Warning for very frank discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts and tendencies.
When I walked into my doctor's office last week for a baseline, it was the first time I had been able to see one outside of an urgent care center for the last decade, because I did not have and could not afford proper insurance. Before enrolling in a Marketplace plan earlier this year, the last time I had insurance that even covered doctor's visits was when I was still on my parents' policy. Which meant that I could not see a doctor without one of them in the room, and that one was usually my mother.
This was unfortunate, as my mother has always believed, and still largely does, that certain fields of medicine are strictly quack. Lies and bollocks, meant to fleece patients out of their money by treating medical conditions that don't really exist. She believes this about one certain field in particular: mental health. To my mother and millions of people who think like her, deficient mental health is nothing more than a moral failing, and the only help a mental patient needs is a swift kick somewhere sensitive.
The first time I ever considered suicide, I was seven years old. The first time I attempted it, I was eight. I figured out the hard way that a telephone cord makes an awful ligature.
I do not remember much from when I was that young, except for how I felt like an instigator of terrible things, even if I had no idea how or why I caused them. I felt guilty and responsible for everything around me.
I also remember being too ashamed to say anything about these feelings to a doctor with my mother in the room. Because I did not need reminding that I was a moral failure.
But when I walked into my new general physician's office last week, my mother was not with me. I could talk about anything I wanted. I originally was not going to mention the constant guilt and worthlessness and hopelessness, and how every time I talked about "the future" I got this sick feeling inside because I did not think I had one. I was originally not going to talk about how I was shopping around at funeral homes to get the best deal on prepaid disposal services so that my family would not have to worry about cleaning up a body when I killed myself later this year. I was originally not going to say that my birthday a month ago was the last one I was ever planning to see. I was originally going to keep that moral failing to myself.
But fortunately for me, I was wearing a t-shirt. A shirt which exposed my arms, and the scars on them. Places I had scratched skin off my wrists. Places I had taken razor blades to them, when merely biting the inside of my mouth until it hurt to eat no longer did the trick. Most of those scars were old, but not all. In particular, three prominent gashes from a razor blade that I had given myself just last month. That I blamed on my cat when anybody asked.
The doctor noticed these. Started asking questions. Goodness, that looks painful, how did you get that? But with that look, that tone, that made it obvious he already knew the answer. But in order to do anything, he needed to hear that answer from me.
I was originally going to shut up and keep it to myself. I didn't.
While I did not tell him everything, I told him enough. For the first time, I did not blame the cat. I owned up to the scars. I told him I shouldn't exist. When he asked why I believed that, I didn't have an answer. When he asked how long I had felt that way, I told him I couldn't remember ever feeling different.
There was more to that conversation than could ever fit into a blog post without becoming a novel, of course. But the important part was that for the first time in my life, it was made apparent that my mother was wrong. I wasn't a moral failure. I was simply a sick person with messed up brain chemistry, and there were ways to treat that.
I was told, for the first time ever, that I did not have to suffer anymore.
I walked out of that office with a prescription that cost me no more than a $5 copay at the pharmacy.
But I also walked out with something else. Something free and at the same time priceless. I walked out of that office with hope. With the knowledge that it did not have to end with me at the bottom of a gator-infested canal around the corner from where I worked. Or with me hanging from the old mango tree in my backyard. With the knowledge that it did not have to end, period.
I would not have had this opportunity without the Affordable Care Act. Without my own doctor and my own insurance, without the ability to receive treatment without my mother in the room, without the ability to talk about this and not be judged a failure, I would still be planning to die instead of apartment-hunting.
While we still have a long way to go on mental health in this country -- nobody should have to suffer in silence when help is literally sitting three feet away, because they're too ashamed of what they're feeling to speak up -- but making it part of standardized healthcare rather than a Cadillac feature you have to pay for with a blood sacrifice and your firstborn is a huge step in the proper direction.
Thanks, Obama.
Statcounter
Monday, June 30, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
Why Both Sides of the Gun Debate Need to Pipe the Fuck Down
We do not have a gun problem.
Yeah, I said it. This progressive does not think guns are the problem, and has a recurring pipe dream wherein both sides of the gun debate -- both the ammosexuals worshipping Wayne LaPierre as some kind of messianic Rambo instead of the corporate shill he is and the Moms Demand Action reactionaries who can't tell you how the thing they want to ban even works -- sit down and shut up like the children they are and let the adults in the middle do the talking.
"Guns don't kill people" is a stupidly irritating way of phrasing it -- because killing is what guns were originally invented to do; they are not a "misused tool" when you shoot people with them, they are doing exactly what they were built for, so comparing them to cars and screwdrivers and pencils and maxi pads and anything else that was designed for a purpose completely unrelated to killing and wounding is ridiculous -- but the sentiment behind this annoying catchphrase is valid; a gun is an inanimate object. It can't kill anything without a human operator pulling the trigger. But it's far easier for people to blame an inanimate object rather than a functionally broken society that encourages violence against one another, because the inanimate object can't talk back to you and tell you you're full of shit. In the 1950s, it was comic books. In the 1990s, it was video games. Today, it's guns. Tomorrow, it'll be computers. Or porn.Yeah, probably porn.
The problem with the NRA side is that "well just arm everybody" is not going to accomplish anything (other than making gun manufacturers rich, which, let's not kid ourselves any longer that that's really the NRA's mission and has been for a long time). Saying the cure for violence is more guns is like saying the cure for lung cancer is more cigarettes. Guns are not the sole and direct cause of violence, but throwing more of them at the problem sure as fuck won't help.
Because that is why the very concept of "gun control" in this country is an illusion. There are just too fucking many of them.
Policing gun sales, especially with the advent of the internet, is like Bill Murray in Caddyshack with the damned gophers. For a very recent and horrifying illustration of this, look no further than the Las Vegas shooters from a couple weeks ago. Jerad Miller was a felon, thus already barred from legally buying a gun. So what's a militant right-wing bigot to do in order to start the revolution and fight The Man? Buy his guns on Facebook, of course!
Gun sales are against the TOS, but who reads that shit anyway?
My point is that stricter gun control laws would not have stopped Jerad Miller from killing 3 people, because the existing laws had already covered him; he just found a way around them. Granted, that has not been the case for a frightening number of mass shooters, many of whom purchased their weapons legally (not included in the linked article: Elliot Rodgers, the UCSB shooter, who also purchased 3 handguns completely legal), so the "well, crazy people don't care about the law anyway so why bother?" argument doesn't hold up, either; James Holmes and Jared Loughner obviously cared to play by the rules long enough to obtain their weapons clean. And I agree that we shouldn't make it easy for people like them.
But the problem is twofold: 1) we don't enforce the laws we've already got, and 2) we have a far bigger problem of too many people who want to kill other people in the first place.
You want to know what would've actually stopped James Holmes? If the cops had listened to the psychiatrist who was treating him when she told them he was dangerous a little more than a month before the shooting. The Columbine shooters? Parents attentive enough to know what their kids were doing (spoiler: building explosives in the garage). Adam Lanza? A better and more informed diagnosis (we can start with not blindly using Asperger's as a catch-all for every awkward kid that walks through the door). Jared Loughner? Wade Michael Page (the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooter)? Better access to mental healthcare (Loughner was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic at the time of the shooting), and in Page's case, a crackdown on the white supremacist echo chamber that fed his rage machine.
In virtually every shooting of this kind, you'll find warning signs. Signs which went ignored. In Elliot Rodgers' case? A string of Youtube videos and a 140-page manifesto detailing how he was going to get revenge on society for denying him his hot blonde sorority girlfriend. In Lanza's case? A fascination with shootings and killing (particularly his obsession with Columbine). And in Jerad Miller's case? That he was at the Bundy Ranch supporting the waving of guns at BLM agents was a pretty big clue something wasn't right (his begging for a gun on Facebook to start the revolution was the giant neon signboard). Warning signs that, had they been heeded, would've allowed law enforcement and/or the mental health system to intervene before something bad happened.
Problem is, we don't care enough about solving the reasons people kill each other. Caring about who is "right" and how much control they get over people who are "wrong" is a lot easier and more satisfying precisely because it doesn't do jack shit.
That's why we're obsessed with locking up criminals rather than preventing crime (and because the for-profit prison system creates a demand to fill jails, but that's another rant entirely).
Which brings me to my next point: more gun control isn't a magic pill that's going to reduce violent crime rates, either. It may make it slightly harder for people to commit crime with guns, but it won't really stop anyone. Because of the aforementioned problem of having too many guns in circulation to effectively police sales. And because guns do not cause crime; guns are tools used in crimes. Expecting gun control to reduce crime is like expecting Prohibition to reduce alcoholism, and we all know how well that worked out.
If you want to effectively reduce crime, you have to attack that shit at the source. People who point to gun bans and lower crime rates in places like Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan tend to forget that those countries don't just ban guns. They also have a much better and better-run social safety net than we do here. All three have universal healthcare. Australia has a minimum wage more than twice that of the U.S. The United Kingdom spends the same percentage of its GDP on the health and welfare of its citizens (pensions, education, healthcare, and welfare) that the U.S. spends of its GDP on everything, ever. In Japan, not only are public universities far more respected than private ones -- the University of Tokyo is #23 worldwide -- but the cost is dirt cheap compared to the U.S., and the student loan structure doesn't leave students broke for life.
Bottom line is that countries with gun bans and some of the lowest homicide rates on the planet are also looking after their citizens far better than we are. And when people aren't starving, uneducated/barely educated wage slaves, they tend to have fewer reasons to be violent.
Stopping gun violence isn't about stopping guns; it's about stopping violence, period. If you can curb that, it won't matter who owns a gun because they'll have fewer reasons to point it at anyone.
You want to stop violence? Stop poverty. Stop hatred.
Handing out or taking away a gun will not stop either of those.
If you want to stop poverty and hatred? Don't hand out guns. Instead, hand out living wages. Hand out education. Hand out healthcare. Hand out mental healthcare. Hand out birth control. Hand out compassion.
Don't take away guns. Instead, take away fear. Take away uncertainty. Take away that which makes people feel threatened and rejected.
If you don't want to do that? Then shut up and get out of the way so other people can.
Yeah, I said it. This progressive does not think guns are the problem, and has a recurring pipe dream wherein both sides of the gun debate -- both the ammosexuals worshipping Wayne LaPierre as some kind of messianic Rambo instead of the corporate shill he is and the Moms Demand Action reactionaries who can't tell you how the thing they want to ban even works -- sit down and shut up like the children they are and let the adults in the middle do the talking.
"Guns don't kill people" is a stupidly irritating way of phrasing it -- because killing is what guns were originally invented to do; they are not a "misused tool" when you shoot people with them, they are doing exactly what they were built for, so comparing them to cars and screwdrivers and pencils and maxi pads and anything else that was designed for a purpose completely unrelated to killing and wounding is ridiculous -- but the sentiment behind this annoying catchphrase is valid; a gun is an inanimate object. It can't kill anything without a human operator pulling the trigger. But it's far easier for people to blame an inanimate object rather than a functionally broken society that encourages violence against one another, because the inanimate object can't talk back to you and tell you you're full of shit. In the 1950s, it was comic books. In the 1990s, it was video games. Today, it's guns. Tomorrow, it'll be computers. Or porn.
The problem with the NRA side is that "well just arm everybody" is not going to accomplish anything (other than making gun manufacturers rich, which, let's not kid ourselves any longer that that's really the NRA's mission and has been for a long time). Saying the cure for violence is more guns is like saying the cure for lung cancer is more cigarettes. Guns are not the sole and direct cause of violence, but throwing more of them at the problem sure as fuck won't help.
Because that is why the very concept of "gun control" in this country is an illusion. There are just too fucking many of them.
Policing gun sales, especially with the advent of the internet, is like Bill Murray in Caddyshack with the damned gophers. For a very recent and horrifying illustration of this, look no further than the Las Vegas shooters from a couple weeks ago. Jerad Miller was a felon, thus already barred from legally buying a gun. So what's a militant right-wing bigot to do in order to start the revolution and fight The Man? Buy his guns on Facebook, of course!
Gun sales are against the TOS, but who reads that shit anyway?
My point is that stricter gun control laws would not have stopped Jerad Miller from killing 3 people, because the existing laws had already covered him; he just found a way around them. Granted, that has not been the case for a frightening number of mass shooters, many of whom purchased their weapons legally (not included in the linked article: Elliot Rodgers, the UCSB shooter, who also purchased 3 handguns completely legal), so the "well, crazy people don't care about the law anyway so why bother?" argument doesn't hold up, either; James Holmes and Jared Loughner obviously cared to play by the rules long enough to obtain their weapons clean. And I agree that we shouldn't make it easy for people like them.
But the problem is twofold: 1) we don't enforce the laws we've already got, and 2) we have a far bigger problem of too many people who want to kill other people in the first place.
