Mocking misogyny: It’s not just for the present day. Here, from 1915, a pointed parody of misogynistic anti-Suffrage arguments by writer/poet Alice Duer Miller. (Note to extremely literal-minded MRAs: She was not actually advocating that men have the vote taken away from them. Nor are we.)
You can find many more examples of Miller’s sharp wit in her 1915 collection Are Women People? The whole thing is available online and in various ebook formats on Project Gutenberg.
Graphic via Roqayah Chamseddine (@iRevolt on Twitter).
@LBT
Yeah, but I get hating the thing that makes you different. When I was a kid, I used to cry a lot and people (adults too) were often pretty mean about it. I hated that I cried instead of hating the people who were mean. Now, I think they were just jerky kids and clueless adults. I still have a strange relationship with crying, though, and I had to work really hard not to judge people who cry in public after I’d worked so hard to never do that.
I can see developing a real love/hate relationship with money as a result of bad experiences in childhood.
Naïf: You’re not Jewish, but you speak the lingo which isn’t common.
Which tells you what? Not much. The things about me/us you don’t know, which will bite you in the ass when you start to assume you can, “read” us are legion.
Moreover, I note that you don’t respond when I do, “speak the lingo”. So we’ll just chalk that up to you admitting, by silence, that you were wrong.
random – hi, nice to see you commenting again! Don’t feel awkward, it’s great when lurkers delurk. 🙂
So, a Diogenes got banned from Straight Dope? Any details you’d like to share? It’d be interesting to know if it’s the same idiot.
random6x7: I remember you. Do tell about this Diogenes who got the Straight Dope to give him the boot.
And oh yeah, to elaborate on this: If you are able to come up with criteria, you probably have reasons for your beliefs.
I came up with criteria for the list of personal and moral failings I see in you. I’m glad to see you admitting I have reasons for my beliefs.
RE: pecunium
False dilemma, and a primary geek fallacy. Logic and emotion aren’t inseparable. One can have both. Pretending to an, “above emotions, all I do is look at the facts” is the geek fallacy. It’s bullshit.
Thank you. I want to tattoo this on my forehead for all the conversations I might have with my father in the future.
RE: pillow in hell
In a way, they know what being poor means and they seek to avoid it. In other ways, like not being able to keep a roof over ones head, or not knowing when your next meal will be is beyond their ability to truly KNOW
Yeah, one of my hopes with my webcomic is to try and make that poverty feeling really sink in. I worry I’m not doing such a good job (in part because a decent chunk of the time, I’m getting through this by pretending I’m having a marvelous adventure and that this is a mere temporary setback) but… oh well, I’ve got time.
Hi, random6x7!
You never have to feel bad about “butting in.” We would love to hear from you whenever you like. 🙂
Hello!
He used to be a really prolific poster there, but got banned a few years ago for repeatedly violating the rules. He also annoyed the fuck out of a lot of people by being an arrogant jerk who’d make the same argument over and over without actually listening to anyone. I’m not the most steady lurker, so I can’t really say much more, but the styles did seem similar. Oh! He also had that “I’m a liberal, but feminazis yuck!” attitude. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the same guy, although I frankly wouldn’t be surprised if they were both mral either.
RE: Some Gal
Aw, you too? Yeah, back in the day, those-who-predated-me had that crying thing as well. (In some ways, I still have it.) I honestly think we learned to dissociate in an attempt to control it. After years of practice, it started to work… but after having the horrific experience of desperately needing to try and being PHYSIOLOGICALLY UNABLE to, I became much more respectful about crying. (It’s a horrible feeling. Like having a canned food with botulism in your chest that you can’t open.)
It’s not just a geek fallacy, either. Reason/logic good, emotion bad has been around for centuries – hell, Richelieu used to give Louis lectures on the subject back in the day, and men were allowed to be a damn sight more emotional then than they are now.
Speaking of which – Some Gal, the Cardinal cried very easily then, too. People tended to say he was putting it on, but he found it humiliating.
LBT, try getting them to remember and exactly experience the flavor of their favorite dessert. That is very difficult for people to do. Feed them their favorite meal and ask them to remeber what exact sensations they experienced when they were at their hungriest. If you can’t easily call those things to mind (and most of us can’t) then how do they know what its like? Fasting and other forms of denial are a good way to keep those experiences close for recall. So long as the wealthy keep in mind that for someone who is poor there is no assurance of an end point.
@LBT
The only time I’ve really needed to cry and been unable to was on an antidepressant (don’t remember which one) and it is a really horrible feeling. I never got to the point where I stopped crying when I was alone and I either put it off or have a mini-cry when no one is looking or in the bathroom or something when I am not alone and need to cry.
I have a friend who has (almost) no problems crying in front of other people and I am both baffled and a bit jealous.
RE: Kittehs
Some Gal, the Cardinal cried very easily then, too. People tended to say he was putting it on, but he found it humiliating.
I actually find that very reassuring. Even though I’ve become more accepting of my crying easily, I’ve still never felt all that comfortable with it. Knowing another guy, even a long-dead Cardinal, had a similar problems helps me feel better.
RE: pillowinhell
I’ve been lucky. So far, any fasting I’ve done has been ED-induced, not financially induced. For that, I feel immensely fortunate.
