Jun 02 2022
something fundamentally male about escaping to Mars…
“And there is something fundamentally male about this narrative of exit [establishing colonies on Mars, for example], of escape as a means toward the nobility of self-determination. The cultural critic Sarah Sharma has argued for an understanding of exit as an exercise of patriarchal power, ‘a privilege that occurs at the expense of cultivating and sustaining conditions of collective autonomy.’ It’s a force that she places in opposition to the more traditionally maternal value of ‘care.’ The politics of exit are pursued, she insists, at the expense of pa politics of care. ‘Care,’ she writes, ‘is that which responds to the uncompromisingly tethered nature of human dependency and the contingency of life, the mutual precariousness of the human condition. Women’s exit is hardly ever on the table, given that women have historically been unable to choose when to leave or enter inequitable power relations, let alone enter and exist in a carefree manner.'” (p.131, italics mine)
from Mark O’Connell, Notes from an Apocalypse
May 25 2022
Kathleen Stock, Material Girls – a few quotes and notes
“So: it follows from the logic of [Judith] Butler’s worldview [social constructionism] not only that there are not two naturally pre-given, stable biological sexes, but also that there are no pre-given facts about natural selection. There is no sexual reproduction. There are no pre-given chemical elements or biological species. There is no climate change, at least not as commonly understood. There are no molecules, atoms, or quarks. There are no viruses and no bacteria; no successful drugs nor placebos. … ” (p63)
No wonder social constructionism is so appealing: knowledge doesn’t matter; learning about anything is useless—don’t bother.
“And an advertisement for the American Mariposa Health clinic, which provides ‘gender-affirming hormone therapy, from anywhere’, exhorts prospective clients to ‘Live your authentic life’. (p113)
Imagine that slogan for Prozac: live your authentic life.
“In this context, treating males with female gender identities as women in every possible context … sends a contemptuously dismissive message to women already conscious of unequal treatment of their interests. This messages says: the interests of males with female gender identities are more important than yours.” (p160)
Yeah.
“As trans scholar Jack (then Judith) Halberstam wrote in 1998: ‘If adolescence for boys represents a rite of passage … and an ascension to some version (however attenuated) of social power, for girls, adolescence is a lesson in restraint, punishment, and repression.'” (p192).
Indeed. (And no wonder girls don’t want to be girls.)
“A 2015 survey found the average sixteen-to twenty-five-year-old woman spends over five hours a week taking selfies.” (p233)
Seriously? We used to call such women airheads.
May 17 2022
from Dark Orbit, Carolyn Ives Gilman – God is watching and buzzwords
“His belief system teaches that God is watching him every second, literally. Can you imagine the invasion of privacy?” (p32)
Indeed.
“That’s what buzzwords are. Tranquilizers.”
“Thought suppressants, you mean.” (p33)
Insightful.
May 15 2022
Can’t decide which is more appalling …
While reading Laura Bates’ Men Who Hate Women, a scene from a movie based on a true story about a young woman who was captured by a man and kept imprisoned/enslaved by him for years popped into my head: at one point, she was allowed outside to help him wash his car or something and at great risk, she turned away from him and covertly held up her chained hands so a watching neighbour, an older man, could see. The look on the neighbour man’s face has stayed with me: one part ‘none of my business’ and one part confusion (because why is she showing him that she’s into some kind of kinky stuff?). I can’t decide which is more appalling.
May 15 2022
A sexy pout??
So I read the phrase “a sexy pout” and realized yes! That’s what that look is, when women thrust out their lips and look so sad. They’re pouting. And they do it to look sexy. Wait, what?
Why is a pout sexy? Children pout. So if a pout is sexy, that means that men are sexually aroused by children. Well, we know that, I guess.
Is it hard-wired? Well, that wouldn’t make evolutionary sense. It doesn’t ‘contribute to reproductive sex’ to ejaculate into a female child; she can’t get pregnant.
Is it because sex is all about conquest for men, and children are easily conquered?
And, but, why is sex all about conquest? Why is ‘power over’ sexually arousing? Is that hard-wired? Or socially conditioned?
Whatever, women who pout to be sexy are encouraging child abuse. So just stop it.
And men? Oh, what’s the point. They won’t listen. They don’t care. They’ll just carry on hurting children.
May 13 2022
Men Who Hate Women: the extremism nobody is talking about, Laura Bates
I highly recommend this book! (Laura Bates is the person behind “Everyday Sexism” for those of you who don’t know …)
A few quotes and notes …
About all the pick-up artist sites (p79) teaching men what to say and do, how to trick a woman into having sex with him – They must not believe that a woman could actually like them, want to be with them, want to have sex with them. And they’re probably right.
“… one recent study [found] that just a quarter of young people were ever taught about consent at school” (p87). You have to be taught not to force someone to do something??
Maybe it’s not that women lie about rape (p98); maybe it’s that their definition of rape differs from that of men’s. Maybe many men think that forced sex is just sex. Such men have likely never had unforced sex.
Re trolls (p144) – When they say they’re just trying to provoke a reaction, I think that’s just a cover, like saying it was just a joke. They’re lying. They really mean it.
Saying that a non sequitur is an intentional derailment (which is what Bates and many others claim) is often giving too much credit. A non sequitur is almost always the result of not understanding the presented argument and so not understanding what’s relevant and what’s not. Happens all the time. (And it’s pretty much why I’ve stopped talking to people. No one can follow an argument any more. Let alone make an argument.)
