Always hilarious: painfully unfunny dudes explaining how women just aren’t funny. Over on Chateau Heartiste, the Heartiste formerly known as Roissy drops some (pseudo) SCIENCE on us all:
[C] hicks dig male status, dominance and personality as much as, or more than, they dig male looks. Men, on the other hand, dig beauty first and foremost, and a woman’s comedic timing, however it might make a man laugh, won’t stir his schnitzel if she’s a dog.
Since women don’t see a benefit from humor in the competition to attract men, their sex, on average when compared to men, has not evolved a strong cortical humor module. Women are better equipped to appreciate humor than they are to produce humor.
Apparently, if you use the same words that scientists use – like “cortical” and “module” – that makes it true!
But there is more to this Old Misogynist’s Tale. As Heartiste explains, it’s cruel humor that women appreciate most of all — in their lady regions. In other words, chicks like dicks:
[W]omen become sexually aroused by men who expertly wield the soulkilling shiv of sadism. …
Cruelty that is delivered with supreme confidence, bemused detachment, and eviscerating precision is catnip to women’s kitties.
Get it? Kitties = pussies = VAGINAS.
Ba-dump-tssh! Heartiste is on a roll.
So let’s see some examples of the sort of masterfully eviscerating humor that makes the ladies weak in their knees and gets their “kitties” excited. (Note: By kitties I am, like Heartiste, referring to vaginas. Exciting a woman’s actual kitties is better done with shiny objects and mouse-shaped toys.)
Anyway, here are some of Heartiste’s examples of cruel humor at its most exquisite, which he has helpfully rendered in dialogue form:
Me: Sweetcheeks, look. That bum just winked at you. He wants to take you back to his cardboard box. [waving at bum] Hi, bum!
Her: [struggling to conceal a grin] Shh, stop that. Stop waving. You’re horrible.
Truly, bum-mockery at its finest.
But he’s only getting started:
Me: You want to take a bus? Forget it. [nodding in direction of obese woman] She ate it.
Her: [looking heavenward] Oh my god, I can’t believe you just said that.
Aw yeah. Suggesting that a fat person has just eaten something comically large: comedy gold!
After some further jests on the topics of male boobs (hmm), the size of black men’s cocks, and raping the disabled (yes, really), our hero is in like Flynn, well on his way to all-caps “TRIUMPHAL SEX.”
The way it will usually go down is like this: You revel in your cruelty. She reacts with manufactured disapproval, often stifling laughter. Her vagina moistens. A wave of hidden shame releases a continuous flow of blood to her vaginal walls, maintaining her in a semi-aroused state all day long. Later that night, the floodgates open and you slip in like a lubed eel.
Yipes. That is about as erotic as Gilbert Gottfried reading from 50 Shades of Grey.
I’m pretty sure the only reason Heartiste can maintain his belief that women can’t do cruel humor themselves is that he’s never heard what they say about him once he leaves the room.
Yeah, as far as I know I’m the only person here who fits that description.
Um, ew?
Christians who complain about atheists refusing to play along or mocking them should seriously get the fuck over it. The powerful majority that often uses its religion as an excuse to foist its beliefs on others crying crocodile tears about those meany meany unpopular minority groups when it comes to religious opinions elicits no sympathy from me. And calling out Christianity’s history of oppressive behavior and current trends in oppressive behavior is seen as being a mean meany and not “respectful”. Refusing to play “all opinions are equally valid” is not in and of itself out of line at all.
Christians can say that their religion requires them to spend millions of dollars trying to deny me civil rights, but if I were to call their deities fictional and zombies, I’m the one who needs to be more respectful? People need to get their priorities straight.
When atheists go after unpopular minority religions in a disproportionate way (which by and large tends to be no fucking more than the average Christian behavior on the matter) they deserve to be called out for their targeting, imperialism, racism, etc. not their mere refusal to pretend like religion is a legitimate thing in general. But as for white (or white coded branches of) Christians complaining about atheists not being “respectful”, smallest fucking violin in the world over here.
I don’t see loving Christmas without being Christian as odd at all. Christianity took a pagan midwinter festival and co-opted it as a celebration of Jesus’ birth. Now a lot of people take the celebration of Jesus’ birth and co-opt it as a celebration of family and friends and being excellent to each other. The wheel turns.
I would love to see Thanksgiving with NWO’s family. I’m sure there’s lots of eye-rolling and furtive whispers in the kitchen about his behavior.
Worst Robert De Niro comedy ever. And that’s fucking saying something.
Intent’s not magic. I don’t generally like to mock religion because it can get pretty meanspirited sometimes and it’s usually an in-group morale boosting thing I don’t really want to participate in. But the fact that religious people “mean well” or are trying to “comfort” themselves or whatever is near irrelevant.
