A few interesting bits via Pandagon, this week. This is a bit of a long one, but it’s worth a read. Think of it as making up for not really providing as much middle-of-the-week content over the last few weeks.
First comes a hilarious masculist troll in the comments of an interesting post about anal sex. In short, feminists in America are destroying civilization because he doesn’t want to have sex with them. Or something. I don’t know, he’s an idiot. He prefers, in his own words, “women that live elsewhere and don’t speak English as their first language”. Note the word “that”, by the way. Not “who” but “that”. It’s kind of amusing. He claims, basically, that American women, or “Western Women” are annoying with their desire for, y’know, equality and independence and all that.
He goes on to enumerate some key points of what he feels to be the downfall of American civilization at the hands of feminists.
-That 60% of College Grads and enrollees are women, yet women are a ‘minority’ and need AA and special programs to ‘remediate their disadvantaged status’?
Er… first, don’t women make up about 52% of the population? I’ve always heard women are a numerical majority. Second, there’s a much higher number of college-aged men who enlist in the armed services than there are women. Third, I really don’t think gender counts for much with regard to college admissions.
-That on the woman’s word alone, any man can be evicted from his own home. Not the mans’ word, hers, alone, is defacto proof of a crime. “I was afraid of him” is all she needs to say. Due process, innocent before proven guilty, secure in his own possessions – all gone, for men only.
I’m sorry, what? It’s… I don’t even know what he’s trying to get at, here.
-Women can abandon ‘their’ children at will in the first week. Men cannot do this, and cannot stop her from abandoning the child. Just like in an abortion, the child is legally considered to be her property to dispose of as she wishes.
Okay, okay, children issues are where I diverge somewhat from most feminism, but I try as much as possible to fill the gap with socialism. If a woman can either have or not have an abortion regardless of the father’s wishes — as well it should be, because it is, in fact, her body — then the father should also have the option of bailing out as well. There’s nothing necessarily “fairer” about either’s decisions. Of course, this is much easier under a better, fairer economic system where people who are in these situations don’t end up financially rather fucked, and can actually get support to provide for their families.
However, that in mind, I don’t get what the fuck this guy is talking about. Men “cannot stop her from abandoning the child”? Well, fuck, just take custody of it. You’re the father, after all. I mean, what the hell’s his point?
-That IMBRA2005 makes it nearly illegal to contact women or men in other countries? While this law is gender blind, it was enacted to protect women alone and to thwart the 45,000 men each year bringing in FW to marry. Cantwell and Marcotte would have you believe that men who find AW unsuitable mates are molestors, pervs and violent. Actually it is the opposite. They are of the upper middle class, established, and earn more than most.
This is arguably the most amusing part of his argument: “He can’t be violent! He’s upper middle class. Why, what a preposterous accusation. Do you really think he molested that child? Really? I mean, come on — think about that Jaguar of his, or his Mercedes, and tell me how what you claim is even possible.” What’s more, he uses “opposite”. The “opposite” of perversion is being “established”. The “opposite” of being a sexual predator is “earning more than most”. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? Obviously a goddamned lunatic.
Later in the comments, Amanda Marcotte is accused of minimizing rape, because she agrees with Dan Savage’s assessment (near the bottom, the last one) of a letter he received wherein a woman claims a previous writer was a rapist and that Dan was condoning rape with the response he’d given.
The original letter was about a guy who liked fucking women while they slept. However, every time he’d try it with his wife — who’d consented before they went to sleep — “when [he'd] try to touch her in her sleep, [she'd whimper, turn away, and otherwise make herself inaccessible]“. Dan’s response was a quick: “Ambien. Next!”
Dan’s assessment — the one with which Amanda agreed, and I do as well — is that grown women are capable of making decisions for themselves, and if someone consents to a kinky sex act wherein they’ll be incapable of continuing to give consent, or incapable of withdrawing consent, and they’re aware of such conditions, it’s certainly not rape, and that any claims that it is are offensive to anyone who has actually been raped. For this, Amanda gets called out for “not being feminist enough” or something ridiculous like that, as though feminism involves other women making decisions for individual women, as opposed to men doing it, or something.
Meanwhile, we find ourselves in the midst of the Miss New Jersey non-scandal, which isn’t actual news, but a completely non-exciting simulation thereof. Read the post on Pandagon for cutting and intelligent commentary on the issue itself. But really, just… just fuck it.
This is the kind of shit that’s gotten me to stop watching any televised news (other than the Daily Show or Colbert Report whenever I have access to cable). I prefer to get my information on current events from the internet, where I don’t have to actually watch that overly-friendly-but-concerned-chipmunk looking Matt Lauer son of a bitch and his ilk try to shame a woman into feeling guilty for not wearing her burka and following ten paces behind. Of course, even then, it’s difficult to avoid the increasing sensationalism of non-events like this.
I just… I don’t fucking care. Why is it suddenly news that a girl goofs around with her friends and takes pictures of it? Why does anyone give a rat’s fuck? This has got to be one of the stupidest mainstream news stories of at LEAST the last five years. Maybe even the last century. Maybe even of the entire course of human history. Fuckers want me to feel outrage, and you know what? I do. I’m fucking pissed off that this shit even gets reported in the first place. So way to go, guys. Here’s your fucking emotional response.
What a bunch of shit. Just leave the goddamned woman alone. Just because you have a camera doesn’t mean you have to point it at every fucking thing in the world that registers even a mild vibration on the seismograph of the “unexpected”. You can eat that fucking microphone, you goddamned prick.
This — THIS — is the most common use of the mass of communications technology we’ve been developing over the last century. This shit. We’ve got a worldwide infrastructure for instantaneous communication, and what is it most often used for? Bullshit like letting us know that there’s a picture of some girl having extremely timid, rather banal fun, and that we should all be mortified by it. Or keeping us up to date on the police chase of the guy who actually didn’t turn out to be the murderer of that one little girl, like, a fuckin’ decade ago.
This is the kind of shit that makes me root for the fuckin’ Decepticons, man. Just… just goddamn.
