So our old friend Janet “JudgyBitch” Bloomfield has written a rather silly post on how men are a bunch of STEM geniuses while women are basically designed to make babies. (On average.)
You’ve heard all this nonsense before, I am sure:
Human achievement depends on the tenacity and ingenuity of men, and their willingness to shoot for the moon (or a comet). Our mastery of the human condition, an end to suffering and poverty and disease and destitution requires technology. Water doesn’t magically clean itself, food doesn’t spring forth from the Earth without coaxing (at least not in sufficient amounts to feed all of us), the oceans do not replenish, diseases do not cure themselves and our ability to communicate and connect with each other, from one side of the planet to the other, all depends on technology.
Technology is designed, built, installed, maintained, repaired and operated almost exclusively by men. Without men, we would be living in grass huts, eating mud.
I’ll give her credit for at least suggesting a slightly novel “solution” to women (allegedly) being a bunch of stupid-heads compared to men. And by “novel” I mean “novel” only to MRAs.
Here is what I propose: we socialize girls to be more like men, and more like exceptionally intelligent men, in particular.
As she sees it, that means (among other things) making girls play with legos instead of Barbies (or any other traditionally girly toys), forcing them all to play Dungeons & Dragons (no, really), and requiring that they
study logic and rhetoric and traditional game theory, to sharpen their ability to work through a problem using reason and the empirical method.
Huh. I’m thinking that most of the dudes in the Men’s Rights movement must have slept through that part of their male socialization.
JB’s proposals are weirdly totalitarian, envisioning a mandatory one-size-fits-all approach to education for girls. And the misogyny underlying her glorification of “male” ways of thinking is fairly obvious. Her attempts to challenge traditionally gendered ways of raising girls fall more than a few steps short of feminism.
Sure, feminists have long fought against the pervasive gendering of toys. But they’re also into, you know, kids making choices for themselves. Encouraging girls to play with legos? Great! Forcing all girls to play exclusively with Legos, because you want them to become STEM geniuses? Not so great. Some girls want to play with legos; others prefer dolls. As do some boys.
For what it’s worth, JB describes her proposal as, yes, a “modest proposal,” so it’s not clear if she actually thinks that raising girls the same way as boys is a good idea, or if it’s one akin to eating babies.
Speaking of babies, here’s my favorite line in her post:
[T]he ultimate expression of femininity is a baby, and the ultimate expression of masculinity is the Large Hadron Collider.
Assuming this is true — and Janet Boomfield said it, so it must be! — just imagine what humans could accomplish if men and women worked together.
Yes, I’m talking about the ultimate in technology: the Large Baby Collider.
Oh, wait, we already have one of those; it’s called the Men’s Rights Movement.
But that’s a pretty primitive model. Here’s a prototype for an improved Large Baby Collider. It’s still a long way away from perfect — you may notice that half of the babies have been replaced by dogs — but it’s still a wobbly step in the right direction.
H/T — @TakedownMRAs
What does JB mean when she says “the oceans do not replenish”?
The oceans do replenish- this is called the water cycle. And it works independently of male action, or indeed, of any human action. Trying to put the water cycle on men’s “win” column makes about as much sense as blaming bad weather on women.
JB is always a callous idiot, but this post is especially pernicious. I especially like how the whole thing is devised as a shout-out to Yiannopoulos’s gross article basically blaming mass killings on the end of “male only golf”. It’s just so *ethical* how these MRAs reach around to jerk one another off about their gross opinions. JB isn’t even being subtle about it this time, either.
Just because Janet “Serena Joy” Bloomfield doesn’t understand science and history doesn’t mean all women are as ignorant as she is.
It’s kind of funny, a lot of toy companies are moving away from gendered toys because as their companies become more species in a certain type of toy it has begun to hurt their profits
Legos were always gender neutral.
And for an example of what I mentioned look at the push for game companies to make game store boys and girls. It became gendered because they were owned by the same companies that made dolls so they went hey we can sell one family 2 toys. But now it just hurts their profits.
Gary Gygax was adamant that people who play DnD are smarter than average, and I have heard plenty of stories about playing the game helping with lagging reading and math skills, but the game cannot manufacture geniuses.
