Hello, and welcome to The Man Boobz Fiction Workshop! Today we will learn my foolproof two-step method for writing believable fiction. It’s as easy as pie — well, easier, since pie can take a bit of finesse — and it is absolutely GUARANTEED to work.
Here it is.
STEP ONE: Write believable fiction.
STEP TWO: If step one fails, write a story that makes a woman look evil and foolish, and post it to the Men’s Rights Subreddit as a true story.
If you don’t believe me, check out this little story from a fella calling himself the-final-word — a Redditor for less than two weeks, with only one previous comment to his name — in which a highly successful gentleman happily humiliates an ex-girlfriend trying to steal his money with the old “baby” ploy.
Take a look at the thread itself to see how eagerly the Men’s Righsers eat up his tale of victory over evil womanhood!
That is the beauty of my two-step method. If people don’t believe your bullshit, find a more gullible audience. And there are few audiences in this world more gullible than Men’s Rightsers.
I should note that I had nothing to do with the-final-word’s story, nor did I sneak into the Men’s Rights subreddit to give his story 47 upvotes and a bunch of positive comments.
Thanks to hackattack92 in the AgainstMensRights Subreddit for pointing out this wonderful example of shitthatneverhappened.txt
ashley: I was going to note that the MRAs have flooded the comments…
…then I noticed it was Yahoo news. Those came pre-flooded.
Regarding the transphobia, I don’t see why the men have a “right to know”. Am I obligated to inform people if I haven’t waxed lately? I mean, they may not be into that. Of course, informing them of that isn’t likely to put my life at danger, making the idea of trans* people being “obligated” to tell people what’s in their pants even more ridiculous.
While we’re on the subject of helping women fighting the good fight:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-the-deportation-of-josephine-komeh-fighter-against-fgm.html
A petition to stop the UK from deporting Josephine Komeh, who was denied asylum despite being tortured for refusing to participate in FGM in Sierra Leone.
Now imagine if the reporter covering the story had been competent.
Local residents have lately found themselves bemused by the proliferation of strange anti-feminist posters. “They’re really offensive”, explained Susan Jones, a real estate agent who found several of the posters pasted on the side of an apartment building managed by her company. “And also confusing, because the graphic design is terrible.”
Bus driver Dave Anderson agreed. “I keep finding them all over the bus shelters at the depot, sometimes covering the timetables”, he commented. “Passengers have been complaining that they can’t figure out when the next bus will arrive, and some of them are very angry because they think the local authority must be endorsing the group behind them. I keep having to explain that A Voice for Men has nothing to do with us and we think the posters are stupid too. Also, who puts light yellow writing on a white background?”
Unfortunately attempts to contact A Voice for Men spokesman Paul Elam for comment have yet to yield any explanations for the existence of the posters that do not violate our policy about not printing hate speech.
Why is it that every time MRAs make the news, they’re from Canada? WTF? Is it something in the water?
My favourite comment:
OT: holiday snaps!
My sister’s place out in the hills.
My sister’s dog Laddie.
The kitty bracelet I bought at the Eumundi Market.
Asylum politics are a very, very cruel joke. It’s sad beyond words how the EU is handling these matters lately… Germany’s no better. :/
And this. I like cassandras version though.
And I have to confess that trans-issues are something that slipped my radar untill recently and I’m not yet very good about it. At first I could just not understand it (sort of like this: “well, if gender wouldn’t be a factor in how you’re treated, this wouldn’t exist anymore, right, isn’t this just about gender roles?”, being pretty darn cis myself and as I never felt alienated by my own body), untill I realised that it’s none of my business and if people say they’re trans, then that’s how it is, end of story. And just because I can’t wrap my head around how it must feel, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I’ll just take their word on it (and they don’t have to prove it to me, as – again – it’s none of my business).
And of course refer to them the way they want (where I often still slip up, when I talk to someone else about it (for example when I tell the bf what Cliff Pervocracy has written on his blog lately)).
Then we had a teacher (a psychiatrist) at nursing school say that transsexuality, homosexuality and pedophilia are all of the same kind of mental abnormality and they almost all have other mental “issues”, even though we do not criminalize the first two and don’t see homosexuality as a sickness anymore. So… ugh. He said other weird stuff too, so I did not really believe him on this, but I felt insecure again. A medical professional (altough one in pension) just told me that transpeople could not become happy by transitioning, because they’re basically mentally ill, and will still be after, and we should rather put them into therapy instead of making money with sex changing surgery (there’s big money in there! or so he said!). I did not know what to make of that.
