Do you like riddles? I do. Here’s my favorite:
What goes around a button?
You might think the answer is “a buttonhole.” But you would be WRONG!
Well, technically, you would be right, but the correct answer to this riddle is “a goat.”
Because goats go around a-buttin.’ You know, like butting things.
Ok, that joke only works when you say it out loud, and it’s a bit of an open question as to whether it works at all. It’s from a very old and very bad book of jokes and riddles I encountered as a child.
Look, I didn’t say I liked GOOD riddles. I sort of prefer the terrible ones.
And I’m in luck! A few days ago a drive-by commenter left a giant angry dump of a comment in response to one of my posts from way back in 2011. I didn’t let the comment through moderation, but it contained a riddle, of sorts, that I would like to share with you all.
What “is similar to a man wearing small tight thongs and having an erection?”
Set aside the issue of why this fellow is wearing more than one thong, and see what you can come up with.
A banana in a bikini?
A sausage in a small hammock?
A roll of quarters in a diaper?
I’m running out of ideas here.
One of those long balloons that they make balloon animals out of, inside a bag that’s too small for it?
Nope!
The answer is: “Women wearing provocative clothes.”
Let’s let Jon explain it:
Women wearing provocative clothes is similar to a man wearing small tight thongs and having an erection. HOw would you feel men hanging out like that? WOuld you invite them to meet your wife/daughter?
First of all, I don’t have a “wife/daughter.” And I am troubled by Jon’s assumption that I am anti-thong, when it comes to men. I’m not. Dude thongs are fine, in moderation. I’m wearing one right now. I require visitors to put on thongs before entering my apartment. I put them on my cats, when I can catch them.
NOTE TO EXTREMELY LITERAL-MINDED READERS: I’m not really wearing a thong. I don’t actually require visitors to put on thongs before entering my apartment. I don’t put them on my cats. I was making some little jokes. That said, I don’t really care if guys wear thongs to the beach, though they should really cover up (and try to think of very unsexy things) if they get erections. As should anyone who gets an erection in public.
In the post that Jon is responding to, I took issue with a fellow who suggested that women who “dress … provocatively and leav[e] a man in an unfinished state of excitement” are essentially assaulting men. Things that this fellow regarded as “provocative” included jeans, high heels, exposed hair. Some of his other arguments were even more, er, provocative.
But let’s get back to Jon, who had many further thoughts and theories he wanted to share with me and my readers, most of which involved explaining how totally wrong he thinks I am, and most of which have nothing to do with my post.
Here are his thoughts on non-verbal communication,
Most human communication is non verbal. For example, if I wink at your wife, are you ok with that? I am just winking right? No David (author) don’t be judgmental! Well that’s called “hitting a girl!”. So provocative outfits create the same sense as sexual organs on a man’s face. It sends non verbal sexual messages.
Er, sexual organs on a man’s face? How exactly did we get from winking to sexual organs on a man’s face?
Women are not a minority – they form 51% of the population and are a MAJORITY.
Thanks for the tip!
Women failures in mathematics, sciences, sports, jobs are not a man’s fault.
How about grammatical errors made by men? Whose fault are they?
In fact most men are not anti-female. At the very least they usually love their mothers, grand mothers, daughters and maybe wives.
‘Maybe wives?” I’m sensing some bitterness here.
Women have failed in these areas as they are just not good enough and lack that white matter in brain that is created by 20,000 evolution and male testosterone. These are biological facts.
Would any biologists care to comment on these, er, facts?
Women do better than men in fields that require caring and nurturing such as certain medical fields (nursing, gynecology), giving birth to babies and raising them.
I will concede that having a uterus does give someone a bit of an advantage when it comes to giving birth to babies.
That said, I am not suggesting preventing women from pursuing their dreams but dont expect 50% of Einsteins and newtons to be women. In fact there has never been a great female scientist of the rank of newton, gauss, euler etc. All major scientific inventions (even minor ones actually) are all male.
