Oh, Scott Adams! Can you write anything about that whole man-woman business without being a creepy douche about it? In a recent blog post titled “Pegs and Holes” – which refers to exactly what you think it refers to — Adams offers his take on the powerful men who have been in the news lately because, as Adams puts it, they’ve been “tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world.”
After noting that the “current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior” and that this “seems right” to him – gee, ya think? – Adams decides to get all philosophical on us. (When you’re Scott Adams, this is a very very bad idea.) He writes:
The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?
I’m assuming that Adams doesn’t actually think that baby boys are born with erections, and realizes that it is biology, not society, that hands out penises and vaginas to babies in the first place. I’m just trying to understand the whole pegs and holes metaphor. Why does he think “round” penises and “square” vaginas are somehow incompatible? In the context of consensual sex, after all, penises of all shapes and sizes generally fit into vaginas quite nicely.
As far as I can figure it out, the round-vs-square analogy simply refers to the fact that men can’t simply stick their “round pegs” into any conveniently located “hole” whenever they feel like it. The fact that these “holes” aren’t accessible to any random guy thus renders them “square.” This seems to frustrate Adams, who goes on to complain that “society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness” and that “society is organized as a virtual prison for men’s natural desires.”
Looking at Hugh Hefner’s marital history – he’s been married and divorced and just got stood up at the altar – Adams concludes that:
For Hef, being single didn’t work, and getting married didn’t work, at least not in the long run. Society didn’t offer him a round hole for his round peg. All it offered were unlimited square holes.
What does this even mean? I suspect that over the course of his lifetime, Hef has had about all the sex he could possibly want, and then some. Is it somehow unjust that he couldn’t force his latest fiancée to actually marry him? Or that some women are sexually unavailable – that is, square holes – to him?
It goes without saying that Adams’ notions of human sexuality are profoundly insulting to both men and women . On the one hand, he’s suggesting that men are basically all potential rapists walking around with, er, turgid pegs; and, on the other, he seems to regard women as little more than passive (if stubbornly recalcitrant) receptacles for these male “pegs.”
And so it’s hardly surprising that his grand solution to the conundrum he’s invented is a rather depressing one. After noting that it really wouldn’t be a good thing for men to go around willy-nilly raping women and/or, as he puts it, tweeting their meat, he suggests the real solution is for men to be chemically castrated. And no, I’m not making that up. Here’s Scotty:
I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond. Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.
That might sound to you like a horrible world. But the oxytocin would make us a society of huggers, and no one would be treated as a sex object. You’d have no rape, fewer divorces, stronger friendships, and a lot of other advantages. I think that’s where we’re headed in a few generations.
Is he being serious here, or is this all some satirical “social experiment?” Who the fuck knows. Though I suspect if I accused him of being serious, he’d claim he was being satirical. And vice versa. Because that’s just the way he is.
Also, while I’m at it: the idiomatic expression about pegs and holes posits a square peg and a round hole, not the other way around. Why did Adams reverse this? Why!? Why!!?? Is he trying to drive us all mad?
EDITED TO ADD: Check out Feministe for more on Scott Adams and his peg.
EDITED AGAIN: And Pharyngula as well.
Keep fucking that
chickensquare hole, Scott!I thought his statements were dumb. Now I know they are beyond dumb they are approaching NWOaf level.
In one of his books he talked about how “who do you think invented the society view of what is a bad word?” And used the rather dumb idea that there was a bunch of men in a smoke filled room who had a list and whoever fainted showed it was a bad word. Now he was trying to be funny and it was kind of a funny scenario but he has to have the least appreciation for history of all of known mankind since everyone knows that it was Prince Albert who had the hang ups about inappropriate language and what Prince Albert thought, Queen Victoria put into practice.
If that last quoted section is indeed satire, I wonder if it would interest Scott Adams to know that the belief that male sexuality is not inherently violent is actually pretty important to modern feminism. Although his solution is pretty logical if you accept his premise that rape is a natural male urge as outlined above. Anyway though, it reads like a creepy, cloying description of a fucked up world view that may be sarcasm or may be some kind of masochistic fantasy. Now who does that remind me of…
I heard in Sweden, they’re banning urinals and making it illegal for men to pee standing up because “it’s a macho masculine gesture that degrades women”.
Maybe Adams is right. What if men really are meant to be aggressive, and by forcibly becoming docile and feminized they’ll end up losing something else, like ambition, desire to achieve, inner strength? We’re already seeing signs of the latest generations of men being passive underachievers, maybe it’s not a coincidence…
Based on the fact that there are no serious articles about this banning of urinals, I think that your leg is being pulled Ion.
Apparently I degrade myself on a regular basis xD And by that logic, I should have become less ambitious, with no desire to achieve and have lost all my inner strength a while ago xD And more so, every day… xD And yet, I just played basketball today to improve my skills xD The androcur must not be working 😐
Seconding PoserformerlyknownasElizabeth (may I call you Elizabeth?)–apparently ONE feminist group at ONE university is campaigning, and one elementary school may have made changes — although I also find some reports of some public urinals being closed because of the splashback problem. No laws have been passed. No fines are being given. No tickets are being issued. No POLICY has been made. Amazingly enough a few moments on Google revealed this information. Check back when this actually becomes a statement of fact.
That is why I said it was not serious because the group was unnamed, the school apparently did away with them without a cited reason and the only possible reason was splashing around problems. Seems to me if it was serious and not just someone pulling our legs, some news organization (like Faux) would have covered it.
And yes Elizabeth is fine. Beth also.
