He For She: Lipstick on a Pig

There is all the difference in the world between treating pyeople equally and attempting to make them equal. - Friedrich Hayek

(Above is Emma Watson's He For She speech. I commented on it in real time as I watched it.

Starts well enough.

Quoting the dictionary definition of feminism is often used by the bona fide man-haters to deflect criticism. Almost always in conjunction with the feminist variant if the No True Scotsman fallacy.

She mentions being "sexualized" at 14, yet was willing to get naked on camera when everybody thought that she was going to be cast as the female lead in the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey. Of course, the reason she felt sexualized at 14 couldn't possibly be because she actually was being sexualized by all those sex-specific hormones that her body was flooding itself with. That would be biology when we know that teenage girls are sexualized because of patriarchy.

At 18 she laments that her male friends weren't "allowed" to show their feelings. This is a solipsistic interpretation of the growing natural behavioral differences between the sexes at that age. (It later occurred to me that, although she mentioned several times men not being "allowed" to show their feelings, she never said anything about men expressing their masculinity. This is another example of solipsism; she fails to understand that emphasis on emotions is a biologically feminine trait. Men do in fact express their feelings; it's just not with the same overt displays of emotion.)

"Why has the word [feminism] become such an uncomfortable one?" Ye shall know a tree by its fruit.

First round of applause for the women's bodily autonomy comment. Pretty sure how this is going to go now.

She says that no country in the world has achieved gender equality, but she's switching between two mutually exclusive concepts of equality; equality of outcome (wage parity, etc.) and equality of treatment (being respected). One has got to give way for the other. Equality of outcome requires inequality of treatment; equality of treatment means inequality of outcome. Can't have both.

(paraphrasing) "My parents loved me and treated me with respect and I'm a girl so they are inadvertent feminists." Nice try, though.

She keeps acting like she can't figure out why people are so put off by the mere word (feminism). It comes with a lot of baggage there, sweetheart.

And now she extends a formal invitation for men to support feminism. That would be the feminism with all the baggage that people don't want to associate with.

And now she's ticking off a short list of social ills that men face, seemingly oblivious to the role that feminism has played in exacerbating the problems.

"...a distorted sense of what constitutes male success." No explanation what this is supposed to mean. Implies that feminism contains the real sense of what constitutes male success.

Lamenting gender stereotypes now. Sounds like the old "social construct" bullshit they use to deny biological sex differences.

When men are "free from gender stereotypes," things will change for women as a natural consequence. Well, no shit. When men stop being men, things will change for women. Has she not been paying attention?

"If men don't have to be aggressive to be accepted..." More "social construct" nonsense. Men "have to be" aggressive because it's a defining biological trait. Ditto for female submissiveness. (Relax there, ladies. Individual results may vary.)

Men and women should "feel free" to be "sensitive and strong." Again, "sensitive" and "strong" are loaded concepts. Sensitive, when applied to men, means overtly displaying feminine traits. Strong, when applied to women, means...OK - I don't know what the fuck it means, but it looks like the promo photo for a Lifetime network original movie.

A "spectrum" instead of two "opposing ideals." She's saying that sexual dimorphism is an "ideal" and not a biological reality. (And this anti-scientific nonsense gets applause.)

"It's about freedom." Yeah, yeah...it's always about "freedom."

Men could be "a more true and complete version of themselves" if only they acted less like men.

And now back to income inequality, the old outcome/treatment dichotomy, as if that hasn't been debunked over and over again. Flogging a dead horse.

Now she's talking about child brides, which is the latest attempt of feminists to ride on the coat tails of third world problems. No mention of corresponding child husbands.

"We are struggling for a uniting word..." Oy vey. Change the package, put a big yellow NEW AND IMPROVED! Now with 33% less Man Hating splash on the front.

*****

The speech was long on men should be allowed to have feelings, which is just a regurgitation of the silly old get in touch with your feminine side bullshit from the 1970s. The predicament that Western men find themselves in today is precisely because of a surplus of feminine conditioning and indoctrination (it's not men that are running K-12 education, is it?) and a deficit of male role models (observe the ever-climbing rate of single motherhood). And then she wonders why the male suicide rate is so high. Normal expressions of youthful masculinity are drugged into submission or vilified as inherently harmful to both women and themselves, as echoed by the "Patriarchy hurts men, too" line that feminists trotted out as another deflection when men's rights activists started gaining a bit of traction in the public discourse.

