Unsurprisingly, our old friend “The Thinking Housewife” is aghast at the notion of women serving in combat. What is a little surprising is why. In one of her many recent posts on the subject she offers this unique take on the subject:
There are so many unexamined consequences of the full integration of women into the military that one barely knows where to start, but one of the obvious places is with the fact that the Armed Forces will be increasingly in the business of population control.
Yes, that’s right: women in combat means women using birth control. The horror!
You see, women who are nine momths pregnant can’t exactly serve on the front lines. So that means the military is going to have to get in the business of helping its women soldiers avoid becoming pregnant.
In addition to providing rations and equipment, troops in combat will need ample supplies of contraceptives — and under this mentality, it will be the military’s responsibility to prevent pregnancy. Given that pregnancies can be, even in the best of circumstances, “unintended,” a woman who becomes pregnant on tour after her unit runs out of birth control pills or condoms will now have cause to blame the military for her offspring’s existence. We will almost certainly see women suing the Army for damages after “unintended” pregnancy. And as a consequence, the military will need to become more and more involved in the effective sterilization of their female troops.
Um, what? Sterilization? When women stop using birth control, they can become pregnant. Heck, they can become pregnant while still using birth control. Calling female birth control “sterilization” is a bit like calling a condom a vasectomy.
She ends her piece with this doozy:
As I said before, women don’t join the military as equals of men in order to defend their country. They join it to destroy their country. An egalitarian military must embrace socially destructive ideals. What can be more emblematic of our times than a military unit equipped with guns to destroy the enemy and contraceptives to destroy future soldiers? We have lost both the will to fight and the will to live.
Time to pull out the Don Draper “what?” gif again.
Actually, I don’t think that will be adequate to convey the sheer WTFery of that conclusion. I’m pulling out the big guns this time.
I think it helps to adopt the “Losing is Fun” mentality when it comes to Dwarf Fortress. I first downloaded it after reading the Boatmurdered saga, and although I’ve never had the shit hit the fan in quite the same way Boatmurdered’s did, in the back of my mind I feel that it would be as worthy and memorable an experience as playing any well-managed, prosperous, and secure fort. Every failure is just another step on a very fun, steep learning curve, to me.
What cruel monster could engender such a world?! cry the Dwarfs, as they retreat underground and never come out again.
@Tulgey: What I do when I hit something I can’t get past, no matter what the game, is put it down and wander off to something else, and come back in a few months.
Or cheat like a bastard. That’s how I finished Heroes of Might and Magic III, cheating like a bastard.
I got to the end of Baldur’s Gate with tons of money because I would just create healing potions and magical ammunition. I made one of my character’s stats all 25s, and the game would still kill him regularly.
Oh, I put Pharaoh down because it took so long to get anywhere, I was just sitting there with the speed up, but if I cranked the speed up all the way the city would burn down before I could react 🙁
I don’t mind that DF is hard, but sometimes it feels artificially hard. Like the key bindings are inconsistent; what fun is there in a learning curve of trying to remember which key takes you back to the previous menu?
Melting dwarf fat is nothing compared to the mermaid-bone collection schemes some players have devised.
I’ve already said too much.
I’d like it better if I didn’t have to plan six hundred steps ahead all the time.
And yes, the key bindings are annoyingly inconsistent.
I can’t play the game at all without DwarfTherapist, which is a third-party app. When a third-party app that reads out the status of your dwarfs is almost necessary, it might point out a shortcoming in your program.
I’d like to devise a scheme whereby NONE of my dwarfs go mad and kill with blood and guts and veins in their teeth because they can’t find bones despite an entire fortress’ worth of piscaphobes gnoshing on turtle in the next room. >:(
Well, I suppose “piscaphobe” is unfair. They don’t fear fish so much as lose to fish.
These dwarfs are sounding like the ones in Oglaf … 😀
Carp! Carp are the Dwarfbane! Never underestimate a carp.
Yeah, forget the Hidden Fun Stuff. The seeds of your fortress’ fall are right there on the surface.
@Kitteh’s: The Fukken Dwarfs are brighter. Last time I played DF, the programmer hadn’t got around to programming the dwarfs to recognize when they are on fire. They’ll just walk around, burning merrily, until they lose their last hit point and keel over.
Woe betide you if they get thirsty while ablaze….
Twenty years I was 7, 2nd grade…still have no idea wtf mystery virus caused me to miss a month of school (I nearly missed he penguin party!)
And Pecunium was swearing into the military…I’m way too young to have grey hairs popping up!
