Men’s Rights Activists learned a long time ago that the easiest way to win an argument with someone is by playing the old straw man game, ignoring what they actually believe and instead pretending that they believe something much less defensible — and much easier to rebut.
Trouble is, when you’re actually debating one of these people directly, they may point out to you that they don’t actually believe what you claim they believe. And this makes it oh so much harder to win the argument.
Luckily, MRAs have found a workaround for this little difficulty. Instead of debating real feminists who can argue back, they debate imaginary ones who say only what the MRAs allow them to say.
One quick visit to a stock photo repository and hey, presto! You’ve got yourself the following memes depicting Straw Feminists Confused About Everything.
Er, what? Feminists have the power to ban hot babes from going out in public? Do these hot babes have to make themselves less hot before they can get a walking around permit from the Department of Jealous Feminists Who Won’t Let You Go Out if You’re Too Hot?
I think I may have posted this one before, but I still don’t quite understand it. Hey MRA dudes, you’re supposed to confuse the imaginary women in your memes, not the rest of us!
This dumb little cartoon, drawn in 2003 by a dude hoping to sell a few t-shirts, has provided MRAs with thirteen years’ worth of cheap outrage so far. Congrats, MRA meme-maker, for squeezing a little bit more outrage from its desiccated corpse.
I ain’t saying she’s a golddigger but, yes, you are saying that. Again. That song is more than a decade old. Move on, dudes.
@kupo, that made me laugh too. The whole thing was one of the more bizarre and hilarious parting shots I’ve seen. Like we were all in an RPG or something 🙂
Interesting that he’s popped up on the other thread to join the original guy that WWTH alerted us to above. He’s a lot more vicious there, too.
Hey Dustin, you realize one of the most important survival skills for humans is the ability to cooperate with others, don’t you?
@Paradoxical intention and SFHC
You only want socialist health care because you don’t want to be the ones to pay for it. You think that’s actually free? There’s nothing free about it; where does the government get the monkey from to pay for all of that? You think it just comes out of thin air? ‘Free’ healthcare and ‘free’ college and ‘free’ maternity leave don’t exist, nothing’s free and when you all grow up you’ll realize this. I don’t feel like subsidizing your health-care, you should all buy your own.
Also, “scientists” have been predicting that ‘climate change’ (what, did they realize that too many people knew that ‘global warming’ was bullshit?) would reck everything, yet so far, it hasn’t (in fact, it’s quite cold where I am now). I guess that means you’ll stop peddling that shit like it’s some kind of secular religion now?
Also, I can’t help but notice that ‘capitalism’ seems to be a bad word amongst the left, yet here you all are, using technology granted to you by capitalism, living in houses built under capitalism, and such to make your points (to which I say, LOL!).
“Poutine-breath” is the best wannabe insult I’ve read all week! Good going, Dusty!
But, damn. Now I want some poutine. And some multiculturalism. And some socialist health care.
@masque d/etoiles
So move. Don’t ruin my country because of it.
@Dustin
I also live in a country with socialized health care. The “long waiting times” you speak of don’t actually exist. If I need to see a doctor, I can go for a drop-in visit without even having to make an appointment. The waiting time for me is usually about 1-3 hours, and my area is severely overpopulated compared to our surrounding areas. The waiting times are normally much shorter than that.
My dad, who’s in his late 60s and recently retired, only had to wait about 2 months for a hip replacement.
Here’s the thing: socialized health care doesn’t mean that a monkey paid for it. Monkeys have absolutely nothing to do with it. Why did you even bring up monkeys?
It’s paid for through taxes. Our income tax rate is about 30% if you make less than $53 000 / year. If you make between $53 000 and $75 000, you would pay 31% on he first $53 000, and an additional 20% on the rest. If you make more than that, you would pay 31% on the first $75 000 and an additional 25% on the rest. As an example, if you make $50 000 a year, you would pay about $15k in income tax. If you make $100 000 you would pay about $37k.
I happen to have a chronic physical disability which forces me to see a doctor every few weeks and run blood work every 2 months. I also need to receive medication through IV 6 times/year. In this health care system, all of this costs me $130/year. Yes, one hundred and thirty dollars per year.
Who pays for it? Not a monkey. I do. I pay for it through taxes. I’ve worked for many years and I’ve always paid my 31%. I am now 31 years old, and thanks to socialized healh care I can probably work for another 35 years and pay 35 years worth of income tax, instead of never working again, never paying another dime in taxes, and living off welfare until I die. Which option do you think is preferable?
