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Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the neverending struggle against imaginary feminists continues apace. Today, one brand-new Redditor, a self-described former feminist, won himself several dozen upvotes from the regulars by bringing them a literally unbelievable tale of his adventures with a coven of slap-happy feminists.
I stopped calling myself a feminist a few years ago when I went to a meeting and was told “men are inly allowed in this safe space if they participate in a slap circle.”
The idea was that it would be harder for me to intimidate with my six foot stature if all the women had a chance to slap me in the face. I left.
Another guy actually did it.
It’s all true. I WAS THAT GUY.
BUT WHO WAS PHONE?
Actually, no. If this dude’s story is true, I will literally eat my cats.
While most of the Men’s Rightsers commenting in the thread seem to have swallowed this story whole, “slap circles” aren’t actually a thing in feminism.
They are a thing, though, amongst bored and/or drunk young men (and sometimes women) around the world, as countless videos on YouTube can attest.
As as site called Hungry Teen explains, a “Slap Circle” is
A great way to bond with friends, release aggression and stimulate the face. The Slap Circle is a game made for the more hardcore, daring person and can be used as a test for finding the manliest of the group. Although adopting female fighting techniques, the slap circle appeals far more to men. Nothing is required for this game, other than a hand, a face and a set of balls.
All you do, is stand in a circle and slap the person to your right in the face, while waiting for a slap from the person on your left. If you’ve had enough, you step out of the circle and the last two standing fight it out for the winner.
I eagerly await stories in the Men’s Rights subreddit detailing Andrea Dworkin’s demand that all men and boys be forced to take the Cinnamon Challenge and all those insidious mandatory nut shot seminars being forced upon all college students unfortunate enough to be born with a pair of balls.
Thanks to Cloudiah for the heads up, and the good people of the AgainstMensRights subreddit for the Hungry Teen quote.
@Suzy
Also, on good things in the US, I know they have classes for the GED if you have to prepare, which is cool. So even if you didn’t get the material covered before you dropped out/ whatever’s making you take it, you can see it.
@auggz
that does sound skeevy (making the disabled kids clean). I remember in my school, they segregated most of the disabled kids from most of the abled kids. And the abled kids kind of looked down on them. It got to the point that when I got diagnosed with a developmental disorder in fifth grade (PDD NOS which may have changed it’s name now. it’s on the autism spectrum IIRC), I convinced myself that my parents were lying and using it as an excuse to ignore me, and that they’d send me to class with majority disabled students and i wouldn’t learn anything and would be made fun of (I was pretty ableist back then :/). Anyway, but the general attitude the kids had towards disabled students made me pretty scared if they found out i wasn’t “normal”.
wow that is super crappy. “You are getting kicked out today but we’ll still punish you for missing this day” its like… are they *trying* to make non-neurotypical kids fail?
Long comment about homeschooling ahead:
I probably mentioned this before, but I was unschooled. I didn’t have any formal education whatsoever (until I was 16, in my case) No curriculum, no scheduled material – nothing. My mom did have some involvement in my education in that she helped me learn whatever I wanted to learn, and I did make some progress in things like geography. But I wasn’t proficient at all in math, writing, or science (save for meteorology, which I only became “interested” in as a result of having a phobia of tornadoes). I mostly just studied things on my own and then ask for help from time to time. Most kids my age would have done anything to be in my situation since I had zero obligations. I just did what I wanted. None of that made my life perfect (obviously I still faced abuse) but at least I felt free.
The problem with my unschooling, aside from the fact that I knew little to nothing of what my peers learned in school, was that I had to deal with severe loneliness due to the lack of social interaction with peers. I know this is a trite, often ill-informed criticism of homeschooling and unschooling, but it was true in my case. Despite having some friends in my neighborhood, I rarely spent time with them because they were in school all day. From a very early age (like 6 or so) I had to cope with being lonely. Whenever I wasn’t playing with my friends or doing something similar, I retreated to my room and just played on the home computer or with legos all day, wishing that someone was there with me. That wasn’t a very happy childhood, putting aside the abuse from my dad as well.
I could have joined clubs, karate classes, etc. in order to get more chances to hang out with peers, but I was extremely shy. I felt that wherever I go in public I’d inevitably run into a mean-spirited kid my age, so I didn’t want to take any chances. I think I would have had a much easier personality development – and maybe even a much easier life – if I weren’t unschooled.
