Dilbert + Scott Adams’ Insufferable Mansplainations = MRA Dilbert. Perfect!

He honestly expected to get away with it simply because of the color of his victims’ skins. And because he had a badge and they didn’t. And because some (not all, just some) of them had prior criminal records.

And why shouldn’t he have thought that? They usually do get away it. I shouldn’t have to be pleasantly surprised that the criminal justice system actually did its job. But I am.

Of course, even after the verdict, he still has supporters. I actually saw a comment that said something along the lines of “we still don’t know everything that happened.” The fuck? As if the defense was going to hold back any exonerating information during the trial! Of course, this person had also helpfully pointed out the victims were “prostitutes” even though only some of the victims were sex workers. So I suspect they didn’t think he was innocent, just thought that raping marginalized women shouldn’t be the type of thing a middle class white guy ought to be punished for.

This is why I get my news from you guys. 200+ years? Holy fuckballs, that’s an actual sentence, none of this 2 years means six months type crap. That’s “the death penalty isn’t on the table, but you’ll never be a free man again”. Like others here, I shouldn’t be thrilled the justice system was actually just of once, but damnit, I am.

But of course he still has supporters, he’s a white guy in a position of power, his victims were poor black women. Logically, who’s likely to be the victim when their paths cross is plain as day, but a certain chunk of asswipes will just never see WoC as people able to be victims, particularly not when the criminal is A Guy Like Them. But fuck them, sure, he’s a guy like them, assuming they deserve 200+ years behind bars. (Read that as you will, I’m cranky)

Or, to quote the animals around here… sniff, sniff, whine, HISSSSSS, purrrrr. Our three mammals are still on questionable terms with each other, but “interesting; do not want; happy”? Yeah, they’ve got this. (And why yes, my life does revolve around them currently, thank you for asking! >.<)

Princess Leia was a smart woman fighting for survival. There was no romance in that film, just her being a smartypants to Han Solo. She often took center stage. Her clothes weren’t exactly revealing and her hair was — odd. I found her inspiring.

Well, she was wearing that titillating barely-there white dress, with which you could see her breasts and her belly and her thighs through the material very clearly.

The shot where she’s lying down on a bench and Luke finds her makes it extremely obvious.

@katz:

That is some delicious schadenfreude right there.

You know, I can’t tell the difference between these comics and the actual Dilbert strips.

One thing that always ground my gears was his awful representation of women as either screeching, destructive, violent harpies, or inert meat-sacks.

I never really liked Dilbert for this. I found it obnoxious. I found it grating, like he was patronizing me and insulting my intelligence by presenting this caricature of a woman in his comics. I found it hard to believe that someone could be so delusional, or, rather, so ignorant.

I feel like it foreshadowed his future as an MRA woman-hating drone.

@Walter:

Well, referencing The Bell Curve, while not exactly conclusive evidence of any sort, doesn’t help his case too much either, even if he wasn’t entirely serious.

Walter, I must know the secret to your mind powers. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your gift by informing us how “90% of white people think”. Use your mind powers now, I’m thinking of a finger, which one is it?

@DS:
Adams did actually say those exact things.

Here’s the wider context in which it was said:

Men’s Rights

The topic my readers most want me to address is something called men’s rights. (See previous post.) This is a surprisingly good topic. It’s dangerous. It’s relevant. It isn’t overdone. And apparently you care.

Let’s start with the laundry list.

According to my readers, examples of unfair treatment of men include many elements of the legal system, the military draft in some cases, the lower life expectancies of men, the higher suicide rates for men, circumcision, and the growing number of government agencies that are primarily for women.

You might add to this list the entire area of manners. We take for granted that men should hold doors for women, and women should be served first in restaurants. Can you even imagine that situation in reverse?

Generally speaking, society discourages male behavior whereas female behavior is celebrated. Exceptions are the fields of sports, humor, and war. Men are allowed to do what they want in those areas.

Add to our list of inequities the fact that women have overtaken men in college attendance. If the situation were reversed it would be considered a national emergency.

How about the higher rates for car insurance that young men pay compared to young women? Statistics support this inequity, but I don’t think anyone believes the situation would be legal if women were charged more for car insurance, no matter what the statistics said.

Women will counter with their own list of wrongs, starting with the well-known statistic that women earn only 80 cents on the dollar, on average, compared to what men earn for the same jobs. My readers will argue that if any two groups of people act differently, on average, one group is likely to get better results. On average, men negotiate pay differently and approach risk differently than women.