Re ‘she cheated on me’ (some guy’s wife had sex with someone else) – I never really considered that before, calling it ‘cheating’. To cheat is to do something unfair. I guess it’s unfair in that it’s breaking the rules, the rules being no extra-marital sex. But incels also invoke fairness when talking about sexual access. So it might not be ‘Unfair, you’re breaking the rules’ but ‘Unfair, you’re supposed to provide sexual access only to me’—which the incels then turn into ‘Unfair, you’re supposed to provide sexual access to anyone who wants it.’ Presumably they mean only unmarried ‘you’ people, because otherwise they’d have a war on their hands with married men.
“He has advised men to expose themselves and start masturbating in front of women, in an attempt to harass them into having sex” (p155-6). Yeah. That’ll make me want you.
Re women’s purpose is to have babies and care for those children (p180) – Ah. I just realized why some men are so insistent about that. It’s because they don’t want to take care of those children. They could, of course, just stop making them (or support the provision of contraception and abortion), but their masculinity (which they stupidly continue to accept) depends on them having children. (And as their sperm continues to become less and less viable, they’ll more and more blame the women …)
Re women ‘have the upper hand when it comes to deciding who can and cannot have sex’ (p226) – Like men never say ‘no’? Hm. Guess not. (They’ll fuck anything that moves. Actually, they’ll even fuck it if it’s not moving.) So if not for women, our evolution would be the result of men’s choices, which are completely indiscriminate. Yeah, that’s a good alternative.
Re ‘Sorry ladies, but a clumsy pass over dinner is NOT a sex assault’ (Daily Mail headline) (p241) – What was that clumsy pass—a pat on the bum? Why not just use your words? Ah. Because men are linguistically challenged. (And note the sport metaphor. It’s all a game, is it? And you just want to win? Though apparently they’re cognitively challenged as well, because one passes to someone on the same team.)
And ‘the idea of a woman playing hard to get’ (p242) – I’ve always thought that meant she’s being a tease. Now I’m thinking it means she’s saying no. And maybe it’s meant that all along … A lot of the time.)
Re “‘Time to stop being ‘charming’ to waitresses. Time to stop trying to make women laugh … One misfired flirt and I could be out of a job …'” (p246-7) – Yes! Stop it all! Be nice, like you are to other men, that’s it! If you want to get to know someone better, man or woman, ask them out for coffee or whatever it is you typically do.
“But this argument goes up in a puff of smoke when you point out the curious fact that these men, who claim to have no idea these behaviours are sexual or inappropriate, are nonetheless not acting in this manner towards other men” (p258). YES!!!
“When I visit schools, extraordinary though it sounds, I frequently hear young people say that ‘rape is a compliment really’ or ‘crying is part of foreplay’. At one school, at which they had had a rape case involving a 14-year-old boy, a teacher asked: ‘Why didn’t you stop when she was crying?’ The boy looked back at her, bewildered, and said: ‘because it’s normal for girls to cry during sex.'” (p271). What? WHAT??? (And does he get that from porn or from his parents’ bedroom?) (Or both?) So … we need to flood the internet with videos of joyous sex, sex that makes you smile?
Re ‘When did rape become a crime?’ (p279) – Um, when physical assault became a crime? ‘Men used to go around raping bishes all the time.’ Good god, how does a man here and now actually honestly believe this shit???
“It is ironic that so much pressure is brought to bear on women to allow for the humanity and individuality of fallible men when it is precisely this courtesy that incels unfailingly refuse to pay to women” (p316). Well-said.
“I’m reminded of David Sherratt, whose journey out of the manosphere was so simply facilitated by meeting a girl who talked to him” (p318) – What, boys don’t usually talk to girls? And yet, and yet, remembering my own school years, hell, even in my own family, no, they don’t. There was this invisible wall. No boy ever spoke to me. And I certainly never had the courage to speak to a boy. (Yes, it would have required courage. Because they were so … superior … to me.) (I’ve come a long way.) My own brother never spoke to me. Incredible. Well, the good news is this is something schools could easily remedy (now that girls are allowed to attend school…)
May 01 2022
Leafblowers bad for the environment. Duh.
“According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1997), as people across the United States re-fuel their leaf
blowers and lawnmowers, they slop approximately 17 million gallons of gasoline onto the ground each summer, gas that seeps into the water we drink and evaporates into the air we breathe. To put that number in perspective, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 dumped 10.9 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude into Prince William Sound, Alaska (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 1989).
“On top of that, leaf blowers discharge a cocktail of contaminants into the air, from hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide*which combine with other greenhouse gases to form ozone*to the carcinogens benzene, acetaldehyde, and formaldehyde. The California Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Resources Board (2000, 50, 3) estimates that the average commercial, gas-powered leaf blower manufactured in 1999 emits the same amount of hydrocarbons in one-half hour as a car traveling 7,700 miles at 30 miles per hour. Over that half hour, the same leaf blower pumps out as much carbon monoxide as a car driving 440 miles at 30 miles per hour.
“An inconvenient truth about leaf blowers is that it is not uncommon for people who use them to relocate leaves, dirt, and weeds into their neighbor’s yard or out onto the street for the city or municipality to deal with rather than
collecting, bagging, and disposing of the leaves themselves. This is not only an antisocial manifestation of out-of-sight-out-of-mind mental processes, but also an unequivocal passing of the social buck that relates to what social psychologists have called ‘‘diffusion of responsibility.’’ [That’s putting it mildly.] [I’d call it ‘I-don’t-give-a- FUCK-about-you-ness.’ Or ‘ME-ME-ME-ness.’] [Or ‘I’m-too-stupid-to-understand-the-long-term-consequences-of-my-behavior-ness.’]
from “The Leaf Blower, Capitalism, and the Atomization of Everyday Life,” Jules Boykoff
And they’re not cheaper to use than a rake, nor does it get the job done faster. So WTF? Men and noise? Men and power tools?
fiction