@The Kittehs’
I’ve been accused of putting it on and also told I am just “too sensitive.” Awful!
RE: Some Gal
Oh god, the ‘sensitive’ label. GOD, I hated that damned label. One of my joys these days is I have friends who I can cry around, if I choose to, and if I tell them not to bother me while I do so, they will obey.
And yeah, in my case, the inability to cry was due to my hormone level. I immediately cut my dosage. So not worth it.
Well thank all that’s good in life, that income induced hunger hasn’t been an issue for you LBT. I’ll just be over here hoping that ED doesn’t cause you any more grief. Hugs if you want em.
When I was financially at my worst I kinda went through three stages. The first was day long panic attacks and an obsessive need to rewrite and check my personal finances and calculations multiple times a day. Then I started elaborately imagining every detail of how life would be if I was making decent money. I’m an introvert (pretty extreme) so when I crawl into my mind whatever I decide to think about becomes my reality and it takes effort for me to engage with everyone/thing else, though I can do so without anyone noticing that I’m daydreaming. That worked for a while, but desperation really set in and I spent entire days counting my blessings. And damn if there weren’t a shit ton more of them then I ever thought. That’s really what got me through, because it helped me to see that I had more resources than I thought, and in many ways those resources are far more instrumental to success than just having money. That time also forced me to re evaluate what I valued and believed in and helped me to get out of a job that I found horrendously stressful but didn’t quite know why.
In a post in which baby-cynic accuses hellkell of projecting:
“Something happened that made you an angry little person.”
Wow, can you guys smell that? *sniff sniff* I think it’s unintentional irony.
You’re talking about yourself, kiddo. You also need some hobbies were you get some fresh air and meet new people. I dunno, try LARPing or something.
Crying is my default reaction to pretty much everything. Frustration, loud noises, getting yelled at – cry. So much fun at an all boys school.
Speaking of which to get briefly back to the bad fashion advice, I wore a black blazer and grey trousers every day for two years. It was a bad time for me, fashionistically speaking.
I’ve been poor. The interesting thing was how I reacted to being not poor again. I spent a couple of weeks, eating like a horse. It’s not that I’d been truly wanting for food, but I’d been worrying about being able to buy enough. When that pressure was lifted I bought more than I needed (though not more than I could eat), and then ate it.
I’ve been really hungry. Not when I was broke but at times when I forgot to eat; or when I was on operations and food wasn’t a priority.
Best meal I ever had was a black-forest ham, romaine, cheddar cheese, dijon mustard and pickles on sourdough bread. I recall wolfing a cucumber while my girlfriend was making it. Not broke, not short of food. I’d gone swimming first thing after waking, and was so blood sugar depleted I fell down coming up the three steps from the den to the dining room.
That was… 26 years ago. The cucumber was ambrosial.
re: Pillowinhell
Yeah, I was immensely lucky. I’d been on food stamps even when I was working, since my income was that low, and so though losing my job was harsh, at least I could afford food. In fact, food stamps probably saved my ass more ways than one, since my ED just LOVED to play the game of, “You can’t buy that food! You need that money for treatment for your eating disorder!” So yeah. Thank god, no matter how poor I got, at least I always had food. (Though getting it into my mouth was another thing entirely.)
I actually have this game I play similar to what you call counting your blessings. The game was called ‘At Least I…’ and then I’d try to come up with all the horrible things that WEREN’T happening to me. If I felt really shitty, I’d still force myself to think of something, which because I felt shitty would invariably end up being something utterly ridiculous, like, “At least I’m not being assaulted by a furious elephant.” And that would be silly enough to maybe coax some slightly humor out of me. And I’d keep going until I at least had some laughs at my own expense.
LBT, I don’t cry easily either. I almost wish I could, because I don’t let anyone know when I feel vulnerable in any way. Which makes having close relationships something of a difficulty.
Spontaneous crying would at least clue people close to me that something is going on.
Not to mention he was someone who could reduce other people to tears when he let rip, or just because of his political power and intimidating personality. None of which excludes sensitivity. And as I said, this was an age when men were much more openly emotional than in the last century or so. The idea of anger being the only acceptable emotion for men to show didn’t have such a grip then as in more recent times.
Shiraz – “baby-cynic” – love it, it just fits katz’s illustration of him.
(I <3 that pic of Pierre cuddling Poutine.)
The blessings thing started when I was watching one of those fundraising marathons for kids in developing countries. Bad as things were, I realized how many people would sell their souls to be where I was.
For as long as I live, I’ll remember the little girl who lived in a garbage dump with her mother and her only possesion was a plastic doll leg that she treated like a full dolly. Also, the women that were also there were asked if they didn’t dream of sending their kids to school. One exhausted looking woman turned to the person asking and said “we’re too poor to afford dreams”.
I have never been that poor and I can’t even begin to wrap my head around that thought.
“…because I don’t let anyone know when I feel vulnerable in any way.”
I can relate. One time my friend walked in on me at the bathroom at work while I was having a panic attack. I actually asked her stay and sit with me, which was a really bid deal. Later she said it was a confusing experience because she knew the panic attack was happening but I seemed too quiet and kept apologizing. There’s just a big fear of being seen as a mess.
I don’t know how I missed that, kitteh.