So, there’s a whole bunch of MRA stuff I should be writing about now, and some Roosh drama, but, you know, my heart just isn’t in it at the moment. So I’m going to take a few more days off to clear my head. In the meantime, I would suggest keeping up with the latest MRA and PUA shenanigans by checking out the AgainstMensRights and TheBluePill subreddits, respectively.
Also, I thought you all might appreciate this video of a cat discovering snow for the first time.
And Happy New Year! Or did I already wish you guys that?
Also it turns out that literally every science and technology was invented exclusively by women, except maybe weapons.
You are wise, Kitteh. The Felinist Cat Alliance will stop at nothing to maintain their dominance. If you stay there too long, you may even become…a serf to a kitteh.
Orion – whoa, that’s in the not even wrong category, isn’t it?
That whole thing about PiV being so incredibly dangerous … it doesn’t make sense at all. Showing my lacka biological knowledge here, but it doesn’t seem to me that evolution would work that way. If it’s all about reproduction, mating that’s hugely dangerous to the child-bearing partner doesn’t seem terribly effective.
The part about her being enlightened (endarkened?) through bad experiences … I wonder if she’d ever accept the idea of someone else having life-changing good experiences, ones that make them say “Screw this ‘it’s too good to be true, life is dreadful evil and btw you shouldn’t enjoy fucking’ attitude”?
Yes, she really does sound like an MRA caricature. Which is weird, given those guys are self-caricatures already.
Hope she doesn’t use the dreaded double full stop.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Love it, Ally. š
On which happy note, I’m off to watch Endeavour. Niters!
Oh my god, this IS the female MRM. Now I’m reading a post about the dangers of letting actual activism but into your preaching-to-the-choir time.
Showing my lacka biological knowledge here, but it doesnāt seem to me that evolution would work that way. If itās all about reproduction, mating thatās hugely dangerous to the child-bearing partner doesnāt seem terribly effective.
(not a biologist but) Mating that’s hugely dangerous or even inevitably fatal is definitely a thing, especially with fish and insects. Mantises and anglerfish are particularly grotesque examples, but I don’t think they’re unique.
Anyway, Witchwind doesn’t say childbirth is unconscionably dangerous, just intercourse. The comments on the linked post inform us that the male partner should apply semen to the vulva, but an older posts says it would be better still if he simply gave the woman some semen and allowed her to apply it herself in private.
I have no relevant scientific or medical knowledge, so I cannot assess the effectiveness of these techniques. I believe Katz expressed some skepticism upthread, but it sounds like a plausible method to me.
Istanbul! It’s gorgeous. Mr C and I both fell in love with it (separately). Thailand is another place where there are cats everywhere, which I loved about being there. Lots of monks feed cats, so temples are always full of them, but there are some particularly awesome monks whose extra special cat-feeding habits I wish I could go see in person.
http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lovd9hRFJv1qfklz1o1_500.jpg
http://www.casaconhecimento.com.br/blog/wp-content/uploads/41.jpg
http://www.amymartinphotography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Tiger3.jpg
From the witchwind blog
Hair surgery? Does she mean what most of us refer to as “getting a haircut”? Obviously hair plugs are a thing that exists, and I guess that qualifies as surgery, but it’s mostly men who get it so now I’m confused.
Tigers <3
Another Middle Eastern country I've been to (and in fact have lived in for a year total) was UAE. And I can safely say it's the worst country I've ever lived in. With respect to trivial things I didn't like, there was nothing for me to do there but sit in the apartment all day and order fast food delivery because it was so damn hot outside for most of the year.
And the whole "HEY LOOK AT US WE HAVE THE TALLEST BUILDING EVER" thing got very old very quickly, especially when I took into consideration the horrible exploitation of foreign construction workers in UAE. I have heard numerous stories of workers committing suicide just because of the abuse. On the highway I often saw trucks crammed full of fatigued construction workers on their way home. Most of them aren’t even allowed to take as many days off as people who do work far less difficult and abusive.
I mean, of course there are countries that have as much if not more worker oppression than the UAE – I say this because Muslim countries are often singled out for racist reasons and that’s definitely not what I’m trying to do here – but seeing it for myself in that country was terrible.
MRA Trope #17: Obsessive fear of one’s own sexual arousal and the conviction that it must be a conspiracy.
