The Summer 2017 WHTM pledge drive is! Please consider donating money to enable continuing coverage of Nazi sexbot debates! Thanks!
By David Futrelle
The Greater Internet Lady-hating community has generally been pretty enthusiastic about the allegedly impending arrival of vaguely realistic sexbots, hoping that the ready availability of faux ladies for sex will render real ladies more or less obsolete. Or at the very least make the real ladies feed bad about themselves, thus achieving a major goal of misogynists worldwide.
But sexbots have gotten a much chillier reception from the subset of internet misogynists who also happen to be Nazis. Last year, for example, a writer for the Daily Stormer denounced sexbots as a plot by Jewish degenerates to lower white fertility and, you know, white genocide the superior race.
A recent poll on the Daily Stormer suggests that most internet Nazis are still wary of sexy robot ladies, with 54% (as of this writing) thinking they’re a bad idea. But a significant minority — 35% — is kind of into the whole thing. A lively debate on the subject has broken out of the site’s BBS. Naturally, these being Nazis, the reasons behind these differing opinions are uniformly terrible.
According to hacker Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, commenting on the Daily Stormer, BBS, sexbots might be good for
nonwhites …(maybe not blacks because they are incapable of caring for any object of high value and it would cost society a lot of money)
for whites no– we implement WHITE SHARIA, and then freely beat and rape women after …
being a faggot with a five figure masturbation machine is probably gonna make you a lot less likely to implement WHITE SHARIA
As someone called Hercules1 sees it,
Having it with a robot is a weird and completely desperate degeneracy.
It’s almost the same as guys who can’t get any, having it with an animal or something out of desperation. …
Have a little self control. We’re not animals, and as National Socialists, we shouldn’t strive for degeneracy.
Fanda is similarly wary
Sounds like either a Semitic scam to further atomise society, a gooky reaction to a horribly atomised society, or a combination of the above.
VorginiaSavior worries about robot-assisted White Genocide:
Sex robots would be not only degenerate but it would go against the propagation of the Aryan race.
But SnakeDoctor has much more immediate concerns:
I’m not sticking my dick in anything that has the potential to clamp my dick off. That’s like taking a gamble getting a blow job from a bitch who has seizures.
But for every commenter denouncing sexbots as “degeneracy” or worse, there are perhaps two others parroting the standard misogynistic argument for sexbots. While running behind the naysayers in the Daily Stormer poll, on the BBS itself the pro-sexbot Nazis are offering much more detailed and passionate arguments as to why sexbots are great news for white dudes.
“Im for it,” declares Exiled_Idiot.
Robots with artificial wombs would pose a giant threat to the female population (cuz noone wants to deal with thots if you can avoid or need to fuck them) and force them to better themself and become more viable. It would essentially force them to evole or die out.
TheOutlander14 sees sexbots as a boon for men in a world teeming with”unmarriageable women.” Echoing pretty much every MGTOW and Men’s Rights Activist who’s ever offered an opinion on the subject, he argues that
Sex robots decrease the marketplace value of sex, essentially taking away nature’s one advantage that women have and exploit to the downfall of civilization in the post-modern era. …
Men have already been FORCED to live lives without women. You have to do everything in the house. Cook, Clean, Work, Maintenance and the only thing your post-modern woman will offer you is a second income, maybe sex, and debt to maintain her consumerist lifestyle. Robots cannot provide money to women or meaningful attention, which works against them.
We’re entering a eugenic bottleneck everyone, and if women won’t shape up and compete against robot pussy, then they will end up without a child or husband. There are more great men out there than there are decent women, and I think they deserve to at least be fucking happy without being called a degenerate because they don’t want to date a 2 ton whale of a woman covered in tattoos who wants to spend their money. Not everyone will be able to mate, and it’s better they do it with a sex robot than a chink. …
If you know a decent chick who isn’t some fat slut with uranium up her vag, don’t fuck a robot. Otherwise, fuck one in the meantime.