You want to know what would've actually stopped James Holmes? If the cops had listened to the psychiatrist who was treating him when she told them he was dangerous a little more than a month before the shooting. The Columbine shooters? Parents attentive enough to know what their kids were doing (spoiler: building explosives in the garage). Adam Lanza? A better and more informed diagnosis (we can start with not blindly using Asperger's as a catch-all for every awkward kid that walks through the door). Jared Loughner? Wade Michael Page (the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooter)? Better access to mental healthcare (Loughner was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic at the time of the shooting), and in Page's case, a crackdown on the white supremacist echo chamber that fed his rage machine.
In virtually every shooting of this kind, you'll find warning signs. Signs which went ignored. In Elliot Rodgers' case? A string of Youtube videos and a 140-page manifesto detailing how he was going to get revenge on society for denying him his hot blonde sorority girlfriend. In Lanza's case? A fascination with shootings and killing (particularly his obsession with Columbine). And in Jerad Miller's case? That he was at the Bundy Ranch supporting the waving of guns at BLM agents was a pretty big clue something wasn't right (his begging for a gun on Facebook to start the revolution was the giant neon signboard). Warning signs that, had they been heeded, would've allowed law enforcement and/or the mental health system to intervene before something bad happened.
Problem is, we don't care enough about solving the reasons people kill each other. Caring about who is "right" and how much control they get over people who are "wrong" is a lot easier and more satisfying precisely because it doesn't do jack shit.
That's why we're obsessed with locking up criminals rather than preventing crime (and because the for-profit prison system creates a demand to fill jails, but that's another rant entirely).
Which brings me to my next point: more gun control isn't a magic pill that's going to reduce violent crime rates, either. It may make it slightly harder for people to commit crime with guns, but it won't really stop anyone. Because of the aforementioned problem of having too many guns in circulation to effectively police sales. And because guns do not cause crime; guns are tools used in crimes. Expecting gun control to reduce crime is like expecting Prohibition to reduce alcoholism, and we all know how well that worked out.
If you want to effectively reduce crime, you have to attack that shit at the source. People who point to gun bans and lower crime rates in places like Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan tend to forget that those countries don't just ban guns. They also have a much better and better-run social safety net than we do here. All three have universal healthcare. Australia has a minimum wage more than twice that of the U.S. The United Kingdom spends the same percentage of its GDP on the health and welfare of its citizens (pensions, education, healthcare, and welfare) that the U.S. spends of its GDP on everything, ever. In Japan, not only are public universities far more respected than private ones -- the University of Tokyo is #23 worldwide -- but the cost is dirt cheap compared to the U.S., and the student loan structure doesn't leave students broke for life.
Bottom line is that countries with gun bans and some of the lowest homicide rates on the planet are also looking after their citizens far better than we are. And when people aren't starving, uneducated/barely educated wage slaves, they tend to have fewer reasons to be violent.
Stopping gun violence isn't about stopping guns; it's about stopping violence, period. If you can curb that, it won't matter who owns a gun because they'll have fewer reasons to point it at anyone.
You want to stop violence? Stop poverty. Stop hatred.
Handing out or taking away a gun will not stop either of those.
If you want to stop poverty and hatred? Don't hand out guns. Instead, hand out living wages. Hand out education. Hand out healthcare. Hand out mental healthcare. Hand out birth control. Hand out compassion.
Don't take away guns. Instead, take away fear. Take away uncertainty. Take away that which makes people feel threatened and rejected.
If you don't want to do that? Then shut up and get out of the way so other people can.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Can We Stop Confusing Remorseless Hatred With Mental Illness?
Unless you've been living in a missile silo the last few days, you've likely heard about how one Elliot Rodgers spent his Friday night on May 27 (spoiler: he killed six people). And you've likely read his 140-page wall of text or seen his videos, or at least heard about their content. And I'm sure you've likely heard everyone who has uttered a single word about this tragedy use six dead people as props for a useless gun control debate (because California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the entire country and that obviously didn't stop this guy) before they've even been embalmed. Or worse yet, as props for a debate on mental health, because clearly a guy who murders six people in cold blood has got to be nuts.
Well, this isn't a rehash of any of that, so pay the fuck attention.
Elliot Rodgers was not crazy. Elliot Rodgers was pure fucking evil. Do not contribute to the stigma that those with mental illness face by confusing the two. Because it's entirely possible to be a violent, dangerous person and still be perfectly sane. As in you are perfectly aware of reality and perfectly aware that what you're doing is wrong, you just don't give a shit.
Rodgers made the motivation for his killing spree more than obvious. He didn't think the people he killed were demons or space aliens or government spies. He didn't think there was some vast global conspiracy out to get him. He planned his killing spree as revenge on others who had what he did not, or who didn't give him what he thought he deserved. He hated women for not finding him attractive. He hated men for being attractive when he wasn't.
That doesn't make him mentally ill. That makes him vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty. It speaks not to a sickness of the mind, but to a sickness of the society that taught him to be vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty. It speaks to a toxic culture of privilege and entitlement that, when unchecked, produces those with the inability to empathize with others, or to care about anything but their own wants and desires.
Rodgers was rich, the son of an assistant Hollywood director behind a very lucrative film franchise (The Hunger Games). And if you have the stomach to read his rambling manifesto, it becomes apparent that he didn't hear the word "no" a lot as a child, at least in regard to material possessions. So when he got to high school and college and started getting the word "no" from women who didn't want to date him and men who didn't want to hang around with him, he eventually heard it one too many times and decided he'd had enough.
Because to Elliot Rodgers, there was no difference between people and possessions. A girlfriend was no different than a sportscar. That's why he didn't want just any woman to find him attractive. He wanted a hot blonde sorority girl. She would be as much of a status symbol as a pair of Armani shoes and nothing more.
No doubt you've heard many feminist blogs talk about the issue of misogyny in Rodgers' motives. And yes, to a point they're right. He was raised to see women as objects and trophies, and hated them when they defied his will by rejecting him; he took it as an insult to his entire being that they didn't act like the characters in his father's movies and throw themselves at him because he's The Hero.
But his pathology went beyond simple sexism and rape culture. Hollywood is also the epicenter of toxic human consumerism, where people are used and thrown away daily like condoms in a nightclub restroom. Thus, Rodgers rejected the idea that human life has value beyond amusing and entertaining him. If you could not (or would not) pump a neverending supply of air into his bloated ego, he had no use for you. Why shouldn't he kill you if you pissed him off?
We might be quick to call him delusional or a sociopath, but we would be wrong. Because to do so is to remove his agency. And with it, his responsibility for what he did.
And worse yet, when we dismiss people like Elliot Rodgers as "crazy", we inadvertently tar all the mentally ill with that same brush. We punish everyone else for the sins of this waste of oxygen. We reinforce the idea that mental illness inherently causes violent behavior, when the opposite is true; the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence, not perpetrators.
And all this tarring strengthens the stigma that mental illness already has and makes those who do experience these problems, from depression to schizophrenia, less likely to seek help. Because doing so is admitting you have a problem in the first place. Admitting you're "crazy." Admitting you're a time bomb. Admitting you are all of the things that we associate with Elliot Rodgers.
So please, the next time you see someone refer to Rodgers or anyone like him as "a nutcase", do kindly correct them. Take that brush away from them and call people like Rodgers out for what they are: products of a toxic culture that devalues people -- all people -- into playthings and tools of amusement, taken to its extreme logical conclusion.
Elliot Rodgers wasn't crazy. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew it was wrong. He knew why.
He didn't give a shit.
Well, this isn't a rehash of any of that, so pay the fuck attention.
Elliot Rodgers was not crazy. Elliot Rodgers was pure fucking evil. Do not contribute to the stigma that those with mental illness face by confusing the two. Because it's entirely possible to be a violent, dangerous person and still be perfectly sane. As in you are perfectly aware of reality and perfectly aware that what you're doing is wrong, you just don't give a shit.
Rodgers made the motivation for his killing spree more than obvious. He didn't think the people he killed were demons or space aliens or government spies. He didn't think there was some vast global conspiracy out to get him. He planned his killing spree as revenge on others who had what he did not, or who didn't give him what he thought he deserved. He hated women for not finding him attractive. He hated men for being attractive when he wasn't.
That doesn't make him mentally ill. That makes him vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty. It speaks not to a sickness of the mind, but to a sickness of the society that taught him to be vindictive, self-absorbed, and violently petty. It speaks to a toxic culture of privilege and entitlement that, when unchecked, produces those with the inability to empathize with others, or to care about anything but their own wants and desires.
Rodgers was rich, the son of an assistant Hollywood director behind a very lucrative film franchise (The Hunger Games). And if you have the stomach to read his rambling manifesto, it becomes apparent that he didn't hear the word "no" a lot as a child, at least in regard to material possessions. So when he got to high school and college and started getting the word "no" from women who didn't want to date him and men who didn't want to hang around with him, he eventually heard it one too many times and decided he'd had enough.
Because to Elliot Rodgers, there was no difference between people and possessions. A girlfriend was no different than a sportscar. That's why he didn't want just any woman to find him attractive. He wanted a hot blonde sorority girl. She would be as much of a status symbol as a pair of Armani shoes and nothing more.
No doubt you've heard many feminist blogs talk about the issue of misogyny in Rodgers' motives. And yes, to a point they're right. He was raised to see women as objects and trophies, and hated them when they defied his will by rejecting him; he took it as an insult to his entire being that they didn't act like the characters in his father's movies and throw themselves at him because he's The Hero.
But his pathology went beyond simple sexism and rape culture. Hollywood is also the epicenter of toxic human consumerism, where people are used and thrown away daily like condoms in a nightclub restroom. Thus, Rodgers rejected the idea that human life has value beyond amusing and entertaining him. If you could not (or would not) pump a neverending supply of air into his bloated ego, he had no use for you. Why shouldn't he kill you if you pissed him off?
We might be quick to call him delusional or a sociopath, but we would be wrong. Because to do so is to remove his agency. And with it, his responsibility for what he did.
And worse yet, when we dismiss people like Elliot Rodgers as "crazy", we inadvertently tar all the mentally ill with that same brush. We punish everyone else for the sins of this waste of oxygen. We reinforce the idea that mental illness inherently causes violent behavior, when the opposite is true; the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence, not perpetrators.
And all this tarring strengthens the stigma that mental illness already has and makes those who do experience these problems, from depression to schizophrenia, less likely to seek help. Because doing so is admitting you have a problem in the first place. Admitting you're "crazy." Admitting you're a time bomb. Admitting you are all of the things that we associate with Elliot Rodgers.
So please, the next time you see someone refer to Rodgers or anyone like him as "a nutcase", do kindly correct them. Take that brush away from them and call people like Rodgers out for what they are: products of a toxic culture that devalues people -- all people -- into playthings and tools of amusement, taken to its extreme logical conclusion.
Elliot Rodgers wasn't crazy. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew it was wrong. He knew why.
He didn't give a shit.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Why Religion and Law Mix Like Coke and Grape Soda
They mix, all right, in the sense that they form a solution that doesn't separate if it sits in the back of the fridge for too long. The problem is the mixture tastes like shit and you'll be looking for a potted plant to dump it into the minute you try to gag down that first sip. There are three root problems with a theocracy. Three core issues of why, much like that one friend's off-and-on romance, government and religion can never reconcile without somebody getting fucked, and they're better off acknowledging they aren't made for each other and going their separate ways:
1. Religion and government were designed for incompatible purposes.
Religion was developed with two major purposes: helping people deal with looming mortality, and simplifying observations that made ancient people's heads hurt because we didn't have the technology to explain them yet. These purposes have gotten corrupted over the years to serve terrible, selfish leaders, but those were the initial reasons we came up with invisible sky-parents.
Government, on the other hand, was designed to maximize the survival of our species by creating a lawful society; that is, rules and norms that encourage fairness and cooperation so that we can better survive shit like harsh winters and bear attacks.
The reason the two purposes are fundamentally incompatible is because people who do not fear mortality any longer have less incentive to cooperate in order to survive. And people who are happy with overly simple explanations are more likely to ignore the nuances of a situation that lead to fairness and teamwork for the greater good. In essence, you get people who are afraid of knowledge, but not of death, and this can't end well for anybody.
2. Religion is too fatalistic to function as a basis for ruling society.
This should be obvious, but for anybody not familiar with various religions (because it's not unique to Christianity), lemme 'splain you a thing. Religions tend to have one of two common fatalistic threads: outright prophecy, or at the very least a simplistically negative view of human nature. If they aren't predicting doom and gloom (either in apocalypse form or an endless cycle of suffering, death, and rebirth for the individual), they're agreeing that humanity is awful and only their particular beliefs can motivate people to be good. Occasionally, a combination of both (yes, Pentecostalism, I'm looking at you).
This takes all point and purpose out of governing. If the world is going to end or we're just going to suffer and kill each other while boning lamp-posts anyway, then what's to be gained by trying to govern ourselves at all? It's like washing the windows on the Hindenburgh. None of it's going to matter once everything goes down in a giant fireball because God hates us.
