Our dear friend W.F. Price of The Spearhead celebrated Columbus Day yesterday with a post suggesting that “American girls” are too weak-minded to deserve college educations.
Price’s misogyny is nothing new, but what, you may wonder, is the connection to Columbus Day? Well, you see, Price ran across a column in the Daily Nebraskan by a female student named Shelby Fleig that was, well, rather critical of Mr. Columbus, pointing out, among other things, that he kidnapped and enslaved many of those he encountered in the Americas.
Fleig’s piece is a tad simplistic at times — at one point it says that when Columbus arrived in the Americas he encountered a “civilization close to 14,000 years old,” which is just plain wrong; there were people in the Americas around 14,000 years ago, but there were no civilizations anywhere on earth that far back. Still, the piece certainly reflects reality far more closely than anything you’ll find on The Spearhead on any given day.
To Price, though, the column is such an unpatriotic abomination that he considers it evidence that education is wasted on women. No, really.
Little Ms. Fleig certainly has it in for her forefathers, but is it really her fault? Probably not. She, like most other college girls, is simply parroting what’s been fed to her by her profs. Girls are good at that, which is why teachers like them so much — they’re easy.
If you’re the father of an American girl, is this really what you want your daughter to absorb over the course of four years? Does it add any value whatsoever to the family or to the nation?
I’m not sure what specifically Price is objecting to about Fleig’s account — aside from its mild profanity (the word “bullshit”) and its less-than-reverential tone towards an icon of American history. But he offers no rebuttal, perhaps because he really can’t. While Fleig may be a bit ahistorical in her judgment of Columbus, it’s a fact that he kidnapped and enslaved hundreds of natives and committed other atrocities. It’s a fact that he paved the way for conquest and genocide. History isn’t pretty.
But Price is only getting started, telling fathers of “American girls” that
Your money would be much better spent sending her to sewing or baking school. Let’s face it: Ms. Fleig isn’t going to discover the cure for cancer. Despite being an attractive young woman, she isn’t going to colonize Mars, either (at her size, she’d be too expensive to launch out of the Earth’s atmosphere).
Yep, he goes there. No manosphere screed is complete without a bit of gratuitous fat-shaming.
In all likelihood, the best she could hope for is a nonprofit or government job fully funded by her father’s and brother’s tax bills.
Because girls can’t handle real jobs. Because jobs at nonprofits or with the government aren’t real jobs. Because nonprofits are funded entirely by the government. And because only men pay taxes.
And yet she represents 60% of college students. What an enormous, unsustainable waste. It’s impolitic to point it out, but from a cost-benefit point of view, in most cases higher education is entirely wasted on women, and as in Ms. Fleig’s case is often counterproductive.
So that’s Price’s thoughtful and logical rebuttal to Fleig’s article: a post that addresses none of her arguments, posits the natural inferiority of women, and attacks her for her apparent weight.
Let’s see what the highly erudite Spearhead readers have to say about it in the comments.
Gender Foreigner suggests that women, born to obey, are simply obeying the wrong people:
Women don’t know how to think: they know how to obey. So, let’s tell them what to do. What they lack is MEN to obey instead of girls to obey. Barefoot, pregnant in the kitchen, obeying masculine will. As long as they do that they will feign civility.
Dire Badger, for his part, acknowledges that Columbus did a lot of terrible things, but argues that this doesn’t matter because reasons. He also uses profanity, though Price doesn’t step in to rebuke him for that.
[I]n the end, individual racial and cultural atrocities mean NOTHING the moment the last person that witnessed them dies…. but things like achievements in literature, art, science… the true immortality that keeps building as part of a cultural intellectual inheritance. The only meaning that such atrocities have is to teach us NOT TO DO THEM AGAIN. Anything else is beating the dead victim horse for no benefit whatsoever, and merely punishes the people that had NOTHING to do with the original atrocity.
In short, columbus opened up america for expansion. He sailed the ocean blue in a way that hadn’t been achieved for nearly 400 years since the vikings.
