Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has posted a blog entry on gender discrimination. His goal is to gather as many links as possible on all sides of the issue; he intends to try to summarize what's out there in a subsequent post. His blog entry includes a few interesting, possibly insightful comments, for example:
"Some men are bullies and assholes. And most men are assholes at least some of the time. When men are bullies and assholes to each other, we interpret it as exactly that. But if I observe those same bullies and assholes mistreating a woman, I interpret it as sexism. I assume others see it the same way.
"The other day a good friend who works as a massage therapist was describing a time in her past she was a victim of gender discrimination. The story sounded convincing to me. Then I asked if she knew I would not have considered her as my massage therapist if she were a man. Cricket noises."
"My larger point today is that any discussion of gender in the workplace is like two blind people standing on an elephant and arguing whether the elephant is a sandwich or a bar of soap. Both are 100% wrong. That includes me."
Personally, I find Adams' writing to be frequently interesting — he at least tries to find his way around traditional blindspots. Sometimes he even succeeds. Since gender discrimination is so often a topic in technical fields, perhaps Soylentils will find this of interest...
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I came across this piece on Scott Adam's blog and found it quite interesting. Thought others here might find it interesting too:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133406477506/global-gender-war#_=_
So if you are wondering how men become cold-blooded killers, it isn't religion that is doing it. If you put me in that situation, I can say with confidence I would sign up for suicide bomb duty. And I'm not even a believer. Men like hugging better than they like killing. But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something. I'm designed that way. I'm a normal boy. And I make no apology for it.
Now consider the controversy over the Syrian immigrants. The photos show mostly men of fighting age. No one cares about adult men, so a 1% chance of a hidden terrorist in the group – who might someday kill women and children – is unacceptable. I have twice blogged on the idea of siphoning out the women and small kids from the Caliphate and leaving millions of innocent adult men to suffer and die. I don't recall anyone complaining about leaving millions of innocent adult males to horrible suffering. In this country, any solution to a problem that involves killing millions of adult men is automatically on the table.
If you kill infidels, you will be rewarded with virgins in heaven. But if you kill your own leaders today – the ones holding the leash on your balls – you can have access to women tomorrow. And tomorrow is sooner.
(Score: 4, Funny) by TLA on Monday March 16 2015, @02:13AM
That said, I could write a book on gender discrimination in English Law. Seriously, between that and minority-ism, if you're a white male agnostic (as I am) in this country, you are boned.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:50AM
Everyone claims they are the victim of something. No matter what one's race, gender, or age is they will complain that they are being discriminated against. and perhaps there is truth to some of those complains. Perhaps we are all discriminated against in different ways. Not saying that we should be but it likely happens. I've been turned down to a bookkeeping job once and later found out from someone on the inside that it was because they wanted a female for that position. The owners of the company apparently think bookkeeping as a feminine job or something. I know someone who had a night shift security position for a gated community at an arm gate and was working that post for the longest time and was the most qualified worker. He wanted a daytime position instead and when a day shift female eventually left (because she was moving to another state) he asked about getting that position. The homeowners and the homeowner's association decided they wanted a female for that position and hired a much less qualified, new, person for the position (the person being denied the position said the general manager wasn't even discrete about their reasons for not giving him the day shift) partly because that shift saw a lot more traffic and they wanted a female to greet the guests and owners and partly because they prefer males for night positions since females maybe less able to defend themselves and being outside at night is potentially more dangerous. So it goes both ways.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:10AM
> if you're a white male agnostic (as I am) in this country, you are boned.
Well, you had a good long run.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Monday March 16 2015, @04:35AM
Discrimination is discrimination. My grandparent treating your grandparent poorly has nothing to do with either of us. If you see anything in that description that you feel gives you a right to judge, you are as guilty as the people you are attacking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:16AM
Lol. I'm judging you for not getting the joke.
Of course the joke was at the expense of the agnostic white guy, so you know, I was totally discriminating against him.
(Score: 4, Disagree) by sigma on Monday March 16 2015, @06:36AM
Discrimination is discrimination.
No, not quite. The Petrie Multiplier [blogspot.com] means a majority attacking a minority results in discrimination squared.
If you read the link, you'll understand why it's sometimes necessary to apply positive action (viewed as discriminatory) to counteract the effects of past discrimination.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Monday March 16 2015, @06:56AM
I'm not disagreeing on that point at all. I specifically said between our grandparents. Punishing a person for their own actions is very different from punishing them for someone else's actions past or present. Only one of them has any place in a fair society.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 16 2015, @07:49AM
What a wonderfully imaginative way to justify YOUR OWN version of discrimination. MY VERSION of discrimination is evil, but YOUR VERSION of discrimination is good.
How about we just expose all bigots as exactly what they are? Sexist, racist, ethnocentric bigoted SOB's. And, yes, I believe that includes you.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:49PM
How about we just expose all bigots as exactly what they are? Sexist, racist, ethnocentric bigoted SOB's. And, yes, I believe that includes you.
Actually, it includes you too. We all discriminate based on prejudice. Denying your own fallibility and putting it all on others would be ignorant.
Unless your goal is simply to feel righteous about yourself, the question that really matters is what are the results?
And that is what Ian Gent is getting at in that blog post. His ideas are not unique, nor new. For example, in 1971 Thomas Schelling [wikipedia.org] showed that even a small percentage of racists in a majority ethnic group can easily lead to fully segregated neighborhoods. Here's is an implementation of the classic Life automata modififed to show that effect in action, [mit.edu] and a more interactive demonstration here. [ncase.me]
By the way the definition of bigot is not just being racist, sexist, etc. It is someone, who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices. [merriam-webster.com] So now you have a choice.
(Score: 1) by curunir_wolf on Monday March 16 2015, @02:35PM
Unless your goal is simply to feel righteous about yourself, the question that really matters is what are the results?
No - that's not the question that matters at all. Because if you're trying to control outcomes based on statistical variations based on race/gender/origin/whatever, you can always find something that looks "unfair" for one particular group or another, and an authoritarian way of making some "adjustment". And, of course, since you're only looking at groups, you're going to be harming some people and rewarding others based solely on an accident of birth.
And this leads to all kinds of moral hazards, not to mention the total effect of eliminating any motivation for individuals to make an effort to improve themselves and society. I refer you here to Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron [wikipedia.org] as an excellent illustration of the logical eventuality of your kind of thinking.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:52PM
Because if you're trying to control outcomes based on statistical variations based on race/gender/origin/whatever, you can always find something that looks "unfair"
That's classic making the perfect the enemy of the good rationalization.
Just because it is possible to use bad judgment doesn't mean we will use bad judgment.
Furthermore, leaving it up to non-random chance based on the status quo is just the tyranny of the masses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:04PM
> I refer you here to Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron
Seems like Vonnegut's view of the lessons of Bergeron differs from yours. [ljworld.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:55PM
Actually he proved it, with the sentence:
What's that, if not prejudice?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday March 16 2015, @11:31AM
Besides, its a good way to keep the grudges going and use divide and conqueror as a political tool.