3. Religion declares inequality from the outset, ensuring that fairness is impossible under a theocracy.
The other thing you'll find about virtually all religions is that there is a baseline inequality inherent in the doctrine of each one. There are those who are "chosen", those who are not, and those who are condemned (with those last two often interchangeable). When your basis for law has already decreed a certain subset of people as worthy or unworthy from the start, it's impossible for a society based on such doctrine to treat each other fairly. And fairness is the cornerstone of a successful and functioning society because when things are unfair, the people who are being treated unfairly tend to get pissed off. And as both history and the modern era have demonstrated, there is only so much they will take before shit gets real.
And this is not even counting the fact that religious people are not a homogeneous hive mind, even within the same religion or the same faction of that religion. When a government seeks to limit rights rather than grant them for reasons that -- to the people -- do nothing for the public good or are outright insidious, that government isn't going to last long once the people figure out they have their government outnumbered.
This is why the separation of church and state is one of the first laws we ever wrote as a country. Because our Founding Fathers, coming from England, saw what happens when you weave religion and government together and said "oh hell no, we are not having that shit here." And they thought it was important enough to list it as law right after freedom of speech and the press.
That's right; despite what the Tea Party wants you to think, the U.S. was never intended to be a Christian nation. It was never intended to be a religious nation of any sort. Because, as the Founding Fathers believed, religion is a personal matter between the individual and their deity of choice.
Plus, you get way fewer civil wars and shit that way.
1. Religion and government were designed for incompatible purposes.
Religion was developed with two major purposes: helping people deal with looming mortality, and simplifying observations that made ancient people's heads hurt because we didn't have the technology to explain them yet. These purposes have gotten corrupted over the years to serve terrible, selfish leaders, but those were the initial reasons we came up with invisible sky-parents.
Government, on the other hand, was designed to maximize the survival of our species by creating a lawful society; that is, rules and norms that encourage fairness and cooperation so that we can better survive shit like harsh winters and bear attacks.
The reason the two purposes are fundamentally incompatible is because people who do not fear mortality any longer have less incentive to cooperate in order to survive. And people who are happy with overly simple explanations are more likely to ignore the nuances of a situation that lead to fairness and teamwork for the greater good. In essence, you get people who are afraid of knowledge, but not of death, and this can't end well for anybody.
2. Religion is too fatalistic to function as a basis for ruling society.
This should be obvious, but for anybody not familiar with various religions (because it's not unique to Christianity), lemme 'splain you a thing. Religions tend to have one of two common fatalistic threads: outright prophecy, or at the very least a simplistically negative view of human nature. If they aren't predicting doom and gloom (either in apocalypse form or an endless cycle of suffering, death, and rebirth for the individual), they're agreeing that humanity is awful and only their particular beliefs can motivate people to be good. Occasionally, a combination of both (yes, Pentecostalism, I'm looking at you).
This takes all point and purpose out of governing. If the world is going to end or we're just going to suffer and kill each other while boning lamp-posts anyway, then what's to be gained by trying to govern ourselves at all? It's like washing the windows on the Hindenburgh. None of it's going to matter once everything goes down in a giant fireball because God hates us.
3. Religion declares inequality from the outset, ensuring that fairness is impossible under a theocracy.
The other thing you'll find about virtually all religions is that there is a baseline inequality inherent in the doctrine of each one. There are those who are "chosen", those who are not, and those who are condemned (with those last two often interchangeable). When your basis for law has already decreed a certain subset of people as worthy or unworthy from the start, it's impossible for a society based on such doctrine to treat each other fairly. And fairness is the cornerstone of a successful and functioning society because when things are unfair, the people who are being treated unfairly tend to get pissed off. And as both history and the modern era have demonstrated, there is only so much they will take before shit gets real.
And this is not even counting the fact that religious people are not a homogeneous hive mind, even within the same religion or the same faction of that religion. When a government seeks to limit rights rather than grant them for reasons that -- to the people -- do nothing for the public good or are outright insidious, that government isn't going to last long once the people figure out they have their government outnumbered.
This is why the separation of church and state is one of the first laws we ever wrote as a country. Because our Founding Fathers, coming from England, saw what happens when you weave religion and government together and said "oh hell no, we are not having that shit here." And they thought it was important enough to list it as law right after freedom of speech and the press.
That's right; despite what the Tea Party wants you to think, the U.S. was never intended to be a Christian nation. It was never intended to be a religious nation of any sort. Because, as the Founding Fathers believed, religion is a personal matter between the individual and their deity of choice.
Plus, you get way fewer civil wars and shit that way.
Barack Obama: Worst Socialist Dictator Ever
The two favorite insults that those on the right love to throw at the President: "socialist" and "dictator" (or "emperor" or "king" or something equally scary). But like a sheltered suburban teenager who just discovered Urbandictionary.com, calling Barack Obama either a dictator or a socialist requires Opposite Day to become a federally recognized holiday.
See, if Obama was a socialist? He'd be calling for the dissolution of private-owned infrastructure altogether, in favor of resources and utilities being controlled by the state, because that is what socialism is. The public ownership of agriculture, finance (banks and credit), energy (both electric and gas/oil), water management, waste management, healthcare...you get the idea. Or I sure as hell hope so because I'm running out of small words.
Advocating for a tax system that gives people more money to spend buying privatized resources they can't live without is the exact opposite of socialism.
So the next time you see someone complaining about the socialist dictator in the White House, ask them who they're talking about. Because ironically, if there was anyone in the White House who was remotely close to a socialist dictator (and even then, only if you squint) -- someone who imposed wage and price control strangleholds and circumvented checks and balances to grab as much power as he could -- it was Nixon.
You know, a Repu--
...Oh yeah. Nevermind.
See, if Barack Obama was actually a dictator, the 2010 midterms wouldn't have mattered, because he would've ordered every single Republican congresscritter (and their aides) to be marched onto the White House lawn and executed by firing squad. Because that's what dictators do. A dictator -- or any ruler with absolute power -- does not follow a checks and balances system. A dictator eliminates enemies by whatever means necessary, full stop.
Ah, but the infamous executive orders! He's going over Congress' head, and that somehow makes him a monarch in the eyes of the Koch brothers' personal army. Well see, funny thing about that: Barack Obama has issued fewer executive orders than nearly every other two-term president in the last century.
So if Barack Obama is trying to be a dictator, he's doing a lousy job of it.
But there's still socialism, right? After all, the ACA--
Yeah, stop. Right there. Because if you equate the ACA with socialism, you've just proven you have no idea what either one of them is.
Socialism is not a system of government, for one thing. It's an economic policy wherein the means of production is owned by the people. Or in smaller words that conservatives can digest, socialism is when people work to produce what is needed and make sure that everyone has enough, rather than to make as much money as possible.
The ACA has about as much to do with socialism as Christmas does with Bastille Day. See, the ACA is not socialized medicine. The law doesn't change who the doctors work for. Only how they get paid. That is, the law is making private insurance available to everyone and requiring everyone to have it, in order to make sure that everyone can see a doctor when needed (and that doctor can get paid). The only part that is even vaguely-socialist-if-you-squint is the subsidy program. But the insurance itself is still not provided by the federal government; the federal government is merely footing part of the bill.
Yes, there was a comment from Obama in a speech from 1998 about redistributing the wealth:
"The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some [wealth] redistribution -- because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot."Now, if Republican Tea Party Fantasy Island denizens could rip out the Kool-Aid IV for five minutes and read that with a clear head, they'd understand that the federal government is not coming for your paycheck with a fully outfitted M-1 Abrams. In this case, the redistribution of wealth means a better use of the taxes you already pay. Because that's what "government systems that pool resources" are. That's what taxes do. Taxes already redistribute wealth. Obama's idea then was that we should be using that tax system more efficiently and fairly.
See, if Obama was a socialist? He'd be calling for the dissolution of private-owned infrastructure altogether, in favor of resources and utilities being controlled by the state, because that is what socialism is. The public ownership of agriculture, finance (banks and credit), energy (both electric and gas/oil), water management, waste management, healthcare...you get the idea. Or I sure as hell hope so because I'm running out of small words.
Advocating for a tax system that gives people more money to spend buying privatized resources they can't live without is the exact opposite of socialism.
So the next time you see someone complaining about the socialist dictator in the White House, ask them who they're talking about. Because ironically, if there was anyone in the White House who was remotely close to a socialist dictator (and even then, only if you squint) -- someone who imposed wage and price control strangleholds and circumvented checks and balances to grab as much power as he could -- it was Nixon.
You know, a Repu--
...Oh yeah. Nevermind.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Quit Shooting the Messenger Just Because He Brings You Bad News
Or, Why You Should Be Pissed Off At Your Insurance Company Instead of the ACA.
As every "Obamacare Horror Story" Fox Noise uses to try and make "fetch" happen gets picked apart with pesky facts and omitted relevant details -- the bane of every Fox story -- it's becoming apparent that the ACA is not our enemy, here. The law is simply a convenient scapegoat for the real reason people are angry.
What the law has uncovered is the systematic fleecing of the American populace by the insurance industry itself. And the ACA uncovered this because it's these dishonest, terrible, expensive practices that the law was written to eliminate.
The most frequent "horror story" we hear on the Scared Old White People Channel is that some poor sod's insurance company canceled their policy for ACA noncompliance, or switched them to a compliant plan with a ridiculously higher premium. The reason every single one of these stories falls apart under even mild scrutiny is twofold: 1) Fox and other right-wing propaganda outlets purposely do not explain what a "non-compliant" insurance policy means in practice, and 2) these same outlets purposely omit any information regarding subsidies for insurance premiums. Thus making it seem like the ACA is costing the consumer more money, when in reality it's saving the consumer from being ripped off.
See, before the ACA, there was no minimum standard when it came to health insurance policies. A policy could quite literally cover/not cover anything. And that "anything" was solely up to the company's discretion. As a result, many of the plans in the individual market were actually worse than having no coverage at all. Because at least if you don't have insurance, you aren't paying a premium. Many of these plans didn't cover doctor visits of any kind, and deductibles ran into five-digit figures for individuals.
I should know. I had one of these terrible plans back in 2008-2009 when I was working at a call center because it was the only one I could afford. My premium was around $80 per month, and the policy didn't cover anything unless I was treated through the ER or urgent care. And even then, the ER was a $100 copay, and for urgent care, $50. And it didn't cover prescriptions, either. Nor did it cover anything if your injuries or condition were self-inflicted (so, you know, if you were going to attempt suicide like I wanted to do so many times, you better make damn sure you succeeded).
Bottom line was that even though I had insurance, I was still fucked sideways with a chainsaw anyway if I was unlucky enough to need medical care.
What the ACA has done is made these terrible policies illegal by setting a minimum standard for what insurance companies need to cover. Hospital visits, emergency services, doctor's visits, prescriptions, mental health, maternity care/reproductive health, outpatient, preventive care, lab services, rehabilitative care, and pediatrics are all mandated coverage. Before the ACA, these were "Cadillac" services. Stuff you had to pay through the nose for with a blood sacrifice and half your soul. Now, they must be built into every policy.
What this means for you is that the ACA is forcing insurance companies to actually cover you instead of taking your premium and laughing at you when you need treatment. Especially for pre-existing conditions.
What this also means, of course, is that the $80-a-month-for-nothing policy will have to become a $250+-a-month-for-real-care policy. And that is where the other pesky detail that Fox wishes would go away comes in: the federal subsidy program for the middle class.
See, based on your yearly income and the state you live in, you may qualify for a subsidy toward your insurance premium. Meaning that the federal government foots part of the bill so that you can buy the insurance you need.
In many of these "horror stories" touted by the right, the "victim" didn't even go to Healthcare.gov to shop for a new policy or apply for a subsidy; they simply took whatever their current insurance carrier offered them (you would think the ideologues who worship Ayn Rand's fossilized feces would realize that the "free market" can't work if people don't shop around for the best deal they can get, but since when has the team at Fox let logic get in the away of bashing a black guy?).
For an idea of how this works outside of Republican Tea Party Fantasy Island, I went to Healthcare.gov myself for a look around. First thing I will say is that I'm probably making less money than a lot of people reading this. Before taxes, I bring in about $16,000/year, and I live in Florida (a state that refused to expand Medicaid, but that's another rant entirely). Silver plans (which are the minimum I would need) for me would run about $230-$290 a month regular price. But because of my income, I qualify for subsidies that bring that cost down to $50-$65 depending on the policy.
This means I'm getting comprehensive coverage for less than what I was paying for the plan I had before that was so shitty it's illegal now.
Blaming the ACA for increased premiums and canceled policies is a bit like blaming Watergate on the security guard. The problem is that we've grown so used to a broken healthcare system run by professional crooks that when someone finally tries to fix it, it's easier to get mad at them for having to rip apart the wall than to get mad at the roaches they're trying to exterminate.
And right-wing blowhards are all too ready to take advantage of that complacency if it pleases and lines the pockets of their corporate masters (many of whom are insurance companies, to the surprise of absolutely no one).