Even to this day if a man is kind to me or just smiles I can still feel this āattractionā and gratefulness that Iād feel before and tried to get rid of, which simply means that men are still our captors and thereās no way we can completely get away from stockholm syndrome so long as they hold us captive.</i?
@ Ally
You see the same thing in Saudi and Dubai, exhausted overworked immigrant workers being shuttled around from one place to another. It was one of the more depressing things about living there.
The Emirate I lived in for most of my stay in UAE was Sharjah (ash-Shariqah). It was markedly poorer than Dubai, but it was more peaceful and way less gaudy and elitist than Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The nice thing about Sharjah was that it was actually so safe at night that I wasn’t even scared of walking in the city at 11 PM. But worker exploitation was a problem there, too.
I think my favorite place in UAE was al-‘Ayn. Beautiful place. And we saw some pretty cool stunt shows, drag racing, etc. there as well. I wish I could’ve gone to Jabal Hafit.
“Gaudy” is a great way to describe Dubai. Sometimes it makes Vegas look subtle and tasteful.
Yeah, I’ve passed by Vegas before, and while Vegas is pretty gaudy it doesn’t compare to Dubai. Abu Dhabi is way more gaudy than both of them combined, though. I went to this one massive mall in Abu Dhabi once and it was so damn gaudy that I nearly lost my appetite when I was eating in the food court. That doesn’t normally happen to me.
One thing that I did think was pretty cool, though was the Dubai Global Village. Yes, it was flashy as hell, but the amusement park rides there were great and for some reason there was fantastic ice cream there as well. And the diversity of boutiques and whatnot was really cool – countries ranging from Afghanistan to Japan were all represented there.
Another thing I hated about UAE: the fucking awful traffic. JFC, I would rather walk in the 45C heat than drive half a mile there. There are so many horrible fatal accidents on the highways every other week.
Last post of the night, apologize for threadspamming. Upon completing my review of the blog, I identified two notable differences between Witchwind and a typical MRA. One is sad, and one is fascinating.
While many MRAs have autobiographies full of imagined slights and abuses, witchwind seems to have survived a substantial amount of actual abuse and manipulation. I’m not totally sure what to make of that, or how it changes my reaction to her philosophy, but it does make a hypothetical “WomanBoobz” blog seem more tragic than funny.
The interesting thing, for me, was the perspective her blog gave me on MRA prose. There’s been much discussion of how MRAs get to be such poor writers. Are these grandiose, self-important MRA spokesmen poor prose writers before they join the movement, or does embracing terrible ideas lead to terrible writing? I can now say with confidence that the answer is “both.”
Witchwind is a much better writer than any MRA I can remember reading. He sentences have some structure, the imagery and phrasing can be evocative, and she is capable of advanced feats like breaking things into paragraphs and putting her thoughts in an intelligible order. When her writing is theory-light, like in the extended personal narrative in her first post, it’s quick, clear, and compelling. At the same time, she has some very MRA stylistic quirks. Like MRAs, she frequently extends commonplace metaphors, and generally in a way that seems not to understand the referent. For instance, at one point she tells us that men and women are like male and female power adapter. The male plug steals energy from the female plug, and apparently prevents the female plugs from forming relationships and circulating energy amongst themselves. I don’t think people are much like plugs, but I also wonder how she intends to circulate power with exclusively female adapters.
Also like MRAs, she uses gives a lot of words personal definitions that are not even wrong. Although the new meaning has some thematic relationship to the original, it’s not so much a misunderstanding of the original concept as a complete disregard for it. Think of MRA “solipsism” or Witchwind’s uses of “unnatural” and “necrophilia.” (Necrophilia is any sexual attraction other than undifferentiated attraction to a real, live human person as a gestalt. For instance, if you have ever done a google search for “boobs,” you’re a necrophiliac.)
My conclusion is that most MRAs are already poor writers before joining the movement. the movement didn’t cause the lack of structure, internal coherence, or parsible grammar. However, it does cause some of the more spectacular. I would imagine that Witchwind is not actually unaware of how extension cords work in real life. My best guess is that confronting the most distressing ideas leads this kind of ideologue to shut down their logic and try to work backwards from a preordained conclusion toward reality, and that these shut downs create blind spots where the brain’s fact-checker is offline. Many of the classic Manboobz trolls were similar. People like Zarat appeared to believe ridiculous things about geography or geology or economics or what-not, because they started with an ideological commitment (gender apartheid) and then incorporated the rest of reality ad hoc when pressed.
