How stupid do you have to be to actually believe the following nonsense? Not just regular stupid. Men’s Rights stupid.
Heck, this is even stupid by normal Men’s Rights standards. It made me think of this line from Ruthless People.
Now, horqth could very well be a troll. His account is brand new, and, I mean, this is just amazingly dumb. But here’s the thing: his comments are being treated as if they are completely reasonable by the Men’s Rights subreddit. I noticed only a couple of mostly ignored comments out of more than 100 even raising the possiblity that he was a troll.
Not only has his post gotten dozens of upvotes, but in the comments there are numerous other Men’s Rights Redditors — not trolls — who’ve actually managed to outdo him in the sheer ridiculousness of their opinions. And they’re getting upvotes too.
Milessycamore seemed to suggest that horqth had understated the degree to which men were being victimized in both places, and more than 200 Redditors agreed:
Saxonjf thought it would be nice if more women would act like these strippers and make men feel “important special.”
Itchybrain, putting his economist hat on, suggested that the root of the problem was the massive over-valuation of women:
So how did the ladies get so overvalued in the first place? Blame the government and all that darn welfare. Responding to one contrarian Men’s Righster who suggested — get this! — that women are appropriately valued — FloranHunter laid down this truth bomb, by which I mean a bunch of complete and utter crap:
If only we could return to the good old days, when women would starve unless they were super nice to unattractive dudes who pestered them in bars!
Lawtonfogle also has no problem with the idea of men being valued for their money; he just wants to get more bang(s) for the buck.
![Lawtonfogle 10 points 1 day ago (12|2) Government intervention in the means of social support programs that result in a woman having far more bargaining power in relationship dynamics. If it weren't for laws that provided support for children and forced fathers to pay for children (even when they aren't the biological father), it would be a very different issue. Men would still be valued for their money and women for their attractiveness, but money would hold more value and being a male willing to commit would also hold (more) value. permalink source parent save give gold hide child comments [–]IOIOOIIOIO 5 points 23 hours ago (7|2) Effective male contraception is going to be amazing.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/lawton.png?ssl=1)
I give up.
Going back to find the discussion about password locking now.
Turn the whole “why would you want to breed via sex” thing around: how many cis het women would want to endure pregnancy without even the pleasure of sex beforehand (especially if we’re talking about making love)? Yes, it would be way preferable for many asexual or lesbian women who wanted children, or heterosexual women who don’t enjoy sex – but would the majority of women want this? I doubt it.
But it’s a stupid hypothetical anyway, because this sort of technology is simply not available for most of the world, and it’s not something women go through lightly. IVF is fucking traumatic by all accounts.
Now if there was an artificial womb substitute, or a way that cis men could get pregnant, I’d be all for it. Plus like the old joke says, if [cis] men could get pregnant, there’d only ever be one-child families.
@Argenti:
Yeah, still scratching my head – and I know you are too! Using this example, both genders have four eye colours, so the variance in *number* of eye colours is exactly the same (4 colours with 0 variance).
If the estimate for brown eyes (picking on this only as its the first eye colour mentioned) was 26% (22%-30%) for men vs. 25% (22%-28%) for women, then yes the variance for the proportion of brown eye colour in men would be larger. But then, so what – what is the practical outcome of this and why is it important? And I don’t think that was the “point” that tedious troll was trying to make. The actual proportions themselves aren’t a measure of variance because they’re a point estimate (like a mean is a point estimate, but because in this situation we’re dealing with categories, we use proportions instead of means so it makes sense). In the case of proportions, the sample size is used to calculate the variance, see e.g. http://stattrek.com/sampling/variance.aspx
I’ve tried to put some explanation in there for others who are following along. 🙂
And now you can see why tedious troll’s comments on variance make no sense whatsoever, and have no practical implications.
If I had a choice between doing away with sex and doing away with the whole physical process of pregnancy and childbirth, guess which one I’d pick? Not the one Triangle recommended, that’s for sure.
http://www.gradientlair.com/post/71637879756/hey-im-sure-sure-sure-that-person-was-well-meaning#disqus_thread
“Honestly the ONLY reason why it’s not password protected already is because I can’t figure out how to go through thousands of readers to know which are Black women and safe to be in my space.”