I started to live with my dad in California when I was 13 because he knew I had a severely deficient educational background and he wanted to homeschool me. I hated the idea, but I had no say in the matter. I would rather go through the loneliness in my childhood twice than have to endure what he put me through in his attempts to improve my education. I was yelled at, threatened, and abused whenever I wasn’t progressing fast enough. He did help me catch all the way up to 9th grade curricula, but that was at the expense of my emotional well-being. I learned to hate quadratic equations because my dad told me that I was a failure if I didn’t know how to solve them. And then he had me write these summaries of books and articles in order to improve my writing, and he reviewed them with the most ridiculous standards of writing ever. Finally, he made me loosely follow an 8th-grade curriculum from a charter school and try to learn all of the material on my own without any of his help (even though I was bad at studying on my own).
And that was all before my abusive experiences of being forced to study for the SAT. I felt so ashamed of myself, being a 15-year-old pretending to be of value by saying “I’m in the 10th grade now! I’m a lot smarter and I really caught up a lot” (even though it was 2 grades lower and I still knew very little). I cheated on my self-administered tests and skipped huge sections of the curriculum so that my dad could believe that I was doing well.
In light of all of these experiences, I’d say that whether homeschooling, unschooling, or public/private school is better depends entirely on the children, their living environment, and their parents. It’s relative. Had I lived in a more loving, non-abusive home environment and was encouraged more to study, I wouldn’t regret being homeschooled or even unschooled. But because of so much I missed out on and the inevitable proximity with abusive family members, I really wish I was educated outside the home. In any case, it’s not my place to judge other parents for how they educate their children as long as they are loving, supportive, suited for teaching/guiding, and not abusive.
So much THIS. BF and I both went to public school, but since mine was in a rural university town and his was in an extremely affluent Boston suburb. Guess which one of us got the better education? All our parents have advanced degrees, which helps a lot, but my school literally couldn’t afford to offer some of the classes he got to take. We got excited when they added a second year of art!
But don’t you dare suggest that there’s some kind of “cycle of poverty” where class inhibits your education which limits your job options which keeps you poor. Anyone can go to college and become a majillionaire if they just work hard enough!
Except disability. Or living in a car. Or not having food at home. Or living in a violent or abusive home. Or having to work because your parents’ incomes alone aren’t paying the bills. Or having no light to study by because your parents spent the money on drugs. Just to name a few.
Real life isn’t a heartwarming movie.
@ Marie
I’m sorry. I didn’t completely think through what I was saying. I didn’t mean to say something offensive, but I did, and I sincerely apologize.
I do agree with you that what you’re learning about matters a lot. I guess I just thought that was implied, but I realize now that I wasn’t being very clear.
*high five*
The option to take classes is great! I prepared for my GED on-line and got a pretty awesome score.
Oh, another thing about my dad “teaching” me: he would often threaten to send me to the local high school as a punishment for not being academically successful. Part of me felt that such a punishment would be a good thing because it would finally enable me to spend some time with peers (and hopefully make more female friends as well). But he made public school sound like it was a deathtrap filled with meth addicts and potheads.
The same at @emilygoddess. I didn’t think things through, or take all the possibilities into account.
@anonymouslazycat
Eh. Well thanks for the apology.
@suzy
You prepared for your GED? 😛 I was too lazy/depressed. I only did mine cuz my sister did it, and I figured I should to get jobs. Luckily I was pretty fortunate with schooling before I dropped out, so I knew most of the material, but yeah. I totally didn’t bother preparing.
@Ally
I know it’s been said many times before, but your dad was shitty. 🙁 All the internet hugs from me you want.
@auggz
Idk if it’s what fade meant, but what I remember from the school it wasn’t just different classes for kids who were mentally disabled, it was that we barely ever saw them or interacted with them. It’s like we didn’t even go to the same school, except for physical location.
@Suzy, wow. Both my high school and my uni required you to take a well-rounded selection of courses: science, arts, math, English, humanities, and foreign language. All of which I was able to meet without even trying, as I happen to have a wide variety of interests.
I mean, the downside is that American students can obtain an education that makes us well-rounded individuals and utterly fails to prepare us for the work force. As an intellectual and curious person I’m extremely grateful for the education I got, but I can’t say it did me any good work- or money-wise.
@ Marie
I read a couple of prep books and practiced a little bit on-line. I needed a good score for college.
@Suzy
ah. I just wanted the GED done, any passing score would do. But I didn’t really want to go to college, at least not for a full degree or to a fancy one.
I have been more interested in college since I learned that our local community college has a culinary school though 😀
Auggz — what Marie said is about true for my school experience too. To the point I don’t remember EVER interacting with disabled kids in HS, despite being friends with one of them in middle school who should’ve been in my HS (seeing how he’s not in my yearbook, I guess maybe he went to private school?)
Grade school they’d send the special ed kids to art and gym and maybe music? with the rest of the students, middle school only lunch was shared, HS I don’t remember ever interacting with any special ed students. Not even passing them in the halls. And we only had the one HS in the city, so they had to be there somewhere. Really creepy now that I think about it.