The fact that witchwind is an abuse survivor is one of the reasons that I was uncomfortable with the “jump off a bridge” comments. I disagree with her on pretty much everything, and think that the stuff she writes is potentially harmful to the people reading it, but I’m just not OK with that kind of language being aimed at someone whose (weird, often creepy, frequently downright baffling) viewpoint has clearly been shaped by abuse.
I have to run out (it’s actually warm-ish here even!) but the ways in which I want to see the Hagia Sophia!
Also, iirc, the thing about mantis females is a result of stresses in captivity. And the vast majority of fish mate with no adverse effects. (Cute effects though, my little ones are getting so big, I think it’s nearly time to move the first batch in with their parents!)
And while anglerfish are kinda gross in what happens to the males, food is scarce that far down, it’s a good way to ensure the survival of the species as a whole. Plus, it’s the males that get the short end of the stick there, so it still disproves the idea that reproduction is bad for the female members of the species.
Ok, I need to run before I start explaining all the strange forms of aquatic reproduction!
Orion: Mantids aren’t, actually, prone to reproductive cannibalism. It seems being in captivity distorts things. Spiders, on the other hand…
There are also any number of other examples (anadramous fish, such as salmon and shad, various other insects who go through metamorphosis, mate and die. Carpenter Bess (where the female builds a nest, and then dies in the back, laying her eggs as she goes in, so the eldest can leave, then the next, etc.).
The point is, of course, the survival of the species, not the individual.
Mammals (with a very few exceptions, e.g. Guinea Pigs) can’t afford that strategy, because the young need care before they can be at all independent.
Ally/Katz: You might also like going up to Sturtevant Falls (go to the top of Santa Anita and follow the signs to the trailhead). Lovely pool. Here are some photos of the trail/falls
Congratulations, pecunium. Hope this means you’ll be wearing a kilt on the day.
The last time we had this discussion on anti-PIV radfems, I concluded (tongue in cheek) that internal fertilization and pregnancy is unnatural, because it obviously violates the female body autonomy. This is exactly what moral crusaders usually mean when they say X is “unnatural”: that X is wrong and not part of how nature should work. It’s not even a naturalistic fallacy, but simply an assertion expressed in traditional rhetoric. It takes for granted that actual nature might have flaws from moral viewpoint. Like the fact that humans cannot currently reproduce without pregnancy in female body.
Titianblue — last I heard, that was his plan.
And now that I’m back, more on aquatic reproduction. Most species go for the lots of young, little care strategy — the opposite of mammals, we have few young, and spend a lot of time caring for them. But there are oddballs — mouthbrooders for example, afaik it’s always the male, and he takes the wee ones into his mouth, where they’ll remain protected for some time before venturing out slowly, returning when scared, and then leave the nest for real (yes, a nest, it’s really just a circle on the lake bed that daddy has cleared out and marked as his territory, but the young are relatively safe inside it). Definitely another example where the female of the species comes out ahead though, in every case I can think of. Even in the lay eggs and die breeds as both genders die afterwards.
Also, spider reproduction is gross.
As for how to inseminate without PIV: people commonly assume the only alternative is IVF or in vitro fertilization, which is a really high-tech operation and not technically even a form of insemination. A more low-tech medical solution would be AI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_insemination
An even simpler method is to ejaculate in a cup and transfer the sperm to vagina with a small syringe (without needle, obvs). For some reason it’s not covered in Wikipedia, but I guess it would be classified as natural insemination, along with PIV and aforementioned trickle-down method. I understand It’s colloquially called “turkey baster method”, which I think is both creepy and hilarious.
Here in Finland it’s called “Moomin mug method”, as in reference to Moomin figure-printed coffee mugs. I guess because so many people have those mugs.
Re: forcing her to be naked during intercourse. At least in Victorian times they would let you wear those night overalls with a flap in the crotch.
Women were also encouraged to think of England during sex. Unfortunately, that only works if you have a fetish for England, and then WitchWind would likely dismiss your experience as insignificant.
Maybe “hair surgery” means laser hair removal?