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.
@Brooked, I missed your comment the first time around, but that is awful and all the Jedi hugs for you.
What’s Wonkette?
And yeah, I’m friends with a bunch of tumblr addicts, but I’ve been using tumblr less and less, even though I’m online a lot crunching HTML and making online shops and all that other shit. It just tends to make me feel crappy.
RE: nilvoid
Oh, and married couples are also subsidized, or did you conveniently forget that, you trash golem?
Aw, don’t mock the trash golems! There was an artist who made them in my last home, and they always brightened my day!
@LBT: Wonkette is a politics blog run by two or three folks. They describe it as a “mommy blog” but that’s tongue in cheek.
They have apparently taken a shine to MLP and they like to shop D*rpy Hooves into photos of Republicans. They also hold a Legislative Shitmuffin of the Year contest.
They don’t tend to watch their language, in short. I like it better than Crooks and Liars since C&L went full frontal aggregator.
Thanks everybody for the kind words.
Re: Wonkette was the Beltway (Washington DC for non-yanks) edition of The Gawker, and it used to be a lot more insider and gossipy. Gawker dumped it in 2008 and now it has a broader Daily Show-esque political humor style, which makes it more entertaining for me but less influential in the grand scheme of things.
I know I’m probably late to the party, but… these guys will never notice such a subtle difference as “strippers will walk away (and quickly) as soon as you let them know you’re not interested”, will they?
Nothing like looking at the usernames of these seagull droppings and seeing a reference to your favorite game. I feel unclean.
RE: Falconer
They have apparently taken a shine to MLP and they like to shop D*rpy Hooves into photos of Republicans.
Aw man. 🙁 This dismays me.
I tried to watch My Little Pony, I really did… but one of the episodes I watched involved a crazy pony escaping from a hospital and her behavior being treated as a big joke, and that kind of ruined it for me. Nothing like a kid’s cartoon to remind you that even in fictional ponyworld, you wouldn’t be treated very well.
This has come much later than I wished it would have, but I feel it’s only prudent to add my proper thoughts to a discussion that I prompted. I also apologize in advance for the length; brevity is my greatest weakness.
Full disclaimer: I’m highly privileged, and very aware of how unaware that makes me of certain things. Commenting on this subject is also particularly strange for me to comment on, since – according to “objective” measurement – I’m considered “abnormally intelligent”. Though I’ll also be the first to tell you how little that actually means. But, more on that later.
After reading through the comments left here, I was able to figure out that my objections to such words stem from two distinct perspectives. Though, on their own, each wouldn’t necessarily be enough for me to come to a satisfactory conclusion, so while I want to detail them separately, I want to note that they’re both (in my mind) important to each other.
First, as it’s the more topical perspective, is ableism. This ends up being fairly easy to sum up in my mind, since while there are many ways to define and debate the usage of any given word that may or may not have ableist connotations, but in nearly all cases here it boils down to one question: Where on the euphemism treadmill are you comfortable being? I.e.: Exactly how divorced from its ableist connotations must a word be before you are comfortable with its usage?
This is clearly a personal question, and it’s likely that most people will have their own answers, and I don’t find myself particularly qualified to judge those answers. And with that in mind, I’d also like to redact my usage of “disappointed” from my first post, as I can only be disappointed insofar as one can be that people don’t hold their own viewpoints. I can at most say that my own answer is (to the first form of the question): “Completely off of it, when possible.” To me that’s the most consistent option, and the one that leads to the least amount of harm, both intentional and not.
I’m going to cut off this post here, as I feel that it addresses the topic at hand. The rest of what I have to say is something of a tangent related to the current of the discussion, so I’ll put that into its own comment to emphasize the separation of topics.
The second perspective is wholly a personal one, built on my observations of how people in general treat the topic of intelligence, but one that I find to be sound. To put things very generally, high intelligence is seen as “good”, and low intelligence is seen as “bad” – even outside of the realm of disabilities. This is evident in how we can use terms that refer to low intelligence as qualifiers; e.g.: a “stupid decision” is synonymous with a “bad decision”, whereas a “smart decision” is synonymous with a “good decision”. It’s my opinion that such a paradigm, while not specifically dealing with an axis of oppression (it’s more a tangent to ableism than a subset), is still in general a harmful one.
Preface: For those who want to argue that “stupid” doesn’t mean “less intelligence”, to put it bluntly: you’re wrong. That does not compare to my experience at all. And I don’t say this as a singular person who feels targeted by that word, I say this as a person who has spent most of his life watching people target themselves with that word because of how “smart” I am. So, while I’ve yet to address the actual problems with equating “less intelligent” with “bad”, I want to make it absolutely clear that the word “stupid” does belong in this discussion, and no amount of dictionary-definition-ing is going to change my mind.