The nightmare of all political activists of all kinds isn't losing, but winning, because that's a trip to the unemployment line and a loss of political power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:18PM
Globally, white males make up a tiny fraction of the population. They out produce and have out produced all other peoples combined in situations good and bad, on every continent of the globe. Yet it is white males that are considered the majority that discriminates against others, it is they that are expected to give more to others while not taking anything in return. How absurd is that? A tiny minority that has been doing well for a very long time being told that they are the powerful majority and are responsible for the woes of every other people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:12AM
They out produce and have out produced all other peoples combined
Semen production that does not result in population increase is nothing to be proud of. Wankers!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday March 16 2015, @02:06PM
Actually, it totally does. I'll give you an example of this, comparing my life to the life of a co-worker of mine.
I'm a white guy from a fairly well-off background. Generations ago, one of my ancestors had come to an unknown little cow town in Illinois named Chicago and bought up a bunch of real estate - if he had been black, he would never have been allowed to do this. That left my family was loaded with cash. That cash, while definitely a much smaller pile since it was divided hundreds of ways among lots of descendants, formed a significant portion of my undergraduate college fund, which is why I graduated college with no student loans. That meant that after college, I started with several thousand dollars in graduation gifts and what I'd been able to save working over the summers, and my income was about $300 a month higher than my less well-off classmates'. That $300 a month eventually became the down payment on a car, saving me thousands of dollars in interest cost. Now I live a very comfortable life, especially for somebody my age.
A black friend of mine grew up in the inner cities of Cleveland. His family was living in that neighborhood not because they wanted to, but because of a combination of redlining, housing discrimination, and threat of terrorist violence against black people living in most suburbs and rural areas. Living in those neighborhoods, he had a very difficult time avoiding gang involvement and drug use, but managed to make it through school and graduate from college, the first person in his family to do so. However, he always had to take whatever decent job he could get in order to pay off his student loans, and because of that he's not had as much job or housing flexibility as I have. He's doing OK, and much better than his parents ever did, but his income is roughly half of mine and his expenses are much higher. And he also has the additional challenge that all his family lives in the 'hood, so when he goes to visit them he's putting his life at risk, and a fair amount of his income goes to try to help out his family.
So yes, that history makes a big difference. And yes, a white friend of mine who was born dirt-poor in Kentucky had some of the same challenges due to being dirt-poor, but nothing like what my black friend went through and is still going through. Among other things, my dirt-poor friend eventually wasn't dirt-poor and began being treated accordingly, whereas my black friend is still black no matter what he does.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday March 16 2015, @04:03PM
One more follow-up to this: Ever wonder why there's a whole lot of dirt-poor white people are concentrated in Appalachia? Those are, for the most part, descendants of Scotch-Irish indentured servants brought into the Virginia colony to work in conditions that were only slightly better than those of the black slaves. The minority of that population that survived their indenture period then went west to get land (they had to steal it from the American Indians, of course), because all the good land nearer the coast was already taken.
And because they were on lousy land, their land was nowhere near as productive as those who were on good land, which kept them dirt-poor until the late 1800's. They bore the brunt of much of the Civil War, too. And then they struggled along until coal was discovered in the area, at which point various forms of force were used to prevent them from getting paid a decent wage. Many of them still are either farmers or coal miners, and are still dirt-poor.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by albert on Monday March 16 2015, @04:34PM
The people with the culture/DNA/values/whatever to succeed went west to get land. Those remaining are descended from people without the culture/DNA/values/whatever to succeed. It's no surprise they don't do well. Sit on your ass, without imagination and without taking risks, and this is the result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @09:32PM
If you want to say "It's a just world, you get what you deserve," then why don't you just say that?
Even if it's a fallacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @07:47PM
For that to hold true, every white person would have to have demonstrable privilege while black persons would have to have a demonstrable disadvantage. In your case this is correct, you should feel guilty and help out your fellow human being. What of white people that come from an impoverished family that has always been so? Is it fair to expect them to be called privileged in relation to a black family of otherwise identical means? To answer anything but no would not be sane.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 17 2015, @04:42PM
That's a definite "yes". Some reasons why:
- An impoverished white person will escape punishment for many crimes that will land a black person a criminal conviction and jail time. That criminal conviction will effectively bar that black person from most kinds of jobs, most public assistance programs, and most places to live.
- An impoverished white person with a high school diploma has roughly the same career prospects as a black person with a college degree.
- An impoverished white person who eventually gains some wealth and career success is able to "pass" as someone with my kind of privileges and thus gain access to many of the advantages I have.
- An impoverished white person can rent or buy a place to live in more and nicer neighborhoods than a black person of equivalent wealth (and yes, a trailer park is better than the 'hood in a lot of respects). If a white person chooses to buy a home, they will pay a lower interest rate and thus get a better price than a black person with equivalent income and assets.
- Just a name more popular among white people like "Michael" or "Anne" gives a person a significant advantage over a name more popular among black people like "Tyrone" or "Latisha". The white-sounding named person is likely to get more interviews for jobs, for example, even with otherwise identical resumes.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday March 18 2015, @01:05AM
I would like to add to Thexalon's reply that none of this is ever a 100% either/or situation. It is statistical in nature. You can always find exceptions. But statistically, the scenarios Thexalon proposes are overwhelmingly the case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:10PM
well no, it's been that way all _my_ life
(Score: 2, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Monday March 16 2015, @02:21PM
> if you're a white male agnostic (as I am) in this country, you are boned. Well, you had a good long run.
Thank you for pointing out the fallacies to today's group politics mentality. Your assertion only works if the "you" is a reference to a group the OP is identified with. It apparently wouldn't matter if the individual had been a victim of oppression and discrimination his whole life - since the group you put him in "had a good long run", it's okay that he struggles with unfairness.
I'll leave this quote from Thomas Sowell here because I think it's a pretty insightful statement: ""Racism does not have a good track record. It has been tried for a long time. You would think by now we would want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management."
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @04:00AM
No, you really aren't boned.
You are still substantially privileged and likely reaping the benefit from a massive amount of historical privilege as well.
If you aren't able to recognize this then it's high time you learn more about the world others have to contend with before making more wah wah persecuted white male complaints.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kell on Monday March 16 2015, @06:27AM
historical privilege
Historical privilege, like all other past abuses, belongs in history. We should learn lessons about it, but not let it become a cause for perpetuating injustices. When eye for an eye is the rule of the land, everyone is blind. Holding modern individuals responsible for the past wrongs their specific races, genders, creeds or whatever is as unjust as as discriminating against other individuals of whatever race, gender, creed or whatever. If we can't get past playing the blame game, we'll never move forward.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sigma on Monday March 16 2015, @06:51AM
If we can't get past playing the blame game, we'll never move forward.
Blame and redress are not the same thing.
Inherited wealth, including wealth of nations, hasn't always been gained honestly or ethically. The descendants of those it was taken from are entitled to feel aggrieved that they're living in poverty while the children of thieves enjoy a life of luxury.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kell on Monday March 16 2015, @10:02AM
While redress is a noble idea in general, it's a naively simplistic appeal to an abstract sense of justice. For example, where do you draw the limit of redress? Do we go back and make right the wrongs of Mongol invaders? Are children responsible for the action of their forefathers? How do you determine who benefitted from what wrongs, and what is just redress? Who should pay to make that redress?
