@CassandraSays

Playful pets and family jewels, oh the stories. I’ve always had the worst luck with dogs because I’m pretty tall and got my growth spurt really early, leaving my dangly bits at a very inconvenient height. It was particularly bad with my old dog because she liked to nip when she was feeling playful, and she was a very playful dog :D:(

@Molly Ren

Was the bird endangered before or after it started pecking at your knees?

@Snowy

Isn’t everyone a fan of Quackers?

@Shadow well obviously! Who wouldn’t be XD

Wars, which are, of course generally started and declared by male political actors, tend to affect women more than men. So much for that whole “protection” thing.

Which is why I don’t get how MRAs just twist it around and make it that women and feminists somehow benefit from war. It hurts everyone. Why cant we all just rally against selective service or war instead of arguing all the time?

Then again I have seen MRAs romanticize the masculinity of war and how it turns men into “real men” and all that. Again I have no idea what they want anymore. Make women enroll in selective service? sure. But then they’ll bitch about women distracting all the men by looking all sexy in their mud covered army fatigues.

@Dracula

“NWOslave makes a point of not understanding things” seems more accurate

NWO has been pretending not to understand gender neutral pronouns practically since they were invented. He practically invented gender neutral pronouns just so he could claim to not understand them.

Oh, bless their little hearts. They’re trying so hard.

oh for fuck’s sake -_-

Where’s alphalady to deliver a lecture about low self esteem and how it leads women into bad relationships when one is actually appropriate?

There’s something very odd about women who hate other women. I’m not sure what to call it, psychologically speaking, but it’s certainly peculiar.

“Women who hate other women”, sadly, I don’t find odd. It seems pretty common; I dislike it, but it doesn’t strike me as somehow against the order of the universe. What weirds me out is “Women who hate women” or “Women who accept a fundamentally pejorative characterization of women”, where the key bit is the absence of “other”. It’s the distinction between spitting vitirol at “those whores” vs. woefully handwringing at what I, as a woman, might do to partially restrain my inherent tendency to do bad things for no good reason.

I’m not a complete stranger to self-hatred, but somehow I can’t quite wrap my head around the worm-crawling low degree of self-regard that could produce a female adherent to unmodified PUA ideas.

@CassandraSays

“Where’s alphalady to deliver a lecture about low self esteem and how it leads women into bad relationships when one is actually appropriate?”

Thinking, always thinking that one.

“There’s something very odd about women who hate other women. I’m not sure what to call it, psychologically speaking, but it’s certainly peculiar.”

I think it’s a matter of in-group/out-group dynamics mixed with a hateful personality. See racist women’s complete lack of empathy towards (or outright reveling in the misery of) women of other ethnicities.

We’re not over this “boys and girls have totally different brains” evo-psych crap? I thought the MRA-types were into facts. Let’s have some facts, shall we?

Individual people have different brains, sure. Ask anyone who’s been an educator, or who’s written an IEP. We can recite “statistical facts” like, “More women than men go into nursing” or “more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADHD in childhood” until we’re blue in the face, but statistics can be manipulated any way we want them to be. And reciting them doesn’t give us any tools to diagnose and assess individuals’ learning strengths and weaknesses.

I happen to be a visual learner. Tested so high on spatial and rotation tests, they could test me no higher. Listening? What’s that? I don’t do that very well. My handwriting and fine motor skills aren’t great. I can slay a math problem no sweat. But I’ll probably use Cliff’s Notes for my book report. And if you ask me to really understand history the way people who are good at it do, you can forget it. But give me a design problem and I’ll solve it faster than most anyone else.

Sure, boys are falling behind girls in school. But people (some MRAs, some plain regular folks) are acting like the issue lies in the school environment. Because in the 70s and 80s and even 90s, we ran in circles through the soccer field and hollered our times tables. (Now kids sit at desks.) In the rural schools, we did tractor pulls while we diagrammed sentences. (Now, kids have to work quietly in groups.) Back then, “in the good old days,” everything was so active and hands-on, “like boys learn.” Now, everything’s at a desk, “like girls learn.” Yeah. No.