There’s no way to objectively assess a person’s intelligence from a distance
In the real world, outside of literally comparing results from “intelligence tests”, you can’t actually assess a person’s intelligence. So, commenting in any manner about a person’s intelligence is by default a fallacious act.
There’s no good/objective way to measure intelligence
Even within the realm of “intelligence tests”, the only thing they’re able to measure is a person’s specific performance in one or more sets of similar mental tasks. These measures alone are effectively worthless, because their scope is so narrow that the results of such tests don’t really correlate with anything other than themselves. I.e.: The results only tell you how well you did on the test, and are thus useless as a comparative measure except with other test results. And, on top of that, performance on the tests is dependent on the participant’s foreknowledge of the concepts necessary to complete the tasks. E.g.: On the two official IQ tests I’ve taken, one required rather in-depth knowledge of English vocabulary, and the other required conversion of Imperial measurement units (while living in Canada, no less!)
There is currently no way to separate intelligence from quality
Another way to view a person’s performance on an “intelligence test” is that it is a measure of their “ability” to perform the tasks in the test. Thus, a person who scores higher is considered “more able”, and a person who scores lower is considered “less able”. Thus, unless we are able to separate “ability” from “quality”, in any objective measure of “intelligence” there is implied a “better” result and a “worse” result (which is where this perspective touches closest to ableism concerns).
There is no correlation between intelligence and quality
As I mentioned, intelligence tests don’t actually correlate with much of anything, but even the idealized concept of “intelligence” has nothing to do with morality or judgement or forethought or any other concept that has a clear “good/bad” distinction. In short: A “smart” person isn’t necessarily a “good” person, and a “stupid” person isn’t necessarily a “bad” person.
The Harm
Simply put: Emotional well-being. It’s a pervasive system that gives every person an immediate reaction to feel both superior to those they are more intelligent than, and threatened by those they are less intelligent than. Such a simplistic and narrow view provides no real benefit, and creates a culture that tends to homogenize around “average”, as everything else faces hostility. Basic “in group/out group” stuff.
Intelligence, in essence, “don’t real”
Given that the above points hold true, I can only find it indefensible to intentionally perpetuate any paradigm that supports “smart” as good and “stupid” as bad.
If anyone had the constitution to make it through the whole slog, I’d love to hear any feedback – this is the first time I’ve put this stuff down into words, so I’m a little concerned about clarity. I promise it’s a fully formed thought in my head, so any incongruity is likely a matter of poor transcription.
Again, sorry about the essay.
And several people have already said it is their experience, so why is your experience right and ours wrong?
I don’t think you’re going to get the consensus you’re looking for (I think) that stupid and idiot aren’t going to be used here.
Your example of a stupid/bad decision doesn’t hold, for me. It sounds like a decision that brought harm or trouble to someone, whether the person involved or someone else. More than that, it’s implicitly a decision whose likely consequences they already knew and chose to ignore. Drunk driving’s an obvious example – people who opt while sober to go out and get drunk and drive home. That’s fucking stupid at best and murderous at worst. It’s got nothing to do with their innate, let alone measurable, intelligence.
For me, I don’t give a damn about measurable intelligence: if anything IQ testing and the like gets my hackles up because it’s so slanted towards people who’ve had a certain type and level of education. But when I see some MRA spouting assfax, and hateful ones at that; when I see the rantings of, f’rex, the Tea Partiers of this world, then no, I’m not going to refrain from calling their actions and words stupid, and them idiots. They are, wilfully so.
Kittehs: Exactly. I’ve said it before, but if someone is going to be stupid enough to tell me I’m not human or sinful or whatthefuckever they don’t like, I will tell them they are stupid.
And copping to your privilege and then proceeding to hammer it home isn’t the most endearing thing I’ve read today.
Yeah, going all “look at how smart I am in these tests!” as a way of saying intelligence =/= worth isn’t exactly effective. not least when one of the people you’re talking to would have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing any of them.
One could even say it was a stupid way to frame it. 😛
Well, dlouwe, thanks for being at least moderately self aware about that wall-o-splainin’ up there.
I agree with hellkell and kittehs, but I did want to run one other thought out there to see what happened to it.
Essentially I wanted to think about the context here, and take note of how uncomfortable I feel with being so painfully earnest in policing the finer points of the connotations of the word ‘stupid’ on a site for mocking what amount to some incredibly ignorant, vacuous, obtuse ideas. Thing is, in other forums I might completely agree with you about how worthy, appropriate or productive the word is, but somehow it feels rather precious to be clutching our pearls over the use of the word stupid to refer to ideas such as that women don’t deserve agency, integrity and dignity because “women’s magazines” are full of consumerist crap.
