So The Independent recently ran a piece by Catherine Murphy of Amnesty International, explaining why the organization is calling for the decriminalization of sex work.
In the comments, someone calling themselves THEMISHMISHEH offers a unique take on the issue.
And by “unique” I mean “seemingly from another planet.”
Shades of Tom Martin, huh?
@Scildfreja
You make a very good point but I don’t think it applies anymore here.
First off, to get this out of the way : doctored sound recordings ? As in, carrying a mic in your pocket for the express purpose of recording what people say, then rearranging everything to make them say something else ? How is that unconscious ?
In the same vein, I don’t think GISHGISHEH does it unconsciously either. At this level I think it’s just plain dishonesty. Sure it’s easy to just “skip” the parts you don’t wanna deal with, but in this case, those parts have been brought back up repeatedly by other commenters – ignoring them at this point cannot be unconscious.
Also I do understand your point regarding depression, but I don’t think it applies here either. And it certainly can’t be used to explain the behavior of a troll (or my asshole of a father, for that matter). I mean, I struggle with depression daily, and half my life is spent either doing my best to not be an asshole to people or apologizing for when I am. So I get how it does affect one’s behavior, up to cognitive processes like selecting the information you want to deal with and ignoring the rest. But I think there’s a distinction to be made.
I replied to someone else on another thread regarding the distinction between behavior that may be influenced by mental illness, and general assholery. I think I worded it as a difference between “asshole mode” and “asshole as a default setting”.
@WWTH
Didn’t he lecture us on “first world problems” at some point ? Or was that another troll ? They all sound the same to me.
@Sinkable John, oh dear. Yes, that’s not unconscious behaviour.
(The unconscious behaviour can lead to that sort of thing, but it’s certainly not excusable!)
I’m very much with you on the idea of depression not being an excuse for terrible behaviour. I am on the tail end of a decade of terrible depression (it’s so nice being on the way out from there, let me tell you!), and I agree, there’s no excuse.
Apologies, I’m in Brain Mode at the moment I guess! I’ll speak generally about people stuck in the mode you’re talking about. Could apply to your father or to our resident troll. Im’a ramble, feel free to ignore.
Depression can still be at the root of it – it could be that being right, and being oppressed (by us mean stinky feminists), gives him good feels to the point that they have overcome the bad feels one normally gets by being so duplicitous. I.e. the desire to be right has overcome his desire to be good.
Hm, I guess that’s a superposition of the Drive to Defend and Drive to Acquire over the Drive to Bond? Dd+Da > Db? Would suggest stress due to either not accomplishing all of the things he thought he’d accomplish, or was told he’d accomplish. I don’t have any findings to back it up, but it follows from gender theory – boys are taught from a young age that they’re supposed to win, supposed to achieve and accomplish. If they haven’t managed that, it could easily overwhelm a desire to fit in and cooperate.
(Pursuing Da+Dd, of course, makes it much harder to fit in and bond, making Db stronger over time. Interesting feedback loop, I wonder if there’s a tendency in growth of Db to increase Da+Dd? Could be – if boys are taught that their value is in accomplishing tasks, then they might see the acquisition and defense of goals as a path to bonding with others. It’s wrong, but it’s pretty much what they’re taught.)
Huh. I guess Four Drive theory predicts the toxicity of patriarchal attitudes towards men. There you go!
@ scildfreja
One day we’ll have to have a chat about ‘Command Task Excercises’. That’s those practical ‘lateral thinking’ puzzles that the military use. You know the sort of thing. A team will be given a bunch of random objects and then be told (sometimes deliberate vaguely or ambiguously) what objective they must achieve (“Get the atom bomb across the ravine without falling in or dropping it” etc.)
You might find them interesting. They’re both a training excercise but also an evaluation tool. The name is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not just about command. There’s an army maxim “If you don’t know how to follow, you’ll never be able to lead” but it’s also about how people contribute to the task. There may be one dominant character barking out orders, but we’ll be keeping an eye on the quiet guy who’s unassumingly uncoiling the ropes and sorting them by length in the background,
It’s particularly interesting what you say about achieving. Some of the tasks deliberately have no solution. It’s a real life ‘Kobayoshi Maru’ thing.
