Tag: Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day: Men's Rights "Activists"

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man boobz exposes the truth about MRAs.

Quoth David Futrelle

At its heart, men’s rights activism doesn’t really seem to be about activism at all. What the movement has turned into is a strange parody of “victim feminism,” an endless search for proof that men (despite earning more than women, heading up the overwhelming majority of companies and governments in the world, getting all the best movie roles, never having to wear heels, and so on and so on and so on) are in fact second-class citizens.

A brilliant piece on a group of people who have recently become a significantly annoying experience online. It doesn’t help matters that their members all too often intersect with right libertarians and Randroids and White Rights Activists (you can imagine what the latter are about)

Unfortunately MRA, much like libertarians are far too numerous online and can easily focus their attention into succesful entryist attempts. MRA entryism is the primary reason why most feminists have abandoned /r/feminism in reddit and have instead migrated to /r/feminisms which has a far more strict moderation policy allowing for deeper feminist discussion without endlessly devolving into What About Teh Mens! arguments.

PS: man boobz has become an instant favourite of mine. If only he would move out of Blogger’s crappy platform…

Hey Microsoft, your sexism is showing

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Microsoft loves some gender stereotyping

Tap Repeatedly put it succintly

[…]although the only firm details I took from the video are that all women do is play Farmville and shop for clothes while men go to work and shoot people. Apparently.

I saw this shit of a video recently and I just couldn’t help but cringe at how horrific it is. OTOH, given that this vid was apparently scrapped it possibly means that at least someone in there has their head screwed on straight.

Quote of the Day: "I'm not concern trolling but you're being too sensitive"

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I’m not concern trolling, but please calm down or you’ll become unpopular.

Chumpstinator evokes uber-face palm.

I’m not concern trolling[…]

Please calm down. I’m not trying to be patronising, I’m not trying to make you angry. Just chill out. I want you to realise, that I am not here to stay on topic. I don’t care if you think I am de-railing. You obviously are getting frustrated with the posts, but I am advising you as a fellow human being, to keep cool in this discussion, or you will make yourself unpopular quick :/

It’s super effective. Db0 is left speechless.

 

Quote of the Day: Definition of Sexism

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Why one cannot be sexist against men.

Quoth Genderbitch

In the sociological standpoint, any ism is power + privilege + bigotry.So sexism is power (man supremacy) + privilege (man privilege) + bigotry (stereotypes about gender). So one can not be sexist against men in any of the contexts that I have ever used that word or anyone else in the egalitarian discourse has used that word. So I didn’t direct sexism at men. I can’t. It’s simply not possible in a world where men have the social power. So you’re wrong. Plainly, simply, wrong.

Succintly said.

 

Quote of the Day: No A for effort.

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If you do this, I want to punch you.

Quoth Fugitivus

Here is the thing, okay? Coming into a feminist conversation with, “Have you considered that sometimes women acquire free drinks at bars?” is like walking into graduate school during Philosophy finals and saying, “Have you considered that the color blue that I see may not be the color blue that you see?”

The quote above succintly describes the immediate frustration radicals of all stripes get when someone makes elementary observations and demands mad props, or even worse, makes elementary criticism which has been countered ad nauseum, and demands immediate and well sourced replies (eg “But what about human nature?”).

This is not the only good part of course, or even possibly the best of the whole post. So read the whole damn thing. Do eeet!

Quote of the Day: The Way Things Are

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Kevin Carson has a way with words on Authority.

Kevin Carson offers an excellent analysis on the recent post by the WSJ on Power Trips. This quote struck me:

In conversations with authoritarians about the stupidity of the pointy-haired bosses, I frequently encounter statements  that “they’ve been put in authority for a reason, and it’s been decided that blah blah woof woof.”  Note the passive voice.  The people in authority, and their policies, are just part of “the way things are,” embedded in the nature of the universe.

Nothing more to say really except to suggest that you read both articles. The WSJ one especially is yet another nail on the coffin of the “Human Nature” myth where humans require some englightened authority to lead them through the straight and narrow.

Quote of the Day: Idiots

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An unassuming Dutch traffic engineer showed that streets without signs can be safer than roads cluttered with arrows, painted lines, and lights. Are we ready to believe him?

Quoth Hans Mondermann

When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.

The whole article is really insightful on the way that people think and interact with each other, with or without someone else (i.e. an authority) doing the thinking for them. This is very similar to the other quote I posted a while back and it also reinforced my observations on obedience.

It further presses the point on how wrong it is for people to defer to (corporate-provided) experts, who much of the time, especially in social sciences like economics and traffic, have a very limited perspective and are unable to reconsider their premises.

