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.
IBM used to have a “white business shirt” only policy for male employees, no way were they going to allow even light pastels under suits.
I went for my last job interview when I had dreadlocks. I did talk to the recruitment consultant about that, and she told me not to worry because I was the most qualified candidate and they weren’t going to be interested in my hair. I have tended to change my hair styles a lot, so much so that colleagues that don’t see me very often (different office, different country) comment on my hair when I see them again.
cloudiah, you’ll be fine with what you wear. Figure out what impression you want to give through your clothes, and then stick with the clothes that you figure best give that impression. And are comfy. 🙂
cassandra – oh yeah, commuting shoes are very much the thing here, too. I haven’t seen formerly dressy leather shoes (these were the very long toed, square-ended sort) in the role before, so it didn’t occur to me at the time. It just looked like “person who buys shoes and never polishes them” (a group of which I’m a member) and was odd with the suit.
Only place where I’ve worked where the dress code sucked was the Museum. Customer service had uniforms, and to start with it was black skirt or trousers for the women, a white or white/electric blue/black patterened, short sleeved shirt, and the world’s ugliest electric blue sweater, cardigan or vest.
The men had white shirts, grey suits from an actual suit supplier (ie. not a maker of uniforms) and patterned ties.
So we already had the situation where the blokes looked almost corporate, or like management (and senior management cracked the shits about that big time – the public sometimes spoke to them by mistake!) and the women were obviously in a uniform, and a less than flattering one.
But that wasn’t stupid enough, oh no. Our then-manager wanted us to have electric blue SKIRTS as well. We organised a petition that said, politely, that it wasn’t appropriate to have the men look respectable and responsible and make us look like fools. Thank goodness it worked.
As it happened senior management’s dummy-spit saw us all put into black skirt/trousers and long-sleeved blue and white striped shirts, and the same godawful knitwear. The oh-yes-they’re-good-quality-real-brass buttons on the shirts lost their gold paint after about three washes.
Did this museum have a problem with the power randomly going out? Because it seems like they were trying to make sure you would glow in the dark.
LOL no, but that’d be a better reason than any they came up with!
Oh yes, and there was the floppy black tie (like a failed bow around the neck) with little museum logos on.
I’d managed to forget about that.
At least I subverted the whole thing as much as possible – long black hair, silver dangly earrings, silver rings on every finger and Gary Oldman blue specs. Thank goodness for being in my Goth period.
I love it when the trolls don’t realize they’re being trolled
I’m being a little cagey on the profession, although I’ve mentioned it before. Think education/information services. Honestly, outside of the interview, most people in these positions range from business casual to very eclectic — I’ve known plenty of people in them with visible tattoos, hair color not on the natural spectrum, guys who wear kilts, etc. But they do expect you to dress up for interviews, and during the all day thing I’ll be interacting with everyone from faculty to fellow professionals to paraprofessionals (aka people who do most of what we do but for less money) to upper administrators. So, mostly I’m going for something where my clothes are the least memorable thing about me; inoffensive, comfortable, and professional enough to pass muster.
I also have to make a 40-minute presentation, which I am filling with lots of jokes — because I like to laugh and have fun at work, and if they don’t like that they shouldn’t hire me. I’m willing to dress up more than usual for a day, but I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not! XD
Seriously, though, foursidedtriangles is a bot programmed to spout pedantic pseudo-intellectual jargony garbage, right?
I did find myself wondering if he would pass the Turing test.
Kiwi Girl — to add to the nonsense, I think Triangle would say that men have more variance if this…
Men:
Brown eyes — 26% (25-27%)
Hazel eyes — 24% (23-25%)
Blue eyes — 26% (25-27%)
Green eyes — 24% (23-25%)
Women:
Brown eyes — 25% (20-30%)
Hazel eyes — 25% (20-30%)
Blue eyes — 25% (20-30%)
Green eyes — 25% (20-30%)
Because something about Bayesian stats. Or something.
I’m pretty sure the idea that this numbers will vary based in your sample is foreign, since we can make guesses without priors or anything resembling real numbers.
And a complete failure to understand that very few genes are a straight binary you have the gene, you have phenotype A, you don’t have it, then phenotype B. Well, I guess a fair number do, but they aren’t the ones going into “hey, this guy is hot!” — hair and eye color are multiple genes, height and weight are environmentally modulated (as is IQ, and ability to get an education), employment had some correlation to genetics outside the extreme cases? Laziness might be a combination of genes and environment, but how acceptable it is…well, poor and unemployed = mooch, trust fund kid on a yacht = vacation they deserve.
