Sometimes I miss Twitter. It’s the place where you can find the dumbest arguments and most stupid people on the internet, and the idiocy has gotten even more concentrated as the smart people bail out. Look what I missed!
Jessica M: Women deal with periods, pregnancy, and menopause. What do men have to deal with?
Lee Anderson: Try the Battle of the Somme.
For dog’s sake, man, that is hyperbole so extreme it makes you look even more ridiculous than your bluster would lead me to expect. You’re a 57 year old man who has never done any military service who was born long after the Somme, and a realistic answer would have been “Swollen prostate, erectile dysfunction, and a bloated sense of entitlement.”
Although I’ve long abandoned Twitter, I haven’t yet deleted my account, and I still get occasional notifications by text. Lately it’s mostly been Graham Linehan raging, so it’s amusing, but isn’t at all tempting me to re-engage.
OK, shit-head. You try crapping out a bowling-ball sized mass of flesh and bone and see how well you feel afterwards.
Does this guy imply that the most worthy achievement of men during all of history was WW I?
Yes, Lee Anderson is embarrassingly a British MP, for Reform UK – Nigel Farage’s successor to UKIP. Sometimes known as LeeAnderthal for his regressive views. It’s slightly unusual for people like him to go back to WW1 rather than WW2.
Is there a biological drive for every man to head to northern France and fight in trench warfare? Wow, guess all the microplastics in my bloodstream have suppressed that instinct.
Also funny when you consider the 30p Lee is the exact type of man who’d have used political connections to steer clear of any enlistment in the army in WW1. Guess on his own terms that means he’s genderfluid or something?
I guess Lee Andersen MP lives in an alternate universe where women haven’t been members of the military for several decades? I think he needs to try out a period simulator so he can understand why his answer is completely beside the point.
I think a troop of women in full PMS phase would be incredibly lethal. I’m actually surprised more women don’t choose violence when their hormones are in full rage mode and some douchbag tries to claim that a historic battle is at all relevant to all the reproductive crap women deal with routinely.
It’s slightly unusual for people like him to go back to WW1 rather than WW2.
That’s because WW2 was a victory against fascism, and now that fascists are ascendant in the UK, they’re not so proud of their country’s victory anymore.
Also, this bragging about how only men have to deal with war is bullshit, and always has been. Women always get seriously impacted by war, especially — but not exclusively — in the countries where the fighting actually happens.
It’s painless to delete your X account, PZ, and there are better ways to amuse yourself. Elon won’t miss you but if a lot more folks like you told Elon to fuck off then we might hear the end of X.
Ragging Bee @ #7 — Add to the many ways women…as well as non-combatant men…are impacted by war, there are now some 229,000 women in active service in the US, about 17.5% of the force. Women have almost always engaged in warfare alongside the men, though often in disguise in modern times because of stupid sexist restrictions. The reason so many women are in the military these days, besides meeting force requirements, is because the military trains people for all kinds of skills, not just firing weapons, while paying them and taking care of their medical needs. Some women in the US actively fought to break down the gender barrier so they would have access to that training and opportunity.
Hey, Dr. Myers, being unborn during the Battle of the Somme is no excuse for your cowardice in serving Amerika. I’m already seeing your name on Trump’s enemies list.
Yup! Those kinds of exchanges remind me why we refer to it as xhitter (rhymes with what you are when you sit on the toilet)
Ah, good old 30p Lee. He’s well-known in the UK and for all the wrong reasons: primarily stupidity, bigotry and hypocrisy. He’s been suspended by the Labour party, jumped ship to the Conservatives, was suspended by them, defected to Reform, and it can only be a matter of time before he’s too much even for those nutters. His Wikipedia entry reads more like the entry of a loon on RationalWiki than it does a standard MP’s life story.
Reform UK, Anderson’s current “party”, are basically the UK’s version of MAGA. Their leader, Farage, has spent more time in the USA toadying up to Trump since he was elected than in his own constituency.
Dilbert Stark is currently trying to find a way to gift Reform UK (Party) Ltd (it’s actually a limited company with Farage as the majority shareholder rather than a “proper” party) several hundred million without contravening UK election law, so it’s hardly surprising the UK shit-weasel club are on X.
These people are utterly loathsome, the only light relief coming from the frequency with which people chuck milkshakes at Farage.
#8: Deletion is imminent. I’m porting over all my old tweets right now, and once complete, I’ll be axing it.
Reminds me of “We Hunted the Mammoth”, a name which IIRC mocks a similar claim that men supposedly “hunted” mammoths, unlike women.