The aptly named Terrible thinks that sexbots will force women to stop saying “no” to sex.
‘Female’ sex robots designed for men are a good idea because they will take a lot of leverage away from women, dealing a deadly blow to the thot institution of ‘consent’. If a guy can just bang his robot and it feels better than banging you, then I guess you’d better learn to cook and clean and be a mother, right? Got some serious competition if all you’ve got to offer is a wet slit.
What must never be allowed to happen, though, are sex robots designed for women, for obvious reasons
Red_In_T_and_C offers an extended take on the threat sexbots pose to the power of pussy.
Our problems may be Jewishly inspired, but the lever that moves us is pussy.
Sex is both the carrot and the stick used to control men. We do the most ridiculous and destructive shit to get our nut. Which is harmful. We are then punished afterwards via things like “harassment” claims, child support etc…
Sex robots will allow men to develop the tools needed to resist being manipulated by women.
For those still unconvinced, Red offers an argument that even the dullest Nazi should be able to understand. Because it involves vaping.
Being against sex robots is exactly like being against vaping. Pussy and tobacco are addictions that are expensive, that are undignified, and which have serious and life ruining real world consequences.
Consider a man of potential being sperm jacked at 20. He may never see his child, but would still be a slave to the child support machine until around 40. His career, ruined. His ability to raise a family, ruined.
And all because a bunch of feminists who hate men wish to deny us our liberation. And because a bunch of insecure men fear shaming language.
The only argument against sex bots is some sort of nonsense about no babies getting made.
Where are the arguments against condoms, the pill, sex ed, and abstinence?
And, hey, if you’re worried about the fertility rate falling amongst whites, Red adds, just “imagine the endless benefits if we gave sex bots to muds.”
Sorry, I’m still imagining the benefits of sexbots designed to clamp Nazi dicks off.
Do I really want to know how you know it’s the same as sticking your willy in a warm can of baked beans?
I get the anger, especially if you’ve been bullied by one of these clowns. I just can’t help but see a lot of scared and pathetic little creatures wallowing in loathing and self-pity, and I hate to see potential humanity wasted like that.
Guess I’m just a big ol’ softie.
To all mgtows/incels/nazis lurking here….you have the same potential as anyone else. No one is holding you back. Own your problems and own your solutions. Get some sun and fresh air. Talk to actual women. Don’t assume that they’ll all talk back. But, if they do, then you have made a friend. These are a lot more fun than robots.
Alright, I’m done here.
‘Guess I’m just a big ol’ softie.’ Or…you’re not personally affected so you can ignore the harm they do.
@Hartwick
Or nah…
That’s… not how friendship works…
Ugh. You can’t unread shit written by Internet Nazis.
Shopping List
Bread
PepsiBeansA few hours ago some dude shot two other dudes in the back, just 5 minutes from where we live. The shooter escaped in a car and was chased down and shot by the police. All three are alive, as far as I can tell. Probably quarreling criminals, as is usually the case when people get shot around here.
In the aftermath of WW2 the preferred term was ‘collaborator’.
And yes the Nazis did seem scared and pathetic as they were overrun by Allied forces, captured by the Resistance, or in the dock in Israel. But prior to getting their comeuppance they’d shown not a jot of sympathy for their victims. And they deserve none today.
@Hartwick
You’re not the only person to feel some pity for these guys, but for me it’s more of a kind of amorphous, general pity.
I mean that, I feel bad that there are humans this full of hate.
But that doesn’t get in the way of my feeling that they are absolutely loathesome and dangerous people. I dunno, for me it’s not one or the other, but a lot of things in turn.
Anyway, the thing about this particular nauseating group that stands out for me is the continued idea that women have somehow evolved separately from men. I am continually gobsmacked that they seem to truly believe women are an entirely separate species from men.
