If you ever need proof that Men’s Rights Activists live in a world of their own, check out this, er, argument, found in a posting on A Voice for Men UK, the official British franchise of the American hate site we know so well :
All women are homophobic.
Whether the men being prejudiced against are gay or not is kind of beside the point – after all, ‘homo’ = man, ‘phobia’ = fear, therefore: ‘homophobia’ = Fear of Man – but, if you want to quibble over Greek & Latin etymology, perhaps we can at least agree on this: all women, to a greater or lesser extent, display the ‘symptoms’ we attribute to said condition: overt caution, fear &/or disdain of men.
Yep, that’s right. In order to find an excuse to call women “homophobic,” they’ve invented an entirely new definition for the word not based in any way on the actual etymology of the word “homophobia” (which is of course derived from “homosexual”) but on something they’ve just made up.
By this logic, the word “homosexual” would not mean “of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex” but rather “man sexual.” If we take this to mean “attracted to men,” this would suggest that all straight women with sex drives would therefore be homosexual as well. Brilliant, A Voice for Men UK.
The author of the post then uses this weird logic to make excuses for actual homophobia among straight men:
Female ‘homophobia’ is so normalized in our society that treating every man you meet like ‘Schrödinger’s Rapist’ is considered an ordinary, common sense fact of life – just so long as you are a woman. But if a man feels at all uncomfortable around another man sexually, he is presently branded an evil bigot for behaving the way all women do at all times.
A Voice for Men: they reject your reality, and substitute nonsensical unreality that allows them to say bad things about women.
Yes, you guys are right she isn’t a friend to women. It is amazing how she manages to almost complete avoid blaming the men involved. It is like she thinks men aren’t human but wild animals that need to be treated carefully to prevent them attacking you. I imagine her views would be very harmful for other women who read what she wrties. I still think she might be rationalizing her own abuse, although that might be me failing to blame her for her own views.
Also, this response from Cheerios is fantastic:
I for one am not attracted to anyone’s underarm scents, regardless of gender.
I…that is not…no. Just no. Tampons are not tea bags.
As for feeding him her blood to bind him, it’s EA o’clock.
http://youtu.be/_r2ywSxuYKE
I like the ASP remix better though.
I’m going to sound gross for saying this, but I don’t think sweat always smells bad. It depends on the kind of sweat. I mean, personally I think sweat can actually smell pleasant if you eat a lot of citrus fruits. And even besides that, the plain smell of sweat isn’t always unpleasant to me.
Fresh sweat can be perfectly tolerable, not generally fond of it, but whatever, we all sweat (and if you don’t, ever, you should probably have that looked at). It’s the “dead gods do laundry/shower!” sweat that gets me. Even with waist length hair that can go three days between washings, if it’s sweaty hot out the rest of you can’t!
Ally, that doesn’t make you sound gross. Some people’s BO is totally nasty; some people’s isn’t really bad at all.
But that quote makes it sound like women go around huffing each men’s armpits and getting turned on, which I’m guessing you don’t do, regardless of how much citrus they eat.
Kittenserf:
Terry Pratchett has made several spoofs on the popular concept of Schrödinger’s cat. My favorite was in “Last hero”, where Death gets extremely uncomfortable when encountering the kitten-in-a-box. This is of course both because Death is famously a cat person and because, “I, IF ANYONE SHOULD KNOW IF THE CAT IS ALIVE OR NOT”. Eventually, Death picks the kitten out from box, saying simply, “I DO NOT HOLD CRUELTY AGAINST ANIMALS”.
(Firefox wants to correct my ö into o. Obviously I should feel guilty for my privilege of owning a Swedish-type keyboard.)
http://lovemeow.com/2013/01/sam-the-cat-with-eyebrows-and-a-permanent-worried-face/
dem cat eyebrows <3
Adding this to the eating bodily fluids discussion:
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/94/09/b2/9409b2154b68d328fb2011bed90debe6.jpg
Kitten:
Yeah, I know that someone talking about Shrödinger’s rapist means that you don’t KNOW, but that’s not what Shrödinger’s CAT is about. Schrödinger’s CAT is about the animal literally BEING alive and dead at the same time until you look. Therefore, complete analogy fail. This also means that someone who actually knows what the cat example is about may completely misunderstand things when they hear someone talk about Shrödinger’s rapist.
Creepy teddy bears and sparkly heart pasties … O__O
Ah, esoteric practioners. Will you ever tire of the bodily fluids and the symbology of the dick?