It seems that her heart is in the right place but, right off the bat, I suspected that she was trying to put lipstick on a pig. The name of her Twitter campaign gives the whole thing away: He For She.

Entitlement much?

Indeed. Her delivery was pleasant enough, but there's nothing new here.

On the Ray Rice Two Minutes Hate

I'm no stranger to high-conflict women. I had a girlfriend once who broke up with me because I ignored her frequent attempts to bait me into arguments about nothing. I had another that bit me hard on the shoulder at a party because I wasn't paying her enough attention for her liking. I waited patiently until she let go and told her that if she ever did it again I would punch her in the mouth. I used to hang out with a tiny Vietnamese girl that got kicked out of five bars in one night because she kept picking fights with random men and punching them in the face. If one of those guys had laid her out I would have been obliged to tell the cops that she had been asking for it all night long.

I dated one particularly unstable woman who flipped out and attacked me when I broke up with her. She was beating on my chest and I had pushed her away several times. When she swung at my face I shoved her hard and sent her sprawling across the hood of her car. I held her down with my forearm across her throat until she agreed to chill the fuck out. If I had had the power and aggression of an NFL running back at the time, there's no telling how that would have played out.

Everybody is focusing on the KO punch that Rice landed on Janay Palmer, his then-fiance. What nobody is talking about is what was caught on the surveillance video before that punch.

In the beginning of the video we see Rice leaning against a pillar near the elevator, apparently fiddling with a smartphone, when Palmer walks by and slaps him in the face. They then enter the elevator where they appear to be arguing. This indicates that we are seeing an argument that had already been in progress for a while. Rice is standing close to Palmer when she appears to strike him in the face again with her elbow. Rice immediately slaps her in the face and backs away. Palmer rushes at Rice and he knocks her out.

This course of events doesn't exonerate Rice, but Palmer had clearly physically assaulted him twice on camera before he got physical himself, which would seem to be reflected in the minor charge of aggravated third degree assault for Rice and Palmer's charge of simple assault.

The two got married shortly after this incident. I doubt that this was the first such altercation between them and I highly doubt that it will be the last. There's a good chance that Palmer is a high-conflict type that gets off on pushing buttons because she knows, just like everybody else has demonstrated, that her violent provocations will be totally ignored.

Rice is done in the NFL. It wouldn't surprise me to see Palmer file for divorce in a couple of years - while there's still money to be had - possibly provoking another beat-down to seal the deal. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened.

Contrary to the propaganda, most DV is mutual. It's always been so. When I was an MP in the Army (a lifetime ago) a buddy of mine told me about an NCO, a 6'7" 300 lb bodybuilder, whose 90 lb Korean wife beat him to death with a cast iron skillet for cheating on her. You can talk all you want about "she can't really hurt him." Then you can google images of male domestic violence victims and shut the fuck up.

A lot of men are puffing themselves up and yammering about how real men don't hit women. That's fine if your idea of a real man is one who will stand there and be a punching bag. Yet these same men wonder why it's so hard to find women that have any respect for them.

State of Independence, or, My Sometimes Curious Musical Influences

I've been on a Jon and Vangelis kick lately. It's one of those weird little against-type things that set my friends to scratching their heads since I'm known to pretty much everybody as a straight-up old school metal head.

But, I have always been a fan of Yes anyway and I loved Vangelis' soundtrack for the original Carl Sagan Cosmos. I remember picking up a cassette of The Best of Jon and Vangelis when I was in high school in the 1980s and had it in steady rotation for years until my cassettes were rendered obsolete by CDs. I've just had a few of the songs from that album on my mind over the past several days.

Anyway...I looked up their song State of Independence a little while ago on YouTube:

In the sidebar is a live version of a cover that Donna Summer did a year after the original was released. Again, a head-scratcher for most of the people that know me, but I really like her version, too.

I suspect that this is one of those songs that is really hard to screw up without special effort.

Female Viking Warriors?

I find it amusing how feminists will vehemently denounce the shieldmaiden trope as the misogynistic fantasies of sexless manboobz and then get all "Grrrl Power!" when some SJW hack writes an obviously dubious piece of click-bait reinforcing that same trope.

Apparently, reading comprehension isn't a strong suit of feminist bloggers.