WE INVENTED THE MAMMOTH TO FEED YOU.
Nature has designed the human female body to carry babies and be sexually attractive to a man. If this was not the case, human species would not have made it this far. It is the very reason that men have hair on their faces and a muscular body. Its called evolution and you cant (and there is no need to) challenge 20,000 years of human evolution.
Men have hair on their faces so … women can be sexy to them?
I’m thinking Jon might have mixed up some of his notes from Biology 101.
But speaking of sexy, let me just end this post with a dude in what appears to be a Speedo or Speedo equivalent.
I don’t know why, biologically speaking, he’s holding a nailgun, but then again I wasn’t paying careful attention in Biology 101 either.
Also it kind of looks like someone else’s face has been photoshopped over the original Speeo-wearer’s face. I have no idea why. Let’s just call that another riddle.
Congratulations to Flora.
I don’t know the antonym of congratulations, but a bulging thong stuffed with whatever-that-is for this Jon guy.
@Pie:
If your relatives can name five living scientists, they’re better than most people. Extra points if they can name five living scientists who are still working. Extra extra points if those scientists are not physicists.
@EJ
Heh, that’s a good question I hadn’t considered. Probably slightly less informative though, other than to show that scientists (especially the boring kind who are still actively doing stuff) just generally aren’t particularly famous or noteworthy as far as the vast majority of people are concerned.
There’s probably a related trick involving naming politicians, the answers to which are likely to be even more depressing.
(as it happens, there are a few members of my family who could get all the bonus points there, but only because they’re cheating by being (or having been) scientists themselves)
http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/aVPMVMv_460s.jpg
@Makroth: He totally is. Nice to see he has such great respect for his gender.
Also, I *love* the “these men aren’t anti-female, they love their female family members” argument. It’s even dumber than “but I have black friends”. So you can only be a misogynist if you’re not on speaking terms with a single woman, including your own mother?
Just saw the news about Tracer being gay/bi. First queer main character in an AAA game? Awesome.
I remember seeing part of an ancient porno which featured both these concepts; It’s premise was…
…
… never mind….
Another cat in a thong (thong also means this kind of sandal in the US too).
NSFW non verbal Farage dickface message
Can’t tell if that cat is goofing around, or if its head is genuinely stuck in that sandal.
Aw geeze, 20,000 evolution? That is so much evolution. Women only have, like, I dunno, 13,000 evolution maybe. We just can’t compete, is the point.
Why, of course not. Only those who meet my approval are allowed to interact with my wife or daughter, because I’m some sort of domineering 50s stereotype.
Why, of course not. Men are only allowed to interact with my wife in ways that acknowledge my ultimate claim on her, because I’m not only a domineering 50s stereotype but also deeply insecure.
I like the implication that it’s only wrong to harass women if she’s another man’s wifeproperty.
The grey matter white matter thing interests me. For instance, how much of it is genetic and how much is upbringing?
I’m also skeptical about declaring that ‘this is why more women aren’t scientists’ – like, maybe ideas of ‘women can’t science LOL’ or the sexual harassment that occurs in some fields is a driving factor? Also has to be factored in that different ways of thinking can in theory bring their own perks to the same job.
I’m also asking myself about why ‘nurturing/caring’ fields are seen as this ‘other’ when it comes to career value to these people. I’ve been wanting to dig further into the factors behind why doctors recieve such poor pay in Russia (some suggest it was because the USSR didn’t see them as producing a tangible product for a long time, others that they saw it as a caring field: medicine is, today, mostly female in Russia iirc.)
Jon’s fallen to the folly of having looked at a glance into many things I too have questions about, but having no depth of inquiry.
False equivalence of the highest order. If a woman was somehow ever so less than blatantly presenting her moist vulva to the world THAT would be the same! As it is there is no way that a woman ‘provocative outfits’ is anything like a man visually imposing his erection on all and sundry.
Dressing ‘provocatively’ is so sweeping – generalised and also culturally and occasion specific, but wearing tight Speedo’s is extremely specific.