One of their key roles though is as a bonding excercise. That’s why they’ve been adopted by a lot of businesses.
They also can be quite good party games.
@Scildfreja
I uh… err… well… wait.
Isn’t that your default setting ? 🙂
This is literally the only response I have right now.
Okay, maybe not. I think I understand the points you’ve made, and I think I totally agree with you. I couldn’t have expressed that as formally and clearly as you did (my studies ended rather abruptly and I tend to often lack the words for my ideas, which is ironic for a writer) but if I’m not completely off in my interpretation of what you said about the desire to be right, then I think I got it.
I think.
Also… did you just call what you said, “rambling” ? I… need more coffee.
@schildfreja: your summary of cognitive bias pretty much matches what I already know about the topic, so thanks.
If you (or anyone else) is interested in more reading on the subject of cognitive error, there are three books I have on my kindle that may be of interest:
How we Decide, by Jonah Lehrer
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman,
Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell.
It’s a fascinating topic.
@Catalya: I haven’t had time to try out the dragon fold yet :(. I promise I will sometime this weekend.
@Alan, “Command Task Excercises”: I’m aware of them! Not from the army perspective, but the general thing-what-peoples-do-for-evaluatin’. It can be very effective, and a lot of fun! don’t really know much about the psychology behind them, they may be ineffective evaluation tools, but I can see them being worthwhile.
@Sinkable John, i’m wired a bit funny that way. My rambles are sort of big-wordy for some reason, and it only gets worse if I’m intoxicated or really tired. Like, at one point a few years ago I was in the hospital on three kinds of painkillers and in pretty incredible pain that would come and go in fifteen-minute bursts. Apparently I apologized for the trouble of the two-hour-excruciating-ultrasound they put me through in crystal-clear big-wordy complete sentences while full of enough morphine and tramadol to put me in the clouds. They finally managed to find some other painkiller (Started with an I, i think?) that took off the edge of the pain. I guess I’m resistant to a lot of painkillers!
@joekster, I’ll look those up, thank you for the suggestion!
Echoing what joekster said about Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. I don’t know anything about cognitive science but I found it extremely worthwhile.
@Scildfreja
Ooh I know that, it also happens to me. And yeah, especially when under the influence (that phrase always makes me chuckle). I think alcohol and various drugs extrapolate traits like manners of speech, etc. For example I’m much more “eloquent”* when drunk-posting and adressing a troll. I’m a bit big-wordy when I speak french (a great example of how the same person speaking different languages may end up sounding like multiple different people) and it also gets much more obvious after a few drinks.
My takeaway from this though is that I am never, ever, debating against you. Especially if you’re drunk at the time.
*And by that I mean that I become an unsufferable asshole, but hey, I only do it with trolls.
@Alan Robertshaw
Dear Alan, you sound like an intelligent man. Let me tickle your mind a little bit and present this argument to you in a different format:
1. According to Kat, women in Argentina suffer sexual and physical assaults.
How can this previous comment lead to an understanding of this following comment?:
2. Feminists sexually and physically assault catholic men.
(Important) Before you answer the previous question, ponder this additional question; can there ever be a reason to justify things such as sexual assaults? if the answer to this question is ‘no’ then comment 1 can never lead to an ‘understanding’ of comment 2 because you lack that essential ingredient to gaining that understanding, reason. Reason is the bridge between the two comments without which there is no link…what conclusion can you draw about an ‘understanding’ that is lacking reason? that it’s driven by ulterior motives. In this case a refusal to condemn the evil without putting a condition on the condemnation because that would be too damaging to fellow feminists and that is not the feminist way:
Any way, I find this “I condemn the sexual/physical assault by these feminists but I understand why’, argument particularly hypocritical coming from feminists. I think you guys have a name for this sort of thing, ’rape culture’, no? where you erode the sympathy for and lay the blame on the victims of the sexual violence and in a way attempt to normalise the crime. Another example of the double standards of feminism.