What’s changed is how learning is measured. Classrooms are overcrowded. The student-to-teacher ratio is higher than ever before, so the chance that any child gets individualized attention is lower, because they’re firing teachers at increasing rates (or not hiring them at all) to save money for the wars. And perhaps most importantly, pretty much everything a child learns has to conform to the (No Child Left Behind) assessment tests. (Thank you Bush, for creating – and thank you Obama, for enforcing!)

So if you MRA types (and regular old folks) are concerned about boys falling behind – or hell, any child with a learning style that doesn’t revolve around memorizing facts and barking them on cue (like me) – you have a couple of options:

1. You can ignore them, in which case, a few will turn out like me (and my school years pre-date NCLB!) and wind up truant, cutting, plain-old leaving school grounds, and getting into all kinds of trouble. Most will just get Cs and Ds. Many, like me, will also grow to hate school and view it as prison. But it doesn’t matter, because this option requires the least amount of effort.

2. You can put them in a private or magnet school. This requires that either a) you are rich or b) they can get into the private or magnet school. Good luck.

3. You can lobby for change. Go to parent-teacher conferences. Demand testing for your child if he or she is falling behind (or is gifted – because a lot of these kids who are falling behind are actually like I was, and are gifted and very, very bored). Don’t stop there.

Vote for your local school board. Vote for funding for education at all levels. Stop supporting Tea Party senators and governors, and other Shorters who shortchange kids.

And above all, stop flogging the idea of the “scarcity economy” being good for everyone. It’s not good for everyone. It hurts your kids first and it hurts your kids forever.

You never know which history books are true and which are not anymore. You don’t have to, but i thought i might as well ask.

You are aware that history is not like calculus or trig, right? There is often no objective truth. Aside from key events and dates, much of the study of history is not “if a, then b.” History is a series of events, dates, statistics, anecdotes, and above all, perspectives and interpretations that have been compiled, studied, and translated throughout time. Individual historians frequently bring their own perspectives and interpretations to the material they present and write about.

“True history” and “false history” is political spin. If you only want that, seek your nearest cable news channel. If you are just looking for a historical book of feminist philosophy with a particular slant – or the Cliffs Notes of same – that’s another matter.

He condoned it, but didn’t justify it. The whole argument was that if we will have forced equality, we will have it in every way, both in favor or men and women. That is, if there is legal affirmative action for women, there should be legal affirmative action for men, which happens to be sex. Fundamentally he’s against all forced equality, both affirmative action and legal rape. The condoning part comes from a different angle. In his view, stopping various injusticed against men couldn’t be solved in a peaceful democratic manner, violence should be used. I don’t really agree with that, and I think he moved on from that idea since then, although as an argument against forced equality, it still works. So he never justified rape, which is wrong, even if you’re “pressured” into it by society.

I’ll be nice and give Emma the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she didn’t see the link

http://eivindberge.blogspot.com/2009/05/rape-is-equality.html

Actually I’m so nice that I actually went back to the fuckers blog and in addition to his actual post, a comment where he says it himself that he condones rape:

SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2009 1:51:00 AM

Sex is a currency that only women have and use to barter things from men, and I have no problem with that. We don’t need to make it any more unfair for men. That is all I am asking, and as long as feminists insist on affirmative action, I condone rape to the extent that sex is as freely available to men as it naturally is to women.

Deny it now and you’re either a troll, have severe issues or both.

“You are aware that history is not like calculus or trig, right? There is often no objective truth.”

Then how exactly do you pick the right one? Do you just pick the one that sounds better, or..? This is all very confusing. I guess I will stick with history with minimal interpretation, just like the way I look at studies.
(sorry about the second comment,forgot to include this)

I think that “rape is affirmative action for men” may be the best quote yet as far as demonstrating to people who’re not familiar with MRAs just how batshit they are.

