The scene: A McDonald’s in Ottawa. A man orders a chicken sandwich. The woman behind the counter tells him they’re out. He calls her a bitch.
And then this happens:
[VIDEO REMOVED. Several people have come to me with information that made me question whether it was appropriate to post this video, and so I have removed the link. –DF]
It’s a little confusing, I’ll admit, but this is a film worth multiple viewings. Some of the highlights, in case you were thrown off by all the shouting.
- Dude trying repeatedly to “explain” to the woman behind the counter, who is calling the cops, that “bitch” is in fact a “proper English word.”
- Dude raising the important Men’s Rights issue of how come he can’t hit women but he can hit men?
- Dude raising the equally important Men’s Rights issue of how come women get all mad when men hold doors open for them?
- The unseen guy who tells angry dude “don’t even look over here for help” when angry dude turns to the crowd for support. “You’re on your own, buddy,” the unseen fellow adds.
- Dude positively AGHAST that someone would call the cops on him “cause I wanted proper service. And you’re not properly servicing me.”
- Dude realizing that “servicing” sounds vaguely salacious. and adding “maybe you should get on your knees.”
- The inevitable shout of “Worldstar” near the end.
I only wish we’d been able to see the guy get escorted off the premises by police, but, hey, they have to save something for the sequel, right?
That old Married To The Sea cartoon turned out to be pretty uncannily accurate, huh?
H/T — Thanks to r/againstmensrights for bringing this lovely video to my attention.
@Ohlmann,
You are very articulate in this language (and I am not at all articulate in yours, sorry). We’ve just seen people doubling down on ‘fat’ ‘blob’ ‘nuts’ etc. And yet now you are doubling down on ‘normal’?
May I direct you to a widely, less contentiously, used synonym: ‘neurotypical’? People use it often here.
On a personal note, may I just say that this statement of yours
‘and there will be some disabled people who have trouble using the stair, but will insist in taking the stair, because it’s possible but harder for them, and they have a need to feel normal that they accomplish doing so.’
REALLY misinterprets why some of us lame assed crips keep trying to use the stair.
Went to sleep. Calmed down. Let’s try this, eh?
@Verily
That’s not my intent at all. I’ve never said anything to Chiomara, in this thread or otherwise, even tho her English isn’t perfect either. He even said himself that he didn’t know ‘autist’ was a slur. I was trying to be sensitive to the fact that Ohlmann’s mistakes could, perhaps, have been due to language differences
And I’d like to point out that my disagreement with Ohlmann isn’t grammatical or typographical. I didn’t misunderstand him either. Our issue is, for lack of a better term, behavioral
@Ohlmanm
It’s not my job to explain, to your satisfaction, why certain things are the way they are in English. Why do you need to be convinced that I, as a native speaker, know what I’m talking about here? Why do you feel the need to to explain to me how the language I’ve been speaking for 20 years actually works? ‘Normal’ isn’t appropriate terminology in this context. Trust me on this
In a perfect world, nobody would worry about offensive language. In a perfect world, people with neurological illnesses would be treated compassionately and never wouldn’t have been. This isn’t a perfect world. In this world ‘abnormal’ is bad, and ‘normal’ is good, and, if people like me are normal/good, then ‘those people’ are abnormal/bad. It’s not OK to perpetuate that kinda thinking, just cos you decided it’s OK, or because it should be OK
This isn’t even about a specific word anymore. Replace ‘normal’ or ‘autist’ with any other offensive term, and I’d be saying the same thing. When someone tells you you’re being ableist or whatever else, especially in a language whose slurs you admit not to be fully aware of, don’t double down. Apologize and let it go. Please…
@Croquembouche
Thank you
Omg, yes. Trust me, Ohlmann. I’m not normal. Not neurologically, not physically, not at all. I don’t want to be, either. Normal people walk around being assholes and can’t understand why, even when there is an opportunity and freedom from negative consequences to myself, I don’t also want to be an asshole.
When I take the stairs despite my knees crunching away under me, the last thing on my mind is whether that act makes me feel “normal.”
@Axecalibur:
Cheers. Oh, and post-het: I used to be happily hetero, and now I’m happily asexual.
@kupo: knees ditto. Also feet and legs. But the longer I keep using them the longer I’m likely to keep being able to use them.