Women will point out that few females are in top management jobs. Men will argue that if you ask a sample group of young men and young women if they would be willing to take the personal sacrifices needed to someday achieve such power, men are far more likely to say yes. In my personal non-scientific polling, men are about ten times more likely than women to trade family time for the highest level of career success.

Now I would like to speak directly to my male readers who feel unjustly treated by the widespread suppression of men’s rights:

Get over it, you bunch of pussies.

The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.

How many times do we men suppress our natural instincts for sex and aggression just to get something better in the long run? It’s called a strategy. Sometimes you sacrifice a pawn to nail the queen. If you’re still crying about your pawn when you’re having your way with the queen, there’s something wrong with you and it isn’t men’s rights.

Fairness is an illusion. It’s unobtainable in the real world. I’m happy that I can open jars with my bare hands. I like being able to lift heavy objects. And I don’t mind that women get served first in restaurants because I don’t like staring at food that I can’t yet eat.

If you’re feeling unfairly treated because women outlive men, try visiting an Assisted Living facility and see how delighted the old ladies are about the extra ten years of pushing the walker around. It makes dying look like a bargain.

I don’t like the fact that the legal system treats men more harshly than women. But part of being male is the automatic feeling of team. If someone on the team screws up, we all take the hit. Don’t kid yourself that men haven’t earned some harsh treatment from the legal system. On the plus side, if I’m trapped in a burning car someday, a man will be the one pulling me out. It’s a package deal. I like being on my team.

I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar. If he’s smart, he takes the path of least resistance most of the time, which involves considering the emotional realities of other people. A man only digs in for a good fight on the few issues that matter to him, and for which he has some chance of winning. This is a strategy that men are uniquely suited for because, on average, we genuinely don’t care about 90% of what is happening around us.

I just did a little test to see if I knew what pajama bottoms I was wearing without looking. I failed.

EJ, you beat me to it AND had the blog post at the ready. Clearly I haven’t had enough coffee yet.

Actually, Walter, I didn’t make that claim. I don’t give a fig whether or not he’s racist and never made that assertion. (He’s vile whether he’s racist or not.)

He probably is because these things go hand in hand, but I never claimed he was a special snowflake for it, or that he was the only one.
What I was doing was pointing out the intersectionality of race and misogyny. His hatred of white women and complete erasure of WoC, are connected to each other.

When white MRAs talk about women it’s assumed by their audience that the women they’re discussing are white women. I’ve often stated that a lot of the rage inducing stuff I’ve seen on here, doesn’t apply to WoC. A lot of the assertions they make about women completely ignore the white male treatment of WoC, historically. I’m often enraged on white women’s behalf, because I know these men are not aiming at me. They’re aiming at the white women they want but can’t have.

For example that whole being lazy and not working thing. Poor women and WoC have always worked. We never had the option of staying home. In their vile assertions about white women working or not working, MRAs completely leave out the history of poor women and WoC. That’s what I mean by erasure.

There are some black MRAs but their arguments with black women are very different. The entitlement takes a different form with them. Black men who say nasty things about black women are pretty vile in their opinions, but it’s just different. They focus on different things, than white men do. There’s slightly less slutshaming for example and more of the sexual availability/entitlement attitude.

Well I don’t want to get bogged down in a discussion on race, just wanted to point out some differences in content.

@Lkeke35:
Thank you for joining the conversation; I’m learning a great deal from every post you make.

If I may ask a favour, could you recommend some good writers on the subject of gender issues within the black community? I’m acutely aware of my own ignorance on the topic and would very much like to learn more.

@sunnysombrera:
That’s a good point: MRAs are so wrong that even Scott Adams thinks they’re wrong, clueless as he is. I wonder, could we use this as a sort of scale of wrongness?

I’m pretty sure Walter is trolling, now. A few times now he’s said things that I believe to be caricatures of feminist / leftist views, I think in an effort to get us to agree with him.

Sorry, but we’re not going to agree with you that 90% of white people ignore POC all the time and thus it doesn’t equate to racism when it happens. That’s a load of fucking bullshit. While it’s true that most white people do ignore POC (I say this as a white person), that doesn’t make it normal or acceptable.

I don’t think it’s likely that, even if someone believed in a penis-size-based hierarchy being some kind of utopia, that they would actually believe that all men across the entire globe instinctively submit to those with larger schlongs. Add to that his attempts to make almost-feminist-sounding arguments that MRAs would love to catch us agreeing with, and it’s pretty obvious to me.

Plus, Walter has never once addressed the Moocow paradox.