Go try it on a conservative sort of dude, your Dad for example, and see how he reacts.

What does it even matter what the word is, or even if he thinks it’s morally right or not. He condones rape, that’s bad enough doncha think?

Goodnight Trolly the Troll. I hope David bans your ass.

This whole thing is starting to remind me of those situations where women write letters to convicted murders and think they’re in love with them. There’s a whole psychological profile behind it, so I know that Emma probably won’t listen, but hey, it’s worth a shot.

Get away from that man, Emma. Someone who contemplated killing sprees and thinks that rape is a valid form of political expression is not mentally or emotionally healthy. At some point he’s going to snap, and you don’t want to be around when that happens. I know you probably think that you’re special and that he would never hurt you, but it’s not a good idea to bet on that.

Emma, your boyfriend hates women and condones violence, you sound young but you need to know that your relationship will end badly.

Happy birthday, Magpie!

Oh, I found the animal to represent MRAs. It’s called the Pigbutt Worm or ‘flying buttocks’. It’s both a worm AND it resembles the rear-end of a pig. It fits on multiple levels!

How about leeches? I AM ENTITLED TO ALPHA BLOOD!

Sex is a currency that only women have and use to barter things from men, and I have no problem with that. We don’t need to make it any more unfair for men. That is all I am asking, and as long as feminists insist on affirmative action, I condone rape to the extent that sex is as freely available to men as it naturally is to women.

Well, why stop there? People with naturally more confidence probably find it easier to get sex than people lacking such confidence. People without such confidence should be able to rape those with confidence! /so much sarcasm

Emma: I missed this; mostly because I was skimming what is a tired argument about the value of women’s work, and why something the law values when a non-spouse does it; room and board are limited as to the amount of cash they can replace in the compensation of a domestic employee… but for some reason when it’s a spouse, 100 percent becomes allowed: even when the workload is higher than for someone whom one is paying cash to would tolerate.

But, back to the thing I missed:

I object to women being used as slaves, I just don’t think they are necessarily slaves under the patriarchy. They don’t go to war, for example.

Bullshit. My unit, when we deployed to Iraq, had lots of women in it. About 20 percent women (yes, my specialty has lots of women, no it’s not medical).

And what Amused said, women in war aren’t new; just ignored, e.g. what you did there; dismissing the women who are serving in war zones at this very minute, in uniform, and at risk.

They aren’t any more protected, in fact they are; because they are denied the right to be in combat units, not members of the units with the most firepower, or practice at using it, and so are in units which don’t have the means to give as much back when attacked (Jessica Lynch… who; whatever may have been done to propagandise her situation, was in combat)..

So no, this is, root and branch, nonsense, and evil nonsense. It discounts women’s work, not because it is less worthy, but because they are women, and worse because they are wives.

Unless roissa is a parody of a MRA trying to parody us? Then it’s a good one.

I can’t imagine mras could be that stupid to try to parody in this thread about mras parodying feminists…right?

Sorry, “has Roissy ever”.

Now, now, we don’t know how she feels about videotaping sex without your partner’s consent yet.

NWO: @Lauralot

There’s only 2 genders. Ya can’t just make up new ones on a whim. Boy/girl.

Unless you speak Russian, or German, where there are three genders.

Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter.

In the Pacific NW, there are lots of social relationships which aren’t what you would think of. A man might not be available for marriage because of who his mother’s cousin’s sister is, in relation to the person he wanted to marry.

Or the ways in which the Navajo explain people (born to, born for) and which family that means one, “belongs” to, as opposed to whom one happens to live with.

Nope… none of that for you.

But the world ain’t all about you.

Emma, you’re falling into another typical MRA trap, which is asking other people to do your research for you.

Because women have worked throughout history without exception, there are stacks on stacks of books – both in the primary and secondary record – that document women’s labor. Yet there is a cultural perception in contemporary times that women hardly worked at all until – BAM – feminism.

