This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Comradebob is a sexist, racist troll of the worst kind, but this thread is an experiment: I’m really trying to avoid banning people who can restrict their odiousness to just this one thread. There are limits, but they’re way, way out there.
I’m sure that asshole is trying to test them, and when he finds them, he will be banned.
I’m also on a hairtrigger here: if he even posts “hello” on any thread outside this one, he’ll be banned instantly.
If I discover that he’s one of the previously banned jerks, back under a pseudonym, he’ll be banned.
But for now, this is one of those Freeze Peach zones. I think we’re learning that when you do that, you open the door to truly committed fuckwits who will find amusement in tromping all over the boundaries of reason.
PZ:
Obviously. However, I think his creepiness toward and sexual harassment of Janine is already way over the line. Seriously so.
@Theophontes:
Difficult to say. I haven’t read Atwood or Cooper. Or Wallace.
Kat Lorraine, you haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale? Put it on thy reading list. ;)
Yeah, he’s a creep. The catch is that the line got moved in thunderdome to way over there.
But I do have my eye on him, and am twirling the banhammer nonchalantly over here, too.
@Caine:
Will do.
@ Kitty
Or the movie! (Yeah, cheating, I know.)
So what you’re saying, Prof. Myers, is that commenters and monitors ought to stop trying to police the Thunderdome.
It’s not supposed to be a safe space.
Why did he said?
Theophontes:
No! Absolutely not. It was a poor job of committing the book to film in the first place, and it doesn’t capture the depth of mood or nuance of the book.
Why don’t you go read for yourself, in the last two iterations of Thunderdome?
Chas:
That’s not what he said at all. Keep working on that reading comprehension.
It’s OK if egregious fuckwittery in Thunderdome is called to my attention. But I’m going to be very, very reluctant to do anything about it.
One thing it’s useful for is that if trolls are willing to expose themselves here, those are people I can decide to not allow to babble elsewhere. Comradebob, for instance, is never going to be allowed to post outside this one zone. He’s just too rancid.
OUCH!
@ PZ
So Thunderdome is like the Festering Carbuncle of Pharyngula?
@ Eurasian magpie
Mwahaha,… very sharp stick, very well aimed.
PZ:
That might be an option for ‘drosera’ who has been repeating themselves over and over and over into the hundreds of posts about Richard Dawkins, Egate and Rebecca Watson.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/20/relief-for-the-heartsick/comment-page-1/#comment-549465
New topic question. Is there any truth to the notion that anti-weed legislation is primarily backed by Big Pharma because they can’t make money off it and a natural product does a better job than their expensive pills? To me it sounds likely but also the “too good to be true” so I’m skeptical.
@Theophontes:
Carbuncle?
Because the tobacco industry makes no money, either?
Yeah, right. It’s not like the government couldn’t tax the hell out of it or anything, like tobacco. Or liquor. Puritan mindset has more to do with it than anything.
I can’t stop trying…
“Some studies in contemporary like cultures found similar sex differences in toy preferences amongst human children, with females tending to prefer dolls and cooking pots and boys balls and cars. But these studies are always open to the interpretation that these differences result from human socialization/cultural influence. Therefore we sought to perform a similar experiment with another species: the Chaco tortoise. Finding similar differences would provide evidence of similarly evolved preferences in at least one other species, thus suggesting differences in preferences for masculine and feminine toys may have existed in our common ancestor. This would lend support to the argument that these differences observed in contemporary humans result at least in part from evolved psychological patterns going far back in our evolutionary history.”
Does the vervet work sound substantially less absurd than this? Before you think about differences between the vervets and the tortoises, consider the differences between both of these species on the one hand and humans on the other.
forget it, SC, I meant what I said. I stuck out the conversation here to the bitter, bitter end, and when you chose to revive it Gish-style on your own blog, I tried gamely there too. Your response, as you’ll recall, was to flush two (2) long Marjonović-style replies, posted in good faith and not without some time and effort, away down the permanent memory-hole. So fuck you.
In other words, you have no substantive reply. I’m going to clarify a few things for other people: First, I said in the very first paragraph of that post that “I’m going to offer my extended critique of the article, and I’ll allow comments as long as they demonstrate a reading and thinking about what I’ve said and aren’t utterly stupid.” Your comments were utterly stupid, and additionally, I felt, would be a source of embarrassment to you in the future. Nevertheless, I did post your first comment. Second, IIRC, you were annoyed that your comment didn’t immediately go through because it contained blockquotes and was too long, so you said you’d email it to me. When you did – complete with HTML tags – and I posted it here where it would go through you became angry that I’d shared a private email. In any event, you simply continued to say the same stupid things over and over – that’s what you mean by sticking out the conversation to the bitter end – and I ran out of patience for it. I probably still have the comment, though, so maybe I’ll post it.
I’m still bewildered at your inability to grasp the fundamental absurdity of that study, but I’m even more angry with your smug and uncritical defense of this nonsense pseudoscience while you’re deeply distressed about the fate of one comment you could easily have posted here. That stupid study is cited often in defense of the sexist status quo, and it harms people. I’m laughing at it, but the whole situation isn’t the least bit funny. That this research was published and is cited and taken seriously in arguments about human psychology reflects and perpetuates deeply ingrained sexism in our society. It’s thoughtless and immoral of you to repeat your shrugs and fuck yous without making a concerted effort to understand why it’s garbage and why citing or defending it causes damage to real people.
And now I have to go do other things.
@20
No the government does not “tax the hell” out of everything. You can make a case for cigarettes but they’re not medicine.
I tried three entries in my dream diary to I Write Like. I got Ian Fleming, Neil Gaiman and Chuck Palahniuk.
The Flaming I can kind of see.
Jerry Coine (JAC) has loudly complained about Scarfe’s cartoon in the Sunday Times. On this I agree with him completely. He also rightly points out Arab antisemitism in schoolbooks. What I don’t get is that he neglects Israeli racism. An example:
http://972mag.com/poll-israelis-support-discrimination-against-arabs-embrace-the-term-apartheid/58258/
Moreover he neglects that in certain Israeli circles mass murderer Baruch Goldstein is revered as a hero.
When muslims in dictatorial countries do something similar JAC is very quick to blame muslims in general. He also seems to think that the Quran urges muslims to do evil, but that the OT doesn’t the same to jews. The conclusion is that he has discriminatory tendencies.
Now what I really don’t understand is that he uses the same logical fallacies popular among creationists to back up his position – to suggest jewish superiority compared to muslims.
The book WEIT is excellent and he writes lots of great articles, but I’ll be damned if I ever post again on his site.
Note: I have given my name on his site, so nobody can complain about my anonymity.
As I’m not interested in an internet war against anyone this will be my only comment. I just needed to get rid of my frustration.
Seems Jerry is now subject to the “can’t spell his name correctly” phenomenon.
@ Alverant
No. AFAIK: The attack on mary jane was launched by Du Pont via their lobbyists. The idea was to demonise hemp, in order to increase demand for their own products (such as nylon). Smoking hemp (not quite the same) got taken out as collateral damage. There were, however, also attacks on it in its own right.
Links to above are easy enough to find. There are alternative theories though: (Link)
Also, there is the wonderful “Reefer Madness” film: Link here. (Well worth watching, especially if you are stoned.)
@ Kitty
No, not that one. I looked on google images, but now feel a little nauseous. I shan’t post here. The description is bad enough:
A very strange name indeed for a cartoon character!
@Theophontes:
Yea, I searched for carbuncle too and eww..
But that cute thing :3 I want to own one and pet it and hear it make ‘chirrup’ noises cause seriously that’s what it would do.
I was hoping Ms Daisy Cutter had got on this thread because I want to steal her nym and use it for the Cleveland franchise in the 43-Man Squamish League I’m starting in 2015. But I thought I should get her permission first in case she had similar ideas. And I was considering trying to hire her seeing as she’s already proclaimed herself GM of the team.
Hate to post and run but have to get some shit done before the weather here gets too crappy.
@ Kitty
Check out the babble too (Isaiah 54:12 -KJV):
(Emphasis mine, not God’s.)
Theophontes:
Ah yes. The garnets are teh beautiful!
@Theo:
Carbuncle is apparently an alternate term for garnets.
In addition the carbuncle is also a fantasy animal with a red gemstone embedded in its forehead – usually hunted for that gemstone, hence cute Final Fantasy summon which I still want to own and pet and feed from my hand and listen to it purr and chirrup.
But not so strange for a game character.
(It’s a summoned monster from the Final Fantasy series.)
Re: weed and Big Pharma ™
I’ve heard a multitude of explanations, ranging from chemical companies or pharmaceutical corporations not wanting competition from hemp producers (I’ve heard both argued at the same time as well as one or the other) to racism (primarily against Latinos and Amerindians at the time, but has since spread to blacks and any race they perceive as no-good druggies) to plain ol’ Puritanism.
I think it’s a pretty obvious argument to say it’s a combination of these factors and others, but it’s also probably the best argument. I don’t think pharmaceutical companies play nearly as big of a role as many people say, but I’d put a lot of stock in racism having a lot to do with anti-weed silliness.
Re: weed and big pharma, I really doubt it’s all that big a part, because what’s going to prevent big pharma from growing and marketing it?
On a semi-unrelated note, however, I’m terribly glad for the laws that limit the places people can smoke in general because I’m borderline allergic to the damn stuff. Basically get the worst ‘trip’ possible off it. Huge drop in blood pressure, tachycardia, light headedness, dizziness, confusion, nausea progressing to vomiting and eventually fainting.
I have never in my life smoked marijuana, but I was around someone who was when I was a child, and I get the same reaction just from people’s clothes who’ve been smoking it heavily/recently. Not fun.
So are oil pans feminine because they’re pans or are they masculine because they’re car parts?
Chas, could you link some of these studies? Judging by your opinion on the vervet study I get this strange sense that you might be exaggerating the significance of the results.
I might be repeating something said previously, since I just saw this discussion, but regarding the anti-cannabis nonsense, from what I understand the main lobby groups pushing for this are private prisons and alcohol businesses.
Skatje, I don’t think anyone mentioned the prison industry yet, but it’s obviously a big part of it. Also the companies that supply weapons and other “tactical” gear to law enforcement, the LEOs themselves , and anyone else who makes a living fighting this “war.”
Private prisons would make a lot of sense too, I had forgotten about that. Not sure about alcohol businesses though. Does weed take away from business? I wouldn’t think so. Generally, since people already have basically trivial access to weed wherever they go, the only difference with legality is that you would no longer be imprisoning potential customers – plenty of people smoke weed and drink alcohol, sometimes simultaneously.
There’s probably plenty of people that lobby against weed who give Puritanical arguments, whose real reasoning/intentions are to continue the war they profit from, be they law enforcement, their equipment suppliers, or even the dealers themselves.
Anecdotally, in college I noticed a fairly consistent trend of people substituting pot for alcohol at social gatherings when it was on hand.
Non-anecdotally, here’s a study related to it: http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/6/1/35
Re: Israeli Poll
Front and center: “Jewish girls belong to the Jewish People”
Is that misogynistic, racist and communist all at the same time? I think my head is about to explode.
Pretty much this; Dupont and Hearst, along with several smaller players, had major industrial interests that were opposed to hemp (Most notably nylon and wood-pulp paper, but there were others). However, no-one was going to buy the idea that industrial hemp was a threat to society, so there was nothing doing there. Then they noticed that Mexicans and (black) jazz musicians/aficionados were prone to smoking hemp, and Hearst started using his media empire to spread stories of ‘marihuana’-crazed POCs going on crime sprees and raping white women (using a then-obscure Mexican word rather than the more common cannabis or hemp so as not to connect it industrial product), which, combined with some good old fashioned bribery, was able to generate enough public outcry to get the Marihuana Tax Act passed, which basically killed industrial hemp. Racism, Puritanism, and the prison/LEO-industrial complex that grew around the increasing drug war have kept it going, though.
Strange gods said (#814 in previous ThunderDome) about the Harriet Hall quote:
I would agree that her remarks implied that possibility.
Strictly speaking this is true. However, our knowledge of how brain differences between men and women may display themselves in any given scenario is limited. All we know (at least the current consensus among neurologists that are involved in the research) is that the differences are quite substantial. Thus it is possible that whenever we do find widespread differences in interest, at least part of the reason for it is innate differences in the brain.
No she didn’t. She said that given the differences between the genders, we should not be surprised that there are different levels of interest in different activities. That does not mean that the current level of interest shown by women in the secular communities is completely explained by sexual differences. She said we need to remove the cultural obstacles to women being involved in certain activities. Presumably then the number of women involved in the secular communities will rise. She said that we can’t expect this rise to necessarily reach 50/50. It might, then again it might not. Of course, we have a long way to go to remove all the obstacles to this goal.
By my definition given of a sexist remark given earlier: A sexist remark is one that demeans or limits females based on unfounded stereotype, misogyny or ignorance. (Also included would be remarks demeaning men.) Presumably Harriet Hall is not basing her remarks on stereotype, misogyny or ignorance. When she says science has shown that real differences exist, presumably she is speaking from her knowledge of modern neuroscience. There have been differences found on a global level in the brain, on the local level in every brain lobe, on the cellular level, and on the molecular level, including sex differences in gene expression and epigenetic regulation. And as I quoted Diane Halpern previously: ” there are also consistent findings of sex differences that hold up across studies, across species, and across cultures…differences that are supported by a body of carefully conducted and well replicated research.”
So I am giving Harriet Hall the benefit of the doubt here, I’m presuming she’s not motivated by misogyny. Presumably her remarks are supported by knowledge of current scientific research. You may not wish to do that, so apparently for you, her remark is sexist (or you may have a different definition altogether). I suppose for some, any remark describing brain differences between the sexes that includes the possibility that these differences might result in different interests and behavior would be considered sexist. Then the majority of neuroscientists currently studying sex differences would be considered sexist.
But enough of Harriet Hall. As I mentioned before, she is planning to speak for herself on the Science-based Medicine site. Moving on, this discussion brings up the question: What is a sexist remark? My definition above is off the cuff and surely incomplete. How would others define it?
Clarification requires getting it right.
But that goes for me too: I see now that you did not refuse to post my first long comment, just the second one. My bad. Here are yours:
fuck you
no, you did not.
yes…
I did…
Never happened. I don’t recall whether I e-mailed it to you ar not, but I’m quite certain you didn’t post it here. In fact, when Nick and (I think) strange gods asked to see the comment in question, I ended up posting it on my own pitiful blog. (People can go over there and see for themselves if it’s “utterly stupiud”.)
That was the first long post in question–you did not post it.
The second (as I recall) even longer and better-organized comment to which I refer was uploaded somewhere between the 10th and the 22nd; this second comment was not posted by you and I did not save a draft copy.
Seriously SC: try to imagine how you’d feel. Your deletion of that comment was the second-rudest thing anyone’s ever done to me on the internet. You’re on that list with Laden. So fuck you.
Here’s the notorious ludicrous study in question. You can see for yourself what they cite.
@philosophia:
Sure, there are physical differences and those may very well cause behavioral differences.
But I’d say it’s pretty implausible to say our cultural attitudes don’t also cause behavioral differences. And our ignorance of causality in the neuro domain makes it impossible to say which behavioral differences are caused by culture and which are caused by physiology.
In this case, any assertion of difference as a result of physiology is highly suspect. There can be no evidence for this in the current state of neuroscience.
And even if that’s not the case, using a physiological difference as a moral justification for treating women differently isn’t valid. Equality is a moral condition. Women who are interested in some facet of human experience shouldn’t be excluded on the basis of physiological differences, especially when the variation in behaviors within genders is so large.
Here’s an alternative hypothesis to Hall’s: the physiological differences in women make them more likely to be a big part of something like the atheist movement. Perhaps a rigorous analysis of social graphs could reveal that even though women do not make up as large a proportion of atheists within the movement as men, they are nonetheless vital as “lynch pins” within the social networks through which the movement is mediated. The smaller proportion of women within the movement reflects purely cultural attitudes and works against (and overpowers) the physiological drives which would otherwise make women better represented in the movement.
This completely contradicts the thesis that women prefer not to be activist atheists as a result of physiology while explaining their smaller representation within the atheist movement, and it’s just as consistent with the evidence on hand as that thesis.
I would say that using the possibility of physiological differences as a moral justification for ignoring gender imbalances of power and representation is, in fact, sexist. It’s the same tactics used by “race realists” and AGW deniers.
I have no idea what we’re supposed to conclude from the fact that females preferred stuff you can put other stuff in.
(It’s probably sad that I remember that you told me that far more intelligent people than me got this whole thing wrong, the last time I commented on this, Chas, but there it is so you don’t have to tell me I’m stupid again.)
I mean, I get it that males and females showed differences in their preferences, but I’m not getting what we’re supposed to understand from those toys being ball&car versus doll&pot. Again, I can understand the doll, but the rest? Those toys have meanings for us, so it seems like a “set up” and people automatically reading more into this study because of it.
I mean… a pot? Unless you know about cooking, it’s just something you can put other things in.
A car and a ball- something that moves.
It just seems messed up.
@Chas:
You need to relax. Skepticism is good for science and the vervet study is…prima facie implausible to be kind about it. Pushing back against it will at worst lead to better and more significant results.
As a male, I consistently experience a physiological drive to put stuff in other stuff. That drive is a lot stronger than my drive to, say, play with toy cars.
thank you for that helpful advice.
Think I’ll do just that.
I should have expected that kind of joke.
Was I out of line? I wasn’t trying to make anyone uncomfortable but I could see in retrospect why I might have.
I mean, I realize this is thunderdome but that doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole.
No, at least not as far as I’m concerned.
daniellavine
There is pretty much no way it interpret “calm down” as anything but condescending.
@chigau:
You’re right, but that’s not what I was worried about being out of line about. A lot of Chas’ output seems pretty condescending to me but I usually don’t say anything about it.
Not specifically on drug laws, I have some frightening links on private prisons in the old Texas has state-sanctioned murder thread.
Interesting assumptions. Did you try google?
Any evidence of that?
Perhaps you assume that companies do everything which could hypothetically help them, regardless of cost/benefit ratios?
+++++
philosophia, I don’t have time for all your bullshit right now.
You are lying.
Don’t you see how lazy this is? Especially as a political response for the purpose of saying we should not try to achieve parity?
Remember, it’s not like Hall was asked “do you think it’s at all possible that there might be innate genetic differences that affect women’s interests in atheist and skeptical communities” and she answered “whatthefuckever, but that’s the very last thing we should worry about; at this moment we should be critically analyzing these communities to see what discourages women’s participation, and aiming for equal participation as a goal.”
She was asked why the sex ratio isn’t currently at parity, and she replied that we should not try to achieve parity, because genetics.
What a fucking stupid, lazy answer. It “explains” everything, and therefore explains nothing. The same answer would have made just as much sense in the 1950s for why fewer women worked outside the home.
Philosophia
The thing is, this is a really shitty, unscientific hypothesis. Given that we know there are large cultural/societal barriers to women participating in the atheist/skeptic movements, the parsimonious hypothesis is that that is the reason why participation among women is lower. If, after we remove all of those barriers, it was still found that women participated less, then it might make sense to wonder about biological explanations, but there’s no reason at this time to suppose that that’s the case.
Aaargh, I’ve been SG’ed! No I can’t provide any good citations, but they’re often the same companies that equip prison guards, and many are run by law enforcement officers or former law enforcement officers. They may not be actively lobbying to keep pot illegal but they are absolutely in bed with the people who are. They also advertise in magazines like “TACTICAL SHOOTER” that trade on that good old fashioned america fear of doped-up-darkies.
The “C” in “ChasCStewart” stands for “Condescending.”
I’m sorry, Peterson. Why the hell did I write Stewart? Apologies for the brain fart.
