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
Oh wait, I found an example of Trolly’s “anyone with a brain”:
http://ct.weirdnutdaily.com/ol/wn/sw/userpics/funny_pictures/43.jpg
Don’t say I never do anything for your, Trolly.
1. This is like bringing up vegetables then getting offended when somebody mentions carrots.
2. Even the usual simplifications are clearly waaay too complicated for your idiotic ass, so to simplify it even more: Gender identity is biological, gender roles are social, and they’re not the same thing.
3. Oh look, yet another case of a right-wing shitbag attempting to use SJ language and failing miserably. It hasn’t worked the previous 98342987534 times, why do you think it’s going to work this time? When you can’t even pretend to not be grossly transphobic for two whole posts?
*you*
I CAN type when it’s not late at night, dammit.
Bina, can I steal “witless wondertwit”? As may be apparent I dig aliteration.
By all means, Argenti, steal away! (Wondertwit Powers — ACTIVATE! Form of: A SEALION!)
I would like to dissect Trolly myself, but it looks like everyone else here already did a good job, and Trolly sucks at basic WordPress HTML and likes to hit enter after quotation marks, so I can’t really parse where their words begin after quotes.
You know… I was totally going to switch camps and see the light of what you’re saying, but then you got so insulting and aggressive here, I just couldn’t. If only you were just tad nicer to us, you’d have had a convert. Better luck next time.
Bingo. I’m a cis woman, which is to say biologically female and female-identified as well, and yet I don’t play the social role marked “feminine” so 100%. I haven’t had a baby, and I don’t care to, so I had my tubes tied without regrets. Any maternal impulses I may have are directed at cats, and I’m quite satisfied with that, and don’t feel traumatized or pathological in the least. I wear pink and ruffles occasionally, but always on my own terms. I cuss like a sailor and don’t fucking apologize for that (because I enunciate “fucking” like a fucking lady). And I gag at any perfume that smells like fruity candy or vanilla cake.
I guess I am the example Trolly asked for (but no doubt won’t accept) that his and Judgy’s concept of Womanhood is simply all wet.
>block quoteblockquote<
Grr I messed up let me try again
:gasp: yay! My first blockquote! Thanks Tessa!
So would this be an inappropriate time to mention that “political jujitsu” and “internet pants” exist and have been defined on the urban dictionary thanks to me?
I mean, a derail with a minor tie in to something briefly mentioned is more entertaining than the ridiculousness wherein said brief mention happened to have been located.
Wouldn’t smaller tear ducts create less tears?
Here is what Rebecca Watson said about the tear duct thingie… It doesn’t exactly “prove him right” as tehy5 suggested:
Omg. The troll seriously argued that Urban Dictionary was better than a real dictionary. As part of a real argument. Which he expected other people to believe.
I don’t know the last time I had such a good laugh. Hee.
Please show your working — and what you understand by “ad hominem”. Do you think “Janet Bloomfield said it, so it must be true” counts?
I’m curious, but also at work and so don’t want to access urbandictionary… what are internet pants, msexceptiontotherule?
Anders Breivik thought reading Wikipedia should replace university education. This kind of thing seems to be common with reactionary shit stains. Maybe because they are too stupid to hack it, but because white cishet men are automatically the smartest and the bestest, the problem must lie with elitist books and institutions, not with them.
Except that…you get that dictionaries aren’t compiled by slavishly referring to the definitions of words set down on tablets of stone in bygone centuries, right? There are these people called ‘lexicographers’ whose job it is to monitor the way in which people use language so that dictionaries can be updated.
Could you give few examples of what you mean by this? I literally have no idea what you are getting at.
@ fruitloopsie
Indeed, and as our friend appears to be missing, dictionaries definitions are decided by common usage so
Pretty sure Trolly5 is complaining that “too many” women are now teaching their sons to be polite and respectful toward others, instead of just taking what they want like good little Alpha Male™ brutes. And to be in touch with their emotions and expressing them accordingly, instead of just transmogrifying everything into Alpha Male Rage™ and Alpha Male Sulks™.
Sounds about right. Right-wing extremist paranoia always insists that everyone else is to blame, and that the ‘winger, by contrast, is a perfect paragon of whatever values they espouse. Even when they suck at everything, including that.
what
And let’s not forget that women’s tears can be of frustration and even anger, not just mopey, girly sadness. When you’re not even allowed to express frustration and anger the same way as the guys, what is there left to do but cry in rage?