If you hate Absolute Monarchy so much

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To all you naive utopians who think that anything other than absolute monarchy can work, these are the real results. Beware and don’t challenge the status quo.

Quoth Bowers of Paradise

What can we learn from this?  To all opponents of absolute monarchy, torture, enforced superstition, and feudalism, the message is obvious: this is what your naive, utopian views lead to in practice.  Your views sound beautiful in theory, but they forget to take into account Human Nature™, which as any wise person knows makes inevitable the eternal rule of the House of Normandy.

The post above hilariously points out the fallacy of using the Human Nature™ argument to argue against anarchism, and the flawed idea that whatever follows the collapse/disorganization of the society one lives in, is Anarchy by default.

The later thing is quite often used in fact, even by people who should know better.


Quote of the Day: There's no good cops

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Where oh where art the good cops?

Breathalyzer
Image by JOE MARINARO via Flickr

Hamakua skewers the classic police apologetics that “therey’re not all bad” in a very amusing way

Honestly? Fuck that. I am judging them all by the apathy of the many. I agree with the earlier post, and I believe every single fucking cop should stand up and strike every time one of these rare (yeah fucking right) bad apples “steps” out of line.

I have cop friends too, with cop families, and cop dinner tables, … with you know what? Fucking cop stories… I have heard them and I can observe the attitudes, of not just the cops, but the family, the friends, the other co workers…. It’s like a bunch of racists… except remove “race” and replace it with “us” and “them”. Meaning cops and non-cops.

Don’t give me any crap about how you have cop friends. You aren’t fooling anyone singing their defense or their praise. They should be held to a higher standard, and in fact are held to a much lower one… and you make excuses for the good ones? There are no good ones, there are apathetic ones and bad ones.

Forgive the rant, but I hate apologists.

And fucking don’t forget, they weren’t drafted, or forced to become cops, they CHOSE to become cops… it’s not like a color of skin, or ethnic background, it’s a fucking power grab.

That’s exactly it people. If there are good cops out there, they fail to publicly display it. They fail to condemn the action of their colleagues. They fail to stand up to abuse being dished out in front of them. How many times have you seen a video of one police officer getting putting his body between a police officer and his hapless victim, even forcing them away if needed? How many times have you seen a suspect being released from a questionable arrest due to the actions of another officer? How many strikes and marches by police officers have you seen against police corruption?

Perhaps such incidents exist, but they are not simply the minority, but such an overwhelmed minority that they might as well not exist. If police officers really showed that they were willing to fight on the side of the people, perhaps those people (who are not servile apologists of power) would fear them less and respect them more. And then, those few good cops, who have proven their goodness, might even be allowed in an anarchist cafe if they are sufficiently known.

But until then, it’s safe to assume that the cop you see in front of you, is as rotten as the rest of his peers. It’s not that good cops may not exist, it’s that the good ones don’t become cops, leave the force or stop being “good” eventually.

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On the heterosexual male's love for the cock

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Blue Linchpin shows us how to skewer the pro-rape position.

Quoth Blue Linchpin (on the pro-rape position of Eivind Berge)

Let’s get this straight: it’s not exactly a revelation that women’s bodies are traded for wealth. This is the general model for how society expects relationships to work. It is, however, just that: a model, a social construct. Male sexuality has no worth in society because those it is of no worth to those in power, ie men. Eivind, as a heterosexual male (aha! So that’s why his link specified heterosexual society) has no desire for cock. He is not willing to pay for it, or make any effort for it, and he would surely cry crocodile tears if it were forced upon him. Would he change his mind if the cock in question were attached to a wealthy business owner, and he were a single father in need of cash? Quite possibly. Does this mean Eivind’s only worth is as a sex object? After all, Eivind is just as capable of being valuable in other ways.

Check the rest of this awesome post btw. It’s very nicely skewers the bullshit arguments made by this very very misguided person.

On a related point: One has to wonder how it comes to be that s0 many right-libertarians end up being misogynists or supporting sexist positions (and then end up wonder why there are so few womyn in their movement). I’m guessing it has to do with the fetishism of market theory, making them try to apply it in every possible situation. If one ignores the social circumstances around one exchange, then it’s not difficult to reach such absurd conclusions. If one simply starts from the basis where women’s worth is in their vagina, it’s not difficult to end up with absurdities such as the pro-rape argument of our Norwegian libertarian above. By refusing to look on why a womyn’s worth rests is their vagina in the first place (hint: it’s because of the patriarchy), you can only start from wrong premises.

Oh, and if you’re up to it, do link to Blue Linchpin’s blogpost about the pro-rape position of Eivind Berge by menioning his name in the link anchor, so that her post get some nice Google juice and people looking for his name can see what he stands for.