Re: Marijuana being substituted for alcolhol….
The original paper can be downloaded from the researcher’s web site: http://dmarkanderson.com/research
So yes, there is a statistically noticable substitution effect when cannabis is made easier to get and this results in much less death.
In 2010 ~1000 people aged 15-34 died by motorized transport. If we round out to a reduction of 20% in traffic fatalities, that would mean that we have saved ~250 lives in one year alone in a single state. For comparison, the number of people of all ages in California who were murdered by a stranger in 2010 is 355.
Legalized cannabis saves lives.
(all data taken from CA)
Now that asshole Phil Giordana is probing, trying to get past the filters to post here. Give it up, jerk: you’re BANNED. That means I don’t want you posting here at all. The same goes for all the other slymers: once you’re banned, you don’t get to comment anywhere here.
Sure, but accuracy is important. I didn’t challenge where you said “the LEOs themselves” because I already happened to know that bit’s true, but, paired with something doubtful, “the LEOs themselves” looked like a lucky guess.
As for funding from private prisons, I haven’t found direct evidence, but it does seem likely considering that CCA has explicitly identified “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration” as a threat to their own business model, and they are known to do a lot of lobbying already — and shit like funding ALEC, which in turn lobbied for three-strikes laws.
PZ, can we have Gumby and Comic Sans back?
I think I have the CSS specific enough: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/08/hey-it-looks-different-around-here/comment-page-1/#comment-515374
ॐ, I’ve seen it claimed more than once that gumbification is an in-group signal that basically constitutes well-poisoning (if not in those very words) and I think there’s some (small) merit to that claim.
(Me, I’d like Pirate Mode back)
About the legalisation (or not) of weed; it’s very easy for anybody with a basic knowledge of horticulture to grow enough at home to make buying any unneccesary – or so I’ve heard (and far easier than growing enough tobacco for even one person; just the required space is beyond most people), so even if it were legalised there could be very little government control, hence little benefit to them in taxes.
They just don’t want us to have fun if they can’t tax it first.
The top 5 interest groups keeping weed illegal according to http://www.republicreport.org/2012/marijuana-lobby-illegal/
daniellavine wrote:
Is that why I can’t get enough of matryoshka dolls?
Katherine Lorraine, if you’re reading Atwood, you probably want to read The Blind Assassin.
And maybe–they have quite difficult moments, but together they tell a compelling story–Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.
> want also to read
(wouldn’t want to split an infinitive)
cm, ‘also want to read’.
Ooh, I just read Oryx and Crake, and I loved it.
It made me want to slap Margaret Atwood for eschewing the sci-fi label too, but whatever. I’ll have to check out The Year of the Flood.
CM, you’ve beat me to Ezra Pound in the last installment of the Thunderdome. Smug european that I am, I didn’t have the chance of becoming acquainted with any American literature yet, other than a compulsory reading of some Mark Twain (the real reason is that we have to make an effort of breaking free from the dubbing-translating oppression). I’ve heard Pound’s name in some context, but otherwise know nary a thing about him. That well-known place where lies congregate claims him to be important, but he seems to have troubling tendency to sympathize with fascism. I am also concerned that his curious writing style will fuck up mine even more. I’ve just finished the amazing Promethea (book 1) by Alan Moore, and reading roulette dictates that some non-fiction follows up. After that I was planning to tackle Ulysses by Joyce, touted as notoriously accessible, but if Pound is worth a shot, I might go for it.
Smug Europeans, yeah!
Down with Holden Caulfield!
You know, this literary criticism thing is easier than it looks.
Thank you for the honor and the recognition PZ. Men of Character respect other people’s property, and you will find my thoughts under names none other than my moniker, and nowhere other than the place upon which I find myself banished.
At the risk of expressing a free thought, it can be readily observed that most of today’s self-described socialists are simply aspiring Marxists without the courage of their convictions. This would surely be very disturbing to those who espouse these opinions and understood the human cycle otherwise known as History. Unfortunately, there ain’t many o’ them.
I hope that wasn’t too offensive.
Shitbag improved:
The name, location, and that is the free exchange of ideas, and Knights. You can add more via the number of letters in the title of the exhibition.
All that one can say that independent thinking is free of Lenin. However, for example, I think you should know, the development and history of the area. Unfortunately.
Wait until it is.
@ comradebob
Are you a whenwe?
Dipshitbob
Are you ever going to actually respond to questions or are you just going to keep posting random incoherent screeds?
Since I see no need to let comradebob claim cluelessness, I swam the moat and climbed the portcullis to bring forward something I endorse wholeheartedly:
SallyStrange: Elite Femi-Fascist Genius @ 900 (Thunderdome 16)
While the proprietor has another take–at this time–I hope, comradebob, that your topic upon your return demonstrates that you know what topic not to raise again.
@ Dalillama
Cdebob is getting boring – a bannable offence.
(Though I suspect Professor Poopyhead is currently using us as guinea pigs in a dastardly experiment, to see if we can spontaneously come up with a working immune response.)
I did not feel the need to point out that being a lesbian does not go against B-I-O-L-O-G-Y.
But I do want to mock him for thinking that his manliness would be enough to change my orientation.
Not likely to happen. I have met plenty of attractive men that I liked. Still have not had sex with one. Definitely will not become heterosexual over a man that I find vile.
Blow it out your ass, shitbag.
(Now I am picturing one big pile of shit surrounded by a lot of tiny piles of shit.)
…. I just saw this and want to beat my head against my desk.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/want-more-sex-survey-says-stop-helping-chores-213917047.html
rowanvt, but obviously providing sexual relief to her partner is a traditional wifely duty!
(Do I need the obligatory snark tag?)
—
As an aside, the first thing I noticed in that article is an image of someone throwing perfectly good food into the rubbish.
(Ah, the “first world”!)
This study contradicts earlier ones, doesn’t it? I’m talking off the top of my head here, but aren’t there more than one study showing that couples in egalitarian relationships report more sex and more satisfying sex lives?
They even mention that further down the thing, but that headline…
pod people
@ Kitty
You could always try THIS at home! ;D
I’m asking for a reset here. Please.
I’ve been a bit of a douche in the past and I admit and apologise for that.
I don’t think I’m a bad person. I don’t think I’ve done anything seriously wrong although I’m not saying that haven’t made a few comments that haven’t upset people here.
I don’t think I’m a racist or a bigot & I certainly try NOT to be. I’m on your side in most issues esp. feminism, environmentalism and skepticism. I’m a humanist who agrees with you more often than not about 75% : 35% of the time probably. I like this blog and want to make a positive contribution to it.
Other commentators are trying to bully me out because, in my view anyhow, they have fundamentally misunderstood me and my views.
To them I’m going to ask – why?
Why do you want me gone and what motivates you? What do you think you have to gain by forcing me out?
What have I done to hurt you badly enough for you to make it such a priority of yours to try and force me out of commenting on someone else’s blog? What actual harm does it do y’all to have me posting even stuff that’s occassionally from perspectives you sometimes find disagreeable here?
Don’t like what I say? Fine, tell me why and give your views and if we end up agreeing to disagree then that’s fine isn’t it? I’m not out to hurt anyone here, I’m following the set rules and just voicing my opinion same as y’all do.
You claim I’ve derailed threads – well I’ve voluntarily stuck to this one which is pretty much underailable and I’ve already said I’m thinking things over and won’t even mention anything related to Muslims unless asked into the indefinite future. I don’t want all Muslims killed certainly not those who don’t pose any harm and are willing to live in peace with us. I’m no fan of their religion and there’s a lot I really dislike about it but, hey, I’m no fan of any organised religion. Wish they’d all vanish. Don’t most of you wish that too?
I’m not claiming to be the brightest spark of lightning here or the best person in the world but I’m sure I’m far from being the worst person alive or worst to post here too. I’ve said stuff in the past I’m not proud of, I’ve gotten carried away and if I could change history and not say some of the worse stuff I’ve said I would. Unfortunately, I lack a time machine so I can’t.
I just want to remind y’all that those silly things I’ve said in the past are NOT me and certainly not now.
Okay, I can be an idiot at times, especially late at night and drunk but I’m willing to listen and willing to learn.
I’m just asking for a second chance and a fair go.
@771 & 757. Strange gods before me ॐ :
About your constantly repeated cherry-picked ancient comments of mine from many years ago and another blog; are you seriously expecting me to answer an equivalent of “Have you stopped beating your partner yet?” I’ve stated that those are NO LONGER my views and pointed out what I got wrong there. I’ve apologised for saying that and clarified what I actually think. I’ve stated those old comments from back when I was a different person will never be repeated or supported by me in the future. What else can I do -other than never commenting here again which ive alreday said I’m NOT agreeing to do?
@old thunderdome thread’s 818. strange gods before me ॐ :
29 January 2013 at 4:13 pm (UTC -6)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-549153
Okay then : I do NOT and never have promoted murder when sober.
I’m probably not sober often enough.
(Have been cutting down lately. Currently only had a few, not that many.)
@old td 819 carlie (mmediately below that) : Well I guess we’re different in that regard then.
***
@ old td 815. cm’s changeable moniker
29 January 2013 at 3:23 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Okay, that’s true & I will but he does write about non-Western notably Indian religion & Indian issues a lot.
***
@810. evilisgood : Acknowledged. The old quote there is NOT what I think now or who I am now and hasn’t been what I’ve thought for years. I now totally disagree with what I said then.
As for your #806. Okay. Yeah. Singapore is indeed. Hong Kong used to be but isn’t now or is it? Arrrgh! City-states confuse me too. Is the Vatican (city) a nation and Monaco plus San Marino too? How does that work? (Rhetorical.)
African Americans I admire :
1) Martin Luther King – Perhaps the greatest of all Americans ever.
2) Benjamin Banneker –genius, astronomer and much more. (See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Banneker )
3) Neil DeGrasse Tyson – Despite really strongly disagreeing with him over Pluto!
4) Barack Oama – yes, I know, I disagree with a lot he’s done & prefer Hilary Clinton had won 208 in hindsight but still do admire him and if I was an American I would vote for him.
5) Crommunist – http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/ great blogger, great bloke. Makes me think and see things differently.
6) Dr. Guion Stewart “Guy” Bluford – first African American in space ( See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guion_Bluford )
7) B.B. King – Read his autobiography and all.
8) Muhammad Ali – Greatest boxer ever.
9) Ron McNair, ‘Challenger’ astronaut, hero – see : http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/01/28/ron_mcnair_a_challenger_astronaut_who_dreamed_big.html
10) Rosa Parks – need I say more?
Great people, great heroes.
There are Muslims I admire too :
Alhazen, Kemal Attaturk, Muhammd Ali (yes again), Ulug Beg and more.
StevoR, I gotta admit I feel a bit sorry for you.
I suspect you’d have done better to leave it at the first two paragraphs, though.
Also, you are being harassed, not bullied — there is no power imbalance or threat to you from others’ comments here.
(All bullying is harassment, but not all harassment is bullying)
—
Well, you could actually play ॐ’s game, and either admit or deny that those comments for which you’ve apologised were racist; I tell you from years of experience that I’m pretty sure he ain’t gonna be the first to give up on that; he’s like a pitbull.
(I think your ego is getting in the way)
Fuck no. You’re still being a douche right now, with your racist shit like calling Japanese people honorary Westerners.
They’re not cherry-picked. If they were, then you would be able to point out comments by yourself from the same time which somehow contradicted them.
They’re not the equivalent. The problem with answering “no” to “have you stopped beating your partner yet” is that it suggests you are still beating your partner.
What is the equivalent problem with answering “no” to “Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that?” and “Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?”
But I will rephrase my questions, since you’re complaining about them.
That’s nice. It does not answer my current questions.
+++++
You have not dealt with the particular questions I am asking now. I am asking them for a reason. For each quote in this list, I am asking two questions: 1) were you a racist when you said it, and 2) was it a racist comment?
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
SGBM @ 927 in the previous T-Dome thread (responding to my post @ 926):
You were going be be my issue number two. I seldom hold grudges or frustrations for longer than a good night of sleep. My misplaced Jim Carrey optimism thought it possible to re-engage with you in a meaningful way. Your response suggests otherwise. Some other folks here in the T-Dome and I have settled into a de facto mutual ignoring treaty. And the world seems better for it. Perhaps we can enter a similar pact.
It should be painfully obvious that I am not going to engage ComradeBob in any way. (This could change if there was more than a 1 in a million chance of being useful.) There is little chance that you can cajole me into any form of discourse with him. My choice OK? Besides I’m just a newbie testing my blog training wheels here in the Dome. I have no blog cred. Few people take me seriously and that probably includes CB. Yes, sometimes one more little voice can make a difference. Obviously I’m not so sure about CB. One comment from PZ (see above) has much more effect than I could ever hope to muster
“…and you don’t care how your actions contribute to sexism.” Simply not true. You can interpret my actions and inaction in any way you please. My inaction may appear to be utterly reprehensible you. But for you to be at all effective you need to, at minimum, change your phrasing to something a bit more defensible. As it stands, your next step is to take all your interpretations, opinions etc. and test them against reality. The reality of what OMB actually cares about. And I’m the only one in the world who knows the answer to that. You are wrong. Try something like, “OMB’s complete lack of action regarding, yadda, yadda, makes me think he doesn’t care.” Then you wouldn’t have to deal with the inconvenient reality of what I actually care about.
“That’s because you have contempt for other commenters here…” No, although it may appear that way to you. There is no question that I have contempt for some commenters here. I do. It’s not all inclusive, my tent isn’t that big. My contempt is not free, it must be earned. But once earned, I am quite free and liberal with it. It’s even possible to earn my contempt in absentia. One need only provide a trusted character witness, such as PZ. If the old hammer flinger says poopyhead is a doofus I’ll believe him. Contempt granted.
Enough of that bullshit.
Given some of the other discussions in the thread I’m a little nervous about my next request.
In the last couple years my interest in history has skyrocketed. My gaze has shifted to the motherland of Africa. I have just recently finished reading
“Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa,” by Jason Stearns.
and
“King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa,” by Adam Hochschild.
I’m now working my way through “The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence,” by Martin Meredith.
I’ve done my homework and my reading list has several more titles on it. But I’m wondering if any Pharyngulites have suggestions or favorites. I’d be especially interested in sub-Saharan, pre-colonial history. I’d love to read more about the Asante, the Bunyoro, the Buganda, etc.
By the time the great European land grab in Africa was over, some 10,000 African polities had been amalgamated under colonial rule. I wanna know about ‘em!
I’m a bit handicapped since I can only read English. Ideas anyone?
No. Every time your fingers hit the keyboard you spew racist shit.
How can you call him a racist when he just posted his top-ten list of favorite negroes?
oldmrbear,
My response has a specific content and can reliably be parsed to understand that content. It is therefore meaningful.
Ignoring people is substantively less meaningful — since it carries less information — than telling them they are promoting sexism.
You mean you get to continue promoting sexism while not being challenged for it, because other people are tired of your bullshit. I’m sure that does seem better for you. It is not better for others.
No.
It is useful to add one more voice making it clear that he is not welcome. You can do this with very few keystrokes: “fuck off bob”. The cost to you is very, very low. It is actually lower cost than all the energy you have spent trying to justify your pathetic reactance.
Your reactance does not make you special, or brave. It is entirely predictable.
And my choice is to continue pointing out that you are helping to make the world more sexist.
That is okay. Again, the cost to you is very low. And you would also be signaling to others that you did not intend to help comradebob, the way you did by attacking his critics. This would be beneficial to you.
These are pathetic excuses for making the world more sexist. Just pick up your share of the work. Do the dishes and tell bob to fuck off.
You demonstrated throughout the earlier argument that you do not care how your attacking Caine and rowanvt’s sister-in-law contributed to sexism.
Actually this is incorrect. Everyone who observes a person can learn what that person cares about. It is not inaccessible information. You act upon it. I will judge you on the information you make available. I have no obligation to you to judge you on the terms you prefer.
If you want to be judged differently, you have an option that will encourage a better judgment. Tell bob to fuck off.
Note well: I am not simply talking to you and I do not have to meet your standards. I am talking to every other reader in this thread; they have the intellectual capacity to recognize the same evidence I’ve recognized, and to adjust my words in their own heads to precisely what they’d have said, so far as I am generally in agreement with them.
What I say about you may indeed be all about you, but it’s not all for you. And I’m not concerned about whether you agree that you’re indifferent to sexism. It would be a nice bonus if you did have such a moment of realization, and I’d be glad for you, but it’s not why I’m talking.
You can’t make other people forget that you were haranguing women for standing up to a sexist commenter.
You are protecting a sexist by refusing to judge whether he is a sexist while criticizing the people who criticized the sexist.
You are contributing to sexism by failing to pick up your part of the work.
Do the dishes and tell bob to fuck off.
StevoR, you never addressed my question in the last Thunderdome (or if you did, I couldn’t find it):
And I’ll add to this that I think that your problem (the one making people pile on you like this) is not with acknowledging that you can be unconsciously racist (we all can and are and do, obviously, as you say), but with acknowledging that you are being unconsciously racist at any particular time with any particular comment. As you say, you have unconscious biases that need to be examined (as we all do) and the problem is that when you say things that reveal the existence of those biases, and people point it out, you refuse to examine them.
Others have suggested that it’s ego preventing you from doing so. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but something is definitely stopping you from taking a good look at the stuff you’re saying and how it looks from over here.
And really, listing some famous black people you like is really not going to make you come off any better. It sounds exactly the fucking same as “I’ve got black friends” or “I’m not racist, I let black people use my toilet!”
oldmrbear –
Just a thought. If you refuse to address anything comradebob says, maybe you should extend that to not addressing other people’s replies to things he says as any comments you make on things people say in reply to comradebob will necessarily be missing half the context and almost certainly be completely unhelpful, if not directly harmful, to the discussion, such as it is.
It’s a bit like babbling at people who are on the phone when your only clue to what they’re talking about is the half of the conversation you can hear. Except it’s worse, because you COULD see both sides of the conversation, but you’re refusing to, while apparently still stubbornly maintaining your right (in the sense of “state of being justified in doing something” rather than “legal right”) to comment on and judge the half you are reading.
Also, oldmrbear,
I’m not asking you to engage in discourse with him. A monologue would be fine.
oldmrbear, I don’t think anybody imagines that comradeslimyrevoltingbob will choose to think or become less slimy or revolting as a result of people addressing him here. But as so often, the point is not necessarily the troll being addressed; it’s the fact that this blog gets extremely high numbers of readers – and it’s valuable both for them and for all of us to make this clearly and explicitly an anti-sexist, anti-homophobic and anti-racist environment. Which is why, yes, there is always value in telling PoS like comradetrollbob to fuck off – or equivalent expression of your choice.
@ old thunderdome’s 748.John Morales – 29th January 2013 at 4:08 am (UTC -6) :
Of course not. Simply that we should judge comments by what is said – their content – rather than focus on who wrote them. Which shouldn’t usually really be that relevant.
***
@763. vaiyt :
Deal with them how?
I’m not claiming that.
You think we’re not also doing that? What do you do when the terrorists ignore the example you’re setting and the good you are doing and are trying to attack innocent civilians in your nations regardless of that good example?
Did I ever say that I think we should treat Muslim immigrants like crap? I don’t think so and it isn’t what I’m advocating at all.
***
@903. theophontes (坏蛋)
Well thanks but when I checked it myself on that link it actually said : HP Lovecraft (twice on different texts) and then Kurt Vonnegut using my comments here, then I Edgar Allen Poe when I cut’n’pasted an article I once wrote about the multiple star Alpha Crucis and Arthur Clarke (I presume they left out the middle C) when I used part of a SF short story I’m working on. Nice!