Of course, what that really is, is JB stereotyping us nerds. You don’t have to play DnD to be a nerd, or smart.
To be fair, men *are* responsible for large hardon colliders.
So, watching the video. Um. Is the first dog… um… named something offensive? Or is my comprehension really bad?
http://40.media.tumblr.com/98ea0343b4108d454119f18527f9d102/tumblr_n2a347p3ZQ1shrov7o1_r1_500.jpg
Really? The “ultimate expression of masculinity” is the Large Hadron Collider? Maybe you should go ask actual men what they think the ultimate expression of masculinity is, because I guarantee you less than 1% of them would say it’s anything remotely intellectual, the rest would say something about sports or fighting. And they would be right too, because literally the only thing men have over women is slightly more upper body strength, they don’t have more brain power or something, so it makes no sense that intelligence would be specifically masculine in any way.
Every “modest proposal” by reactionaries that I see on the internet these days reads like Andrew Ryan. “No gods or kings, only men” indeed.
Oh wow. Her weird fit of self-loathing is pretty ironic, considering she’s a full-blown idiot and her entire career has been one long whine that academia isn’t worth the effort, essentially.
At this point I can’t feel sorry for her anymore. I just wish she’d shut her idiot mouth. I’m so tired of stupid people who haven’t studied shit acting all chiflada like they know anything.
this is the ultimate expression of masculinity
“…the ultimate expression of femininity is a baby, and the ultimate expression of masculinity is the Large Hadron Collider.”
Well, that’s better-put that most of what JB writes; so, points for pithiness, I guess.
However, in the future I think that JB may find that her fellow-manospherians’ tolerance for her is on the wane. The brand of reasoning cited above is traditionally used to drive women away from STEM fields and not toward them, and manospherians generally are suckers for tradition. Besides, so many of them were sent into such intense fits simply by the sight of Anita Sarkeesian playing video games that the prospect of classes full of little girls immersing themselves in particle physics might be rife with consequences untold yet horrid…like two worlds hurtling toward each other or BabyDogs colliding.
I have one female cousin, and by the time she was born I was in junior high (middle school, 12 years old, 7th grade) but the rest of my cousins are boys, I have one older brother. I’d spent all those years playing with legos, blocks, building forts and playing with star wars action figures besides Princess Leia (though my brother and cousins did let me play with the Princess Leia, mostly because they didn’t want to) not to mention pestering my brother for my turn on the family computer. My parents were both teachers, as was my aunt (mom’s twin) – their view was to give us toys that were *educational* first and foremost, or encouraged creativity and ingenuity. The time my brother and I dug a basement for our backyard fort and hit the water table was fun (for us, parents not so much) – I’m glad that neither parent felt the need to drag me away from that project to force me to play with dolls instead, not that I never played with dolls but it’s nice to have the freedom to choose when.
There are times where Judgybitch really seems to have committed to a life of miserable attitude and constant self-resignation but she really needs to understand that not everybody wants to live like she does nor do they have to. I’m willing to bet that a good number of the MRAs she answers to would be appalled at the ‘egalitarian pleasurefest’ my parents’ marriage is and the model it has been in building my own. Equally horrifying would be the way my dad was the one who insisted on raising me in such a way so that I would never *need* a man to survive and have a roof over my head, freeing me to choose the person I wanted to be with and on my own time table.
What I didn’t get about this was that girls are already forced to do math??? We aren’t “naturally good at it” but we all did it in school, without crying that our femininity was being taken away from us. Her whole rant made no sense. Like, feminists want girls to be more interested in STEM, and her response is to force girls to do math until they hate it?? Whaaa boys have to take art and drama, we’re clearly pussifying them. Like sorry, we all had to take classes we hated, we all had classes we aren’t good at. Yes, boys are typically drugged up more often because they have a harder time sitting still and learning, – But what if I told you that it’s not his female classmate’s fault??? – And of course it takes zero intelligence to do things that girls enjoy. Any idiot can excel at drama and become and actor, or a fashion designer, or a dancer. It takes zero skill whatsoever to do that. No, those are things girls are good at so they’re of little value. Never mind the fact that extensive knowledge of mathematics and chemistry does everyday people little to no good. We all could have gone our whole lives without knowing dinosaurs exist. Yea, without people with those skills. we wouldn’t have t.v. or the internet. But what the hell would those be without writers and actors?? My point is, we live in a shitty society that values men’s skills over women’s skills, when all skills are valuable. Maybe she should just shut up about STEM and babies. Because women can do STEM, but men can’t fucking make babies.
