The Paris attacks have inspired cartoonist and opinion-haver Scott Adams to reflect on some of the true injustices in the world today.
Specifically, the fact that in the United States, men often pay for dates, yet cannot have sex with women without getting their permission first.
In a blog post that is incoherent even by his standards, Adams compares the male-dominated societies of the Middle East with what he describes as “female-dominated countries” like the US.
In his mind, American men live in a matriarchal dystopia in which women force men to pay for dinner and open car doors for them:
When I go to dinner, I expect the server to take my date’s order first. I expect the server to deliver her meal first. I expect to pay the check. I expect to be the designated driver, or at least manage the transportation for the evening. And on the way out, I will hold the door for her, then open the door to the car.
Weird, because I’ve literally never had a date like that. And even if all this were true, as a general thing, it wouldn’t be proof that the US is “female-dominated.” Chivalry is part of patriarchy, not proof of matriarchy.
When we get home, access to sex is strictly controlled by the woman.
Er, dude, that’s how sex works. Both sex partners have to agree to it, otherwise it’s rape. And men have veto power when it comes to sex just like women do. Women aren’t allowed to force themselves on unwilling partners any more than men are.
If the woman has additional preferences in terms of temperature, beverages, and whatnot, the man generally complies. If I fall in love and want to propose, I am expected to do so on my knees, to set the tone for the rest of the marriage.
What a romantic fellow, proposing to a woman even though she’s some kind of spoiled princess who has preferences about room temperature and refuses to have sex when she doesn’t want to have sex.
Also, Adams wants everyone to know that when he talks over women in meetings, it’s not that he’s a sexist, it’s just that women talk too much.
Women have made an issue of the fact that men talk over women in meetings. In my experience, that’s true. But for full context, I interrupt anyone who talks too long without adding enough value. If most of my victims turn out to be women, I am still assumed to be the problem in this situation, not the talkers.
But really, the problem is that ladies just won’t shut up amirite fellas high five!
The alternative interpretation of the situation – that women are more verbal than men – is never discussed as a contributing factor to interruptions. Can you imagine a situation where – on average – the people who talk the most do NOT get interrupted the most?
Uh, yes. Because that’s not just a hypothetical “situation.” It’s the way the world actually works.
I don’t know if the amount of talking each person does is related to the amount of interrupting they experience, or if there is a gender difference to it, but it seems like a reasonable hypothesis.
Unfortunately for Adams, this is a hypothesis that’s been repeatedly disproved. Men talk more than women in meetings, yet are more likely to interrupt women than women are to interrupt them.
Weird how Adams, who thinks of himself as a rational sciencey guy, didn’t even bother to do the 30 seconds of Googling that would have shown that his “reasonable hypothesis” was a crock.
Speaking of weirdness, Adams goes on to suggest that he might turn to terrorism if no one gives him a hug. Literally.
So if you are wondering how men become cold-blooded killers, it isn’t religion that is doing it. If you put me in that situation, I can say with confidence I would sign up for suicide bomb duty. And I’m not even a believer. Men like hugging better than they like killing. But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something. I’m designed that way. I’m a normal boy. And I make no apology for it.
NOTE TO SELF: Do not invite Scott Adams to any party without also inviting this dude:
Or maybe don’t invite Adams to any parties at all.
@Paradoxical Intention
Good, you noticed Kailibigot Bonin’s utterly baffling post too. I wrote a lengthy reply to it, but you already said everything much more elegantly.
@Kailibigot Bonin
Everything PI said. Also, stop making excuses for Mr. Dilbert. This is not an isolated incident that needs to be read in the best light possible, this is Adams being his own damn self, writing sexist shit like the sexist shit he is.
And yeah, your prose makes Zebediah Killgrave look yellow. Tone it down, dude.
I think you missed the point of his article.
@sbel
You’re right, I should have said “Unable to communicate by typing.”
I skipped even replying to that Kailibigot person’s comment because I really wasn’t sure what it was saying.
I see we’ve got a second Adam’s fanboy in here crying context! though.
Seriously, what context is this
not horrible? I can’t work out any context that paragraph could go in that doesn’t sound like he’s saying that sexual frustration causes men to become killers. The implication of that is always that it’s women’s duty to give affection and/or sex on demand to men so that they don’t kill people, or if we’re not going to do that we’re supposed to at least be understanding and sympathetic towards them.