My answer to you as far as what books might be, “well, just about any history survey textbook.” Early Modern Europe by Merry Wiesener has all sorts of interesting tidbits.

See, the common mistake MRAs make with their completely false canard about how women have never worked is that they assume that “women = upper class white western women”. That is, a negligible portion of women historically, and even then, some of those women worked. However, it’s another classic case of looking at only the surface. The single worker household was a flash of dawn in human history.

Taking agrarian societies in general, which I’m loathe to do, but since I don’t have time to dredge up specifics, you would have to be a fool to think that women didn’t work. Agriculture, especially up to the mid 20th century, is incredibly labor intensive. I mean, do you think that women were basically sitting around performing no labor on these farms? So that’s a place for you start, researching women’s work in agriculture, which has historically been a substantial part of agricultural work (somewhere around half of the global population are still agrarian).

Let’s not forget historical professions such as midwife, schoolteacher, spinners, and so forth. But of course you never hear about them, because “they never made anything.”

Likewise, with the dawn of manufacturing in Europe, women were sought out for manufacturing jobs. Women were sought out of course because it was socially acceptable to pay them less, oh and they were considered “more dextrous.” Look up Richard Arkwright’s factory. Women have always been present even in manufacturing. MRAs just have a skewed view of manufacturing, they think “manufacturing = late 20th century American and Western European manufacturing”. Rather myopic, no?

Lora Jo Foo notes that, at least in the tech sector, women dominate manufacturing. But of course, because they are white women who generally live outside the United States and western Europe their labor tends to be erased or ignored.

Foo writes in “Asian American Women”, of Silicon Valley’s manufacturing firms:

“Fabrication workers, who work in the ‘clean rooms’ and wear the white bubble suits, are primarily Filipina women, who, as a result of the US colonization of the Philippines, have the English language skills to program and operate the computerized machines that make microchips. By contrast, the semi-skilled and unskilled assembly line workers, those who solder wire and transistors onto circuit boards, are non-English speaking Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese women. Seventy percent of the approximately 50,000 to 70,000 assembly line workers are Asian and Latina women who do not get health benefits. In the subcontracting shops, the percentage is higher – 75% to 100% of the assembly labor force is Asian and Latina women.”

Indeed, sweatshop labor often falls upon women in disproportionate numbers. And as far the frequent MRA lament that only men work dangerous jobs, I suggest looking into the long term health affects of sweatshop labor and particularly circuitboard and tech assembly.

You should watch the film “The Global Assembly Line”. It’s a bit old, but that will actually assist your historical perspective I suppose.

I’m not going to write a research paper for you and cull sources. I mostly pulled this from the top of my head. You now have google, access to your local library, and the myriad of threads to begin with.

@Johnny BB: Good point–the MRA’s are always asking for sources and demanding others do the work for them. And you’re very good to give our Emma Troll some information.

Since she’s just a garden variety troll, I refuse to do any real work (I live with a medieval historian, who studies peasants, which means both men and women–her focus in social history is that large group in the 14th century who were NOT the elites!), but you know, Google is one’s friend.

Here’s the Google search results for “history of women’s labor” limited to site:edu (American universities) (and even then Google gives me a bunch of fucking ADS):

http://search.sweetim.com/search.asp?src=6&q=history+of+women's+labor+site%3Aedu&barid={87B4B3F2-4F7E-4853-A04B-76D7CE69BBC3}

So, Emma go to town. Edumacate yourself.

But I’d bet real money you won’t.

Emma: Where did you blame the victim? Right here,

If you happen to be so weak you can’t decide for yourself, but let social shame and your boyfriend decide things for you, then I’m sorry, but you only have yourself to blame. Society is not there to protect you from yourself.

The way that’s phrased, anyone who doesn’t leave an abusive situation is, “weak” and has only themself to blame.

Read that again, your words, “you have only yourself to blame.”