Ability to dress smart is genetic only in so far as your ability to fit well into off the rack clothing — which is probably more variable in those with breasts (or wearing clothing designed around an assumption of breasts that they lack). Just look at men’s jeans versus women’s — waist and inseam is going to result in a fairly good fit, both combined into one meaningless number…not so much.
So we’ve got a series of features/phenotypes that aren’t going to have any real difference in variance between genders, and ones where society and environmental factors cause gender differences. None of which has any bearing on DNA, or, for that matter, anything remotely on topic.
Actually I’d argue that the reason waist/inseam works for men’s clothes isn’t just because these are precise numbers (and they’re not – vanity sizing happens in men’s clothes too, though not as much as in women’s), it’s also because men’s clothes are generally designed to fit in a rather loose way, while many/most women’s clothes are designed to fit closer to the body, so there’s less margin for error in the fit of women’s clothes.
Sexism as seen through the prism of what it means for clothes to “fit”, basically.
Eugh… I worked at a job with a dress code once. No shorts, slacks only (in the middle of the desert). Shirts must have collars, but they couldn’t be blue cotton; too close to the dreaded “denim”. And yes, there was not-so-subtlely coded racism for that.
All of this, naturally, meant that the boss walked around in t-shirt, shorts and sandals.
I hope I never work at a job that has a strict dress code. I’m afraid of having to work in an environment in which I’m not only made to wear masculine office clothes but also made to cut my hair. I’m sure my dad is lying about the pervasiveness of the so-called automatic discrimination against “men” with long hair, but it still happens.
Most tech companies won’t even make you wear real shoes, much less formal clothes.
(Unless they’re Oracle, boo hiss.)
I don’t think I’d ever have a chance at working for Oracle anyway, so that’s a relief.
cloudiah, I’d go with the jacket instead of the cardi on the twinset, otherwise you’d fit right in with the candidates we had when interviewing for the couple of faculty positions I was on the committee for. Unless the “education” part is high school or below, or the “information services” part is library with more than half the time spent in administration, a jacket is really necessary to show that, when they need to count on you to look professional, they don’t have to worry.
One of my roommates wanted to go into law (because of the lure of living DIRECTLY ON THE BEACH, of course) so in her last year, she cleaned out half her closet and bought seven suits (all with skirts, of course). I thought they were identical, but if you got them in the light, you could tell that one was dark navy as opposed to black, and that the other had very find charcoal pinstripes, etc. and white knit shells with a high, round neck. And a set of pearls (earrings and a necklace) that was all she was allowed to wear, other than her watch.
On the other hand, I suppose if you only wear a uniform every day it takes a lot of pressure off to decide what to wear every day…
Also, here is the absolute worst picture of me ever, partly because of the suit and tie but mostly because MUSTACHE! V_V
That was at a wedding party when I was 16. It was miserable for me purely because of my appearance and clothes.
I actually quite like suits (though having to wear them every day would get old really fast). It’s business casual that combines all the sartorial elements that I like least into one “why do we have to do this again?” package.
@Argenti: true, and true. The complete inability of troll to express an actual equation was also a give-away.
It was like someone coming here and typing “yellow is a bread monkey large” and then getting all “I’m better than you” because no-one can work out what the hell they’re talking about. It looks like English (stats) but it isn’t.
I did love the comment about how Bayesian statistics and frequentist statistics can be estimated the same way. Which is, of course, the reason that Bayesians use Winbugs so much and frequentists use SAS, SPSS, Stata, R, and basically anything not-like-Winbugs.
Ally, some industries are (sadly) still clinging to the idea that people (men or women) can’t really be considered professional if they have long hair. However, if you live in a progressive area of the country or work in most progressive fields (correct me if I am misremembering, but aren’t you working to learn software development?), you will be fine if you are clean and neatly turned out.
The last big company I worked for allowed people to have long hair and wear it any way you like if you were on the development floors. If you were on the production floor, no matter your gender, you had to wear your hair either close cropped or otherwise bound (braids, buns, etc, no ponytails) close to your head, and often covered with a tight fitting cap. The machinery went so fast that if a stray lock of hair were to get pulled in there was little or no chance that they could stop the line before you had it ripped out, and you’d consider yourself lucky if you didn’t have your head bashed in as well.
Yeah, that was an odd troll. Also the bit about triangles – “We don’t know that four sided triangles cannot exist if we venture into sufficiently high dimensional mathematics!”… Okay.
Odd.
