Memeday: Straw Feminists Confused About Everything Edition

@dreemr

It’s just a hunch; I’ll say it’s possible, but I could be wrong. Explanations were wanted, so I provided.

@Scildfreya

And they call it science! Science!

I hope it’s okay that this came across in Gimli’s voice for me – “And they call it a mine. A MINE!”

Also, even though I’m sure your words regarding genetic expression are wasted on the amazing Dusty, I found them very enlightening, so thank you!

Additionally, I learned tonight the importance of ledges, and of climbing same, to our very survival! I had not heretofore appreciated the role ledges have played in human history.

I also wondered how he came to the conclusion that fat people swim poorly? Has he never seen aquatic mammals? A good portion of them carry a great deal of fat stores.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4a9c4e2be2f025fb6673932bb8153366/tumblr_mvgd9499pR1qh613ao6_r2_250.gif

🙂

Ledges! apes and monkeys are all about the safe and cozy perches. We cling like stubborn pines to the cliffs!

Well, I’d like to be a tree.

the aquatic ape thing is … an interesting theory, but not much evidence for it. I don’t think boobies evolved as flotation devices!

No, he’s just sold on the fat=unhealthy stereotype, which is certainly not true. Sedentary=unhealthy, not fat.

I want to buy a rowing machine :s

Being skinny implies that you are fit and that you don’t lie around, gobbling down food every day,

Wait, are you saying that women shouldn’t eat every day? How often are we allowed to eat? Every other day? Every three days? You should Google “amenorrhea” and maybe learn why eating every day would be beneficial for fertility and breastfeeding.

Also, skinny does not imply fit. Fit people can be a variety of different sizes. When I was an athlete, I started out super skinny. Then puberty hit full force and I got pretty curvy. Big boobs, curvy hips, chubby arms. I was still an athlete. Still really fit! But I did have to pretty relearn every dive I knew. That really sucked.

thus meaning that your children will not have to compete with you for as many resources.

Since when do mothers and children compete for resources? Mothers provide resources for their children. Some of those resources would be breast milk. A hungry mom isn’t going to be provided the best quality breast milk.

Being thin also means that you can probably run faster in the event that something is chasing you, with fat people being unable to climb ledges and/or swim from things that might eat them.

Humans stay safe from other predatory animals by banding together. A lion won’t attack a group of people.

Fat people are more appealing to predators,

No. When humans are killed by other animals, it’s usually because they’re isolated from the group. Most animals won’t even try to attack an adult, though. Not unless it’s guarding its young. Adult humans aren’t food for other animals. Toddlers might get taken, but not grown ups. Do you really think that there are bears roaming the forest looking for fat people to eat? That’s … adorable.

and it’s possible that men might have evolved to find them unappealing so that they wouldn’t feel inclined to dump their resources onto them, given that this would be risky in an environment fraught with predators.

What? You really need to back this one up. I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about here.

It’s not as important for men to be skinny, but it’s more desirable all the same. Fat men can handle long campaigns of looking for food in cold environments because of the body heat.

Where do you think Paleolithic women lived? Heated mcmansions? You really think women used to sit around the cave eating bonbons, don’t you? We joke about that around here all the time, but wow. Here’s someone who actually believes that!

Anyway, I’ve noticed that you’ve utterly failed to bring up pregnancy and childbirth. Do you not know how dangerous it is? Before we had modern medicine, dying in childbirth was very common. Teenaged girls, even now are much more likely to die giving birth because their hips are too narrow. Also, their babies are more likely to be of low birth weight. Which means infant mortality rates are higher. This is why “childbearing hips” is a thing. This is what I was getting at when I asked you why skinny in women would be a reproductive advantage. Predictably, you were too ignorant to pick up on it.

Evopsych fans always pretend to be such experts on reproduction and fertility, but they never seem to know the first thing about pregnancy, labor or breastfeeding. Funny how that works. All they know is what their boner likes.

@Dustinzeit

Being skinny implies that you are fit and that you don’t lie around, gobbling down food every day, thus meaning that your children will not have to compete with you for as many resources.
Being thin also means that you can probably run faster in the event that something is chasing you, with fat people being unable to climb ledges and/or swim from things that might eat them. Fat people are more appealing to predators, and it’s possible that men might have evolved to find them unappealing so that they wouldn’t feel inclined to dump their resources onto them, given that this would be risky in an environment fraught with predators.

This is simply your inaccurate guess, with no evidence whatsoever. You also fail to take into account cultural and/or historical norms and values. Far from finding fat women unappealing, Nigerian men with the money to do so pay for prospective brides to go to ‘fattening houses’. A fat wife shows that you have lots of money. Prince Edem in the article below says a slim wife would have no appeal for him;

“I don’t think I will ever even do that,” he says.