I then put in a quote from Isaac Asimov and it said he wrote like JD Salinger and a quote from John Glenn, first American to orbit Earth and former presidential candidate ( a rhyme he came up with on page 533 of his 1999 Memoir co-written with Nick Taylor and he apparently wrote like Rudyard Kipling. Albert Einstein going by some cut’n’pasted quotes writes like Kurt Vonnegut too. Good fun.
So, umm, what text of mine did you use?
@100. la tricoteuse
Okay. Read that & I’m working on it now. May have an answer for you in an hour or two or tommorrow my time or the day after depending on how things go for me.
@old td 880. comradebob – 29th of January 2013 at 10:50 pm :
Actually I’m fairly sure that only applies to Euclidean geometry and other forms eg. Riemaniann & Bolyai-Lobachevskian geometry exist where that equation does not in fact follow.
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry#Creation_of_non-Euclidean_geometry
Think # old td 891. athyco (29 January 2013 at 11:08 pm – http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-549304 ) may have made the exact same point already but still.
@@100. la tricoteuse : Still thinking on it. May have to get back to ’bout that you tomorrow or day after my time. Will attempt to do so.
Argh. That’s
May have to get back to you ’bout that tomorrow.
Which may give you an idea about why. Getting late for me here.
@StevoR, horrible human being
Sorry, can’t hear your backpedalling over your cries of “IF YOU DON’T APPROVE OF INVADING
the Middle EastMORDOR THEN YOU WANT TO DO NOTHING AND LET THEMuslimsArabsJihadistsORCS KILL US IN OUR SLEEP”.This is completely irrelevant, but I keep getting this song in my head thanks to this thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APMdeQFCGMQ
One does not simply walk into the Middle East. Its black gates are guarded by more than just Muslims. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Non-Westerner is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly.
Nobody is obliged to judge you based on what you believe your views are. You, like everyone else, are judged by what you say.
Skimming the StevoR thread, I count nine people saying you should already have been banned, and one more saying you should leave. These people outnumber those who say you should not be banned. The general sentiment is evident; because of the things you have said, more people want you gone than want you to stay. (Indeed, I don’t see anyone who actually wants you to stay, in the sense that they would miss you if you left. It is evident that you would not be missed.)
We would have one fewer racist to deal with. If you leave or are banned, this would send a stronger signal that racism is not tolerated at Pharyngula. And it is unpleasant for some, triggering for others, to have to interact with racists. Therefore, it would be good for our stress levels, good for our health, to have one fewer racist showing up here every Australian evening.
CR:
It is wise to beware the Afārīt.
StevoR says
StevoR says
@StevoR:
Holy fuck, shut the fuck up. You’re making it worse!
“I’m not a racist, here’s the standard white racist’s list of 10 black people that I admire! And look, four Muslims! I’m not a racist! Why don’t you believe me?!”
Just shut up and stop. You’re. Not. Helping.
cr 110:
*heart*
A white nationalist at Stormfront, on page 10 of the “Phil Anselmo from Pantera says white power” thread, says
“Let Them Eat Carbon: The Price of Failing Climate Change Policies, and How Governments and Big Business Profit From Them” By Matthew Sinclair.
Has anyone read this book? The guy who wrote is coming to be part of a debate about whether or not taxes and stuff are good (he is, obviously, anti-tax). I’m just wondering if anyone knows how stupid this particular book is/if anything in it is particularly outstandingly stupid.
@ StevoR
Actually, I was referring to content not style.
@ SGBM
Perhaps, like Verwoerd, he holds to a version of racism that trumpets “good neighbourliness” between the races (provided they remain ever seperate)? One can respect the other for living up to certain shared ideals, even if they are so very different in all other matters.
Alternatively, that it is too late in the day to tackle MLK. He is too universally acknowledged as a pivotal leader. So instead, praise him all the more to say how much those following after have been depreciated/corrupted since. All within their “nature”, no doubt.
Having paid no attention to the spectacle surrounding SteveR, I still wanted to give an unqualified reply to the certainly intriguing idea of beating up people who are already prostrated, as demanded by Jesus Fringe Logic. Why again should SteveR go against comradebob? He’s served officially and what’s the point of dealing with uninteresting troll being uninteresting? Other than that, some people think it lame of joing a winning team and would rather rally for the underdog, unless they actually stand in for something appalling. SteveR might not be a master rhetorician, and might have made the tactical mistake of pulling a variation of the some of my best friends are X argument. But that is what people often do when they somehow have to conjure up “proof” that they don’t subscribe to certain views. This argument is simply moot. He could be racist, or could be not. Anyone can certainly compile a list of his top ten americans of irish descent, his top ten japanese professional knitters of whatever it is. In my case, before I make up my mind whether someone is a racist or sexist I have to clearly see it (paying attention and all that). Some of the vocal commenters have shown impaired judgement skills already, and have demonstrated quite eccentric views on what makes an ad hominem, which is an example of an ad hominem argument (and they aren’t always invalid).
Could be either of those, and the second option might be implied by the parenthetical. I didn’t look further to see exactly what the rest of that guy’s views are.
OTOH you might be overthinking it and assuming a framework which isn’t there. Take it at face value and there’s nothing extraordinary or unbelievable there: he might just dislike black people generally while feeling a positive affect for MLK, for the reasons he states.
@ SGBM
True, but it does have an air of familiarity about it. Like the bad old days in SA.
Eg:
[q]”See, ou ..er.. SG, MLK/’Merkin Blacks are cool. So I’m not racist right! So the problem must lie with the bleks.”[/q]
theophontes,
Sure, but some of those instances could also be racist feeling without intellectual framework. A couple of notes. I’ve had another look and the commenter was 17 at the time, so probably not very sophisticated. Also this is Stormfront we’re talking about; the standard party line is that MLK was a bad person who has been propped up by liberal and/or Jewish lies.
+++++
Eulenspiegel,
since you have confused one commenter for another, I’ll politely ignore your statements which depend on that conflation.
bob does stand for several appalling things. Did you neglect his sexual harassment of Janine?
Are you are referring to yourself?
My views on the ad hominem fallacy are standard and cited. Do you wish to dispute the fact that it is of the form “Person A makes claim X; Person B makes an attack on person A; Therefore A’s claim is false”?
That may very well be. I deemed it boring and didn’t pay attention to what was going on there. And that’s about it. I won’t go back to the older thread to read a boring troll being boring when the verdict already hit the street—just because to meet your idiotic power play. Get the idea out of your head that people who happen to disagree with you (individually, on different matters!) somehow conspire against you. I am making a sailor’s knot to really run home the point: I am in no way affiliated in any shape or form with some other poster, including but not limited to “bob” and explicitly do not endorse whatever they have written somewhere, even if they make the extraordinary claim that the sky could be considerd blue sometimes. Also entertain the possiblity that non-jugdemental people do exist who are completely fine with either having no clear opinion on something (like due to having paid no attention, admit of having no clue etc), or consider multiple options valid enough.
***
Regarding the Ad Hominem. I provided you a link, which you forgivable overlooked due to my habit of borrowing some wit from other people’s writing. I also see that it sometimes sucks to just dump a wall of text as “required reading” on someone else. The key point is that not the attack makes the person’s claim invalid, but implication that a personal characteristic (which is pointed out) does. You can attack a person’s ethos and that may render their argument invalid, but in most other cases it is a fallacy. For example: PZ Myers is a biologist. His opinions on history don’t count. An insult can be an ad hominem fallacy, but likely isn’t one, because me saying that you’re feigning intelligence cannot be considered a fact, thus trying to hinge some other claim on it isn’t even logic.
Does the fact that I am highly amused by this photo make me a terrible person?
Edit/Addendum: Before someone misunderstand this. “That may very well be.” was targeted at the second sentence of him harrassing someone else. Other than that, better don’t try to trick me with your silly Mu questions.
Owlglass, not that it should mean anything to you but I deem you to be rather boring and beneath my notice.
Notice that it is a self-reporting study (kinda understandable since sitting at the bedposts counting is kinda ifyy). Now.. Could there possibly be a reason women with perfect-housewife-fantasies over-reports sexual activities..?
WMDKitty
Yes, you assume to know what’s good and better for them than those people themselves
Fuck you do, see above. You haven’t made an argument (for lack of better word) that actually applies to people seeking IVF alone. Your “arguments” apply to all people who choose to have children, yet youR’e singling out a group of people suffering from a medical condition and demonize them.
Here’s some news: All people who can competently handle contraception and have access to abortion have children for totally selfish reasons. They don’t do it for the sake of humanity.
Now, who died and made you the arbiter of how much selfishness and hedonism is OK? And since we’re at it, how much medical treatment is ok? Medication to prevent blood-clotting? Treatment to avoid first trimester miscarriages? A cerclage? Hormone treatment? Sperm donation?
“Obvious for any rational person”. Again, you’re fucking arrogant and condescending because you are judging their lives from the outside.
The problems with the public perception of adoption are one thing, only that you choose to let all your hatred fly towards one grooup.
You’re also arrogantly presupposing that all people seeking IVF live in the USA or that there are plenty of children up for adoption everywhere.
Wow, I guess I’m a total asshole by having those children of mine. I mean, OK, I didn’t need medical assistance but still I chose to have them instead of a foster kid. And so is every parent here on Pharyngula and elsewhere.
Do you go around telling that people, every parent? Do you walk up to every pregnant woman and tell her what a selfish asshole she is for not adopting? Or is it only people who are already suffering who get your condescending condemnation?
Well, I believe that it hurts. But why would you want to be adopted by selfish assholes? Here’s a hint: you can’t demand that people love other people.
And here’s a question: Why don’t you actually take it up with people who produce children they then don’t care for? Or a system that doesn’t give parents who struggle and would like to be loving parents any support so their children end up in the foster system?
No, apparently being biologically capable of having children eeven though you can’t fucking care for them is OK, but seeking medical treatment is a crime against humanity.
Wanna-breed?
You’re fucking dehumanizing people who suffer from a medical condition. And yes, here’s some sad news for you: You don’t have a right to be loved and cared for by total strangers who have fuck all to do with your existence. So, what about their emotional and mental health? What about the emotional and mental trauma of having your body fail yo and fail you and fail you again and people denying you medical care for the benefit of somebody else? Guess that doesn’t count, they’re just wanna-breeders anyway, not actually people.
You should shut the fuck up about ableism given that your whole argument is based on the demonization of people with a medical condition.
And I guess it’s only white people choosing IVF. Or is it OK if they’re people of colour?
And yeah, maybe part of their plan for having children is that they want to see them grow up, that they want to witness their first steps, hear their first words. Being a parent is a fucking investment. It’s not something we owe society. The reason for having children is that people expect to get something back that justifies their investment. So they actually do get to define their conditions under which they want to become parents.
Yep, racism is a problem. Go fix it.
Ableism is a problem, but who the fuck are you deciding for people what they can and can’t bear as parents? Do you picket abortion clinics where women go to abort disabled fetuses?
Yes, I know, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a healthy, able-bodied and neurotypical child if you have one yourself, but that’s a risk as opposed to a guarantee.
Is that fair to the children? Fuck no. But it’s not the fault and responsibility of people whose only fault it is to suffer from a medical condition themselves.
Because no, actually children don’t have a right to a loving permanent family. All children deserve a loving family and should have one, but that is foremost the job of the family that brought that child into the world. The moment you demand that people love somebody, that somebody has a right to be loved, you’ve lost it. Yes, that’s even true when talking about children.
And no, this is not the first and not the only time you’ve done this. You left your condescention and arrogance all over the place over at Almost Diamonds where you felt the need to discuss if women should be allowed to have birth induced at 6-7 months.
You left your arrogance and condescention all over the place when you claimed that alcoholism isn’t a disease and that people could just stop if they weren’t assholes while I was actually fearing for the life of my alcoholic mother.
You left your arrogance and condescention all over the place when you claimed that people from a minority had no right to label the majority when Katenrala was discussiong the term sexual/sexual person.
oldmrbear @96:
If you’re thinking includes me because I had no interest in discussing with you the details of taking 8th graders to Six Flags, then stop it. I enjoy my memories of those trips. In no way do I have similar enjoyment of you. I found no impulse to change my experience of you through only a facile question about chaperone/student ratios. Now that you state that such silence indicates a better world, I cannot let you continue in ignorance. You made the decision to call a woman a misanthrope in a conversation started by a sexist ass, to adjust quotes by adding the word “despicable” in front of “vagina gremlins” so that you could make a cute acronym (DVG). You had made the decision to ignore the beginning sexist statement. You now handwave away your ability to have any impact writing against it. You then say
and expect to change the subject to your reading list. No.
oldmrbear, do the dishes and tell bob to fuck off.
*sorrow* I have abused a pronoun.
“If your thinking includes me…”
*cuddling you’re and promising proofreading penance*
I was just on the main page and for a moment there I thought I’d stumbled into how to become a “professional victim”….o.O tilts head….
There was an banner ad from a local college advertising in big letters a 1 year program in Victimology.
http://www2.algonquincollege.com/ppsi/program/victimology/
Apparently its a real program they offer, albeit in victims rights and services not on how to be a victim. Just caught me off guard and I had to share it somewhere….
This one for me.
Responding to old posts. I should be debugging silicon…
———–
consciousness razor here:
Because misopedia and racism both dislike a certain group of people simply because of the way they naturally are. But of the two I mentioned above, misopedia is more similar to ableism.
Sure it’s possible, the same way it’s possible that I am wrong with my claims that racist/ableist mindsets are not okay.
What does this have to do with anything unless you want to go from one fallacy (ad hominem) to another (circular reasoning) in arguing that my claim (misopedia being not okay) is awful?
—————————-
strange gods here:
I agree with the differences you outlined. Which is also why I can see how misopedia can be a form of misanthropy, since like you said everyone can identify with children because everyone has been a child.
And why is everyone avoiding the term misopedia/misopedist? Are those not accurate/appropriate terms given the subject? If a person is racist, does it make it sound more okay if I say that the person “dislikes black people”?
Still ad hominem. When one is judging whether misopedia is okay or not, why is it at all relevant what a “sexist conservative Christian” feels about the subject? I also think ableism is wrong. Should others be mindful about my views (that of a conservative Christian) on ableism before forming their own views on the subject?
I could do that to support my pro-life views, but it would be completely ineffective since the obvious difficulty is that most here don’t agree with the premise that fetuses are also persons. So even if I do think there is a link between abortion and misopedia considering that I feel both involve human persons, abortion advocates should completely disregard and sever any such link since fetuses are not to be considered persons like children. So to the abortion advocate, any conservative Christian’s opinion on misopedia should be completely irrelevant. Therefore, you’re still committing ad hominem precisely because of your views on abortion.
Besides, I already mentioned to Janine that I’d rather to tune my arguments to promote my anti-ableist views. People here still think that disabled persons are persons, right? That’s why the comparison between misopedia and ableism is much more apt. And it should be obvious that I think the mindsets of misopedia and ableism are both not okay.
You should already expect what I’m going to do with the above sentences. In place of “children” substitute any other group of people who share some natural characteristics, such as “women”, “black people”, “Arabs”, or “the mentally disabled”. So as long as there is no mistreatment, then would any mindset that despises women, black people, Arabs, or the mentally disabled for being what they naturally are be “always okay”? I say no, it is not okay and that we should do our best to correct those mindsets.
And here is the crux of the issue. Because you feel that it is sexist to shame women to feel badly about not wanting to have children, you would go so far as to justify misopedia (as long as their is no “mistreatment”). But here is your error: not wanting children != misopedia.
It may be considered okay for a pregnant woman to wish that her child isn’t born with a disability, but that doesn’t necessarily make such a woman an ableist nor should that justify an ableist mindset. It may be considered okay for a white woman to adamantly prefer the adoption of a white child, but that doesn’t necessarily make such a woman a racist nor should that justify a racist mindset. And likewise, it may be considered okay for a woman to not want any children but that doesn’t necessarily mean such a woman detests children nor should that justify a misopedist mindset.
The point is this. The disliking/despisement/hatred of ANY group of people simply for being what they naturally are is not okay and people should do their best to correct their innate prejudices if they may have them. I thought everyone here would agree with this.
——————
Now back to lab…
Janine – you just know he was thinking “look, I have a cool black friend!”
I want to know who thought it was a good idea; let’s have Kenny G open for Miles Davis.
At least in the case of the Jimi Hendrix Experience opening for The Monkees (an other unlikely pairing), Peter Tork and Jimi Hendrix were friends from their Greenwich Village days and Tork was doing a favor for a friend just before Hendrix’s career took off.
IT IS Sexist to shame women for not wanting to have children.
Bullshit
Actually, unlike “women”, “black people” and “Arabs” children DO have significant differences from non-children. Your claim itself is fucking racist and sexist as you compare the real differences between adults and children to imaginary ones between black and white people or men and women.
And no, not everybody has to be able to permanently deal with the special needs of disabled people. Since we seem to be able to manage that as a society the responsible thing to do for people who can’t deal with that is to remove themselves from the situation.
Well, I guess it would be a nice world in which the actual bigots just removed themselves from the company of those they hate instead of trying to keep them out…
So… am I a misandrist then because it takes me a long time to be not-nervous around a man? Because typically within the first 6 months I won’t be in a room alone with him? Because typically within the first year I won’t be in a car alone with him?
How about when you learn I was stalked when I was 17? And basically stalked again when I was 19/20 by a guy who tried to break up my engagement and french kissed me without my permission? And then followed/chased by a man through downtown at 1 in the morning when I was 21?
Jen McCreight just wrote a post about how she has gotten tired of meta commentary in the skeptic blogosphere. She says that she will not be taking part in this and instead will be just writing about comments she cares about.
(I cannot blame her. As infuriating as all of this bullshit is, it is also boring as hell. As provocative as the pit thinks it is, it really is a rather dull place.)
The second comment is by a slymie, going off how skeptical dialogue is needed because of how uneducated the general public is.
*sigh*
Glenn Beck’s idea of “really nice guys”.
Branch Davidians
Rowanvt, if you’re a misandrist for those reasons, I’ll join you in the corner. We’ll have tea. I won’t be alone in any room in any building with a man I don’t know. Won’t be in a car with one. Won’t be in any sort of enclosed space with one. Nope.
I was stalked when I was a *child*. I was 10. One night, I heard scratching on one of my bedroom windows, thought it was my cat. Nope, very large large man in the dirt, between bushes, trying to get into my room. Dude ran when I screamed, cops didn’t do anything. A week later, I thought I heard something suspicious during a windstorm at night. Next morning, went around the side of the house, there was our chaise lounge outside my other bedroom window. Someone had been sleeping there. And so forth. I’m willing to bet my stalker just looooooved children.
Caine, I can’t even imagine… >_<
Cops also did nothing with my first stalker. The (male) cop who came by said that because I hid in a closet instead of calling the cops immediately when the guy tried to break in, that he wasn't going to check for prints or anything because how was he to know I didn't simply have an argument with my boyfriend.
Rowanvt, that is so wrong in so many ways.
Giliell:
I have one very simple thing to say about all this stuff: ideally, every child should be wanted. Now, that’s not what’s going on, obviously, but it would be nice. Given that, if people don’t want to adopt, they should not, for the obvious reasons.
I was an unwanted child who was kept. All I have to say about that, in short form is: absolute fucking nightmare of a horror show. All you regulars know the details. Unfortunately, there are no magick formulas or standards on this particular subject. And yes, this is aimed at WMDKitty, not you, Giliell. I’m just not going to get into this in the lounge.
Rowanvt:
:near fatal eyeroll: And morons like oldmrbear wonder why we have such an issue with toxic, systemic sexism.
Somehow the anti-choice fuckwits appear to ignore medical ethics during the birthing process. Which shows their lack of ethical/moral thinking….no wonder they can never make their points.
Nerd, are you in the right thread?
joey,
Do you? Then why do this:
?