@auggz
I think abled is the right term.
@auggz
It might have been different classes for mentally disabled kids, but I don’t recall seeing any physically disabled kids in the “normal” class, either.
So this is just based on my impression. But the impression I got was that they were all in the same class, regardless of learning level (like ninth grade disabled kids w/ 12th grade)so they had more limited course options. I may be wrong, but that’s what i absorbed, and waht i was afraid of
Since poor areas have low property tax bases they are less well funded than schools in rich areas. It would be better to have a statewide fund with schools being funded according to the size of the student body and the number of students with special needs.
That’s a good point and I apologize for forgetting to bring it up.
Unfortunately, some districts are either unwilling or unable to accommodate students who aren’t abled or neurotypical properly. My school district actually had great programs in our public schools for my autistic brother. We have smaller alternative high schools for students who don’t thrive in a more traditional public school. I don’t know enough about them to comment on how good they are though.
A neat thing Minneapolis schools does is let parents decide which school suits their kid best. Kids don’t have to go to their neighborhood schools. I never went to the same school as my brother. He went to the schools that had the programs for neuroatypical students. I went to the schools that offered open programs which allow for the students to have a little more control over their curriculum and were a little more informal.
Ugh. My brother was in a class for disabled kids only in elementary school but he was mainstreamed starting in middle school. He’s not high functioning enough for advanced math and science and isn’t capable of analyzing literature. But he did take regular classes when he could and was able to make a few neurotypical friends and graduate from high school only a year behind.
RE: disabled students
I remember having disabled kids in my classes. There was one guy who I think was autism spectrum in my math class, back in middle school, because while his handwriting was abysmal, his math skills were fantastic, and he was a nice guy. One of the disabled kids actually ended up winning the school history bee, and our student body was quite excited about this. There was a CP girl in my art class, and I shared gym class with some folks.
It was far from perfect, but at least we knew they were there and that they were just as decent as other people, even if they operated differently than us. (There was one creep, but thank god I only had to share one gym class with him.)
RE: emilygoddess
But don’t you dare suggest that there’s some kind of “cycle of poverty” where class inhibits your education which limits your job options which keeps you poor. Anyone can go to college and become a majillionaire if they just work hard enough!
One of the smartest decisions I ever made was to quit grad school and move to Boston and have top surgery instead. At the time, it was an extremely tough decision, and a lot of people really wanted me to stay in school, but now I am so glad I quit while I could, since I know three folks who got my degree. One is a bookshop retail worker, one works two part-time library jobs, and the other, last I heard, was leaping from temp job to temp job. My top surgery was well worth the price, and NOBODY can take its worth away from me.
That said, I kinda wish I’d had better options. Quitting school so you can have surgery is pretty shitty. Being GLAD because the degree would’ve been an expensive piece of paper is pretty shitty too.
Hmm In Europe accommodation for disabled children is mandatory I think. My school had an elevator, disabled children took all classes with the abled and teachers were required to give them extra time to take all the exams. There are actually special ed schools in every city, but a parent can choose to send their child to a “normal” school.
In the UK, at GCSE which are the qualifications done over two years at 15-16, there are certain subjects that everyone has to take, which include maths, science, english literature and language and at least one humanities. The idea is that GCSE’s ensures everyone has a basic standard of numeracy and literacy. It used to be that taking a modern foreign language was compulsory as well but that was gotten rid of years ago (and surprise, surprise, we now have a shortage of people taking languages at university and a shortage of people to teach them at school level).
So yeah, while you then tend to narrow down a lot at A Levels (taken at 17-18 and designed to prepare you for university level study), you still keep options open at the age of 16. Especially as pretty much any and all university or higher education courses (and jobs as well) require at least a C grade in Maths and English at GCSE level. So you HAVE to take maths at that age.
You may want to narrow things down to specific countries rather than just “Europe”. I went to both high school and university in the UK, did entirely humanities subjects at A-level (grades 10-12), and graduated with a BS rather than a BA. My high school was private, but most of my cousins went to public school, and what you’re describing doesn’t sound much like the British system at all.
@Suzy, remember “Europe” means many, many different countries and while EU legislation may make provision for children with disabilities a legal requirement, not all European countries are in the EU.
Seconded, Cassandrakitty, that system doesn’t bear any resemblance to the British one and oh my gosh it is infuriating when people appear to forget that Europe is a continent not a country! All the countries in Europe are separate, sovereign nations with their own laws and their own education systems. All of them are different.
I am going to start a petition for people to stop talking about continents as if they are a country and ban all generalisations.
I specifically said that I speak for some European countries. I have travelled a lot and lived in several.