Hey, you’re in good company, Argenti. The Mister went grey by the time he was thirty and took to colouring his hair (don’t believe the cretins who claim he wore wigs, I got the colouring info from primary evidence, and I don’t mean him).
Weren’t wigs common in the era in general? Just curious as I know they were the status quo in various periods.
Thanks though, and hey, it’s an excuse to dye it redder than it is naturally (which isn’t very red!)
They were around, but weren’t high fashion at that stage – they weren’t ubiquitous like they were from about the 1660s. Men’s hairstyles got longer and fuller through the ’40s and ’50s and it became standard for fashionable men to add hairpieces to bulk out their own, but eventually the demands of style were too much for any natural head of hair and full wigs came in. Ever read Samuel Pepys’s diary? He does a lot of agonising over whether to get a wig or not. Will everyone stare? Will it be a nuisance? Will it come from a plague victim and kill him? He was also reluctant to cut off his own hair, except keeping it clean was such a pain. He eventually caved and got a wig, and was kinda disappointed that nobody took a blind bit of notice when he wore it to church. 😀
N00b here.
Reddit is well known for being a douchebag hangout. If you wanna confess your dirty deeds or reveal your weaknesses there, prepare to be trolled.
Regarding what this woman did, I’m in no position to be a marriage counselor here but I really think that her if her hubby has found out what she did he should really get a divorce. People like this just never change. They can’t seem to get all their needs met by one person. She’s using her husband for emotional and finanicial support while she indulged her impulses to sleep with a man who clearly has little respect for her. She’s sounds very insecure and lacking in self-esteem in and self-respect. If I were the hubby I would be honest with her and say that despite her guilt and promises to change her ways, the damage has been done. Clearly there’s no easy way out of this for either party……:-/
I was half expecting it to be about how military uniforms are just too drab looking, but she managed to come up with something even stupider, which I suppose takes a certain kind of skill.
re: dwarf fortress, the most fun I had was a fortress in an evil climate with lots of zombies. 5 of my dwarves got killed (and zombified) before I even got underground, so I had to start my fortress with just two. My anvil was left on the surface and I couldn’t retrieve it (because zombies), but fortunately it was a sandy area, so I could make glass – lots of serrated green glass discs turned out to be highly effective in dismembering the undead. Eventually, I even got some migrants who managed to survive the trip. This is making me want to find time to play DF again.
Though the thing about dwarf fortress is, it’s not really THAT hard when you’re just trying to survive and create a fortress that can provide for itself (unless you start in a really unforgiving climate or have some really bad luck at the start, or both). And once you have that, the only thing left to do is start some crazy ambitious project like a device to pump magma on your enemies (which will presumably eventually lead to your dwarves’ horrific, yet amusing deaths), but I’ve never really had the patience nor imagination required for megaprojects. Which would probably explain why I usually get bored of it after playing for a few days.
CommanderToad — I want to reply to your comment in depth, but you’re on the wrong thread. Mind copy and pasting it on the proper thread so the conversation can make sense in context?
@ec: Very true. One can just seal a fort off with bridges, or, as a last measure, wall the dwarves off from their enemies. That’s why my latest fort has a giant room with floors of green glass bridges for the trapping and slaughtering of goblin sieges. Also, my first magma pump stack ever is 65% complete, so there’s the option of dropping goblins into the pit and then making them eat hot magma death.
Magma. It solves things.
katz: “Married dwarves at least get children, but dwarves who are friends get fuck-all.”
It’s the friend zone! Misandry!!
And they have to carry the hard chairs, penguins, and bon bons around.
If I understand the points people have made about red hair genetics correctly, and it’s a mix of “single mutation determines whether you’re a redhead at all” and “multiple contributing genes influence hair color, thus affecting how clearly the redheadedness is expressed”, that would finally explain the phenomenon of “stealth gingers” to me.
You know how you sometimes meet someone who looks basically blonde but with just a tinge of strawberry blonde to it, or has brown hair that has just a bit of an auburn shade… and then you notice that they also have quite a few freckles… and eventually you go “waitaminnit, are you actually a redhead? Cool!”
And these Dwarf Fortress comments are a great example of why I love that game. I have never played it, but the conversations about the absurd stuff that happens in it never fail to make me laugh until my spleen hurts.
@ Kiwi girl: considering most of the chairs in the game end up being made of rock (and possibly studded with metal or menacing with spikes), I’m betting Tom Martin would absolutely hate it.