his 18th birthday. Selective Service will accept late registrations but not after a man has reached age 26. You may be denied benefits or a job if you have not registered.”
http://www.sss.gov/default.htm
“One of these days [redacted] – John, pow! (camp) (bayonet) Straight to the [redacted]! guts.” – The Honeymooners
Yes. It’s actually the same thing all through Western Europe.
BUT the myth that black people are “cannon fodder” is bs. For one, modern methods of combat don’t use “cannon fodder” (a WWI expression and relevant then.)
Draft might or might not come — it is more likely with the current (redacted) in charge, but that’s the stuff of my nightmares. It’s not very efficient.
BUT if it comes, we don’t know what form it will take. Depends on what they need and the only reason I can imagine a draft on “living in poverty” is if they somehow really want them off the streets in the US. I suspect a draft will be more like Portugal in the seventies. My brother got drafted BECAUSE he had an electrical engineering degree. They needed that for computers.
BUT if they do a draft, I suspect it will hit most highschool graduates and have nothing to do with race. Gender, yes. I’m not disputing with him on female “oppression” being a crock of sh*t. I’m disputing the idea that black males are somehow oppressed because white males exist and in some things, at some times have better outcomes.
I’m tired of the Marxist competition of aggrieved classes, and it makes me very mad.
There’s also some data that disputes the service composition assumptions that are tossed around casually. You know, those about the military taking advantage of poor, disadvantaged and/or minority populations to pad it’s bullet catchers?
I don’t have it to hand, unfortunately, but the analysis doesn’t bear out. Though there are some demographic tendencies in the service, they’re not things the narrative will acknowledge.
Rich white boys die a lot more in combat because they do things like join combat units or join up to be infantry, or be pilots.
Middle class everybody is next, being all over the place.
“Disadvantaged” folks– slightly higher rate of poor blacks– join as a career, usually in things like supply or medical but very heavily in things that take a lot of training. Lowest death rate.
As of about ’05 or ’07, can’t remember what the reporting year was. (Was current when I was in, but “current” can be two years old.)
Yes, this comports nicely with the formal study I saw referenced a bit back. I just can’t find it…
http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=psc_working_papers&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2Fsearch%3Fsetmkt%3Den-US%26q%3Ddeath%2Brate%2Bmilitary%2Bcombat%2Brace#search=%22death%20rate%20military%20combat%20race%22
This mentions it. Hope it posts…..
Has a little bit of silly for “Hispanic,” but dose oint out that blacks have the lowest death rate.
(Given how many Marines are “Texicans,” it makes my head hurt. Oh, and you can be classified as “Black” against your will if you have sickle cell, two girls in my division were.)
Many thanks!
Small quibble, mi’lady: I believe the gentleman was referring to both males when he referenced “cannon fodder”, not just blacks, since his point seemed to me to be that gender was a much more significant factor than race.
The original gentleman? Nah. He wanted race to be recognized as the victimiiiiiest of all.
I’ve heard that women are the deadlier of the species, but I don’t believe it.
Look at what most women will do when defending their children– (not counting propaganidized females). The thing is mass. A man has mass and when fighting can cause damage. When a woman fights she doesn’t have mass so she uses the most lethal force she can go get the fight finished as quickly as possible– most deadly means at hand. When a woman is angry, she loses all perspective and all boundaries. All- or nothing. So yes, she is deadlier. She doesn’t have honor or other male concepts to bind her.
To continue– most men will constrain or do damage. Woman will kill using any means available if that is the only option open to her.
Moved down for room
For example we often hear about how benighted the people were during the middle ages, but if you look carefully this is the result of how the people of the enlightenment made sure you understood that they were soooooo much better than those who came before them.
There’s a conversation over at John C. Wright’s blog where pretty much everything they keep throwing at the middle ages/ Christianity making life hell is from the Enlightenment.
This is a tradition extending at least as far back as the Roman Emperors, whose official policy entailed a successor emperor writing the “history” his predecessor’s rule. Thus what we know of Nero or of Caligula is essentially the bill of charges brought by his replacement.
It is as if our modern history of President Clinton were determined by historians appointed by George W Bush and our understanding of the Bush presidency were the work product of the current administration.
Not seeing the difference for the latter.
Sorry, guys. They weren’t the Good Old Days, and I’m not making the problems up, even if many or even most of them have (thank Heaven) been left in the past.
Clearly you are missing the point of the comments. It is not that the “old days” were so very good, it is that the criticisms of them are hardly objective and may be less than valid. Sometimes the criticism amounts to little more than “they do no share our prejudices, they insist on holding their own.”
Sometimes the critiques of the past are akin to the Ferengi denunciation of Hoo-mans for clothing our women. Happily, most participants on this blog are as jaundiced and skeptical about the depiction of the past as we are about the presentation of the present, well aware that reporters oft times see what they want/expect to see more than they see what actually is.
If the topic is a caution against resurrecting a traditional practice on the ground that it came packaged with problems, it may be true, but not very helpful, to object that it’s possible to exaggerate the badness of the bad times. Exaggeration of both the good and bad points of the past is a human failing that’s always with us, but that doesn’t mean we should go back to the old way. No need to resolve the exact level of how bad the times were, as long as it’s clear we’re leaving them in the past and not pining for their return.