As for the rest? FUCK YOU. Get over it already, you pussy.
In a followup comment, he adds:
Columbus rediscovered America by a monumental navigational goofup… funny story… What he did afterwards doesn’t concern me except as an object lesson. I honor the accomplishment but have no reason to diminish it by sorrow over a bunch of people who would still be more than 400 years dead if Columbus had never existed.
Schlomo, meanwhile, is mad at Fleig for not blaming Columbus’ mom for the whole thing:
What irks me is that feminists constantly blame only men– and then mostly white men– for all evil in the world. They don’t look at women’s roles in raising boys to be exploiters; or in bedding “bad boys” (thus rewarding their brutality); or in serving as Nazi prison guards, etc.
White females helped run plantations in the Old South and ran them alone during the Civil War. Ergo, it’s a lie that gals are innately “better” than guys. After all, they became queens of men feminists now demonize… and sometimes were the evil-incarnate leaders of countries themselves.
Nowhere, of course, do feminists praise men for the creating the Magna Carta or washing machines or hi-fi systems. No kudos, either, for males who wiped out polio and provided potable water. Also, no credit for inventing penicillin or making cars safer. Always and everywhere feminists blame-blame-blame. You never hear them collectively apologize for THEIR shite, like their hysterical historical foresisters’ White Feather campaigns… or sleeping with the enemy.
Where is the condemnation of Sacagawea for helping Whitey conquer her “people”?
It’s like domestic violence: fembots never talk about the equal evil women do.
Wilson, meanwhile, decides that Fleig is the truly evil one, not Columbus, based on a bunch of TRUE FACTS about her he’s pulled from his own posterior:
Conquest through genocide is not actually immoral, since there is no “social contract” being violated, though the greed of it may be questionable. Fleig would support a genocide against whites, so she is in no position to judge anyway, and her motivations–spite, malice, nihilism, betrayal–are much more evil than Columbus’s straightforward and productive ambition
But Fleig does have one defender amongst the Spearhead regulars, a fella named Dragnet, who happily declares that “corn-fed” gals like her please his penis. No, really, that’s his argument.
Being from the Midwest myself, I find her buxom, corn-fed heft absolutely delightful. I have had more than a few liaisons with her similarly endowed Midwestern sisters–to this day my manhood rises in salute.
What I wouldn’t give for more women on the east coast to be built like Miss Fleig. There’s a well-built, fulsome hardiness to the women of the Midwest that you really don’t find out East. God bless them all.
Well, I’m glad these superior-brained, independent-minded men have put us all straight on these important historical issues.
Okay, I left class.
Look, I’m young, I don’t know anything. I don’t think anything I say is original, in fact I like berating myself for being unoriginal most of the time. I even said that I didn’t expect much out of anything. I think it’s cool that you guys have a place to entertain and poke fun at. I have no problem with humor, snarky sites, we need this type of stuff in the world. I engaged here because even though this is a humor site people it tends to get both the serious and the snark, so I came in as a young naive ‘serious’ person especially since I saw there were people talking about my comment, and we got into a nice conversation at first. I know I’m really direct with my opinions, but I have no desire to actually change anyone’s or this site’s style. It might not be my style to post about cats but it doesn’t mean I want to stop others from doing it. Maybe it seemed like it since I express my opinions so openly and directly, but I really don’t. I’m sorry if it seemed that way.
I’m the type of person to write and talk completely out of my heart, so I felt hurt when people would snark. I like you guys and enjoy being around here but I guess saying some stuff got me laughed at and the same snark directed to the manosphere that I didn’t expect. Especially as a newcomer who started off well it was easy to feel alienated.
I guess the problem with the internet is that we can’t hear the tone of the person so we can only interpret it from the words. I have a really rough, blunt, tactless, direct, pretentious writing style so I can get why I come off negatively. I think things would be different if it was face to face. I think the fact that here we can only read words and not the tone, body language, kind of messes things up.
Uh, it’s your pits. Do what you want with them. And thanks for the site link, i’ll check it out.