See, unless you are independently wealthy and can afford to pay out of pocket, someone else is going to have to pay for any medical care you receive. And if you can afford out of pocket costs, you are paying for a bunch of other people's care whether you want to or not. So the Ayn Rand argument is kind of moot because if you can pay, you're already shouldering the cost of those who can't. That's why saline IV bags that cost the hospital $1 end up being $90+ when the patient gets the bill. Under the ACA, requiring that everyone who can afford insurance buy some or pay a fee makes that system a little more efficient and less costly by spreading the burden of risk to as many people as possible who can afford to pay it (which, if you didn't know, is how insurance works). The ACA isn't perfect by any means. But it's a start. It's something that can be tweaked and improved, and in some states it's already gotten people talking about a move to single-payer. Something that, I might add, the rest of the world already has.
When it comes to healthcare, we're one of the most backward nations in the world, for one very simple reason: in places that are not the United States, being able to see a doctor and not come away broke is considered a basic human right. Here, it's as much a privilege as caviar and edible gold flakes. When some of the poorest nations on earth have excellent universal healthcare, it becomes apparent that America's problem is not that we can't provide everyone in the country with the health services they need, it's that we won't.
Because the only thing America is truly exceptional at is pure, unfettered greed.
As every "Obamacare Horror Story" Fox Noise uses to try and make "fetch" happen gets picked apart with pesky facts and omitted relevant details -- the bane of every Fox story -- it's becoming apparent that the ACA is not our enemy, here. The law is simply a convenient scapegoat for the real reason people are angry.
What the law has uncovered is the systematic fleecing of the American populace by the insurance industry itself. And the ACA uncovered this because it's these dishonest, terrible, expensive practices that the law was written to eliminate.
The most frequent "horror story" we hear on the Scared Old White People Channel is that some poor sod's insurance company canceled their policy for ACA noncompliance, or switched them to a compliant plan with a ridiculously higher premium. The reason every single one of these stories falls apart under even mild scrutiny is twofold: 1) Fox and other right-wing propaganda outlets purposely do not explain what a "non-compliant" insurance policy means in practice, and 2) these same outlets purposely omit any information regarding subsidies for insurance premiums. Thus making it seem like the ACA is costing the consumer more money, when in reality it's saving the consumer from being ripped off.
See, before the ACA, there was no minimum standard when it came to health insurance policies. A policy could quite literally cover/not cover anything. And that "anything" was solely up to the company's discretion. As a result, many of the plans in the individual market were actually worse than having no coverage at all. Because at least if you don't have insurance, you aren't paying a premium. Many of these plans didn't cover doctor visits of any kind, and deductibles ran into five-digit figures for individuals.
I should know. I had one of these terrible plans back in 2008-2009 when I was working at a call center because it was the only one I could afford. My premium was around $80 per month, and the policy didn't cover anything unless I was treated through the ER or urgent care. And even then, the ER was a $100 copay, and for urgent care, $50. And it didn't cover prescriptions, either. Nor did it cover anything if your injuries or condition were self-inflicted (so, you know, if you were going to attempt suicide like I wanted to do so many times, you better make damn sure you succeeded).
Bottom line was that even though I had insurance, I was still fucked sideways with a chainsaw anyway if I was unlucky enough to need medical care.
What the ACA has done is made these terrible policies illegal by setting a minimum standard for what insurance companies need to cover. Hospital visits, emergency services, doctor's visits, prescriptions, mental health, maternity care/reproductive health, outpatient, preventive care, lab services, rehabilitative care, and pediatrics are all mandated coverage. Before the ACA, these were "Cadillac" services. Stuff you had to pay through the nose for with a blood sacrifice and half your soul. Now, they must be built into every policy.
What this means for you is that the ACA is forcing insurance companies to actually cover you instead of taking your premium and laughing at you when you need treatment. Especially for pre-existing conditions.
What this also means, of course, is that the $80-a-month-for-nothing policy will have to become a $250+-a-month-for-real-care policy. And that is where the other pesky detail that Fox wishes would go away comes in: the federal subsidy program for the middle class.
See, based on your yearly income and the state you live in, you may qualify for a subsidy toward your insurance premium. Meaning that the federal government foots part of the bill so that you can buy the insurance you need.
In many of these "horror stories" touted by the right, the "victim" didn't even go to Healthcare.gov to shop for a new policy or apply for a subsidy; they simply took whatever their current insurance carrier offered them (you would think the ideologues who worship Ayn Rand's fossilized feces would realize that the "free market" can't work if people don't shop around for the best deal they can get, but since when has the team at Fox let logic get in the away of bashing a black guy?).
For an idea of how this works outside of Republican Tea Party Fantasy Island, I went to Healthcare.gov myself for a look around. First thing I will say is that I'm probably making less money than a lot of people reading this. Before taxes, I bring in about $16,000/year, and I live in Florida (a state that refused to expand Medicaid, but that's another rant entirely). Silver plans (which are the minimum I would need) for me would run about $230-$290 a month regular price. But because of my income, I qualify for subsidies that bring that cost down to $50-$65 depending on the policy.
This means I'm getting comprehensive coverage for less than what I was paying for the plan I had before that was so shitty it's illegal now.
Blaming the ACA for increased premiums and canceled policies is a bit like blaming Watergate on the security guard. The problem is that we've grown so used to a broken healthcare system run by professional crooks that when someone finally tries to fix it, it's easier to get mad at them for having to rip apart the wall than to get mad at the roaches they're trying to exterminate.
And right-wing blowhards are all too ready to take advantage of that complacency if it pleases and lines the pockets of their corporate masters (many of whom are insurance companies, to the surprise of absolutely no one).
See, unless you are independently wealthy and can afford to pay out of pocket, someone else is going to have to pay for any medical care you receive. And if you can afford out of pocket costs, you are paying for a bunch of other people's care whether you want to or not. So the Ayn Rand argument is kind of moot because if you can pay, you're already shouldering the cost of those who can't. That's why saline IV bags that cost the hospital $1 end up being $90+ when the patient gets the bill. Under the ACA, requiring that everyone who can afford insurance buy some or pay a fee makes that system a little more efficient and less costly by spreading the burden of risk to as many people as possible who can afford to pay it (which, if you didn't know, is how insurance works). The ACA isn't perfect by any means. But it's a start. It's something that can be tweaked and improved, and in some states it's already gotten people talking about a move to single-payer. Something that, I might add, the rest of the world already has.
When it comes to healthcare, we're one of the most backward nations in the world, for one very simple reason: in places that are not the United States, being able to see a doctor and not come away broke is considered a basic human right. Here, it's as much a privilege as caviar and edible gold flakes. When some of the poorest nations on earth have excellent universal healthcare, it becomes apparent that America's problem is not that we can't provide everyone in the country with the health services they need, it's that we won't.
Because the only thing America is truly exceptional at is pure, unfettered greed.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Misogyny is the Root of All Evil: Why Feminists Are the Best Friends Men Can Have
Yes, you read that right. Feminists are just as much men's allies as we are women's. For one very simple reason: misogyny and sexism harm everyone, including men. It seems like a strange concept, that hate can harm the oppressor right along with the oppressed. But in the case of the sexes, that's exactly what happens because people aren't stereotypes.
Just like women don't all want to stand barefoot in your kitchen making sandwiches all day, men don't all want to do what their gender role tells them, either. Not all men want to be emotionally distant workaholics who rarely see their spouse and/or children. Not all men want to play football with their sons and ignore their daughters (except to police their love-lives). Not all men like feeling pressured to ditch dinner plans with their wives to go bar-hopping with their friends. Not all men want wives, either, just as not all women want husbands. Some men want husbands. Some women want wives. Some want neither.
Not every man is the self-absorbed chauvinistic asshole society tells him he should be.
And the reason feminists are your friends is because feminists are the first people to tell you "fuck that noise."
See, feminism isn't anti-men; feminism is anti-patriarchy. And yes, there is a difference.
Men are individuals. Men are people with agency. Patriarchy is the system that robs every human being on earth, man, woman, and everyone in between, of the agency they should have and dictates to them what they're supposed to act like based entirely on what gender they're perceived to be. Patriarchy is the force that is reducing your character, your intelligence, and your ability to make your own decisions to a single fucking chromosome and telling you to accept it by giving that chromosome a trainload of societal advantages.
Patriarchy is not just the rule of the world by men. Because even if men were in charge but ruled everything and everyone with respect and dignity, we wouldn't have a problem. Patriarchy is instead the rule of men based solely on the fear and hatred of women. Patriarchy is the division of society into strong and weak, worthy and unworthy, people and not-people, based entirely on which of two convenient little gender tickyboxes they happen to fall into.
It's the system that feminists want to get rid of, because we know that it's what holds us back as people.
Feminists don't just want women to become doctors and lawyers and construction workers and firefighters if they wish, without the fear of harassment over it. Feminists want men to become hairdressers and librarians and secretaries and stay-at-home dads if they wish, because those jobs are not inferior just because they're traditionally associated with women.
We don't just want women to be able to walk down the street in stiletto heels and a crop top without getting catcalled and harassed because we want to feel pretty and confident in peace and safety. We also want men to be able to walk down the street in pink tutus with glitter in their hair because if doing so makes them feel awesome, they should be able to do so in peace and safety as well. Because pink tutus and glitter are not shameful for men to wear.
We don't just want women to be taken seriously even when we're emotional. We want men to be able to show emotion openly and talk about things that bother them. Because emotions are a human thing and their expression should not be a source of shame or derision for anybody.
We don't just want women to stop being blamed for the sexual violence done to them. We want men who are raped and abused to also be able to talk about their experiences and seek help without feeling judged and ashamed or that they "let it happen" somehow. Because nobody ever "lets" rape happen to them no matter how strong they are. Because rape can and does happen to anybody, and no victim should ever feel like they can't tell their story.
More than anyone, feminists believe in the inherent humanity of men. We believe men are not born monsters. We believe that men are in full control of themselves, every moment of every day. We believe that the men who act like assholes choose to do so, because they have been raised in a toxic social climate of patriarchy that tells them such behavior is acceptable and even righteous. And we believe that every man on earth has the moral capacity and empathy for others to reject patriarchy and choose not to act in such a manner.
But if you still need to know what's in it for you as a man who is a feminist? Here are some starters:
If you want women to be held accountable for their actions just as men are, then challenge the notion that women are natural caregivers and incapable of certain behaviors just because they're women.
If you want men to be able to openly like "unmanly" things without getting ridiculed or persecuted, then challenge the notion that everything associated with women is inferior and shameful.
If you want men who are victims of abuse and rape given the support they need, then challenge the idea that men are strong and therefore can't be abused or raped.
If you want men to not be seen as sex-crazed monsters incapable of controlling themselves, then stand up and challenge the rape culture that patriarchy has fostered over millennia.
If you want equality, then help us fight the patriarchal system that tells us all that we are and all we can be is limited by what gender we're perceived as. Help us fight the system that tells us one gender is deserving of respect and dignity and the other is not.
If you want equality? Be a feminist.
Just like women don't all want to stand barefoot in your kitchen making sandwiches all day, men don't all want to do what their gender role tells them, either. Not all men want to be emotionally distant workaholics who rarely see their spouse and/or children. Not all men want to play football with their sons and ignore their daughters (except to police their love-lives). Not all men like feeling pressured to ditch dinner plans with their wives to go bar-hopping with their friends. Not all men want wives, either, just as not all women want husbands. Some men want husbands. Some women want wives. Some want neither.
Not every man is the self-absorbed chauvinistic asshole society tells him he should be.
And the reason feminists are your friends is because feminists are the first people to tell you "fuck that noise."
See, feminism isn't anti-men; feminism is anti-patriarchy. And yes, there is a difference.
Men are individuals. Men are people with agency. Patriarchy is the system that robs every human being on earth, man, woman, and everyone in between, of the agency they should have and dictates to them what they're supposed to act like based entirely on what gender they're perceived to be. Patriarchy is the force that is reducing your character, your intelligence, and your ability to make your own decisions to a single fucking chromosome and telling you to accept it by giving that chromosome a trainload of societal advantages.
Patriarchy is not just the rule of the world by men. Because even if men were in charge but ruled everything and everyone with respect and dignity, we wouldn't have a problem. Patriarchy is instead the rule of men based solely on the fear and hatred of women. Patriarchy is the division of society into strong and weak, worthy and unworthy, people and not-people, based entirely on which of two convenient little gender tickyboxes they happen to fall into.
It's the system that feminists want to get rid of, because we know that it's what holds us back as people.
Feminists don't just want women to become doctors and lawyers and construction workers and firefighters if they wish, without the fear of harassment over it. Feminists want men to become hairdressers and librarians and secretaries and stay-at-home dads if they wish, because those jobs are not inferior just because they're traditionally associated with women.