The MegaDong

This is the sort of thing one might trip over at a grindcore house party.

Racist Cops Harass Innocent Teens

FULL RETARD FRIDAY: A Tale of Two Selfies

So this little bundle of fail is making its way around the congregation:

Well, sort of...

Right off the bat, we see that whoever created this meme is too stupid (or high) to understand the difference between a professional promo shot and an amateur selfie. Or they think that we are. My money is on the latter, as this meme is steeped in the sort of condescension and intellectual conceit all too common among congregants.

This is "how white/black guys who smoke weed are portrayed," we are scolded told. But let's ask the obvious question: portrayed by whom?

Are we to infer that these are racial stereotypes propagated by the white racist media? That white stoners are portrayed as addled buffoons and black stoners are portrayed as violent criminal thugs because racism? Is this accurate? Can we find no portrayals of black stoners in popular media who are not also criminal thugs? 

What about Dave Chappelle?

Bob Marley?

Chris Tucker?

Ricky Williams?

The juxtaposition of a white stoner buffoon with a Thug Lifer is meant to create a false equivalency and insinuate that it is racist to recognize an urban street thug when you see one.

But why would we assume that we're looking at a violent street thug? Well, let's take a closer look at the two images.

The one on the left is of Jim Breuer, a comedian who is familiar to pretty much anybody that has fired up a spliff in the past thirty years. His whole schtick is the stereotypical white quasi-hippie stoner. This is how he portrays himself to make his living in the world of stand-up comedy.

The image on the right is quite different as it is a selfie portraying the image of a violent urban thug, complete with a bandanna (which may or may not be gang colors) concealing his face in the time-honored tradition of the armed bandit, an automatic handgun (anybody care to wager whether applicable title and permits are in order?), and either flipping the bird or flashing a gang sign with his left hand, which has been cropped out of frame.

If we assume - reasonably, IMO - that the picture of Mr. Breuer is intended to portray him as the affable pot-head dumbass he has played his entire comedy career, may we not reasonably assume that the apparent Thug Life selfie is precisely what the guy intended it to be? For that matter, if we were to see it all by itself, would the first thing that comes to our minds be stoner?

"I'm not even that fucking high."

What is a selfie, after all, if not a self-portrait intended to be shared on social media? Are we to speculate that there was some Evil White Man or cackling Jewish media mogul forcing this Innocent Teenager^TM to portray himself as a violent street thug? No; he portrayed himself exactly as he wanted us to see him. He could have chosen a stack of books, a musical instrument, a science project, a kitten, or a picture of his dad, but he chose a gun, a mask, and the aggressive posturing of an inner city gang banger. Who are we to pretend that he wasn't keenly aware of the image he was portraying?

Jim Breuer built his career on being the goofball stoner. Odds are pretty good that Thug Lifer also smokes pot, but it's just plain stupid to think that his selfie was meant to portray the image of a harmless pot smoker.

But that's the whole point of this meme; to get us to internalize that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and we therefore call it a duck - but it's a black duck - we're racists. It's to get us to deny to ourselves what our eyes plainly see.

I'd be interested to know, based only on the photos, which one the creator of this meme would rather meet in a dark alley.

The photos in this meme were composed to portray two entirely different things. Putting them together and suggesting that we are somehow racist for recognizing that a gun-wielding urban thug and a harmless white stoner are vastly different people and therefore merit different treatment earns this meme a post on FULL RETARD FRIDAY.

I just don't get it...

Pictured above is Zoe Quinn, the woman who single-handedly wrecked video game journalism with her vagina when her uberchump now-ex-boyfriend discovered that she had been cheating on him with pretty much everybody and then told the entire world. If you are not familiar with this still very live train wreck, check out #GamerGate on Twitter or InternetAristocrat's Quinnspiracy Theory series on YouTube.

What I don't get is this: before the red pill I had several long "dry spells." Several years at one point. But even at my most wretched, most desperate, most abysmally lonely, I still would never have fucked Zoe Quinn.

Yet guys in the gaming industry were, apparently, lining up to bump uglies with this puffalump. This fact is as scathing an indictment of the industry as the utter lack of any moral, ethical, or professional standards. I mean, shit - if you're gonna leverage whatever little bit of influence you have for a piece of ass, you might as well shoot the moon.

Res Ipsa Loquitur