Dress codes? Bane of my life. I can’t accessorize or dress snappy to save that life, so the few times I’ve been in situations that require a dress code I’ve had some severe trouble. The hospital was’t bad, because the uniform was supplied by the hospital and so you simply wore that, but stuff like official debating teams where I had to find a shirt that matched by selection of suits and my 2 ties, both of which have a color not quite normal, was rather a problem. I figured eventually if you just went yellow tie, purple shirt, black suit, people started assuming I was actively trying to be neatly iconoclastic with my fashion, and not just in perpetual shortage of fancy stuff (Danish tailoring is hellishly expensive).
The dress code for my other job is chain mail, troll costumes, elf make up or elf ears, which I can bear much better than fancy shoes. I do sometimes wear a suit to official functions, but the suit is a minotaur skin.
I’d go with the jacket, seconding gillyrosebee (How’s your business by the by?) – it’s neat and simple and does show that, on occasions where you must be fancy, you can be fancy.
(Still find dress codes an odd thing)
scott1139, my sense from what I’ve read on GradiantLair is that she would welcome you heartily as a reader if what brought you there was an urge to pay close attention and listen respectfully, and do the work it takes to try to understand what you find without feeling the need to correct or override her points from the perspective of your privilege.
The ‘Black first, color next’ policy is about comments and interaction. The I think she screens those would she allows to interact with her because of the overwhelming weight of racism that gets added to the already heavy burden of sexism she has to contend with, and her perfectly justifiable right to control how much of that toxicity she is willing to put up with.
As someone of mixed heritage who presents as white, I have this chance to move back and forth between perspectives and see just how much white privilege insulates one from the worst of the world at large. When hanging out with my cousins we would be described as “prairie n*ggers” by people who, when I was alone and in another context, would tip their hats and call me ma’am. And let me assure you that I am actually quoting there, not stating a hypothetical. It’s eye-opening, and it’s a perspective that most people who benefit from being considered ‘white’ by society don’t often have. If you can’t get that perspective naturally, you’ll have to work a whole lot harder to understand it.
Look at her policy as a kind of generosity. That she’s spelled it out so clearly can help you in your stated goal of learning to work with and understand your privilege. In a more equal and just world, no one would think it odd that the right to decide who and how she wants to interact with people or whether she wants to speak to or hear from them is completely and totally up to her (and incidentally, one aspect of what you wrote that could be read as offensive is this idea that you might be, if not shocked exactly, then confused that some aspect of the world would not welcome you – this is a feeling that stems precisely from the intersection of white and male privilege: the idea that the world owes you an explanation or will find a way to include you no matter what).
So, read all you want. Once you have educated yourself, feel more able to ask respectful and humble questions, always with the understanding that you are not guaranteed so much as an acknowledgement of your inquiry, let alone an answer. But always keep in mind that one aspect of the privilege you have inherited is that people of color have grown up in a culture that constantly demands they cater to the needs, desires, and whims of people like you (and me) at the expense of their own health and sanity, and they are heartily tired of it. It’s your job now to understand that and come to terms with its implications.
Wow, lack of sleep is making me very explainey today. That’s really weird. My apologies, and I’ll try to rein it in.
Good and bad. It’s growing faster than I expected, which is causing some stress and discomfort as I try to ramp up. But, on the other hand, I had expected that it would take me longer to make it support itself, let alone become profitable, and that date might be closer at hand than I had initially thought.
Thanks for asking!
Ugh, Ceiling Cat save me from coworkers who wear too much fragrance. One I can kind of forgive, as she often come straight from her other job, where they sell scented fucking
candlesbath products, but (1) it still makes my head hurt, and (2) our patients are animals. Wearing heavy perfumes around them must be like flashing strobe lights in the eyes of human patients.I admit I stressed the hell out about interview clothes (and I had to shave!), but now that I’m hired I don’t have to worry, since I wear scrubs at work. Plus several of the nurses have facial piercings and sleeve tattoos, and there’s an employee with bright red hair on our advertising materials, so “professional” obviously means something pretty different where I am.
Kiwi Girl — but how do we know that the monkey isn’t purple? What if the definition of yellow means under some silly conditions it could be purple (this is a bad choice, as purple-yellow color blindness is a thing)
But most people with any form of color blindness are men, ergo men have more phenotype (huh?) variation and thus women do more mate selection.
I don’t know much Bayesian stats is why I didn’t comment on the math, just the nonsense priors, but thank you for explaining why the math was just as nonsensical as the priors and related assumptions.
I errored emailing pecunium about French and said je suis du vin instead of je boire du vin — I am wine instead of I drink wine. I am wine makes more sense than the idea that x linked recessive traits play some important role in mate selection.
And SAS! While working in software licensing at Pitt I had an undergrad come in, he needed SAS for a project due in half an hour. I directed him to the computer labs since no way was he going to install and learn it with time left to do his project.