It was useful and informative and well-organized, and now Valerie Aurora is profiled in the Guardian. It’s got lots of good information about how men can be good allies to women, too.
Like any commercial from Big Pharma, you should pay close attention to the long list of terrible side effects. I’ve been on this thing for decades, and “not listening, thinking bad ideas are fantastic, and a condescending tone” are really common; I have managed to escape the symptom of “war crimes” so far.
You knew it was coming. The technologies are developing to introduce us to virtual reality games, and right away, there are men showing up to ruin it all.
I wasn’t as experienced a player as BigBro442. Everywhere I ran, he appeared beside me, ready to grope as soon as the zombie wave was over. I’d had enough. With a final parting obscenity, I yanked the headset off my face and stood back in the sunny, familiar room of my brother-in-law’s home.
What had just happened? I hadn’t lasted 3 minutes in multiplayer without getting virtually groped.
There are no penalties for that sort of behavior in the game. There is no one looking on to see that someone is having a miserable experience in what should be fun entertainment. BigBro442 — even his chosen name is a tip-off that he’s a creep — is more experienced in that particular game, which means he’s been playing it regularly, and hasn’t experienced anything to drive him off, unlike the woman who would write that piece.
We just shrug and accept that there will be assholes in games. It’s people like BigBro442 who convinced me to abandon multiplayer games — that, and the developers didn’t give a damn. Every game is targeted right at the young male jerk audience.
Contrast that, though, with what happened when two women went on a date, and the creepy real-life version of BigBro442 started harassing them.
Here’s what happened when the man started asking me and my date about our private lives: First of all, not one, not two, but three employees — two men and a woman — rolled up on this dude, like a very refined food-service gang. Then, everybody behind the bar looked up, watching the scene, and you could almost hear them all thinking Just make one move, fool, I swear to fucking God. I realize now that the staff had been watching us for some time, trying to measure our level of discomfort at an intervention versus their obligation to their customers to maintain a chill, relaxed atmosphere. I’m going to guess that some of these staff members were LGBTQ folks, but all of them were the strongest allies I’ve ever met in my life.
The manager then spoke clearly: “Sir, you need to leave. You’ve made our patrons uncomfortable, and we do not tolerate this kind of behavior in THE BRANDY LIBRARY.” That’s a hilarious statement, but it’s also a very beautiful one — especially when you’re a scared twenty-something on your first big date with a person of the same gender, and you just want to have a nice night.
Wow. That’s how you do it.
It sounds like The Brandy Library is a good place to visit in New York…hey, wait a minute. I looked at the photos of the interior, and the address, and I think I have been there, years ago. But it had a different name. I think?
Well, gosh, I guess I’m going to have to visit New York again and check it out.
I’m not so keen on checking out yet another multi-player video game with little boys running rampant.
Remember Peterson? The tenured professor at the University of Toronto who insists on disrespecting his students? Shiv is collecting all the news about this bozo, so if you want to learn more, you know where to go.
One of the things that surprised me, sort of, was this account of a teach-in to discuss the issues.
The event was interrupted by Lauren Southern from The Rebel, a right-wing online media outlet. Southern, pretending to be transgender, took to the microphone to defend Peterson and was quickly shut down, having not identified herself as a media correspondent.
That left me very curious. How does someone who doesn’t believe in the reality of transgender people pretend to be transgender? That could be revealing in itself.
I guess I’m going to have to come down on the side of free speech, though. If that ass Peterson can refuse to address his students respectfully, I think it’s only fair that his students get to address him as “Peterson, you ass…”.
I find myself repelled by the color pink anymore. It’s basically been appropriated by the Susan G. Komen Foundation to represent research on breast cancer, and it’s as if daubing pink paint on something suddenly makes it an accomplishment in cancer research.
So we had pink drill bits. Fracking for the cure!
Pink fighter jets! Strafing and bombing for the cure!
They cut support for Planned Parenthood! Who needs mammograms and education when you’ve got drill bits and bullets?
Susan G. Komen has long held deep ties with right wing groups. Now we learn that another aspect of those ties is that they have scheduled major fund raising events at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
Komen has held their annual “Perfect Pink Party” at Mar-a-Lago since 2011, and Trump has attended throughout the years. The AP reported today that the party is still planned for January 2017, and that the organization won’t make a final decision about whether to go ahead — or cancel and lose the deposit — until after October. Komen spokesperson Andrea Rader declined to comment beyond the AP story.
The AP also reported that two alleged instances of Trump touching women inappropriately occurred at Mar-a-Lago.
There’s also this little gem.
Nancy Brinker, who is the founder and chair of Global Strategy for the Komen Foundation [but who is currently on leave] endorsed Trump earlier this year.
Trump’s support among women is dismally low — this is a thug who thinks women need to be punished for getting an abortion — and yet Komen doesn’t think this is enough of a problem that they should distance themselves from him.
I’ll never donate to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and I don’t see how they can stop their slide into irrelevance at this rate. I’m just waiting for the Republicans to slap a coat of pink paint on their logo to show that they are pro-woman. It’s the least they could do.
Joe Rogan dreams of being Billy Bush. Aim high, Joe, aim high! And now he’s found the ridiculously rich (but probably not as rich as he claims he is) presidential aspirant to leech off of and sycophantically praise for his raunchiness. It’s not Trump, though. It’s Dan Bilzerian.