@Croquembouche
Ah! Now I feel a bit stupid. That was so obvious I assumed there was gonna be some Shayamalan level twist. ‘I used to be hetero, now I’m a werewolf!’ 😀
@Croquembouche
Has anybody given you your welcome package yet?
Thankyou (and David, and everybody else) for sticking up for me. ^^; I know I get really bristly about ableism against autistic people – it insults me, it insults my best friend’s kids, it insults my little brother (SISTER BEAR GOES RAHR) and it happens so damn often.
Also, I love your username.
@SFHC
Love it! He lucked out wth you, didn’t he 🙂
http://66.media.tumblr.com/18567692ec8587c457ca7cfc2be72fcf/tumblr_nxnak94mTR1rk7zmgo1_500.gif
Checked in to this thread a few days ago and then nopetupussed right the other way. Thanks, everyone who stayed and educated.
I’m not Autistic (my brother is) but I am seriously considering going on disability leave, and I feel a great deal of guilt and shame (over and above the guilt & shame I already have over my abysmal job performance, and my unethical attempts to hide it) and I just don’t need this shit right now?
I’m sorry you’re going through that, Viscaria. Hugs if you want them.
It’s cool kupo, but thank you for the hugs. I probably shouldn’t have even brought it up. There’s really no safe place to talk about this so I’ve been bursting at the seams with FEELS FOR SHARING, and they kind of slipped out.
The important takeaway, I think, is that ableism, in all the forms present in this thread, does appreciable harm to real live people.
@Axecalibur: what if the twist in the Shyalaman movie was that there WAS no twist? Oh, yeah, that’s what happened. Sorry.
@SFHC: ooh! Thank you! The penguins make me particularly happy. Do I recall correctly that you are also Australian? Are you familiar with First Dog On The Moon, coiner of the best names ever? Brenda the Civil Disobedience Penguin is who I want to be if I ever grow up. Good to know sluttiness is still an option for consenting penguins (or for interpretive dance bandicoots, even for climate denialist potatoes).
Croquembouche origin story here:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2016/jan/11/is-it-sexist-against-men-first-dog-moonsplains-sexism-again
@ everyone everywhere: Do you feel as yuk as I do that a conspicuously unarmed and unthreatening black man being non-fatally shot feels like a good outcome, compared to what could have happened when an autistic person sits in a street with a toy truck? Kinsey is a legend and I hope Rinaldo is coping OK after that clusterf*ck of not his faultness.
PS I’ve recently seen evidence suggesting that being all SJW virtue signalling on social media can actually have a net positive effect on bystanders, even though we all know it doesn’t affect the shitposters themselves. So ima try that for a while.
https://theconversation.com/its-just-a-joke-the-subtle-effects-of-offensive-language-62440
Except that there’s another new Tingler out, so I may be translocated to the next layer of the tingleverse for a while.
https://www.amazon.com/Accusations-Plagiarism-Removing-Republican-Convention-ebook/dp/B01IWVBM6O/
@Croquembouche
Depending on your frame of subcultural reference:
1)The no mixup mixup
or
2)
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/531/557/a88.jpg
It is a day ending in Y, so lucky stars are being counted for sure
The best feeling is when somebody shows up outta nowhere, in the middle of a conversation, to say ‘I agree, you’re absolutely right’. Some of that is undoubtedly straight up ego, but it’s affirming to know you’re not just shouting into the aether. That someone’s listening…
@ Jennifer Hills
Hi, and welcome.
True, brain injuries don’t turn one into a misogynist. But our society is misogynistic and that influences everyone’s thoughts, perceptions, and actions. One particular misogynistic belief is that women have all the power, while men are their helpless pawns. Once you’ve divorced yourself from reality to believe that women are responsible for almost all of your problems, then all kinds of violence (from verbal to physical) can be justified. When men lash out in reaction to being rejected by a woman, for example, there are many men and some women who rationalize the violent response as boys being boys. Sure, plenty of people will laugh at the video, but how many also excuse violent male outbursts in other contexts?
So, I agree, one does not turn into an anti-Semite after a fifth of vodka (to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens on Mel Gibson). But it’s entirely possible for even the mentally ill to absorb the idea that women are to blame for their life’s frustrations. It’s also entirely possible, like you said, that he believed these things before his injuries.