I hate Dilbert, and I think Scott Adams is dumb. Also, standing up to pee is not inherently aggressive or masculine. I know men who sit and women who stand. In fact, I’m trying to teach myself to stand, as a lark.
Also, in a world where just men are chemically castrated, I pity the straight women. What kind of hell is that?
@Sarah
Although the rest of the women might get a little more action 😀
It never ceases to amaze me how these blog posts from Scott Adams simultaneously annoy both the feminists and the MRAs. At this point, I am completely and utterly convinced that he is doing this for the lulz.
Best Troll EVAR.
Ion, if to be like a woman (I assume this is what you mean by “feminine”) is to lack ambition, the desire to achieve, and inner strength, how do you think the feminists got Big Daddy Government on their side (as so many MRAs see it)? Conversely, if these traits that you view as positive are human traits that various humans have to various degrees, why do you associate their lack with being a woman? And why do you associate aggressiveness with being a man? Do you think women are never aggressive? And if so, does that mean they never want to be violent or that they lack the ability to be as violent as men? And what is so good about aggression that you want to claim it for men? FYI: I am totes jealous men can pee standing up, but I resist the urge to aggressively legislate their ability to do so;)
@unintentionalfeminist: In Adams little fantasy there I’m sure lesbianism would prosper, which I can’t argue with! But some people just aren’t attracted to certain genders. And that would be sad for them.
I wonder if Adams would want to castrate trans men?
Also, describing a baby as turgid is gross.
What mystifies me is how Adams seems to equate twitpics with cheating on your wife (which is fair enough), but then lumps them in together with raping. There’s a huge fucking difference between a twitpic, an extramarital affair, and actually raping someone. The fact that Scott Adams sees little to no difference in this only demonstrates his own twisted views on sexuality. Perhaps because all the women he’s been with have found sex (with him) to be mildly distasteful, he assumes that all women think that all sex is mildly distasteful, and the only way to convince a woman to sleep with you is either payment, deception or just outright rape.
@Sarah
Yes it would be, too bad Adams doesn’t believe men are capable of not being violent (now he’s reminding me of Andrea Dworkin, or at least the MRA vision of her)
And yeah, “round-pegged and turgid” babies is… I don’t even know. Really creepy.
Also, standing up to pee is not inherently aggressive or masculine
at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as women entered the office workforce, women’s urinals were produced, and included in ‘modern’ office buildings.
The adoption of women’s slacks, and eventually pantyhose, made them impractical and they were removed in favor of toilets. They didn’t really offer any significant advantages anyway.
I think the last ones hung around until the early seventies, though.
I didn’t want to say this the last time Scott Adams was apparently off his meds, but I’ve got to confess: I feel sorry for Mrs. Adams. As if it weren’t enough that her marital life must be as cold, hard and sterile as the Lunar surface, she now has to endure public humiliation on a regular basis.
Ion and Femalespectator: Another thing that positively mystifies me is the MRA belief that discouraging rape will make men less ambitious in the academics or whatever. As bad a logical leap as it is that being persistent in solving integral equations is JUST like raping someone, the “logic” behind the proposition that being discouraged from raping makes natural mathematicians less interested in math just completely escapes me.
Sexual aggression aside, you know what REALLY robs people of their ambition and makes them passive and unfocused? Entitlement, that’s what.
Really? Nothing to say about this
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/06/15/sock-puppetry-of-the-penis/
?
Interesting.
@Zombie: “I think the last ones hung around until the early seventies, though.”
There are actually totally still women’s urinals hanging about. See!
Somewhat unrelated, this is hilarious and a really good idea.
Appeal to Nature Fallacy. <-seriously we need to add that shit to kindergarten curriculums
First problem with this is the failure to properly define what is natural and what is not. Is playing basketball natural? How about using fire? What about beehives, are they natural?
Second problem is the failure to demonstrate that the natural is good and the unnatural is bad.
Third problem relates to the first problem in the fact that responses to the first problem always boil down to one of two things-applying an intentionality to a non-conscious force like evolution and thereby treating descriptive terms as prescriptive terms-or invoking a deity and turning it into divine command theory. Given that Adams is a creationist, it is pretty fair to assume he would go with the latter. However, divine command theory is a logical failure (I hate to feed the Plato worship, but Euthyphro's dilemma does slam that one pretty good), and creationism is wrong.
On another note, lesbian and bi women exist. In addition, it is not clear that castration stops copulation, especially if done early. Granted, there are less studies on chemical methods being applied at an early age. But Italian castrati and others castrated in the old fashioned method before puberty finished often maintained the ability to have erections and organsms (Castrati in Italy were often highly sought after as sex partners for women due to their sterility being convienent, so we have quite a few records discussing such things). Trans women who have hormone blockers and replacement hormones to make their hormones look more like those of cis females are not always incapable of erection and orgasm (adding progesterone, increasing estrogen, and/or adding testorone at cis female levels often helps problems with sex drive and function with that where they occur). In short, medically speaking, it is not so clear that castration of any kind, especially if done early, stops the sex from happening. Also, as PZ points out, we totally have the drugs to make a go the whole chemical "castration" bit, but guys don't seem so enthused…
There are actually totally still women’s urinals hanging about. See!
I guess it’s not really a surprise that Texas is STILL not entering the 21st Century….
thx for that though. I will revise my Urinal Patter.
First problem with this is the failure to properly define what is natural and what is not.
Zombies? TOTES natural.
@Sarah – I can see what zombie meant about female urinals not offering any significant advantages. That thing takes up just as much space as a regular toilet.