The SlutWalks have not just driven many MRAs to distraction; they’ve also driven one of the bloggers at the Gates of Vienna to set aside her usual Islam-bashing for a few moments to take on the awful bullies marching in the SlutWalks. Yes, bullies, for how else can we describe young women who go out of their way to highlight their foul sexiness whilst denying their bodies to the helpless males who happen to catch sight of them?
According to the blogger who calls herself Dymphna:
Women who walk around in slutty clothing in order to “voice” their opinion about male sexual aggression are indeed acting out a hugely immature power trip. … Call it for what it is. Strutting your stuff and daring anyone to stop you isn’t real freedom. It’s a sneaking, sadistic bully-girl game.
So evil is the behavior of these slutbullies that if any man decides, upon catching sight of one of them, to grope or otherwise assault her, well, she’s at least as much to blame as the dude who lays his hands on her.
If the act of strutting your stuff results in an equal reaction, a girl must take at least half the responsibility for whatever transpires as a result.
Dymphna seems to mean this quite literally, suggesting that a slut who gets assaulted should be charged
as an accessory before the fact — i.e., if some dolt grabs her, then at the very least she is his partner in crime. And the offense in which they both participate is a serious transgression against civil order. Sadistic provocation is a breach of the peace.
Ironically, Dymphna the blogger has apparently named herself after Saint Dymphna, a 7th century Irishwoman who, legend has it, was murdered by her father after she refused to marry him.
In the light of Dymphna the blogger’s airtight logic, we have to wonder if Saint Dymphna was wearing something really, really slutty. I mean, what else could have inspired her father’s foul desires?
Wait… When was the last time NWO said he was able to post because he had one of his rare days off?
The Mirror Test is a marking symbol. It’s a sign of when infants become aware.
Mockingbirds pass it. Mockingbirds also have an ability to count (at least to six).
Crows seem to pass information on to other crows, so that a crow who sees another crow get shot will somehow inform an entire rookery, and that flight path will never again be used.
Pecunium – He always posts between 5p and 9a on weekdays, so I’m guessing that he works pretty much “banker’s hours.”
I wouldn’t make fun of him for having a perfectly ordinary job if he didn’t pretend that it’s sooooo demanding and dangerous and important, and furthermore no one else really works at all at their jobs.
@ ithiliana
I can understand what you mean above and concede that you are indeed correct, with one small exception. I dispute that I don’t understand how to argue, you’ve told me nothing new here. If I failed to make a convincing argument then I don’t believe it was because I don’t understand how to argue, more likely I’m not as good at it as I thought I was. I think the real reason is because I was arguing from a position which I was unsure about being in.
I’m also not convinced of my passive-agressiveness, but to be fair, I don’t know enough about passive-agressiveness to argue this point either.
The Mirror Test is a marking symbol.
I stand corrected, then.
NWO: My roommate is attracted to nerdy women in glasses. If I wander around wearing glasses and talking about D&D, am I teasing him and does he have the right to rape me? Just asking!
No talk about amazing birds is complete without mentioning that Alex, the famous African Grey parrot owned by Dr Irene Pepperberg, figured out zero.
http://youtu.be/P3w6OYsKJCc
This human need to underestimate the intelligence of those we don’t think are human is both annoying and revealing.
@quert – Thank you. It is refreshing to see someone admit when they were wrong – especially on the internet.
@ithiliana – great post 🙂
@Pecunium – thank you for the correction!
By now I’m convinced that Pecunium knows everything, or at least something about everything. 🙂
Yeah, qwert, that was nicely done. Seriously.
NWO
That play…
…is that Euripides’s The Bacchae that you’re butchering? The play about Dionysus’s vengeance on his mother’s family, which was written for, and performed during festivals to Dionysus? Where the Bacchae (the “lesbians” you refer to) are a destructive, chaotic force used to punish those who’ve earned the displeasure of the gods? What the hell did you think was the point of that play? Did you think it was a history? Did you even read it?
