So someone on YouTube decided to put together what was intended as a heartwarming and inspirational video — assembled mostly from Russian dash-cam videos — showing an assortment of ordinary fellows taking a few moments from their day to help out their fellow human beings, and even a few animals. We get to see little old ladies walked across the street, cars pushed or pulled from snowbanks, and so on.
But when Paul Elam of A Voice for Men — the alleged Men’s “Human Rights” site that posts an open call to firebomb courthouses and police stations in its “activism” section — watched the video, all he saw was what wasn’t there — that is, helpful women.
For you see, as far as anyone can tell with all that heavy winter clothing, this five minute video features only helpful men, and I think one helpful boy, and no helpful people of the lady persuasion. Mr. Elam underscored this point by headlining his post “Where are the women?” and ending the post with the very same question.
I’m not exactly sure why Mr. Elam thinks this is a particularly important question to ask (twice). I don’t know the precise gender breakdown for helping little old ladies across the road either in Russia or the US, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t 100% male. I’m almost positive that there are some women in the world who actually help their fellow human beings (and animals) from time to time. I’m pretty sure I know a few myself.
Indeed, if you look at the actual statistics for volunteering from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — generally considered a better source of data than compilations of Russian dash-cam footage — you will discover not only that substantial numbers of both men and women volunteer but also that, in the US at least, women consistently volunteer at rates higher than that of men. Take it away, BLS:
The volunteer rates for both men and women (23.2 and 29.5 percent, respectively) changed little in the year ending in September 2012. Women continued to volunteer at a higher rate than did men across all age groups, educational levels, and other major demographic characteristics.
I guess that’s where the women are. Volunteering.
If you’re interested in seeing the video that got Mr. Elam’s heart feeling so warmed, here you go:
Oh, wait, that’s not it. That’s not dudes helping. That’s dudes punching each other and acting like assholes. Here it is:
Damn it! More punching and assholism. Let’s try again.
Oops again.
In my defense, the videos I’ve posted are assembled mostly from Russian dash-cam footage, and I’m pretty sure there are no women in any of them.
Here’s the actual video, for reals.
Why did I quote the link? Oh, I need coffee.
As for animals learning how to cope with traffic …..
Many years ago, we were driving on one of the highways out of Adelaide, three lanes both ways with a substantial median strip between the two directions. Traffic wasn’t exactly bumper to bumper – it was “full” in the sense that everyone could drive at the speed limit, I think it was 80 but it might have been 100k back then, but there was little to no opportunity to change lanes.
And there was a cat. Calmly sitting on a white lane marking between the middle and innermost lanes, waiting for the chance to cross another lane. Given the direction it was going it had already managed to cross 4 lanes as well as the median strip by this method. It was completely still and patiently watching the speeding wheels going past its little head, ready to flit across to its next waiting point.
Mrmagnificent had an extremely negative view of cats’ intelligence up to that point. They were nice to cuddle, but dumb. He fairly quickly came to the view that there’s no way to know whether a cat is smart or not just as I’d always maintained – most of them care too little about others’ opinions to worry about doing what they’re asked to do to prove *something* to someone. (A bit like wombats really. They don’t care what anyone thinks of them either.)
Oh, a bit late to the party, but Happy Birthday cloudiah. Sparkles and ribbons for everyone.
Crows in some Japanese cities use the traffic to their advantage: they wait for a red light and deposit walnuts in front of the cars. The light turns green, the cars crush the nuts, and at the next red light, the crows go and collect their snacks. Some drivers will even swerve to hit the nuts.
“because women spend all the money on kitty litter” – MordsithJ
My favorite quote of the thread thus far. Also an accurate depiction of my finances. Love it.
After that link, I need booze. 🙁
@emilygoddess
That sort of thing is why my policy toward crows is “We should be nice to them; they might be people.”
Not as amazing as those crows, but when we lived in a suburb fairly close to the city we always went by underground, and our three dogs (we have four now, had three then :-)) learnt to recognize the recorded voice message which said we were at our home station. They’d quietly lie on the floor of the train while the recorded voice announced one station after the other; when the voice announced OUR station, they perked their ears and bounced up.
Re cats and intelligence, it’s obviously wrong to say that they’re stupid just because they’re difficult to train. For instance, both cats and dogs can figure out how to open doors by pulling at the door handle with their front paw (my GSD learnt to do that standing on her hind legs, and a cat my parents used to have learnt to jump up and grab it with her paws so that the door swung open). Both species can figure out various stuff on their own, that was just an example.
Some people go the other route and say dogs are stupid because they do as people tell them, but that’s just as wrong. Firstly, people who say these things usually have an incredibly exaggerated view on how obedient the average dog is and how much they just love to please people. Now, there ARE many dogs (although FAR from all) who thinks, for instance, obedience training is really funny, even if their rewards for doing tricks on command is just tiny treats, a thrown tennis ball or simply that mum/dad claps their hands and shrieks “GOOD DOG”! But lots of human beings do stuff for little or no reward as well just because they think it’s fun – playing computer games or playing football, for instance. So if dogs are stupid for enjoying various kinds of training, so are human beings.
…then two minutes later they fall off the edge of the table while stretching. Again. =/
My sister used to have a cat who figured out how to turn a round doorknob using her body weight…but she couldn’t make it work because she had long hair between her paw pads that acted as a natural lubricant. She couldn’t grip the knob.
