I love this. How often is the father in a commercial the one clearing away the dishes and lecturing the kid about finishing their dinner, while the fun-loving mother acts like a child to get dessert? No doubt MRA types would see nothing in this but an affirmation that women are irresponsible and immature and indeed suck, but it’s a nice bit of variety anyway.
Yay!
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007Because I can’t wait five damn days for the Pandagon comment thread, and I’m not joining some Yahoo discussion group
Monday, July 23rd, 2007For those who’ve finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Thoughts appear at random.
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The perks of not being an asshole
Saturday, April 14th, 2007It turns out the Flash Gordon crew had nothing to worry about. Look what happened to Chris Clarke when he peeled off that male privilege and washed it down the sink. That’s what it’s often like when you’re a decent person because you want to be. For fuck’s sake, as long as you don’t tell anyone that you’re only being nice and understanding and shit to get women to stroke your ego, you’ll probably get the same results he did, if you can manage to be half as charming.
I mean, using your privilege is another option, and there’s certainly an argument for that. I imagine following strange women around to watch them squirm would make a guy feel pretty powerful. It might even get some of your friends to buy you a beer.
The one I wouldn’t go for is whining about how you want to be a nice guy, really you do, but you just can’t stand the thought of toiling away in the darkness and dying an unsung hero. You don’t get the gratitude or the asshole rush out of that, so what’s the point?
Saturday cat blogging
Saturday, March 31st, 2007I know I’m a day late, but I might as well introduce the family.
Coming soon: the boyfriend boxer
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007Why are they called “trouser” and not “trousers”? And isn’t the whole point of wearing your boyfriend’s clothes that he’s worn them? Is the Gap just admitting that they make better pants for men than for women?
At least they cost the same as the men’s, I guess.
Armchair Rebelutionaries
Sunday, March 25th, 2007Lisa KS sums up my reaction to the Christian Masturbator Uprising of 2007.
I’m actually really getting into the idea here that I’m making a bunch of buttwipes suffer agonies by my mere presence in their line of sight. This is totally awesome. How often does a bunch of really dipsh*t guys advertise so blatantly how you can drive them all mad without the slightest effort on your part and without them having the teeniest ability to do a damn thing about it?
The problem with this attitude, I am aware, is that this is exactly the reaction they expect you to have, because they already know that you exist solely to make them miserable, and that you know exactly what you’re doing and are enjoying it. Frankly, I’d be afraid to piss off anyone who’s not sure he wouldn’t rape his sister if he saw her bend over to pick something up.* If he decided I was abusing my privilege of not being raped and proceeded to deprive me of it, there are a lot of people who wouldn’t exactly blame him.
Unfortunately for the brave soldiers, they live in a world where most people either have gotten laid or will get laid at some point, and do not wish to identify with pathetic losers who frantically try to stop thinking about their sisters while they touch themselves. If they could get up the courage to actually rape a girl (not a blood relative), they’d get a lot more sympathy from the general public. Once people figure out that you’re serious about not wanting to waste another erection, they start to fear you, and then they try to comfort themselves by deciding that maybe what you did made sense, so you’re not so scary after all. After all, what the hell was that slut doing wearing such a short skirt anyway? What did she expect?
Obviously, since these guys are only using their typing hand to share their sexual fantasies with each other, we can safely laugh at them. Like all fundamentalist wingnuts, they became obsolete when people figured out that you can sometimes get a girl to sleep with you by talking to her and that this Darwin guy seemed to know what he was talking about. It’s only when they stop whining and actually do something about their grievances with the world that they get any instinctive empathy from us. Not anything we’re proud of, but I guess they have to take what they can get.
*Go look for the damn quote yourself. I’m not touching that thing again.
This weekend
Sunday, March 11th, 2007Just donated a bunch of books I bought at a library sale a few months ago back to the same library. At least I’m doing my part to help disadvantaged kids waste time playing games on the internet like the rest of us.
Sticks and stones
Sunday, March 4th, 2007Some people reasonably think we shouldn’t be spending time responding to the Coulter thing or whatever else the wingnut of the hour hacks up on the carpet. Don’t waste your time on a comeback, because they’re not going to get it anyway. Don’t let them see that it bothers you, because it just encourages them.
Well, it does bother me. Congratulations, Ann Coulter. Every time your haggard face opens and something slimy comes out of it, I feel a little twinge of hurt and shock and unhappiness. Not because I particularly care what you think about anything, but because I don’t like being reminded that such ugliness exists in the world. If someone were to show me a picture of a mutilated kitten, it would also make my day a bit darker.
The relevant attention Coulter gets isn’t from us, but from the people who clap and cheer when she says “faggot.” If that weren’t there, she would shrivel up into a dry husk of a late-night radio show host and we wouldn’t have to hear about her ever again. And that’s the part of Wingnuttia that deserves our attention. It needs to be seen and known and remembered for what it is. It needs to be held up and scrutinized and lamented and mocked. We need to spend time shaking our heads that such people exist and congratulating ourselves for being better than them. We don’t need to be above pointing out that we’re better than them.
Not that any of us has that problem. I’m just saying, good for us.