We don't just want women to be able to walk down the street in stiletto heels and a crop top without getting catcalled and harassed because we want to feel pretty and confident in peace and safety. We also want men to be able to walk down the street in pink tutus with glitter in their hair because if doing so makes them feel awesome, they should be able to do so in peace and safety as well. Because pink tutus and glitter are not shameful for men to wear.
We don't just want women to be taken seriously even when we're emotional. We want men to be able to show emotion openly and talk about things that bother them. Because emotions are a human thing and their expression should not be a source of shame or derision for anybody.
We don't just want women to stop being blamed for the sexual violence done to them. We want men who are raped and abused to also be able to talk about their experiences and seek help without feeling judged and ashamed or that they "let it happen" somehow. Because nobody ever "lets" rape happen to them no matter how strong they are. Because rape can and does happen to anybody, and no victim should ever feel like they can't tell their story.
More than anyone, feminists believe in the inherent humanity of men. We believe men are not born monsters. We believe that men are in full control of themselves, every moment of every day. We believe that the men who act like assholes choose to do so, because they have been raised in a toxic social climate of patriarchy that tells them such behavior is acceptable and even righteous. And we believe that every man on earth has the moral capacity and empathy for others to reject patriarchy and choose not to act in such a manner.
But if you still need to know what's in it for you as a man who is a feminist? Here are some starters:
If you want women to be held accountable for their actions just as men are, then challenge the notion that women are natural caregivers and incapable of certain behaviors just because they're women.
If you want men to be able to openly like "unmanly" things without getting ridiculed or persecuted, then challenge the notion that everything associated with women is inferior and shameful.
If you want men who are victims of abuse and rape given the support they need, then challenge the idea that men are strong and therefore can't be abused or raped.
If you want men to not be seen as sex-crazed monsters incapable of controlling themselves, then stand up and challenge the rape culture that patriarchy has fostered over millennia.
If you want equality, then help us fight the patriarchal system that tells us all that we are and all we can be is limited by what gender we're perceived as. Help us fight the system that tells us one gender is deserving of respect and dignity and the other is not.
If you want equality? Be a feminist.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
We Can't Call Ourselves a Democracy Anymore
Or at least we can't until every last member of Congress who is on the Koch brothers' and Heritage Foundation's payroll has been sent home packing. That's what the last few years of escalated pointless infighting should be teaching every single person in the country who is eligible to vote.
The word itself comes from the Greek δημοκρατία, meaning "rule of the people." This busted-ass system is as far removed from that as it can get at the moment without throwing up its hands and asking England to come back and take over. You cannot call yourself a "rule of the people" when your government is doing the exact opposite of what the people want because it's following the money rather than the voters.
The problem we have is that due to the deep pockets of millionaires who hate government making pesky laws that tell them there are only so many ways they can abuse people for a quick buck, the system has been rigged since the Gerrymanderpocalypse of 2010 to elect people to government who hate governing.
The irony, of course, is that this is all coming from a group that claims to love the U.S. and wishes to rescue it from the hands of filthy progressives. The irony is that they "love" the U.S. like a NASCAR fan loves his battered wife.
See, the Tea Party's whole crusade against taxes because they love America is the stupidest damned thing since NASCAR itself. Federal income tax was implemented by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican president from a much different time when the party platforms were flipped; the Republican Party was originally founded by anti-slavery activists, and the insistence on small government was in regard to stopping the plantation system that left small, independent farmers with shitty land because rich slaveowners bought up all the good stuff. The original Republican slogan was "free labor, free land, free men."
Republicans originally wanted small government not because they believed government is inherently bad, but because the government at the time was both large and corrupt as hell. And that small government would start with the abolition of slavery, or so they thought. Even then they were the party of business, but for different reasons. The original goal of the party was to keep what it viewed as government's sticky fingers out of private business. Because that's where corruption starts.
They were the party of business, yes. But small business. Republicans of Lincoln's time up until the 1930s were about protecting the mom-and-pop family-owned ventures from being run out of town by huge corporations they could never compete with. They felt everyone had the right to success, and that right would be best preserved by making business fair.
Remember Theodore "Trust-Buster" Roosevelt? The guy who fought to break up shit like price-fixing and gentleman's agreements between large businesses that were squeezing out little-guy competition? He's the Patron Saint of the old school Republican party.
So what happened that changed the party ideals? Two things: The Crash of 1929/Great Depression and World War II.
The 1929 stock market crashes that precipitated the Great Depression could best be described as "too much of a good thing." By the Roaring Twenties, government had abandoned agriculture for big-city business, such that rural populations were giving farming the finger and moving to the city where they hoped to find work. Credit and investment had just become a thing, and people were partying like a kid on their 21st birthday with them. Republican economic policies only saw the short-term benefit (read: shitloads of money), and not the long-term risks.
Once the crash happened and Ted Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, became president and started enacting common sense stuff that works (Medicare, Social Security, etc.), that was the beginning of today's Republican party, trying to reclaim the completely unsustainable prosperity of the 1920s.
Really, the Republican Party of today, and the Tea Party in particular, are more like the NASCAR fan who is trying to make his battered wife starve herself back into her wedding dress so he can re-live the glory days when Dale Earnhardt was still alive and diet soda didn't exist.
To that end, the GOP's answer isn't so much "smaller government" as "no government." See, "government doesn't work" is a self-fulfilling prophecy; progressives have proven for nearly a century that government totally fucking works when you have people running the country who want to make it work. When you hire people who hate their job, of course service is going to suck. A trip to Wal-Mart is enough to prove that.
We tried the GOP's way of doing government twice in the last thirty years. Once in the 1980s, and again in the 2000s. Both times failed spectacularly, and both times it took a Democrat who cared about the country as a whole instead of just his campaign donors to get shit done.
What we need to do now to fix this country and get it back to a sustainable state is, ironically, to do what any business would:
Get rid of the people who don't want to do their fucking job.
The word itself comes from the Greek δημοκρατία, meaning "rule of the people." This busted-ass system is as far removed from that as it can get at the moment without throwing up its hands and asking England to come back and take over. You cannot call yourself a "rule of the people" when your government is doing the exact opposite of what the people want because it's following the money rather than the voters.
The problem we have is that due to the deep pockets of millionaires who hate government making pesky laws that tell them there are only so many ways they can abuse people for a quick buck, the system has been rigged since the Gerrymanderpocalypse of 2010 to elect people to government who hate governing.
The irony, of course, is that this is all coming from a group that claims to love the U.S. and wishes to rescue it from the hands of filthy progressives. The irony is that they "love" the U.S. like a NASCAR fan loves his battered wife.
See, the Tea Party's whole crusade against taxes because they love America is the stupidest damned thing since NASCAR itself. Federal income tax was implemented by Abraham Lincoln, a Republican president from a much different time when the party platforms were flipped; the Republican Party was originally founded by anti-slavery activists, and the insistence on small government was in regard to stopping the plantation system that left small, independent farmers with shitty land because rich slaveowners bought up all the good stuff. The original Republican slogan was "free labor, free land, free men."
Republicans originally wanted small government not because they believed government is inherently bad, but because the government at the time was both large and corrupt as hell. And that small government would start with the abolition of slavery, or so they thought. Even then they were the party of business, but for different reasons. The original goal of the party was to keep what it viewed as government's sticky fingers out of private business. Because that's where corruption starts.
They were the party of business, yes. But small business. Republicans of Lincoln's time up until the 1930s were about protecting the mom-and-pop family-owned ventures from being run out of town by huge corporations they could never compete with. They felt everyone had the right to success, and that right would be best preserved by making business fair.
Remember Theodore "Trust-Buster" Roosevelt? The guy who fought to break up shit like price-fixing and gentleman's agreements between large businesses that were squeezing out little-guy competition? He's the Patron Saint of the old school Republican party.
So what happened that changed the party ideals? Two things: The Crash of 1929/Great Depression and World War II.
The 1929 stock market crashes that precipitated the Great Depression could best be described as "too much of a good thing." By the Roaring Twenties, government had abandoned agriculture for big-city business, such that rural populations were giving farming the finger and moving to the city where they hoped to find work. Credit and investment had just become a thing, and people were partying like a kid on their 21st birthday with them. Republican economic policies only saw the short-term benefit (read: shitloads of money), and not the long-term risks.
Once the crash happened and Ted Roosevelt's cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, became president and started enacting common sense stuff that works (Medicare, Social Security, etc.), that was the beginning of today's Republican party, trying to reclaim the completely unsustainable prosperity of the 1920s.
Really, the Republican Party of today, and the Tea Party in particular, are more like the NASCAR fan who is trying to make his battered wife starve herself back into her wedding dress so he can re-live the glory days when Dale Earnhardt was still alive and diet soda didn't exist.
To that end, the GOP's answer isn't so much "smaller government" as "no government." See, "government doesn't work" is a self-fulfilling prophecy; progressives have proven for nearly a century that government totally fucking works when you have people running the country who want to make it work. When you hire people who hate their job, of course service is going to suck. A trip to Wal-Mart is enough to prove that.
We tried the GOP's way of doing government twice in the last thirty years. Once in the 1980s, and again in the 2000s. Both times failed spectacularly, and both times it took a Democrat who cared about the country as a whole instead of just his campaign donors to get shit done.
What we need to do now to fix this country and get it back to a sustainable state is, ironically, to do what any business would:
Get rid of the people who don't want to do their fucking job.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
You Don't Get to Blame the Bank When the Robber Shoots the Hostage
Or rather, why capitulation isn't compromise, and why Republicans need to go back to both high school English and high school civics to learn what those words mean and how they apply to the governing process.
See, the reason that the bank being robbed is not responsible for the hostages getting shot if they don't hand over the money is because the law does not want to encourage bank robberies by making them easier to accomplish and get away with. And that analogy applies to the current shutdown crisis, too. The Republican-controlled House took government functionality hostage, and demanded the Senate hand over ACA defunding measures. The Senate refused. Republicans shot the hostage, and now they and Rupert Murdoch's minions over at Fox Noise and CNN are trying to blame the Senate (because 2014 is not that far away and laying off -- yes, that's what "furlough" really means in practice -- 800,000 people is kind of a dick move and they know it).
The current problem with compromise is that those in charge of the House don't actually want to. Or at least they don't want to compromise in the way the word is supposed to work. In House Tea Party Republican Fantasyland, "compromise" means "give us what we want, full stop." And this is plainly obvious when you do the math. A simple majority in the House right now is 218 votes. There are 201 Democrats, and about 20 Republicans who have publicly indicated that they would vote in favor of a continuing resolution that leaves the ACA alone. Boehner refuses to bring it to a vote not because the votes to pass aren't there, but because they are and he's under the delusion that he needs the Tea Party's support in order to keep his leadership role (not even bothering with a joke here, it's easy enough that you can make up your own).
This becomes either doubly hilarious or doubly sad when as far as the American public is concerned, they have zero fucks to give about the Tea Party. Sad because this demented tantrum is costing millions of people badly needed assistance and paychecks and hurting an already struggling economy, and hilarious because it's like watching Mean Girls, in reverse, with a cast of men who are more than old enough to know better.
Compromise, in the real world, involves concessions that both sides can live with in order to resolve a conflict. When one side refuses to make any concessions and demands concessions they know will fuck over not just the other side, but a shitload of other people (many of whom will die without healthcare coverage they can afford), that's not compromise. That's terrorism. Just not the kind that uses trucks full of fertilizer. If House Republicans had the Senate chamber and every major city in the country wired to explode if they didn't get their way, we'd be calling it terrorism. Using the same tactic without the explosives doesn't make it different.
The irony, of course, is that this is the part where those of us on the left can quote the only intelligent thing that ever came out of Bush 43's mouth.
We will not negotiate with terrorists.
See, the reason that the bank being robbed is not responsible for the hostages getting shot if they don't hand over the money is because the law does not want to encourage bank robberies by making them easier to accomplish and get away with. And that analogy applies to the current shutdown crisis, too. The Republican-controlled House took government functionality hostage, and demanded the Senate hand over ACA defunding measures. The Senate refused. Republicans shot the hostage, and now they and Rupert Murdoch's minions over at Fox Noise and CNN are trying to blame the Senate (because 2014 is not that far away and laying off -- yes, that's what "furlough" really means in practice -- 800,000 people is kind of a dick move and they know it).
The current problem with compromise is that those in charge of the House don't actually want to. Or at least they don't want to compromise in the way the word is supposed to work. In House Tea Party Republican Fantasyland, "compromise" means "give us what we want, full stop." And this is plainly obvious when you do the math. A simple majority in the House right now is 218 votes. There are 201 Democrats, and about 20 Republicans who have publicly indicated that they would vote in favor of a continuing resolution that leaves the ACA alone. Boehner refuses to bring it to a vote not because the votes to pass aren't there, but because they are and he's under the delusion that he needs the Tea Party's support in order to keep his leadership role (not even bothering with a joke here, it's easy enough that you can make up your own).
This becomes either doubly hilarious or doubly sad when as far as the American public is concerned, they have zero fucks to give about the Tea Party. Sad because this demented tantrum is costing millions of people badly needed assistance and paychecks and hurting an already struggling economy, and hilarious because it's like watching Mean Girls, in reverse, with a cast of men who are more than old enough to know better.