While sometimes it's obvious (eg. the plunder of thieves), often times it's not obvious at all. For example, should a white man descended from slavery abolitionists living in a slave state still pay to right the wrongs of other people? Clearly he benefits from "white privilege" but neither he nor his ancestors were part of the problem. What about people who moved to that country long after the fact? As a white Australian who moved to Connecticut for my post-doc, I've been told by Americans that I am somehow a beneficiary of black slavery, even though neither I nor my forebearers had ever even been to the US*.
When it is something as nebulous as "patriarchy", where women have historically been just as involved in asserting gender norms as men, where do you even begin? Sadly, the world is not just, and fighting for social justice will not succeed. Instead of saying "get even", we should be saying "never again".
* And before anyone starts, my Australian forefathers were Lutheran missionaries who were opposed to mistreatment of aboriginals. They served in the Logan Germantown mission, before going out past Toowoomba preaching to black and white alike.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday March 16 2015, @11:34AM
For example, where do you draw the limit of redress? Do we go back and make right the wrongs of Mongol invaders?
Even better example is the middle east. That is so dense with historical mistakes, that the movie quote of "nuke it from orbit just to be sure" applies quite well. I honestly think there is no other endgame for them other than that, if its declared to be time to right all the wrongs. However, none of the players likely want to be nuked from orbit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:41PM
> I honestly think there is no other endgame for them other than that,
Why is black-and-white thinking so seductive to geeks?
It seems especially so when the geeks have only the most superficial knowledge of the topics they opine on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:56PM
When it is something as nebulous as "patriarchy", where women have historically been just as involved in asserting gender norms as men,
Woah nelly!
When the oppressed go along to get along that doesn't make them "just as involved" unless by "involved" you mean living with it instead of making the enormous personal sacrifice of going against the entire tide of their society - defying friends, family and neighbors.
(Score: 1) by albert on Monday March 16 2015, @04:42PM
Men start life as boys, raised primarily by women. They are getting their values mainly from Mom. They see how Mom celebrates the birth of a boy, but aborts a daughter. They see how Mom is strict with girls. They see how Mom gives the girls less food.
It's all on the Mom, and thus on women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:39PM
> It's all on the Mom, and thus on women.
Wow. I can't tell if you are Poe's Lawing or not.
And apparently it is no longer possible to check a user's posting history to see if they have expressed such amazingly ignorant misogyny before.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:29AM
It's all on the Mom, and thus on women.
Wow. I can't tell if you are Poe's Lawing or not.
Evidently, we are dealing with an extreme, and perhaps literal, case of the Oedipus Complex. If you do not know what this is, I suggest you turn yourself in to the nearest psychiatric hospital. No need to be to specific. Just texting the post you have made here will be sufficient. Trust me. Because you are obviously a literal motherfucker. Get help, bro!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:21AM
Do we go back and make right the wrongs of Mongol invaders?
It's your father, you bastard descendant of the noble Khan that fucked you great, great, and not so great-grandmother. Represent! Stand up and take responsibility for your line of patriarchy! You sniveling son of a whore!
(Score: 1) by curunir_wolf on Monday March 16 2015, @02:42PM
Luckily we have historical events like the French Revolution to show us how to properly implement "redress".
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @10:00PM
Well that's nice to know. I am a white male.
In my lifetime, I've been not hired for a number of jobs because I'm a white male. One of them, at a local body government facility, was for a data entry job. I was pitted against a woman, who got the job because she was a woman. She could type around 5 words a minute, I can type more than 100. She did nothing but cause trouble, and then left the job because of the resultant stress a few weeks later. I was also punished for not getting this job by the local unemployment office - I should have tried harder! Not sure how trying harder would help, it wasn't effort that cost me the job but in their eyes, it was my fault.
Affirmative action cost me a job that I would certainly have been much more efficient at than the other person, regardless of sex.
I've been (and am presently) denied government assistance because I'm a white male, meanwhile my present job pays less than the unemployment benefit in a town with at leat 4000 others unemployed (probably more like 30,000 once underemployment is taken into account) and around 100 jobs available. Were I female, or Pacific Islander, I'd have support groups crawling on their bellies through broken glass to try and help me, but no.
I'm a while male.
Apparently, I've had it too good for too long and need to be discriminated against.
Number of full time jobs I've had in my life (I'm presently 40):
two. One of those was temporary, filling in for someone. The other, the boss didn't like me so kept assigning blame to me for everything he'd done, and then fired me for it. Motherfucker's going to like the visit he gets from law enforcement as soon as I've distanced myself from him. He doesn't even realise that I know what goes on at his house...
Number of part time jobs I've had in my life:
six. Each and every one of these promised that if we worked hard, we'd get more hours. So I worked hard, and I got more hours alright - unpaid hours, that lead nowhere.
And that's it. Discrimination in favour of minorities (especially the female minority, which makes up 53% of the population) has lead me to a life of low-wage or, as happens every couple of years, no-wage and hunger.
But just remember, it's because of all of those benefits I had! I came from a wealthy family.
Well, perhaps a wealthy family if you compared us with Afghani peasants in the 70s and 80s. We didn't have enough food, didn't have new clothes, didn't have a heater when the snow was half a foot deep outside, but I was a lot better off than the families who were on benefits.
No, wait, I was in one of those families.
I had relatives come up to me at one of my schools (I went to nearly a dozen because we couldn't afford to live in one place for too long before our rent fell behind, and I'd lived in 19 houses by the time I was 18) and tell me that I wasn't rich enough to be their friend. I had another relative throw a tantrum about how hard she's worked her whole life and how she didn't get nearly as much as I did - rather difficult to see her point of view, her husband was highly paid as a bottom rung engineer at a meat plant, so was getting more than $60k for six months work while the national average wage was $25k and the regional average wage was $15k.
I didn't have any of the advantages ascribed to white males, but I've certainly got all of the disadvantages ascribed to the poor, and you can add to that the discrimination against the white males because they clearly had all the advantages, as well as the discrimination against the poor.
Your assumptions already make you out to be a fool. Shall we now throw in my disability and the rampant discrimination I've suffered against that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:23AM
Wow. I guess now you have some idea what it was like to be black, without the burning crosses and lynchings. You pansy. Grow a pair, you are embarrassing the rest of us white males.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:22AM
I love Dilbert, but I don't see how Adams has anything more to contribute on the gender issue than any other random person who's been in the workplace for 15+ years.
Re/code [recode.net] is run by a feminist (well, two people, one of whom is a feminist) who doesn't shy away from covering gender topics. They're giving gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins discrimination lawsuit, for example, although they try to cover it in an unbiased way, noting when Pao had some tough days on the cross examination stand. Re/code also covers a lot of the GamerGate stories. Yeah, it's slanted towards the feminist side but that's how you get to hear about the issues ... it's like in a courtroom trial, the prosecution always goes first so the jury can learn why they're there in the first place.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:45AM
Scott Adams is a real insightful and unique guy, based on his comics. And humor does seem to require understanding issues from several perspectives.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Monday March 16 2015, @03:51AM
Very little written or spoken about on this topic makes much real difference.
It is not that difference is not being made, its that there is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much discussion and almost all of it is complete shit.