Methinks ball has been spectacularly dropped.
@SFHC
And the internet manbabies wept hypocritical tears.
“Blizzard shouldn’t be forced to change their game.”
“NO BLIZZARD TRACER CANT BE MY WAIFU IF SHE’S GAY!”
This reminds me of one of the objections to ‘gays in the military’ – the infamous Shower Threat. When ambulatory fistulas like the one in the OP imagine a gay man in a communal shower, they imagine themselves being naked around multiple naked women.
Apparently, they believe that they would become uncontrollable lust beasts in such a situation.
A few minutes careful thought (hah) would result in the realization that most gay men in the United States *have* been in a communal shower. I certainly have. And yet, and yet, we don’t carry on like bonobos on Mollie. It’s almost as if human behavior is modified by culture and not hardwired.
I just can’t help laughing at the complaints in the article’s comments on Tracer being gay. “This is just tokenism because Tracer didn’t match my stereotypical image of what a gay woman is like, so therefore she was actually straight but just turned gay for the sake of diversity to pander to the sjws!”
@SFHC, @Cynical Optimist,
the comments on that article were as depressing as I expected. Loved the guy asking “Wait, is she actually a lesbian or is she just bi?” (Cause, you know, he’s still got a chance if she’s bi! And all women are bi donchakno science said so!)
And of course the piles of people saying “They’re just pandering to SJWs!” One good reply to that was the fact that any mention that she’s gay would have been taken as pandering. Whereas if it was shown that she was in a straight relationship? No pandering at all, that’s totally hot.
Leave Tracer alone, ya knobs! Let her’n her girlfriend have a nice peaceful holiday, ain’t ya done enough to the poor woman already?
Oh, another super annoying comment from there was “I wonder what the dude who complained about how the butt pose would be taken by his daughter thinks about this!” As if just being a lesbian were dirty.
Ugh. Fuck these dudes. So gross.
@Ellesar,
Nearly choked on this one. Mostly because the article’s about guys wearing tiny speedo swimsuits.
Why yes, I am a five year old.
@CPphasor,
Extremely difficult to determine that. There’s certainly a genetic influence to the amount of myelination in the brain, but specifics are hard to suss out. (I don’t trust most gender-differentiating studies) I will leave it to the biologists in the room to answer if they want to!
This is the central divide between the “hard” and “soft” sciences, in my opinion. Hard sciences tend to have access to the majority if not all of the variables in their questions, so their accuracy is based more on the precision of their instruments. “Soft” sciences are a much more complex tangle of factors, with many of those factors being hidden, so their accuracy is much lower and based more on inference, probability and the process of elimination.
Dudes who are enamoured by science are generally more enamoured by the technology of the instruments and the metaphors of science communication than the science itself – it’s all a poem of technology. So they look at the hard sciences, see these grand statements and broad vistas and incredible precision. Then they look at the soft sciences and see weak, cautious statements, frequent errors, and tepid metaphors. They compare and think the “hard” sciences are better because of the pretty metaphors and bold statements that can be made from them, without understanding how damn complex those soft sciences are, and how much more chewy their problems are.
Then they apply the hard-science methods to the more intractable problems in the soft sciences, and declare themselves the winners of science. The actual scientists roll their eyes, while the science journalists’ eyes gleam as they sell huge volumes to starry-eyed assholes desperate for evidence that they’re genetically superior, to cover up their own flaws.
Almost every publicized “men genetically better than women at X” article I’ve read follows that pattern.
Compassion is weak and womanly, so it’s lesser. That’s really all there is to it in my opinion – there’s an association between “nurturing” and “woman” that’s very durable in our society, because most people were nurtured by women while growing up. That connection is enough to make it appear weaker and lesser than “strong”, “harsh”, and “critical” fields.
This is all a fight against the concept that women must be nurturing and men can’t be. A lot of these issues seem to boil down to that.
