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.
Hell a woman could just start crying in the middle of the street and say shes hungry and legions would rush up to feed her. Your privilege.
…unless she’s black, of course.
Did someone say that it’s impossible to be a white male AND to be homeless?
If you say yes, then we’ll know that you’re lying again.
Excuse me, just in case NWOaf tries to jump on this like the mendacious little snake that he is:
Did someone say that it’s impossible to be a white male AND to be hungry and homeless?
If you say yes, then we’ll know that you’re lying again.
Sally dear, I do work for bottling companies/dairies. All those bottles of juicy you pick up at the store. Well guess what? When those machines get shut down for repair/automation they don’t make money. They want that shit up and running asap. You work till the job is done. Theres no well I put in my 8 cyas. You’ll all scream bloody murder if your milky isn’t available at the local store.
Or, to be even more nit-pickingly accurate, since this is what you have to do with people who are habitual liars:
Did someone say that having white male privilege means it’s impossible to be hungry and homeless?
Tell me my privilege
You’re working.
You never got turned down for housing because your partner was the same sex.
You’ve never been stalked.
You have a computer.
you’re free to hate women. It’s wrong, but you’re free to.
I’m privileged Sallystrange, remember. Yet I have no doubt every one of you have lived a far easier life than me. Why didn’t my white male privilege save me from poverty?
The answer is simple. You people are just a huge pile of privileged manure. There is only one privileged class in all the western world and that is woman.
It’s nice that you have a plausible scenario that might cause you to work 28 consecutive hours, NWOaf. If it weren’t for your long history of lying, I might accept it, even with the highly implausible idea that you both landed the job yesterday AND spent your first day on the job executing an emergency repair that required 28 straight hours of work. However, since you’ve lied about so many, many things on this site, it’s going to take a lot more than that for me to put an ounce of trust in any one of your proclamations.
Also, you’ve failed to answer the question: Has anyone actually said that having white male privilege means it’s impossible to be hungry and homeless?
They want that shit up and running asap. You work till the job is done. Theres no well I put in my 8 cyas.
Boy, wouldn’t this be a GREAT time to have a union?
Also, Spearhafoc is going to be FUCKED trying to correct that mess.
“Mr. Kobold again. Another of the privileged elite.”
[Citation needed]
“First off I’m older than you know. My day job is not a day job. I just got yesterday.”
Of course I know you’re old, I’ve been around the likes you. You’re just like every other loser lifer at those warehouse or stocking jobs I had as a teenager. Some old lonely scrub who’s not really capable anything else, and bothers everyone with hobo worthy born-again nonsense and/or conspiracy theories in cafeteria that guys like me ignored as we went on with the nightshift. The difference is that you have a computer where you can meet other losers exactly like you to trick yourself into thinking you’re not pathetic dumbass.
If you were just some contrarian troll you might be tolerable, but you’re just some skill-less loser who actually believes their own stupidity and somehow stumbled onto the internet.
Unlike you, I accept that I have privilege. It doesn’t bother me, because I’m actually working to change society. I have white privilege, for sure. I have white female privilege, which is an interesting sort of thing–it means my looks are more likely to be regarded as attractive than those of a black woman, and hair products are going to work for my hair, and there’ll be beauty products that match my skin in every drug store in town. I have straight privilege and cis privilege and a bit of class privilege, though not as much as some.
It doesn’t mean my life is peachy keen, I still have to work. But not as hard as others.
That’s all there is to privilege, NWOaf. Really. Cross my heart and hope to die. Feel free to ignore this educational interlude, just like you always do.
Well WTF Sallystrange. If my white male privilege doesn’t help in the way of poverty, hunger, housing. What the hell good is it?
I’da been so much happier starving in my little cubbyhole home in the dead of winter had I known I was privileged. Imagine my laughter and the loser oppressed women like you in there nice cozy homes, eating a hot meal. Saps, if only those oppressed women could understand how privileged I was.
Still not answering the question, eh liar?
I’m curious to know how he worked 28 hours in a day.
Also, Mr. Slave, if your parents were so fantastic, and women can get food whenever they want, why didn’t your mother do…whatever you’re making up, to acquire food for you? Or did she disown you for being a miserable little shit?
Presuming to know other people’s experiences because they are also able to type does not, in fact, make you a genius.
Mr. Kobold, go run to your local college and kneel before the feminist altar of worship. Pray to the goddess of PC for your existence.
I answer that question already amandajane5. Try reading and comprehending.
And like all your math moron that 28 hour shift doesn’t exactly pan out given that you come on here every day at six to say something utterly stupid and illogical.
Unless you’re using office computer equipment that is, in which case you probably have access or are a part of some sort of “air-conditioned office”
What the hell was the question oh privileged Sallystrange?
Go get a pedicure Mr. Kobold, you’re getting youself all in a lather.
NWO, If you disagree with what I said up-thread about feminists not thinking all men are rapists, you might consider reading some Melissa McEwan’s pieces. You may not trust Shakesville as a source, but it is decently representative of a lot of feminist anti rape activism. In the Rape Culture 101 post that I linked too last night she quotes from transforming a rape culture: “In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. ”
Most of the time its the Phyllis Shafly types, the religious right, the “gender-complementary” people that seem to view men as inherently violent and women as gentle. And yet they still trust men to run the world. The thing is, if male sexuality really was inherently violent (BIG if here) we’d have a choice to make; just ignore it, or lock them all up, chemically castrate them, whatever. Scary shit, but in that awful situation, I’d rather do then do nothing. Good thing that’s not reality. Good thing it’s the culture that’s violent, not men as a gender. That’s what rape culture means, and the sooner we fix it, fewer people will be raped and fewer men will be in prison.
( http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/10/rape-culture-101.html )
“Mr. Kobold, go run to your local college and kneel before the feminist altar of worship. Pray to the goddess of PC for your existence.”
I guess I touched a nerve there if you’re busting out stupid cliche right wing radio metaphors, funny.
Here buddy, take some solace in that job you got (in the off hand chance that your utter social awkwardness and pathetic little prejudices don’t cause you to lose it) because it’s probably going to be the only thing you’ll ever have. No girl, no growth, just you, that (maybe) job, and a whole mess of steadily increasing and exponentially stupid comments on the internet that reveal what sad little man you are.
Well, we worked 29 hours a day down at the mill, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves singing “halleluiah!”
And you try to tell the young people today that, and they won’t believe you.
Try writing in comprehensible English, and then maybe I’ll consider the question answered. My lovely parents, because they are lovely, try to help me out when I’m down and out, and if women just have free food thrown at them in the streets, why wouldn’t your mother donate some of it to your sorry cause?
@unintentionalfeminist….I know according to mainstream indoctrination that whatever a woman says hold inherent value and should be listened to, but I find that not to be the case. Surely making up words like cis-gendered and gushing over the sheer genius of such a miraculous event doesn’t exactly inspire me.
Any opinion piece that starts out with the words “rape culture” is false from the get go.
No Mr. Kobold, I figured you’d like to hear how you’re doing alright by your masters. Your life revolves around any womans approval, even online.