Longtime readers of Man Boobz may remember “Ferdinand Bardamu,” the pseudonymous blogger behind the thoroughly despicable In Mala Fide blog. How despicable? Well, once upon a time, “Bardamu” wrote a post with the lovely title “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” in which he set forth the proposition that “[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.” Yeah. It was that kind of a blog. You can find some more of Bardamu’s terrible thoughts in the MB archives.
You may also remember that Bardamu took down his blog about a year ago, and seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.
Except it now turns out he hasn’t been gone at all. Indeed, he’s been hiding in plain sight the whole time. For, just about the same time that Bardamu vanished off the face of the earth, a new and almost-if-not-quite-as-thoroughly-despicable new Manospere blogger appeared, writing under his real name: Matt Forney.
He’s perhaps best known for a post in which he “jokingly” offered advice on how to get away with rape by murdering your victim. Ha ha! What a card! (Ultimately, Forney deleted his post, and offered a half-hearted, feminist-baiting “apology” for it.)
Forney came out as the Artist Formerly Known As Ferdinand Bardamu on his blog last week.
His explanation for his vanishing act? In part, he explained, it was because he had started getting disgusted by some of his own followers. “Surround yourself with the worst humanity has to offer and it will inevitably wear on you,” he wrote.
It got to the point where I dreaded reading my own site because it was becoming dominated by basement dwelling neo-Nazis, MRA permavirgins and other losers I would never bother with in real life.
As much as I hate people who bitch about “hatred” and “negativity,” they were right in the end: I didn’t want to be associated with those freaks.
Yep, the rank and file of the right-wing Manosphere actually disgusts the guy who came up with “[w]omen should be terrorized by their men; it’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.” Yikes.
The other thing, the “hour on the bus” is more than an hour, between the time to the stop, form the stop to the campus, and the reverse; as well as the less than adequate scheduling of that bus route. As I recall it was more than an hour, and the way the timing worked means that classes you need will not be available to you.
But it seems he has some serious problems with allowing you to be an adult.
I already know HTML5 and CSS. I also know a little bit of Ruby in addition to jQuery and JS; I’m thinking about learning Ruby on Rails as I’ve heard that’s very powerful and popular these days.
It wouldn’t hurt to try looking at PHP, though.
Actually, if he really hates the idea of you being out alone late at night, that might be a fruitful angle if you keep at it. There’s no way that if you’re an hour away from your university you won’t be out late alone on a regular basis. It’s just not possible. So, unless he wants to go pick you up…
Aaliyah, UCLA hires students to do programming. If you were to get a job on campus, would that help?
And katz has a good point. Maybe we should stop offering solutions you can come up with yourself, and just tell you you have our complete support. Let us know what is helpful and what isn’t, and don’t worry about hurting our feelings.
By which I mean, if UCLA does it, maybe UCSC does too. In case my leap of logic isn’t clear.
I’m going to stop making suggestions too per cloudiah’s suggestion other than to repeat – talk to the campus student advisory offices. That’s what they’re there for, and they want to help students.
And I’ve just confirmed that the bus route is as long as you say it is.
Well, shit.
It’s all right. I really appreciate the help – I feel completely lost right now so even the suggestions that won’t help me are helpful somehow (think “process of elimination”). And of course pecunium’s suggestion about me learning Unix sysadmin is extremely helpful. So while I’m not going to pressure anyone to help, I do appreciate all the advice. I only get upset by advice-giving when it’s done in a really condescending and patronizing way. But none of you are like that. Quite the opposite.
I was thinking of that too. For instance, if you take any lab science class, you’ll have to take a lab that will say that it ends at 5, but it will go to 6 or 7 or god knows when, and you can’t leave until your goddamn reaction actually works or else you’ll get a zero, and by the time you’re done with everything it’s still an hour bus ride and you have to wait at a bus stop all by yourself…
The risk is just that he might eventually go “Well, if you can’t make it work, then you can’t go to UCSC at all!” But Aaliyah knows her dad and will have a better sense of where that line is than we do.
