Here’s a preview of the talk I’ll be giving at Northwestern tonight.
Remember, the talk — on “How to hate women and have terrible sex: Misogynistic sex myths, and how they ruin sex for everyone” – will be at 8 PM in Room G02 of Annenberg Hall on the Northwestern Campus in Evanston.
(Here’s a map.)
See you there!
Oh, and also, The Spearhead has discovered that I will be giving a talk. W. F. Price writes about it with his usual objectivity, by which I mean that his piece is filled with lies and weird projection.
EDITED TO ADD: And now the Men’s Rights Subreddit gets in on the fun! Apparently they are also very concerned about my weight.
oops *acknowledging its not universal and calling it invalid.
<blockquote
No it doesn’t and its ableist to suggest so but I do not know why you brought it up since no one even implied that. The issue is that you don’t seem to acknowledge that is a legitimate reason why someone might be a “leech” as you like to call it.
Well, actually, I did imply that >.> or rather, I stated it quite directly, and I think that’s what Nanasha was responding to here. I don’t think that’s what Nanasha intended to convey at all, just the way the conversation went and the way my life is going, that’s what the feeling was for me. I don’t think that Nanasha (or you, or anyone else involved) actually thinks mental illness makes you a child, it was just something very personal about me. The problem was me bringing up my mental health in the first place. So, blame Viscaria for that one.
You can also blame me for failing at blockquotes. And for referring to myself in the third person twice in two posts.
Okay, I don’t even think what I said makes any sense at all. I wasn’t being very clear when it wasn’t 2:15 in the morning, and I’m definitely not being clear now. I’m just going to shut my big gob for once and go to bed. 😐
How dare you accuse MRAs of using shaming language! You must be a white knight mangina.
How dare you say every man doesn’t deserve to be loved (by a fertile, 18yo supermodel) you fat, old, ugly, cat lady.
The *purpose* of the university is knowledge for knowledge’s sake. In practice it’s never been 100%, but it *should* be free of any influence from ideological fads and other temporal institutions that happen to be dominant for a brief (i.e. a few centuries) amount of time, like the church, or capitalist bourgeois democracy (i.e. the institution that seeks to take over universities right now by trying to turn them into factories to produce more workers).
If people want to learn a trade, that’s what trade schools are for.
Let me rephrase:
“Working hard is *considered* important in this society”.
Because, I am so sick of the implication that hard work! bootstraps! are going to solve everything! And it’s your fault otherwise for not working hard enough!
Hard work doesn’t magically make things better. It doesn’t make a person better than someone who doesn’t work hard. It’s also freakin’ difficult to measure. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again — who works harder, my mom at Walmart (where she broke into the double digits for her hourly pay, yay mom!) or me at my intellectual office job (good benefits, good pay, etc)? It’s my mom. But is she valued more by society? If so, why doesn’t society give her the good money?
tl,dr: Hard work is not correlated with anything in the real world, in my experience. I don’t know of any scientific studies in this area, so I will refrain from making any stronger statements.
I think my biggest issue with you saying oh the reason certain people are the way they are is because they are lazy is a common trope disproportionately thrown at poor people,POC, and disabled people rather than upper middleclass kids. I’m not really sure what you hope to accomplish trying to turn the tables and calling them that but its not really going to help anything especially not marginalized people.
I also don’t know why you are so averse to people other than yourself getting financial help from others. If you don’t want that for yourself fine but why do you keep implying they are less then you because of that?
that is a lot of words just to say ‘kill the poor’
it makes me wonder exactly how many of them would be able to survive if the zombie apocalypse were to happen tomorrow,
In my twenties, the Zombie Apocalypse would have been a godsend. I was barely making it on work, but the skills so survive in something like that I had. It’s not that life, “post Hammerfall, Systemic Shock, The Bomb, Red Dawn, Etc.” would have been so great, but the competition would have favored me more than what was going on.
Of course most of the people I know would have been dead long ago, and the society which grew out of such a collapse wouldn’t be likely to be the sort of place I’d want to live, but odds are I’d be dead, or in late middle age by now, what with the harder living conditions.