This will add to the pile.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @05:39AM
I love Dilbert, but I don't see how Adams has anything more to contribute on the gender issue than any other random person who's been in the workplace for 15+ years.
There is no reason as to why any random person cannot have insight on the subject, this isn't a subject which requires significant domain-specific knowledge. Nice poisoning the well there.
Re/code [recode.net] is run by a feminist (well, two people, one of whom is a feminist) who doesn't shy away from covering gender topics. They're giving gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins discrimination lawsuit, for example, although they try to cover it in an unbiased way, noting when Pao had some tough days on the cross examination stand. Re/code also covers a lot of the GamerGate stories. Yeah, it's slanted towards the feminist side but that's how you get to hear about the issues ... it's like in a courtroom trial, the prosecution always goes first so the jury can learn why they're there in the first place.
Blatent slashvertisement (errr... soyvertisement?), and irrelevant to the current topic.
This comment shouldn't be +4, it doesn't contribute anything worthwhile to the discussion.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:05PM
Re/code [recode.net] is run by a feminist
It also is bigoted... It assumes no one else other than those who are discriminated against can say anything. It basically subsumes that unless you have 100% understanding you can not help at all. It is a tactic used by those who want to shut down the other side and not listen to them and only have their message heard. They do not want to hear the other side. It assumes that the best way to fight bigotry is to have even more bigotry. Which it does not. It just creates even more bigotry from the original group.
Discrimination/bigotry/racism is a 2 way street.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday March 16 2015, @02:14PM
So why shouldn't a link to a site specialising in the subject under discussion be allowed?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @03:25AM
It doesn't specialize on the subject, and I didn't say it's not allowed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 16 2015, @02:29AM
Someone once told me that everyone discriminates, and most people do it pretty much all the time, and that's not a bad thing, otherwise we would be making all sorts of bad decisions about the people in our life.
I'm not sure if that's quite right, but there might be a element of truth there.
Also Scott Adams' opinions are sometimes wrong, (if I don't agree with him for instance), but he is an entertaining writer, and the debate is worth having.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 16 2015, @02:50AM
I work for a division of a large corporation, regularly interacting on both personal and professional levels with people in wide variety of departments.
The amount of sexism complaints I have heard about events that transpired while I was there? Nil. Nada. And I work for a pretty frisky bunch of people in an environment where hallway flirtings are commonplace.
I did hear that my division settled a lawsuit initiated by a male ex-employee, who was able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his female boss and otherwise all-female department had discriminated against him because he was a man. And knowing all of the women who work in that department leaves me with little surprise at hearing all that.
Sexism is indeed a problem in many environments. However, I think people (and especially men) who raise the issue the most are seriously trying to get laid, and that's why I think (among other reasons) prostitution should be legalized. Unfortunately, in practise, the type of woman to go out of her way to be pissed off at things like that is also the type of woman who treats men like Adams as pets while consummating with the very types of men they claim to despise -- men with the balls to challenge 'em.
Sometimes I think this is divide-and-conquer pop culture bullshit to cause Americans to argue with each other and not collectively argue with the government that's fucking them -- but that's another political discussion altogether.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 16 2015, @03:01AM
Lame self-reply, but worth mentioning since Adams addressed the issue of massage.
I have fucked 2 massage therapists and have fucked a friend of one, and have made out with yet another. However, there was one I didn't fuck, the only one who actually gave me a massage.
I hurt my back a couple years ago and it just so happened that a friend had a gift certificate for a free massage at Massage Envy, a massage franchise. When you fill out the form, you are asked if you want a male or female to massage you. I didn't think much about it at the time, but reasons for asking that question are strictly sexual. Being the horndog I am, I chose a female, and discovered subsequently that most massage therapists are way underpaid considering that each massage costs around 90 dollars there. I told her to concentrate on my lower back (she asked) and she not only ignored it, but inflicted massive pain to everywhere else. Make no mistake about it, massage therapists can fuck your shit up if they want. I was fucked from the get-go because she assumed that I was a either a horndog or homophobe for requesting a female and it certainly didn't help that I laughed when she timed her hand movements to the shimmering twinkle of new-agey bullshit music they play to relax you during the massage.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday March 16 2015, @06:53AM
Sounds like you got a lousy massage therapist...
I had the pleasure of being the "practice dummy" for a woman friend who was training as a massage therapist. She explained a lot of the training to me. In her case, at least, it was really pretty serious training including a lot of study of muscles, tendons, etc.. I remember also discussing the sexual aspects of it. Of course most guys would rather have a woman running her hands all over them. The therapists are perfectly aware of this, and there were quite a number of little tricks of the trade for making it subtly clear to the customer that it the massage was going to be just a massage.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:14AM
Someone once told me that everyone discriminates, and most people do it pretty much all the time, and that's not a bad thing, otherwise we would be making all sorts of bad decisions about the people in our life.
What is that, the dictionary pedant's defense of discrimination?
The definition of "gender discrimination" is discrimination based on gender instead of characteristics actually relevant to the decision.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by physicsmajor on Monday March 16 2015, @02:32AM
He's got a point. Humans are hard-wired to accept windfalls - this is established psychology. So if the system tends to send certain things your way, and that's always been the way things are, you don't recognize these as the privileges they are. This applies on both sides of most debates where it's hard or outright impossible to step into the other party's shoes. Male vs. Female is and will continue to be at or near the top of the list.
Fixing this is hard. The only real way forward is attempting mutual understanding. Empathy. Shifting your cognitive perspective to just attempt to understand things like Schrodinger's Rapist [kateharding.net] can be a tremendous challenge from the male perspective. I'm male, and I have walked around St. Louis at night without even thinking twice. It makes me physically ill to realize that essay is the only prudent female response to, well, the reality of rape statistics. If you're a male about to get defensive on me, I dare you to honestly say you would differently in that position. Also, consider the effects of hormonal shifts inherent to fertile cycles on everything else you've got going on. Plus monthly bleeding, which despite being a completely natural thing most men think is super gross and disgusting. How would it feel to be constantly demeaned for a normal thing your body does? Not just by society, but also by your most intimate partners? Men, don't pull away or act disgusted; treat periods as the normal, natural occurrence they are and support your significant others during this time. You will reap all of the benefits.
On the other hand, realizing just how biased the system is against males in disagreements involving child custody/care is so foreign to females as to be essentially alien. So too is the difficulty of male OB/Gyn docs to get patients. Or Adams' example of female massage therapists likely preferred by both sexes. Or how men can't change their names at marriage like women can. Or how paternity leave is a joke in comparison to maternity leave. Or how essentially any woman can pick up any child at a church, while a ~30-something balding male without his significant other present would essentially be attacked by the parent. I freely acknowledge there is less privilege on this side. That doesn't invalidate the point.
Our broken society loves "Us vs. Them" conflicts. From politics to reality TV to sports, this is a depressingly common thread. We have to stop this! The only way to fix this issue (and others) is to understand each other, instead of taking sides and hurling insults while deaf. One of the best potential effects of decent, disseminated VR tech would be to allow people to experience a snapshot of typical day-to-day life from the other perspective.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TLA on Monday March 16 2015, @02:45AM
I've been married for fifteen years, I don't get to think about what women think about - I have enough issues trying to read just one woman's mind! :)
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:46AM
monthly bleeding, which despite being a completely natural thing most men think is super gross and disgusting.