CB: I read, a lot. I have a pretty wide-ranging set of interests (natural history, law, history, biology, science, religion, theology, geology, all sorts of social sciences).
I am numerate, but not all that good at mathematics (algebra is about as far as I got, though when I was a machinist I did have to learn how to use some simple trigonometric functions), and understand stats (and skew).
The more useful thing is I have an amazing memory; and books. So I can recall things, (and will do better when all of them are unpacked) and look them up. The details on birds are from, “In the Company of Crow and Ravens. The fall of Rome stuff was recently refreshed by my reading of, “The Inheritance of Rome”.
And I like to argue. I’ve been doing persuasive writing since I was a teenager, and writing a column for my high school paper. I did debate in college, as well as being a copy-editor on the paper in my college (which is a job that requires a wealth of trivia, so one can spot silly mistakes, like calling the USS Ohio an aircraft carrier).
Being an interrogator was icing on those cakes. To do the job requires being able to keep track of details, and spotting weaknesses in the subjects story. Teaching it required being able to be exploitably wrong.
So, no, I don’t know something about everything, but what I do know, I can speak about. What I don’t know, I know how to look up.
“By now I’m convinced that Pecunium knows everything, or at least something about everything.”
Srsly.
Pecunium, you remind me of the things I would do if I didn’t have kids–more reading being chief among them. Oh well, maybe when they get older…
kathleenb: I don’t know that he figured out zero. He figured out the idea measurable lack.
Which is a big conceptual gap, but I don’t think Peppenberg was correct in saying that didn’t exist in the West until the 16th century. Zero as a placemarking tool (and so the ability to create tables of organisation for numeric bases [whew… I was trying to avoid limiting the utility of zero to decimal notation]) was late, but the idea of an utter lack, and the ability to talk about it was well known.
If Alex had come up with a notational system; and it had a zero… any doubt about parrots’ sapience is demolished.
Do I think we are the only sapient creatures on earth? No. There was an interesting study in Brazil, with wild parrots, and how they acquire their names (parrots have unique calls they use to identify themselves, and which other parrots use to indicate to whom they are speaking).
Their parents give them names. They took some eggs, and swapped them. The names the chicks acquired were not names which the parrots, “knew from the egg”, but were names the “parents” gave/used for them. They were dialectically similar to the names the foster-parents had, not similar to the names the genetic parents had.
I’m not sure where I put the link to the study, damnit, or I’d include it.
CB: Taking public transit helps a lot. The net has been good, and bad, for my reading. I don’t read books the way I used to, but a wider variety of secondary material is available to me, and I can go to more experts than I used to.
And it causes me to buy more books. But I’m down to 8-10 hours a week of reading time (I am a fast reader, and always have been). But I’ve been reading for about 40 years. It adds up.
I have a Library thing, which is sadly not accurate. When I am unpacked I will try to complete it. There are about about 400 books listed right now.
(adds African gray parents to her list of Animals Ozy Is Not Allowed To Eat Ever)
I would like to add to the chorus of people who think Pecunium knows everything, and add that I fully intend on ascending to the Knowing Everything plane of existence when I’m older.
Pecunium: Interesting. Veeeery interesting. Every single time I think I know something… Kind of the human condition, but I’m used to being the trivia monarch in a given room.
@Qwert: I dispute that I don’t understand how to argue, you’ve told me nothing new here. If I failed to make a convincing argument then I don’t believe it was because I don’t understand how to argue, more likely I’m not as good at it as I thought I was. I think the real reason is because I was arguing from a position which I was unsure about being in.
Wow, thank you for acknowledging I might have a point or some points. That is an excellent example of knowing how to make good arguments (knowing that the opposing arguments are not all ‘wrong’!) If you’ve not spent a lot of time discussing/arguing with people who don’t agree with your definitions, assumptions, and overall claims, then, yes, you’re probably not as good at arguing as you thought you were (it’s easy to convince people who agree with your definitions, assumptions, and claims!).