I agree with you somewhat. Violence is not necessarily a bad thing, but, and this is a huge but, (no pun intended) it is only permissible or justifiable or excusable under very specific conditions. For example you must have exhausted all other options, you must be subject to violence yourself and your response must be measured and fair and just (emphasis on the word response, in that you are responding not initiating, but you already appreciate the difference between the two).
ISIS follows an islamic sect that believes that all those who don’t conform to its interpretations deserve death. They also believe that debate is not permissible with infidels (everyone but them is an infidel in their eyes) and they enact violence on an industrial scale, so they leave their enemies with no other choice but to resort to violence. Violence and war are not always a bad thing.
I agree. The feminists in the video are initiating the violence and the Catholic boys are NOT even responding to it…so according to your logic, which I agree with, the Catholics come out as clear winners in this encounter in the way they responded to the violence and the feminists come out losers in the way they initiated the violence and the sexual assaults against a people who quiet literally made a point of just standing there and turning the other cheek. The conduct of both groups speak for what they stand for perfectly, I think.
Again, I am going to ask you this same question I asked Kat.
If you are protesting against sexual assaults and violence. If you detest such things, how much sense would it make for you to resort to these very same tactics, sexual and physical violence in your protest of sexual and physical violence? it is insanely contradictory.
Y’know, the thing that impresses me the most about Scildfreja’s analysis and prediction of troll behavior, is how GISHGISHEH then went on and did the exact thing that was predicted.
Congrats, troll. You had a giant hole in the ground with a sign saying “BEWARE GIANT HOLE IN THE GROUND” and you still managed to run right into it.
@ mishmisheh
I’m having to use my phone at the moment so that limits my ability to use the quote facility. So please forgive me if I just go straight to my answers.
As to your query about linking the two statements, it does seem you are still conflating understand with condone/approve.
It’s fairly easy to understand why the women did this. Possible reasons include anger, vengeance, making a point etc. That doesn’t however imply that understanding the reasons means one must approve or endorse. And Kat made it quite clear she didn’t.
To use your ISIS example, ISIS are one of the best understood terrorist groups in the world. They set out their aims, motivations and rationalisations very clearly. In essence they wish to restore the Caliphate as a necessary prelude to Fitnah. Every relevant intelligence agency completely understands that. Do any of those agencies supper or approve of ISIS or their actions? With the possible exception of the ISI and elements of KSA security the answer is clearly no.
As to whether sexual assault is ever justified I’ll wager that 99.9’% of the feminists on this site unequivocally say no. But compare that to non feminists. It’s ‘blokey’ society that makes approving jokes about paedophiles and other unpopular offenders getting their just desserts in prison.
We also need to consider the difference between regular assaults and sexual assaults. In England at least the key element is that the motivation must be sexual gratification. To give a trite example, if a man grabs a woman’s crotch for no other reason than gratification then that’s a sexual assault. If she then kicks him in the bollocks in retaliation then it’s not a sexual assault. They both involve contact with genitals, but they have a fundamental difference.
With our specific example, whilst the women may have found revenge gratifying I doubt they felt any sexual gratification. This was just a case of “see how you like it”.
So without necessarily condoning that action I can fairly point out there’s a moral difference.
@mishmisheh, so what you’re saying is, you conflate the word ‘understanding’ with ‘agree with’ even though these two things are entirely unrelated to each other? For example, I comprehend (another word for ‘understand’, fyi) the reasoning behind you coming in here to have an argument with yourself and to call the rest of commentariat stupid sheep when they didn’t agree with every word you wrote. I don’t agree that it was the most rational or best choice for you to make. Does that clarify the difference?
I’m surprised this guy is putting so much work into defending an ill thought out, throwaway comment to a news story about Amnesty international over a year ago. This is Bush II level determination.
‘Stay the course’
‘We’re rowing into a waterfall’
‘Stay the couuuuuuuu..”
@MISHMISHEH
It can hurt to be criticised and have your words held up for ridicule. Being called an idiot may seem ‘negative and destructive’. Mockery can be painful, especially if the mockery is directed at a strongly held belief.