All that said, even after years of reading this shit, I still can be surprised that anyone anywhere can say such amazingly over-the-top hateful crap about other human beings. I mean I see it every week but it is still kind of shocking to me.
And how do these geniuses think “artificial wombs” are going to work in their favor, exactly? Now that’s an invention that would really give women a huge boost in bodily autonomy. How do they proposes keeping women from using them? And how do they propose creating a viable zygote without a donor egg from somewhere?
So I sprained my ankle today, pretty badly.
And I think to myself, would these Nazis have sympathy for me for my sprained ankle? And I have to conclude that no, no they wouldn’t.
And that basically kills any sympathy I might have for them. Because sympathy and compassion works both ways, and when it doesn’t work both ways it is a recipe for abuse.
So, no sympathy for Nazis here.
Echoing Guest here: It’s easier to be a big ol’ softie when you don’t really have to care very much about their hate affecting you.
Yeah, people won’t change unless there are consequences for their speech and actions. They’re not going to stop otherwise, except in the unlikely event that they see they’re damaging their own relationships. Many don’t care because they have learned that they can harm other people and get away with it.
Most trolls are happy. They like it that they can torment people they dislike online and get away with it. In the US, we incarcerate a lot of people for crimes like stranger assault and theft/robbery/burglary compared to interpersonal violence offenses like domestic violence, stalking, and harassment (which people are punished for more commonly in Western Europe than in the US). People have unacceptably permissive attitudes towards trolling and other interpersonal violence behaviors.
“And how do they propose creating a viable zygote without a donor egg from somewhere?”
It always amazes me that they don’t seem to realize that this is an actual problem they would face. It does seem like most of these people have a very weak ability to detect logical contradictions, and while I have no sympathy for these people, I do have a bit of pity for people whose minds work so poorly.
Some years ago I read Daniel Goldhagen’s controversial book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, which argues that one of the reasons for the success of Nazi anti-semitism was a history of several decades of “eliminationist” anti-semitism in Germany — the belief that Jews were a subhuman race so irretrievably evil that nothing short of their eradication would save German society. As I read the book, I kept asking myself, “If I had been brought up in that sort of milieu, would I have been able to resist acquiring the belief” — and as much as I like to think I would have resisted it, I’ve never been able to belive it with certainty. I feel that I was lucky to have been brought up to be rational; that my parents’ prejudices (mainly my mother’s anti-Catholicism, which could have been a problem in my majority French/Irish/Polish Catholic home town) were weak and easily counteracted; and that I was never encouraged to blame my problems on women. I’d like to think that I never would have become a misogynist no matter what, but I’ve never been absolutely certain. Maybe I was just lucky.
If you stop asking me to sympathize with literal Nazis who desire a Fourth Reich and the implementation of their 14 words, I can be quite friendly and welcoming. Really.
There’s even a welcome package link over to the right, or below (if you’re on a phone). Check it out.
I kind of…always feel empathy for everyone. But it’s not a limited resource. I’ve been on the bad end of attacks and so forth, including some pretty nasty stuff, but I’m just wired that way. I can’t help it – but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t act. But dude, I’ve been known to cry and be miserable when I see a limping seagull.
I know it disgusts normal people, so I don’t tell them I feel it usually, but I do tend to feel sorry for people like nazis, mras, etc that they are like this. I just don’t conflate that feeling with any need to pause in putting someone down or resisting a toxic idea.
I think it’s a bit like @deemr. Because I feel pity doesn’t mean I don’t also feel loathing or disgust. And it’s pretty nasty to assume I’d be a collaborator because I’m a raw nerve. I see it as fuel for implacable action with recognition that these are people, not monsters. And that means it can happen anywhere.
Isn’t it easier to convert an egg into acting like a sperm than the other way around? I think I read something like that somewhere…
@Steampunked – well put. Thank you. And, I’m not asking anyone to have sympathy for these guys. I’m not unaffected by them, and I’m definitely at risk due to their ideas. But I do not think they are not human. It’s like when we say we can care about more than one issue at once – I can feel more than one way at a time.
@GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina
Well, anecdotally speaking, I was not able to completely resist the inherent racism we’re saturated with here in the U.S., so I have to believe I would have also acquired such an anti-Semitic belief.
Hopefully, like my racism, I would be able to recognize it as absolutely unworthy and be able to at least question myself daily about it, to work against it. But I doubt I could have escaped it.
Lots of fun stuff to reply to here!
i.e. Conservatism at large. The list of Republicans who were shocked that Trumps’ policies would hurt people they know and love is large and ever-growing, and it’s always the same. “The person I care about isn’t the same as those others!” Yes, they are. It’s a deficit of empathy that defines them, almost more than anything else.
@dreemr, I always baffle at something similar to what you’re pointing out. I even give them the whole “okay, so you can engineer a donor egg” thing, even though that’s patently nonsense. No, I always giggle at the fact that they seem to forget that children need to be raised. What, are these alphabro manlymans going to raise their children?
I mean, first thing – oh god those poor kids. Raised like wolf cubs. I wouldn’t wish “being raised by MRA single dad” on anyone.
And second, do they really think they’re gonna be able to handle being a single parent if they can’t even handle the thought of women being independent beings?
That’s really the crux of it, I suppose. They can’t think of women as independent beings, how could they possibly handle children? The thought makes me shudder.
Regarding the “Sympathy for Nazis” thread… I completely understand the idea of sympathy for everyone, even unearned and unreturned sympathy. I get that. But above someone said that sympathy wasn’t a limited resource. It is. It’s often vast, far deeper than we might suspect, but it’s not limitless and its absence is often imperceptible. It’s also important to keep in mind that sympathy for one group can often exclude sympathy for another. You might feel sympathy for both, but an expression of sympathy for one group can easily negate or reverse expressions of sympathy for another.
Not sure if that came across well! It’s hot and i want ice cream. So Im’a go do that.
Fair points, everyone, except the “collaborator” nonsense. Collaborators worked with or tolerated the third reich out of fear. Having both pity and contempt for similar critters, and wishing that they’d embrace humanity instead of reject it, is not the same thing.
And, Axe, talking to people is actually a really good way to make friends. I just met a couple of nice young ladies while out paddling the lake on a gorgeous day. I’m already hooked up with one on Fb and planning to meet up next week. Not being a creep helps a lot.
aaaaaaaand didn’t stick the flounce.
Vanilla. Caramel. Maple. Praline. Crunch.
Ice cream technology has advanced incredibly over the past years. What a time to be alive.
<3 Hartwick. You're missing an essential part here, my duck.
These MRAs and Incels and whatnot can't and don't lose their internalized belief systems by force of will. They can't simply decide one day to try to treat women fairly and as equals. Brains don't work that way. It takes deep introspection and often a great deal of personal struggle and trauma in order to bridge that gap.
I think that the issues some have with your suggestions that MRA's just go try to "make friends" is that the MRA trying to make friends will still be carrying their toxic beliefs with them as they're connecting to these women. It's basically suggesting they go harass women. I know that's not what you're wanting them to do! But that'd be the outcome.
Detangling the heavy net of hate and self-loathing needs to be a priority before they should be pursuing relationships. Doing otherwise would just offload that hard work on the innocent new friend at best, and starting an abusive relationship at – middling? I feel that the worst outcome could be much, much worse.
So please don’t presume this position as cynicism! It’s not. It’s compassion for women. The prototypical MRA you’re talking about needs to do some self-work before they should be reaching out to women again.
Also, I don’t speak for anyone but myself and am full of maple and cream, so should not be trusted for much of anything.
@ steampunked & dreemr
Perhaps I should amplify what my issue is with the idea of sympathy for Nazis. And please understand, I’m not having a go at you personally. I know you’re both very decent good people, as indeed you demonstrate with your empathy. But it’s the principle that I believe is harmful.