It’s also possible that you may have to start the first term living at home and then go “well, looks like this commuting thing isn’t working out”.
Unfortunately, there’s a 90% chance he’ll say that if I bring up the inconvenience of the bus route. But perhaps there’s a chance he’ll change his mind. I’ll ask him tomorrow.
This is why I’m saying that you might end up having to wait until the term is already underway – less chance of him pulling the plug and demanding a change of college once you’ve already started.
He told me that he will only let me live on or near campus during my senior year at UCSC. So I know that things will be easier then.
But I’m not happy with that at all. I’m sorry if I’m sounding rash or immature, but I don’t want to live like this any longer, even if it’s for only one quarter at UCSC. To the best of my ability, I want to ensure that I move out by the time I’m going to UCSC. If I have no choice, I’ll compromise and stay at home for my first quarter, but I absolutely hate that idea.
That doesn’t sound at all rash or immature – just the opposite.
Pecunium’s right, your core problem here is the not treating you like an adult bit. Do you have any relatives he’d respect the opinion of that could remind him that you are an adult now?
If he’s anything like my family, don’t try having that conversation under his roof unless you’re prepared for the inevitable “as long as you’re under my roof” line.
At a more basic level, can you reason with him that you’re going to need adult skills sooner or later and an apt will help build those? And really, just treating you like an adult would help since you can be a dependant child forever? (Word that carefully if you try it, the risk of “well then go be independent now!” exists)
And um, I imagine it’s the last card you want to have to play, but if he’s going to treat you like a Muslim man, play it up, point out how that means you’ll need to be a head of household and take care of a wife etc etc. Yes, it royally fucking sucks, but it’s a lie to avoid having to continue living a lie.
If I thought smacking him might help, I’d suggest it at this point (lol, no, seriously, responding to his attempts to “teach me self-defense” by randomly assaulting me with proof I knew self-defense, caused my father enough bruises that he learned to fucking stop — some people cannot be reasoned with). But I have the perk that my mother is usually reasonable and controls the money, more or less.
In any case, work backwards. You want an apt, with trans* friendly people. Work backwards to how you make that happen. The bus isn’t a problem if nothing you say will be taken seriously — the not being taken seriously is the problem. Etc.
But as for the bus, I’ll end this with a joke (that probably half of you will get) — “And while you guys are dragging your candy asses half way across the state and back, I’ll be waiting on the other side, relaxing with my thoughts.” — an hour+ there is an hour+ back is probably nearly 3 hours not spent studying. And anyone who thinks you can study on a bus has never tried it (if it comes up, the inability to juggle three colors of highlighters, post it note flags, and index cards is why)
Intention – I will work during my commute!
Result – plays Angry Birds, reads Oh Not They Didn’t.
I must keep it shorter than that, sorry!
“I was thinking of that too. For instance, if you take any lab science class, you’ll have to take a lab that will say that it ends at 5, but it will go to 6 or 7 or god knows when, and you can’t leave until your goddamn reaction actually works or else you’ll get a zero, and by the time you’re done with everything it’s still an hour bus ride and you have to wait at a bus stop all by yourself…”
Or says it’ll end at 9 and you find yourself at a vending machine at 9:30 before you starve to death because it turns out you have an hour more to go over before the midterm. Night classes suck. And even if it gets out at 9, add an hour on the bus and you have, at absolute best, two hours to study. Pretty sure they still recommend two hours of studying per hour in class (how the fuck you’re supposed to actually do that is beyond me though)
Aaliyah: Yeah, by all means, talk to the folks on-campus. Ask them flat-out, if your father were to cut you off, what sort of financial aid would you actually be able to qualify for? I won’t even pretend that this would be an easy road–but whether it’s ‘easier’ than living under your father’s control for another year is one of those things you can only decide for yourself, after learning all your options.
You might also see if there’s a student group for ex-Muslims; they’re becoming more common now, but I don’t know if there’s going to be one on your campus or not.
****
That was me, earlier this week! Thanks for the kind words for my analogy. I’ll admit, I’m fairly proud of that one.