“People will think I am not rich… If a woman is not fat and has not gone through that process she does not qualify for marriage.”

His wife Happiness elaborates further;

“When you are fat, it makes you look healthy,” says Happiness.

“People respect you. People honour you. Wherever you go, they say, ‘your husband feed you fine.

“If you go to a village, people can come out to look at you, because you are healthy.”

So instead of imagining what other cultures/different historical eras are like and getting it wrong, read up on it. Google is your friend.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6904640.stm

Some pretty gruesome serial killer stuff coming up, so feel free to look away now.

@Bina

Yup. I’m so old, I still remember when police up here in Canada didn’t intervene in domestic abuse incidents, because “a man has the right to discipline his wayward wife”.

This made me go completely cold as it reminded me of an incident I read about regarding Jeffery Dahmer. It seems the police had the same attitude towards gay couples.

A neighbour of Dahmer’s called the police because she’d found a naked 14 year old boy who’d escaped from Dahmer’s apartment. He was beaten, bruised, bleeding and intoxicated. Dhamer had already raped him and drilled a hole in his head. The police accepted that the boy was 19 and in a consensual relationship with Dahmer. Yeah, because all consensual relationships end up with one partner naked and bleeding in the street with a hole in his head.

The idiot police officers put it down to a lovers’ tiff and sent the boy back to the apartment he’d just escaped from. They signed the child’s death warrant as a few hours later, Dahmer murdered him.

By Mr. Dahmer’s own account, he had already drilled a hole in the boy’s head when the officers, with a corpse of another victim lying in a bedroom only a few feet away, questioned him at his apartment.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/13/us/officers-tell-jury-of-letting-dahmer-keep-boy.html

Milwaukee resident Nicole Childress, 17, called 911 at 2 a.m. to report in alarmed tones that a man was chasing a youth who was naked, dazed and bleeding.

“I’m on 25th and State,” she said. “And there’s this young man, he is buck-naked and he has been beaten up. He is very bruised up. He can’t stand. He has no clothes on. He is really hurt. . . .”……….

…..About 10 minutes later, Glenda Cleveland, Childress’ aunt, called police to ask about the incident and offer her niece and daughter, Sandra Smith, 18, as witnesses.

“No information was taken down. I was wondering how this situation was being handled. It indicated a male child was being raped and molested by an adult,” Cleveland told one officer with whom she spoke.

Finally, she reached one of the officers who handled the incident. She was told the accounts of her niece and daughter weren’t needed.

“It was an intoxicated boyfriend of another boyfriend,” the officer told her.

“Well, how old was this child?” Cleveland asked.

“It wasn’t a child. It was an adult,” he said.

When Cleveland persisted, the officer responded: “Ma’am. Ma’am. I can’t make it any more clear. It’s all taken care of. He is with his boyfriend, in his boyfriend’s apartment, where he has his belongings also.”

The officer later said, as Cleveland continued to question whether the injured person was a child: “I can’t do anything about somebody’s sexual preference in life.”

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19910802&slug=1297813

:'(

Being skinny implies that you are fit and that you don’t lie around, gobbling down food every day, thus meaning that your children will not have to compete with you for as many resources. Being thin also means that you can probably run faster in the event that something is chasing you, with fat people being unable to climb ledges and/or swim from things that might eat them.

Hi there, Dustinzeit! I’m a very skinny guy, perpetually bordering on underweight. (Although that’s at least partially because I’m tall and bmi is slanted against tall people.) I thought I would weigh in to give you another data point.

I’m not especially fit. I get tired easily. I can walk quickly but that’s because of my long legs; if I’m running then lack of cardio kicks my ass. I certainly can’t climb onto ledges to escape predators, and I cope with that by living in a city where there are no predators.

I’m not skinny because I work out a lot; I’m skinny because my parents were skinny and their parents were skinny.

Now, clearly, a single data point isn’t a disproof. I’m entirely willing to acknowledge myself (and the rest of my family) as anomalous, if you can show me the data set and the regression curves you’ve drawn from it.

You do have those, right? You wouldn’t make a statement like that without having the backing of a solid chunk of experimental data, would you? After all you’re a rational man speaking rationally. There’s no need to talk down to everyone or to be falsely modest; Scildfreja and I are scientists (as are some others here) and I’m sure we can survive being talked to respectfully as peers.

I can’t speak for Scildfreja, but personally I can’t wait to see your error calculations. Those are always the interesting part.

*Looks up the thread*

Wait, did some troll try to argue that being skinny was an evolutionary advantage and that’s why our culture considers skinny people attractive? Because that’s literally backwards. In cultures where famine is prevalent, fat people are considered more attractive than skinny people. For early human history, when food was scarce, being skinny was a disadvantage. You would drop dead sooner than your fatty mcfatterson companions because the whole point of getting fat is to have food reserves for when the going gets tough.