See, you could’ve been unlucky instead of me. You could have this disability, and it’s just pure luck that you don’t. We think it makes sense that we all pay a few extra % income tax, so that the person who happens to be unlucky won’t have their entire life ruined. This is not “other people’s money”. It’s my money. I’ve been paying into this system for years, and now I benefit from it. The same goes for other people. If they get sick, they’ll be covered.
But, I repeat, this has NOTHING to do with monkeys.
Dustinzeit,
You could not be a bigger bundle of wrong. Your ignorance is only rivaled by your piss poor attitude. Congratulations! I’m actually impressed by what an all around asshat you are.
Hi Dustinzeit! You didn’t answer my previous question but I’m hoping that it was that I was just not being loud enough. Let me try again.
I’m a white-collar worker who’s young, able-bodied, single and male. I have put far more money into the system than I’ve taken out of it. As such, I could probably take the selfish course of action that you suggest and ask to stop subsidising other people.
Except I won’t, because subsidising other people is (and is extremely well-understood to be) a good decision by society as a whole. If a small group of people are too poor to afford health treatment, then we need to treat them because they will infect the rest of us. Likewise, if they are given the medical help that they need then they will be able to be productive citizens and we will all benefit. The same is true for education, law enforcement, justice, environmentalism and all the other things we need to invest in.
It’s tempting for people to believe themselves “self reliant” if they have money but nothing could be less true. You and I are pathetically reliant on the rest of society. We don’t run our own power plants, grow our own crops, dope our own silicon wafers and write our own dope beats to drop sick choruses over; nor can we. These all require specialist professional knowledge, and we have advanced far past the point where any one human can do them all.
I want socialised healthcare. I want to pay my share of everyone else’s healthcare, too. I don’t want to be allowed to weasel out of paying my share and I certainly don’t want freeriders like yourself being able to do it.
It is an honour to pay taxes in a democracy, and it is an honour for me to be able to assist people who have conditions which require regular care. I appreciate that you may be too selfish to understand this, and I’m sorry to hear that. It must suck to be you.
How’s the weather outside your cave? Are the mammoth skins helping to keep out the draught? I imagine that it might be quite hard to run the TCP/IP protocol via smoke signals and talking drums like you’re doing.
If you aren’t living in a cave and using smoke signals, then perhaps the words you’re looking for are “thank you, science, you have improved my life in so many ways and I’m eternally grateful.”
(Science, notably, is another case of society investing in its shared future. You know, that thing that a smart capitalist would approve of?)
Um… The internet was developed on taxpayer money. You do know that, don’t you?
My house wasn’t built by capitalism either. My house was built with funds from the local council, along with all the other “houses” in the block of flats.
To which I say, fucking yay.
Global warming is correct. The globe is, as a whole, getting warmer. Ironically, people such as yourself, who don’t understand science, tend to believe that if it happens to be cold where they live, the globe as a whole can’t be getting warmer. This is why climate change might be a better way to put it when talking to less informed people. Even though the globe is warming, not everybody on the globe will experience the warming at all times. Heating up the entire planet has all kinds of weird consequences.
This is exactly the kind of mind bogglingly stupid reasoning that made James Inhofe bring a snowball to the Senate as “proof” that global warming isn’t happening. Because if the planet’s average temperature has been rising over recent decades, that must mean there can’t be any snow anywhere in the world, right? Because that’s how logic works.
http://i.imgur.com/QAt1ujp.jpg
@ Dustin
Even amongst the most sceptical of climate change experts it is the majority view that climate change is happening. The issue for them is whether this is entirely down to natural factors (which of course do play a part) or whether human influence is accelerating the process.
Currently something like 97% of people who know what they’re talking about accept that climate change is directly affected by human activities.
Of the remainder, the majority accept that the trends identified are occurring, but express doubts as to whether human factors are necessary to explain the changes.
Then there is an almost insignificant amount of climatologists who believe that there is no climate change (possibly only a few individuals); but in any large number of experts you’ll always find some off the wall opinions (heat doesn’t affect steel, HIV is unrelated to AIDS) etc.
And before you go down the ‘they laughed at Galileo road’ remember that they laughed at a lot of people and in 99.999% of cases they were right to do so.
Where does the government get the monkeys? Monkeys don’t grow on trees, you know. They just live in them.
Joking aside, why does Dustin think the US is his country anymore than it is mine or anyone else who would like socialized medicine? What an entitled little shit.
Also, I’m very curious why Dustin switches between double “scare quotes” and single ‘scare quotes.’
@kupo
Maybe it depends on how scary he thinks the topic is. One quote = kinda scary, two quotes = outta this world spoopy.