They should really join us in the new world. I do all my spells through my own coded little platform. Or teleconference my circle working. It really just is easier.
And it’s not like you *need* the “precious bodily fluids” anyway. Water and some red sugar color works just as well.
But oh no, it’s all dancing in the moonlight and seventh this of seventh that and age old heirlooms.
Read a book, people. Get with the times.
( Yes, the flippant and arrogant tone is part of the joke )
( ( The Shining = The Stealing ) )
( ( ( All alimony and no boner makes Jack a dull boy ) ) )
Falconer — I’m pretty sure the bear is supposed to be the one in her book…and that one saw better days than doctors torturing their
inmatespatients to death. I like Suffer, the bear that’s been through hell and back and is still very much loved…there’s a nice parallel in there, with the OP even, if you squint enough.When you are making cookies, cherry jello works just fine too (at least the picture looks like the jello cookies recipe I use…
All the talk of cooking with semen made me think of that schoolteacher in LA who fed his to his students on cookies and in a spoon.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/13/los-angeles-district-settles-claims-involving-teacher-accused-lewd-tasting/
Which brings me back around to “jesus christ bananas, what the holy fuck is going on with some people?!?!?!??!!?!??!?!?!?”
Pardon me for quibbling, Dvärghundspossen, but the example of Shrödinger’s is less about the literal condition of the inside of that container than it is about the question of irreconcilable uncertainty which exists up to and until the moment when the condition can be measured. The cat is not actually, literally, both alive and dead, it’s that the condition of the hypothetical moggy can’t be verified from a position outside of the box, so it is only simultaneously in both states until the box is opened. Superposition of both states is simply a correlate of that uncertainty, and exists only hypothetically until the result of the experiment is observed.
I like this take on the matter:
Similarly, and this is why I think the concept of Shrödinger’s Rapist works, you can’t tell what is in the sealed box of a guy’s head, so it’s not that they are actually, literally both a rapist and a not-rapist, but that there is no way to test the proposition without measurement (being alone with them to see what happens).
Now, some guys are essentially leaky boxes, and you can get a whiff in advance of all that poison in there, so the troublesome issue of doubt is removed for them.
… Hang on, people. I just understood quantum mechanics. BRB, inventing cold fusion.
@Gillyrosebee: I’m not a physicist, so if you are one, I’ll immediately bow to your expertise. But from what I’ve understood, Shrödinger came up with the thought experiment with the cat to show that on a certain interpretation of quantum mechanics the cat would be in a simultaneously dead-and-alive state until the box is opened and its condition observed. That is absurd, therefore that interpretation must be wrong.
Anyway, I’m pretty certain that it’s not MERELY about UNCERTAINTY of the state of the cat, since that would be completely uninteresting. While Shrödinger’s rapist is only about uncertainty and nothing else. Which means the cat and the stranger aren’t analogous at all.
I think what I really take issue with is that the term “Shrödinger’s rapist” could easily be understood as meaning that all men has some kind of rapist/non-rapist potential, and whether the man is gonna become a rapist or a non-rapist isn’t determined until he has some kind of interaction with someone else (just as the cat, from what I’ve understood, has some kind of dead/alive potential and whether it’s alive or dead isn’t determined until you look).
Which is obviously NOT the case, and completely different from the sensible claim that you can’t KNOW whether a stranger is in fact a rapist or not.
No- it’s that when a woman encounters a stranger, she has no way to know if he’s a rapist or not, but given the culture of mens entitlement to womens bodies, her concerns that this may be the case are valid.
It’s not about the question of whether or not that particular individual has the capacity to commit the act (remember- not everything is about the man!), because it’s not about him.
It’s about the woman’s place in the culture, and for her own safety, until the man proves himself respectful of her safety & privacy, she’s equally justified in thinking he may well cause her harm.
Dvärghundspossen, nope not a physicist myself, but I did work with one on a project. He was brilliant and tirelessly willing to explain experimental conditions, but functionally illiterate when forced to try to do so in writing. The university paid me to sit there and listen to him for nine hours a week, then turn what we discussed into legible text. The joke was on them, I’d have done it for free!
The interesting part comes after and lies in the interpretation of what comes next, as I understand it, and that’s where the everyone seems to fight. In this case “merely” gets complicated, because what exactly is uncertain is based on the position of the observer.
The Copenhagen assumption (the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, think Heisenberg and it becomes easiest to remember) is that the superposition is a function of uncertainty, rooted in probabilities, and collapses when measurement is made.