Obviously no-one can help feeling empathy or pity if that’s how they’re inclined. Such things are just innate. You can have no more control over that than crying when you’re sad. But what does become a problem (I believe) is expressing that sympathy.
There are a number of reasons for this.
One of them is that by suggesting Nazism is somehow a reaction to some underlying suffering it both excuses and legitimises people. It seems analogous to the “Oh it must be mental illness” reaction to mass murderers. As you rightly point put, Nazis are humans not monsters. But that means they make choices and must be responsible for those choices. No-one is born a Nazi or compelled by fate to become one. So expressions of sympathy, and even worse, invitations to sympathise (which I know neither of you have done) abdicate responsibility from Nazis as if somehow they can’t help it and are therefore victims themselves.
My principle objection though is the message it sends to victims. To look at it from the other side, there are many valid reasons to punch Nazis. But what really struck me was that article by a Jewish person as to the effect it had to on them. It was a message that, no matter what was going on in the world, there were at least some people who weren’t on board with Nazism and wouldn’t let it stand. It was a reassurance that at least one other person valued that Jewish person’s life over any accommodation given to Nazis.
So I worry the flipside of that is expressions of sympathy sends a message to Nazis victims and potential victims that we prioritise the feelings of Nazis over the safety of the people they want to hurt.
Like I say, that’s just my own opinion on this, and I certainly don’t think you’re bad people, quite the opposite, but I do think that it’s perhaps best not to express openly any sympathy even if you can’t help feel it.
ETA; ninja’d much more succinctly by Scildfreja
As an actual woman, I vote for Nazis, MGTOW, incels and the like to please not talk to me. I don’t exist to provide free therapy to men who literally want me to either be a sex slave or maybe just killed because I’m in my late thirties and too old to please their boners. People who want to commit genocide against some of the people that I know and care about simply because they aren’t white or aren’t cishet. They can sort their own shit out and then talk to me and maybe, but only just maybe if I believe they’re reformed, I’ll trust them.
I’m not sure I get a vote here though. Clearly my wish to be safe from misogynists is not as important as manpain. To carry on my point from the previous thread.
“The prototypical MRA you’re talking about needs to do some self-work before they should be reaching out to women again.”
Yeah, maybe so. I will admit to being overly optimistic at times. But, isn’t interacting with people, imperfect as it may be, a better solution than seething in the basement?
And, if the ‘flounce’ comment was directed at me…. Nope. I just left for a few hours to go paddling. I’ll be leaving again for dinner shortly.
@Scildfreja & @Alan
You’ve both mentioned the expression of sympathy, and I do think that is key.
I feel some generalized pity for many of the people we discuss here, but I don’t think I express it, except when it comes up occasionally, like it did today. I usually feel a flutter of “Oh damn, it must suck to carry around so much hate and rage” but it is quickly supplanted by “Oh, what hideous and awful human beings”. I don’t usually wonder “whatever could have happened in these dear boys’ lives to make them so angry? Although I do sometimes wonder how someone living in the same world I live in can hold such unbelievably awful beliefs.
Also, I always come back to this vague thing I remember from when the Amish Schoolhouse shooting happened. After losing everything, the Amish community took pains to forgive the man who murdered their children. Now, I’m not saying that anyone else ever EVER has to do such a thing, but that has always resonated with me in some way. Somehow, forgiving him helped them avoid being poisoned by anger, hate and revenge.
Now, I am not saying I could ever do anything similar, its just that that story has always served to remind me of my own humanity and that of others’. There are many monsters in the world, but I can’t bring myself to believe that even the worst of them are less than human. And I’m sure many here will feel that is a very Pollyanna way for me to think, but it’s what helps me retain my own humanity.
