If you live in New York state, you may have seen the poster above plastered on a bus shelter; or you may have seen it posted somewhere on the internet. The message is pretty simple, and it’s sad that it has to be said: kids are pretty impressionable, so teach your sons to treat women with basic respect.
The purpose of the ad campaign, sponsored by the New York state Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, is pretty clear as well: teaching boys respect for women lessens the chances that they will abuse women as adults.
Numerous studies have found that men with sexist attitudes towards women are more likely to try to control their wives or girlfriends with physical abuse. Indeed, one recent study even found that brief exposure to sexist jokes made men more inclined to brush off violence against women, at least amongst men with sexist attitudes to begin with.
Speaking of which, the sexist jokes over at A Voice for Men have unveiled a hilarious new “meme,” which just happens to be inspired by the “awaiting instructions” PSAs we’ve been discussing. And here it is:
The logic here is airtight: because some women get drunk and urinate in public, women don’t deserve respect.
I guess men never get drunk and urinate in public, or ever do anything vaguely embarrassing that gets caught on camera?
Is it really asking too much to respect people as people, foibles and all?
My favorite example of the two nations thing was when, aged 8, I asked someone sitting next to me at school in Texas if I could borrow their rubber.
Intereestingly (well, I thought it interesting), in Britain, Karen Ingala Smith has started a twitter account called “Counting Dead Women”.
One blog which Octo might care to read deals with the myths that women commit domestic violence and murder on a par with men.
http://kareningalasmith.com/2013/04/29/this-thing-about-male-victims/
In particular:
She explains her maths in detail in the comments, in case Octo wants to quibble.
This is one of those things where, when people do quibble with the math, I start wondering if they ever talk to the women around them, or just pay attention to what’s happening in the families they know. I knew of cases of domestic abuse, and was aware of how it tended to be gendered, even as a child, long before any exposure to feminism.
Suicide is when you kill someone named Sue.
Fratricide is when you kill someone at a frat party.
Genocide is when you kill someone named Gene.
Etc, etc.
Patricide is when you kill someone called Pat.
Oh to have been a fly on the wall! 😀
@Octo
Note: If want an example of Kiwi Girls very impressive math skills check out this thread: http://manboobz.com/2014/02/07/dating-by-the-numbers-why-hacking-okcupid-is-a-waste-of-everyones-time/
First you make a brain-melting argument about how Fade’s percentages don’t matter because there are so many more overall male homicide victims.
Yet this is your next post:
So you have seemingly fallen back in love with percentages now that there are more overall female victims. FYI, you’re actually using mathematics here, poorly at that, and Kiwi Girl deftly picks apart this paragraph.
You patronizingly brush aside her analysis with this hunk of assholery:
Kiwi Girl’s response is dead on IMHO.
Remember the -ometer discussion? I’m getting vibes of that.
Matricide is when you beat your mats with a stick to clean them.
-Ometer discussion? That one seems to have fallen down the memory hole for me.
Pesticide is when you get rid of trolls, like Octo.
I’m still laughing at “homicide means killed at home.”
I can’t remember the -ometer discussion either.
Hey, hellkell! When’s the move on?
Not until late June/early July. We have to give our landlord 60 days notice, plus we don’t want to drive up there while there’s even the slightest chance of shit mountain weather. We also have to go up, find a place, find pet transpo, have a giant yard sale, hire movers, and buy a new car. And a million other little things.
Ah, the joys of moving house (let alone interstate) – not.
Octo – I don’t believe you’re trolling. I do believe you think you are a lot smarter and know a lot more about this than you actually do. I can see you’re trying, but you keep posting half-formed ideas right in the thread.
Assuming you do want to be part of this community, you might want to read more and comment less, so that when you do comment, you’re on point.
This, however, was just rude. Kiwi Girl (the one who you were talking to when you said this) is our resident statistics whizz.