In some places, “thongs” are what are known to Americans as flip-flops (ie, they are a sort of open shoe). So to my mind, wearing thongs and having an erection are two very, very, very unrelated events. And it’s completely reasonable, Dave, to expect one to put on thongs when entering a household. They’re called house shoes, or indoor shoes, elsewhere.
I always wondered with the arguments surrounding testosterone. If more testosterone makes one a better human, shouldn’t we be promoting a broad testosterone-regimen for all women. And if estrogen makes a person more sexy, shouldn’t we promote a broad estrogen regimen for all men? (I mean I want to be more sexy!?!).
I for one, welcome our new, fully androgenous hormonally pumped-up super-overlordies!
=8)-DX
Also proving that they still haven’t grokked what the damn complaint was even about: Not the butt itself, but said butt* going against character in a character-driven game. Which is par for the course whenever the “See no facts, hear no facts, speak no facts” shit-flingers are involved, but still facepalm-worthy.
*But butt but but butt.
Also @Christina Nordlander, Emperor’s White Knight
>>Just saw the news about Tracer being gay/bi. First queer main character in an AAA game? Awesome.
Mass Effect: has multiple playthrough possibilities and romantic/sexual liasons possible, basically your player character is open to gay/bi/poly/interspecial sexuality based on your play style.
And there’ve been many other games that are open to this. It’s still of course “controversial”, but there’ve been many games that have worked with non-normative sexualities and heroes.
When it comes to men wearing thongs, I’m reminded of this scene from “Shrek.”
As for Anthony Weiner, who was mentioned as a possibility for the face of the man holding a nail gun and wearing a thong, he’s a nominee for the “Best Scandal — Sex & Generalized Carnality” Golden Duke Award at Talking Points Memo. He’s certainly a worthy nominee!
@RosieLa
We always called them thongs rather than flip-flops here in WA, though now my immediate association with the word is the underwear. I’m not sure whether that happened as a result of an increase in popularity of the underwear or because of the influx of transplants or because the Internet got me used to the other meaning. Same thing happened with “pop” – I say “soda” now, but grew up saying “pop”.
I almost never refer to fizzy sugar drinks at all, but when I do, it’s either “soda pop” or “carbonated beverages” depending on context.
Rather off-topic, but I am reminded of a terrible sexual harassment training article I stumbled upon a few days back
In all its glory…
It pretty much out-and-out says that sexual harassment is almost always a natural consequence of the harassee’s behavior. Did you wear too much make-up or dress as a temptation to the animal lusts of men, inviting them to mortally sin in thought? Did you talk about your home life? You forgot to be courteous, didn’t you. Dammit, Alice, I told you that constant interruptions were Frank’s fetish!
The thing is, I bet the exact same writer, if asked to write an article for ciswomen on how to be attractive to men, would include about three paragraphs on how dressing modestly is “hotter” than whatever the children are calling sexy these days, and how courtesy turns heads and makes one stand out.
Take the word of the dyke who wears, as a default, her grandmother’s pearls (Mimi was such a BAMF), a braid-coronet copied from the late Princess Grace, and, when nail polish is called for, Essie’s Ballet Slipper Pink, which was called back into existence by HRM Elizabeth, and who is working from home because stalky-guy-who-won’t-take-the-hint is stalky and won’t take the hint: “class” is no defense against the creepy boner rub. (Also, ew, “class” implying that rich people are somehow inherently better… but I digress in my digression.) The woman with the hot pants is targeted because it may be hoped by the aggressor that her accusations won’t be taken seriously; the woman who dresses like there is a reasonable chance of dropping by a convent later is targeted because harassers think she is too gracious (or wimpy) to call them on their dastardliness (or, in one notable anecdote, because the assailant could not or would not afford a professional dominatrix, and was hoping these paragons in tea-length skirts would say something withering. Er, anti-withering). It is our job as the defenders of righteousness to disabuse those who assault of both notions.
I apologize for ranting, but it’s been itching in my brain lately.