[Copenhagen rapist = you go home with the guy and are either safe or not]
Of course, you get folks who complicate that by positing another level of simultaneity, based on the relation of the observer to the system being observed. Since Shrödinger, outside of the box, is observing one condition (the whole system of catwithinbox) but the cat is observing another (the system insidethebox), and as the cat IS legitimately an observer of the experiment from the standpoint of the system, the question of when the superposition will collapse is complicated by the multiplicity of viewpoints.
[Relational rapist = you go home with the guy, and find out that you are either safe or not, but an observer outside on the street can’t tell which it is]
A certain number of folks will suggest that the whole thing is a pile of hooey, because the experiment of one single catwithinbox system is not mathematically significant, given the range of systems which will need to be tested in order to adequately describe the whole ensemble of potential systems; any one system is statistically meaningless.
[Ensemble rapist = one person going home with one guy is just a detail when weighed against the complexity of human mating systems on any given night… or something like that]
Then you have those who insist that, from an objective standpoint, sooner or later there will be some limiting physical (time, temperature, etc.) condition which will settle the question even if the box is never opened, so whether or not Shrödinger observes the physical condition of the cat, after a while without opening the box (whcih was posited to be airtight anyhow, and so was not a great place for a cat to be hanging out), you can assume that the superposition has collapsed of its own accord without needing the convenience of an observer.
[Objective rapist = in the long run, we’re all dead anyway, and eventually the sun will expand and envelop the earth]
Finally, and most interestingly, you get the many worlds folks, who insist that the superposition does not collapse but actually expands the nature of existence: all possible superpositions are assumed to continue to exist regardless of their measured outcome.
[Many worlds rapist = you go home with the guy and afterward, there is a new timeline where you were safe, and one where you were not (and potentially a range of others as well, based on the conditions set which require a particular set of outcomes, in which each potential outcome creates a new stream of reality where it is operative…)]
/overexplaney thread derailing
Nope, this is the common misapplication of the Shrödinger paradox, and it always seems to be the interpretation that MRAs insist on, because it seems to posit that all men are rapists based on opportunity, which is not the case. Rabbitwink has it right when zie says
It’s not that all men are potentially rapists, but that *any* man could be, which are very different propositions, as you note.
The question relates to the uncertainty inherent in the potentialrapistguy system, which exists within the closed box of a stranger’s head. You can’t see inside the box without opening it, so from the perspective of your observation both states rapist/nonrapist are superpositioned and that superpositioning won’t collapse until some measurement is made. From the perspective of that outside observer, there is no way to know unless you open the box (get in the car).
Of course, from the perspective inside the potentialrapistguy system, there is an observer who knows the answer, though how reliable that observer’s report is to the outside observer is an open question.
/overexplaney thread derailing for reals this time
Obviously Schrodinger’s Rapist is a weak term because it’s unclear and inspires arguing about what it means and whether it’s a good allusion to make and so on.
@Arctic Ape:
Love it! I haven’t read Last Hero, but I’ve read most of the others. One reason Death’s one of my favourite characters is because he’s a cat person. I also like the scene in Lords and Ladies where Greebo is the cat in question (dead, alive or bloody furious) and an elf suffers the consequences of opening the box.
Dvarg – what everyone else is saying. It’s about legitimate fears of strangers, not “all men”. If some dipshits want to turn it into “Waaah waahh you’re saying all men are rapists” that’s their fucking bad luck, and I’m sick of them being so damn privileged they won’t even read what it means.
There’s also the fact, pointed out in the original Shapely Prose post, of just how many men are rapists. One in six women in the US raped means one hell of a lot of rapists, and as we know most rapes never get reported, let alone prosecuted, and most rapists rape several times.
So fuck any men whining about the term. I don’t give a shit about their willful misinterpretations.
RE: lowquacks
You are your body!
*snrk* Not necessarily. But I recognize I’m in an unusual demographic, in regards to that conversation.
RE: sweat
One of the things I miss about our body pre-testosterone is that we had Mary Sue unicorn sweat. We seriously smelled mostly like burnt sugar, it was the weirdest thing ever. On T, though, we smelled AWFUL. I’m glad that’s gone now that our body’s reverted–now we smell more like bleach. I don’t know, guys, our vessel is WEIRD.
And I really don’t feel comfortable talking about GWW’s trauma history guys, even if she did post about it. It just skeeves the shit out of me, and hits way too close to home with how I coped for years.