@Hartwick
Well, obviously. Not what you said tho:
There’s a lotta dudes (this blog covers them plenty) who think that any, even mildly positive response to being chatted up means a woman likes them. Not least by gals in the service industry, who hafta be nice. I accept it’s not what you meant, but saying that kinda thing to these kinda people… I dunno, maybe I’m being oversensitive
Also, what @WWTH and @Scildfreja said. Unlike my nonsense, perfectly said 🙂
@POM
I’m sorry to hear that. It’s awful. I hope that your ankle heals quickly.
<3 Alan and WWTH, you say things more clearly than me! I don't know where you get the impression that I'm more succinct than you, Alan, but I feel about as eloquent as a freight train at the moment.
(probably just feeling bloaty from ice cream though mind you. Could be that)
@Hartwick, it sure is better to interact with people than seethe in a basement! 100%. That's not the problem.
The problem is that those people that the MRA will interact with are, y'know, people. People who should not be subjected to the hate and bottled aggression of an MRA, and who should not be considered as therapeutic instruments for the rehabilitation of a misogynist. You’re inadvertently placing the needs of the MRA above the needs of the people they would be interacting with.
The MRA should go interact with people who understand and are okay with the situation. Generally, that involves counseling of some sort, be it professional or not. That I’m 100% behind. I’m far less enthusiastic about them glomming onto randoms. Those randoms’ need for security and peace override the MRA’s desire to rehabilitate themselves.
I hope that’s clear! Please correct me or clarify for me if I am confused, everyone. Because that is my normal state these days!
@Policy of Madness – I should have said something sooner, but I hope your ankle feels better soon.
I promise I wasn’t too busy feeling sorry for Nazis – I mean “White Nationalists” whoever they are – to feel some sympathy for you, too. In fact I feel exponentially more sympathy for you and your for-now bum ankle.
:O POM! Feel better! I hope that your ankle heals up quickly and that you are back on your feet soon. Until then, don’t strain yourself! Don’t strain da sprain!
@Axe, that too! It was in my head in your previous comment but I didn’t follow up on it, because my brain is a mess these days. MRAs aren’t very good at understanding relationships, especially with women, so the assumption of “she’ll talk to me” == “she’s a friend” is hideously misguided.
Especially in the service industry. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been cheerful and attentive behind a counter while someone drones on-and-on-and-on about something incredibly dull and I just can’t escape, because I gotta earn my stupid $7.25 that hour.
Women are raised to be polite, thoughtful, attentive and subservient. Too often, people assume that this equates to friendship when it’s really just the barest skin of toleration overtop a bubbling anger-pudding.
My gosh, I must still be hungry.
Anyways, it’s a very good point, thank you for making it!
@dreemr, I’m exactly the same. That was really well put. +1 !
YES, it totally is. I used to be prepared to bend over backwards for people, to accept all kind of behaviour, and frame it as a person needing to emote/ work it through or whatever, but I have seen too many people harming others and not changing to give a shit about them anymore.
I am sorry they are like that, but only because I am sorry for the people they affect and the fact that they make the world a shittier place. .
I also don’t take it as a given that these guys don’t get any social interaction. Most people aren’t cool with the bigoted extremes that the people David cover go to. But people do tolerate or even agree with quite a bit of bigotry. It’s not necessarily hard for these guys to blend in with the rest of society.
@ POM
Yeah, sympathies for the ankle. Hope I’m not teaching you to suck eggs but I really recommend the Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation approach.
@ Dreemr
We had a similar thing here years ago in a notorious ‘vicarage rape’ case. The victim very courageously waived her right to anonymity and publicly forgave her attacker. One had to admire her commitment to her Christian principles. Of course there’s then the danger that it puts pressures on other victims to be equally magnanimous or can trivialise rape (“If she can do that, why are you so upset?” sort of thing). But of course victims are allowed to react in any way they wish. There’s is the only opinion that matters in such circumstances. And notwithstanding what I’ve said about expressions of sympathy, I do take comfort in their being compassionate people like yourself, and others on this site, in the world. If everyone was like you we wouldn’t have Nazis in the first place.