I really think this is a giant, messy mis-communication. Let’s just put this behind us. Here, I’ll even post a cat video
Yeah, yeah, there she goes again.
Yeah, well, forcing your kink on us isn’t cool.
Wow. So much to catch up on. But first I’ll take a second to preen for identifying Yoyo as a total wanker. Lessee, I’ll respond to Yoyo first and everyone else next.
This is the heart of the matter: Nobody actually thinks like this. No. Bo. Dy. And you don’t either. You’re just going around from subculture to subculture looking for a place where you can stroll in and crap your unsolicited opinions over everyone and they’ll be treated like nuggets of wisdom. You’re not going to find one.
You might as well lay off the “I’m still learning, I’m a sad little woobie full of self-doubt” act. If you weren’t sure of your opinions, you wouldn’t constantly announce them as statements. You’d phrase them as questions, like “Would it be helpful for women’s studies to require biology classes?” Or you’d just shut up.
“I’m full of self-doubt” is also a pretty obvious appeal for coddling. If you’re expecting us to swoop in with “No, you’re the smartest college freshman I’ve ever met!” then you’re going to be disappointed.
Another one I used a lot when I was a teenager! Unfortunately you can’t actually win an argument by throwing all your points at it and then going “Okay, now everyone stop talking about this and go back to that other topic!” Not that I didn’t often try.
Well, I guess if the one and only criterion you were using was “telling you to fuck off,” and if Price indeed did that, then there would be no difference. But most people who talk to you for an extended length of time are probably Price by that criterion. Also, comparing us to Price makes this next bit rather ironic:
*bows down* We’re not worthy!
I wish Yoyo would change their handle so that CoolYoyo doesn’t get mistaken for hir.
Then shut up.
Then shut up.
Then shut up.
Then shut up.
Then shut up. All your problems will be solved by shutting up.
Yoyo, HellKell said it right earlier – if you want to be part of a community, read then speak. Read lots. It’s the best lesson you’re going to get from this. Please, for everyone’s sake, stop trying to explain yourself. If you keep responding and excusing and responding and excusing all that’s going to happen is that people are going to keep responding, you’ll feel like you’re being piled on so respond again so other people will pick up on stuff so you’ll feel like you’re being piled on… you see where I’m going?
FWIW you’ve pretty much managed to change my mind about you. I mean I don’t want to be BFFs but I don’t think you’re a total jerk anymore. But stop trying to excuse the jerk-y things you said, take a step back, read a bit more (a lot more) and maybe then come back.
Oh and with a different nym maybe? We already have a Yoyo here, it’s confusing.
It’s so mean of people to react negatively to people who’re tactless and pretentious! They should be more understanding.
The lesson to learn here is that writing is a form of communication, and if your writing is communicating things that you don’t mean or making you look like a jerk then the responsibility for that lies with you.
Can I get this as a sampler for my cube wall?
My first thought was “if you’re really, really trans-exclusionary…”
The other thing is that we’ve tried that before. We’ve been really polite and gentle and accepting to certain people and tried to help them understand. But sooner or later, they always just devolve and start calling us bitches.
BTW, I’m with katz on this one. I don’t care if deliberate trolling or stupidity is the cause, I just can’t be bothered to deal with the result.
Thirding that emotion.
That’s why I’m trying to nip it in the bud before the inevitable meltdown 😛
Depends how you define it. I might be inclined to label coming in and announcing your opinions on every topic and what your personality is like and how you sit in on college classes and everything else about you as a type of trolling, in that it contributes nothing and ruins the conversation. But if you define trolling as inherently being disingenuous, then not as much. There’s still some of that but only some.
This. So many times this.
Clarification: A variant nym, such as “PretentiousYoyo”. If you come back with a different nym and pretend to be a different person, that’s socking and it’s a bannable offense.
Aren’t we on meltdown # 2 or 3 already? This one melts very easily. Poor construction, clearly made in a factory with no regard for proper safety standards.
Good point.