But most people don’t have the physical skills to survive in a post-apocolyptic world (I just did a discussion on that very topic, to a crowd about as large as Dave’s last night). Like anything else, a lot of it is luck. I know how to farm because my folks, when I was 8-11 were struggling, so we had community garden space. I tagged along on the regular trips to tend it.
When I was in my teen my folks (different set of “folks” as my mother had remarried) bought a place with a yard, and I could garden in the yard. I had to clear out ten years of iceplant, and turn the soil under, and recondition it.
And I had hobbies that helped, so I learned the basics of blacksmithig, and how to do archery, and how to fence. It was the ’80s, and doom and gloom filled the air. So read books, and practiced things like flint-knapping.
Helped that my folks went into business for themselves, and I was running a used bookstore in the summers (and working in it during the year). I read a lot.
In the ’90s I joined the army, and in the ’00s I was living with someone whose family had a lot of land (for a city, 3/4s of an acre), and I had lots of dirt to play with. Vegetables and wheat and chickens, and guinea pigs. And horses.
So I’m reasonable confident that, should I survive the element of social collapse I can survive (in part because I have lots of books on “archaic” skills), I know that it’s mostly luck. I was interested in that sort of thing, and fortunate enough to get to play at it when it wasn’t my life on the line to learn how.
But it doesn’t make me superior to anyone, not morally.
And it’s not relevant, one bit, to how I did, or didn’t, get help from friends, family, lovers, in the days of the non-apocalypse.
I know I’d be absolutely screwed in a zombie apocalypse. Zombies aren’t exactly phased by programmers. 🙁
@Nanasha: I had a long post about how different things are at the university I teach at (small one in poor rural area in Texas), but the internets ate it.
And the more I thought about it, the more I figured fuck it–nothing anybody else says is having any impact on your self-righteous tirades.
So I guess the question I have is what made you think it was a good idea to derail this thread into the “Nanasha is so superior to everybody else” train track?
Because, when you go on at length about YOUR experiences compared to every other straw person’s, it’s really boring.
Apallingly long set of replies to a single topic.
Nanasha: This article says the unemployment rate is something like 15% for young people, yet 85% of people are moving home after college. It tells me that there’s something else going on here than just the lack of jobs
What’s an apartment cost?
I’m in the “underemployed” category. I can afford to be because I have a disability pension. But I’ve been underemployed by the same company for the past three years. I’m making a whopping 13.00 an hour. If I didn’t have the skills to teach cooking, as well as sell cookware, I’d be making something closer to 11.50, because I’d have had a lower starting wage.
That’s a take home of about 21,000 a year, full-time, which none of the 15 people who aren’t management are getting. In the off season I’m getting about 15 hours a week. That’s 8,000.
The only non-students at my work who don’t have second jobs, are married. That’s been the case on both coasts (I worked for this company in SF, as well as New York).
I don’t know anyone who can live, without help, on 8,000 a year, in either New York, or SF. When I was unemployed in 2008, I was living with my dad, in Tenn. Even there, where the cost of living is a lot lower, 8,000 a year is pretty much going to require housemates, or assistance.
And the truth of the matter is that most adult children who go back to live with their parents don’t pay rent, they don’t pay for food expenses, and regardless of the chores they do around the house, it generally is less contribution than that of a full household contributor.
Citation needed, desperately.
I think that the worst thing here is that most of the time, being back at your parent’s house is basically like back being their slave. They make the rules, they control all the money and how it is spent, and if you don’t like it, tough cookies
More citations needed, because I’ve done it, and I know people who have done/are doing it. It wasn’t like that for me/them.
Even the articles agree that most people who go home to live with parents end up earning less and having less successful careers when they do get a job.
Lew Rockwell is a reliable source? Again, citation needed.
Let’s look at the options. Living with parents, and the drop in income that comes of entering the workforce late. Ok.
Ending up homeless, and the drop in income that causes?