@Hartwick
I think you’re probably well-meaning, but it sounds like you may have an unrealistically optimistic view of the world. Yes, these people might be helped by therapy if they’re willing to honestly try to change, though most don’t have mental disorders. Therapy might even make some people worse because it could teach them social skills that make them better at manipulating people (the honesty and wanting to change are really important, or teaching someone new ways to behave is a waste of time).
TW for child sexual abuse
I used to work on a helpline. I had a caller who had been brought up in a very strict religious household and had also been raped by her father at the age of 7. She had been told repeatedly that she could only move on if she forgave him. She certainly did not WANT to forgive him but it was difficult for her to let go of this idea.
Thanks everyone. Sorry for derailing. I was a little intoxicated maybe when I posted that. LOL
I am icing the sprain but don’t really have an option to rest it the way I should. There are a lot of things to get done this weekend and only one more day to get them done. Please ignore what I post when I’m drunk.
POM: You make more sense drunk than most of the world makes sober.
I’m going to bring up something brilliant that WWTH said in the incel thread today:
Bullies are
and that’s somehow more important than what they do to their victims.
“Big ol’ softie?” Not when you’re trampling over someone who’s been hurt so you can shower sympathy on the person who chose to inflict the hurt in the first place.
For most bullies, a 9 to 18 month jail sentence is more effective than counseling because bullies are accustomed to a permissive culture. People take sides with bullies and make excuses for them. The opposite is often true for crimes people go to jail for a lot because someone like a thief usually has problems that let him or her go and steal despite very strong societal disapproval of theft and property crimes.
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson:
“If a Nazi were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity his state of mind; but our first consideration would be to ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.”
I have a natural sympathy for all suffering human beings, by virtue of their status as fellow human beings. Those who suffer because they hold maladaptive beliefs and engage in deleterious behaviors receive less sympathy from me than those who suffer because of the beliefs and behaviors of others. I do not believe that this is a fault.
I have no pity to spare for worshippers of Hitler.
Robert Walker-Smith – that would be how I feel. I mean, hmm, well. I rather LIKE chickens. I know a lot of people don’t, but to me they’re fascinating little weird dinosaurs.
I also kill and eat my own chickens. I break their necks, and I do all the gory stuff that comes next. I do kind of feel a bit sad, but well, it’s something that has to be done. My empathy for my feathered little would be tyrants extends to proper medical care, healthy food, some mental stimulation (bored chickens suffer), and so forth. And it heads on into a clean kill. I feel strongly that modern chicken farming is a horror, and I grimace when I participate in it by buying fillets, etc, when I run out of frozen roosters.
So my empathy for Nazis filters into: Treat them like human beings, and do whatever you can to eradicate that belief system. I’m not opposed to various forms of institutional suffering they sign themselves up for – at least if it helps them unlearn that mental state. Not a huge one for suffering for suffering’s sake, not a huge believer in prisons either.
But none of that means I’d put them above a victim, as was claimed above. Or that if I saw something (as I have) I’d treat both people equally (I didn’t – the blameless must be assisted first).
Anyway, ehhh. My comments about empathy come down to it always welling up in me over time regardless of what I go through. Might be different if something happened to my kid. But it’s never the only feeling, everything always has exhausting layers.
This.
Scildfreja Unnyðnes
I saw (maybe read) a brilliant discussion/comment on this topic the other day. The conversation was about conservative versus liberal/progressive attitudes. Someone made the point about liberals showing more acceptance-tolerance-empathy for people they’d never met than conservatives do. The other party pointed out that conservatives can be extremely supportive and empathetic to people they know or who are, at least, like them in some obvious way.
The difference between them is not in their capacity for empathy. The difference is in the definition of the word ‘us‘. All that is needed for most conservatives to become “liberal” is for a wider, more inclusive approach to considering who is and who isn’t “like” them.