You don’t feel that it is sexist to shame women for not wanting to have children or not wanting to be around children?
Ack! Mistake! Apologies for any disruption other than laughter my way.
The Thunderdome cannot be derailed!
By definition.
I’m going to ignore the raging sexism and argue against the motivation for the comment.
Last I checked, we’re weren’t having a problem with women having too few children. So even if it wasn’t ragingly sexist to ‘shame women’ for choosing to not have children (it is), there is no rational motivation to do so as too few children isn’t a social problem that needs correcting right now.
I still fail to see how it is “problematic” and “not okay” that some childfree women dislike the company of children.
The historical record of the human ability and facility to “other” groups to which they themselves once belonged, or in even still belong to, is long and glorious.
All derails lead to Thunderdome!
…even if it was, you can’t force anyone to have kids.
Nightjar:
We’re defying our “nature”.
It’s true: women aren’t really people until they pop out their first crotch gremlin.
Caine,
Of course! I can tell there’s something very wrong with me by the looks I get when I don’t show interest or excitement about the possibility of holding someone’s baby (I like interacting with older kids and teenagers, but I don’t care much for babies and toddlers).
And just when I thought WMDKitty couldn’t possible be any more contemptible, she drops this turd at Greta’s:
Gosh. I guess that leaves me and a whole lot of other bisexual women out in the cold, given that open or poly relationships are our idea. Nah, couldn’t be, right?
Christ.
Caine, yet again the impossible woman.
Janine:
It is my fate. Now which gods do I curse?
But in a good way… ;-)
The closest available deity.
Just hang on the line. One will be free shortly.
I meant to mention this aeons ago. Prince Charles warned us:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2004/may/17/architecture.regeneration
:-)
*your prayer is important to us. Please wait for the next available deity, no matter how imaginary. Meanwhile, enjoy the infomercials from the priests*
Jesus Jumped Up Fucking Christ. That’s it, WMDKitty is in the killfile, to stay.
I posted a link to Greta’s post on my local poly message group (before WMDKitty’s comment); it’ll be interesting to see if any of the many happy healthy poly people here jump in.
So, if the Thunderdome can’t be derailed, is it ok if I post a random rant? Because this is really eating at me, and this is a crowd that’s likely to have a reaction similar to mine.
The pharmacy I go to is deeply steeped in woo. I’ve overlooked it so far because it’s so convenient to where I live and I like to support local businesses and they stock some good convenience food. But today I was waiting near their mini book store, and in addition to the sketchy-looking diet books and other items of questionable utility, they had two books, with two copies each, by Andrew fucking Wakefield. One of them he co-wrote with Jenny McCarthy. They are earning money for child-killers.
I haven’t switched pharmacies yet because the middle of a major depressive episode is not a good time to take on confrontation and figure out logistics. But I’ve started composing the e-mail I’m going to send when I feel up to it. And I feel pretty shitty about having given them so much money over the years.
Gah. Andrew Wakefield. So much rage.
Huh. I’m a narcissist wanna-breed and I’m ruining bisexuality.
Always nice to show up after the fact and get a two-fer. ::pats self on back::
The Janine RPG
How do you answer?
1) Deadpan: Obviously.
2) Sarcastic: I am deeply grateful that Her Serene Highness lowered herself to let me know.
3) Critical: Why should I care. You are “someone on the internet” so far, and who is antagonizing whom is merely a matter of perspective.
4) Sympathetical: I am sorry to have made the appearance that I don’t care about your feelings.
5) Friendly: We had a rough start. Perhaps it’s not the best idea to always assume the worst of other people.
——————-
You:
:D
burgundy:
Commisertions for you depressive episode and welcome to the Land of Random Rants!
–
I get a headache (not always literally) when I drop into the nearest (50 miles) ‘health food’ store to me. Lots o’ woo lit and overpriced miscellany to wade through for an item or two I can’t find in the regular supermarkets.
–
Wakefield*, bah!
–
*Which reminds me…
————————– *Paging Martin Wagner, paging Martin Wagner!*——————–
~mumbles to self~ “He was here the other day…” *shrugs*
I was just wondering if Wakefield is still polluting Austin with his presence …or if he’s moved on to say…Hollywood?
On the subject of a woman’s nature, how we’re supposed to be all focused on the mighty task of breeding and lovin’ the babies (emphasis mine):
From Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice, by Jack Holland.
Ahh! I don’t even have one and there is no way I’m reading further into that last paragraph than “hooked forceps.”
MM:
Welcome to the club! How about we go on a spree and utterly destroy bisexuality together?
Perhaps I could help?
Dysomniak:
It makes the practice of cutting the clitoris off with scissors seem tame by comparison. I felt quite ill reading that, and even worse at the idea of it happening to children, even though I’m one of those dislikers of vagina gremlins.
Oh HELL NO.
bluentx, I didn’t realize he lived in Austin. So I checked google to see if there’s some connection between him and this pharmacy. And he has been on their radio show. Which airs on a Christian station.
…..
I just refilled all my meds today, so I have a month to get things in order. This is disgusting. I never want to go in there again.
And the shitbag plops in just to be a creep. Again.
Shitbag improved:
You can decrease?
Comradefuckwit – you and your need to be a creep can keep their distance from me. I have no use for such a disgusting, loathsome piece of shit as you. No one out in here in reality does.
Name-calling is a micro-offense. There are limits to the acceptable bounds of behavior within Thunderdome. Now, let’s try again: Hi Janine, how was your day?
There is no offense in the Thunderdome shithead. If you have something to say, say it. If all you have is insults, look in the mirror and say them to yourself. You might think they are funny. Anybody above poop jokes thinks otherwise.
@ comradebob
Stalking Janine again you pathetic creep. Its getting about time we had yuo surgically removed with a banhammer.
And how about you answer my question while you are still here: Comradebob, are you a whenwe?
you
Theophontes:
Stalking me and MM this time around.
Shitbag improved:
The license terms that threat model. Now back to its health or Jeanine.
Sorry,burgundy! Didn’t mean to add another straw. :(
I read , a year or so ago maybe, that he (Who Shall Not Be Named Without Spitting) was in Austin and haven’t seen anything lately.
You’re in Austin? (If you want to say.)
Caine, the shitbag is doing it to MM, you and me.
Sadly, it seems that in my case, it is a given.
Janine:
Yes, I’m afraid so. Well, I’ll do my bit of the dishes:
Hey, comradefuckwit! Do all living things the favour of fucking yourself right off a tall cliff. Ta.
@ Giliell
Some comments about adoption:
In South Africa, there are many children who have become orphans through AIDS, accident or abandonment. A problem with adoption (in the traditional sense) is the high cost of adopting (another) child. The solution, in some communities,is that the communities take a shared responsibility for the children. They move from family to family in rotation. This means that each family has the time and resources to give the orphans the love and care they need. The orphans, in turn become a social glue in the community. They have many brothers and sisters and parents and are never alone. They help to increase communication and bonding within the community and so become very valued members thereof.
According to the pffft, Wakefield is in the Austin area:
bluentx, no worries! I’m not losing sleep about this or anything, I’m just angry and appalled. And yes, I do live in Austin. (And for anyone else in Austin, I’m talking about People’s Pharmacy.)
comradebob: You are really creepy and disturbing. You show a profound lack of interest in other people’s boundaries and comfort levels. Stop. Stop now.
Thanks Caine. Just hadn’t checked up on him lately.
Me, my day was very pleasant and involved quite a bit of driving. Thanks for asking! Somehow my thoughts were focused on a project to benefit my community and not Janine. Perhaps this is because I had cable TeeVee in my hotel room and watched network news, quite possibly receiving programming from those who seek to control us, distracting me. It is hard to know for sure. It may be a Sarah Connor thing. But it is pleasant to now be able to chat about evolution and Geometry theories on Thunderdome with all of the pleasant people.
burgundy:
I’m a couple of hours NW of you.Lived in A. 1980-1998.
I tune in to KLBJ-AM from time to time (glutton for punishment I guess). I know it”s time to change the channel when I start yelling at the right-winger drivel and the other drivers are lookin’ at me funny. And unfortunately one of the biggest sponsors of those shows is People’s Pharmacy.
Shitbag improved:
The stations are available at present. Thank you and thank you for your question. Name of the project to the local community and Emma. I will try just toasting, new program (s), and the idea of hotel-room cable TeeVe can be difficult. Is a good idea, but I think the good news is the good and the bad: live volutiv sprintcup reverse geometry.
….fuck apache2.
why y no have useful errorlog?
Caine
Do I get to destroy bisexuality too? I’m currently monogamous, but I am bi, and L is seeing someone else; that almost counts, right?
Creeperbob
You continue to amaze me; every time I think you’ve reached the depths of slimy assholery, you break out a drill. My advice to you is to fuck off out of here, turn off your computer, and never go online again. Ideally you’d also never inflict yourself on anyone in meatspace either, but that’s probably too much to ask. No one likes you, no one wants you here, and no one’s going to to anything but insult you until PZ finally brings the banhammer down. (Speaking of which, PZ, when are you going to ban this asshole already? He’s not just boring, he’s also actively engaging in sexual harassment. What’s it take to get someone kicked out these days?)
Dalillama:
Did you see The Overlord’s red letter comments above?
@ Dalillama
I suspect we might be left to our own devices here. Perhaps we can come up with a standardised response, that notes the trollery, the multiple stalking and the asshattery and use only that. It appears the troll only seeks interactive attention.
Dalillama:
Oh yes. By all means, join the party of destruction. Being poly is a plus. We shall destroy bisexuality and force everyone to bow down to arbitrarily drawn normative values. Oh my yes.
TL;DR: We vogon hir outa here.
Blue:
While PZ may never be far from his banhammer, he’s not yet prepared to swing it. I expect the tipping point isn’t known as of yet. Might be a while.
Someone here needs to add some content. I guess that has to be me. Check this out:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.html
Jared Diamond again proves that it makes excellent financial sense to make zero scientific sense.
blueintx
I did. I specifically saw the part that said :
I’m curious how close creeperbob is to those limits, given that the direct, personal sexual harassment he’s been performing isn’t, AFAICT, standard even for the trolls that get locked in here.
Theophontes
But it won’t shut the fuck up, even if no-one’s interacting with it. In that case, it’ll jsut go back to random screeds and sexual harassment (although to be honest I can’t really tell the difference between screeds that are allegedly in response to something and the ones that are spontaneus.).
Caine
Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘being poly’; I’m currently involved with only one person, but our relationship is an open one, and there remains the possibility that that that will not always be the case, and as I noted, he’s seeing someone else, so our relationship is definitely poly. Anyway, hi yo arbitrarily drawn values, AWAY!!
Dalillama, I tend to think of people in a poly relationship as poly; that’s probably a bad and sloppy habit I should lose. I think that way because of the openness of mind of those in poly relationships.
NNSFW
Stars and
stripes…strips… Tentacles!Lili Loveless
Ben Kingsley
Caine,
I tend not to think of people as poly at all; I’m genereally in the habit of defining relationghips as poly vs monogamous. I won’t say that I’m absolutely in the right to do so, but I’m not at all certain that it’s the same kind of immutable personal characteristic that,say, bisexuality is.
Dalillama:
I’d say your line of thought is more right than mine, as I said, habitual and sloppy thinking on my part. I do not think being willing to be in poly relationships is an immutable trait like sexual orientation, however, I think it is a trait of some sort, given that it’s not the social norm these days. I’ll have to think about this some, I’m not being terribly clear in trying to translate my thoughts on the matter. My pain meds have kicked in, making thinking difficult at best for the moment.
I know some people who say they have an innate poly orientation, and that they could not ever be happy in a monogamous relationship. I don’t think that’s the case for me, but I would describe myself as poly even if I were currently single, because that describes the type of relationship I want and my philosophical approach to relationships in general. For a long time, that wasn’t the case – I was perfectly happy to date people who were poly, but I wasn’t seeing anyone else and didn’t identify as poly because it wasn’t something I was actively interested in pursuing.
I don’t think a characteristic has to be immutable for it to be an adjective applied to people – religion, political identification, weight, ability level, all of these can change for a person. Ten years ago, I would have said of myself “I am Jewish” rather than “I practice Judaism.” I think it’s one of those things that varies from person to person, and the trick is to be aware of the variation and sensitive to people’s preferences, rather than figuring out the one best way to describe it.
This is a dubious assertion.
How you judge things is then another matter entirely. Not all group attributes are false. For someone to be considered Arabian, they must have their origin in Arabia. Woman can bear children, men cannot. But what is the magic children sauce only children have? It seems that the children set is much more fuzzy than some others in your list.
Owlglass, lots of women can’t bear children, and some men can.
Call me a skeptic, and I love you guys and gals and others, but name a man who can bear children.
Voila
Didn’t know that human males can get pregnant, never heard of it. You are correct of course that not all woman can have children, and as we know from Gender Studies etc, that there is a lot more to say about this. Arabian is also a fuzzy set, just in case that didn’t came across (but in a different way, as what constitutes “Arabia” is completely made up). However, children aren’t much different, hence the link to Dawkins recent article.
I have reviewed the link and come to the conclusion that perhaps you should reconsider your opinion Burgundy. The concept of Men bearing children, in my opinion, is still in question. The scientific method is however, all inclusive, and calls upon all voices willing to participate, at least those on full tuition. If I were paid for grading your paper, it would rate a ‘B’.
Why the fuck should I reconsider anything, comradebob? Because you condescended to me? Really good evidence, that. And it’s not an “opinion.” It is a fact. They are men. They had babies. Are there any facts that you would like to dispute with other facts that are supported by evidence?
I had a really awful professor for my (required) management course in grad school. I got a B in that class (or maybe a B+, I don’t remember now.) I was not bothered in the least, because to get a higher grade I would have had to produce something more in line with his way of thinking, and that wasn’t something I could intellectually justify.
Now, why would I be reminded of that, do you think?
You guys, I made the horrible mistake of replying to Justin Vacula’s blog. You know, the one that argued for a reconciliation and asked for constructive ways to move the dialogue forward. So, I outlined some things that I think most A+ers (there must be a better way to say that) shared as a paradigm, such things as “words shape our reality” and “we sometimes have to give up our right to say something, in order to effectively communicate in a civil society.”
Welp, of course the entire conversation devolved into demands that I explain why calling someone a cunt is sexist. And then endlessly arguing that I’m wrong–that there is no apparatus of female oppression, or that we can just magically change the baggage some words mean, or I’m British so there!, or “I have the right to insult you!”
So. Fucking. Depressing.
A graduate student. Didn’t know. Sorry.
Cyranothe2nd, welcome to the club.
Good morning
Hi Burgundy.
Woo is deeeeeply ingrained into European standard medicine and pharmacies.
I become particularly angry when I ask for a medicatio against XYZ and they want to sell me homeopathy…
Theopontes
I never said I was against adoption, but the world’s a big place and situations are differnt in different countries (you might want to read what I’ve written in the Lounge about my personal experiences).
I take objection with claiming that it’s something that is possible and doable and good for everybody in spite of what those people themselves think and I take especially objection with going after a group of people who suffer from medical problems as the “bad guys” when they did nothing to cause the situation of the foster system in the USA. At least not more than anybody else by not demanding better policies.
owlglass
Yes, of course, the differences between a newborn and a 20 year old are just the same as those between an Egyptian and a Norwegian. And just like we have a clear continuum of development from a fucking zygote to an adult, we have a clear continuum of human races starting with something at the low end and something else at the upper end. That’s fucking racist.
But I guess it’s also part of a culture that denies that children aren’t just small adults and thinks that teenagers should be tried as adults in court.
+++
As somebody who really likes children in the general sense (I clearly don’t like ALL children, but I enjoy spending time with children) I’m am generally grateful for people who don’t like them to not look for their company and treat them like people if it can’t be avoided.
comradebob
fuck off
burgundy
I do too, honestly, and it may just be a knee-jerk thing for me to be kind of suspicious of claims that any given behavior is innate.
This is pretty much the case for me as well; at bottom, I fail to see any sense in saying “Person x and person y are in love. Person y and person z are in love. Persons y and z thus have to be unhappy and not act on their love” rather than ‘person x and person y are in love, person y and person z are in love, clearly person y should be involved with persons x and z.” It just never made any sense to me, so I decided not to bother with it.
This is why I prefer to use it as a descriptor for relationships rather than people. It solves that kind of labeling problem neatly.
This is a very good point.
…a Markov generator makes more sense than comradebob….
Poor comradebog.
(I certainly don’t get those people who heartily desire to be despised and abused)
Indeed, there is a lot wrong with what you wrote. Geographical longitudes have absolutely nothing to do with the age of people, southern doesn’t map to infant and northern doesn’t map to old people. As far as I know “Arabian” isn’t a race, and I only stated that Arabians must come from a place named Arabia (which is defined as such, through people having named a landmass). I see you want to express something with “low end” and “upper end” regarding age, and well. But, being better off doesn’t exactly scale with age either. And finally, it makes a lot of sense to create definitions for legal purposes and to enforce them, but that doesn’t mean these lines naturally exist. Someone had the idea that the age of 18 is considered adulthood in some countries, and that’s it.
Owlglass
Who the fuck talked about drawing age lines in the sand?
The fact that in a continuum we can’t actually draw a line between two neighbouring points and declare that there’s a fundamental difference between those two fucking points does not mean there isn’t a fundamental difference between two points that are at some difference from each other. There is no fundamental difference between somebody age 17 years 364 days and 18 years 0 days but there sure as hell is one between somebody age 8 and age 18.
opposablethumbs @ 103.
Thanks, I agree with you. I know I’m much too stubborn for my own good. It’s something I struggle with. When someone I don’t respect, or someone who hasn’t fully earned my respects demands I perform for them like an abused circus bear, I’m apt to get a bit prickly. Being a lifelong loner, I’m used to choosing my time and place. I hope not to be unduly influenced by others, without an opportunity to consider the issue for a while. And sometime a while will take a few days or weeks – I’m slow, and definitely a double digit dude. Not excusing myself exactly, but just sayin.
Someone else upstream suggested that I need not engage in a dialog with ComradeBob, that a monologue with myself would work. I appreciate being offered any face saving outmaneuvers. Unfortunately I just created more trouble for myself when I began to equate monologue with masturbation, mental. I found a work around though when I realized my many long years of practice and unquestioned skill at masturbating. The fact that I’m constantly talking to myself anyway will help. Maybe I can do this. I’ll just call it OMB’s soliloquy…
Yo, ComradeBob. I’m calling you out. Yeah you. I have it, from a man who has built up years of trust and respect, that you are a repulsive sexist, racist and a total poopyhead. You are not wanted around here. It’s time to pack up and leave. I haven’t been following you personally but I just did notice the way you treated Janine. Creepy and repulsive. Time to leave dude. I’m thinking that Ol PZ will be flinging the hammer when he wakes up. Perhaps that’s what you want. Just remember it will be a justified execution, not martyrdom.
This is the last you will hear from me. It appears to me that your entire purpose here is to yank chains and then fill out your bingo cards when people react. The more reaction you create, the more points you score. Profanities are a double bingo. I’m not going to be more filler for your cards.
Bug off.
athyco @ 129.
Sigh.. Regarding my cute little acronym. Please reread the original post (#78 in the previous incarnation of the T-Dome). I believe you will find the quotation to be something like “My own sister-in-law despises “vagina gremlins” and can’t stand to be around children.” It wasn’t necessary for me to adjust anything.
You mean crotch-fruit?
Heh. I recall one chap who used to call chicken eggs “bum-nuts”.
@ Giliell
Actually I agree with you.
Certainly not with WMDKitty (perhaps my example should have been addressed to hir). It shows that there are also other avenues open.
athyco @ 129
A facile question? You flatter me. It’s a good adjective though and very similar to adroit, agile, artful, au fait, brilliant, capable, clever, deft, dexterous, effective, effectual, efficient, experienced, expert, gifted, ingenious, intelligent, and keen.