How is this
not misogynistic? In what context could this possibly not be interpreted as saying that women talk too much and that’s why men interrupt them? Even though that’s been proven to be completely false.
If you’re going to insist that Adam’s is being taken out of context, please do explain what the context is. Since he’s a known reactionary misogynist crank, I’m not going to be giving him extensive benefit of the doubt.
And BTW, David never really copy pastes entire blog posts. He always picks out the most mockable “snippets.” MRAs tend to ramble and nobody has time to sift through their crap unless they’re doing this professionally. It’s not like Adam’s is being singled out and picked on here.
Ninja’d by WWTH. and fed to the blockquote mammoth.
In never ceases to amaze me how many people think ‘well you see that horrible shitty thing said was actually taken out of context so that automatically makes it perfectly fine’, provide zero supporting evidence and expect to convince anyone.
“The alternative interpretation of the situation – that women are more verbal than men – is never discussed as a contributing factor to interruptions.”
Really? REALLY? Obviously this far from the most objectionable thing he says here, but…REALLY? How can someone actually say this with a straight face? Dude, that’s already the default position. What you’re seeing now and whining about is women finally pushing back. “never discussed” my ass.
-Virtually Out of Touch
I dunno, I always thought they were kinda great since they could be specific about somebody or something being bad for women. Under normal circumstances a douche is useless at best and actively harmful at worst.
Of course, anal douches also exist, but I don’t think they’re equivalent.
I sometimes wonder how much of this is sexism on the servers part, and how much is learned defensiveness. From a risk analysis point of view it may be safer for them to always defer to the dude, because the worst case scenario in this situation would be probably getting the stink eye from the couple, maybe a cynical remark, and a smaller tip. Because women are socialized to minimize slights against them and that kind of thing.
On the other hand, if they defer to the woman and the male half of the couple is a swaggering, macho, touchy asshole, then they are going to get exploded at, the asshole screaming slurs and expletives at them for DARING to question his masculinity by allowing his woman any semblance of autonomy. Plus maybe getting swung at or having the couple refuse to pay/demanding to see the manager, etc.
@John The Snipper, you must be Adams’ sockpuppet, he’s always whining about people who call him out on his misogyny not understaaaaaanding that he writes the undeniable truth! If only people would read, they would understaaaaaaaaand he’s not a sexist asshole at all, just a reasonable man being reasonable against the hordes of matriarchal bitches throwing temper tantrums!
Yeah, of all places were institutional sexism occurs, I’m inclined to give waitstaff the most benefit of the doubt. It could be an official policy they can’t change; it could be a lesson they learned the hard way.
Clearly Scott Adams is a man of science and he times the amount of time each speaker talks for, and takes note of which proportion of those speakers are male to ensure that everyone has an equal amount of time to speak before getting interrupted, and said interruptions are based purely on objective,measurable criteria and not something as nebulous as a subjective view that the person is not saying anything of value. This obviously must be the case, for someone as scientific as Scott Adams must already know about the studies that show that women are perceived to be speaking more when they actually take up a third or less of the total speaking time, and would not want to allow this unacademic, socially-imposed tendency to bias his actions. /sarcasm
Still not caught up, and have a basement cat to go give some love to (basement cat is our newly indoor stray), but dhag — ze/zir. And I think, in English anyways, the controversy is a simple “but I don’t wanna change! Anyways, they’re weird!” and then it descends into various bigotries.
I love the “context!” argument because it implies that his communication skills are so phenomenally bad that not only are his blog posts completely incomprehensible without additional context not provided in the post, but it’s impossible to tell from the post itself that additional context is required.
How bad is the comments section on Adams’s blog? Classic WHTM troll NWOSlave is there, and he’s one of the most sensible commenters.
Seriously. He’s over there pointing out that xenophobic wars of cultural assimilation are not the sole province of patriarchal Muslim cultures, in fact they’re kind of a common thing in Western history, and everyone else is denying it. Holy crap, the guy who thinks Greek myths really happened and the sinking of the Lusitania was a feminist plot has a better grasp on history than Scott Adams and his fans.
This is so sad.
I still like the Spivak pronouns, but it appears I’m in a minority.