I am a man and I never thought that to be gross nor disgusting. I recognize it is inconvenient for women, and they need to take some precaution to avoid making a mess, that's all.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 16 2015, @03:24AM
Because you are a real man. Many women have some kind of shame about it, but I tell them that each "rag" will be a celebration of not only vitality, but fertility. I then perform the red-wing procedure (I have to fight some of them to let me do it, but they love it when I do) and paint stripes on my face with it like a native American chief in ceremonial dress. And go, "Boobooboo!" while stopping the "Boos" with my hand just like a native American does.
Unfortunately I no longer have a washing machine closeby, so I bought a black bathmat and lay it down to prevent further staining of my mattress.
For those of you lesser men who have not experienced the feminine beauty of "Aunt Flo's visits" -- take the plunge. Be more gentle than usual, and try to avoid getting it on your hands and hand-printing all over the place. Certainly do not recoil. But if you can make a woman who is squeamish about it comfortable, you will win her over. It's the same strategy for any other part of her she doesn't like, belly rolls for example. I love gnawing on belly-rolls, she will squeal and squirm at first but you will own her later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:10AM
Shifting your cognitive perspective to just attempt to understand things like Schrodinger's Rapist can be a tremendous challenge from the male perspective.
They used that 1-in-6 statistic again. Very nice.
It makes me physically ill to realize that essay is the only prudent female response to, well, the reality of rape statistics.
Do you question the rape statistics themselves? Do you question how they are collected, what questions they use on surveys, what the sample size is, how they define their terms, or if the sampling represents the population at large?
How would it feel to be constantly demeaned for a normal thing your body does?
You don't get to control what other people find disgusting. I'm disgusted by feces, and everyone has bowel movements. Still, it's disgusting. What about it? Thinking it is disgusting isn't bad.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:23AM
Engage in just a tiny bit of metacognition and understand why you think feces is disgusting: you have a natural instinct that discourages you from eating biological waste. Feces ceases to be disgusting after you acknowledge your instinctual prejudice and accept it for what it is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:25AM
No, not all disgust can be 'cured' so easily, and nor is it always rational. And again, finding a 'normal' bodily function disgusting is not wrong; it's a personal matter.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:31AM
You're totally right. Some idiots have to eat shit before they learn not to eat shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:35AM
I'm not sure where that was said, but whatever.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by wisnoskij on Monday March 16 2015, @04:05AM
I don't really follow. You are saying that women are discriminated against because they are constantly worrying about being killing, raped, or beaten whenever they are around men, irregardless of the fact that they are far far less likely to be killed, beaten, or raped than a man in a similar situation? Women are the victims of men being ubiquitously viewed as violent murderous rapists?
Ya, just how women treat farting as a normal natural occurrence. Or any other bodily discharge of waste for that matter. People are hypochondriacs, who freak out at the slightest bodily odor or mess. Should they lighten up, yes. But menstrual waste is not viewed any differently than any other bodily function. Honestly, this reverence of waste your body just expelled is even more ridiculous than any amount of queasiness about blood, bile, shit, or piss.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday March 16 2015, @01:07PM
[Citation needed] that women are fare less likely than men to be raped.
And yes, men should get some men's liberation too. Men should not accept violence just because they are seen as weak for complaining about it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by wisnoskij on Monday March 16 2015, @01:39PM
I said men are far more likely to get violently assaulted in some way, what like 80-90%? Rape in particular seems closer to 50/50 in the stats excluding prison. One could argue that men do not have the freedom to talk about being victimized in that way or have anyone to report it to who would listen, but really we cannot say much without actual statistics.
Isn't that the exact opposite thing we should draw from this? Men are, apparently, privileged by ignoring their fragile and precarious bodily safety.
(Score: 1) by wisnoskij on Monday March 16 2015, @06:15PM
Schrödinger's Mugger: Or an African American's Guide to Approaching Strangers Without being Lynched
Africans. Thank you for reading.
Let me start out by assuring you that I understand you are a good sort of person. You are kind to children and animals. You respect the elderly. You donate to charity. You tell jokes without laughing at your own punchlines. You respect whites. You like whites. In fact, you would really like to have a mutually respectful and loving sexual relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, you don’t yet know that person — they arn’t working with you, nor have you been introduced through mutual friends or drawn to the same activities. So you must look further afield to encounter them.
So far, so good. Miss LonelyHearts, your humble instructor, approves. Human connection, love, romance: there is nothing wrong with these yearnings.
Now, you want to become acquainted with a person you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that white people are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, an African. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.
“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”
Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for white people, it is. When I go on a date with an African, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?
So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this African murder or mug me?
Do you think I’m overreacting? Over 4 million violent crimes are committed each year in America by Africans. I bet you don’t think you know any Black Criminals, but consider the sheer number of crimes that must occur. These crimes are not all committed by gang members. While you may assume that none of the Blacks you know are criminals, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: If Africans commit 85% of all interracial crimes while remaining 12% of the total population (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then a Black is 40 times more likely to hurt you.
When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Criminal. You may or may not be an African American who would hurt me. I won’t know for sure unless you start attacking me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.
Fortunately, you’re a good guy. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the White with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.
To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance. When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some people, particularly people who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable. Those women do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to date them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. People are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.
The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.
This means that some Blacks should never approach strange women in public. Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a white person cold. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of solitude, but I suggest you start with dating your own kind, where you can put your unusual traits out there and find a Black partner who will appreciate them.
Are you wearing a tee-shirt making a violent joke? NOT A GOOD CHOICE—not in general, and definitely not when approaching a strange white person.
Pay attention to the environment. Look around. Are you in a dark alley? Then probably you ought not approach a white person and try to strike up a conversation. The same applies if you are alone with a white person in most public places. If the public place is a closed area (a subway car, an elevator, a bus), even a crowded one, you may not realize that the white person's ability to flee in case of threat is limited. Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this person be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach them.
On the other hand, if you are both at church accompanied by your mothers, who are lifelong best friends, the white person is as close as it comes to safe. That is to say, still not 100% safe. But the odds are pretty good.
The third point: white people are communicating all the time. Learn to understand and respect what a white person tells you.
You want to say Hi to the white person on the subway. How will they react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because they are already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb them. Really. Even to say that you like their hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for a white person to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Mugger. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win them over with charm or flattery. Believe what they are signaling, and back off.
If you speak, and they responds in a monosyllabic way without looking at you, they are saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but please leave me alone.” You don’t know why. It could be “Please leave me alone because I am trying to memorize Beowulf.” It could be “Please leave me alone because you are a scary, scary man with breath like a water buffalo.” It could be “Please leave me alone because I am planning my assassination of a major geopolitical figure and I will have to kill you if you are able to recognize me and blow my cover.”
On the other hand, if they is turned towards you, making eye contact, and they respond in a friendly and talkative manner when you speak to them, you are getting a green light. You can continue the conversation until you start getting signals to back off.
So if you speak to a white person who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps their right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when they have tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps their right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.
For white people, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.