The link and quote are above. It’s quite possible I misinterpreted what she was saying.
@Chris
She’s complaining about brutal harassment and social media attacks, and it sounds like she gets a ton of it. A lot of bloggers find the abuse and stress too much, to the point that they give up because of it.
I respect that she wants the blog to be a safe space for black women. That’s the reason I don’t comment, because I don’t have anything particularly substantial to add to a conversation about the lives of black women. If she took the blog private, I wouldn’t take it personally if she wanted to limit the people who have access to her site.
That said, I don’t think she has a problem with non-harassing white readers like me, so I have no problem reading it. I don’t get your shock over what she said and don’t feel like it should drive away any white reader who understands the blog is fundamentally not about them.
Here’s a nice little piece she wrote, “My Feminism Is…”
http://www.gradientlair.com/post/62732540637/my-feminism-and-my-womanism-is
Here’s a more substantial post about black women and reproductive rights.
http://www.gradientlair.com/post/74243812084/black-women-pro-choice-roe-v-wade
I like her blog quite a bit, in part because it’s something different from the Huff Po mainstream white feminist fluff. If you are put off by a black woman who get’s pissed off about racism, then, yes, don’t read her blog. I’m not, and it makes me physically I’ll to think how black writers so often have to watch their “tone” in order to coddle white readers’ feelings.
*makes me physically ill (Thanks a bunch autocorrect.)
Autocorrect and WordPress, minions of Basement Cat.
Say, remember we used the phrase about sitting in the punchbowl? Well …
It’s amazing! One woman stands out in my memory. We were interviewing (a couple of hundred people contesting several available promotions) and in the middle of the second or third day this person came in to our not-very-large room and all three of us almost choked on the pervasive fumes of perfume and she was all decked out in clothes and jewellery that looked as though she was going to a cocktail party after work – not evening clothes, but lots of “decorative” features – and makeup thick enough and obvious enough for stage work. Once she’d left we did a quick debrief – always necessary to cement the details when there are so many people involved – and mentioned this. We were trying to be fair and we agreed that we shouldn’t hold this inappropriate presentation against her for the job in question. We found out later that day that this woman dressed and groomed like this every single working day.
Speaking as an interviewer, we liked to see that you’ve made an effort, but it has to be appropriate. Jewellery is important. The usual rule is that small earrings are better than large, on the earlobe is a safer bet than dangling. Fewer rings are better than more. If you’re looking for a more formal presentation, wearing a s.m.a.l.l. brooch/ pin on the lapel of a jacket or holding a scarf in place can be dressy without being overdone. Bracelets and necklaces are a trap for the unwary – small and one only is better than big or many. And for the sake of FSM _and_ all the saints in every version of heaven, shoes! Must be clean/ polished/ in perfect state of repair – tick every applicable box.
Whoops! That was me.
You’d have cringed at the guy I saw on the tram the other day, mildlymagnificent. Good smart suit, dressed for work, fashionable pointy shoes … but scuffed. Like, really scuffed.
I just hope they were his comfy commuting shoes.
And this is the kind of bullshit that makes me go “fuck it” with a side order of “men have it so much simpler.”
I’ve never worn a brooch in my life and I have no intention of starting now. Nor do I own any non-dangling earrings, other than a couple of pairs that were bought for me as a tweener by friends of the family.
This conversation is making me glad I live in California (and have never worked in a really conservative industry).
I wear dusty blue and orange running shoes.
They are comfortable running shoes because I do actual work in them.
They are dusty because I do actual work in them.
Anyone who has a problem with that can fuck right along.
This is also why I never pursued the financial services job leads that I was offered when I first arrived in San Francisco.
Employment agency rep : So, they’re quite conservative, so you’ll need to wear a skirt.
Me : That’s fine, but you don’t mean every day, do you?
EAR : Yes. Now, do you have a suit?
Me : Of course.
EAR : What color is it?
Me : Excuse me?