Compromise, in the real world, involves concessions that both sides can live with in order to resolve a conflict. When one side refuses to make any concessions and demands concessions they know will fuck over not just the other side, but a shitload of other people (many of whom will die without healthcare coverage they can afford), that's not compromise. That's terrorism. Just not the kind that uses trucks full of fertilizer. If House Republicans had the Senate chamber and every major city in the country wired to explode if they didn't get their way, we'd be calling it terrorism. Using the same tactic without the explosives doesn't make it different.
The irony, of course, is that this is the part where those of us on the left can quote the only intelligent thing that ever came out of Bush 43's mouth.
We will not negotiate with terrorists.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
A Tale of Two Authors: Why It's Okay To Be Proud of Your Work
When Theodore Geisel wrote the manuscript for his first book in 1937, it was rejected by publishers at least 27 times. And Geisel himself got so frustrated with his lack of success that after Rejection Letter #27, he was on his way to chuck it into an incinerator and just forget the whole being a writer thing. On the way to the incinerator on Madison Ave., he ran into his friend Mike McClintock, who had just landed a job as a children's book editor for Vanguard Press. McClintock convinced Geisel not to burn the manuscript, and instead told him he would personally take a chance and publish it.
That manuscript was And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street! And yes, the man who nearly burned his own work because he was that sick of rejection was none other than Dr. Seuss, who would go on to write the books that defined childhood for generations of children worldwide.
When Stephen King wrote his fourth unpublished novel in 1973, he was so disgusted with his own work that he threw all but the first three pages in the trash. At the time, he was teaching English at Hampden Academy, and was so broke he'd disconnected his phone service. His wife, Tabitha, would've been more than justified in telling him to work on resumés instead of horror novels.
But she didn't.
Tabitha King instead dug the manuscript out of the trash and convinced her husband to finish it and submit it to a publisher. Because he had no phone, Doubleday had to contact him by telegram to say that the novel, Carrie, had been selected for publication with a $2,500 advance (1n 1974 $USD; accounting for inflation, that would be an $11,850 advance today). King would go on from there to write a body of work that redefined horror and mystery as genres, and taught us exactly how a book can scare the daylights out of us.
There's more than just a theme here of not giving up. The tale of these two authors is the tale of every artist who thinks they can't art. Musicians, dancers, writers, fine artists... Because as artists, we're told by society from the day we're capable of reasoning that we can't feel proud of our work unless other people like it, and sometimes not even then. We must reject compliments with a blush and a handwave because otherwise, we're proud and therefore sinful.
For every "believe in yourself" story, we're told not to praise our own work, to accept it when what we produce is awful, and to not let praise go to our heads. While "don't toot your own horn" isn't necessarily bad advice -- arrogance is not becoming on anybody -- the problem is that we aren't taught to listen when other people toot it, either. We're given conflicting messages and no way to resolve them. No balance point. No clear boundary between "sin" and "confidence." And so we grow up into our own harshest, most terrible critics because we're taught to believe that confidence is a sin.
That was the lesson that these two men learned, and had it not been for two extraordinary people -- a longtime friend with connections and a nose for risk, and a supportive wife who believed in her husband -- we would be missing out on some brilliant work, and the world would be a much sadder place.
Whenever you feel as an artist that you can't art and you'd be better off throwing all your work on a bonfire and salting the earth, remember these two guys, and the hundreds of other men and women just like them who thought they couldn't art, and ended up transforming the world because someone else thought otherwise.
It's okay to look at your work and think "damn, I'm good." Listen to the people who believe in you. Listen to the people who tell you that your work is worthwhile. It's okay to agree with them. Because like Mike McClintock and Tabitha King, they're more often right than wrong.
That manuscript was And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street! And yes, the man who nearly burned his own work because he was that sick of rejection was none other than Dr. Seuss, who would go on to write the books that defined childhood for generations of children worldwide.
When Stephen King wrote his fourth unpublished novel in 1973, he was so disgusted with his own work that he threw all but the first three pages in the trash. At the time, he was teaching English at Hampden Academy, and was so broke he'd disconnected his phone service. His wife, Tabitha, would've been more than justified in telling him to work on resumés instead of horror novels.
But she didn't.
Tabitha King instead dug the manuscript out of the trash and convinced her husband to finish it and submit it to a publisher. Because he had no phone, Doubleday had to contact him by telegram to say that the novel, Carrie, had been selected for publication with a $2,500 advance (1n 1974 $USD; accounting for inflation, that would be an $11,850 advance today). King would go on from there to write a body of work that redefined horror and mystery as genres, and taught us exactly how a book can scare the daylights out of us.
There's more than just a theme here of not giving up. The tale of these two authors is the tale of every artist who thinks they can't art. Musicians, dancers, writers, fine artists... Because as artists, we're told by society from the day we're capable of reasoning that we can't feel proud of our work unless other people like it, and sometimes not even then. We must reject compliments with a blush and a handwave because otherwise, we're proud and therefore sinful.
For every "believe in yourself" story, we're told not to praise our own work, to accept it when what we produce is awful, and to not let praise go to our heads. While "don't toot your own horn" isn't necessarily bad advice -- arrogance is not becoming on anybody -- the problem is that we aren't taught to listen when other people toot it, either. We're given conflicting messages and no way to resolve them. No balance point. No clear boundary between "sin" and "confidence." And so we grow up into our own harshest, most terrible critics because we're taught to believe that confidence is a sin.
That was the lesson that these two men learned, and had it not been for two extraordinary people -- a longtime friend with connections and a nose for risk, and a supportive wife who believed in her husband -- we would be missing out on some brilliant work, and the world would be a much sadder place.
Whenever you feel as an artist that you can't art and you'd be better off throwing all your work on a bonfire and salting the earth, remember these two guys, and the hundreds of other men and women just like them who thought they couldn't art, and ended up transforming the world because someone else thought otherwise.
It's okay to look at your work and think "damn, I'm good." Listen to the people who believe in you. Listen to the people who tell you that your work is worthwhile. It's okay to agree with them. Because like Mike McClintock and Tabitha King, they're more often right than wrong.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
The Real Reason the ACA Scares the Shit Out of Republicans
As if it couldn't be more obvious, Republicans at both the state and federal levels have been trying their damnedest to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, either through denying funding, stupidly challenging parts of it, or trying in vain to repeal it for the 40th time. They are terrified of this law, nevermind that they came up with it first (specifically, their 2012 presidential candidate enacted the exact same program in Massachusetts).
The question on everyone's mind, of course, is why.
Oh, they're all too happy to tell you. They're positively gleeful to tell you it's a job-killer, it's socialist, it's putting too many regulations on the free market, it will cost too much, it's unconstitutional
I could pick through each and every reason listed and why they're all ridiculous nonsense, but that horse has had its rotting flesh flogged off for a couple years already. No, the purpose of this rant is to cut through the bullshit and tell you the true reason the GOP is evacuating its bowels over Obamacare.
That reason is because it will work.
Yes, they're terrified of it working. And the reason they're terrified of it working is because it was implemented by a
There's a very simple formula at work, here. When you give people rights they know they should have and protect the rights they already do have, you get votes. The GOP is afraid because they know that when it works -- not if, when -- and when people start feeling the benefits of being able to get healthcare they didn't have access to before, they will be Democratic voters for life.
Because see, that's just how we roll on the left.
Conservative voters (read: scared old white people) vote out of fear. Fear of change, fear of losing their privilege, fear of their ideas becoming obsolete. When you vote out of fear, you vote to restrict and restrain that which makes you afraid (read: people who are not old, scared and white). And thus, as a conservative, you vote to take away rights. You vote to restrict and restrain the poor, women, the LGBT community, immigrants, and people of other races.
Progressive voters (read: everyone else) vote out of hope. Hope to make things better, for our lives to improve. We vote to give rights to people instead of taking them away, because when people have rights, their lives suck less.
Republicans hate the ACA not for the law itself, but for which side it's benefiting. Which is why they rail so hard against Obama for it, but dodged the question when Romney's plan was mentioned. They're not seeing 30 million Americans having access to healthcare; they're seeing 30 million votes going to Democrats, and they just can't let that happen after the beating they took last year.
This isn't new, of course. Anybody who paid attention under the Clinton Administration should be getting an odd sense of déjà vu. For those who weren't old enough to remember or be interested in politics, check out this infamous memo from 1993, courtesy of Republican strategist William Kristol.
To put it another way, I'm sure anyone who is reading this and is from the U.S. has seen Revenge of the Nerds. Or at least clips of it. If you haven't, let me remedy that because it's kind of important:
Sound familiar?
The message from the Alpha Betas is pretty clear: how dare you be popular, how dare you work, how dare you give credit for working to people we don't like.
Republicans fear Obamacare for the same reason they feared the 19th Amendment, Executive Order 9981, the New Deal and the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Acts, the Auto Industry Bailout of 2009, the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and countless other Little Guy victories. They know there are a lot more nerds than there are beautiful people. There are a lot more who have been stepped on, left out, picked on, and put down.
They know there are way more of us than there are of them, and they're afraid that if we're given too many rights, too much equality, we're going to realize it.
Monday, August 5, 2013
The Most Important Reason Why You Should Never Date a Nice Guy(TM)
For clarification before I begin, when I use Nice With a Capital "N", I'm not talking about actual guys who are nice. Nice Guys with capitalization necessary are men who put on a pretense of being nice because they think doing so will get them what they want (usually sexual favors/relationships, but not always). Rather than genuine goodwill, their niceness is pure turd polish. And while this phenomenon does happen with girls, too, it doesn't seem nearly as common in women as it is in men. And I'll get into why I think that is later.
We ladyfolk have heard all the usual reasons Nice Guys make terrible boyfriends. They're entitled jerks, they're manipulative, they don't actually care about you as a person, etc. But I think there's one more reason that isn't talked about nearly as much as it should be. Not because people are afraid to call out the behavior for what it is, but that many out there don't understand what's so fucked up about it.
Nice Guys and Nice Girls are domestic abusers looking for a victim.
Or more to the point, they have the dangerous potential to become domestic abusers, because they have the mentality of one already. Specifically, they have the mentality of an emotional abuser. One who uses guilt and feelings of attachment in their victim in order to get what they want.
When a Nice Guy responds to romantic rejection with the classic line -- "Look at everything I've done for you, how could you do this to me!" -- what he's doing is shifting the responsibility for his emotions onto the person he's pining for. It's not his fault that he's hurt, it's hers for telling him no. She's the bad guy, here, because she'd have to be in order to reject someone as nice as him.
That, dear readers, is the hallmark of emotional abuse.
The vilification of the victim, and the absolution of the abuser is what makes the sick system work. Someone who already has the capability to make another person feel responsible for their moods and emotions has one foot on the abuse train, and the other isn't far behind.
All abusers have a degree of narcissism -- that is, an inflated sense of self-worth and importance and a lack of empathy for other people -- but it's not anywhere near as blatant and apparent as it is with the emotional abuser. He doesn't use the fear of violent reprimand to control his victim, but guilt and feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. And he does this primarily by shifting blame and making his partner feel responsible for all of the problems in the relationship, and therefore unwilling to leave because doing so becomes a perceived admission of failure.
The crux of the Nice Guy mentality is exactly this kind of blame displacement. That he's already learned to do this to someone he's not even in a relationship with speaks volumes to his potential for further abuse should this behavior go unchallenged. And the reason this behavior tends to go unchallenged is because of the three types of abuse, emotional is the most poorly understood and the least visible. The scars it leaves are just as devastating as any physical or sexual trauma, but they're only recognized by therapists who have been trained to look for them, and by people who have been the victim of it themselves. And of the three, it's also the only kind that is perfectly legal.
Nice Guys are more common than Nice Girls for a couple of reasons. One is that women generally don't receive societal conditioning that tells them they are entitled to any man they want by virtue of being a woman. In order to feel entitled to a man, society dictates that certain criteria must be met first. A woman must be stunningly beautiful (read: slender and buxom, with flawless skin and eternal youth), classy and well-mannered (read: keeps her opinions to herself), and able to walk the invisible line dividing the Madonna-Whore Complex with the precision of a highwire performer if she is to be seen as having "the luxury of being picky" (that being picky when it comes to romantic partners is seen as a luxury at all is another rant entirely).
Men, on the contrary, can only lose the luxury of pickiness if they meet certain criteria (and that criteria is being exceptionally unattractive, though Ugly Guy, Hot Wife is a very common wish fulfillment trope for a reason, so sometimes not even then). Otherwise, society conditions men that they deserve the woman they want just by virtue of being male.
Men (especially American men) are also conditioned not to be negatively emotional unless it's anger and aggression. Sadness is unmanly. Hurt is unmanly. Guilt is unmanly. I don't just mean expressing these emotions, but just feeling them. The Nice Guy seeks to shift the blame for his hurt and sadness at being rejected onto the person who rejected him in order to feel "manly" again. His feelings of hurt and sadness don't count against him if they aren't really his fault. If he can make someone else take responsibility for them, he can get his Man Card back.