No worries though. As fate would have it a friend saw my brilliant question to you. She very kindly set a wonderful morning coffee with three retired teachers. I learned a great deal and had great fun reminiscing. My perspective was as a student and theirs as teachers. I didn’t remember much about student/chaperone ratios. On field trips, teachers and chaperones were just a necessary nuisance and quickly forgotten. What I haven’t forgotten were climbing into buses, watching the old school house shrink in the distance, driving down to the concert hall and listening in awe to the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
oldmrbear:
Nope.
Its primary sense is ‘without due care or effort; lacking depth”, unlike any of those other terms.
SGBM @99
Thanks for the link to reactance. A quick glance sparks my interest and definitely apropos. A thorough reading will have to wait until morning.
As for the rest of your post, it seems to me you are just beating a dead horse. What ever floats your boat.
oldmrbear, why do you think of yourself as a dead horse?
(Ain’t ya an senescent ursine?)
Good catch there John, I screwed that one up royal. I looked up facile on my favorite search engine Duck Duck Go. The result I latched onto were synonyms for “able” which included my search term “facile”.
I’ll try again. From thesaurus.com. Synonyms for facile: accomplished, adept, adroit, apparent, articulate, breeze, child’s play, cursory, deft, dexterous, easy as pie, effortless, fast talk, flip*, fluent, glib, hasty, light, obvious, picnic, practiced, proficient, pushover, quick, ready, shallow, simple, skillful, slick*, smooth, superficial, uncomplicated, untroublesome, voluble.
My best option here is to ignore the primary definition, cherry pick a few good synonyms and try to perpetuate my embarrassed but still flattered ego.
Sorry for the confusion athyco.
And perpetuate was not the word I intended to use.
Way past my bedtime….
Thesauri are crutches for the lexically-challenged.
John, at this hour I’m lucky to have chosen a mammal. My excuse will be that the beast being flayed has decayed beyond recognition.
Owlglass,
You said “men cannot”. Since some transgender men can and have become pregnant, then obviously men can.
Owlglass
Sorry, but I know where that goalpost was before and it stood over here.
We’re not talking about cultures, we’re talking about people and there are no such fundamental differences between somebody who is stereotypically Japanese and somebody who is stereotypically French like there are between somebody who is stereotypically 3yo and somebody who is stereotypically 30 yo.
Bullshit. I clearly said that growing up is a continuum.
You are stupid. Go ober to the Crommunist and get yourself some education on “colour-blindeness”
@Nightjar:
I do not see this line of questioning going well, as far as avoidance of transphobia will be concerned anyway… (not from you, but from Owlglass / Racistbob…)
@Katherine Lorraine,
I’m afraid you’re right. I thought that after you told Owlglass on the previous Thunderdome that you’re a transgender woman who would love to have children of your own, Owlglass would at least make an effort to not ignore the existence of transgender people. But no! Women can, men cannot!
@Nightjar:
Ahh… Gender essentialism. Gotta love it (no, not really…)
Alright, continuum is it then.
·
Have found that one. It’s unconvincing. I can see why a concept like race is used when you have a colonial or slave history, and later switch to immigration where waves of people from far away come to your country. Asians, even if they come from places hundreds of miles apart and from different countries may feel more alike to each other when confronted with american culture. But that’s a different story when you sit in north europe where far most immigrants come from (relatively speaking) nearby countries or are former foreign workers from one or few nationalities, where you don’t have a slave trade history and the colonial episode was too short to have made any impact, and when the only application of the term “race” is deeply and strongly connected to Nazi ideology and never used outside that specific context. The people here are dutch, or danes, maybe they are from turkey or poland and the occasional ghanaian is simply a ghanaian. There are no sub-cultures where people from a certain background need to fabricate a race idea that ties them together. So let’s entertain the idea that “bullshit” and “stupidity” are merely reflections of your ignorant mind.
Oh ye gods, another arrogant European who thinks to be the first one to ever discover Pharyngula so now they can explain the stoopid Americans how the world really works (especially a black Canadian like Ian how race works).
Here’s a hint: How do you call it in German when somebody discriminates against people of Turkish descend due to prejudices about their alleged stereotypical characteristcs?
Rassismus.
How do you call it in French when somebody discriminates against people of Algerian descent due to prejudices about their alleged stereotypical characteristcs?
Racisme
How do you say in British English when somebody discriminates against people of Pakistani descent due to prejudices about their alleged stereotypical characteristcs?
Racism.
I guess other users can provide you with more examples. The word “race” might be frowned upon due to historical context, the concept remains the same.
So, who’s the ignorant one?
Nice Godwin there.
Also, racism as a concept is not possible without race as a concept. Racism = prejudice against people of a race, people perceived as of a race, or people with possible association to a race. Racism exists, therefore race exists. Whether or not the concept should exist is largely tangential until racism is eradicated. In short, you can’t be colour-blind whilst racism exists.
It is possible to acknowledge the concept of race without being racist. It’s goddamned hard, seeing as we’re all brought up with ingrained societal biases against anyone who looks different, and for all I know we might have some weird bias against anyone that looks different to us as some kind of instinct thing. I’d love to know if seeing “different” as threatening is an inborn trait. I expect studies exist, but my google-fu is not strong. The uncanny valley effect may shed some light. Maybe.*
It doesn’t matter though – we do have these prejudices, how we acquire them is a useful area of study in the sense that the more we know about the reasons for prejudice, the more ways we have of preventing or mitigating it. That’s academic though – we need to focus on stuff that’s actually applicable – like getting racist morons to see WHY what they say is racist, and how even casual racism is inherently harmful.
Same goes for any ism. Doesn’t matter why we do it, it matters that we STOP.
*If this bit nets me a horde-hammering, I will understand exactly why. It sounds dangerously to me like EP, and I’m not dipping into that bucket with any more than speculation, because that’s all I’ve got. Since my point is that even if it -were- some kind of innate thing it shouldn’t matter… yeah.
Giliell,
Racism? In Europe? Never heard of it.
When a black man comes to play football here, people barely take notice of his race. It’s all, like “Nice tan, man. Let me get you a beer.”
Not to mention Chinese immigrants. Absolutely no hate for them “stealing our jobs” and lowering the prices in their shops. Nope. None.
And in my little corner, the word is rasizam.
Nope. No racism in Italy (we invented fascism hooray!) or the UK. Butterflies and sunshine and jelly
beansbabies and absolutely definitely no racism at all especially not against people from Africa no sir no way no how.Oh, and razzismo.
@ comradebob
Do you regard yourself as a patriot in action?
But why is everyone destroying bisexuality? :(
https://www.facebook.com/events/415585138515484/
An event in which I side with Dinesh D’Souza. There are no true winners.
So you are saying that when someone personally doesn’t divide humans into racial groups and thinks the concept of race is dubious (like me), the person ignores the existence of racism and is therefore a racist themselves. Well, I don’t own a car and think that I don’t need one. Does this mean that I am unaware of the existence of cars!? You must be joking. Of course supremacists and xenophobia in various shades exist, and I’m obviously against it.
· · · · ·
Yes, indeed I said that and that is my current understanding. I have never heard that men can give birth and have no idea how this is biologically possible. At the moment I have no time for looking this up, but will do later. If you have a good resource, please provide it. I rather think you confuse gender (identities etc) and sex (biologically).
Men should strive to be champions of Truth by using their God-given tools of Senses, Sciences, and the Arts. In an ideal situation, this could be interpreted as Patriotism.
In this manner, I am curious as to the Nature of polyism. However, given constraints upon my time, this will have to wait. Have a nice day.
A better continuation of that analogy would be that since you don’t own a car and don’t think you need one, you cannot comprehend why someone who makes the same salary as you do, but lives 30 miles from work, has less disposable income than you do. You don’t know how much a car payment is, you don’t know how much gas it takes per month, you don’t know what car insurance costs, you don’t know what maintenance and upkeep are on a car. So you look at that person with the same salary as you, and don’t have any idea why they don’t wear clothes that are quite as nice as yours, or why they don’t go on vacation as often, or why the rise in prices of things bothers them more than it does you. It’s not that you are unaware of cars, it’s that you are unaware of how having a car affects the rest of one’s life.
The concept that sexual orientation is immutable, unlike every other aspect of a personality, has always bugged me a little bit. I understand the political necessity for making this claim, and I also understand that just because an aspect is plastic doesn’t mean it can bend infinitely (i.e. you can’t pray the gay away).
I just know that personally I’ve fluctuated between being really heterosexual, to being fairly bisexual, back to being more heterosexual. My desires and tastes have changed with time. I can’t prove that I’ve actually changed, but I think I have and that should be enough. It makes me wonder how immutable these characteristics are in general.
@Owlglass:
What is a man? (Besides a miserable little pile of secrets) Is a man defined by his biology? Is a man defined by his identity? Is a man a person with a penis? Can a man be a person with a vagina perhaps? (And watch your answer, cause I’m a transgender woman here, so any answers here will also affect me if the genders were reversed)
Owlglass,
burgundy provided it already @#214. But maybe you missed it, so here it is again.
I’m not confusing anything. You said “men cannot”. You didn’t say “humans with a male reproductive system cannot”. The men mentioned in the link above are men and they gave birth.
The senses are unreliable, even when you put a capital letter on them; that’s exactly why science was developed. If you don’t know that, you don’t know what science is – and should go away and learn before coming back here.
Art? Please explain.
If we’re nitpicky enough, science is not a search for truth. After all, if we discover the truth, how can we figure out that what we’ve found is indeed the truth? By comparing it to the truth, which we don’t have? No, science is the search for all falsehood; it proceeds by elimination, by disproof.
…what?
That makes you the second such person I’ve ever read of. The other one… had a blog at learningtodrivestick.com that seems to have disappeared. :-( She’s a woman who was bisexual after puberty, then (years later) became lesbian, and then (many years later) – to her great surprise – became hetero. All without a discernible reason or trigger. Brain chemistry weirdness. *shrug*
GAAAAAAAAAAH!
Owlglass, you are the one who is confused. “man” = gender, not biology. The fact that gender and biology coincide in the numerical majority of cases should not prevent you from noticing that they don’t necessarily have to coincide – and often don’t. As nightjar pointed out, the individuals mentioned in that article are men. And they have given birth.
dobbshead:
They have to be at least as mutable as gender role (as opposed to gender identity), I’d think. Different cultures and time periods have had different ways of expressing sexuality and, lo and behold, more people express their sexuality in a culturally identifiable way. Heterosexuality as western culture now identifies it hasn’t existed in the same way throughout time, after all.
There may be basic facts that remain the same through a specific person’s life (some are primarily androphile or gynophile and that never really changes, some are always fluid, etc), but that may not be the case with everyone. Even those who never greatly deviate from a certain segment of the continuum may find that their sexuality is expressed and understood and acted upon differently at different times in their lives.
I recognize the political drive behind the “born this way” arguments, but it obfuscates the variety throughout history and across cultures and even within a single lifetime.
I am curious why proven idiots feel the need for excessive capitalisation. However, given the subject matter I don’t suppose it will ever be given a coherent answer.
@ comradebob
Stop fucking around. You are being evasive and you know it.
Dobbshead, MM
Immutable is perhaps not the ideal word, but there is considerable evidence that a significant portion or sexual orientation is innate. However, it is inaccurate to view orientation as an either/or thing, or even a Kinsey scale thing; the continuum is both more fine-grained and more complex than that. That is to say that expressed sexuality is indeed a combination of innate characteristics and environmental influences as far as I am able to determine. Some people are entirely androphilic, and unable to function sexually at all with a woman; similarly there are people who are entirely gynophilic, but IME neither of these are terribly common. In a society where homosexual activity is condemned, though, a primarily gynophilic man or androphilic woman will tend to identify as heterosexual, and simply ignore or deny the occasional same-sex feelings of attraction; in societies with different ideas about sexuality, those same people will choose a different self-identification, and perhaps be more likely to act on those attractions, but that doesn’t mean that the underlying feelings/attractions necessarily differ.
MM
This is kind of what I was getting at above; I’ve known people who were almost exclusively attracted to one gender entering comiitted relationships with someone of a different gender whom they’d fallen in love with; that’s part of what I’m talking about above in the post.
Frankly IMO sexuality is a function that depends on time and the person in question, but not on nearby prayers.
Have to call it quits for today, but I’ll answer these. You don’t really care, what I think about the topic (which is fine), and I don’t deem my opinion important either (they aren’t entrenched). What labels people prefer for themselves, what they do with their bodies is none of my business. The acamedia is unclear as usual in these waters; and frankly, when the experts are done and agreed on something more, they can come out of the tower and tell everyone. Until then, I nodded (already) that some confusion and unclarity exist, that gender and sex are two different things and they somehow influence each other (i.e. what can be considered established), while I generally assume that in biological context (i.e. giving birth) sex is meant, and not gender, which I also deem rather obvious. Since you certainly possess expert level knowledge in this topic, you would have seen my nod towards gender and engage a tad more sensible from there. You went for the boring “do I smell bannable-offense!?”, which is totally fine. Everyone and his grandfather can see it, and it’s kind of implicit mission statement of the Thunderdone anyway.
@Owlglass:
I don’t care to play an unwinnable game with you. It’s a question with a single answer (well two, but one of them is wrong.)
The only unwinnable aspect of the question is if you answer incorrectly (and lemme give you a hint. If you make me upset, it’s the wrong answer.)
So again, what is a man?
Owlglass, you choose of your own free will to use the word “man”. Not “male”, or “biological male”, or any number of other more specific terms that could have been used. You are not going to get out of the need to take personal responsibility for your choice of words.
Dalillama:
I think we’re basically in agreement here and just using slightly different language. There is evidence that there is an innate bedrock of orientation, but a lot of how it’s expressed and experienced appears to be influenced by environment, culture, gender expectations, hormones, etc. That’s what brought the comparison to gender roles to mind. How we express and experience our sexuality is to some degree influenced by outside factors (much like our societal gender roles), even if there is something that appears to be innate beneath that (much like our inner gender identity). A man born in ancient Greece who had relationships with young men in addition to a fulfilling marriage to a woman might not identify as bisexual if he were born today, but someone who identified as bisexual five years ago might not identify that way today either.
You can’t talk someone out of their innate attractions, but which aspects of those attractions they acknowledge, act on or just find more dominant might change over time or with different people. I’ve known a number of women over the years who went through a straight/bisexual/lesbian/straight cycle or something like that. They weren’t confused bisexuals. Those were an honest description of how they experienced their orientations at different points in their lives.
oldmrbear from previous T’dome:
Nope. She told you why “vagina” doesn’t have any negative connotation for her. She told you why “gremlin” has no negative connotation for her. Her explanation would not have made any sense if she’d tried to tell you why “despicable” has no negative connotation. YOU added “despicable” to the term.
I might despise pineapple and make up the term “Dole droppings” for them. Someone who likes pineapple may decide that “Dole droppings” is a cute way to refer to pineapple–just a double entendre. If I make the acronym DDD so that “despicable” is part of the term, the person who likes pineapple won’t use it.
I tell you that I lack enjoyment in association with you, and you have a “still flattered ego”? We can eliminate the sorrow caused by your confusion. Choose from these synonyms for my use of facile: cursory, flip, perfunctory, shallow, simple, superficial.
@96 (previous T’dome):
@228:
You brave, alert, independent, lone, elderly ursine. </sarcasm
Owlglass,
Look, what you said was wrong. It also hinted of disregard for the experiences of transgender people. That’s all we’re pointing out. Unwinnable? I think an acknowledgement that yes men can give birth too in specific situations is more than enough. You were very quick to acknowledge that not all women can give birth, but for some reason it’s taking you longer to explicitly acknowledge that some men can. “a lot more to say about this”, “the academia is unclear”, “some confusion and unclarity exist”… you’re handwaving. Stop that.
It’s not “rather obvious”. It could be that you were sloppy and meant assigned sex (in which case you should acknowledge that and be more careful next time), or it could be that you’re one of those people who has trouble accepting transgender men as men. Given that such people are not at all uncommon, it’s impossible for us to know without asking or correcting your statement and waiting for your response.
Everything would have stopped right here if you had said “You are correct of course that not all woman can have children and some men can” instead of replacing “men” with “human males” for no apparent reason and vaguely alluding to gender identity without actually acknowledging one of your two mistakes.
No, we corrected your statement. No one is trying to get you banned. You’d have to outdo bob and trust me, no one wants to see that.
owlglass
Yes, that’s about it. We have ample evidence that a “colourblind” approach doesn’t work and actually serves the status quo. You hold at least racist ideas, which is not the same as “being a racist”.
You’re at best ignorant and lying to yourself, but given your little dishonest “we don’t see race in Europe” bullshit I’m not that keen on giving you so much benefit of doubt.
There IS actually evidence that people who claim to be “colourblind” or “genderblind” and “rational” are often more discriminatory against underpriviledged group because they deny that they hold subconscious biases and prejudices while people who admit to that might think again as to why they’re holding a certain position.
But it’s kind of funny to have that discussion after you brought up the “fundamental differences” between Arabs and Japanese and so on…
Carlie:
Oh, we don’t want to, however, we’ve been informed we are doing so, by our nasty, open attitudes and refusing to agree that monogamous pair bonding is the only healthy normative available. So, we might as well enjoy destroying bisexuality, right?
StevoR:
Fair enough.
The list of black people you like was pretty unnecessary, though. That probably wasn’t the best way to make your point.
Whew. Finally got through this thread.
I don’t have anything in particular to add at the moment, but I do feel a small twinge of guilt…
I haven’t been doing my share of the dishes.
comradebob: Fuck off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXWx3zHAzwE <— I haven't looked at the comments because 'youtube' but who wants to bet there are lots of people in there missing the point and claiming this is proof there is no such thing as a patriarchy because it constrains the rights of men?
For those of you who don't want to go to youtube, and who could blame you, turns out some guy got done for fraud by the DMV after he changed his last name to that of his wife after getting married. The judge agreed: "That only works for women."
And yet I bet there are people who will refuse to see how this is reinforcing men being the more important one in the relationship.
Also: comradebob? Fuck off.
Steven, yeah, that story was linked in the lounge a few days ago. Needless to say, the judge is flat out wrong.
The DMV has rescinded the suspension and dropped the fraud allegation.
While the goal of color/gender blindness may ultimately be a nice sentiment, the trouble is that we have way too much history of racism and sexism to make it feasible, certainly not now and perhaps never.We need to be mindful of the inequities that still our society and be willing to call out even the most subtle amount of prejudice, especially when it comes from ourselves.
Interesting – I think of attractiveness orientation (homo/bi/hetero) as a completely different axis than monogamous/polygamous. One can be heterosexual and want several partners of the opposite sex in a relationship, and one can be bisexual but still only want one partner at a time. It’s just that bisexual people have a lot more options for combinations in polygamous relationships, right?
I’ve often wondered if a rather large percentage of people are bisexual to some degree, but many don’t notice it/think about it because of cultural conditioning (along the lines of what Mellow Monkey said), and if they have enough of a tilt one direction or another they don’t think of themselves as bisexual.
Gah, I should have known I’d be late to the party.
Ah well. Good to see the DMV has seen reason.
Carlie:
There’s potential for fluidity, yes. This whole thing got started with WMDKitty’s rather, um, conservative views on open and poly relationships at Greta’s blog. She’s of the opinion that all open or poly relationships are about the man wanting lots of outside sex and finding a way to get that without cheating and therefor, monogamous pair bonding is the only healthy option, full stop.