And then I learnt about trans gatekeeping and ugh… I think it’s okay to guide people to find out if a transition is what they really want, because there are risks (as with all surgeries), the result may not quite be what people expect first, it can’t be reversed etc. People who consider it should know what exactly it entails before. But that’s an ADVISING role. You don’t get to say what people are allowed to do with THEIR body or not. You don’t get to say what’s their reality. Just no. It’s not right. :/
And the various ridiculous restrictions on changing your legal gender… ugh.
I’m not sure if I make sense right now (I found this really hard to articulate). And I hope I did not say anything offensive. If so, I apologize, and please tell me what’s wrong. ^^”
Ugh, ugh, ugh. It really gets my hackles up when I read about so-called mental health professionals who’re more like professional douchebuckets.
For what it’s worth, I thought you articulated that very well, katzentier.
leftwingfox — signed and tweeted
katzentier — you made perfect sense. And I have a book that teacher should probably review, it’s called DSM IV >.< (that'd be the standard manual for diagnosing such mental illnesses [and related conditions, autism for example])
He's nearly right about trans* people tending to have mental illness(es) though…but he has the order wrong. Depression and anxiety are not uncommon results of the brain-body disconnect and society freaking out. As in "well maybe they'll be less depressed if their body looks the way it should" versus that load of crap about they just want to transition because they're mentally ill.
(I have many more, angrier, thoughts on this, but they aren't really relevant)
@Sporklift, it’s the majority of the group, at least 4 people. I should add, it’s mostly work colleagues so that’s a bit of the problem. We’re friends, but while normally I’m not afraid to just be like, “That’s bullshit!” it’s a little different with coworkers and I’m trying to figure out how to take a more subtle tack without tolerating bigotry.
@LBT and Argenti, thank you so much. That’s the strategy I was trying to take, but being drunk and surprised I rather failed, I’m sad to say. My primary strategy was basically just to be like, “Well, she looks like a woman to me…” along with LBT’s suggestion of “they’re big boys, they can take care of themselves,” but I was a bit overwhelmed and drunkenly drawn into conversations that I wasn’t sure how to handle. You’ve both definitely given me some reinforcement and good talking points, and I will definitely use them.
Argenti, I really appreciate your answer with its worst-case-scenario suggestions. In most situations I’m pretty comfortable addressing transphobia, but I was honestly caught off guard. I didn’t really expect it from this group of friends.
I really appreciate you guys talking about this with me. I realize it’s a bit of a Trans 101-type subject, but I don’t know of any other trans*-friendly resources to go to.
Also, for full disclosure, I’m pretty drunk right now (was not out with the people I’m posting about, FWIW). If I missed acknowledging anyone or anything someone said, or misinterpreted it, please forgive me. I will reread this when sober, promise.
*is working on being pretty drunk* Yeah, I doubt the worst case will happen, but if they’re remotely decent people the idea it could should give them pause. Particularly coupled with how it’s no skin off their backs either way.
It’s the climate. It’s favorable for freeze peaches.
/).<
That is all.
Yes, that makes sense of course, in the same way that people with chronic diseases have a tendency to depression, because well, that’s sure as hell what I would be if I’d be in constant pain (and I have depressive episodes a lot more since my body does al sort of weird stuff no one can make sense of *sigh*, but I’m not sure about the order, maybe I have these physical symptoms because of the depressive tendency, not the other way around, who knows). But there was a time when medical professionals believed, that chronical patiens had certain personalities _unrelated_ to the symptoms of their disease or even developed the illness because of their personality.
This is not to equate transsexuality with chronic illnesses, btw! Just the tendency to be depressive, because something in your life is shit, be it how society treats you, or constant pain or something similar.
But it’s not what the teacher said. He didn’t mean depression, If I recall it corecctly (this is over a year ago), he linked it to psychosis, and particulary to shizophrenia.
And yes, DSM IV.. but he’s in pension allready and thus does not diagnose anyone anymore (thankfully), he just likes to drag out his hobby horses in front of nursing students. Trans was one of his favorite topics, “fear of castration” and “penis envy” another (I was never sure if he was serious about this, though, he sort of made fun of freud, but at the same time suggested that there has to be something to it), and he liked to go on and on about how anorexic girls just didn’t want to grow up and wanted to be daddy’s girl forever.
It was, frankly, horrible. :/
Oh lord, penis envy. That alone makes me want to lock Freud in a box forever.
katzentier — argh, he should not be allowed to teach anyone anything involving psychology. And I got your analogy with chronic illness. Sorry I don’t have more coherent thoughts, but it’s 7:30am here and I really should just go to bed already!