EAR : Navy blue or black only, and ideally you should wear a white shirt, though subtle pinstripes are OK. Also shoes – you should wear heels, obviously, but they shouldn’t be too high. About 2 and a half inches would be ideal. Now, about your hair…
Me : Um, I don’t think this company is going to be a very good fit.
And then I ended up working at a dotcom where everyone wore jeans and flipflops unless they were on a sales trip, and then at a huge tech company famous for the founder’s Hawaiian shirts, and then a newspaper where half the staff had tattoos. Yay, California!
“I don’t get your shock over what she said and don’t feel like it should drive away any white reader who understands the blog is fundamentally not about them.”
I did not state I was shocked by what she said. When I was staring at the page, it was because I was bewildered and thinking about what I should do.
I also never said I had a problem with her blog. Looking back at my first comment, I realize I must have deleted the part stating I really liked the few articles I did read.
I am a white man, and I do have a ton of privilege I need to learn to identify and keep in check. I mention the previous because I can tell from your responses that I said something wrong, but I don’t know what it is.
katz – I wear whatever shoes I fancy for the day, according to weather, how my feet feel and what colours I’m wearing. I’ve had one job that required a uniform (and how horrible that was!) and for the rest, clean and neat was all that mattered, and that didn’t mean any particular style.
With the guy on the tram (don’t know if the “fuck it” referred to noticing his footwear?) it was tthe combination of smart office suit with neglected office shoes that caught my eye. If they’d been with jeans they’d have looked fine. He was in a district that’s all suit territory, banks and financial companies and whatnot. Suits (with or without jacket) are de rigeur.
Dress requirements are particularly odd in my field (chemistry) because, unlike most white-collar jobs, it has a real possibility of ruining your clothes. Wearing old junk clothes is the most sensible choice–and wearing old junk clothes ought to make you look more professional because it shows that you know what you’re working with. (Interviews can be an exception since of course you don’t do actual chemistry at an interview. But wearing nice clothes still doesn’t actually prove anything.)
I’ve only sacrificed one T-shirt (ferrocene) and one sweater (acid!) to the field, but Doad has ruined any number of pairs of Dickies with adhesives. Yet his work still has a business casual dress code, even though it’s a) usually covered with a lab coat and b) in serious danger of getting stained.
RE Dude on train, probably commuting shoes. I see women in corporate clothes and trainers on the BART all the time – they carry their work shoes in their bags and put them on at the office.
Weirdest work clothes situation I’ve personally run into was a friend who worked in one of the “clean rooms” that make tech equipment in the Valley. She referred to the full body outfit with mask and gloves that they had to wear as a “bunny suit”.
Hah! We were public service. So the dress standards for “frontline” staff started around bank-clerk-without-the-uniform level. In big departments there’d be some variation but lawyers and accountants tended to be fairly conservative – especially if they had to deal with members of the public. Occasionally we kicked up about this because these standards were often a barrier when we were dealing with, or addressing meetings of, truckies or building workers and other trades. So some blokes got around it by doing the casual office dress thing. They’d turn up in the conventional suit and tie, talk for a while then loosen the tie, undo the top button, remove the jacket and roll up the shirt sleeves. (Look at Obama’s usual presentation – that’s not an accident. He rolls up his sleeves but leaves the tie knotted when he’s wearing one.) Dressed for business, but relaxed at the same time.
The men complained that their options were more restrictive than ours. And they were. So long as we were clean and neat, and breasts, belly, back, and buttocks were decently covered, we had more choice. At least, once the rules against women wearing pants and against denim of any kind for anyone at all were relaxed. That took a while.
For come reason banking and the associated industries seem to be just about the most restrictive environments as far as dress code in terms of industries that don’t technically require a uniform. Part of the reason it’s hard to give cloudiah advice is that we don’t know what kind of job she’s going for, or in what industry. Over here at least what will or won’t make a good impression is almost 100% dependent those two factors.
(For example, even at tech company with brightly shirted CEO, people turned up for interview for sales jobs in suits. Which was always funny, since almost everyone else at the office was in shorts and sandals in the summer.)
Well, apparently I can’t type today. Curse you, Triangle, this is all your fault!