Taking two, or three, low end jobs, and not being able to enter the workforce in the career field you wanted, and the subsequent diminshment in earnings because, should you manage to get back to your desired field, you entered the workforce late?
The, “articles” aren’t taking the counfounding variables into effect. They are making the assumption that people who move in with their parents are doing it to, “take a break”. That they are being lazy, and choosing not to work, and that, if they had tried, they would be in a job, in their field, and starting to pile up the seniority/experience, needed to make more money.
It’s not obvious this is the case. Hell, you are doing it yourself, But then again, I do have to tip my hat to them a little bit. Were it not for their laziness and elitism to find a job that they think is “beneath” them, I would not have had nearly as many job opportunities as I have had in my life, shitty economy or no (and I graduated right when the economy went in the toilet, and have always been able to find employment, even in the city where I live, where there are very few jobs outside of retail). So thanks to the entitled assholes- I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
You admit the economy is tight, and that you have a job. Well I’m sure there were other people who applied for those jobs (I know that in 2008, I couldn’t get work in three different cities, LA, Oak Ridge/Knoxville, and SF: and that with professional résumé massaging). But you got it. That means someone else (more likely several someones) didn’t.
But you are better than them, because you weren’t lazy, like them.
But I’m really tired of people who act like they are completely justified in coming home from college and then parking their asses in their parents house and refusing to be a part of the household and just go back to acting like a spoiled little kid….AND THEN THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT IT.
As opposed to people who, without citation, look down their noses at everyone who isn’t “striving” like them?
And really, where are these lazybones who are complaining about how hard they have it while the are refusing to be part of the household (and have you noticed how you went from they were being slaves to their parents, and doing chores and stuff, to this), and then complaining about it?
Citations sorely needed. Not just a single example, but the hordes that show this to be the case in general.
But I honestly think there’s a big difference between that and the neurotypical kid whose parents buy them a new car, pay all their rent, give them a credit card they’ll pay for, and basically encourage them never to have to do anything on their own…so they don’t.
Do you also, honestly, think this is the lot of kids in the “Middle Class”? Really? Because I’d be hard pressed to think of a middle class family which could afford to do that. Even the “well to do, middle class” parents I’ve known couldn’t afford that.
Maybe, if they’d not spent lots of money on tuition for the primary/secondary schools their kids went to they could have, but then again, those kids left school and got jobs; they didn’t have to work in college, but they didn’t have cars and unlimited credit cards either.
I too feel lucky that I was able to take advantage of a high GPA based scholarship for my first two years of college.
How expensive was your junior college? How much do you think that ease of funding helped in your ability to spend the time to get good study habits for your transistion to a four-year school?
My experience is not the same as everyone else’s- I get that- but I don’t understand how my experience and my thoughts on a subject are totally invalid/false/disingenuous just because they don’t apply to EVERYONE EVERYWHERE AT ALL TIMES.
People aren’t denying your experience. They are denying the ways in which you have taken things (like a Lew Rockwell column) and then made blanket statements about other people. You have done that.
>>Lew Rockwell is a reliable source?
Oh I’m sorry I engaged, I hadn’t seen the Lew Rockwell citation. Might as well be Timecube or Stormfront, on the scale of ‘is this a person you can have a serious conversation with?’
I’m about to be the college graduate moving back in with her parents, actually. And god damn, I am soooooo looking forward to moving back in with my abusive father! I can’t wait to hear about all the harassment I’ll face about not looking hard enough while the only responses I’ve had to the resumes I’ve seen out are clearly scams. And boy oh boy the day when I get a position as a secretary (which, incidentally, is my dream job) or something and my father starts screaming about how it’s beneath me and I didn’t go to college for four years to answer someone’s phone is going to be just wonderful! Have I mentioned my severe depression yet? That’s going to be great to add to the mix!
Hey Nanasha: Shut the fuck up.