I love how Dustin’s reaction getting proven wrongwrongrongittywrong is to completely change the subject… and be wrong again.
http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/thumbs_up_waynes_world.gif
I am actually being completely sincere, Dustin. For realsies. Forgive my digression…
I’ve let hate and anger get the better of me in the past – I’ve shouted myself raw and let my brain spin out into hate spirals. I’ve done that, thinking that it was justified, because I was shouting against something I thought was evil. I was on the right side, and I maintained my goodness in the face of their selfish evil.
But hate’s like a fire, unlike what Robert Frosts’ poem suggests, and it consumes everything around it. One day I recognized how it was twisting me, making me hateful and arrogant and – well, as evil as the things I was fighting against. It was killing me, literally – I still suffer from the depression and anxiety attacks and chest pains that started in the middle of that period of my life.
So I don’t do that anymore. I try to fight hate with compassion, to fight ignorance with generosity, selfishness with kindness. It’s just as painful, often – it requires maintaining a certain vulnerability which leaves me very open to attack. But it’s the good kind of pain. It stretches the right emotional muscles and toughens the right derma.
And, well, yes, of course, there’s a bit of snark in my replies, too. I’m well aware that you’re not going to be swayed by the magic of friendship in the course of an internet conversation – more’s the pity. I’m just hoping that a few of my words burrow themselves into your brain, so that some day in the future you can realize what the hate’s doing to you. I’d love to do more to help, but I really don’t know what would.
I’ll reply to your more specific comments in a little bit; I just wanted to say that first.
http://iambrony.steeph.tp-radio.de/mlp/gif/50534___safe_fluttershy_animated_artist-archonitianicsmasher.gif
Okay! now for some more specific replies! I’ll try to be brief.
Love it. I was struck by how unique my country is a year ago; was flying home from a conference in India. Going through the airport in Frankfurt to the terminal that would take me home, I was struck by how orderly it was – little boxes of Chinese, Indian, German, Ethiopian. Everyone in their terminal, organized and quiet and patient, in the way that only airport crowds can be.
I could recognize my terminal before I saw the number. All races, all religions, milling together happily. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed more joyful – people talked to one another, and they were smiling. So, yes – I love my multiculturalism very much and would not trade it for the world.
As for the health care? My dad was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago. He almost immediately got surgery to have it removed. By one of the world’s top TMJ surgeons. Using an advanced laproscopy robot. In a world class research hospital. And he’s just a mechanic who’s trying to save for his retirement. You keep your greedy libertarian mitts off my health care!
(What exactly is so offensive about a country coming together and saying ‘hey, let’s all pitch in to make sure everyone can afford the doctor’, anyways?)
Tee hee 🙂
I’ll take my chances in the Libertarian Apocalypse with my compound bow and my Oakeshotte XVIII longsword. Probably won’t survive, but that’s really just probability. I will meet Þórr and Óðinn in Valhöll or Freyja in Fólkvangr, and that suits me fine!
We know it’s not free. We pay taxes for it. We actually see our provincial budgets, you know; it’s not a mystery to us.
(I pay my taxes and am happy to do so, knowing that it not only goes towards my healthcare, but to the health of my fellow Canadians. I’d pay my taxes even if I found a way to sneak by without doing so. I take my responsibilities seriously.)
(We also see the American health care costs and sweet fancy moses keep those ideas away from me. What a terrible system. Please, America, you can do better!)
Turns out that meteorology and climate science is hard! General warming trends don’t disclude cold periods, after all. Saying “Global Warming ain’t real cause it’s cold here lol” is a bit like saying “Well, I’m dry” while standing in a dinghy in the ocean. Technically true, but missing the point! I sugest that this direction of conversation is just a distraction, though – a Gish Gallop, if you will.
http://media.giphy.com/media/SriJPYsPgvpNm/giphy.gif
The internet was a government project paid for by tax dollars through DARPA.
The modern computer age was heralded by cryptography projects in England and the US during the second world war, funded by government projects.
The engine of innovation and progress is fueled largely by government grants to research groups. Private companies are largely too focused on the next quarter to be concerned about research with long-term payoff.
Capitalism’s just one tool in the toolbox. I don’t have an issue with it so much as the people who worship it as The Only Solution To Every Problem.
Okay, so! Is there anything you’d like to focus on in this discussion? Cause usually when someone brings out all the material they can think of, it’s sort of a sign that they aren’t able to deal with what they’re being confronted with. It’s easier to just focus on one thing at a time, much more engaging and entertaining discussion!