I went to a funeral for my aunt a few weeks ago and I’m sure the pastor who lead it wanted to comfort us all. But he spent the entire funeral telling everyone to “go to Jesus”. He said that nobody should be sad because she’s in Heaven and said repeatedly that the only correct way to deal with your grief was to be “saved” and believe fervently that you were going to be reunited with her under Christ. He also spent time preaching against “false religions” and how no other religion had the message of salvation and therefore was useless. I’m not going to respect someone’s “intent” when they blatantly step all over the non-religious and the non-Christian and the non-evangelical-Protestant. If he intended to comfort us then he ought to have fucking sat down and thought really hard about death and grief and realized that dismissing everyone’s pain in favor of a bland message about Jesus (that everyone in the US has heard 9000 times) is a fucking awful thing to do.
Also I know a lot of people here still love the cultural aspects and rituals of Christianity but I never really found any value in it even when I was a Christian, and a lot of people who deconvert from Christianity deconvert due to the culture and community. I hope everyone here realizes that the culture/rituals/community aren’t beyond criticism and that it’s not just the beliefs or tenets or doctrines of Christianity that do the work in oppressing people of other faiths or no faith. To some extent the actual doctrine of a religion is infinitely flexible (i.e. look at the difference between Catholicism, Mormonism, gnostic Christians and the Christian Identity movement) where it’s the culture that doesn’t budge and that determines the relative flexibility and content of beliefs. So someone’s “intent” is always going to occur within a certain context; for example, if a Christian Unitarian says they love all people under God it’s going to mean something completely different than if a white conservative evangelical Protestant tells me they love all people under God (because their idea of love includes “forcing me to stop experiencing same-sex sexual attraction” and “preventing women from having abortions”). You have to realize that even if you feel included and safe in a particular Christian or other religious context that not everyone else will. There’s this narrative that people like to perpetuate about religion that the ritual and the culture is awesome, or at least neutral and separable from everything else, and why can’t atheists join in or at least leave it alone and stop being such spoilsports?!?!?! Some people have been deeply burned or hurt by (a) religion, and they are not going to want to participate, and they have every right to speak out about this when they want to regardless of whether or not they harsh your buzz. There are more or less appropriate times to do this, of course, but you don’t get to shut their voice down just because they’re being critical (as DSC said, and being racist/imperialist/whatever is of course different). If you don’t want to see criticisms or mockery of your religion or your religious views you can always not read them or listen to them; this is what I did when I was a Christian.
The two worst things that people said to my 16-year-old self after my father died of a heart attack (on his 47th birthday) was, “God has a plan” and “God never gives you more than you can handle.” At the time, in my grief, the only thing I could think in response was, “Well, God’s a supreme asshole, then.”
There were already other things that had started leading me away from Christianity at that point in my life (I’m an agnostic), but the bizarre response we got from our church after my dad died was what finally pushed me out completely. At that point I still believed that the community aspects of church were very important. But our congregation treated us like pariahs after his death. They were so uncomfortable with a young widow and her two children that their response was to pretend we weren’t there. It made the whole situation that much worse. The support network that is supposedly provided by a church congregation was nonexistent.
My mother has since left that church and gone to another one. As for me, I find organized religion to be nothing more than social control in which the powerful coerce and manipulate their followers for no other reason than to maintain their authority.
Also, the lesson I eventually learned from my father’s death did not come from the church. And it is that terrible things may happen in life, but it is how you respond, learn, and grow from them that is the true test of your spirit and character. But FYI, “God has a plan” is NOT a nice thing to say to someone who’s just lost a loved one.
I have a fairly similar story, Kladle. When my maternal grandmother died, the prayers were nice enough, but the funeral mass was incredibly painful to get through*. The entire mass was about how it’s lucky she believed in God, otherwise she’d be going to Hell, and you’ll go to Hell too when you die — maybe soon! — if you don’t fall in line like a good Catholic. It wasn’t even about the wonderful woman we had lost. She was a prop, a means to bring in more people of diverse faiths and nonbelievers so that we could be condemned. She could have been anyone, and the mass would have been identical. It sickened me. I was there for my beloved grandma, not for that.
My mom’s grandma died the year mom got divorced. She still considered herself Catholic a that time. I think it hurts her to this day that she was about to go up for communion at the funeral as part of her grieving process and several relatives shot her dirty looks until she sat back down. Communion is not for fallen women, apparently.