As for “douche” as an insult, I think besides whether it’s icky/useless/harmful, it’s a word where you can draw out the “oo” sound and almost hiss the “sh” sound to emphasize your disdain. By an AMAZING COINCIDENCE, “Roosh” also has this quality.
“I dunno, I always thought they were kinda great since they could be specific about somebody or something being bad for women. Under normal circumstances a douche is useless at best and actively harmful at worst.”
– Store bought chemical kind, sure they’re harmful.
“Also, here’s a wacky thing: In my last sexual/romantic relationship my girlfriend wanted to have sex before I, a man, did. And despite the “fact” that women “control access to sex” I was not required to have sex with her before I wanted to. Weird, huh?”
– I don’t know what universe the Manosphere lives in but in mine and your’s I assume most people in relationships are empathetic and take into consideration the desires, needs and yes “feewings” of their partners, and there is a mutual reciprocation between the two.
“Once, on a date with my soon-to-be-husband, we asked for the bill, and the waiter handed it to my husband. In the waiter’s presence, I took the bill, took a credit card from my wallet, and handed both to the waiter. The waiter returned with the receipt and gave it to my husband… and my husband handed it over to me to sign.
Folks, I calculated this guy’s tip as ‘the bare decent minimum, then a hair less’.”
– The Manosphere interprets the waiter’s behavior as “misandrist” for assuming your hubby-to-be as your financial slave, bid doer and princess enabler.
Nequam — most of my dislike for Spivak is that E is my legal first initial. So, E says is, to me, more like using my name than a pronoun, which just makes the other uses weird to me. And it shortens to em, so it just gets all kinds of odd.
Also, Z is a poor neglected lovely letter.
Kailibigot Bonin
Uh, it’s not about “finding suitable women” he’s voicing, he’s saying that after a man paying for dinner, and opening doors, somehow the woman still has the power to say no to sex! And this means women have all the sexual control.
Wow, this is a whole lot of bullshit. So, to you, “those bitches can get all sorts of men for meaningless sex, so they have to make men work for it?”
“Yes there are lots of men who are looking for sex with women on a very casual contingency basis.”
News Flash! There are also plenty of women who want no strings attached sex. All you have to do is find them, and the internet and adult friend finder has made that so much easier.
I really don’t see what the problem is.
Well… that was an epic block quote failure. 🙁
Take two!
Kailibigot Bonin
Uh, it’s not about “finding suitable women” he’s voicing, he’s saying that after a man paying for dinner, and opening doors, somehow the woman still has the power to say no to sex! And this means women have all the sexual control.
Wow, this is a whole lot of bullshit. So, to you, “those bitches can get all sorts of men for meaningless sex, so they have to make men work for it?”
I… What? To me this reads as… Wait… are you saying “The hoops women make men go through for sex have nothing to do with emotion, but they STILL also make men develop an emotional attachment before she’ll put out, but she’ll still feel nothing?”
Well, you must have meant what I said above because this is a repeat of it… Dude.
OK, you’re using “contingency” way too much.
This isn’t what he’s saying at all. What the hell? How does whining that he expects to pay for dinner, drive, open doors, and at home she gets to decide on whether or not she has sex translate to “women can have more sex with random dudes off the street who launch their penises at her, so women hold this over men’s heads and make them dance! DANCEI SAY! Therefore men have a fear that women just don’t love them as much as they do.”
You wanna know a secret? If a man complains about women being able to choose, he’s really only talking about women he chose first.
@Argenti Aetheri
“Also, Z is a poor neglected lovely letter.”
This is true, but if we start using it more commonly it will throw out the frequency curve for letter use in English, hampering the work of cryptanalysts everywhere. Won’t someone please think of the cryptanalysts?!
(NB. I’m totally in favour of gender neutral pronouns for those who desire them, although it will take time for me to learn how to use them and be comfortable with them – after nearly forty years of using a binary system, I hope I can be cut a little slack if I’m making an honest effort!)
I skimmed some of the comments on Adam’s blog, but I didn’t get very far. I mostly just saw a bunch of whining about how nobody cares about adult men.
Off topic but not really; Donald Trump continues to be the absolute worst.
http://gawker.com/noted-racist-donald-trump-tweets-out-anti-black-propaga-1744083487
Gee getting permission is somehow bad? Having sex without permission is called rape