Hmm, are you saying that people are cherry picking what mental and physical health issues they respect? Or why, since the roid rager had no impulse control either, no one asked for the video of him to be taken down too?
No one came out to say that they know this guy is on steroids. Probably is, but there’s a difference between altering your physical and mental state by volunteering to inject steroids and irreparable brain damage caused through seizures and brain tumors. And don’t steroids shrink the testicles, not the brain? I could be mistaken.
Regardless, the few calls to take down the video didn’t strike me as a defense of sexism when it’s done by the mentally handicapped. Just that context matters. Sexist garbage from the mentally disabled, however upsetting, doesn’t warrant the same reaction as when the same garbage comes from someone with relatively healthy mental faculties.
@ Croquembouche of patriarchy
And hi to you as well!
Virtue signaling, like white knighting, is a real phenomenon, but has come to be so broadly interpreted that it’s functionally meaningless. According to an anecdote from Dr Nerdlove (sorry, I don’t have the link), a husband he knew was called a white knight for standing up for his wife.
The irony of virtue signaling is that the people who complain about it are trying to signal to others how virtuous they are because they don’t engage in virtue signaling. It’s the equivalent of a man shouting in public, “I hate people who shout in public!” You may like this video from hbomberguy on the subject.
That said, it is still a real phenomenon. There are so-called allies who see themselves as uncriticizable because they are “one of the good ones“. (What is described in The Conversation piece you shared isn’t virtue signaling, imo. It’s doing actual, difficult work.)
Sadly, at the same time this is true, MRAs and other misogynists use the reality of this sort of ally to encourage bystanders to believe that agreeing with them is the only honest thing you can do.
@Tragedy of the Commas:
I do indeed like the hbomberguy video, thanks! It kind of underlines how an identification and description of a particular mode of interaction has been coopted and turned into a dismissive label by the knights who say cuck.
The Conversation piece is I think a pretty good example of what gets *labelled* as virtue signalling, in order to shut it down without refuting it. The research it describes is dangerous to the idea that resistance to bigotry is futile for at least two reasons.
The second reason, which I referred to before, and which shows up in this chicken sandwich video, is that one bystander speaking up can snowball. People who were there, whether or not they joined in the discussion with this gentleman, probably walked out of McDonalds with more of a sense that they can express disagreement than they walked in with. Some people stopped being bystanders, and some may be more likely to stop next time.
The first reason, Axecalibur referred to above. When you are the one being monstered, like the server was, other people supporting you can make the experience less awful.
@ Croquembouche of patriarchy
“The knights who say cuck”? I’m going to steal that.
I completely agree that it’s the sort of thing that gets labelled as virtue signaling without being as such. Simply to dismiss it without any substance to the dismissal.
Those are damn good reasons. They are proof that the cuck knights’ ideas are not the indestructible wall of ideology they imagine them to be.
BTW, the new Chuck Tingle book sounds amazing. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Chuck Tingle read aloud, check this out!
@ Tragedy of the Commas,
I can’t claim credit for “knights who say cuck”. I can’t remember where I heard it, but right here seems quite likely.
Re Chuck Tingle: thanks for that link, I will definitely be listening to the whole thing, was not previously aware of her work. In return, may I offer Mark Oshiro’s discovery in mid live read that he and his performances are now part of Chuck’s meta repertoire, if you haven’t seen it?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IIwJuN59wX8
The newest Tingler: is it just me or does the golden coif of the physical manifestation of political rhetoric suggest that Milo might be a partial inspiration for him? He gets many beautiful descriptions, including this:
A surge of guilt suddenly pulses through me. He’s right, after all. While my first draft of the speech had been concrete and multifaceted, this version is just a pretty face, gorgeous and triumphant on the outside but completely lacking any substance.
ETA: The butt-pounded narrator of course owes something to Tony Schwartz.
CHICKEN NUGGET LADY – The “Male Supremacist” Edition!
I don’t even bother calling these dorks “MRAs/Men’s Rights Activists”. That phrase is inaccurate and too dignified.
They’re Male Supremacists. That’s all.
I call them “Omega Guys”.
“M.S.” would be good, too.
@SpukiKitty
That’s awesome. I needs to start doing that, too.