Now, when my dad’s parents died, fairly close together, we had both of their services in a funeral parlour, not a church (as they wished). They were Catholic, too, and the services acknowledged and respected their religious beliefs, while still making room for the varied beliefs/non-belief of their family and friends. I didn’t participate in all of the prayers, because gods and angels have no meaning for me, but I felt the love and respect that they showed for our loved ones. There’s no reason a funeral can’t be both religious and inclusive.
*Maybe everybody knows this, but Catholic funerals are typically split into two halves: the prayers, which are pretty much like any other funeral service where loved ones get a chance to speak and pray; and the funeral mass, which is a mass devoted to discussing the deceased.
I am such a terrible communicator, wow. My Dad’s parents wanted their funerals to take place in a funeral parlour. They did not want them to take place in a church. My family respected their wishes. It shows off my pretty awesome writing skills that I made it look like the opposite.
Cloudiah: I have made one. I had to look it up, because I was (incorrectly) calling it a clafoutis (which is it, except that clafoutis, it seems, is made, specifically, with cherries). Now I wish was going to work so I could get one at the bakery across the street from the shop.
My little religious journey is this:
-I was raised Jewish. I pretty much always hated it. It was painfully restrictive, and, in my family, came as part of the package deal with “We’ve got your whole life planned out for you, and all you need to do is execute this plan perfectly.” Being a good Jew was just part of the plan that I was constantly failing to live up to.
Did I believe in the Jewish God? Sort of. Mostly it was irrelevant whether I believed, so long as I followed all the rules and planned to marry another Jew and raise the kids Jewish so they could continue the cycle of awkward obligation.
-In college, I became an atheist. It was tremendously freeing, but eventually, I kind of fell out with other atheists because the religion-mocking started feeling narrow-minded and mean-spirited to me. Any mockery that applies equally to hellfire Evangelical churches and ultra-accepting UU churches–because they’re “godbags” either way–wasn’t getting at the real problem here.
If someone believes God hates gay people, the thing they need to change is the hating gay people, not the God part. If they stay a believer, but start believing God loves and wants them to be kind to gay people, that’s fine too.
-At some point in my adulthood I rediscovered–maybe just discovered–religious belief. What I believe is very loose and includes no particular commandments about behavior (I think God/Gods care about as much if I have unmarried sex as a rock cares if another rock rolls down a hill), but it is a belief. Ultimately, probably an irrational and unfounded belief. But I try very hard to keep it a harmless irrational belief.
-My partner is Christian and uses it to be a better person. He’s kept very strongly to the “love your neighbor” and “practice forgiveness” parts and not at all to the various “also XYZ is an abomination and cast them out” parts. He has a lot of love and patience for others and a lot of motivation to give and volunteer for charity, and Jesus is part of his motivation for that. There’s no question that he’s cherry-picking parts of Christianity based on a liberal morality, but that doesn’t make him not a Christian; it only says that he’s a very particular kind of Christian.
TL;DR: There are a ton of people who use religion as an excuse to be jerks. I get uncomfortable when people go viciously after the “religion” part instead of the “jerk” part.
NWO: This is why we call you both ignorant, and an Anti-semite:
Well, what can one expect from the decendants of the very people who decided to crucify him for their amusement? Who brought us such gems as the talmud, the defining book of the Jewish faith. Worshippers of themselves and gold.
The Talmud isn’t the defining book of the Jewish faith, that would be the Torah, though the Tanakh is close (in that it has the Torah, and the Prophets… what you would call the Old Testament).
And the bit about worshiping themselves and gold??? Christ on a crutch, could you be more classically anti-semitic, you child-leering (he who looks on a woman with lust in his heart is a fornicator, right? Go forth and sin no more), bearer of false-witness who misses the entire point of every biblical story he brings up.
It’s not anyone’s faith that’s being mocked. It’s just that you (along with far too many right-wing, fascistic, religious fanatics) have your boxers in a bunch because someone said something which wasn’t abject, slavish, adoration of your iterations of religion.
Go and sit on a crucifix, for Christ’s sake
How about, Jesus Christ, sweet semen sucking savior? That’s been used here quite often as well.
It has? No, it hasn’t. I’ll bet it’s the first time it’s been used here (more of that false witness you are so fond of bearing).
After all, ridiculing my faith is promoted by Dave,
Nope. Ridiculing your lies, your hypocrisies, your (by the doctrines of the faith you profess to believe) unrepentent sins; those are fine and dandy.
I, for one, happen to dislike simple religion bashing, and blanket statements about it. I’ve gotten into a couple of heated discussions about it here, because of that disagreement.
But I’ve studied religions, and in particular mine, and I can say that your interpretations are, while not completely unique, pretty fucking novel, and your case of the vapors about people using Jesus name, are precious; given how vile and hateful you are; while professing to adhere to a religion which has the central tenet of, “be good to each other”.