I have no idea what it is with the psychology teachers at my school. The psychiatrist had some really fucked up views, and the psychologist who’s supposed to teach us communication models and how to not think in boxes, is my least favorite teacher ever (I despise her so much, that I just get angry thinking about her, goddamnit human, stop the bigotry). Every fucking example she uses to illustrate how miscommunication happens is a variation of “wimminz have all these feely feelings, they’re not stating directly, and the menz are so logical, they only can understand literal, factual statements, so if the wimminz ask the menz if they want to take the trash outside, the menz always will say straight no, because they’re totes not capable of understanding indirect communication DESPITE IT BEING IN OUT CULTURE EVERYWHERE”.
I always want to throw my books at her head. And discussion with this person is absolutely pointless.
A psychologist who has no. fucking. idea. how human psychology works, and has such moronic, bigoted, essentialist guano floating around in her head???
That’s just … I haven’t the words. She’s teaching a subject about which she knows jack shit!
Makes me want to rush out and give my psychologist a box of chocolates or something for knowing his stuff AND passing the Decent Human Being test.
If anyone wants brain bleach, here’s Laddie showing his big doggy nose.
The porch and view from my sister’s place.
Bunny brain bleach.
http://rabett.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/snuggle-bunnies.html (It’s an ad, but it’s snuggly.)
Don’t forget to be quick at the end and click for the “Behind the scenes” video – it disappears really quickly.
I’m sorry, auggzilliary, that sucks. In my college we just never touched these subjects, and now at nursing school feminism isn’t really a topic either (though we get a lot of texts in feminized form, in german nouns are gendered and there is a special feminine ending now to include women more (not sure If I like this, I’d rather have a neutral form and leave gender out of the equation unless it’s relevant to the context (not often, but there’s is the danger that people then still would only think about the default male, as long as society is still this sexist), but a lot of people complaining about the massacre of the german language wouldn’t like that either, so can’t win there either way and the arguments are mostly fairly stupid and along the lines of “Evil Feminazibitches have nothing better to do than ruin our language”).
Except for the psychologist all our teachers at nursing school are hammering on that we should always ask ourself what it would be like to be in the place of our patients, and I think that’s great and I love them for it (they are mostly decent and non-judging persons). I also like that we have to “act out” various impairments, like exploring the city in a wheelchair, having our legs bound together to imitate M. Parkinson, or an arm to the body so we have to manage doing everyday things with the non-dominant hand. We also had to practise washing on each other (so everyone learns how that feels) and the various embedments. All this to teach us more empathy for the people who are at our mercy in the hospital. And to be patient. And to actually listen.
Oh and yes, we were taught that the internet is a bad source too (especially wikipedia) and everything you can actually hold in your hand is better, no questions asked, no criteria on how to judge the content.
Which, totally unrelated, reminds me of the hard time we have in animal rescue to convince people that they should NOT listen to the advice regarding rats in most books, from pet shops and a big bunch of the breeders here, and that actually certain internet sites are much more reliable and have more updated information. I suspect that a large part of these problems come from “never trust the internet, always trust books/”experts” too. Only the so called experts in pet shops often don’t know shit about rats, a lot of breeders are total amateurs of the variety “oh, nice little cutsie animals”, and… bwuh. :/
That’s the point, yes. And I’m not going to defend most news sites *shudder* or the bigger chunk of the internet. There are lots of misinformation and outright lies out there and it is a good thing too be critical of internetsources. Just not to condemn them generally and always approve of every word written in a book. We should be taught to judge books and the internet with the same criteria (check sources, check claims, critical thinking).
I’d not exactly recommend every rat information site either. 🙂
But there are a few good ones, that are a way better source, free to access and easy to find. And it’s just sad if people tend to go “but the salesperson at the pet shop said… or “my book from 1980 says..” instead of looking at these sites and then overthink the way they treat their animals/ look up more on the topic.
D., I tend to think of it as am I obligated to inform them about any body modifications or medical history I have? Do I have to tell them I dye my hair? Do I have to tell them I don’t have wisdom teeth or tonsils? Appendix? How about telling them my toenails are painted? Piercings? Mental illness? Falling out of a tree as a kid? Broken bones? How far back in my medical history am I obligated to talk about? Should I be filling out all my vaccinations? Infectious diseases beyond STDs? Chicken pox, measles, mumps, whooping cough as a kid? How about a family history of heart disease? Diabetes, high blood pressure, physical disabilities? These are just examples, and I could think of a lot more, having asked many people their medical histories as part of my job. Even then, no one is obligated to tell me, they’re totally allowed to not answer, and I only ask about things that might be pertinent to my providing health care.
Once you start saying people are obligated to tell other people medical history it gets into ridiculous territory, and since it’s almost exclusively trans* women (it’s not totally, but in general that’s who people are talking about when they say you should disclose) who are “obligated” to explain, it’s firmly rooted in homophobia, in my mind.