It’s really quite hilarious that he thinks that our ability to gain weight was some sort of ‘natural process’ that just happens to punish humans for being lazy. We evolved a metabolism that intentionally gains weight. Obviously being fat had some advantage or our bodies wouldn’t go to all this effort.

I forget if this is entirely accurate, but whatever! I’ve got a behavior and a rationalization, what else could I possible need?

@Katz
Never saw the movie. I assumed it was just really epic trailer music, so I never thought to try checking the soundtrack. Silly me

@EJ
I eat like a pregnant elephant, and weigh nothing, in full regalia and soaking wet. If anything, my thinness shows just the opposite of Dustin’s competition… hypothesis. My kids, if I ever deign to procure any, will have to fight daddy to the last, or lose their rations to the void. For I am Masticator, Devourer of Food
Metabolism, the real MVP
http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldrjszGQ5b1qdow0r.gif

Edit:clarification

@Kale

back in the day when I was more indulgent with trolls, cant tell you how many times I had a “conversation” like this:

“Why do you believe X?!?”

“I dont. Never said that. have stated strong opposition to that. No idea where you got that. I believe Y. ”

“So you say you believe Y, but how can you really believe Y when you believe X!”

“I do not believe X.”

“Why do you believe X?!”

Last year sometime, I had an online spat with an incoherent MRA troll. His arguments were hard to follow as he weaved all over the place. He also used ‘women’ and ‘feminists’ as synonyms. He was melting down over feminists claiming they wanted to be independent, but Anna Nicole Smith. So there.

I told him that Anna Nicole Smith was hardly the poster girl for Feminism, but he asked again why Feminists only want to be independent when it suited them. I said that wasn’t true and every time I said one of his erroneous beliefs about feminism was incorrect, he roared, “STOP LYING!!” We are all looking for sugar daddies apparently. He then threatened to go his own way and told me to enjoy buying my own shoes and handbags. #byeFelipe

My favourite part of his rant was where he claimed that all women/feminists were out to trap a man, any man, by getting pregnant. Then the poor male victim would be forced to pay child support for a child he wanted absolutely nothing to do with. For 18 years! Why aren’t feminists doing anything about that? What about the menz?

I pointed out that claiming *all* women/feminists are looking for a mug to give them a bun in the oven for financial reasons is patently ridiculous. There are multiple reasons why people have children. For a start, couples who are/were married tend to plan their children together. That’s why contraception is sometimes referred to as ‘family planning’.

Some men go to extraordinary lengths to have children. One of my best friends was married for 16 years and has IVF twins because her husband had a plumbing issue. He had to have very painful surgery before his swimmers saw the light of day. Fortunately, the vast majority of men who want children find getting their partners pregnant a lot easier (and far more enjoyable). But the desire to have children can be just as strong in men as it is in women.

Unless it’s discussed beforehand, there’s an unwritten assumption when you get married that you’re going to have children. Sometimes unmarried couples have children who were much loved, planned and very wanted. And yes, some women lie to get pregnant, but not all of them want or ask for child support. I know this for a fact because this was how I was conceived; my bio mother did not want any money. She wanted ‘something of his to own forever and ever’ [sic]. She’s a real charmer

I also wanted him to explain how gay men are tricked into having children. I asked the troll if indeed, he thought they WERE tricked, in which case would he like me to draw him a diagram? Either way, the majority of children are not conceived because their fathers were tricked into it for the financial gain of the mother.

I told him that if he was that worried, he could always use a condom or practice abstinence. He became incandescent because contraception wasn’t his problem. It’s the responsibility of women apparently as they are the ones who get pregnant.

He let forth a torrent of abuse about the supposed Matriarchy we live in, with its gender-gap myth and feminists with their ‘enthusiastic yes’ policy. They just want to stop hetero couples having sex and by virtue of my genitals, I had no idea what a torture it is to be ‘involuntarily celibate’. The Matriarchy sent men out to die for their country and forced them to have circumcisions as babies, all for women. And I wasn’t even saying thank you.

Then he ranted on about how unfair custody courts are because mothers are always awarded custody. Misandry! If I was really anti-discrimination, why wasn’t I doing anything about him not getting custodyof his child? I gave him a one sentence answer; ‘Why would I support your custody petition for a child that five minutes ago you said you want nothing to do with?”

Silence.

Lol.

*Gender pay gap myth

@ SunnySombrera

I hold my hands up to not being an expert on Europe. I’m probably slightly more in the ‘Yes/stay” camp because I think there’s safety in numbers. There will be at least some protection because the government won’t be (theoretically) allowed to trample all over our human rights. But Cameron is pro Europe, and I don’t want be on his side on principle. I’ll head over and take a look. Thanks.