I’m still not quite sure what position you were arguing (there were several!), but if you were “unsure about being in” it, why in the world were you trying to argue it? Another good thing to understand is that the “pro/con” model (i.e. correct/winning vs. incorrect/losing) of argumentation is seen only in strictly controlled and artificial circumstances–i.e. not in real world discussion situations. You probably don’t even realize that there are deep divisions and conflicts in feminist discussions (because you don’t know the history and writings well enough). And if you’re unsure, why not say something like “I don’t know about X, can we talk about it,” and ask questions. There are lots of people on this forum besides me (coffcoff) who don’t mind holding forth on their areas of expertise.
The passive-aggressive thing: well, since you honestly don’t seem to see it, I’ll try to explain what I see happening, and you might, if you choose, want to avoid certain rhetorical strategies in future because of how many people tend to interpret them (your intent is not relevant here, btw!)
First: naked aggression (which you are not doing, and why people are still talking to you instead of simply mocking you): NWO is the perfect example though I wince at using the word “naked” in the same sentence as his name. He comes here and insults us. That’s aggression. He’s not interested in communicating or in trying to change any minds; he doesn’t give a damn. He seems to enjoy the insults.
Passive-aggression: where the speaker has a negative view of the ideas or people (or both) he’s addressing/talking about but does not for whatever reason want to talk like NWO-there are no direct insults, no direct statements of disagreement, but the disagreement and/or insults (or both) are masked by certain word usages and sentence structure.
How about my quick rhetorical analysis (yes, I know its long, but a full grammatical analysis would be a helluva lot longer, trust me) of what I claimed was your most recent example of passive aggressiveness:
This, of course, is not to say that all this feminist theory is correct, but that I, for certain, don’t understand it as well as I would like to, and probably should.
I don’t in all honesty see myself becoming as involved in the issues of gender, equality etc. etc. as the people here. I think I can probably find more productive things to do with my time. Not to say that you are wasting yours.
*ok, let’s go!*
First clause: “This of course is not to say that all this feminist theory is correct”
Your convoluted syntax here is fascinating: There is no clear referent for “this”; then there is the negative “not” embedded right after “of course” which is what I mean by ‘convoluted.’ The rhetorical purpose of the clause is to express disagreement with “all this feminist theory” which, as I read it, applies to what stuff feminists on this blog have been saying to you and others, without directly stating it.
That is, if I rewrite this phrase into a direct rather than indirect statement, I not only end up with fewer words but a clear statement of the purpose: first level of rewrite: “I do not think all this feminist theory is correct.” But since correct is part of a binary structure, as are many terms in English), the direct statement s: “[all this] Feminist theory is incorrect.”
That direct statement is rather aggressive; your style comes across as passive aggressive because of the convoluted syntax and the reluctance to directly express a fairly aggressive point: it’s passive because you are not willing to say directly that feminist theory is incorrect.
Do you in fact assume (you have to assume since you don’t know much about it) that all or much of “feminist theory” (as you understand it) is “not correct”? If feminist theory is incorrect, then the assumption is that going on a century plus of activist work in this country alone by women over multiple generations to achieve equal access and equal rights (not to be seen as equal meaning “the same as” men) has been unnecessary, because, well, women had equal rights all along. (And I don’t buy the “I don’t believe all men are the same, so I’m not sexist” no matter how many thousand times I hear it. That’s not what equality means in this context.)
Thus, I interpret your statement (as do others here) as passive aggressive. Misogynists are not afraid to say that feminism is incorrect/unnecessary/evil/fill in the blank, NWO! (In fact NWO isn’t afraid to say that feminists oppress men these days!)
Second Claus: more disclaimers or what I call in technical terms (small joke!) “waffling”:
“but that I, for certain, don’t understand it as well as I would like to, and probably should.”
“but” is a contrasting conjunction–(“and” is coordinating). By using “but” you are implying you have NOT claimed that feminist theory is incorrect (though you sort of did). This clause starts to try to claim that the fault, so to speak is in you. That shift in focus is a potentially useful start: saying that you the speaker don’t know enough about the subject to make a claim about it can often be a very useful limit/qualification (and what you do say, can be stronger for it, as long as you’re able to be honest about “based on what I know, this is what I think, but I might be wrong and change my mind if I learned more.”