And if we’re going to talk about not working hard enough and mental illness being just something we have to push ourselves through:
I’m severely depressed. I barely attended class last semester, and I cut myself and have crying fits I can’t control on a regular basis. Even thinking about the future gives me panic attacks, because once I start, I can’t stop the constant stream of worries that I won’t be able to take care of myself/I’ll fail at my job/No one will hire me/I’ll end up stuck in a job that is hell on earth but that I can’t leave because there’s nothing else/etc.
Last semester I made the dean’s list. This semester I’ve stopped skipping class on a regular basis, and I’m on the dean’s list again, as well as working on my thesis. I have sent out resumes to dozens of companies and posted them online, despite the panic attacks that doing so has caused. I have a job on campus and I’m going to graduate free of student loans (though with almost no savings at all). I take antidepressants and I’ve spoken with therapists. I am working hard, by most anyone’s definition.
And not only do I still not have a job for after graduation, but I’m still also so panicked by the prospect of graduation that Sunday night, I had a five hour unstoppable sobbing fit, complete with clawing at my face, hyperventiliated, and giving serious contemplation and planning to stabbing myself in the spine, because if I were in a hospital for weeks for rehabilitation, I wouldn’t have to deal with the stress of graduating, and if I were paralyzed, I’m sure my parents would buy into the awful stereotype that it’s much harder for the disabled to do “normal” things and as such their expectations of me would be far lower.
RE: David
Sounds like your talk went well! Congrats! I really hope you put up a transcript (video access is the hardest thing for me to get ahold of and I also find video too immersive).
RE: Pecunium and Kirbywarp
Yeah, I’d be totally hosed in the zombie apocalypse. And you know what? I’m not particularly upset by this. I’m also not particularly upset that I would likely die quickly in ANY societal collapse. For god’s sake, I’m an ARTIST. I make up languages and write spec fic and scribble comics about Edward Cullen. I HAVE NO USEFUL SKILLS IN SOCIETAL COLLAPSE. (Except rudimentary gardening skills and the ability to clean and weed. Oh, can I clean and weed like a motherfucker!)
RE: Nanasha
I had a long comment written up, but really, it all boils down to a Monkey Island quote:
“You seem… bitter.”
“Sorry, it’s been a rough day.”
RE: lauralot
I have never, ever been so thankful that I’ve always been pretty lucky at finding jobs, even of the toilet-scrubbing variety, and that my mental borks are not depressive in variety. I am so sorry.
Hey Nanasha! Why is it that living independently is a morally superior move exactly? Lots of people live with roommates or friends or family. Everybody leans on somebody else in some way in their lives- NOBODY is truly independent or self-sufficient if they exist in a society.
But, you’ve decided that it’s okay to accept emotional or financial support from some people, but not others. You’re married, right? Then I’m sure you and your spouse probably help each other out all the time. You probably live together and help each other with chores too. If one of you earns more money than the other, you use that money together to support each other, even though one of you is contributing more money than the other. And I’m sure if you lost your super hard-working job that you earned with your own bootstraps, you would accept help from him. All of that is fine, of course.
But living with other family members, like parents or siblings (or whoever else), is inferior because…. why exactly? Some people value supporting other parts of their family when they are in need. Plenty of people need help from somebody, sometime, and for many people, that help will come from their family. If the help they need is support while they’re between jobs, then how does that make them inferior?
You’ve simply decided that most young college students who return are lazy, ungrateful leeches, sucking the life out of their naive parents because it lets you feel superior. It must be nice to be able to judge other people as inferior so easily. That makes you a smug asshole, of course, but you seem to like it.
tl;dr
I live with my parents- that does not make me a leech. So, seconding Lauralot- shut the fuck up. (Also, Lauralot- I’m sorry you’re having to deal with that)
RE: Pecunium and Kirbywarp
And I’ll definitely win the zombie apocalypse because I’ll be joining the winning team- team zombie. BRAAAAIIINS!!! Because physics sure as hell hasn’t prepared me for surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Hugs! Hugs for everyone!
LBT: Weeding like a motherfucker is a survival skill. Being able to count/write is a survival skill.