I responded that such attitudes disappear bisexual people, to which she obviously disagreed, stating she was bisexual also, albeit one who is not actively bi and finds women to be on the scary side. She went right back to how open or poly relationships are all about the man wanting to fuck more women, yada, yada, yada. Not only is that patently untrue, it dismisses poly people who are in same sex poly relationships as well as those of us who are bisexual and poly.
Caine – ah, I hadn’t followed that at Greta’s. I didn’t realize I was flailing around at the edge of something I could have looked up for myself to see what the actual problem was.
(short time passes during which reading happens)
Oh,…dear. I should not have stepped into that, I think. WMDKitty later mentioned being overwhelmed and needing a break in the Lounge, so I’m going to guess that was part of it. But yes, I agree with everything you said there about relationships, so I doubt I have anything useful to add on that topic.
I did not realize this about myself until I became friends with a married heterosexual couple. I enjoyed the company of both of them and separately. After I while, I found that I was attracted to both of them; that if chance deemed it, I would be seriously tempted to be with either of them.
This realization about myself floored me.
But I kept it to myself. I had no sign that either felt that way about me. I had no desire to create a scene over something that was purely in my head. And even if there were any hint of mutual attraction with either of them, I would not want to be in the middle of a couple who really complimented each other.
But the realization that I was bisexual, that I could find a man attractive, well, that shook me even more than when I realized that I was queer. I still consider myself to be a lesbian. But I also understand that lines are blurred. And that qualities you are looking for can trump the gender of the person.
Has anyone here heard of/dealt with this ‘political party’: http://www.patriotparty.info/mission.php
I just ran across this via a FB post by one of my long time friends. I have no idea if she is actually involved with this group. Hope not, as they are anti-gay and for limited abortions (whatever that means).
Haven’t had time to delve too deep into the site yet.
Perhaps it is the result of my cynicism but I avoid anything that has Patriot in the name.
Janine:
I think this particular aspect, which can be huge, is often ignored by people, or at least, seldom thought about.
Carlie
The short answer is yes. That’s also what I was getting at earlier. I assumed I was straight, what with being into girls as an adolescent, until (also as an adolescent) I started feeling strong attractions for guys too. So I pretty much rolled with it, although I publicly identified as straight most of the time for convenience, until I married a man and no one bought it anymore. My current roommate has a similar story to Janines, in that she realized she was queer, ahd a bit of a crisis, identified as a lesbian, then found herself attracted to a few men, had another crisis, etc. This sort of thing is why I don’t really think of my sexual orientation as a fundamental part of my identity; it saves on identity crises later on if it turns out to vary from what I thought it was.
blueintx
I’ve never heard of them before, but they’re definitely wingnuts, based on their website. They look like another version of the Constitution and Natural Law parties, which is to say that they’re John Birchers with a few unique conspiracy theories of their own. Basically the people who even the Teabaggers think are too fringe. From their platform:
Both Spring and Gravity “Theories” appear to have been pulled straight out of their asses, although the description of ‘gravity theory’ is basically a rewarmed version of Original Sin with all the god bits taken out.
It’s embarrassing to admit this, but base sexual jealousy is the only reason that I could never be in an open relationship.
I’ve tried to rationally examine this monogoneurotic (not really a word, is it?) tendency of mine, but all introspection has led me to a painfully uncomfortable conclusion: I’m irrationally possessive.
When I consider the dynamics of an open relationship as a concept, it seems a perfectly sensible option. But when I imaginatively put myself into one, I immediately recoil at the though of my partner having sex with another person. Tellingly, though, I don’t recoil in the least when I consider what my own sexual encounters might be like.
Essentially: It doesn’t mean anything when I do it, baby. Ugh! I can see my own blazing, raging, screaming-to-be-acknowledged hypocrisy staring me in the face.
Sometimes my face is kinda ugly.
I’m with you,Janine.
I’m just trying to find out what they’re about in case my friend is involved -to prepare rebuttal and debate points.
So far what I see is a combination of recycled Rand and what they claim as a “new science”: humanology. Sheesh!
Dalillama:
Yeah, I loved that Spring/Gravity nonsense. Same old: Because of the New Deal now poor people are more dependent, they’ve lost their dignity ’cause … ’cause… ’cause… they eat regularly.. or something.
–
I should start making up trading cards. I love to collect conspiracy theories. : )
Billygutter,
What is it about sex that differs so from having other friends, interests, or activities?
Billygutter01:
No need to be embarrassed. A lot of people share that, you know. Most people. We grow up in a culture in which hetero monogamy is not only considered to be the norm, but the goal. Also, when one takes a wider view of various cultures, most non-monogamy based relationships have been polygamy based, and that leads to a lot of confusion on the part of a lot of people who don’t understand polyamory.
Yep. That’s why so many people cheat.
Dhorvath:
Intimacy. It’s important to keep in mind that people can get very jealous over their partner’s friendships, and outside interests/activities, too, especially when there seems to be an intimacy involved.
Caine, I was more wondering why Billy feels that way, but didn’t make the distinction clear. For most anyone I know there is certainly a line they keep in their relationships. Some don’t date, others don’t kiss, or this is who I live with, etc. The specifics change, but not that they have some things they restrict, and others that they don’t.
Personally, the number of people we have met who haven’t got a handle on what their line is has out-numbered those who knew and were comfortable with their needs. This has it’s own issues.
Absolutely nothing. That’s why it’s so infuriating. It’s like I can see where my reason takes a sharp turn, but I can’t seem to figure my way out of it.
Well. actually the sex is different….. I’m still rather working this out. Perhaps I should have refined these thoughts a little further before dropping them in.
Well, clearly at least one thing differs: that you find it raises jealousy. I doubt this is something that anyone reasons themselves out of; certainly for me it’s the other point of view that my brain won’t approach save in tangential manner. Which is to say: I couldn’t reason myself into feeling things that I don’t. Open doesn’t work for a lot of people. Some of them don’t find out until they try. Sometimes there is fallout for others. And all of that is okay, relationships are complicated.
And don’t worry about not having it worked out. I don’t know much of anything until I engage with others about it.
Dalillama, I think sex tends to be the exception for a lot of people because what may start as a purely sexual attraction can deepen into an emotional attraction, which can lead to bonding and love, which, when applied to a supposedly monogamous relationship, can lead to the dissolution of the original relationship. That shit happens all the time. When you extrapolate that, it comes down to a fear of losing someone, I think, losing that special love and intimacy you have with someone.
Thanks, Dhorvath.
Your comments are helping to corral my ramshackle thoughts into a more coherent order.
Caine
Was that last remark directed at Dhorvath? I
Yes, it was, Dalillama. Apologies to both you and Dhorvath. Yeesh, my brain, it no work today.
No worries, I didn’t think that could possibly be in response to what I said last. I was jsut making sure I hadn’t forgotten something I’d posted.
@ Caine
I had this poster over my desk… Linky
Theophontes:
An accurate depiction of my brain state today. :D
Caine,
Oh, don’t I know that. It’s amazing how people who like the idea of sexy times with others react so differently when it’s for real than when it’s fantasy. Suddenly there are more people, more interactions, more cues, more everything. I can’t fault people for being who they are and maybe that should encourage me not to leap in when the topic comes up.
I don’t cheat. I have been cheated on, though, and I suspect that’s why I get that knee-jerk emotional response when I think of an open relationship. Decoupling that gut wrenching feeling of betray is difficult, even understanding that an honest, informed open relationship is nothing like “cheating”. I can see where I’m conflating infidelity and open relationships. I can see my weaselly, indefensible double standard – I could have other sexual partners without eroding our relationship, but if you did, I’d feel jilted and insecure. It’s forty shades of fucked up.
It’s like I’ve surgically removed my cognitive dissonance, brought it in for photo microscopy, examined it as best I could, took impeccable notes, then stuffed it right back into my head so it can continue its mischief.
Dhorvath:
Oh yeah. I think that’s one of the reasons a lot of poly people are downright anal about processing every little detail of their relationships. Stuff can get messy. Very messy.
I don’t think that’s a reason to stay out of such conversations – most of this doesn’t get thought about at all, which keeps everything…messy. :D
I am sorry Billygutter to read that. We get sold these notions with no returns, refunds, or even choice in what we bring with us further into life. I hope it’s not weighing on you onerously. Take care.
FTFM
Billygutter01:
I think those are all pretty normal feelings. I do think the basis for those feelings all come back to fear, fear of loss and fear of betrayal. Those feelings don’t necessarily disappear in poly relationships, which is one of the reasons people in them are so nitpicky about processing every little thing. Same goes for a lot of open relationships, where a couple defines outside interaction in intense detail. All that said, Open or poly relationships aren’t for everyone, by a long shot.
The correlation between secure dentures and strong relationships does not make much sense. If anything, one would think that there would be a negative correlation between these two things. And frankly Chalice, I had envisioned you as someone younger or with better access to dental care. But then again I was not aware that men were capable of becoming mothers.
*Recites Bene Gesserite Litany against fear*
Yeah, Caine, *That ol’ fear is a fearsome foe.
*If that isn’t already a song title, I claim it NOW!
Oh look, comradebob, your very own motivational poster: Link.
Billygutter01:
Claim it, claim it, claim it!
Yeah, fear is a bad one. It’s our most intense emotion and it’s damn hard to win out against it. I know that one of the few times I’ve experienced what I thought was jealousy in a poly relationship had to do with attention, which was quite the shock when I figured it out. I don’t require much attention, while I do require a large amount of time alone. So, when I felt like I wasn’t getting enough attention, that was really saying something. After some more thinking and little bit of talking, I realized it wasn’t a lack of attention that was the problem, it was a fear that I wouldn’t get the attention I did need. So it turns out that when something is novel in my relationships, I have a tendency to feel preemptively threatened. People – we are all seriously messy.
@ Billygutter,
I was in your shoes three years ago, when my partner and I first started talking about opening our relationship. I was just so afraid to lose him…it was totally okay for me to have casual sex with other people (with his knowledge, of course) while I was away at college, but the thought of him doing it just ripped me up inside. I was convinced that he’d fall for someone else and leave me.
Most of that was my own insecurity, and its something I’ve had to work on. I can only say that, with time and patience, we got there.
But yeah…its not a failing to just never want to go down that road. Some people want to explore it, and some don’t. I don’t think that you’re a bad or irrational person for feeling the way you do. It’s just normal.
Ooh ooh ooh! I’m bored! Let me start a fight in the THUNDERDOME!!!
Actually, not so much. But I did have a thought or three about poly relationships**.
The first thought is that poly relationships are doomed to failure. Sort of the 1b) thought is that they are more doomed to failure than monogamous relationships because there’s more people… an acknowledgement that MOST relationships are unstable, and it is unfair to hold poly relationships to a higher standard.
But then I thought about juggling and orbital mechanics and billiards other “multiple bodies in motion” problems. So maybe even though people say “two people together” is the most stable combination, other combinations can meet or exceed that level of stability. So maybe two is better than three, and four is entirely unworkable, but then 5-8 are pretty awesome but 9 throws things completely out of whack?
And then I thought about what I’ve learned over the past few years about the fluidity of sexuality and gender and all the rest, and so it is likely impossible to map out the “best” arrangement. So maybe it is just best to let people sort shit out for themselves, and if they are all decent people then whatever the outcomes are they won’t be actively harmful to anyone.
Then finally, right now… I realize that this isn’t an intellectual exercise, and don’t care about any of the rest of what I’ve said. All I really care about is that people are happy and healthy and comfortable and thriving in the situations that they find themselves in. And fuck anyone who says otherwise… if I’m going to start a fight in the Thunderdome, that’s one worth doing.
** I gave it a try once, a long time ago. Tried an open relationship too. They don’t suit me, but I know people who have made them work longer than I’ve been married. I don’t mistake “doesn’t work for me” for “doesn’t work for anyone.”
Cyranothe2nd:
Emphasised and QFT.
I felt preemptively cuckolded in a theoretical poly relationship.
Did I mention I was cuckolded in a theoretical poly relationship? Messy seems about as kindly as one could phrase it.
You’re the best, Caine.
IJoe:
Given the very high failure rate of monogamous relationships, that’s not really saying anything. I do think it’s to the point to highlight the amount of cheating in monogamous relationships which ends up being the cause of those relationships failing.
So much of this is cultural conditioning and societal expectations, rather than about people themselves. Some people are happy and comfortable in a monogamous relationship. Others are not. Many of those who are not are those attempting to live up to societal expectations, and not succeeding, so they cheat. Cheating causes incredible damage and trauma for so many people.
Improbable Joe, you seek a fight? Sure.
Rapists are people too, you know, so presumably you actually mean you want only some people to be happy and healthy and comfortable and thriving in the situations that they find themselves in.
No?
Billygutter01:
That makes a lot of sense to me. I can easily see how you (or anyone else) could feel that way. For me, a poly relationship must be about everyone’s needs being met. If you start out with a sense of betrayal, it’s definitely not going to work and it’s going to cause a whole lot of hurt.
That’s another messy part of being human – we’re all self-protective and we can do very messy stuff when that autoprotect program starts up.
John Morales
Maybe you should get drunk, instead.
John:
Stop playing the asshole, John. We’re talking about consensual relationships and you know that. This is a difficult enough discussion and you getting your jollies playing ass isn’t helpful.
chigau, instead of what?
(I’m appeasing IJ’s ennui)
…
Fair enough Caine.
(Not sure why IJ irritates me, but I desist)
John Morales
Instead of playing The Devil’s Asshole.
John:
Thank you.
Fine then.
@Cyranothe2nd
Thanks. I think you’re right on the money about insecurity. It seems to be at the festering root of it all. Damned roots. And the festering. And how well it describes me.. Grrr…
I certainly acknowledge that distinction. ImprobableJoe. I’m firmly in the “doesn’t work for me” camp, but I wonder how far in that camp I would be if the notion of monogamy hadn’t been so firmly entrenched in my upbringing… or is it just my insecurity?
So many culprits, so little time.
Billygutter01:
I think it would be fair to assume that dealing with insecurity would be much easier for everyone if we weren’t all swimming in the “monogamy = right, normal and ideal” stuff, which we’re not only raised with, but encounter every freaking day, at the conscious and subconscious levels.
@ Carlie,
I believe that this is true. I didn’t really figure out that I was bisexual until I was in my mid-20s and didn’t do anything about it until my mid-30s (trying telling family you’re having a same-sex relationship after exclusively dating the opposite sex for that long. It suuuuuucks!). Same is true for poly relationships, strangely enough.
For both, I think it was that I just needed age and maturity to grow more comfortable in my skin. It helps too that I have a really supportive partner that encourages me to grow and change as much as I want.
Caine,
I agree entirely with everything you said. And I think even within a more relaxed societal standard, there’s maybe a push towards truly poly relationships, rather than open relationships, and especially against “open on one end” relationships. You know, “it is cool if there’s more than two people if there’s LOVE involved” but maybe less of “they’re together but they fuck separately” and even less approval for “they’re together but he’s/she’s got random fuck-buddies on the side.”
Like I said, I judge on whether people are happy and healthy where they are, not on how they get to that place.
I think that, to a certain extent, “how insecure would I be without the culture of monogamy?” is sort of like “how would my gender presentation be different without the culture of sexism?” (I’m thinking now about Greta’s Fashion Friday post). There’s basically no way to know, and it doesn’t seem useful to beat oneself up about being influenced by cultural norms. Which is not to say that it isn’t worth investigating and deconstructing and challenging, just that it says nothing about anything being wrong with you.
Would that I could turn my insecurity inside out to fashion a security blanket.
You know, like Linus. He was so unflappable and…. um…. never mind. :-)
Improbable Joe, what’s wrong with “they’re together but they fuck separately” or “they’re together but have fuck buddies on the side”?
Oh wait, I think I misread you, never mind.
billygutter01,
I can’t speak for you, but my own issues have little to do with any sort of entrenched monogamy. And I wouldn’t say “insecurity” as much as “understanding my limitations.” I don’t think it matters though… if it is nature or nurture, it just doesn’t work for me. I can also see how it can work for other people. And in a world that’d filled with all sorts of terrible, I think it is incredibly wonderful whenever anyone can find anything good and fulfilling to hold on to.
Okay, that’s all for me tonight.
Thanks to all who helped me muddle through some shizzle this evening. Best wishes, and I’ll yak at/with you fine folks soon.
Hugs/pleasurable thing of your choice, everyone!
Sweet dreams
O, Thunderdome.
May your Domeness
And Thunderliciousness
Remain ever strong.
IJoe:
Thing is that the culture of monogamy is very much like sexism – we’re all swimming in it, whether or not we’re aware of it. It affects how we think, feel and act to a large degree. It’s another of those gotta take the red pill situations.
Cyranothe2nd
L had very similar feelings early in our relationship, but didn’t feel that it would be fair for him to have other partners and me not, so we were monogamous for a while, until he got used to the idea that I did, in fact, want him around for his own sake. It was wrapped up in a whole bunch of other insecurites, abandonment issues, etc.
Also, This:
but also this:
Caine
There’s a balance to be struck there, especially for those who simply can’t keep it in their pants. If every relationship you’ve ever had has ended because you were having sex with someone else, maybe monogamy is not for you (I mean the generic you, and I am not referring to anyone here, except possibly myself)
I got the strangest looks when I introduced L to the family, all right. I really have no idea how to bring up the poly thing with my folks, though.
Threadrupt here too, but a few things:
1- comradebob, please fuck off.
2- SteveoR, please fuck off
Aaaand in the positive column…
3- carlie, I really liked your #258!
Caine,
I get that… I also don’t particularly want to get into my own particular relationship issues. I keep typing stuff and deleting it! :)
Maybe the best way to describe it is to turn it towards something else that I’ve seen discussed here recently: parenting. I don’t want to have any children. It doesn’t have anything to do with my culture, or any sort of abuse in my childhood, or a political position. It has to do with the fact that I don’t feel any drive to reproduce, no sort of link to a genetic past that I’m desperate to extend, and mostly that I’m not so self-centered to ignore that I’m too self-centered to be a father. I’ve got 4 cats and 1 dog, and those are more children than I can deal with. I understand the massive undertaking that taking care of a human child is, and I know I wouldn’t be happy doing it.
And you know Caine… maybe the whole red/blue pill thing is a little unfair on your part. Just a little bit “yes, but” and also “if you’d only try it with an open mind” sort of thing. Life presents infinite variety, and those variety include all the “vanilla” and “boring” stuff. Somewhere out there among the seven billion of us wandering around, there’s probably a few tens of thousands of people who married their high school sweethearts and only have sex on Saturday night, missionary position with the lights off, and that is the best of all possible worlds for them. Trust me, at least some of us monogamous folks aren’t missing anything.
Or, to put it the way I used to put it to my kinky friends: if you think vanilla is crap, maybe it just means you haven’t have really good vanilla. :)
From waaaay up-thread:
Carl Sagan was heavily into his weed: Mr X by Carl Sagan
Oh, and I also meant to say… you can have and even appreciate a good vanilla ice cream, and it still not be your favorite. You can appreciate the good parts of any sort of relationship and STILL not find it ideal for you, mono or poly or open or master/slave or whatever.
Um, I think you seriously misread me. Or you’re reading a hell of lot more into what I wrote than was actually there. My point is simply that we are all influenced by the culture of monogamy more than we think.* It had nothing at all to do with your own relationship choices in life and you don’t need to justify them to me, nor do I need a lecture about all manner of things I wasn’t even talking about. You seem to have leaped into defensiveness here over a mention of monogamous culture.
*The culture of monogamy has a great deal to do with how think about other people and the boxes we stick them into, the labels we apply, what values we assign to them, and so on. It has everything to do with how non-monogamous people are viewed and it has heavy ties to sexism. Being aware of it is a good thing, just like being aware of sexism is a good thing.
Shitbag improved:
Relationships and add any additional value. The United Nations is. Dental philosophy as an opportunity for young people to think, but not vice versa. I do not know.