If you’re like me, you said “who?”, but apparently Dan Bilzerian is huge on instagram, with millions of followers. His specialty is looking masculine while hanging out with expensive cars, big guns, and naked women. He’s filthy rich because he inherited huge sums from his criminal father, and, he says, from winning at poker. He sounds like a truly horrible person. Sadly, that seems to be a path to fame, and also sure enough, he is running for president of the US.
But Joe Rogan is even more pathetic. He did a three hour interview with Bilzerian in which he’s practically drooling over him and openly saying that he wants to be just like him. The sycophancy is gross.
I wasn’t able to cope with more than a few minutes of the interview, but someone wrote to me with an annotated breakdown of key moments. Thank you! I could not have made it through the whole thing, nor do I want to. So I’ll just put it all right here.
First Joe Rogan Defending Donald Trumps attack on the Miss Universe shaming her for being fat https://youtu.be/sywnldE9YIA?t=59 That’s not why I wrote you. It’s for the Podcast he did With Dan Bilzerian. This Is so bad, and yet no one has said anything against this monster. If you listen to nothing else just got to link 8. As a mother this broke my heart.
This is the perfect example of 2 white man, essentially promoting rape culture. People where surprised at Billy Bushes behavior, being the sycophant that he is. I was not surprised because as a woman I have seen the bro culture as it is now referred too my whole life. In a recent Joe Rogan podcast,
Joe talks a Dan Bilzerian who markets himself as a playboy He 40 million followers on intagram and facebook https://www.instagram.com/danbilzerian/?hl=en Notice all the groping in the photos.The whole conversation they spend talking about women as objects being refereed to only as bitches and pussy.
1 Here is Joe Rogan emulating Billy Bush https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=3 @20 second he calls woman bitches.
2 Here, Bilzerian refers to woman as pussy https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=96
3 Here again Bilzerian braging about sleeping with woman even though he didn’t want, and Joe Rogan doing he best interpretation as BIlly Bush. https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=279
4 Here they go on a long rant about woman being gold diggers. https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=1451 Women are almost always talked about in the context of being evil whores that want to steal rich guys money.
5 In Bilzerian calls someone a cocksucker https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=2063
I see you often talk about Donald Trump, and wonder how he could become president. Here is you answer, this behavior is so normalized, that men like this look up to Trump. This and no one in the mainstream speaks up against this type of interaction. 50 Million people take these seriously.6 They talk about fame and again women only being attracted to money. Listen to Joe refer to it as Balling. This is a 49 year old man https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=2887
7 This is the saddest part. I genuinely feel sorry for his wife and daughters who one day will listen to this. Joe Rogan laments that he has a wife and kids. He says it as if his family are a burden. https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=2901 TO say this publicly is just monstrous. I would not be happy if my husband said this about me.
8 famous for being a baller, https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=2922 Joe loses his dignity here. Look at Bilzerian’s face here, even he feels awkward with Joe Rogans ass kissing. https://youtu.be/RX5Iw-XsWu4?t=2949
If Bilzerian were at some point to get serious about running for the presidency (I don’t think he will, but I’d have said the same thing about Trump), the opposition research has already begun. I have to say though, that I don’t envy the people who have to go through the sludge of youtube and other media sources. It does help when you’ve got point sources like Rogan who revel in the slime.
Keep in mind, though, that there are millions of people who admire these two assholes.
So do I.
Man, I’m going to miss the Obamas.
There exists an article in which a male politician’s fashion choices are judged. It even explains why he looks rather frumpy.
This should not be. This cannot happen. This is just wrong. I’ve gone through life assuming that my poorly fitting clothes and lack of style would never be used against me because I am not a woman, and here are all my hopes and illusions shattered.
I do not know if I’ll be able to step outside in public ever again.
At least my clothes still have pockets, so I can retain a shred of my sense of superiority. Those feminists are probably going to go after those next, aren’t they?
Today we celebrate women in science and technology by remembering Ada Lovelace. We also take note of how tech companies still fail to meet gender equality standards (so they better hire my daughter when she graduates), and the miserable failure of academia to end sexual harassment. So it’s kind of a mixed celebration.
Do read that last link, if nothing else.
Last week I watched a documentary by Louie Theroux, about Jimmy Savile and the child rape scandal. In it, Theroux said something that struck me; “monsters don’t get close to children, nice men do”. I think the same can be said of these sexual harassment and abuse stories that we hear of so often now in STEM disciplines. The perpetrators of harassment and abuse are not monsters, they are often highly respected and inspiring figures at first. They can be our friends, colleagues, and mentors. That’s what makes it so hard if we find out that this trusted friend, colleague, or mentor has been abusing and hurting other people. The resulting cognitive dissonance keeps us from accepting that it is even possible that our trusted friend, colleague, or mentor is capable of these behaviours and therefore, we automatically ignore what we hear from survivors. We believe the excuses and explanations that the perpetrator comes up with. And I have come to realise that this is just one of the many ways that our society allows sexual harassment to go on as long as it does, and why survivors are so scared to come forward. Even when they do, we expect these survivors to shoulder the emotional labour of reaching out to other victims, talking to the media, and reliving the harassment, all while trying to hold the perpetrator accountable for what they did. And if that wasn’t enough, survivors also have to deal with those within the community who question the veracity of their experiences.
On a cheerier note, at least now you can buy badass women of science t-shirts.
Gosh, I wonder what they’re going to talk about at the debate tonight.
It just came out. Anyone else feel like the Clinton campaign is gleefully waving a red cape at a bull?