The war on unhappiness, or turn that frown upside down before I do it for you
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007I want to know where I can get a chip for my shoulder as big as this guy’s.
I suppose if I were a six-foot, six-inch tall man with a hateful grin plastered on my face, I might suffer fewer daily reminders of how other people see me. Being a good deal shorter, and having genitals much less prominently displayed, I have to settle for an impotent “Jesus, why you feminazis gotta be so goddamn uptight?” or “Just because I spent the last five blocks leering and catcalling at you doesn’t mean I’m hitting on you, you ugly bitch, so don’t flatter yourself” when the world fails to conform to my desires.
But if I were blessed with perfect oblivion, I could take feminist hostility to people who order random women on the street to feign pleasure as a call to strengthen my crusade against surliness.
A zombie-faced sourpuss glooming up the world is the same no matter what genitals they happen to possess. I say “Smile!” And, having seen the idiocy of some of these responses, I will now be far more militant and mindful about it. It’s a war between those who mope and slouch through life and those who want to spread some love.
Amen, brother. Peace. And it’s not just out on the streets that we’re needed, I say. How many women are causing unneccesary discomfort and suffering to their sexual partners by not faking their orgasms convincingly enough? When did sexual climax become more important to us than happiness?
But we cockeyed optimists realize it may already be too late for the world. Feminists, atheists, and eyeliner-wearing goths have been allowed free reign to spread their misery and gloom far too long. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t even dismiss a woman’s concerns without being asked if you can’t pull your head out of your ass before you suffocate yourself. It’s sexism, is what it is.
If you say “People should relax and be less sensitive,” you’re a patriarch trying to control women. If you say “Abortion shouldn’t be taken lightly,” you’re a patriarch trying to control women. If you take a BREATH, you’re a patriarch trying to control women.
…
On Pandagon, my MALE-ness makes everything I say skewed or damaged or wrong in some way, automatically. Ironically, this is how the true sexists I’ve known in my life view women’s ideas.
“What does she know? She’s just a goddamn mouthy cunt.”
But perhaps that is Pandagon’s aim: to let ME know how it feels to be regarded as just a “mouthy cunt.” It has worked. It hurts and it angers.
The reign of the downtrodden must be stopped. We the cheerful must rise up and demand from the populace the displays of happiness we deserve.
SMILE, SOURPUSS!
Well said, sir. Well said.
What I want to know is this
Thursday, February 8th, 2007If all you wanted was someone to parrot your views in your blog, why would you hire Amanda Marcotte to do it, instead of your local gas station attendant, your primary-care physician, or me? Do you also fill your gas tank with Cristal?
They call it the opiate of the masses because it’s weak and diluted
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007From PZ, I learn that CNN wants to know why “atheists inspire such hatred” in believers that many would like to compel them to stop talking about their atheism.
Well, let me help you out, CNN. If you hate atheists so much that you need them to stop talking, it’s because you’re an atheist yourself. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t waste that kind of feeling on atheists, and you woudn’t find them so threatening. If another person’s words or opinions or existence can shake your faith hard enough to make it dizzy, it’s because your faith is already hobbling around drunk on broken stilts.
And just like banning tape recorders in classrooms won’t stop teachers from proselytizing, getting atheists to shut up won’t make your own atheism go away. It’s going to take something stronger than that. Since your current opiate is apparently about as effective as week-old coffee, just about anything should be an improvement. I suggest starting with some decent marijuana and seeing where that leads you.
They’ll get you, and your little dog, too
Friday, January 19th, 2007This particular weirdo troll, who claims to be a feminist and an atheist but hates feminists and really ought to give the God-thumping thing a try, is worried that librul hedonist peer pressure is forcing young girls and boys to pick their flowers before they’re ready.
95% of girls and 89% of boys agreed that “being a virgin in high school is a good thing.”
77% of sexually active teen girls, and 60% of boys, wished they had waited longer before having sex.
****
24% of sexually active girls between 15 and 19 said that their first sexual experience was voluntary but unwanted.
(Moore et al, “A Statistical Report of Adolscent Sex, Contraception, and Childrearing,” National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, March 1998, pg. 11)****
But, omigod, let’s not encourage abstinence, because that’s what conservatives do.
I suspect that when this troll’s preschool children bury their teary faces in his/her stomach, crying that they’re afraid of the dark because there are monsters under the bed, s/he lovingly strokes their hair and tells them they’re right, there are monsters under the bed, and in the closet too, just waiting to gobble up naughty little children who go into the dark alone.
Clearly, there’s nothing wrong with being afraid of the dark when you’re a small child, and forcing a terrified little creature into a dark room by himself and locking him in is abusive by any measure. But to a sex-hating conservative, children aren’t to be encouraged to face their fears, taught how to keep themselves safe while living as freely and fully as they can, and offered respectful guidance and support as they learn to trust the world and themselves. Frightened children are easier to control, after all, so why give up such a useful teaching tool as fear?
Where are the surveys telling us how many adults wish they hadn’t waited as long as they did before having sex? How many would have preferred not having their adolescent fears of growing up and learning to relate to other people as friends, lovers, and makeout partners validated by their parents and teachers? How much easier would it have been to grow up if they hadn’t been surrounded by people happy to keep them young?
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