I won’t can’t say, because I don’t presume to know the mind of God; and you might reform, but if you were to die tomorrow, I’d expect you to be cast into the Outer Darkness, where there is nothing but wailing and gnashing of teeth; because you are a goat†.
Happily, for me, I don’t believe in an afterlife of permanent suffering (it’s incompatible with a deity of loving nature) so even when I think there is an afterlife* I am not afraid of everlasting torment, and I can be comforted in the thought that I am not trying to damn you to such a thing. But that’s a theological problem you aren’t equipped to handle. I know this because Christ on a pogo stick, you are in a frothy rage because someone didn’t kowtow to your desire to have every last symbol of your faith (a belief which is based on nothing more than that you believe it) treated as if it were factually true, while abusing the same faiths of others.
Fix the beam in your eyes, before you stab at the motes in others.
I’ll accept that anyone here can ridicule my faith and heritage as long as I can do the same in return.
No, you don’t. Because you’ve done this rant before. And you got to be as insulting as you wanted, and no one stopped you; not even Dave (who is even now letting you, just as he let you last time around). So you got what you said you wanted, and you are still bitching that someone, somewhere, said a neutral thing that has Jesus’ name in it, and isn’t “respectful enough”.
So I repeat, you can go sit on a crucifix, and run about 12 volts through it.
†Matthew 25:31-46
When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment:
*my theism is a weak one, and I am not even willing to say it’s not more than just a framework for apprehending the wonder and joy in the world. I have bouts of agnosticism, but I digress
1) We don’t always do that. Some people don’t get that treatment because nobody likes them. 2) We don’t always do that. Some people don’t get that treatment because there’s too much death going on at that time. When one starts looking at what situations that does and doesn’t happen, one can’t stand by the idea that such actions are ridiculous.
The only way to criticize Christianity without getting called a jerk is to do so without being noticed.
Right.
“Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ” is, (I think? cursory Googling didn’t confirm it) originally a reference to the way someone’s legs would dangle while they were hanging from a cross (although all the depictions of this I’ve seen have him with his legs secured), so it could be taken as mildly nasty. I doubt that most people who use the expression are thinking of it that way, though. It’s become so divorced from the original meaning that it’s hardly offensive — sort of like ‘Zounds’ or ‘Gadzooks’, which started out as blasphemous (swearing by ‘God’s wounds’ or ‘God’s hooks [ie, the nails]) and are now what knights say in cartoons.
I don’t think so. Tap-dancing is relatively new, and for all the various oddities of a grotesque torture becoming the icon of Chritianity, that sort of “dance” is, when it shows up (to do a fine jig between heaven and hell: to use an Irish locution), a reference to “turn off” hanging, which is how public execution was done in England until well into the 19th century: v.r. gur ivpgvz jnf gnxra gb gur gbc bs n ynqqre, naq gura gur ynqqre jnf ebgngrq, fb gurl jrer fjvatvat ng gur raq bs gur ebcr. (ROT 13 for being graphic)
Crucifixion was always done with the legs secured because it prolonged the suffering. Rome was possessed of a twisted morbidity, and enjoyment of making people suffer.
i was raised by atheists and ive pretty much always been an atheist, i guess ive thought a good bit about the possibility of some sort of god existing but it always comes down to, ‘well, i know i dont believe it, so that’s that’
But you’re using that same tactic to try to feel superior to me, too!
…No, seriously, you are.
I dunno, I find “the practices of conservative Christian organizations are holding back advancement and causing widespread suffering in this country” a whole lot more persuasive than “but zombies aren’t real!”
I wanna distinguish ‘jesus isnt real’ which sounds kind of silly, from ‘god isnt real’ which is really just the converse of ‘god is real’ and i feel is a perfectly sensible way of expressing my atheism
LOVE the faux outrage you’re wearing, slavey. But does it come in any other colours?
@pecunium/argenti
i obviously meant ‘converse’ in a colloquial sense and i swear if yall go all debate team logic wank on me…
I’ve been too hard on Christianity before, and that’s wrong of me. After leaving fundamentalism as a teen, I felt some resentment towards people who had taught me “Everything is a sin. You are bad, and you will be burned alive forever unless you do everything and believe everything we say”. I associated all of Christianity with the bad apples I’ve been around in the Bible belt. So anyway, it’s not fair to judge liberal Christians that are accepting of everyone by the actions of the Christian Coalition.