BTW, as a general suggestion – if someone is unsure of themselves and their opinions and thinks that their thoughts lack originality and so on, you know what really isn’t going to help? Shitloads of bravado and stating every point as if you had absolute confidence in the rightness of your opinions. “Fake it till you make it” is not a good approach to take in political arguments, or on the internet. All that will happen is that you will annoy people and they will point out all the holes in the argument you just made, and how is that going to boost your confidence?
(This is if you’re sincere but kind of stupid and not trolling. I’m still leaning towards option B in this case.)
I’m a page behind, cuz I got my brain prodded, but that is, in fact, relevant to my belated point.
“The reason these people are so awful is because they HAVEN’T had terrible life experiences.”
Yeah, I’m occasionally grateful for the shit I’ve gone through. Having my world turned on its head, repeatedly, taught me some hard lessons in empathy. I don’t want to say I’m a better person for it, cuz fuck that noise, but it feels like having seen just how horrible people can be has highlighted how most people are decent people, maybe busy and focused on themselves, but not harmful and not really selfish either, more that most people only harm people by accidentally carelessness, not malice.
And I’m gonna shut up before the comma barrel runs dry!
Also, I was one of those psych majors, and you can’t empathize someone out of being an asshole. There is, however, a reason we’re taught from childhood not to give into peer pressure, and mockery is certainly a form of such. But really, you just can’t change people who don’t want to be changed, at least not without exploiting either a standard human weakness (e.g. peer pressure) or a personal weakness (which isn’t cool) — and yeah, with some people the desire for social connections can make empathy a valid strategy, but not with people who truly think the people trying to empathize are less than human and trying to use them. It’s how feMRAs exist — they agree on some level, and feel bad for MRAs, but have to constantly prove that they aren’t like those mean horrible women. (Well, part of why they exist, the point is more that even if you go to that length, they still won’t trust you enough to listen, and really, that’s the missing variable in having warm fuzzy replies get through to someone — they have to trust your opinion)
Dear gods am I verbose today, and I’m nowhere near caught up!
Caught up, only addition is that NewYoyo should learn the first rule of holes.
And idk if biology is required everywhere, as a psych major I had to take a neurosci course, but the rest of the body wasn’t required. I don’t think it’s required of any? most? of the social science and fine arts majors at Pitt. Our science was more math and research oriented.
Seconded! (Or whatever numbered, since I haven’t caught up yet. Motion carried?)
The idea that empathy can heal all wounds is just really misguided. There’s also the fact that FeMRAs try their best to shower those guys in empathy and kindness and warm fuzzies, and it doesn’t make the guys hate women as a whole any less, it just makes them go “there’s a nice token well-behaved female” and pat the FeMRA in question on the head. It doesn’t even mean that they won’t last out at the FeMRA who’s just been attempting to love-bomb them the moment something sets them off into rage mode again. It’s dangerous to even try the healing-via-compassion approach with people that angry, which is part of why the idea that trying is some sort of an ethical duty bothers me so much.
Lash, not last.
In England, where I went to Uni, we weren’t required to take any General Ed-type courses at all. I had a major and two minors, and all the classes I took were on those three subjects.
Personally I don’t like being told I should spend time or money depilating when
1) I don’t want to
2) My deodorant works fine, thank you for asking
3) Depilation results in me being wetter and chafing, which is FUCKING PAINFUL
4) It’s nobody else’s goddamn business
Yeah, I’m going to go with “if we’re not getting naked together I don’t see why it’s any of my business” on the subject of other people’s body hair. And even if we are, if someone doesn’t want to accommodate my preferences that’s just too bad for me, I don’t get to tell them what to do with their body.
Can we have a real, proper meltdown? I’ll bring popcorn.
Love the “people should have to do X subject on top of everything else” suggestion. Like their courses aren’t already full and they have endless time and money to devote to extraneous stuff. Especially if, I dunno, they’re not kids living at home/on campus, but adults who have jobs and maybe kids or parents to look after. Yeah, it’s so reasonable to demand more and more subjects be required.