We could always reflect wistfully that it would be nice if we could get the good parts back without their baggage, but that’s a given.
“So you ask for the story of your origin, beautiful boy, and why you and your father are different from those around you.You are fourteen and nearly a man. Before you choose your name, you should know yourself – and I, your grandfather, will tell you the story of you. The tale is written in the scars of my hands, and told in the blood of the Incan people.”
Hahahahah. No “white man” can write like that.
Moved down for room:
Texan99 | May 31, 2014 at 4:41 pm |
Re your ice cream analogy: If I told you I’d stopped attending a restaurant because I’d gotten food poisoning there too often, and you said there was no food poisoning at that restaurant, I’d say “That’s interesting, but I think I’ll judge by my own experience.” I might persist in this inexplicable act of self-determination even if it meant you were offended on behalf of the unjustly maligned restaurant–which, by the way, I ate at and you did not. Other people can keep the restaurant in business if they like the food. I don’t have a duty to like it just because you do.
No, it would be more like if you refused to eat at any ‘Ethnic’ restaurant because you got food poisoning from $5 all you can eat Chinese buffet and Roach Coach burritos, and you insisted that restaurants inevitably led to food poisoning in the face of people saying “Wow, that’s bad– the risks those places took should be corrected, because a decent restaurant wouldn’t leave their stuff out in the danger zone temps for three hours.”
I have to decide for myself what risks are worth taking and what needs to be lumped into the “to be avoided” category in my life. I’m not in the business of making sure none of the restaurants think they’re being unfairly subjected to suspicion by association. I don’t owe them my business. They can get through life quite comfortably without feeding me. It’s not as though I were a bank and redlining them!
When I get to know individual men very well, it often turns out that we can dispense with the whole business of worrying about getting bills sprung for meals that were supposed to be offered as gifts, so to speak. When people are close and trust each other, they no longer have to use these rules of thumb to ward off common problems of misinterpretation and aggrieved disappointment. Nevertheless, these are the procedures I adopt for strangers and professional acquaintances. And when I hear men complain about mercenary women who only pretend to want independence and fairness while letting them pick up the tab and pay off the credit cards, I don’t have to take the comments personally. I can just be glad I avoided that trap.
So you are agreeing that your metaphor was flawed, the offered revision is better, and you wish to defend a blanket rejection of eating a restaurants because you got food poisoning at one or two?
To keep the metaphor fairly accurate, you would also have to be urging that nobody else can do it, either, because the very idea of restaurants must be stamped out.
None of that seemed to have any real relation to anything I said, except in some cases being a flat-out opposite.
That isn’t an answer.
You made a metaphor.
I offered one I found more accurate.
You gave a long response that sort of responded, but didn’t.
I asked for clarification.
You said something obscure but negative, which might relate you you not agreeing with the counter-metaphor, but it’s rather hard to tell.
*****
Ironically, this is #notallmen with a more rational face. You are saying basically “All chivalry results in chauvinism to outright misogyny” and a half dozen. minimum, other people are saying “No, not all chivalry, and heck not even most– that’s just wrong to do.”
And then you get upset.
I didn’t understand what your metaphor had to do with anything I was advocating, so I tried to explain where it went off the rails.
There’s an arrangement that doesn’t suit me; too often it works out in a way I don’t like. So I avoid the arrangement, leaving other people (who may like it fine) to keep it up between themselves to their heart’s content. Nobody’s saying the arrangement is 100% pure evil all the time–even for me!–or that it has to be stamped out for the whole world even if other people besides me like it. It just created problems I didn’t care for, often enough and annoying enough, that I decided to opt out. Where does all this business of “stamping out” come from? What has it got to do with anything I’ve said?
To return to the restaurant: anyone who wants to keep eating there is free to do so. They don’t need me to come along. The restaurant won’t miss me.
I didn’t understand what your metaphor had to do with anything I was advocating, so I tried to explain where it went off the rails.
Actually, you just said it did.
No explaining.
And the “stamping out” thing comes from your claim to not want to be “singled out” for chivalry– when, if it’s being practiced properly, it’s not “singling out.” It’s a general practice that you object to having happen in your direction.
In order for you not to be “singled out” in the form of being offered chivalry, it must be removed entirely.
I’ve found it quite possible to decline politely when some service or benefit is offered to me personally, without requiring the offeror to alter his behavior to anyone else. None of the gentlemen involved seemed to have any difficulty with the proposal that he offer it instead to someone else for whom it would be more welcome.
It’s pretty clear even to me that this has dead ended.
Thought I’d throw in to see if I had any more luck than the others, but clearly no.
We certainly don’t seem to be promoting mutual enjoyment or enlightenment! Just as well to let it go.
Hmm… I see that I missed where there was a response to my analogy, so I’ll tell Texan99 that I’m sorry for saying she was ignoring me. As for the response itself, well, I can see there’s no point in continuing.
Pretty sure I posted this after you pointed out she wasn’t responding.
It was in a different email thread (gmail appears to limit each one to 100 messages) that didn’t show up in my inbox until later.