However, the waffling or hedging in the clause puts your claim of not being an expert into doubt: by hedging, I mean specifically “for certain,” “as I would like to” and “probably should.” One of these modifiers might have worked–the combination of all three undercuts your stated purpose.
In English, the more modifiers you use, the more your claim is weakened–it’s an odd result, but would you trust any car dealer who said: “I can give you some really really really really great deals, really they’re great, you have no idea how great these deals are?” Or, by the end, would you be backing away? So insisting that you “FOR CERTAIN” and then undercutting it with the much weaker “PROBABLY SHOULD” understand feminist theory sufficiently to make an argument about it (and the correct/incorrect argument is a fairly simplistic one), you’re undercutting your claim as you make it (thus, passively).
And “should” is a very dangerous word in arguments: I tell my students that no good thesis in an academic argument should rest on the modal “SHOULD” (a modal is a linguistic term for what many call ‘helping verbs’: should learn, will learn, must learn, ought to learn) Each modal in that list carries a lot of meaning added to the main verb; MUST learn is stronger than SHOULD learn. Making an argument that X should do Y isn’t really strong or useful because it’s not supportable: everybody SHOULD obey the laws. Right, we should. But do we? No (everybody breaks some laws). . Add the “probably” as well–more hedging. Would you ever believe anyone whose stance on doing something was more or less: “for certain. . . .I probably should?” I wouldn’t. And the “as I would like to” is undercut by the hedging around it–and totally undercut by your next clause where you directly contradict yourself.
Third clause: Remember, you just told us that you don’t know as much about feminist theory AS YOU WOULD LIKE TO (though multiply hedged, so it’s undercut). Now you lay it out fairly directly (for you) but still not as directly as you could: “I don’t in all honesty see myself becoming as involved in the issues of gender, equality etc. etc. as the people here.”
Possible points for using “I” to make a direct statement about yourself (as opposed to the first clause).
But the points trickle away fairly quickly because you say “in all honesty”: if you are speaking honestly, you probably should not qualify the claims with telling us you are speaking honestly–because that raises the possibility of the opposite, just as the on-going modifiers weaken the claim. In this case, you’re stating that you lied to us above–when you implied you would like to learn more about feminist theory (since you don’t know as much as you PROBABLY SHOULD ).
But you didn’t really mean that (as “should” hinted at) not really–because honestly, you’re not going to become as “involved with the issues of gender, equality etc. etc. as the people here” (The double use of “etc” is offputting as well — implies there’s more about gender and equality issues but you cannot be bothered to list it, or do now know it, and want to pad the phrase out.) And while implying that the people you’ve been discussing are more involved with you (although, judging from what you say about yourelf, “more involved than you” is a pretty low bar), implying more expert, might be a useful way to acknowledge the opposing group’s expertise, you undercut the characterization of the involved people here in two ways: first, by all the hedging in the previous clauses, including “honesty” and “feminist theory is incorrect,” and, second by the final clause:
“I think I can probably find more productive things to do with my time. Not to say that you are wasting yours.”
“I think I can probably find” could be more direct (thus possibly perceived as aggressive): “I CAN FIND more productive things to do with my time than learn about feminist theory [which I would like to understand but not really I lied about saying that]. And there is PROBABLY again (I don’t know about you, but when I say “I should probably do X,” I usually end up not doing it! Then the final kicker: NOT TO SAY that you are wasting yours. This last line is a throwaway–you cannot even be bothered to put it in full clause mode with a subject like the earlier ones: I am NOT SAYING that you are wasting yours! You cannot say that, because in fact you are strongly implying that we are wasting OUR time.
