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.
Okay b/c somebody will say it… it should be the Rodeo Cat :3 XD
I dunno, you do xD
I mean how can anyone take anything a woman says or does seriously?
Umm, by treating them as humans and individuals?
Just spitballing here.
On the other hand, taking Slavers seriously….
@zombie except he takes everything we say srsly xD SUPER srsly… he’s always upset and angry and trying to debunk us and quoting ppl and etc etc xD
http://i1221.photobucket.com/albums/dd461/mildandlazy/frankly.jpg
I just saw that btw, and I think it sums up what he’s saying this entire thread pretty nicely xD
Oh no the great sage Ami Angelwings is here to illuminate me about the oppressor/oppressed dynamic in the Kyriarchy cis gendered patriarchy.
My evil, white, cis gendered male skin is in full retreat.
Do tell little Mz wings why I must love and accept all you say as gospel. Oh to be totally accepting of whatever morals have been laid at the State altar. Illucidate me on the joys of total acceptance of the progressive/liberal mandates.
Time for more stats!
According to RAINN:
A woman has approximately a 1 in 6 chance of being raped sometime during her lifetime. She has a 1 in 4 chance of suffering a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault while attending college; 10% of women entering college have already been victims of same.
A man’s chance of being raped in his lifetime is somewhere between 1%-3%.
Out of a group of 16 men who have committed a rape, only 1 of them will ever serve jail time. So there are 15 rapists walking free for every 1 rapist in jail – voting, blogging and sharing everyday space with women. Somehow, I expect a man who has such a severe contempt for women that he commits rape is probably also not very pleasant for women to have as a boss, coworker, coach, neighbor, teacher or employee.
Most men who rape do so multiple times before they are caught and jailed.
So tell me again how women are privileged above men?
Maybe some black women are on welfare because of systematic injustice, not because they’re favored. If black women were truly the leading class, then I doubt that they’d be on constantly-reforming welfare, which is certainly not enough to bring anyone out of poverty. If black women were the leading class, then I’d expect them to be affluent and in a wide variety of high-powered careers where they got to make decisions affecting large numbers of people – not ghettoized, with their abilities always under question.
There’s no racial or gender quota for welfare. The government doesn’t allocate a certain number of welfare dollars for black women or white men, and if you apply after your quota has been filled, you’re S.O.L. If you need welfare, you go to the welfare office and apply and demonstrate need. They don’t really give a shit about your race or gender, only that you need the money for you and your family to survive.
I mean, in this thread alone, we’ve had:
My job is a little rougher than painting my toenails to match my lipstick
I’m sure when they sold out of faux gucci shoes it was a heartbreak.
Go get a pedicure Mr. Kobold
Lets lay the wreath of least likely to be incarcerated at the feet of the privileged ones
Is it infuriating when you purse doesn’t match your pedicure?
Look, take a nice hot bath in fragranced bath salts, paint your toenails
Yep, looks like our subbie’s a foot worshipper. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just always funny when repressed people let their kinks slip.
I feel spurned. He gave me a twinkie comment, but no toenails.
(sulk)
Molly, well, Scott Adams seems like a classic attention-seeker; he’s probably both tickled by the attention and annoyed that he’s not constantly being hailed as a genius. I don’t worry too much about sending traffic to odious twits, because, hey, without odious twits what would I have to write about here?
If someone seems dangerously unhinged, though, I generally don’t link to them.
“On the plus side when you wake up in the morning you don’t have to shit.”
Oh, not like Subby hasn’t already been proved a liar in many other, more important ways, but actually — and I speak as someone who has gone through long periods of not eating in the past — this isn’t true.
In other news, I’m about to cut my toenails. If Subby’s nice, I’ll take pictures.
Well, since I’m just pretending to care, I guess I should just quit my non-profit job and go get an MBA, or something. Thanks, NWO for showing me the error of my ways.
Hasn’t NWOsub been violating the comments policy for most of this thread, specifically by misrepresenting other people’s views and lying about them?
Yeah, I suppose, but he’s pretty consistently wrong about everything, so I don’t think there’s much danger anyone is going to take anything he says about other commenters here seriously.
White felons are hired more readily than black people with no criminal record:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/race_at_work.pdf
Black women have lower average incomes than black men, both have lower average incomes than white men.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0703.pdf
“In 2000, households with non-Hispanic White householders had a median net worth of $79,400; those with Black householders, $7,500 ; and those with Hispanic householders, $9,750 (Figure 6).15 Non-Hispanic White households in every income quintile had significantly higher levels of median net worth than their Black and Hispanic counterparts (Table H). In the lowest quintile in 2000, the median net worth for non-Hispanic White households was $24,000; for Black households, $57; and for Hispanic
households, $500; the corresponding figures for the highest quintile were $208,023, $65,141, and $73,032, respectively.”
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p70-88.pdf
As to trans people:
“Respondents were four to five times more likely than the general population to live in extreme poverty, with an annual household income of less than $10,000 at all levels of educational attainment. Those surveyed were twice as likely to be unemployed; 26 percent had lost a job because they were transgender, though if you factor in not being hired in the first place or denied a promotion, that number rises to 47 percent. A full 90 percent of respondents reported harassment or other mistreatment in the workplace. The statistics for transgender and gender nonconforming people grow even worse when race is factored in, with transgender people of color faring worse than white participants across the board.”