Argenti, no need to worry about the long responses. It’s not like you’re sending me diatribes or anything,
He’s like that with everyone. He’s the oldest brother of the family, and so he thinks that he has the right to tell everyone what to do. He often says something like “If you want to be treated like an adult, act like one!” whenever I voice my objection to what he tells me to do or whenever I’m consistently not doing exactly what he says.
And actually, I do. One of my uncles, in fact, is all for me living away from home. I’ll go ask for his help – thanks for the suggestion. He was the same uncle who warned against me becoming a pot-head if I live there, but I think he’s still fond of the idea of me moving out. It won’t hurt to ask.
He’s exactly like that, unfortunately. X_X
He’s probably not going to listen to that because his other reason for not wanting me to live there is that he wants to pay for my living expenses, and he currently can’t afford it. I’ll try my best to persuade him to eventually let me take care of my living expenses, but that’s going to be rather difficult.
He is one of the scariest people I know. Only recently was I able to defend myself from him the first time, and that made everything even worse.
I was in the car with him, and he was arguing about my eating habits. I raised my voice and said “hey” (literally that’s all) and then, WHILE DRIVING, he put me in a fucking headlock taunting me to say that again because he was furious about me disrespecting him. I pushed myself away from him and telling him that putting me in headlock while in the car (the car was at a stoplight, but still) is extremely dangerous, but he just tightened his grip and got angrier.
I’ll try to think about it that way, thanks.
The more I hear about your father, Aaliyah, the more I think “intervention order” or straight out “this bastard should be doing time”. 🙁
I’ll ask them that, sure. I’ll either email them or go to the campus myself.
Joining such a group this quarter is probably one of the worst thing I can do considering that I’m afraid of my father finding out, and there are few things that piss him off more than apostasy. Thank you for the suggestion, though. I’ll consider it some day.
I’m not trying to be apologetic, but he hasn’t been violent to me these days (although he still likes to threaten me a lot). Right now he’s a lot nicer to me because he’s proud of my admission into UCSC and the fast pace of my web development training. And I really, really don’t want to deal with getting him arrested or anything at this time. I’ll just crumble if I have to deal with that on top of everything I’m dealing with right now.
I don’t know… I used to prepare my lecture notes for TA sections while on the bus, aided by really good headphones and traveling at off hours.
More seriously, though, I know that it can feel intolerable not to handle basic issues, like wanting to be free of the emotional manipulation or blackmail of family, but a UC quarter is 10 weeks at a time, and it might be possible to push for a little more freedom each quarter until you reach a point where the balance of connection and separation is tolerable…
I hope you will be OK even if you can’t make it work right now. Yes, it really sucks, but even though it feels like it’s going to be forever until you’re a senior, it’s not actually going to be that long and I don’t want you to get discouraged.
Argle fucking bargle = my only response to your father. The corollary to “then act like an adult” is “if you want respect, act like I should respect you”…but that went poorly when I tried it. Granted my mother did say that I was right, but in the end I got a round of “are you taking your pills?” (being completely dismissed because crazy is so much fun)
gillyrosebee — off hours would help I guess. Pittsburgh has um, a variety of homeless people. The drunk and potentially dangerous ones come out at night, so I was never comfortable wearing headphones after dark, and my daylight hours were generally in class or elbow deep in software (discs, machines making them, such fun things)
Utterly tangentially, the disc storage module broke once, dropped two discs in one slot and refused to acknowledge the second one, it was effectively lost. I said “just turn it upside down and shake it”, my boss got that pale “oh heavens no” expression and said he was going to find the manual…it said to turn it upside down and shake it. Luckily we had the sort of relationship where that was hilarious and I was laughing with him. Laughing at your boss is unwise after all 🙂
Speaking of “it won’t be that long” get a real paper calendar, figure out when this mythical semester when you can move out starts, number backwards. The concrete reminder that it is going to happen helps somewhat. (Like, having my plane ticket to Pittsburgh, and a count down til I left, was basically why I didn’t kill myself after rapist ex #1, the effect on your mental state is stronger than you’d think)