It must be shocking when doing a ‘vanity’ search (this is an internet search using only your username as the search parameters) to find two entries mocking your words. (If you were not doing a ‘vanity’ search, please accept my apologies but in typing in your username, WHTM was the first result shown and the second was Fundies Say The Darndest Things (FSTDT).)
The quote you attribute to Aristophanes:
“The butts of the most savage jokes are opportunists who prey on the gullibility of their fellow citizens,”
is an incomplete quote and does not support your argument that mockery is evil. It is rather confusing to see why you included it, except, it is possibly one of the easiest quotes to find when scanning a Wikipedia article. I am sorry, but I find it difficult understand the evil you see in this quotation where Aristophanes is saying he mocks people who take advantage of gullible people.
To fully discuss Aristophanes and his use of mockery would require a discussion of the historical context, an overview of his plays and other factors which would consume far too much of my time and possibly be incredibly boring to read.
Reading through your many comments, you return to the idea of mockery being ‘bad’ (paraphrased for the sake of brevity). You repeat the refrain ‘Only a simple mind engages in mockery or enjoys it,’ which you do not properly attribute. (On Mockery, Mohamed Ghlian / September 3, 2013.) It is sad that you quote other parts of the article in some of your replies without attribution. You even use the Webster’s definition (slightly expanded) included in this Mohamed Ghilan’s article. The article is interesting, but the premise is based on the evils of the mockery of religion.
Mockery may be seen to be an enemy to religion as it is a criticism of the faith and the people who follow that faith. Both The Koran and The Bible deplore the use of mockery possibly because it may lead to people taking a step back and questioning the basis of their religion and their faith. This is problematic for belief systems which rely heavily on conviction.
Many writers with complex and/or brilliant minds have engaged in mockery. Examples have been provided by a number of commentators. It would seem this assertion of ‘simple minds’ is in doubt.
Discussing anything further with you holds no interest for me.
@Scildfreja
It is always a pleasure to read your interesting and informative comments.
Dealing with MISHMISHEH’s galloping gishing reminds me of this for some reason:
https://youtu.be/Qj-yAHTfVeE
What’s happening now? Mizzenmast is still here?
For some reason “Mizzenmast” really cracked me up.
I don’t get “Mizzenmast” ._.
Is this a language thing I’m missing ?
(A mizzenmast is the mast in the middle of a sailing ship. Best known for its relationship to large gusts of wind.)
That’s the part I was missing 😀
Thank you. There are things Google can’t help with, and figuring out the link between our troll and a mizzenmast fell into that category.
So it wasn’t language, I’m just slow.
Well, I called Mixmatch “Mizzenmast” because it’s better than whatever their actual name is.
@Alan RobertShaw
I am not. Let me elaborate. To understand something you need reason based on strict principles of validity. Reason being ‘the act of thinking in a logical, sensible way’. It is an essential ingredient to forming an understanding. Without valid reasoning I cannot form a valid understanding of an issue. Without valid reason to justify things like sexual assault you cannot come to an understanding based on logical reasoning. It is not an issue of conflating ‘understanding’ with ‘condoning/approval’. You cannot through reasoning (if sexual assaults are never ever justifiable) come to understand a behaviour of a people doing such a thing.Let me tell you what does help me understand their despicable actions; their following feminism.
Additionally, You follow an ‘ideology’ that believes in something called ‘rape culture’. Based on feminism ‘rape culture’ is one that erodes sympathy for victims of sexual abuse and lays the blame on victims as apposed to the victimisers in an attempt to normalise the crime. An example of this feminist ’rape culture’ issue is people condemning rape but saying they understood why it happened because for example the woman was dressed provocatively. You and Kat are doing the exact same thing here. You are doing the exact same thing that your ideology claims to be part of ‘rape culture’. You are condemning the sexual and physical assault but saying you understand why it happened.