Now as for the sayings “God has a plan” and “God never gives you more than you can handle”, I agree they are hurtful rather than comforting. I know it’s hard to know what to say to someone who is grieving, but it’s probably better to say nothing than to just say a platitude that has unfortunate implications. That’s why when my aunt and others told us stuff like “God saved you” or “God was watching out for you, and he still has a plan for you” last year, it made me feel worse. Why would God save some people and not everyone?
Another platitude that needs to be dropped is “God works in mysterious ways”. I heard that one a lot, too. It’s better than the assholes that say disasters are God’s wrath, but it feels like it’s in the same ballpark.
People who try and use their religious beliefs as a shield to say whatever vile thing that they want about other people are like that kid in elementary school that everyone hated who would stand behind the teacher and flip people off and then feign innocence when the teacher turned around.
You have the right to believe in deity(ies)/religious stuff/engage in ritual, etc.
But hatred, bigotry, legal discrimination, etc….those are not protected by your BELIEF in religion. Those other different sorts of beliefs- and can only really be justified by using religion as a convenient shield.
It’s like my political science teacher used to say in senior year of high school:
“As a Catholic, I like wearing the medallion of my patron saint around my neck, as it gives me comfort and is a sign of my faith. This is like my right to my religion. It does not interfere directly with others, but gives comfort to myself. If, on the other hand, I were to drag a huge wooden cross down the hallway each morning with a thorny crown on my head screaming about how the non-believers are sinners and are going to a fiery punishment in hell, THAT would be infringing on your rights to believe (or not believe) as you wish. Subjecting others to religion against their will is just as wrong as being told that I am not “allowed” to have faith.”
I have never had faith, personally, so I don’t really understand it.
But I do understand the idea of *wishing* there was some big, all-powerful/good/knowing person out there looking out for the humans and keeping them in line. Do you have any idea how great it would be if, any time someone tried to abuse, rape, murder, or victimize someone else, that a big hand would come out of the sky and stop them? Or that the criminal person would be touched by the Spirit and magically not want to hurt others? It’s very, very seductive to think that would be a really awesome universe to live in. But that is not reality, so I have to cope with that fact, and pretending to have faith just doesn’t work for me.
So blah. Wouldn’t it be great if people didn’t think that a right to religious beliefs meant that they had a right to also put every other belief that they hold under the umbrella of “respect my religious beliefs”?
For those atheists here who are also on Facebook, I want to plug a group called Grief Beyond Belief. It provides advice and support for atheists who are in mourning. Good resource.
I’ve got some dear friends who have a toddler. I was over at their house just about bed time one day, and their bedtime rituals include reading story books, telling bedtime stories, and reciting in chorus John 3:16.
I kind of wish they would leave the babby alone to make up hir own mind later, but what can I do about that?
I wasn’t really raised religious. My folks sent me to Sunday school for a bit, but I came home asking about whether our cats would go to Heaven when they died and they decided it was indoctrinating and stopped, so I could make up my own mind.
What I finally decided along about high school was that I am an atheist. I don’t merely assert that the case for God is simply not proven, I actively affirm that there is no evidence for God or any higher power and there’s actually no need for higher powers.
Of course, this then leaves me twisting on the cruel horns of physics and chemistry. I’d like to think I know as much about the cruel indifference of the physics of auto collisions as the next person. The comforting thing is, when we understand why people get hurt or killed in car accidents, we can take steps to mitigate the injuries (seat belts, air bags, crumple zones, designing the engine to drop down and back so it doesn’t end up in our laps, etc.).
Likewise, germ theory helps us stop some of the worst diseases in history. Then it gives us MRSA to kill us, because evolution doesn’t stop. But we’ll solve that, too, eventually.
@Cloudiah- that’s really awesome. Thanks for the suggestion.
However, I would have to say that when people in my life die, it makes me sad because I can’t see them anymore, but the thing that makes me happiest is telling stories about them- remembering them in ways that honor who they were.
All I can say is that I am very damn lucky that my grandmother lived to be 97 and was in full control of her mental and physical faculties and lived at home until she just suddenly died of stroke. I really, really miss her, but I don’t think there is anything that could change that fact.
Seriously, if I could have given her a decade or two of my own time, I would have. She was the most gracious, kind, giving, loving and non-judgmental person I’ve ever known, and she always opened her door to let people know they were welcome. Her house was always having visitors and she always knew the local news from everyone out in the family. If anyone knew how to talk about or help with a problem, it was her.
It kills me that I can’t call her anymore.
I can only hope that I too can be that sort of person to others.
*promises not to go debate team logic on Sharculese*
On (current) topic — “I dunno, I find ‘the practices of conservative Christian organizations are holding back advancement and causing widespread suffering in this country’ a whole lot more persuasive than ‘but zombies aren’t real!'”
Seconding that.