“Those who expressed a transgender identity or gender non-conformity while in grades K-12 reported alarming rates of harassment (78%), physical assault (35%) and sexual violence (12%); harassment was so severe that it led almost one-sixth (15%) to leave a school in K-12 settings or in higher education.”
http://www.towleroad.com/2011/02/landmark-study-on-transgender-discrimination-released.html#ixzz1PaXdynTr
I’ll leave you to chew that over while I work on building my army of castrati sex slaves. 😉
Came home from a bike ride x3 I’m shocked that the thread just ended. Also that apparently he just exploded cuz of me xD That was very… odd XD
My Rodeo Catness is improving xD I think that’s the fastest nebody’s gone from “I’M NOT LISTENING TO YOU LALALALALALA” to “ARGHHHH GET OUT OF MY HEAD!! GET OUTTTT!!!!!” b/c of me xDD
Who was it who said that Subby has a crush on Ami?
In other news, I’m about to cut my toenails. If Subby’s nice, I’ll take pictures.
A year or so ago, I ripped up one of my toenails doing a jump axe board break. The emergency room tech mostly taped it back into place, and after a week or two, it was ready to come off…. I really regret not making a video of the dead nail removal and posting it on YouTuber. Viral!
Okay, so when I was wee, my mom told me stories about a game show called, “Queen For A Day” which I have not watched, but is YouTubeable according to The Google, wherein whoever had the biggest sob story got a prize. I vote for Mr. Slave, with the caveat that he has to actually be a woman for some period of time to receive said prize. I mean, surely he wants to be a privileged princess who gets free things everywhere and has nothing else to worry about besides his pedicure, right?
Darksidecat, your stats mean exactly squat. If you take away the top .1% of evil white men who earn some phenominal sum the stats on the average privileged white man drops dramatically. Hell why not take out Obama’s salary along with Denzel Wasington and Morgan Freeman and a whole wack of sports figures and we can drop Black net worth down even further.
And your heartwrenching rant on the plight of transgendered is truely breathtaking. Tell me why do you consider your concern for the plight of a few thousand transgendered so wonderful, yet a few million white men who are in the same economic boat doesn’t even raise an eyebrow? Is it because they have white male privilege? I’ll bet they feel real lucky swiming in all that privilege!
NWO:
So you’re saying that white men have it just as bad as trans-gendered folks? Really? What exactly makes you think that’s the case, besides your ass?
Yep, he’s been ass-sourcing again.
I dunno Kirbywarp you tell me. If a transgendered has a job, even at a Mccy Ds and a straight white man is a homeless bum sleeping on a grate for warmth who is better off? Are ya gonna tell me the grate sleeping bum is privileged? Did his white male skin offer him any privilege? When the starting point of any movement is hatred, (feminism). That movement sucks. How can every white man be privileged reguardless of his status? White men DO die of starvation, ARE below the poverty line, ect. Yet your movement maintains that white/male is privileged. That is hatred. But somehow I’m the bad man.
Intersectionality ttlly doesn’t exist to him does it xD PPL CAN ONLY BE ONE THING! (also ppl always seem to forget that class and age also factor into the privilege/oppression dynamics…e_e)
And he does a lot of conflating of class and gender/gender identity/etc xD
Like it’s Manny Pacquiao’s early life vs. Lauren Conrad for men and women, and that’s IT apparently xD
I think first we need to ask him what he thinks the life of an average man is like vs an average woman’s, cuz again, it’s Pacquiao vs Conrad right now xD (i’d watch that fight! it might come to that at the rate Maynever keeps dodging him xD )
Or like.. what our lives have been like, or even mine, since apparently he knows xD
This is useless, but… privilege doesn’t mean you’re evil (how could it? you’re BORN with it!) and it doesn’t mean you get life on a silver platter. It just means that you do not face certain obstacles that other groups face.
A transgendered person (“transgendered” isn’t a noun) may make more money than you, but they will still face types of discrimination and ignorance about their identity that you don’t. This doesn’t mean that they’re better than you or that their life is ruined in all ways–just that they have to deal with things that you are privileged not to deal with.
NWO:
You are an absolute moron, and my sincerest apologies to all the real morons out there that suffer by the comparison. Privilage in this sense is not what you have, its what you don’t have. A white male doesn’t have to deal with shit that women have to because they are women, or trans people do because they are trans. The white privilage or male privilage is the privilage of not dealing with certain issues.
But this doesn’t matter. What matters is you thinking that comparing one person’s life to another is a good indication of society. We have a black president right now. Look at the huge gap between Obama’s life and your hypothetical white bum on the street. This is evidence that black people are much better off than whites? Really? Or that black people don’t have to deal with racist bigots all their lives, and still some manage to get ahead?
I doesn’t matter whether there exists a white man who dies of starvation, or a woman that runs a company, or whatever. The concept of privilage is the idea that the white male bum will never have to deal with being groped on the subway, or the miriad of other problems that women have to deal with no matter what their socio-economic status. It is you, and only you, that constantly defines “privilage” in terms of hatred. And it only piles on to the abundant evidence of how ignorant (most likely willfully ignorant) you are.
@Holly:
Heh, nice ninja. 😛