Caine, there at the end I didn’t feel the least bit defensive, I felt like I was expanding on a theme, rather than justifying… and whatever I read into your comment was a “little bit” as I said. Just hinting towards, not a bold statement or anything. :) And I sure didn’t mean to “lecture” or anything, sorry if it felt like that.
I’m aware of how the general culture views things, and I think that it is almost entirely bullshit. Kind of like the difference between recognizing and rejecting racism, and being “colorblind” while reinforcing racism?
Also, IJoe, your jumping straight into sexual practices tells me you didn’t understand what I meant at all. I’m not the slightest bit interested in what you do or don’t do in bed. However, in the interest of clarification, the assumption that those in poly or open relationships are automagically into kink is a highly faulty one.
IJoe:
It’s similar, yes. The great weight that our society places on monogamous marriage is something which shouldn’t be ignored, especially as it’s seriously bound up in patriarchal sexism. That’s why I brought up the red pill. Pressure and expectation to “pair off” is immense and damn near everything is aimed at traditional monogamous pairing up, all the way to the plethora of dating sites, dating advice, everything. Once you start looking, it can be overwhelming.
And with that, I’ll bid everyone goodnight. Back for round two tomorrow. Later today. Something. ;)
Caine, I think we’re talking right past each other, since almost nothing you’re ascribing to me is an accurate representation of what I’m trying to convey.Sorry for wasting your time.
Caine @145
“:near fatal eyeroll: And morons like oldmrbear wonder why we have such an issue with toxic, systemic sexism.”
No, Caine, I wonder no such thing. If you have an issue with toxic, systemic sexism, then I welcome you to my club.
I do wonder why you felt it necessary to call me a moron. Specifically that word. As I’m sure you know, the word has prominent legal and medical definitions. Used a a pejorative it generates significant splash back. I find your use of the word to be offensive and insensitive. That’s my opinion anyway, and perhaps food for thought.
Any way, calling me a moron does make me laugh at you. And I need a good laugh now and then.
@100. la tricoteuse
31 January 2013 at 4:42 am (UTC -6)
Of course it won’t and I will and do.
Well that’s certainly one definition – there are others and its not how I define Western personally. The term does seem pretty vague “Western” seems to be like art – its hard to define precisely but we know it when we see it! (Or something.) To me the West includes a set of values that are loosely termed progressive or at least post-Enlightment / French Revolution (roughly 1790’s) are a mainly though not exclusively Western phenomena, the West is also generally the liberal parliamentary (Congressional?) democracies and the nations historically allied against Communism and Fascism in the previous century. But I’m aware that a whole setoff other definitions incl. yours exist and that this seems to lead to considerable confusion. Wish we could all settle on one easy to grasp definition of what the West is and what determines what’s Western or not but that now seems unlikely.
Okay, maybe. These judgements and definitions necessarily are broad and generalised with exceptions and paradoxes and problems. That would be one of them. I’m going to concede your point there and reflect on this some more over time.
Well if I am unconsciously or sub-consciously racist I’m certainly NOT conscious of that and I make a conscious effort to avoid and fight racism and be consciously anti-racist so, yeah, how does this work?
If at a conscious level you reject racism and oppose how on Earth can you be considered and labelled as racist? That just doesn’t make much sense to me.
Really? Well that’s your opinion and you are entitled to it. But I can assure you that I do look at what I’m saying and I have revised and tried to clarify some of my views and have stated that some of the things I’ve said in the past, I won’t say again. Drunk or sober, here or elsewhere. I’m always willing to look at myself and my views and willing to learn.
But when I think I’ve been misunderstood, misread and made into a strawperson or caricature that doesn’t actually represent me or a halfway reasonable perception of my comments aren’t I also allowed to say so? Isn’t it entirely reasonable of me to do so?
I don’t understand why.
Why saying here’s a list of people of group X that I’m accusedof hateing that Iactually admire and respect is someone going to be taken as a sign of the idea that I somehow hate allof group X.
I don’t understand why saying I’ve got black friends or would let people of any sikin colour use my toilet is supposed to be a sign of being racist either. I just don’t get that.
Correction Typo fix for clarity :
Why saying here’s a list of people of group X that I’m accused of hating that I actually admire and respect is someone going to be taken as a sign of the idea that I somehow hate all of group X.
I don’t understand why saying “I’ve got black friends” or that I would let people of any skin colour use my toilet is supposed to be a sign of being racist either. I just don’t get that.
Surely, logically, these *are* evidence AGAINST the proposition that individual X is racism rather than in favour of that notion?
What is the alternative – to say Oh I can’t list any people of group X that I admire? / I don’t have any friends of group X / I refuse to allow people of group X to use my bathroom? Are those alternatives not far clearer evidence of racism?
All this just doesn’t compute for me.
Hey, guys, who are everybody’s favorite Orientals?
I like Sulu! And Thai bargirls!
Spot the fallacy:
Q: I wonder whether a large percentage of people are actually X without knowing it.
R: Yes they are because meee!
@ old thunderdome : 770. strange gods before me ॐ
29 January 2013 at 8:15 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I played that anti-Bush game today. Loved it – although there are a few minor points in it that are a bit problematic and a couple of lines I disagree with such as calling the Bush mission to Mars “silly”. Funny to recall Kerry as POTUS candidate then and think he’s the new US Secretary of State now replacing Hilary Clinton. Classic game though and has to be one of the strangest computer games ever – sure didn’t see the twist with the teletubbies at the end coming! So thankyou for linking that.
StevoR:
After a few weeks of reading your posts, I think that is the clearest statement you’ve made yet!
@363. ChasCPeterson : Spot the fallacy
Generalisation from one individual out to an entire group? Not sure of the correct Latin (?) name for that fallacy if there is one.
Overgeneralisation is certainly something that’s very easy to do as is stereotyping. Aware that I’ve been guilty of that to greater or lesser extents in the past and hard to avoid now, for almost everyone I suspect.
BTW. comradebob : YOUR SEXUAL HARRASSMENT OF JANINE (Or anybody else) IS TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. STOP IT.
@359. Improbable Joe
Your line there about “almost nothing you’re ascribing to me is an accurate representation of what I’m trying to convey ..” works so much for how I feel about people ‘s response s to what I’ve been arguiong too its uncanny.
You put it better than I did but that sums my experience here up really well in my view.
@ 362. Take III :
Why saying “here’s a list of people of group X that I’m accused of hating that I actually admire and respect” is somehow going to be taken as a sign of the idea that I somehow hate all of group X ..
Sorry. Definitely too tired again.
Everyone loves Bruce Lee. I think that pretty much proves that racism against Chinese people doesn’t exist.
Athyco @274:
You make a good point and I enjoyed your example.
As we both know, the original phrase being discussed was “despises vagina gremlins”. It wasn’t my phrase and I didn’t add anything to it. In the subsequent discussions there was an attempt at trivializing it by using minimizing synonyms such as “dislike”. Eventually the first word was dropped completely and the focus effectively shifted.
I’ll choose “shallow”. Someone up-thread already used that word to describe me. A little reinforcement never hurts.
Flattery is in the eye of the beholder I guess. It’s hard to predict especially when dealing with the perverse. In fact, it reminds me of a happening back in the old days. Seems that JFK/LBJ were getting desperate for human cannon fodder for use in their expedition into Viet Nam. They wanted me! Me! We’re talking major flattery here. My very own Sally Field moment. So I laughed. The local draft board didn’t think I was funny either. In fact, they lacked enjoyment in association with me. Eventually they came to realize that a deaf man with a crippled leg wasn’t even good for fodder. I wasn’t the unblemished, virginal sacrifice the gods of war demanded. Told me to go to hell and saved me a trip to Canada. I’ve never been so flattered! So today, like I did back then, I laugh. And laugh. And laugh. Until I cry for my friends who can’t.
Yes, I’m a digression junkie…
Caine at 306- definitely. In the thought experiment, I wouldn’t mind a bit if there were more sexual partners involved in my relationship. I wouldn’t mind if there were more emotional partners involved in my relationship. But when I start to think about about the possibility of more equal partners involved in my relationship, that’s when I hear the record scratch sound and I revert to “mine mine mine no” mode. I guess it’s possible that I could navigate a totally new relationship that’s clearly poly from the outset, but when it comes to this one that’s been mine for so long I’d need so many assurances of being (and continuing to be) the primary partner that I think it would end up being functionally unworkable.
Well, I can at least say that I’m, well, curious about same-sex sex. And sex only, not relationships. But I also know that at the moment I really, really, really don’t want to unpack that knapsack.
Something else is that fantasies are not desires. Somehow sex is the one area where people think that fantasies are the thing you really want (like the often cited rape-fantasies being used to diminish rape). Nobody does that for other kinds of fantasies. Fantasies about killing orcs (or your boss) are not seen as an indication that you’re actually a mass-murderer waiting to happen.
Might have been someone here who said it – I heard once someone’s definition of being homosexual/bisexual was restricted to which gender you’d want to have romantic/bonding relationships with, not who you’d want to have sex with, because what is “sexy” is such a malleable construct. I’m still not sure how much I agree with that, but it is an interesting way to look at it.
Carlie:
Yeah, I think there’s a part of us that screams “competition!” and that brings out every insecurity and fear inside us. It also sets everything on a path of win/lose, which is a bad path.
Giliell:
Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to make that a blanket statement, especially when it comes to sex. For some people, fantasies are simply an enjoyable thought indulgence, for others, fantasies are indeed desires, which are often followed up on, in the pursuit to make those fantasies real.
Yeah, oldmrbear, whatevs. It’s all about you. Doesn’t matter that you dance around the point again and ignore quotation marks that separated the verb (despises) in the original sentence from the direct object. Doesn’t matter that “shallow” was one in a list of synonyms for my use of facile about your question, not you.
Thanks ever so much for the tagging of my phrase to the hot, breath-catching memory rush of the Vietnam draft. Did you assume that I was not old enough to be affected?
I’d definitely have to be First Wife ! Although I’m perfectly happy being Josh’s third behind you and Janine. :)
@StevoR:
Examine what we’re telling you for a moment and realize precisely WHY what you said is a racist trope. You’re an intelligent man, you can figure this out.
Carlie:
:D I think I lucked out early on. My first poly relationship happened when I was young (under 20) and I was highly resistant to it for quite a while. Turned out, it was a great relationship all the way around and I loved it and both my partners.
France’s parliament approve gay marriage article. BBC Link.
And, of course, the fucking goddists have to chirp up:
Carlie:
What if your second partner was a man?
Theophontes:
Boy, they excel at missing that whole “between two [adult] people” part.
PS:
The above is conform The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16(1):
(Note, no specification as to the order required (man-woman, man-man, woman-woman…). Other articles implicitly support this position.)
box turtles & shit!
First Partner!
I somewhat irrationally think a same-sex extra partner would be easier, because then it’s more obviously not direct competition; that person is providing things the other partner simply can’t, from a viewpoint on the world to the actual sexy parts.
I can see how it could get complicated quickly, if each of us also had other partners of any or all genders, if some partners were partners of both of us, etc. Hence all the talking-out poly relationships are stereotyped with, I suppose! I have just a touch of OCD-ness, so I’d futilely want all the categories to be nice and tidy and organized with everyone in a clearly-defined place. She’s my second, he’s my third and your second, she’s your third but I don’t like her very much, etc.
Chas – your expertise is urgently required over here, where discussion is whether a turtle can survive in a junk room for 30 years.
@ carlie
More OCD-ness: Linky.
StevoR continues defining the West:
So you explicitely exclude Germany and Italy from the West now?
Eurasian magpie,
Oh damn, I’ll have to unhush StevoR. I don’t have greasemonkey at work anyway, and when at home I miss gems like that one.
I guess I’m not in the West after all. We kinda went in all directions, so manage to have both a nasty fascism in our history, and communism in getting rid of the first.
If only European history and politics (and politics in general) were as simple as StevoR imagines.
Sometimes I fail to understand how one can make a simple observation like: women seek children when they are young, and security as they mature. And then get yelled at as being a bad guy. But then there are those females who blather on incessantly about relationships and the like for hours, making my point better than I ever could. And they do not get yelled at as being bad guys.
…
From an evolutionary success standpoint, real Mormons and Muslims have correctly identified polygamy as the correct form of gender-relationship. All females contain bio-value as being able to produce life. When paired at a 4:1 ratio with top quartile (Alpha, upper-Beta) males, the genetic makeup of the tribe is continuously enhanced with improved characteristics. The lesser males (lower-Beta, Omega) are then sexually frustrated, angry, and able to seize resources from neighboring tribes for their genetically more advanced brethren.
Don’t worry, my little hushfile. You won’t stay hungry. Here’s a nice fat troll for you.
Yep, right next to the Islamophobic genocidal bigot. They should be good for keeping each other company.
Because it’s wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it is also harmful because it perpetuates and encourages attitudes that actively harm women, e.g. a woman will get passed over for a job because “she’ll probably get pregnant and quit soon”.
Oh, joy of joys. I contain bio-value for reproduction. I also contain bio-digestion-value for food, bio-intelligence-value for logical reasoning and bio-fertiliser-value for defacation. I demand recognition for my other bio-values!
Fuck off, bob.
~~~
As a huge digression, I feel the need to pick a rather large nit that’s been irritating me for a while on the nature of the ontological argument. Any iteration of the argument I’ve seen so far makes use of a concept similar to the “greatest”, “most perfect”, “best possible” or some other form of extreme positive in relation to some imaginary thing. What bugs me most about this is that “greatest” or any of the other labels implies that there is an objective* value for “great” that exists outside of human desire.
I’d love to see anyone try to find a group of people that can come up with a concept for “great” or “perfect” that doesn’t involve personal preference.
What we end up with is a being that is supposedly perfect, but is completely different to every single person who forms a concept in their mind. Do they all exist as this so-called “supreme” being? Are they one being, even if the qualities that form one person’s definition of perfect are diametrically opposed to the concept of another?
Completely ignoring the fact that “existence” isn’t a quality one can ascribe to something that hasn’t already demonstrated that it exists. Existence is a post-hoc descriptor, not an additive adjective. I’d love to ascribe the quality of existence to the amazing chocolate bar I’ve just invented in my head with existence and have it so.
In fact, the only way that the ontological argument makes sense is in a very literal sense. Think of a greatest concievable thing. That thing now exists – that thing being the idea of the greatest concievable thing. Congratulations, you’re a creator!
*Fucking WLC, always with the objective this, that and the other. No, what you think is great isn’t what is objectively great, just your own fucking opinion. Just like the rest of your bullshit word soufflé.
Carlie,
Or worse, you will have to pay her during the maternity leave and take someone else to substitute for her.
/socialist country, but damn jealous of those who can fuck their people over more easily
Yeah…no, comradebob. Your point was never the varieties of relationships possible between/among consenting adults with NO mention of producing children in them.
fuck off
Plus, “[seek] security as they mature”? I make my own security, fuck you very much.
Shitbag improved:
I do not know how to add a comment: pirate girl TOTOTOTO168 business meeting. In other words, beautiful colors. Women and Ximpler can reduce the sound the human voice.
…
Nail convoys can reach numbers as Christians and Muslims are actually polygamous Mormon development cr. Women also produce organic life laokrain 16: 1 work jeans pressure is very important. The area (alpha, Beta). The dead (ZIP version) and sexual harassment and the development of genetic resources: the big brother. Sisters.
————————————————————————————————–
Shitbag, it is time for you to move on to the slymepit or AVFM.
comradebob
fuck
offSeeing that England was the country where much of the theoretical foundation of Marxism was worked on and that a large percentage of the British population were sympathetic towards Nazism, England cannot be considered part of Western civilization.
God knows what that would make Manchester then.
The First Law of Thermodynamics is very similar to Natural Selection. A closed system society is Naturally in resource equilibrium, meaning that it has to compete and selective pressures act upon its members. In such a society, critical organizations would Logically not employ women, as they do get pregnant and leave the workforce as their Maternal instincts kick in. This imposes a cost on all members, making it less competitive with neighboring societies, and susceptible to invasion and the eradication of its biological traits.
Our modern society is not a closed thermal society, due to fossil fuels. These fuels create an open system society where certain inefficiencies are made up for by the energy injection of millions of years of sun-energy, stored in the form of Carbon which was protected by from Oxygen. As societies such as this progress and decay, they drift from Logic.
One very clear example of this is the religious aversion to fossil fuels among human bio-diversity enthusiasts, as fossil fuels in a very real way allow for their continued existence and opportunity to propagate. Mother Nature is quite indifferent to the emotions of those living under her wrath.
comradebob
It Seems You Are Becoming More Poorly Informed With Every Post.
fuck off
One more for the road… The Arithmetic correlation between increase oil production and the increased carrying capacity of the earth is thus:
An increased oil output of 5 barrels of oil per year from the earth’s crust equals the increased carrying capacity of one human.
This can be observed as the earth’s human population increased from 1 billion to 7 billion since the year 1900 and the world’s oil production has increased from negligible to 30 billion of barrels of oil per years since the year 1900.
The Jonsian faith teaches that energy derived from the sun in a closed bio-thermodynamic system can replace energy stored from the sun in an open bio-thermodynamic system. This is of course a religion that is fanatical, and violent. Their symbol is the windmill.
Shitbag improved:
The first law of Thermodynamiqu. The two social systems and door lectif quilibr courses and races. Measures is the logical structure of the labour market, to provide for women leaving the community during pregnancy. (D) the biological functions of General aggression, entouran, all the members interested in coin rabl.
Columns of today’s society in which organic objects. This is 1 million carbon oxygen and bashmsh from the start. The land area is poor.
The religion of the fossil fuels of fossil fuels is due to an actual sample of the biodiversity. You can buy any of the man’s parents.
The gibberish really was not increased at all.
comradebob – Fuck off.
comradebob:
An old apple is like a summer breeze. Kafka and I took a marzipan (with a polite necromancer, and a girl beyond the dilettante) to arrive at a state of intimacy where we can hesitantly buy an expensive gift for our alchemist. The guardian angel takes a coffee break, and the wisely unsightly haunch trembles; however, another surly cup graduates from a ballerina inside a lunatic. The pocket carelessly organizes an ostensibly botched boy.
Sometimes a pocket beyond a swamp hibernates, but a trombone always bestows great honor upon a looking glass around the shadow! Unlike so many others who have made their bungled bubble abhorrent to us, shadows remain lowly.
I figure this makes about as much sense as what you’ve posted.
Shitbag improved:
Also, again. Many fruit and vegetable oil is an excellent sound and arithmetic: If.
5 million barrels of youth from many countries. Increase the value of oil every year.
in 1900, the world population every 30 million barrels of oil, has little oil.
Jonsian electric heating. Solar Green energy and open the container door teacher will be present, but not with intolerance and violence. If you want to delete.
(apologies to all for the cliche’ed meme) Scumbag StevoR http://memegenerator.net/instance/34232950
comradebob: boring troll is boring. Fuck off.
All the world is interconnected for those with the capacity and desire to observe and celebrate its mysteries. I’ll try again in fewer words:
1. Women exchange sex for love.
2. Men exchange love for sex.
Shitbag improved:
Links and secret transactions around the world. I repeat: 1.2 man page.
Your proper home is A Voice For Men. Look it up.
comradebob
Stupider and Stupider.
In other words, you establish that you are the authority on the matter and I have to submit to your rule. Well then, Queen Katherine Lorraine. There is no one true answer.
