So while poking about the manosphere today I followed a link from an obscure Men’s Rights blog over to Alex Jones’ Infowars site — specifically to the comments on a news article about a study that claims internet porn is destroying marriage.
Jones, as you may know, is essentially the king of the world’s conspiracy theorists, so naturally I expected his commenters to be pretty unhinged. What I didn’t realize is that they would also all be Men’s Rights Activists.
Well, maybe they don’t all call themselves that, but they certainly think like MRAs; several even linked to a site for Men Going Their Own Way.
Most commenters agreed that porn was a better deal than a wife; after all, as numerous wits declared, porn won’t steal half your money in a divorce.
But alongside such familiar, indeed cliché, sentiments there were also some pretty inspired mini-rants. Here’s my favorite, which received several dozen upvotes from the regulars, making it one of the most popular comments in the 373-comment thread.
But there were other comments that were nearly as, er, inspired as this one. Take this righteous comment from one of Mr. EinNietzscheStein’s biggest fans:
And who could forget this fellow’s intriguing theories about female sexuality?
“Hanoi Jane.” Hadn’t heard that in a long time. Really brings you back, doesn’t it?
@kittehserf
Seeing as I have vegan friends and I’ve equivocated on becoming one myself (I do implement “vegan weekends” on myself simply because of the carbon-footprint reduction, and strangely I tend to get fuller sooner on weekends then when I eat animal products… but giving up fish may be damn near impossible, because sushi), I really shouldn’t find that joke funny… but it’s hilarious.
@cassandrakitty
Happily, I don’t know a single vegan who loves PETA. Every single one of them is completely anti-PETA. One friend said that, for him, PETA is to veganism what the Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity.
Not a perfect analogy, but apt, I think.
@kiitehserf
That gif is basically my reaction every time I see it.
I am vegan, mostly. I feed the cats around here kibble with ground up murdered chicken in it.
@ Nathan Hevenstone – your friend sounds very sensible!
They even have the same approach to advertising! I’ll never understand why people can’t figure out that PETA is full of shit just from looking at their posters.
That’s the exact thing, blahlistic. A human can choose what they eat, being as we’re omnivores. A cat can’t make that choice, though, and thrusting it on them because of our moral choices is (IMHO) unethical. Even if a cat had the same moral and empathetic reasoning capabilities as a human, they’d still need tasty dead critters in their diet, because biology.
Nathan (and anyone else who’s vegan) – I did wonder if I should post that joke, cos it made even this omnivore twitch slightly, but my RARGH HUMANS HARMING KITTIES side won.
It usually does.
grumpyoldnurse, you summed it up.
As for PETA – they use porn in their advertising, so even if they weren’t into killing animals, I’d say fuck them forever.
I was fortunate to take a course at UW with guest lecturer Randy Eaton who stated that cats were the purest carnivore among the terrestrial mammals. This was when he was here consulting with the zoo on their cat program in the early l970s. This was also when “Randall organized a series of four international conferences on the world´s wild cats, their behavior, ecology and conservation, and he edited the proceedings as The World´s Cats”. I take his word on feline natural history as authoritative.
This was before his work with marine mammals.
http://www.conservationforce.org/advisorseaton.html
Chiming in to say that yes, cats ARE obligate carnivores, and if you try to make yours a vegan cat, you’ll quickly wind up with a very sick or dead cat. Some kitties can and do eat veggies; I’ve seen a couple of videos of cats who LOVE broccoli (and one adorable kitten who got downright mad when her humans tried to take it away from her!). But you can’t make that a staple of their diet, and you shouldn’t even try. Plant matter is usually either a treat (catnip/catmint) or an emetic (grass, which they eat to help them get rid of hairballs). Anything much more than that, and you’ll run into trouble. Vets are forever cautioning new cat people against letting their kitty munch on the houseplants or garden flowers, because many of those are toxic.
On the funny side, one of my sisters once had a proud vegetarian roomie, who bragged that her cat was also a vegetarian. My sister, knowing better from having grown up with lots of very carnivorous kitties, asked what the cat ate. “Canned cat food, what else?” Facepalm, headdesk, thump-thump-THUMP. That story cracks me up whenever I think of it.
I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing. On the one hand, yes, it’s clearly bullshit. But on the other hand, sometimes bullshit like that gets animals adopted, and if putting a cute pink bow on a female pit bull will get her adopted, it’s hard to refuse on principle.
Also, fuck PETA with a cattle prod. “Ethical Treatment of Animals” based around unethical treatment of humans is a non-starter. One doesn’t have to be a raging omnomnomnivore like myself in order to loathe them; I know lots of vegans who do, too.
Heard another good analogy today about PETA, based on the celebrities involved with it:
PETA is to veganism what Scientology is to religion.
That’s a good analogy. ::nods::
It could be “PETA is to animal welfare what Scientology is to religion” as well.
MRAs and InfoWars: two lulzy tastes that taste great together! I’m a huge Alex Jones fan, in that he and his disciples are always good for a laugh.
Re gendering animals at the shelter: katz is right that it can help with adoptability. Also, there seem to be legit sex-based behavioral differences in cats, although of course that has fuckall to do with colors or other human gender stereotypes.
Is this kind of graphic sexualized violence appropriate for a feminist site? Or am I being oversensitive?
PETA is against pet ownership, even though they rarely remind donors of that, so they fight against the no kill shelter movement and are disturbingly enthusiast about euthanasia. Google PETA and you get outsider critiques, some severe, and insider propaganda, all disingenuous. Throw in their creepiness and you do have something resembling Scientology.
Yeah, I’d be happier if we could avoid graphic sexualized violence, myself…
Even if we didn’t live in a universe where that was idiotic and made no sense whatsoever, wouldn’t it technically be the opposite, at least in the case of pregnant females, since they need more nutrients?
You’re right, emilygoddess, contrapangloss – and I missed that.
Female cats don’t like meat and dairy? Tell that to Dracarys who tries to climb on my plate every time I eat a protein.
Or Fribs, who is quite sure any bowl with cream in it is hers.
It isn’t appropriate.
My question for vegetarians and vegans about turning naturally carnivorous beasties into vegetarians/vegans themselves is…WHY?!?!?!
I mean, get real. I knew a woman – a vegan – who insisted that the only reason her cats ate meat was because…wait for it…ignorant and evil humans had TAUGHT them to. And that there are no natural carnivores – only poor, deluded animals, wild and domestic, who had been made so by horrible human attitudes and treatment. All I could do was stare at her in disbelief. Of course, every cat she had ended up with all manner of illnesses, including starvation. And she, as far as I know, never GOT IT!
It may sound cruel, but I do not believe that anyone who has anything like such a goofy idea about naturally carnivorous pets should be allowed to live with them.
I was briefly a member of a Christian sect (I won’t mention which one) which believed that all animals were vegetarian in the Garden of Eden and carnivory only developed after the Fall. It might be that your vegan friend had picked up a version of this idea that had been stripped of the religious context.
IIRC, Dr. Kellogg (the sanitarium one), claimed to have turned a wolf vegetarian. The wolf was not consulted.
I did chuckle at the ‘finest vegans’ joke, and may share it.
Did you read “What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?”