Putting the negative at the start is failed attempt to contradict what you just said: i.e. learning to understand feminist theory would NOT be productive which means it would be nonproductive, i.e. a waste of your time. If learning about feminist theory is a waste of time, and if it’s incorrect, then the people on this site involved in feminist issues of gender and equality are INCORRECT and WASTING THEIR TIME (and possibly, by extension yours, though nobody dragged you here).
So the direct claims in your rather wordy and convoluted paragraph are (badly) masked by the hedging and modifiers and attempted disclaimers that I’m betting most of us did not believe because we see the subtext, and that’s what we mean by passive aggressive. And the amusing thing here is that the cultural gender stereotype is always that women are ‘naturally’ passive aggressive (i.e. catty) and never say anything directly to anyone (the oh so direct men lament continually!)
And that’s why see that statement as passive-aggressive instead of aggressive:
AGGRESSIVE VERSION:
Feminist theory is incorrect.
I don’t understand it, but I don’t want to waste my time with it.
I don’t need to get involved with the issues of gender and quality that you people are wasting your time with.
PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE:
This, of course, is not to say that all this feminist theory is correct, but that I, for certain, don’t understand it as well as I would like to, and probably should.
I don’t in all honesty see myself becoming as involved in the issues of gender, equality etc. etc. as the people here. I think I can probably find more productive things to do with my time. Not to say that you are wasting yours.
*claps*
…is that Euripides’s The Bacchae that you’re butchering?
Oh, man, I was trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about! Of course! That’s hilarious! So… a play written during the height of Greek culture, based on an even older myth, is proof of women having too much power several hundred years later… because it has female monsters in it.
I guess we’re just lucky he’s not educated enough to have heard of Lysistrata.
@ ithiliana
Thank you for your detailed post above, I appreciate that you didn’t have to take the time to write all that.
As I think you might understand: I’m not exactly fully accomplished in the use of my language. I’m aware that I often make rather odd word choices, and I’ll even admit that sometimes I choose words partially based on the way they sound or look when a simpler word would suffice, or be more representative of what I might want to express. Hence, long-winded sentences like the proceeding one. 😉 This is clearly something that I need to work on if I plan to become more involved in online debates or discussions. It’s actually quite frustrating to not be able to articulate my thoughts in a way that is readily understood by others. I think this often leads to me thinking, incorrectly, that people are deliberately avoiding my point and trying to derail my train of thought, so to speak, when they might well, in fact, be genuinely confused as to what I’ve actually written.
I think I understand what you (and others) are getting at by saying I’m being passive-aggressive. I think, however, that a lot of my “passive aggressive” writing is just me being uncertain about how I’m coming across when I write: a limitation of my writing skills rather than shrouding some form of aggressiveness. I’ll write something, and then attempt to clarify what I’ve just said before anyone has even questioned it in the first instance.
When I said: “This, of course, is not to say that all this feminist theory is correct, but that I, for certain, don’t understand it as well as I would like to, and probably should.”
“I think I can probably find more productive things to do with my time. Not to say that you are wasting yours.”
I didn’t mean:
“Feminist theory is incorrect.
I don’t understand it, but I don’t want to waste my time with it.
I don’t need to get involved with the issues of gender and quality that you people are wasting your time with.”
I meant (trying to kerb any passive-aggressive streak I may have):
I don’t know if feminist theory is incorrect or not, because I don’t have a sufficient understanding of it to say so. There are more important things to me than gender and equality issues, but I don’t believe that you are wasting your time if you choose to study / discuss them etc. etc.
However, thanks to you, I can understand how you, and others, have interpreted my words in this way.
I guess we’re just lucky he’s not educated enough to have heard of Lysistrata.
Women denying men sex on demand? Oh, the horror! The chaos! Think of the poor blue balls!
shaenon: Oh, man, I was trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about! Of course! That’s hilarious! So… a play written during the height of Greek culture, based on an even older myth, is proof of women having too much power several hundred years later…
You forget… this is NWO.
THERE IS NO CONTEXT!
Pecunium, is this the study you were thinking of?
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/07/07/rspb.2011.0932.full