Yes, I used “men” and “women”, which makes me of course responsible for it. But I doubt that a free will was involved. A couple of comment sections back someone –or more likely– a pack, lectured me, in the usual friendly way fostering cooperation, that my use of the word “female” amounted to something like left-handshaking the pope. In other words, I’ll go back to my gut feeling. My reality plays out in a different language anyway, people here aren’t any reliable source for anything and I know about the difference of gender and sex (unlike the majority of people). And in reality so far had no problems with finding the right words and behavior in a sensible way. Besides, the nuture vs. culture debate isn’t exactly explained in a comment. I sure have thoughts about what makes a gender, what is socially and culturally constructed (and subject to change) and where it perhaps hinges on biology.
What’s the letter assigned to those males who are so scorned by the Alphas, Betas, and Omegas — not to mention all of the women — that they have no other option than to go to egalitarian societies and do nothing but spew racist and sexist bullshit about how awesome it is to be in a racist and sexist tribe?
No one is fooled by your pseudo-intellectual sophistry, comrade. You are not nearly as clever as you think you are. Your “points” are not being addressed because they’re “not even wrong”, not because no one understands your words. For example, let’s take your idiotic arithmetic of oil versus population that somehow managed to completely miss the fact the biggest consumers of petroleum are not those with extremely high density populations to maintain. Your “men exchange love for sex” was refuted in this very thread where some men were talking about feeling emotionally vulnerable about being cheated on.
Out of curiosity, I wonder if anyone here is a ‘defecter’ from the slymepit? Of course it wouldn’t be necerssary to defect from the slymepit as posters here would not be arbitarily discriminated against at that other place.
The reason I ask is that there seems to be a considerable number of regulars at the slymepit who will profess to be ex ftb’ers, including actual bloggers. Al stefanelli is a regular at the slymepit and thunderf00t posts occasionaly, Aronra has also posted there. Lately a number of A plussers have signed up at the slymepit expressing great dissatisfaction with that place.
I have noticed that when ‘slymepiters’ criticise ftb they will usually include a link to the relevent article, so that people may reasonably evaluate that critisism, whereas here no such links are given. I have to say it seems to me that the characterizations of the slymepit are way out of line with the reality I have seen. Perhaps i’m wrong? Of course it might help when criticising the pit if people here would provide links.
SGBM suggested once that we don’t call people slymepitters or mention they should go there unless the place is already the topic or we know the person is connected with the slymepit.
I liked the proposition then and am still in favour of it. It’s just drawing attention to the place and giving it too much credit. It’s a fringe forum, but we make it sound far more important than it is, as well as giving the place new supporters who probably hadn’t even heard of it before reading about it here.
Yes, you are wrong.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/06/never-forget/comment-page-1/#comment-505931
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/06/never-forget/comment-page-1/#comment-505958
To sum up again: She wants me to re-introduce the word “race” into my language (which is considered to be prima facie racist here due to history), because she thinks not dividing humans into entirely artificial groups is somehow “colorblind”, which is a new term she made up and conflated with whatever she thinks my views are. Ergo: “human races actually don’t exist” = “colorblind” = “holding racist ideas”. I have a video taped answer on that one, and here is what others think about it.
Not true; bluharmony left because you shitheads were too evil for her.
comradestinkingshitbagtrollbob: fuck you, you putrescent piece of shit. Fuck off to the slimepit or AVfM where you belong, with your fellow-trolls – or better still, just fuck right off from the internet altogether. Even better than that, just stop interacting with other human beings. Your trolling has fewer redeeming features than anything I have ever scraped off the sole of my shoe (including the time I trod on a slug in the middle of the night; at least that was … interesting. You, not so much).
ckitching;
The vast majority of the earth’s human population growth has Naturally been among the r-type human tribes, yielding the highest current densities. Economic interconnections have allowed nutrients to move long distances and caused this growth. K-type human tribes are the only ones capable of harnessing the power of stored sun-energy to any significant degree; they maintain relatively stable populations but are robust. It is the Logical group survival strategy of r-types to move closer to and live among K-types, minimizing the length of their lines of sustinance. We can observe this in our daily lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory
I recommend the same regarding AVFM.
In other words, you establish that you are the authority on the matter and I have to submit to your rule. Well then, Queen Katherine Lorraine. There is no one true answer.
Knave, it is not that she is the authority and that you must bend to her rule. It is that you better not discount her experience. Because too many people discount the lives and experiences of transgendered people.
In fact, with this answer and how you are addressing Katherine, you are dismissing her.
(And you have been wondering why I have not been too fond of you.)
The first paragraph in my previous post is by Owlglass.
If the slymepit is such a clearly bad place why would it gain supporters from ftb readers. If your arguements held water what would you be afraid of?
You’re in Thunderdome where such criticism could easily be a topic. Have you checked for them with Ctrl +F? I think you’ll be searching with little result.
Our mentions of the mildew mosh are magnitudes less than their mention of us. Are you aware, for example, that terms like FTB, FfTB, A+ and Skepchick all have tens of thousands of mentions on the ‘pit while on A+, for example, the mentions of them are <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/01/30/terms/#comment-191403"<title="less than 200"?
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/01/30/terms/#comment-191403
Drat. I knew preview wasn’t showing properly, but I thought for sure I’d done that right. :(
… and I apologise for mentioning the pit when there was no need to: I agree with the point above, but posted without refreshing. ugh.
Did you just fucking ignore my last two comments and move your fucking goalposts? It sure looks like it.
And how fucking bad is your logic? Do you assume that “FtB readers” are exclusively good people?
Fucking troll, can’t you think of any other reasons besides “afraid”? How about we have other shit we prefer to do with our time besides seeking out a hate site which is infested by sexists and transphobes?
finkfree,
comradebob is a ftb reader
Trolls and harassers joining forces isn’t exactly a good thing. Ask Jen. Ask Rebecca. Especially since some of the harassers may turn into “real life” bad guys, as SallyStrange notes here.
I am not afraid of the pit. I find it to be dull.
Cunt!
Cunt!
Cunt!
Cunt!
Damn! How provocative
PZ is power mad and .and acts just like a tyrant!
Such insight.
Ophelia Benson and Surly Amy are professional victims and cry about t-shirt and jewelery!
Dem bitches be crazee.
Greta scammed her readers so that she could buy shoes!
We will show them how to give to charity.
I do not care enough about them to follow their every move.
Blow it out your ass, fink.
True, I once tried CTRL+F “voldemort” in Harry Potter and wondered what the whole point of the story was.
parhaps you could provide a link to support your ‘sexist & transphobia’ assertion?
Also, I will not apologize for bringing up the pit nor AVFM. That is where the shitbag belongs.
Also, I will nonsensical idiots to clog their site. I want them to stand by their FREEZE PEACH principles.
jesus fucking christ
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/30/thunderdome-17/comment-page-1/#comment-551599
err what goal posts have i moved and where did i say i thought all ftb reqders are good people? I didn’t even suggest i think any ftb readers are good people.
Gee, the old challenge. PZ gave the misogynists a chance to explain themselves, but evidence was required. After 1500+ posts, no evidence shown to justify their attitudes. I think PZ may moderate links to the site.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I want to entertain your sophistry, comrade. I do not. Your ability to grab random bits of science and grossly misapply them to justify your racism is astounding, though. It’s shocking that someone can misunderstand something so thoroughly as to type something like “r-type human tribes” and be serious about it. Perhaps you can direct me to these “tribes” that have somehow altered their biology to start delivering entire litters of human babies instead of the more typical one-at-a-time process almost everyone else uses.
No apology is suggested. Here’s what I originally said. I don’t want to argue with you about it, but I don’t believe we’re going to bother them by sending bob or his ilk their way. He’s at least as articulate as sacha, who they love.
In case, there was any concern, comrade, this flash animation was not a documentary on human reproduction.
I answered some of your questions; you ignored this.
Well then that answers your question. Some of them are not good people, and some of these are the ones who go over to the pit.
Is sasha as racist as the shitbag?
No, I don’t believe she is. Try your experiment; I don’t want to argue the point further.
ckitching;
R-type humans out-reproduce H-type humans in simple environments, such as those in tropical climates or recently emergent, petroleum fueled environments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzspsovNvII
H-type humans out-reproduce r-type humans in more complex environments, such as those with Seasons, or when faced with resource shortages. We all began as r-type humans in a tropical environment. Some of our ancestors were displaced from these simple environments and were forced to adapt, or die. I am not sure what is so difficult to understand.
Techno babble in the mouth of a low verbal IQ person.
comradebob: Fuck off.
comradebob
It is difficult to understand how far you are from understanding anything about evolution.
But chigau, African evolved men and Asian evolved women and micro-aggression!
evidence of the caliber of discourse at the pit? (NSFW)
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/02/02/what-is-more-important-than-peace-nsfw/
Blah, blah, blah, fucking blah.
8 read the user AR-type tropical resources. Light is life. I think it is easier to understand.
owlglass, you still don’t understand. Maybe if I write in bold type it would help? Just because you claim not to “see” race doesn’t make an entire group’s treatment through history by people who do see race and care very much about it disappear.
You don’t want to say that a black person is a different race than a white person. Great for you! But do you realize that what’s inside your own head doesn’t erase the fact that the black person is treated differently than just about everyone else in society, that their parents were treated differently, that their grandparents were barred from most public spaces that the white person’s grandparents were, that their great-grandparents were owned by the white person’s great-grandparents? Do you have any inkling what the cumulative effects of that differential treatment are, and what impact they still have on the people standing in front of you? Do you realize that people don’t live inside the happy rainbow world in your head? Refusing to acknowledge that by saying “I don’t see race” is refusing to acknowledge reality.
Janine
Seasons!!!!!
Complex Environments!!!!
But Pteryxx, I am sure that Stephanie Zvan was cherry picking in order to put the slymies in the worst possible light.
Oh, who am I shitting. I have been to the pit often enough to know that this is not an exaggeration.
comradebob, what is difficult to understand is how you can completely misunderstand this concept so thoroughly. Humans are not r-type by definition. We reproduce one at a time (multiple births are the exception, not the rule), it takes nine months for gestation, and another twelve to fifteen to reach sexual maturity. That’s practically the definition of slow reproduction, and none of these factors differ regardless of where the human is from.
Many rodents, on the other hand, are classifiable as r-type, and field mice get along just fine in environments with seasons or “complex environments” (whatever you choose to define that as). As do bacteria and insects.
As for myself–I’m a nobody. Once, two years ago, I helped organize my local SlutWalk. My name appeared once on the SlutWalk Facebook page. For this, I received, oh, about a dozen messages on FB telling me what an ugly unfuckable skank I was, and about half of these mentioned rape, and a couple specifically said they wanted to rape me.
So it never occurred to me that Rebecca Watson, with a fairly large public presence, upon being targeted by Richard Dawkins for admonishment about making too big a deal about unwanted sexual advances, and considering Dawkins’ even bigger media presence, would have to fabricate the existence of an influx of comments threatening rape and death, some of which specifically mentioned Dawkins.
Of course, I’m probably lying too. Because, as Saint Dawkins tells us, unwanted sexual attention is Zero Bad, rape threats are Just Words, and until women in Saudi Arabia are allowed to drive and exit the house without male escort, no women in any other countries should take any actions to fix their own relatively less serious problems.
Oh whoops. Sorry folks, wrong thread.
ckitching @454:
I really do understand your point. And agree with it. But I just had to chuckle a bit at your second sentence. It was just ambiguous enough for me to entertain the thought of human sexual maturation at 12 to 15 months. Precocious little buggers, eh?
Oops. Yeah, forgot the “years” in there.
Is there a mute button for comradbob?
And SteveoR?
Owlglasd is getting on my fucking nerves with this “I dont see race” shit too (also for ignoring the experiences of the trans community). So muting may be requested soon there as well.
Tony, if you are using the Mozilla browser, you can download Greasemonkey and install you own mute button.
Kinda funny watching the desperate efforts of comradebog to troll this thread.
Kinda sad that is attempts to troll, when run through Bad Translator, really do not become more incoherent.
There is a hidden “h”. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find where the “h” goes.
Here “is” your h hole…
Caine (and others involved in the conversation)
From up in the thread: thank you very much for your thoughts and points on poly relationships and mono relationships.
I’m of the monogamous lean, because I know how jealous I am/can get (and I’m with carlie here, have to be First Partner!); getting used to sharing my relationships is extremely difficult for me, and I’m most terrified of being betrayed/abandoned for someone ‘better’. I did try a poly relationship when I was in university (and actually learned the most about a healthy sexual relationship from one of the partners), and it just didn’t work for me. It wasn’t bad, both partners were great (in their own ways), but it just didn’t sit well with me.
I’ve felt physical attraction towards other women only a couple of times, but it has happened – it surprised me the first time, since I’ve always considered myself to be completely hetero. But. While some curiosity remains on the subject, the women I’m attracted to are few and far between, and the curiosity isn’t strong enough for me to want to actually do something about it. Also, I’ve never really wanted relationships with them; it’s been a purely physical (sexual) sort of attraction. *shrug* Not much of a point here, except… it was interesting reading? That’ll do, hopefully.
Also, fuck off, comradebob.
Of course all humans are K-type organisms relative to mice. All bipods mature later, live longer, reproduce slower, and have heavier brains than mice. However, among human groups who evolved in different environments, a very clear and unchanging pattern is observable:
Northeast-Asia evolved humans mature later, live longer, reproduce slower, and have heavier brains than European evolved humans; and
European evolved humans mature later, live longer, reproduce slower, and have heavier brains than African evolved humans.
These differences are distinct, clear, and cannot be challenged.
All of this fuck off, comradebob got me thinking of a song I have not thought of in decades. I checked youtube and what do you know? There it is!
It is by a rather juvenile southern California punk band called The Fiends. It is form an album titled We’ve Come For Your Beer. And it is called Die, Bob, Die.
Thanks for the memories.
Bipods are pretty cool.
The shitbag may be an idiot. But he is smart enough to have his racist tropes down pat.
Who said that a low verbal IQ shitstain is not capable of parroting.
comradebob is quite the idiot. I am highly amused by his stupidity in thinking that tropical climates don’t have seasons.
[citations needed]
[lots of them]
comradebog, your brain ain’t up to decent trolling, thick as it may be.
(How you imagine you’re gonna be taken seriously after your initial efforts is beyond me, but hey! Hope springs eternal! :) )
Heh. Biped, tetrapod… such tricky concepts!
(Humans are, of course, bipedal tetrapods no less than are ostriches)
Blah, blah, blah, fucking blah.
In short, I want to live more of your mouse is fat bipods. At the same time: a model for the development of the national minorities.
How many other people affected by the South-East Asia (n) is package
Marina sokszoro health life loss Lisbon Africa changed.
And then, of course, different from the others, as well as with recour.
The vast majority of children enrolled in the Head Start program are Tropically evolved (‘whites’ are lumped in with ‘Others’). A comprehensive report on the effects of Head Start was recently released. As a matter of fact it was released 3 days before Christmas. Here is it, read the words for yourself:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/head_start_executive_summary.pdf
The pull quote for those who may be intrigued by comparative r-K evolutionary biology, in my opinion, is this:
“Looking across the full study period, from the beginning of Head Start through 3rd grade, the evidence is clear that access to Head Start improved children’s preschool outcomes across developmental domains, but had few impacts on children in kindergarten through 3rd grade.”
As Tropically-evolved human brains develop faster than Seasonally-evolved human brains, but weigh less when full-grown, this makes perfect sense to anyone who celebrates human biodiversity. However, to the study’s highly paid educators, it is a mystery. This is why pursuing theology is a questionable life-choice.
John Morales:
A while back you threw an aside my way,
“(Ain’t ya an senescent ursine?)”
When I first read the comment, my numb and exhausted brain saw “sentient” and couldn’t relate. Your actual word was apropos. Words, ya gotta love ’em.
John, I surmise that you are a word guy. That gives me another opportunity to digress. A common name for one of my favorite plants is kinnikinnick. I love the way it rolls off my tongue. Another common name for the plant is bearberry. And despite my T-dome moniker, that’s rather boring compared to kinnikinnick. Not so boring is a third name, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi. A bit repetitious, but I like it.
That’s all.
I see that comradebog is not only ignorant about anthropology and biology (indeed, about science in general), but also ignorant about sociology.
(Figures)
You see, the shitbag is an Alpine evolved low verbal IQ dipshit.
Who could not be bothered to read a book like The Mismeasure Of Man.
oldmrbear, for some it is a thrill to trill.
(Why yes, I do like words! :) )
Janine, I still really like you but Steven Jay Gould was another Harvard fraud who pretty much hated Seasonally-evolved people for reasons which will not be apparent to most. For reasons which are not clear even to me, the New York Times has communicated the incident:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html?_r=0
A better book to raise your level of knowledge would be “The Ten Thousand Year Explosion”.
The creep creeps again.
rq:
I’m glad you got something positive from your experience. Yeah, poly just isn’t for everyone. There have been times when it wasn’t what I wanted or needed, either.
Say you like me one more time and I will fucking punch you in the throat.
comradebob, why do you imagine an ignoramus such as you who buys into pseudo-science and misunderstands actual science has any basis upon which to advice people?
Also, shitbag, I want you to point at the works where you get you “facts” about tropical evolved humans.
Also, you do know that the scientists who are reading this blog have been pointing out (And laughing, I am assuming) your use of scientific sounding words.
(I am not a scientist nor do I try to pass myself off as one.)
Feisty!
Is paying US$2900 to “publish” your paper normal in scientific circles?
http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/
malicious!
asshole!
Sitting on a park bench —
eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose —
greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun —
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck —
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
comradebob, you are so obviously trolling for comments that it is pathetic. Take your racist pseudoscientific ass and go hang out on freeper boards where you’ll be welcomed.
bob-o apparently didn’t read his own link.
I suppose it is unrealistic of me to expect bob to understand that cold temperatures selects for animals with a larger body mass and the brain to match.
You know, I try to be nice.
So.
comradebob, it would be awesome if you fucked off.
Athyco @ 375
Good, gracious goobers, sigh, you are a persistent one. As you say, whatevs. A fleeting meeting of the minds.
But hey, you did offer me a choice. You gave me a nice short list of Athyco approved synonyms. I chose. It really is all about me.
No, I assumed that you would be old enough. I don’t know your exact age, but if I’m not mistaken you mentioned the number of years you taught school. That gets me close enough.
My digression was brought on by an accumulation of associations and connections here in the T-Dome. Using your phrase was a bit nasty, but served my purpose ( who is this all about anyway?)
The Dancer
Okay, I know PZ stated the line to cross to qualify for banning was pretty far out there, but in my not so humble opinion comradebob has reached it. If I were Janine and on the receiving end of his harassment I’d be double locking my doors and windows and carrying a gun. And I hate guns. This is not hyperbole. He is an internet menace and it is not worth experimenting with whether or not he would choose to also be a meatspace menace. Enough.
Stop projecting your personal inadequacies and angers you twits. Typical Jonsian behavior; lose an argument and then seek to silence.
comradebob, there is a difference between “seeking to silence” and “not letting someone stalk and harass another person”. Your specific attention to Janine and your insistence that she knows how you feel about her is creepy at best. I may have fired a bit prematurely, but I have now requested for PZ to take a look at this thread and your behavior since you’re obviously not leaving her alone or responding just to what she writes.
No argument has been lost. Your assertions have been so wrong, no one takes what you babble about seriously.
Now the shitbag is squawking about FREEZE PEACH.
Laughable.
Now, respond with an other sexist harassing one liner.
SallyStrange,
Actually, I’m beginning to think that this would be the right thread for drosera.
Carlie:
I’m glad you did, as I was about to. Not much point in being anti-harassment while allowing it to go on, eh?
Being polite to someone by stating that ‘I like her’ before bringing her attention to the fact that she is hanging an argument on a Fraud is not harassment. Noting that someone is ‘feisty’ after she threatens to ‘fucking punch me in the throat’ seems to me to be pretty reasonable call to civility.
Frankly, her multiple responses to my very reasonable comments seems a little obsessive.