The fifth and last point: Don’t mug, don’t assault, don’t threaten with physical violence, don’t rape.
Shouldn’t this go without saying? Of course it should. Sadly, that’s not the world I live in. You may be beginning to realize that it’s not the world you live in, either.
This article was originally published here(http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/) and tited Schrödinger's Rapist. I have since made slight changes throughout in parody of it (The entire article is a parody, and while it contains some real stats is not meant to be taken seriously as anything but a rebuttal of the original article).
A summary of the changes:
Replaced most feminine gendered pronouns (she/her) with white person/person or similar.
Replaces most masculine gendered pronouns (he,him) with black person/African or similar.
Replaced references to rape and sexual assault with violent crime.
Removed one section about a dating antidote.
Replaced rape states with black on white crimes stats/black murder stats. Used very rough ball park figures, I might be off by quite a bit and it is even possible some of my sources are off, but I believe I am probably in the general ballpark of correct here. Than any refinement would not change the point made.
The only real deviation made from the original was I replaced “use online dating” with “date your own kind”. I maintain this is the closest I could get to converting “you're just too creepy to date real people” to something a racists would say. The rest of the article I do not believe I took any creative freedoms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:21PM
Win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @10:10PM
Interesting that you've ignored the possibility of being raped, as a male, by a female.
It's happened to me many times, and with my build most males are a bit scared to fuck with me.
Then there's an interesting statistic I came across a while ago:
One in six women report being raped by their partner, in a heterosexual relationship.
One in three women report being raped by their partner, in a same-sex relationship. Source: Rutter and Schwartz, the Gender of Sexuality.
In essence, women are bigger rapists than men. Stick that in your stereotypical pipe and smoke it.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:03AM
Most bloggers are stupid assholes all of the time. Is Scott Adams really so very egotistical that he needs to be a blogger?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday March 16 2015, @03:56AM
Since blogs were the pre-cursor to "social sites", is everyone using a social site "very egotistical"? When twitter came out everyone was complaining that 140 characters wasn't enough talk about anything. Turns out that most people prefer a sentence and a link over paragraphs and in-line images.
I could be so wrong, i don't keep track of this stuff anymore. Maybe when everyone left blogs for MySpace/Facebook/whatever a core group of assholes remained behind.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @11:26AM
It is.
How does that contradict the first statement?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday March 16 2015, @02:18PM
A sentence can easily fit inside 140 characters and a paragraph cannot. The second blockquote was just a longer way to say your "It is."
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @11:16AM
So your logic goes: "Most X are Y. A decides to become X, therefore A must be Y."
Sorry, that logic doesn't fly.
Let's insert some other values for X, Y and A:
"Most top managers are men. Alice decides to become top manager, therefore Alice must be a man."
Now the wrongness of that logic should be obvious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:38PM
'Need' is not a modal must.
I need water to live.
I must water to live.
(Score: 1) by m2o2r2g2 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:11AM
"English M***F*****... do you speak it?"
I need water to live
I must have water to live
The analogy holds
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:58AM
I need have water to live.
I must have water to live.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @05:43AM
The comments don't show up on this post, and only on this post. A possible code glitch?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @05:46AM
Now they show. But I also notice some irregular responses. Maybe the error was on my end...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:16AM
You're such a glitch.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jpkunst on Monday March 16 2015, @05:49AM
That will settle the question once and for all </sarcasm>.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Monday March 16 2015, @06:50AM
1. Asking women for money is unmanly while asking man for money is a right.
2. Sweden is the greatest country for gender equality because there are more women than men and men are 16 times more likely to commit suicide than women. [1]
3. A school with more boy students than girls is gender-unequal while a school with more girl students than boys is gender equal. [1]
4. Having a boys-only school is sexism, having a girl-only school is protection from.
5. Fathers don't need to see their kids (2% of child custody and/or visitation cases are in favor of fathers)
6. Seeing your kid at school can be considered kidnapping only if you are a father
7. Having your kids hate you for unimagined crimes is not a problem.
8. More men are trapped in false rape cases than their are rape victims but that is a gender-gap in favor of women so we need tougher rape laws.
9. More men die by work related injuries than women.
10. More men are suffering from high blood pressure than women
11. Men are required to pay maintenance to wife while women are required to - do nothing?
12. A wife can force you to kick your parents out, but you cannot kick her parents out.
13. Men work longer hours without pay while women... get men to work for them?
14. Women are biologically forced to take pregnancy leave and a company is forced by its shareholders to perform, hence it is patriarchy that is discriminating against equal pay for women?
The list can go on and on... but the reality is most people don't know what is gender equality because men enjoy being called privileged while women enjoy being called victim.
Ref.
1. https://in.news.yahoo.com/global-gender-gap-report-one-sided-mens-rights-124803568.html [yahoo.com]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday March 16 2015, @07:52AM
The list can go on and on
I am sure it can. So isn't it time to come out of the closet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:31PM
See, a man points out discrimination and is insinuated as being homosexual in a way that is also discriminatory to homosexuals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:19PM
No we have to 'suck it up'. We are white men. <sarcasm>They can not possibly be discriminated against. They have all the power right</sarcasm>If we told 'another group' to suck it up we would be discriminatory.
If only we could fight bigotry with even more bigotry! Instead of the knee jerk reaction of 'he has the privilege therefore he does not have issues'. Could be changed to 'hey he has a problem too'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @09:59PM
The AC did not specify what closet you should come out of. It looks to be a "men's rights" closet, you know, a misogynist closet. Or maybe just linen.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @03:49AM
So Feminists are fighting for equal rights and and men's rights are misogynists, and/or gays. Did I get it right?
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:27AM
So, are you a homophobic or a misandrist?
You might be jesting but this kind of attitude is the reason why we don't have shelters for abused men and why men commit suicide.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @08:00AM
Yep. That's how it goes.
Women. Can't live with 'em, can't keep 'em in a cage in the basement. Sigh.
No. wait. That should be.
Women. Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em.
Wait. No. That's not right.
Women. Can't live with 'em, can't make a decent souffle either.
No. This is difficult. Okay. I got it now.
Women. Can't live with 'em, unless you're willing to be a reasonable human being who will listen, compromise and make decisions that benefit both people.
Aww...that's too hard. Fuck it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:29PM
I thought the canonical version of this was:
Women! Can't live with them; pass the beer nuts! [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @10:54PM
No, that's still not right.
Women. Can't live with 'em, can't establish an acceptable halfway point.
Just about everything I've seen is always gifted to the woman. Seats? Jobs? Money for being in a minority that's greater than 50% of the population?
There's an old propaganda line that a woman needs to work twice as hard to be thought half as good as a man. A few months ago, at my work, there was a study that showed that women think they're better at everything. Funny, I don't think I've heard a woman admit that a man might be better at something than she is.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @11:23AM
Even worse: Men are much more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction than women! ;-)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @12:38PM
You have 14 points and one reference.
Can you provide references for the rest?