While women don't display this kind of manipulative behavior as blatantly or as often, Nice Girls are out there, and they are just as abusive. The difference is the pathology of emotionally abusive women is rooted not in a sense of entitlement being challenged, but in...well...feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness.
Women are conditioned to the exact opposite of entitlement, as previously mentioned. We are pressured to be perfect in every way. We are pressured to be beautiful, quiet, chaste, and resilient and if we aren't all of these things to a superhuman degree, we are told we will never attract a mate and if we can't attract a mate, we are worthless. When a woman is trying to weasel into the life of a man she wants, it's because his rejection of her is effectively telling her "you're undateable and therefore useless" whereas a woman's rejection of a man is merely challenging his perceived authority over her. Note that this does not make it okay for women to be abusers; it's not okay for anyone to emotionally abuse another person. This is merely explaining the difference in motives.
When a woman shifts the blame for her moods onto someone else, she's not doing it to reclaim her Woman Card because feelings of sadness and hurt are considered "feminine." Women cry. Women emote. Women react. Women sit around the kitchen table with cheesecake and ice cream and console each other. For women who shift blame to other people for their emotions, the chief difference can be found in the emotion they're shifting blame for. While male abusers shift blame for sadness and hurt, women shift blame for anger. Because while sadness and hurt are considered feminine, women displaying anger (and therefore aggression) is unladylike. When female abusers blame-shift, they are often looking for absolution of wrongdoing. "I didn't get angry, you made me angry by Doing Thing X/Not Doing Thing Y."
So now that I have a Fashionable Headgear Army all bent out of shape because I'm calling the Nice Guys with whom they identify and sympathize potential abusers and steering all the women away from them, what I mean by the title of this post is not that Nice Guys should be avoided forever; they should be avoided only while they are still Nice Guys and still have that blame-shifting mindset. Because while it's entirely possible for Nice Guys to reform and grow up and realize how fucked and awful their behaviors and motives are, while they are still Nice Guys and unwilling to own their emotions and moods and seeking to shift that burden to their partner, they should not be given the chance to reel in a victim.
We ladyfolk have heard all the usual reasons Nice Guys make terrible boyfriends. They're entitled jerks, they're manipulative, they don't actually care about you as a person, etc. But I think there's one more reason that isn't talked about nearly as much as it should be. Not because people are afraid to call out the behavior for what it is, but that many out there don't understand what's so fucked up about it.
Nice Guys and Nice Girls are domestic abusers looking for a victim.
Or more to the point, they have the dangerous potential to become domestic abusers, because they have the mentality of one already. Specifically, they have the mentality of an emotional abuser. One who uses guilt and feelings of attachment in their victim in order to get what they want.
When a Nice Guy responds to romantic rejection with the classic line -- "Look at everything I've done for you, how could you do this to me!" -- what he's doing is shifting the responsibility for his emotions onto the person he's pining for. It's not his fault that he's hurt, it's hers for telling him no. She's the bad guy, here, because she'd have to be in order to reject someone as nice as him.
That, dear readers, is the hallmark of emotional abuse.
The vilification of the victim, and the absolution of the abuser is what makes the sick system work. Someone who already has the capability to make another person feel responsible for their moods and emotions has one foot on the abuse train, and the other isn't far behind.
All abusers have a degree of narcissism -- that is, an inflated sense of self-worth and importance and a lack of empathy for other people -- but it's not anywhere near as blatant and apparent as it is with the emotional abuser. He doesn't use the fear of violent reprimand to control his victim, but guilt and feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. And he does this primarily by shifting blame and making his partner feel responsible for all of the problems in the relationship, and therefore unwilling to leave because doing so becomes a perceived admission of failure.
The crux of the Nice Guy mentality is exactly this kind of blame displacement. That he's already learned to do this to someone he's not even in a relationship with speaks volumes to his potential for further abuse should this behavior go unchallenged. And the reason this behavior tends to go unchallenged is because of the three types of abuse, emotional is the most poorly understood and the least visible. The scars it leaves are just as devastating as any physical or sexual trauma, but they're only recognized by therapists who have been trained to look for them, and by people who have been the victim of it themselves. And of the three, it's also the only kind that is perfectly legal.
Nice Guys are more common than Nice Girls for a couple of reasons. One is that women generally don't receive societal conditioning that tells them they are entitled to any man they want by virtue of being a woman. In order to feel entitled to a man, society dictates that certain criteria must be met first. A woman must be stunningly beautiful (read: slender and buxom, with flawless skin and eternal youth), classy and well-mannered (read: keeps her opinions to herself), and able to walk the invisible line dividing the Madonna-Whore Complex with the precision of a highwire performer if she is to be seen as having "the luxury of being picky" (that being picky when it comes to romantic partners is seen as a luxury at all is another rant entirely).
Men, on the contrary, can only lose the luxury of pickiness if they meet certain criteria (and that criteria is being exceptionally unattractive, though Ugly Guy, Hot Wife is a very common wish fulfillment trope for a reason, so sometimes not even then). Otherwise, society conditions men that they deserve the woman they want just by virtue of being male.
Men (especially American men) are also conditioned not to be negatively emotional unless it's anger and aggression. Sadness is unmanly. Hurt is unmanly. Guilt is unmanly. I don't just mean expressing these emotions, but just feeling them. The Nice Guy seeks to shift the blame for his hurt and sadness at being rejected onto the person who rejected him in order to feel "manly" again. His feelings of hurt and sadness don't count against him if they aren't really his fault. If he can make someone else take responsibility for them, he can get his Man Card back.
While women don't display this kind of manipulative behavior as blatantly or as often, Nice Girls are out there, and they are just as abusive. The difference is the pathology of emotionally abusive women is rooted not in a sense of entitlement being challenged, but in...well...feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness.
Women are conditioned to the exact opposite of entitlement, as previously mentioned. We are pressured to be perfect in every way. We are pressured to be beautiful, quiet, chaste, and resilient and if we aren't all of these things to a superhuman degree, we are told we will never attract a mate and if we can't attract a mate, we are worthless. When a woman is trying to weasel into the life of a man she wants, it's because his rejection of her is effectively telling her "you're undateable and therefore useless" whereas a woman's rejection of a man is merely challenging his perceived authority over her. Note that this does not make it okay for women to be abusers; it's not okay for anyone to emotionally abuse another person. This is merely explaining the difference in motives.
When a woman shifts the blame for her moods onto someone else, she's not doing it to reclaim her Woman Card because feelings of sadness and hurt are considered "feminine." Women cry. Women emote. Women react. Women sit around the kitchen table with cheesecake and ice cream and console each other. For women who shift blame to other people for their emotions, the chief difference can be found in the emotion they're shifting blame for. While male abusers shift blame for sadness and hurt, women shift blame for anger. Because while sadness and hurt are considered feminine, women displaying anger (and therefore aggression) is unladylike. When female abusers blame-shift, they are often looking for absolution of wrongdoing. "I didn't get angry, you made me angry by Doing Thing X/Not Doing Thing Y."
So now that I have a Fashionable Headgear Army all bent out of shape because I'm calling the Nice Guys with whom they identify and sympathize potential abusers and steering all the women away from them, what I mean by the title of this post is not that Nice Guys should be avoided forever; they should be avoided only while they are still Nice Guys and still have that blame-shifting mindset. Because while it's entirely possible for Nice Guys to reform and grow up and realize how fucked and awful their behaviors and motives are, while they are still Nice Guys and unwilling to own their emotions and moods and seeking to shift that burden to their partner, they should not be given the chance to reel in a victim.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Behold, the Power of Shoes
Women love shoes.
It's a stereotype as old as Sears Roebuck itself, often the subject of jokes that are funny for about five minutes until you realize that invoking stereotypes for the sake of humor and not doing anything more is shorthand for "I'm not actually funny, I'm just an asshole." And recently, it's become a thorn in the sides of radfems seeking to abolish anything viewed as traditionally "feminine" (a rant for another day, I assure you, because fighting sexism with misogyny is like stabbing yourself and expecting your opponent to keel over dead).
Before I start on this, I want to go on record that I am not a shoe-woman. I own exactly three pair: one pair of flip-flops (because Florida), one pair of plain black slip-ons, and a pair of black steel-toed men's work boots. All three pair put together set me back less than $60, and I only replace them when they are quite literally falling apart. No doubt there are many women out there who are much the same. Like any stereotype out there, there are going to be people who buck the trend, real or perceived.
The reason I'm defending the women out there who do love shoes, however, is because I'm sick of being told there is only one right way to be a feminist, and I'm doubly sick of interests associated with women getting shat upon because nobody ever grew up past "girls have cooties!" I'm tired of women and anything associated with women being Acceptable Targets.
First, shoes carry different meanings for men and women. For men, they're an item of fashion and/or utility and little else. You wear them because they fit a need, and don't really think much of it.
With regard to women, shoes are a symbol of independence. Especially for older women who grew up in the 1950s, the era that the phrase "barefoot and pregnant" as the pinnacle of female virtue gained popularity. Shoes mean she can leave the house whenever she damned well pleases. Shoes mean agency and the ability to do things for herself without having to wait for her husband to get home.
As a fashion accessory, it's no wonder that women who love shoes are going to buy a lot of them, and are going to be choosy about their styles and colors. Shoes are a symbol of individual rebellion. Naturally they're going to reflect the woman who is wearing them. The woman who is telling the world that she does what she wants and if you don't like it, you can kindly fuck off because she doesn't have to answer to you.
Women who love shoes view them the same way that men who love vehicles view their cars. But while jokes about guys and cars are affectionate and good-natured, the jokes about women and shoes are derisive and full of contempt. And it's more than just a hideous double standard of 'girly' interests being worthless.
Denigrating women for liking shoes is denigrating them for putting their agency and independence on display. For expressing their individual desires and wants and going out to get them. For reminding everyone that they are not to be kept locked up in the house all day. It's denigrating women for not wanting to be controlled.
Think about that the next time you make or hear a hateful joke about women and shoes. Would you effectively tell that woman you think she's stupid because she wants to leave the house and be her own person and you find that just hilarious?
If you would think twice, maybe that joke is better left unmade.
It's a stereotype as old as Sears Roebuck itself, often the subject of jokes that are funny for about five minutes until you realize that invoking stereotypes for the sake of humor and not doing anything more is shorthand for "I'm not actually funny, I'm just an asshole." And recently, it's become a thorn in the sides of radfems seeking to abolish anything viewed as traditionally "feminine" (a rant for another day, I assure you, because fighting sexism with misogyny is like stabbing yourself and expecting your opponent to keel over dead).
Before I start on this, I want to go on record that I am not a shoe-woman. I own exactly three pair: one pair of flip-flops (because Florida), one pair of plain black slip-ons, and a pair of black steel-toed men's work boots. All three pair put together set me back less than $60, and I only replace them when they are quite literally falling apart. No doubt there are many women out there who are much the same. Like any stereotype out there, there are going to be people who buck the trend, real or perceived.
The reason I'm defending the women out there who do love shoes, however, is because I'm sick of being told there is only one right way to be a feminist, and I'm doubly sick of interests associated with women getting shat upon because nobody ever grew up past "girls have cooties!" I'm tired of women and anything associated with women being Acceptable Targets.
First, shoes carry different meanings for men and women. For men, they're an item of fashion and/or utility and little else. You wear them because they fit a need, and don't really think much of it.
With regard to women, shoes are a symbol of independence. Especially for older women who grew up in the 1950s, the era that the phrase "barefoot and pregnant" as the pinnacle of female virtue gained popularity. Shoes mean she can leave the house whenever she damned well pleases. Shoes mean agency and the ability to do things for herself without having to wait for her husband to get home.
As a fashion accessory, it's no wonder that women who love shoes are going to buy a lot of them, and are going to be choosy about their styles and colors. Shoes are a symbol of individual rebellion. Naturally they're going to reflect the woman who is wearing them. The woman who is telling the world that she does what she wants and if you don't like it, you can kindly fuck off because she doesn't have to answer to you.
Women who love shoes view them the same way that men who love vehicles view their cars. But while jokes about guys and cars are affectionate and good-natured, the jokes about women and shoes are derisive and full of contempt. And it's more than just a hideous double standard of 'girly' interests being worthless.
Denigrating women for liking shoes is denigrating them for putting their agency and independence on display. For expressing their individual desires and wants and going out to get them. For reminding everyone that they are not to be kept locked up in the house all day. It's denigrating women for not wanting to be controlled.
Think about that the next time you make or hear a hateful joke about women and shoes. Would you effectively tell that woman you think she's stupid because she wants to leave the house and be her own person and you find that just hilarious?