@ scildfreja
Alan Turing was worried about an impending breakdown of society so he converted all his assets to silver ingots and buried them. Then forgot where. By the time he remembered Milton Keynes has been built on top of the site.
Guess genius isn’t necessarily a transferable skill.
It really isn’t, @Alan, is it. “Genius” doesn’t really exist, I don’t think. It’s just varying levels of optimization for certain types of thinking.
Oh, Alan Turing, that poor thing :C He needed hugs more than most.
@Imaginary Petal
Yeah, and where do you live? Because I smell bullshit, you probably have tons of refugees you’re taking in as well that are being a drain on the economy, so I doubt you can just walk in.
What the hell is wrong with you people? You pay how much in taxes? That’s inconceivable. You can just cut taxes and let people pay for their own health-care. And here in the states, it doesn’t matter how much social-assistance you give people, they just lay around with it, using food stamps to buy beer and shit (I live down the road from a woman who adopted 3 kids for the government money, but does nothing to raise them and lets them run around in the street with their pants around their ankles and their obnoxious “music”).
Weirdest insult ever! In order:
Multiculturalism
Pretty well, except that occasionally White Canadians (including myself) use it as a smokescreen to hide the very real racism in this country. Overall, though, 8/10.
Socialist healthcare
Fantastic! It should include more, though. For example, NHS includes dental, and if I’m not mistaken even some drug coverage. I wish that our neighbours to the south could also benefit from guaranteed healthcare, regardless of financial situation.
Long waiting periods
Prioritizing specialist visits by severity of need, while it may be occasionally annoying, is the best available system. Ensuring shorter wait times for rich people by denying care to poorer people doesn’t seem like a plus to me.
Poutine breath
Sadly, we don’t really get proper poutine this far west :(. Instead my breath smells like decaf English breakfast, which I think we can all agree is a step down.
@Viscaria
You know that if we tried that shit down here, the illegal immigrants and criminals would drive it all into the ground. They would take and take and give nothing back; then they would cry ‘racism’ when someone expects them to take a little personal initiative now and again.
Wow, I missed a lot on this thread.
And I missed evopsych wankery!! Dammit!!
Okay!
@Alan:
“I pretend I’m defusing a bomb”
Yeah I do that too. I thought I got in with one second left. Turned out I killed us all.
@Scildfreja:
My god, I think I want all my genetics lectures prefaced with pony gifs from now on. You’re damn awesome.
AND FINALLY-
@Dustin:
Dude, I did actual evopsych. Like, wrote my thesis on it and everything. And I got a near perfect grade on a massive thirty page paper whose hypothesis boiled down to: “All of the books that you, the professor, recommended I read on this topic were bullshit, for the following reasons.” That should give you a sense of how actual professionals approach evopsych. My teacher would write stuff like “Citation needed that isn’t Kipling” because he’d call students’ bullshit wankery like yours just-so stories.
Also, greentexting on websites that aren’t 4chan isn’t a good look. Don’t do that, unless you want everyone who knows better to immediately start snickering down their sleeve at you.
Just to pick one thing at random in that mess: Did you know that in actual survival situations, the extremely fit and healthy strapping young man usually dies *first*? I seen it in the desert plenty of times. These dudes are so used to pushing themselves to the limit and beyond that they have no idea how to tell when to stop. Young dudes in their teens and twenties will march through the grand canyon or death valley, thinking they’re doing just fine, and then suddenly just drop dead, or finally sit down for a rest and fall over, because they literally have never bothered paying enough attention to their biology to know when they’re working themselves to death.
Also, fuck you, I can read a topo map and navigate by the stars. Ever had to find a suitable pass to get across a mountain before the sun set and you were going to freeze to death? I have. So go to hell.
Of course, you’re not going to read this, because the sheer shittiness in your tone demonstrates that you couldn’t even pretend to be a decent human being for the space of a thread where you were actually being treated with VASTLY more benefit of the doubt and politeness than I felt you deserved. I’ve got zero patience for trolls, but I’ve learned to hold it back because it still warms my heart to see other people treating you with courtesy.
Also, the thing about the monkey? Now I can just think of-
“She works hard for a monkey!
So hard, for a monkey!”
So, is she a monkey, and she works relatively hard compared to other monkeys?
Is she working hard, trying to save up enough money to buy a monkey?
Or is she working extremely hard, for an employer who is themselves a monkey?
I do think it’s funny when Americans talk about socialized healthcare like it’s some weird Canadian anomaly, rather than something almost everyone has who isn’t them. Might as well talk about those Canadians and their strange/fascinating mandatory paid parental leave. Or their interesting local measurement system, which they call “metric.”