One effect of living within the ideological bubble of the Men’s Rights movement is what you might call ideological inflation: MRAs start off believing, for example, that women don’t face discrimination today, in the developed world — an idea that’s wrong enough to start with. But then, surrounded by other delusional MRAs who reinforce their every wrong notion, the denizens of the Men’s Rights bubble come to believe that women haven’t ever been discriminated against anywhere and at any time in the history of the world. (You may recall those evil cavewomen who sat around eating prehistoric bon bons while the men hunted the mammoth to feed them.)
And that leads to things like the following video, in which the FeMRA video maker who calls herself The Wooly Bumblebee declares war on a pair of “Misandric Pants” she bought for her daughter by accident.
Yep, that’s right, she’s furious because one fucking percent of the proceeds made from selling these pants goes to a charity fighting against the very real discrimination and oppression that girls face all over the globe. You know, like being denied educations because they’re girls. Like being forced into child marriages with adult men. Like being forced into prostitution as children. That sort of thing.
Apparently girls don’t suffer from being repeatedly raped as children. But boys are totally oppressed because a tiny portion of the profits from a pair of pants goes to a charity that talks about, and tries to do something about, the shit girls have to endure because they are girls.
“Whut? Smoke free relates to kid friendly how? At first blush is looks as if smoke filled = kid friendly, but I doubt that’s what they mean.”
@pecunium, my shop announcement just said I made my cat smoke outside, but I never mentioned I had a kid *oops*
Yes, I found the “made in Rosemead” on the last bottle of sriracha I bought (while living in PA lol). Unfortunately there seems to be a preservative or something in it that gives me stomach pains, so I stick to Tapatio, or just chili flakes if I’m cooking Asian. Unless I can find chili garlic paste, yum.
Btw, re:wool carding, do you have a carding drum? combs?
To get back to the “misandric pants” for a moment, improving the education and status of girls in poor countries is probably the single most beneficial goal for everyone there: it leads to smaller families in the next generation, which means lower infant mortality, better health, and more resources for the children of that generation, lower unemployment when they grow up, a more equal sex ratio so the boys who want to find a wife when they reach adulthood have a better chance of doing so, less environmental damage… Opposition to prioritising women and girls isn’t “anti-misandrist” – it’s anti-human.
I loved the landing sequence in SPR; I’m not much of an action film fan but I adore a good bang-up action scene (and I have a fairly willing suspension of disbelieve if the artistry is good enough; the trainwreck sequence in Super 8 was AWESOME). Spielberg is a very capable filmmaker, but he gives in to the maudlin and saccharin too easily, and his endings lapse almost invariable into unnecessary schmalz : P Not to mention the King of Emotional Manipulation by Score he uses every single time, meh.
heathenbee – I am absolutely in accord with you that the psychological aspect of Pan’s Labyrinth is part of what makes it so gut-wrenching.
Ahh, Dante! Doesn’t tell me who you are, really (and neither does a quick perusal of your livejournal) but at least gives me a sense of the crowd. 🙂
I need to get combs. Then I’ll be able to better manage just what sort of yarn I’m making. I have other needs before I spend money on a drum carder (rewinder/bobbins, maybe a skein winder, swift, ball winder, etc.).
Making the cat smoke outside seems perfectly reasonable.
@Argenti, if I wanna freak my kid out, I go outside the kitchen door at night and mouth “Mummy? are you my mummy?” at him through the window ; )
@pecunium, I looked through your flickr last night and was ogling your spinning wheel! My mom used to weave professionally and her studio is filled with fiber toys: three floor looms (one tapestry, two 4-harness), a traditional-style wheel, carding drum, swifts, plus combs and drop spindles etc. And I don’t know how many bags of unprocessed mohair….. I never enjoyed weaving, nor crocheting or knitting; but I’d love to try spinning again, I really enjoyed it.
pecunium:
In my experience, you’ll want a swift and ball-winder first (they work together, and you can use a swift to wind skeins though a niddy-noddy is generally cheaper). You can use the ball-winder to replace bobbins–wind your singles into center-pull balls and use those to ply and you don’t have to worry about how many bobbins you have. You can order than off Joann’s with coupons, though I got my swift from knitpicks.
I agree with you about cats smoking outside, but my kitties aren’t allowed outside, so they don’t get to smoke. I actually have had one of my cats come up behind me and sit behind me while I spun.
Also, for those who didn’t know, there are more foster kittens:
http://new.livestream.com/FosterKittenCam/RipleysKittens
I think from experience, I prefer a rewinder for plying, to working from balls.. I have a niddy-noddy already. Niddy-noddies are better at making skeins than swifts. Since woollen wants to rest before plying, I’d like to have more spinning bobbins (as opposed to plying bobbins). Of course I really want a bulky flyer, so I can make longer skeins.
The equipment, it adds up.
heathenbee. A spindle is cheap, and (apart from plying being a bit more of a nuisance) lets you make yarn pretty efficiently. It’s also portable. I spin on the subway.
My tip if you want to pick up a spindle: don’t buy the kit with the hexagon spindle (I forget the brand). The thing is so cheap that mine split near the hook the first day I was using it (when I was putting the “drop” in “drop spindle”).
I agree/disagree with everyone about Pan’s Labyrinth. The violence is indeed not “movie violence,” and it is indeed very “effective” – but in my case, the effect in question was “triggered a panic attack so severe I had to run out of the theatre and vomit repeatedly.” I never even saw most of the movie; after the scene with the guy’s face being smashed in there was no chance in hell I was going back. There’s no doubt that scenes like that are effective in bringing home the whole “violence = terrifying and awful” message, but I question the value of exposing people to that without warning – because, as people said, it’s NOT normal movie violence, and so simply being told “this movie features violent and disturbing scenes” did nothing to prepare me for that.