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @04:05AM
Look it up yourself. I found out about it myself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate [wikipedia.org]
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2013/574973/tab2/ [hindawi.com]
http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/37/5/1199.abstract [ahajournals.org]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23749317 [nih.gov]
http://www.falserape.net/falserapeafa.htm [falserape.net]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape [wikipedia.org]
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/false-rape-cases-in-delhi-delhi-commission-of-women/1/409320.html [intoday.in] (btw, rape means immediate arrest - and social stigma of arrest is infinitely bigger in India than USA)
sorry... gotta go but you can just do Google and find many many studies. Regarding child rights and visitation rights or rape cases etc., it is hard to gauge the rate of false accusations unless you work closely with them because all this data not only doesn't fir the normal feminist narrative in media, people actually think that it is okay for some innocent men to suffer if one woman can be safer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:21PM
Look it up yourself.
That isn't very convincing but I'm an AC so I appreciate that you provided some links.
"After menopause, however, blood pressure increases in women to levels even higher than in men" (Gender Differences in the Regulation of Blood Pressure)
It is common that people forget that there is a large difference in heart disease risk between pre- and post-menopausal women. Heart disease is the number one killer for both men and women (WHO 2008).
"DiCanio (1993) states that while researchers and prosecutors do not agree on the exact percentage of false allegations, they generally agree on a range of 2% to 10%." (Wikipedia)
I would expect there would be under-reporting but I am doubtful that it is so much more that "More men are trapped in false rape cases than their are rape victims".
"2% of child custody and/or visitation cases are in favor of fathers"
I'll have to find a reference for this. It is a real shame that the system is biased against fathers and I would hope that it isn't that bad.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday March 18 2015, @01:40PM
About 1 in 6 custodial parents were fathers (17.8 percent). (http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-240.pdf) 20 years ago. Since then a whole generation has comes that is referred to as 3rd wave of feminism and that actively demands that all rape accusations must be treated as true unless proven false. In India, from where I belong, National Commission of Women, the biggest organization of women was forced to admin that 53% of all reported cases of rape were in fact about consensual sex that didn't led to marriage. It is easy to get this data there because the definition of rape covers sex under promise of marriage. You won't get this data in USA because it is culturally acceptable for men to break-up.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday March 18 2015, @01:43PM
About 1 in 6 custodial parents were fathers (17.8 percent). (http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-240.pdf)
DiCanio is wrong and 20 years old. Since then a whole generation has comes that is referred to as 3rd wave of feminism and that actively demands that all rape accusations must be treated as true unless proven false. In India, from where I belong, National Commission of Women, the biggest organization of women was forced to admin that 53% of all reported cases of rape were in fact about consensual sex that didn't led to marriage. It is easy to get this data there because the definition of rape covers sex under promise of marriage. You won't get this data in USA because it is culturally acceptable for men to break-up.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @12:55PM
15. Men can make up whiny loser shit and get modded up to +5, but if women did the same, they'd make +7.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:57PM
You mean, women are the better hackers? ;-)
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @04:06AM
Why all of you are AC? Cannot refute me by facts?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Pseudonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @10:31AM
Every god damn time "gender discrimination" or "women in videogames" or "women in IT" is brought up? I start to hate the people who brought it up and the websites that host said content.
I get it, we ALL get it. Women sometimes are the victims of sexist jokes, workplace discrimination and objectification in video games. I've heard it well over 6 gorillion times.
But I absolutely despise it that no attention is ever brought to men being the victims of sexist jokes [youtube.com] or when gamers are stereotyped on TV shows that are obviously pushing a fucking agenda like some angry mob who are just out to rape women . [youtube.com] Or when men TOO are objectified in video games! [youtube.com]
But it's okay if heterosexual white men are being stereotyped and oppressed because they're the majority and they're the opressors!
I am tired of women being in the center of all of this like they're some crowd who needs protection, I thought all those feminists said they were "strong independent women"? Regardless, they have the same rights as men! *cough**cough* [huffingtonpost.com]
No. I am tired of this 'women' and 'minorities' issue being pushed like everyone that isn't white, male and straight is some monster that needs to check their privilege or get arrested for verbal rape!
* TRUE womens rights (voting, jobs, etc) in the western world haven't been an issue for ages
* Men's rights are trampled upon just as much as women's rights (male vs female circumcision!, child custody, heavier sentences)
* These issues are being used to uphold corruption [gamergate.me]
* These issues are being used by attention whores in order to get more pageviews (Dilbert right here, Youtube Celebs, etc)
No. What I see right here is hypocrisy, corruption, oppression on all sides (even worse in third world countries!), important issues not being discussed, being white-shamed out of anything because apparently being in IT and being white can be a potential problem in case feminists start looking at your business and complaining not enough women are hired and start some boycott campaign, which everyone follows blindly because the general public is like a flock of sheep. (Did you see how well that Charlie Hebdo thing worked in Europe? Imagine that with Feminists and the business you work at. Enjoy flipping burgers with you MSc in Comp Sci!)
My issues are with you just as much as with everyone else, reader of Soylentnews:
* You let this bullshit non-news out of the firehose
* You 'discuss' this shit and spread the word and continue the cycle
I thought you were different, SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @07:33PM
*Cue pensive piano music in the background*
Hello, my name is I.M.A. Douchenozzle. And the name of my little friend, here, is Pseudonymous Coward. I bet you come here everyday. You read stories here on SN. You post comments here, sometimes insightful, sometimes funny. You hurry off to other sites to see the many and varied wonders that the internet has to offer. In short, you are free to go where you want and read what you want, never having a care in the world. But, not so for Pseudonymous Coward. You see, he is a straight, white male. For him, the internet is a bewildering, scary place, overrun by angry feminists and their SJW enablers. And his world is rapidly shrinking. Because of hypocrisy, corruption, and oppression on all sides. Because of white-shaming. Heart breaking, isn't it? But what can you do? Turn away? Ignore the problem? Pretend it doesn't exist? Is there nothing we can do for him? Well, thanks to Voice Of Male Internet Trauma (VOMIT), now you can do something. VOMIT seeks to reach out to men like Pseudonymous Coward. To give them a safe place where they can be authentic men of integrity, the way God intended. A place where they can heal from the wounds of oppression. Just 80 cents a day is all it takes to give my friend Pseudonymous Coward the tools he needs to survive in today's confusing world, roiling with social change. Please. Won't you please give so that Pseudonymous Coward can have a chance at a better life? Would you look into his face and say no? Will you just turn away and do nothing?
Operators are standing by to take your call right now....
(Score: 1) by Pseudonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @08:19PM
Yeah, except for the part where I am a bisexual crossdresser with a boyfriend who's still dealing with gender dysphoria. (I am white, though!)
I suspect you have an account on SN but would rather not deal with the fallout of hordes of "white male heterosexuals" storming on this website to reply to every reply you make. I understand that.
But please take your cowardly uninformed two-faced hypocritical opinions and post them somewhere other than SoylentNews, or atleast have the balls to do it with your main identity and face the scrutiny of your opinion. I thought this website was PEOPLE? THAT IS: ALL PEOPLE. Even people who you determine must be male and heterosexual and turn out to not be.
If I was out of the closet to my immediate close friends and family? I would've used my actual internet pseudonym to tell you this:
tl;dr: Fuck off, coward. You're out of your element.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @09:02PM
> I suspect you have an account on SN
I remember you.
Apparently you have multiple accounts on SN.