The best survival skill… the one that Lew Rockwell, et al (even, though he fails to understand it, our very own DKM) is teamwork. The biggest stumbling block to that is the idea that you know what’s going on better than everyone else.
I know a lot of shit. Push come to shove I could go all “Grizzley Adams” and hie me to the hills. But it’s a lot easier with help. It’s a lot easier if, when I don’t know how to do something (I’m so-so at knots) I don’t get all stuck on my pride, and sense of, “do it myself!”, that, like a two-year old, I make life more miserable for everyone.
This is just a true now, in a working society, as it is in a collapsed one.
Thing is, were it not for the kindess of friends, I’d be living in a box somewhere, if I weren’t in a different box, pushing up daisies. None of us is an island, ad those who rail at the people who are able to accept the blessings of other people being there for them, are the lesser for it.
Society is people working together. Family is society writ small. If family isn’t seen as being something which can help in times of need, why in the world should we think that strangers will chip in?
That’s the Brandon model of, “fuck you Jack, I got mine”. Yeah, some will say they are all for social security networks, but then they get all huffy about the “undeserving” (or just underderserving) who have the gall to make use of them.
Sorry, I’m not in a good headspace today, it’s making me bitter because I am unahappy. I ought to take the camera, and shoot some tulips, drink some coffee, and try to remember the world is what it is, and shit happens.
I’m with you QuantumSparkle, just remember to strap on a helmet before the hunger sets in, as a surprise for all those cricket bat wielding “survivors.” You should head down to the Costco, so many survival plans involve going there that there will be a veritible brain buffett of those that did not get inside in time. Good luck out there, and, as always, braaaaaiiiins…
RE: Quantumsparkle
Hey, physics means projectiles! ZOMBIE CATAPULT!
RE: Falconer
You seem a cool peep. You don’t happen to lurk up in my neck of the woods, do you? (I’m in MA, USA.)
RE: Pecunium
I approve immensely of this photographing tulips plan, and am sorry you’re in shit headspace. And I agree immensely with what you say about teamwork. I’ve pulled off some mental survival stunts in my day, but I am positive I wouldn’t have lived through the landing without the love and support I have the fortune to experience around me. (Ironically, I feel like my own mental breakage, in itself a result of trust violation, was what taught me to trust; I had to or I knew that this might be the crash I didn’t walk away from.)
Also, if in our post-apocalyptic wasteland, anyone ever needs a field of onion weed pulled up by hand before it goes to seed, without benefit of pesticides… I AM THAT MAN.
God I wish I remembered my knots from sailing class… they were always really hard for me to learn but SO MUCH USE IN THEM.
I definitely shouldn’t be commenting in this thread anymore (or maybe Manboobz at all, for a little while) but since I am no longer a zombie myself from staying up hours later than I should have, I’d like to clarify what I was saying about mental health.
The idea that psychological disorders are just something you need to “push through” seems to have come from me. It is, of course, absolute bullshit that the mentally ill just have to work harder and then everything will be fine. Sometimes — a lot of the time — it is just not possible. Even in the cases where we can “push through”, it’s still going to be way more difficult than doing the same thing without fighting depression/anxiety/whatever, for exactly the same remuneration. I wasn’t trying to dismiss any of these realities, or the lived experiences of anyone here, and I’m sorry that I did.
What I was really trying to say was that I don’t view the choices I am making, as far as leaning on my family, to be bad ones; and if I was in good mental health, they would still be totally valid choices. I felt as if the message being sent was that how I am living my life would be shameful, were it not for the fact that I have a fair excuse, depression. I don’t believe that in the slightest. Able people still need to lean on their families sometimes, though not always as often or as heavily. It is just as valid when able people pull strength from their families as when I do it. I resented the idea that it is just my mental health that makes what I’m doing acceptable. I also resented the idea that my mental health made what I was doing necessary, since, in my particular case, it is still possible (though less likely) for me to find employment. However, that is absolutely not true for everyone, and I don’t mean to speak for anyone other than myself.
Now I’m going to bail out of the thread for good, before I cause any more damage.