::applauds::
To me, “stupid” means someone going off and saying/doing something *they* know they shouldn’t do. To be stupid requires a degree of premediated wilfullness / sheer bloodymindness.
It’s not related to intelligence. Intelligent people can be really fucking stupid. MRAs aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the drawer, but they are *intelligent enough* and *have read enough* that they *should* know their views are both offensive and not backed up by any sort of reality. That’s stupidity.
Basically those teal deers read like “I feel really guilty about the advantages my intelligence give me, so I’m going to fix that by making everyone else responsible for those feelings” to me. Extra irony points for the fact that it takes a pretty solid sense of your own superiority to a. assume everyone was waiting for your response and b. make that response in the form of not one, but two, massive walls of condescending splaining.
My eyes started glazing over after the “my experience is this, therefore everyone else is wrong” bit. Because obvs everyone else’s experience doesn’t count.
dlouwe, you’ve never done this before – why are you digging this hole?
Okay, ugh. I’m not going to start offering excuses or anything; badly thought out posts were badly thought out – to understate things. I fully accept that, and I’m gonna work on dealing with whatever compelled me to do that.
I’ll try to give the short answer: I’m in my head a lot, and I don’t have many outlets. I picked a bad one. I don’t know what else to say at this point, since I don’t want to sound like I’m either trying to keep a debate going (not really appropriate), or trying to pull a “I’m so aware of my faults, please don’t think less of me” thing.
I screwed up, I have shit to work on, and I’m sorry that you fine folks had to deal with it – truly.
Works for me, it’s not like I’ve never been there before. 😉
i’m not exactly sure what this is saying? :/ I mean, maybe my brain fog is acting up today? I agree its skeevy to act like bigots are inherently “less intelligent”, because a) that throws people who are less intelligent under the bus and b) even if some of them were, the problem is the bigotry which is willful and not based on intelligence
is that the general gist of it? I can’t tell…
I have heard ‘stupid’ used both ways in the ‘willfully ignorant’ and ‘less intelligent’. i guess you could ask how a word that means less intelligent (I mean, for whoever was splitting hairs over the dictionary definition, that’s one of them) also wound up meaning willfully ignorant?
blag my thoughts are all scrambled on this, but since i told you to come back i’m gonna post them so you can see i’m not ignoring you
Works for me too, dlouwe – no worries.
dlowe, fwiw, I found your thoughts interesting, just overlong and maybe overly divisive for this particular setting. Not to be all “get your own blog” because that sounds like I’m just trying to get rid of you, which I’m not, but if you have a lot of thoughts and opinions, a blog is a great outlet.
Ah the good old “I dumped my brain on you and probably shouldn’t have”, I’ve stayed out of this so far, but wanted to chime in to say that damn do I know that feeling!
Maybe we need a Bucket for Brains to go next to the Barrel of Hugs/Furri Overlords. 🙂
On some level, Cat Lady is correct, though her complete inability to articulate is killing the efficacy of her post.
Superfecundation is exceptionally rare in humans so, as an overwhelmingly general rule, females can only bear children with one male at a time. On the other hand, males can impregnate as many females at a time as they are able to copulate with. Thus, maximal genetic fitness would require different strategies from males and females. Naturally, at an unconscious level, females will be much more selective in mates than males. This is true in almost all sexually dimorphic species. Sexual selection almost universally involves female selection of male specimens, with only a few notable exceptions (such as human female breasts). It only makes sense that females would be looking for different things than males. The X/Y genetic sex determination scheme also ensures that males will have greater levels of phenotypic variance in all X-linked traits than will females.
These men shouldn’t be angry with women or nature, though. They’re simply inferior specimens. They fail to reproduce because, in general, they do not “deserve” to reproduce. Women want superior specimens, not jobless, fat, unattractive, unintelligent losers with no talents or future prospects. Breeding is at the very least vaguely meritocratic. Their failure to successfully reproduce is simply natural selection at work. Most MRA’s are fat, lazy, lower IQ, genetically inferior individuals. Breeding with them would be akin to an inverse Flynn effect. MRA’s are probably correct about female “hypergamy,” but it’s a good (or at worst neutral) thing. From the point of view of evolution (non-teleological as it is), female hypergamy is neither good nor bad, it simply is. This is because group selection is a false hypothesis. From the point of view of concern for the future advancement of humanity, however, female hypergamy is ultimately good. Let these failures of humanity learn to masturbate, build sex robots, or buy the service of prostitutes if they require sexual stimulation, but don’t let them breed. There is nothing cruel about the passive eugenics of sexual selection.