It was inspired by Christopher Pell, I think because of his “keylogger”, but we were coming up with alternate uses for various meters. A barometer tells you where you can get a drink, an anemometer locates tide pool life, a spirometer detects corrupt vice presidents, etc.
I guess an O’Meter would measure your Irish ancestry.
RE: cassandrakitty
I hope “they” doesn’t become a common thing because it makes the gods of grammar cry.
Actually, it has a loooong precedent in the English language. It was in the King James bible!
I… may have had to have this fight with a lot of people claiming that our pronoun preference was negated by grammar. <.<
My favorite example of the two nations thing was when, aged 8, I asked someone sitting next to me at school in Texas if I could borrow their rubber.
Oh my god. I had this EXACT SAME THING happen when I was in high school with a German exchange student! That poor girl. I was even in Texas!
My own example of language hilarity was when I was living in New Zealand, where apparently they don’t use the word ‘cilantro’ and pronounce ginger (the spice) and ginger (the redhead) differently. We each thought the other was putting us on.
How do they pronounce ginger differently, LBT?
RE: kittehs
In the USA, ginger the spice and ginger the redhead are pronounced the same, like “jinjer.” In NZ, apparently the spice is pronounced “ginger,” and the redhead is “jinjer.”
I’m scratching my head over that one as NZers are well known for our “lazy vowels” (and high rising terminals, I’m soooooo guilty of that). In that, when we say “beer”, “bear”, and “bare”, they’re all pronounced “beer”.
So I’m trying to work out how we say the same word differently.
Piss-take of our prime minister, to illustrate the point (I *don’t* talk like this, I promise):
I’m scratching my head over that, too – never heard of ginger being said with the hard g sound.
I’ve heard a joke that the Kiwis flogged all their vowels off to us. I think it might be true.
We have the rising terminals too, have had for ages. I always want to say “Are you asking me or telling me?” ::grinds teeth::
Funny thing: NZer recently introduced herself as (I thought) Keddy. What a cool name, thought I. Glad I didn’t say anything … her name’s Kitty. Which is also a cool name, but not the unusual one I thought it was! But sometimes I can’t tell Oz and NZ accents apart. I’d be struggling to name most USian accents too, and never mind trying to tell a Canadian from a USian!
I can tell a few Sydney accents now, but that’s about it.
For the Canadians, it seems to be in the way they pronounce their “o” so it’s more like “or”, but not as obvious as the South Africans (I’m better with spotting their accent now, I used to be stuck until I got them to say a word with an o in it). The only time I have been fooled recently was by an American who lived very north, practically just over the border from Canada (can’t remember the state, wasn’t Washington) and I called them a Canadian. I think that was a first for them. They laughed and took it in good grace.
I’ve had a bit of trouble with the Irish and Scots accents in the past – not the heavy accents, but the ones that have only a slight accent. To my ear, they both roll their r’s the same way.
NZ has been getting regional English accents (there are already regional Maori accents, and those existed before Europeans arrived). But given that no-one understands what we say anyways, I doubt non-NZers will notice. Our mangling of English is a trick so that we can pass secret messages to each other without having to change anything! 🙂
@kittehserf
I can’t tell canadian accent from US accent, and I live in the US XD
of course, i also suck at regional accents. When I moved from New York to Indiana, people kept telling me I had a New York accent, but they didn’t sound like they had indiana accents.
I always think of South African accents as “Sith Efrikan,” but that’s more the Boer-descended sound, I think.
I can never tell if Oz has any regional accents or not. The differences I hear are more of the class-indicator variety – think of the sort of thing Kath and Kim was sending up (though their parody of the sound was pretty mild).
About the only accents I’m reasonably good at picking are ones from the UK and Ireland, though it’s only the English ones where I can pick some regions – Yorkshire, Birmingham, Geordie, West Country and some London ones. This is what happens when you spend your life watching the BBC. 😛
I can tell a Melbourne person if they sound like Kylie did when she was on Neighbours.