Not really the best position to be throwing stones from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @10:48PM
Original AC back again:
Pardon me, but your original post seemed to be enraged that "it's okay if heterosexual white men are being stereotyped and oppressed because they're the majority and they're the opressors!" I think, given the content of your missive, that my assumption was reasonable, though apparently incorrect.
Your suspicion is incorrect. I always post AC. I would rather that people judge the content of my post, rather than engage in petty grudge matches.
Ouch! That hurt!
Now I have a message for you: if you look for something to be offended by, you will certainly find something every time. Without fail. Stop looking for ways to be offended. You will probably be much happier as a result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @08:39PM
yo, more women in college than men, less women in prison than men, no wage gap except through personal choice because gender discrimination = illegal
dig the moves that i'm laying down, cat, you got nothin but fey pudgy snark
you garfield, my man, you the og original orange cat and jon has had it up to here with your fat lasagna craving ass
your era is what I call over, fella
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @10:59PM
Yo, if you got something to say I suggest you try to put it in some semblance of proper English, rather than faux Gangsta-speak.
Peace out, bruthah!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @11:16AM
Why even pretend to call it gender discrimination, when he's only talking about female discrimination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:03PM
Because "discrimination" can, from pure logic, only be between two or more things. So you can discriminate between men and woman, that is, based on gender.
"Female discrimination" would be discrimination between female and non-female. But what is non-female? Right, male. So it's gender discrimination, discrimination based on gender.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday March 19 2015, @02:23PM
Yeah, I thought it odd that a topic on gender discrimination immediately launched into an attack on men. I could tell right off that it was going to be a fair and balanced discussion!
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Monday March 16 2015, @03:08PM
Due to both our limited evolution at this time and our propensity for statistical slicing and dicing, this sort of topic will be an evergreen.
In any case, the divisions in our society are growing and becoming more serious. People feel justified to use rhetoric and actions that in the past we would consider abhorrent. How do we deal with this? Either we rediscover our similarities and recognize our frailties and continue to pay them heed, or we break each other, with all the pain and suffering that entails. I believe it's quite clear that we already hurt each other enough. Why add to it? Choose kindness.
That is all.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Monday March 16 2015, @06:18PM
Considering I spend a moderate amount of effort replying to a comment here(http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6551&cid=158200), I thought I would repost on the top level
Schrödinger's Mugger: Or an African American's Guide to Approaching Strangers Without being Lynched
Africans. Thank you for reading.
Let me start out by assuring you that I understand you are a good sort of person. You are kind to children and animals. You respect the elderly. You donate to charity. You tell jokes without laughing at your own punchlines. You respect whites. You like whites. In fact, you would really like to have a mutually respectful and loving sexual relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, you don’t yet know that person — they arn’t working with you, nor have you been introduced through mutual friends or drawn to the same activities. So you must look further afield to encounter them.
So far, so good. Miss LonelyHearts, your humble instructor, approves. Human connection, love, romance: there is nothing wrong with these yearnings.
Now, you want to become acquainted with a person you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that white people are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, an African. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.
“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”
Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for white people, it is. When I go on a date with an African, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?
So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this African murder or mug me?
Do you think I’m overreacting? Over 4 million violent crimes are committed each year in America by Africans. I bet you don’t think you know any Black Criminals, but consider the sheer number of crimes that must occur. These crimes are not all committed by gang members. While you may assume that none of the Blacks you know are criminals, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: If Africans commit 85% of all interracial crimes while remaining 12% of the total population (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then a Black is 40 times more likely to hurt you.
When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Criminal. You may or may not be an African American who would hurt me. I won’t know for sure unless you start attacking me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.
Fortunately, you’re a good guy. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the White with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.
To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance. When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some people, particularly people who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable. Those women do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to date them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. People are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.
The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.
This means that some Blacks should never approach strange women in public. Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a white person cold. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of solitude, but I suggest you start with dating your own kind, where you can put your unusual traits out there and find a Black partner who will appreciate them.
Are you wearing a tee-shirt making a violent joke? NOT A GOOD CHOICE—not in general, and definitely not when approaching a strange white person.
Pay attention to the environment. Look around. Are you in a dark alley? Then probably you ought not approach a white person and try to strike up a conversation. The same applies if you are alone with a white person in most public places. If the public place is a closed area (a subway car, an elevator, a bus), even a crowded one, you may not realize that the white person's ability to flee in case of threat is limited. Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this person be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach them.
On the other hand, if you are both at church accompanied by your mothers, who are lifelong best friends, the white person is as close as it comes to safe. That is to say, still not 100% safe. But the odds are pretty good.
The third point: white people are communicating all the time. Learn to understand and respect what a white person tells you.
You want to say Hi to the white person on the subway. How will they react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because they are already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb them. Really. Even to say that you like their hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for a white person to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Mugger. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win them over with charm or flattery. Believe what they are signaling, and back off.
If you speak, and they responds in a monosyllabic way without looking at you, they are saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but please leave me alone.” You don’t know why. It could be “Please leave me alone because I am trying to memorize Beowulf.” It could be “Please leave me alone because you are a scary, scary man with breath like a water buffalo.” It could be “Please leave me alone because I am planning my assassination of a major geopolitical figure and I will have to kill you if you are able to recognize me and blow my cover.”
On the other hand, if they is turned towards you, making eye contact, and they respond in a friendly and talkative manner when you speak to them, you are getting a green light. You can continue the conversation until you start getting signals to back off.
So if you speak to a white person who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps their right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when they have tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps their right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.
For white people, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.
The fifth and last point: Don’t mug, don’t assault, don’t threaten with physical violence, don’t rape.
Shouldn’t this go without saying? Of course it should. Sadly, that’s not the world I live in. You may be beginning to realize that it’s not the world you live in, either.
This article was originally published here(http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/) and tited Schrödinger's Rapist. I have since made slight changes throughout in parody of it (The entire article is a parody, and while it contains some real stats is not meant to be taken seriously as anything but a rebuttal of the original article).
A summary of the changes:
Replaced most feminine gendered pronouns (she/her) with white person/person or similar.
Replaces most masculine gendered pronouns (he,him) with black person/African or similar.
Replaced references to rape and sexual assault with violent crime.
Removed one section about a dating antidote.
Replaced rape states with black on white crimes stats/black murder stats. Used very rough ball park figures, I might be off by quite a bit and it is even possible some of my sources are off, but I believe I am probably in the general ballpark of correct here. Than any refinement would not change the point made.
The only real deviation made from the original was I replaced “use online dating” with “date your own kind”. I maintain this is the closest I could get to converting “you're just too creepy to date real people” to something a racists would say. The rest of the article I do not believe I took any creative freedoms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @07:59PM
I appreciate and understand your efforts. This is just a bad time in history to be male, to be a single male, to be a sexual single male, and (on the internet or in California at least) on top of all that be white. It is a clever trick of cruel culture to take away a group's ability to defend itself without reinforcing bias against them. Your post will not be modded up much if at all, it will not convince anyone that believes in the original article, and the very clear, robust logic of it will be entirely ignored by otherwise intelligent people. Some will ignore it for convenience, some to keep their preconceptions, and some because they don't want to be reminded.