Her attempted solution? Teaching the other cats how to do it. Seriously. She’d call them over and reach up to the doorknob while looking at them. They never caught on, fortunately.
If cats ever evolve thumbs, the human race will become obsolete.
Lol, the completely untrainable bengal who could open the fridge and climb in, if it was so much as a hair open (razor sharp claws are amazing little tools…for stealing leftovers)
The cat here has fallen in the 29g tank twice, I think she may’ve learned better finally. Like, yes dumbass, you can climb atop the glass lid…that’s broken, with the hole covered by a cd case…that you will fall through…
I consider my father’s dog a dumbass not because he follows commands but because he eats bricks and walks straight into things that then fall on him (he can see just fine, just doesn’t seem to grasp that he’s frikken huge)
There are dogs in Paris who use the metro to commute to good scrounging areas.
Last week my boyfriend and I jointly helped rescue a baby groundhog that fell off the curb into the road and couldn’t get back up onto the sidewalk because its little legs were too short and its little belly was too fat. I noticed it because we were on his motorcycle, so I was able to hear it making these adorable little “peeping” sounds.
Anyway, I’m a woman. And I was the one who insisted we stop and rescue the fat, stubby-legged little creature. So take that, Paul Elam.
I think animals act stupid so that humans have no way to understand how truly smart they are. I’m also coming to the realization that the furrinati may include more than just cats and dogs.
How far does this conspiracy go??
Just follow the kitty litter. I mean, the money.
It’s all pets, at least. Big Bunny is not a figment of the Goodies’ imagination.
I keep trying, but certain species keep eating it.
http://media-cache-ec4.pinimg.com/550x/3b/51/8d/3b518d649bf3abd149fc32f014072ebb.jpg
LOL my friend’s dog does that. He thinks the litter tray is a candy dispenser.
Dashcams in Russia are partially to protect against insurance fraud. They also come in handy to protect against corrupt police officers who will pull over a nice car and basically try to extort a bribe. It is a thing that happens quite often.
Pedestrians cross the street at their own risk in Russia. I don’t know if pedestrians legally have right of way, but… if they do, nobody cares. Nobody will stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk. Nobody really respects lane markers either. A three lane road often expands to 5 when drivers decide that there’s plenty of room on the shoulder. Sidewalks are not just for walking. They’re extra parking spaces for trucks and suv’s. Things are very different there.
I did not watch the video, so I can’t comment specifically, but can lend cultural perspective. To most Russians, any Russian man that watches a babushka trying to cross the street and doesn’t help would be considered a jerk. Even more so if he watches a woman help her and doesn’t intervene. It tends to be a very traditional society, with very specific gender roles. Men will insist on helping a woman who’s carrying something heavy, they will stop and help if they see a woman stranded with a broken down car, they will not let a woman pay for a date (in fact, it is a HUGE insult to even suggest splitting the check.)
Things are somewhat more modern in the larger cities, but in the smaller cities and especially in the village… very traditional. For the MRM to take a video, made in Russia, and try to bash all women with it is just ridiculous. For better or worse, that’s the way things are in Russia.
I did finally get the video to play. What you see there is one of the most beautiful things about Russia. People help eachother, not to be congratulated, but because it’s just the right thing to do. It’s not a chore or an imposition, but rather just part of a normal day. People share freely (especially food.) I think it comes from the memory of the hard times that Russia’s been through in the past 100 years. The only way we got through it was to cooperate and help eachother.
That poor babushka that was crossing herself before trying to cross the street…
Moscow, too.
I think part of the “dogs are dumb for just doing what you tell them” idea stems from the fact that sitting down, lying down, standing up etc on command would be a pretty stupid activity for a human being, but that’s because we grasp language in a way that dogs don’t. For a dog, matching the right body movement to the right sound coming out of a human’s mouth is actually pretty challenging. Usually they trust our body language much more than our actual words, but in obedience contests you’re supposed to do absolutely nothing with your body while saying the command, and that’s really tricky for a dog.
For a human being, a comparable activity would be to get scores when you managed to match up various bodily movements with completely random noises. You can also imagine incorporating a learning process analogous to teaching dogs various tricks with clicker (which seems to be what most obedience competitors use nowadays) – you’d start by flailing your body parts around at random, you get a score when you happen to find certain movements, you have to figure out what, amongst all your flailing about, gave you the score and repeat it in order to get higher scores, eventually the movements have to be more and more precise in order for you to score, and then random noises start to appear and you have to match up the various movements to the noises.
If there were a computer game like that, some people would totally play it just for the fun of it.
The way that people commonly measure intelligence in dogs is also unfairly weighted towards the dog’s willingness to please us, imo. For example, I’ve been around enough Akitas not to think of them as lacking in intelligence, but they tend to score poorly on those kinds of assessments because they’re not particularly interested in pleasing people.
(A perfect example of this is the notorious refusal of Akitas to fetch. You throw a ball, they’ll usually either ignore it or give you a look that suggests that it’s you who’s a complete imbecile.)
Given that Akitas have been known to house-train themselves, I can’t imagine anyone finding them unintelligent. They’re not super friendly, but they’re not dumb.