I’m not one to support censoring art, and by all accounts it’s a great movie from an artistic perspective – but I wish very much there had been some sort of warning to let me know it wasn’t for me, and I question whether the artistic benefits of showing a scene like that where the violence is so very sudden, brutal, and non-movie-ish outweigh the fact that even just writing about it years later I’m fighting down a wave of panic and nausea. I don’t do well with that sort of violence; I can explode zombie heads in video games all day, but that…no. Just no.
(I may also be a little bitter because the douchebags I saw the movie with proceeded to come find me afterwards and make fun of me for being a “wuss.” While I was still kinda crying and asking to be taken home to get my anxiety meds. Ugh.)
Pollywog–I’m so sorry. We should come up with a way to warn against movies like that and separate them out from other violence, but… it is hard.
I’m pretty sure I spent half that movie with my hands over my eyes. I’m still glad I saw it, but I’m not interested in re-watching it.
Ha, heathenbee, you think you had a lot of comments to catch up on? 😉
Pecunium – yes, I knew the Aran Islands are a place. The jumpers were fishing jerseys to begin with.
And yay to the Goon Show!
You silly, twisted boy. (Grytpype-Thynne’s line would be perfect for use on trolls.)
First she was livid that she had the option to buy a one dollar hat at her child’s school to support the charity “because I’m a girl”, saying she was being shamed into it. Now she returned a pair of pants because once again she is outraged that the money goes to girls rather than boys. In actuality they do go to boys because women there tend to run households with males. Not to mention when they find water I find it unlikely only females benefit. It’s like being extremely angry that there is a program called boy scouts. Oh well. No hope for Mrs. W.B.
Pecunium, have you tried Turkish spindles? I’ve read that they give you a center pull yarn ball and you can ply with them. I’ve decided that if I get into spinning that’s the type of spindle I’ll make.
As for carding wool, how well do you think brushes for dogs would work?
pilllowinhell — “As for the Ponds, we have a woman who spent her entire existance waiting for one man AND she likes to abuse Rory who is willing to put up with it why?”
I’m not sure she was really waiting for him so much as stuck there (assuming you mean the two streams fuck up). As for the latter though, OMFGS yes. Rory’s whole “last time I said something like that you hit me with your shoe” is Not. Okay.
MAPLE SYRUP REPORT:
Had it on porridge this morning.
Yum!
“Ha, heathenbee, you think you had a lot of comments to catch up on? ;)”
Yes, and I made plenty of my own to pay you evil people back, bwa hah hah!
MAPLE SYRUP YAY!
LOL!
Oh god, polliwog, I am so so sorry for you for all that : ( : ( : (
There’s no knowing how some elements may trigger in any movie for any filmgoer. I’m kinda guessing there will indeed be an algorithm for an app where one can answer a series of trigger questions to vet a film (or other media unit) before committing to the experience. In the meantime? I feel for you, truly.
Polliwog, I’m sorry, that’s awful.
I love del Toro’s “The Devil’s Backbone.” Also beautiful and not as violent.
RE Pacific Rim – it’s a live-action Macross! In the hands of someone like Michael Bay I’d be horrified, but Del Toro can pull it off.
On the violence in Pan’s Labyrinth, that was definitely a deliberate choice. He’s an unusually intelligent director, Del Toro, and I think he played the contrast between the fantasy world and the far more scary reality perfectly. It’s one of those classic “we’ve seen the real monsters, and they’re us” fantasy moments.
On the original comment, Nick is correct. There’s a strong correlation between women being educated and all kinds of other positive outcomes. Women who are more educated tend to voluntarily limit their family size, all over the world. NGOs give supplies to women rather than men because the women tend to distribute them more fairly. Yes, I know it upsets MRAs to have things like this pointed out, but feminism isn’t the only reason why focusing on women is a smart thing to do if your goal is to lift entire societies out of poverty and fix other social problems.
(The fact that they lose their shit whenever this is pointed out is one of the best illustrations of how irrational they are about women. It’s a weird combination of hatred and fear that’s quite distinct from the sort of regular old sexism that you see all over the place – not just an exaggerated version, I think, a different category of problem.)
“It’s one of those classic “we’ve seen the real monsters, and they’re us” fantasy moments. ”
@Cassandra, *exactly*!!! This is why I get upset when current events get dismissed as acts of evil, as if the rest of us “normals” are exempt from human evil. We’re not; none of us is : /
I may have to try that one at some point, because I do think he seems like a really talented director, but that sort of violence is just thoroughly Not For Me. (And thanks, everyone who said nice things. I make a point of not seeing movies with those particular people anymore – sadly, they were mostly family members, so I can’t make a point of not doing anything with them, much as I’d like to.)
Also, it frustrates me sometimes how bad a job movie ratings do at communicating anything meaningful. I feel like almost anyone can viscerally understand the difference between a scene like the one that triggered me so badly and a scene of, like, a B-movie hero chopping off zombie limbs with a chainsaw while spurts of red corn syrup shoot out of the wounds, but both of them will generally simply be listed as being rated R because of violence. (Of course, it gets even dumber if you don’t look at even those vague reasons behind the ratings – it drives me bonkers that “this movie features a penis,” “this movie features someone saying ‘fuck’ several times” and “this movie features brutal murders” are all presented as being essentially the same amount of disturbing/”mature.”)