C Baker — that’s exactly what my first thought was, but I think the dog is named Trigger since it’s a fairly(?) common dog name and makes a lot more sense.
On topic, I’m just stuck on my Professor Brian Cox nerd crush, sorry guys but I would probably just swoon if at CERN. Otoh, I can’t picture him deciding science was for boys only considering the amount of “science is fun kids!” stuff he does.
@bekabot – absolutely. What JB has apparently forgotten to take into account is that so many of the manospherians (especially the ones who believe that AWALT, even the FeMRA ones) dedicate themselves to the idea that men are inherently superior – inherently smarter, inherently stronger, inherently hardier (both physically and emotionally) and inherently more suited to leadership positions, because they are men. Therefore, JB’s proposal that girls be forced towards STEM subjects and interests to make up the deficit will not be taken well by those people. JB is basically saying that women can be equal, can contribute equally, can be just as smart and successful, if they just pull their socks up and are socialized to do so. That’s the opposite of what many of JB’s fellow manospherians want to hear.
Speaking of “boy” and “girl” toys reminds me of a story that this person was working at I think McDonald’s or some fast food place and the person was taking some mother’s order and the person asked the mother if she wanted a car toy or a Barbie (i think those were the toys I could be wrong) and the mother asked for a “boy” toy and the person replied “don’t we all?” That had me laughing so hard.
I wonder too if the manosperians will kick her out and will not listen to her anymore because she is advocating women and girls to be in stem fields.
@PandaPool
Thanks for the women’s history lesson!
Brag plus fact: I knew four out of the six. And the fifth one, Ching Shih, I read about maybe a week ago. I think that it was on WHTM. Yay, me! The only one I truly had never heard of was Fatima al-Fihri. I’ll have to see what Wikipedia says about her.
Years ago, “Ms.” magazine ran a column called “Found Women.” I learned a lot and miss that column very much. Another kick-ass column was “Stories for Free Children,” kids’ stories with a feminist slant.
@samsara
I forget where I heard this story: When Sally Ride blasted off in the “Challenger,” her mom, who was there at Cape Canaveral with her eyes trained on the skies, exclaimed, “Thank you, Gloria Steinem!”
Marlo Thomas tells the story slightly differently. And she also mentions Sally Ride’s dad, who told her, “You have to reach for the stars.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlo-thomas/sally-ride-reaching-for-t_b_1699778.html
Judgy Janet and the other MRAs want to bring us down. No matter. People of goodwill support us. We just have to keep our eyes on the prize.
Bessie Colman was not only the first African-American with a pilot’s license, she was the first American of any race or gender to have an international pilot’s license. (She had to go to France to be trained, because white flight schools wouldn’t train a black person and black pilots wouldn’t train a woman.)
And Trigger, yeah, that makes much more sense.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/12_01/tigerpigsDM3011c_468x242.jpg
Sadly, no.
Orion:
Ah, I knew this had to be an attempt at satire based on some poor understanding of what feminists say.
I played with Legos, Tonka trucks, Tinkertoys, and Barbies, often all at once. Judgy Numpty can trip over a roomful of them all in the dark, if she’s feeling especially logicsl.
I thought I knew everything worth knowing about Ayn Rand before I read these articles. It’s like the whole Manosphere philosophy summed up. What’s even worse is reading the butthurt in the comments from Ayn Rand Society members complaining that the author didn’t “interpret” it properly. Oh, and she was a WOMAN!!!
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/top-10-lessons-strange-mirror-universe-ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged?paging=off%22
http://www.alternet.org/culture/10-things-i-discovered-about-ayn-rands-addled-brain-after-reading-atlas-shrugged
Now, here’s some kittens in case you survived reading that.
http://dreamatico.com/data_images/kitten/kitten-2.jpg
http://dreamatico.com/data_images/kitten/kitten-1.jpg
http://dreamatico.com/data_images/kitten/kitten-6.jpg