I mean, yeah women have anatomy and biological processes that can be more troublesome, not to mention having to put up with a lot more violence and oppression and stuff. But come on, when men get old we start to grow hair out of our ears. Isn’t that just as bad?
https://i0.wp.com/theunwrittenrecord.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/600-a10.jpg
Just saying…periods, pregnancy, and menopause AND war.
PZ, if you delete your account your name becomes available to anyone who wants it.
Another option:
https://au.lifehacker.com/security/34428/news/dont-delete-your-twitter-account-do-this-instead
The original tweet is also dumb so you are not missing any intelligent discussion.
@#7: And those who have not swords can still die upon them. — Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings. (Note that J. R. R. Tolkien really did serve in the Battle of the Somme.)
#17: Good idea. I paid for a cheap slow service to do the transfer, so it’ll be a few weeks before it’s done, so I’ll just lock it down without deleting my account.
@#19: I like that Eowyn quote. Tolkien does show he understands something about the unfairness of gender roles in a discussion about her – Aragorn (or possibly Gandalf, can’t remember) points out that while both Eowyn and Eomer have the stress of dealing with their uncle’s failing health and the deteriorating political situation, Eowyn has it far worse that Eomer because he gets to ride out and attack people, while she is expected to sit at home and deal with everything (and then eventually she does ride to war and kills a far bigger foe than anything her brother manages).
Great Britain proper in WW2 did have a lot of bombings of civilians; this was a lot less frequent in GB in WW1 hence why he might have chosen WW1 over WW2 (this ignores places like Belgium, northern France and Russia in WW1 where civilians were still at high risk; also ignores female nurses such as on the HMHS Llandovery Castle who were killed in the line of duty). This all ignores civilian deaths in Germany and its allies.
(There was bombing of civilians in England in WW1 by the Germans which killed less than 1500 people though the source doesn’t breakdown civilians/military; the Blitz in WW2 killed over 40,000 civilians.)
@11. Rich Woods : “His (Lee Anderson) Wikipedia entry reads more like the entry of a loon on RationalWiki than it does a standard MP’s life story.”
Hmm… Lessee :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Anderson_(British_politician)
Checks out.
Also why choose The Somme in particular? I mean I guess I can see why they wouldn’t use the battle of the Bulge (ok WWII battle but anyhow..) but why not Verdun or Gallipoli ( Hear – Eric Bogle – The Band Played Waltzing Matilda – 7 & a half mins ) Also why limit it to trench warfare on land and not, say, the maritime Battles of Jutland or Coronel instead? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Coronel )
Also note these battles were bloody, horrible and caused by racist, toxic colonial empires and imperialists throwing away and ruining hundreds of thousands of lives – of all genders – for really dumb reasons. Young fools needlessly dying due to the egos, greed, ambition and lack of intelligence (in both forms of that word) of rich old rulers exploiting and controlling them as puppets and literal cannon fodder. These battles weren’t necessary, they could’ve been avoided and lives would have saved if they had been avoided so.. yeah, overall WTF why?
@9 “PMS rage would make women good at killing” isn’t the pro-feminist statement you think it is
@23. To put more concisely men (& everyone) suffer through war becuase of poor, selfish, unwise generally* male leadership.
.* With a few rare exceptions.
Ethicsgradient @ 3
You beat me to LeeAnderthal ! 🙂
From middle-age onwards, men have to get up to pee in the night. And we get unhygienic hair on the chest.
That surely must count for something!
BTW
Mussolini: “War is for men what childbirth is for women”
.
Lee AnderThal is literally echoing the original fascist.
WW1 is the cultural referent of extreme rightists like Reform at the moment: poppies and war memorials and silhouettes of bowed- head soldiers are their chosen battleground to identify the “woke” enemy. Because their last political triumph, Dog’s Brexit, is now so obviously toxic that they are very quiet about it. The Somme has been transformed from a total military disaster that almost lost the allies the war (and did lose them the core of the volunteer army recruited in the early testosterone- rush of war) into a Supreme Blood Sacrifice for which we should be Eternally Grateful.
Why insult Neandertals – who we have no reason to believe were any more antisocial or bigoted on average than their modern descendants (i.e., us), by using a play on their name as an insult?
I miss NNTP.
The worst thing I have to deal with is baldness shaming from people who think it’s my fault somehow and can’t be convinced that it’s my genes, not my shampoo (yes, that happens; no not just Republicans!) . Nothing like people with wombs deal with, though.
Isn’t it amusing how men who are taking credit for fighting wars (or hunting mammoths for that matter) hardly ever actually fought a war? Also, how they usually object women fighting alongside of men?
rietpluim, the converse is the old “women and children first” sentiment.
Also, what sane person would take pride in fighting wars? A real accomplishment would be preventing them!