Please follow the link below to a feminist blog condemning a comment left by someone saying they condemn a rape but understand why it happened. It is the exact same thing that is happening here but reversed…over there feminists are condemning this person’s comment whilst here you are using the very same tactic as that person and condemning me for telling you it is wrong. This is the definition of double standards. if you don’t approve of such methods why use them to justify your actions?
http://freethoughtblogs.com/indelible/2014/03/27/i-do-not-condone-rape-but/
is putting sexual assault (when feminists do it) into context agreeable with the word ‘unequivocal’? if the answer is yes, then please don’t question those people who put rape of women into context by discussing what they were wearing before they were raped because you just as easily apply your argument here to theirs.
‘blokey society’? are you making a sexist implication? You are a man who follows an ideology that is supposedly against sexism, yet here you are using gendered, sexist terminology. Feminism has that effect on people. It renders them illogical and senseless to its hypocrisy and double standards.
I agree with you. People who make light of pedophilia are disgusting, despicable, lowlifes. The biggest victims of this culture are usually boys. Speaking of this culture and lowlifes who make light of pedophilia and its victims; Barbara Ellen a feminist, Guardian journalist had this to say about the imprisonment of pedophile and child rapist Madeline Martin. The following is not a joke but rather serious which makes it that much more disgusting and despicable.
“Looking at the case of Madeleine Martin, the 39-year-old RE teacher and mother of two, jailed for 32 months and placed on the sex offenders’ register for sleeping with a 15-year-old male pupil, do we seriously think that a female teacher sleeping with a male pupil is on a par with a male teacher sleeping with a girl pupil? I don’t. And neither, I’d wager, would most 15-year-old boys.”
Do you know what else is disgusting and despicable? After decades of activism, in 2003 feminist groups successfully campaigned for reforms of the sexual offences act in the UK. Part of this reform involved redefining rape to exclude most female perpetrators of the act as well as their male victims. Previously, in 1994, male victims of rape had been included in the criminal justice and public order act (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/pdfs/ukpga_19940033_en.pdf). That year the words ‘raping any woman’ were exchanged to ‘raping any person’ as a definition for the crime of rape. In 2003 this was successfully changed in response to feminist ‘activism’ (http://nicolewestmarland.pbworks.com/f/Rape+Law+Reform+in+England+and+Wales+-+Westmarland+2004.pdf ) such that rape became defined as it effects women by men and excluded female perpetrators and their victims (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/pdfs/ukpga_20030042_en.pdf):
Rape in the UK become define as follows:
A person (A) commits an offence if—
* (a) HE intentionally PENETRATES the VAGINA, ANUS or MOUTH of another person (B) with his PENIS,
* (b) B does not consent to the penetration, and
* (c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
So thanks to feminism a woman cannot be charged with raping a man in the UK.
If this is not sexual violence/assault, then I do not know what is. Would you approve of anti-feminists showing up to a feminist rally and perhaps rubbing their bare genitals against you or your wife or other feminists in the same sexual manner as was in this video, in protest of feminism? Most feminist would be crying rape and ‘rape culture’ to no end.
Waow…sucking each other other’s breasts and forcibly rubbing their private parts against other human beings in a sexual manner is ‘see how you like it’??? what kind of person who despises sexual violence uses it as weapon to prove their point????? what kind of logic is this!!!????!!?????? besides, haven’t you been arguing that you don’t condone these behaviour, yet here you are clearly trying to do just that. I am so surprised that a person who is obviously intelligent can stoop to this level of irrational thinking.
Ah, we’ve reached the “I have found a commentor who is clearly identified as male and will now address specifically him to the exclusion of all others, because a fellow man is worth my attention and will clearly see and agree with the logic of my arguments!” stage of a troll’s life cycle.
The end is near.
Fucking finally.
End it all.
Can we email David to finally ban the troll? I think he used up any entertainment potential he had a long long time ago. (I would do it but I can’t find the link to email David in the sidebar anymore. Did it get removed at some point?)
EDIT- Nevermind, just the baby head got removed, the link is still there. (Jeez that’s an ominous sounding sentence isn’t it.) Invoking the dark lord now.