(Personally, I don’t think this would help much with people like the US Speaker of the House and his ideological clones. But it probably would with a lot of the thoughtlessly racist and sexist or similarly us-not-them folks.)
‘Anyway, the thing about this particular nauseating group that stands out for me is the continued idea that women have somehow evolved separately from men.’
As I’ve done several times before in various venues, I’m going to ask the hive mind here if they have any information about this…but isn’t that more or less what Darwin himself suggested? I know that if I really want a satisfactory answer it’s on me to go through Darwin’s work myself to find out exactly what he argued, but (and I may be completely wrong about this, so please share if you know better) I believe Darwin argued that sexual selection in humans has led, and is continuing to lead, to males becoming more strong, brave and clever (because that’s what females are looking for in a mate) and to females becoming more docile, pliant and caring (because that’s what males want in a mate)–i.e. that the forces directing evolution in humans lead in divergent directions for the sexes. Now, as far as I know (and again I have pretty much no idea what I’m talking about here) divergent directions for the sexes doesn’t actually make sense, as offspring have qualities of both–if a gracile human and a robust human have a child that child (whatever its sex) ends up with both gracile and robust genes. So what did Darwin actually argue was going on, and how much of his argument was genuine observation of humans vs unreflective sexism based on observation of the middle-class Victorian humans he was surrounded by? (We are aware that although Darwin doesn’t seem to have been an actual misogynist he was certainly capable of thinking of women as some species of pet: https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/tags/about-darwin/family-life/darwin-marriage .)
I’ve had no luck to date getting people who understand these things to help me understand it–I’m asking for expertise from people who understand both genetics and Darwin’s work, and I don’t know if there are that many people who meet both requirements (unfortunately experts in the history of science generally don’t know much actual science). I’ve looked online, and discovered that finding useful information about Darwin’s work is impossible through general searches because they’re bogged down with Christian agendas (i.e. it’s very easy to find criticism of Darwin’s arguments, but not any of any real value). I’ve asked on various online forums, and IRL when I meet people who I think might be able to shed some light. I’ve even asked people at Down House, when I happened to find myself there!
But now that I’ve typed all this out, I’m thinking that reading The Descent of Man is now on my to-do list for this afternoon….
Choose your words carefully. I would not advocate sympathy or empathy for the creep class, because those words imply a shared or relate-able experience. I do think, perhaps, that pity may be warranted for fellow human beings with hearts so dark that they have lost their humanity.
Further, I still think it’s a good idea for creeps to leave the basement and go talk to people. Perhaps they can regain some of that lost humanity, and that would be a benefit to all of us. If you check my earlier comment, however, I also said that some people might not talk back. I do not — as some have suggested — mean to put the needs of the creeps above the needs of those they might interact with.
And, yes, by all means take the stick out of his hand first. Pity can come later.
I appreciate all of the responses — it’s always good to get opinions and perspectives different than mine. Good night all.
OT: Effety-eff, this is so not normal
White House sent Melania into Trump-Putin meeting in a failed effort to get Trump to stop talking
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/7/7/1678707/-White-House-sent-Melania-into-Trump-Putin-meeting-in-a-failed-effort-to-get-Trump-to-stop-talking?detail=emaildkre
@ guest
Sexual dimorphism isn’t the same thing as separate evolutionary paths. Humans exhibit relatively little sexual dimorphism. Darwin argued that sexual selection caused the Victorian social gender roles and associated personality characteristics. There is no evidence for this proposition. He was principally rooting it in an unthinking assumption that the way he’d grown up was the natural order of human life.
@Dalillama that’s definitely the impression I get…but I wish I knew someone with enough expertise on Darwin’s work to substantiate it. I’m remembering now another reason why I’ve had such difficulty getting any information about this–people who do work on Darwin, used to having to fend off Christianity-based criticism, are understandably not interested in engaging with critical questions from someone they don’t know.