If you would think twice, maybe that joke is better left unmade.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Privacy Is Dead, Get Used to It
Because I'm the type who calls shit when I smell it, regardless of whether it came from the anus of an elephant or a donkey. Fake outrage is fake outrage is fake outrage, and it sounds silly no matter who's getting frothy about it. In this case, it's privacy. Or the illusion thereof.
Ever since some guy named Edward Snowden showed us what's been common knowledge to anyone paying attention for almost 20 years now, many on the left have gotten a lit stick of dynamite shoved up their collective asses about privacy. The reason I call this fake outrage is because privacy as we know it has been hanged in the village square since approximately 1995, when the internet and cellphones started becoming affordable and accessible to people who aren't the Koch brothers. It's especially dead now when cellphones and VOIP service have been pushing the landline into extinction since at least 2011.
See, when you make a call on a cell phone, your message is not confined to one very tiny physical space that you need some know-how to hack into (a practice called "phreaking"). With a cellphone, especially in the smartphone age, there are a shitload of apps out there that do all the work for you and allow you to listen in on live calls without the other person's knowledge. And this is not just limited to intentional spying. "Spying" of the accidental type (called "crosstalk") can also happen due to signal interference, especially in large cities. Which is why if you're doing telephone banking on your cell, enter the numbers on the keypad if you can instead of speaking them. And also why many banks and other services no longer have the IVR speak your entered information back to you.
And we haven't even gotten to the internet yet. This is just your phone.
With the internet, you're even more exposed because you're already going through a couple of middlemen to communicate at all. The first is your ISP, of course. The second is the server supporting whatever website or e-mail you use.
See, the internet is little more than a shitload of computers all over the world talking to each other. Every website you visit is another computer. Your e-mail address is another computer (two, actually; one for incoming mail and one for outgoing). A computer that someone else owns and has full access to. Sending an e-mail is not like sending a letter; when you send a letter, there is exactly one copy of your message that gets physically delivered to the recipient. When you send an e-mail, your message is copied to your e-mail provider's outgoing mail server, then sent to the incoming mail server for your recipient, which he or she then downloads the message from or views the server copy depending on the provider.
These servers (basically gigantic monstrosity computers) are maintained by a team of people who, by agreeing to the terms of service, you give permission to access anything on them, anytime. This is why it's never ever recommended to send important shit like credit card information or passwords through e-mail; there are way too many people who could potentially get their hands on it.
Even on social media sites that allow filters, such as Facebook and Livejournal, anything you post online is already in someone else's hands by virtue of how the internet works. That post gets copied to another server.
But let's pretend you're one of those technophobes who has no computer or cellphone or tablet or whatever, and you're reading this because one of your friends printed it for you. Your worry is those evil gub'mint cameras at busy intersections that are watching you, not unlike those two creepy statues at the entrance to Cirith Ungol. Your outrage isn't fake because how dare The Man invade your privacy like that, right? You're just walking down the street!
Well...yeah. You're walking down the street, in public. If you think you have an expectation of privacy at a busy intersection, your outrage is actually more fake than anyone worried about their phone calls or e-mails getting snooped on. Because you are literally within view of hundreds of people, and there's a good chance half of those people are carrying a high-definition zoom camera with a constant internet connection in their hand.
That camera on the traffic light or street lamp? The guy behind it doing the watching doesn't give a shit about you. He's not going to notice you unless you're doing something that camera was meant to catch (speeding, running a red light, driving like a coked-up ostrich, etc.).
That's really the part that makes this outrage so baseless and sad. Not only can private citizens snoop your calls and e-mails and surreptitiously snap your picture far more effectively than the federal government and with far more malicious intent (see: creepshots, Scientology), but nobody in the government cares about your day-to-day activities unless they are illegal. Yes, I realize that people want their privacy and they don't like the long arm of the government getting all up in their Kool-Aid. But let's be realistic here: you've likely been spied on by private companies working on federal contracts for the last 15-20 years. What terrible injustices have happened in your life in that time that you can directly and verifiably attribute to government surveillance?
The problem is that people like feeling significant. Being snooped on is flattering in a stupid, twisted way because it means they're important enough to pay attention to. And they have a real problem with someone taking the wind out of their sails and being told that no, really, the Feds don't care how long you talked about the Game of Thrones finale with your friends last week. Or where you went for lunch on Tuesday. Sure, they can listen to your calls, watch you at an intersection, read your e-mails. And they're going to be bored out of their collective skulls because you aren't doing anything that warrants a second glance. Sure, it may be a violation of the 4th amendment, but 1) this isn't going away, and 2) it's petty and insignificant compared to shit like TSA digitally removing your clothes and groping you at the airport. You don't have to like it, no. But there's something to be said for picking your battles wisely rather than succumbing to knee-jerk reactionary bullshit.
Privacy as we've always known it is dead. Whether you're buying coffee, banking, taking the bus, talking to your friends online or on the phone, texting your significant other, or even just walking down 5th Ave., you are likely being recorded in some fashion. And if you hadn't even noticed it until Edward Snowden pointed it out, it's not likely to make any difference whatsoever in the rest of your time on the planet, either.
Why? Because your life is not a Will Smith movie. Except maybe for that part at the end of Men In Black II where we're the mold in some alien's locker room.
Ever since some guy named Edward Snowden showed us what's been common knowledge to anyone paying attention for almost 20 years now, many on the left have gotten a lit stick of dynamite shoved up their collective asses about privacy. The reason I call this fake outrage is because privacy as we know it has been hanged in the village square since approximately 1995, when the internet and cellphones started becoming affordable and accessible to people who aren't the Koch brothers. It's especially dead now when cellphones and VOIP service have been pushing the landline into extinction since at least 2011.
See, when you make a call on a cell phone, your message is not confined to one very tiny physical space that you need some know-how to hack into (a practice called "phreaking"). With a cellphone, especially in the smartphone age, there are a shitload of apps out there that do all the work for you and allow you to listen in on live calls without the other person's knowledge. And this is not just limited to intentional spying. "Spying" of the accidental type (called "crosstalk") can also happen due to signal interference, especially in large cities. Which is why if you're doing telephone banking on your cell, enter the numbers on the keypad if you can instead of speaking them. And also why many banks and other services no longer have the IVR speak your entered information back to you.
And we haven't even gotten to the internet yet. This is just your phone.
With the internet, you're even more exposed because you're already going through a couple of middlemen to communicate at all. The first is your ISP, of course. The second is the server supporting whatever website or e-mail you use.
See, the internet is little more than a shitload of computers all over the world talking to each other. Every website you visit is another computer. Your e-mail address is another computer (two, actually; one for incoming mail and one for outgoing). A computer that someone else owns and has full access to. Sending an e-mail is not like sending a letter; when you send a letter, there is exactly one copy of your message that gets physically delivered to the recipient. When you send an e-mail, your message is copied to your e-mail provider's outgoing mail server, then sent to the incoming mail server for your recipient, which he or she then downloads the message from or views the server copy depending on the provider.
These servers (basically gigantic monstrosity computers) are maintained by a team of people who, by agreeing to the terms of service, you give permission to access anything on them, anytime. This is why it's never ever recommended to send important shit like credit card information or passwords through e-mail; there are way too many people who could potentially get their hands on it.
Even on social media sites that allow filters, such as Facebook and Livejournal, anything you post online is already in someone else's hands by virtue of how the internet works. That post gets copied to another server.
But let's pretend you're one of those technophobes who has no computer or cellphone or tablet or whatever, and you're reading this because one of your friends printed it for you. Your worry is those evil gub'mint cameras at busy intersections that are watching you, not unlike those two creepy statues at the entrance to Cirith Ungol. Your outrage isn't fake because how dare The Man invade your privacy like that, right? You're just walking down the street!
Well...yeah. You're walking down the street, in public. If you think you have an expectation of privacy at a busy intersection, your outrage is actually more fake than anyone worried about their phone calls or e-mails getting snooped on. Because you are literally within view of hundreds of people, and there's a good chance half of those people are carrying a high-definition zoom camera with a constant internet connection in their hand.
That camera on the traffic light or street lamp? The guy behind it doing the watching doesn't give a shit about you. He's not going to notice you unless you're doing something that camera was meant to catch (speeding, running a red light, driving like a coked-up ostrich, etc.).
That's really the part that makes this outrage so baseless and sad. Not only can private citizens snoop your calls and e-mails and surreptitiously snap your picture far more effectively than the federal government and with far more malicious intent (see: creepshots, Scientology), but nobody in the government cares about your day-to-day activities unless they are illegal. Yes, I realize that people want their privacy and they don't like the long arm of the government getting all up in their Kool-Aid. But let's be realistic here: you've likely been spied on by private companies working on federal contracts for the last 15-20 years. What terrible injustices have happened in your life in that time that you can directly and verifiably attribute to government surveillance?
The problem is that people like feeling significant. Being snooped on is flattering in a stupid, twisted way because it means they're important enough to pay attention to. And they have a real problem with someone taking the wind out of their sails and being told that no, really, the Feds don't care how long you talked about the Game of Thrones finale with your friends last week. Or where you went for lunch on Tuesday. Sure, they can listen to your calls, watch you at an intersection, read your e-mails. And they're going to be bored out of their collective skulls because you aren't doing anything that warrants a second glance. Sure, it may be a violation of the 4th amendment, but 1) this isn't going away, and 2) it's petty and insignificant compared to shit like TSA digitally removing your clothes and groping you at the airport. You don't have to like it, no. But there's something to be said for picking your battles wisely rather than succumbing to knee-jerk reactionary bullshit.
Privacy as we've always known it is dead. Whether you're buying coffee, banking, taking the bus, talking to your friends online or on the phone, texting your significant other, or even just walking down 5th Ave., you are likely being recorded in some fashion. And if you hadn't even noticed it until Edward Snowden pointed it out, it's not likely to make any difference whatsoever in the rest of your time on the planet, either.
Why? Because your life is not a Will Smith movie. Except maybe for that part at the end of Men In Black II where we're the mold in some alien's locker room.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Nobody Dates a Jerk On Purpose: An Open Letter to the Self-Proclaimed Nice Guy(TM)
Dear Mr. Nice Guy,
I appreciate your feigned concern over the welfare of women whom you perceive to have ill-gotten taste in men because they 'only date assholes.' There are just a few problems that I would like to point out that may help you realize why you're always the guy who finishes last, because let's not kid ourselves any longer.
Problem the First is that nobody looks for assholes to date. No woman is deliberately looking to get treated like shit. We just happen to end up dating assholes because many assholes have perfected the art of keeping their true nature a secret, and because women are conditioned from the time we develop cognitive reasoning to accept that our entire worth as people revolves around whether we make a decent mate. In practical terms, this means that if a woman is single for too long, there's an implication that there's something wrong with her to make her undateable and therefore worthless. Ergo, many women will seem to tolerate shitty behavior in their mates because they don't want to be viewed as unable to keep a man interested. You can thank men and all the years of forcibly marrying your daughter off right after puberty for that one.
Problem the Second is that what you're seeing as assholishness, she's seeing as confidence, and to her that's attractive. See, not everyone she dates is going to be a genuine asshole. They just seem that way because none of those guys are you and you happen to have an artificially inflated opinion of yourself to compensate for your insecurities. A guy who is rough around the edges but still confident enough to be upfront about his intentions instead of trying to weasel his way into her life is going to get more respect just for being honest.
Problem the Third is that if you are befriending or being kind to a woman with the end goal of having sex with her, that makes you just as much of an asshole. You're just more subtle about it. The reason it makes you an asshole is because just like the ones you think she's dating, you don't see her as a person, either. She's a prize. A reward for not being an overt douchebag. You are still objectifying and dehumanizing her, but doing so under the guise of friendship and caring. And frankly that just makes you creepy rather than nice.
See, nobody owes you sex or a relationship in return for pretending to be a decent human being. As a famous image macro says, women are not machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out. If you're being nice purely because you're expecting a reward, you're still an asshole, full stop. Women have the right to refuse your advances no matter how nice you're being, because nobody is entitled to another person in any way whatsoever.
It's your duty to handle rejection like someone who isn't an asshole.
Regards,
The Patron of Sarcasm
I appreciate your feigned concern over the welfare of women whom you perceive to have ill-gotten taste in men because they 'only date assholes.' There are just a few problems that I would like to point out that may help you realize why you're always the guy who finishes last, because let's not kid ourselves any longer.
Problem the First is that nobody looks for assholes to date. No woman is deliberately looking to get treated like shit. We just happen to end up dating assholes because many assholes have perfected the art of keeping their true nature a secret, and because women are conditioned from the time we develop cognitive reasoning to accept that our entire worth as people revolves around whether we make a decent mate. In practical terms, this means that if a woman is single for too long, there's an implication that there's something wrong with her to make her undateable and therefore worthless. Ergo, many women will seem to tolerate shitty behavior in their mates because they don't want to be viewed as unable to keep a man interested. You can thank men and all the years of forcibly marrying your daughter off right after puberty for that one.
Problem the Second is that what you're seeing as assholishness, she's seeing as confidence, and to her that's attractive. See, not everyone she dates is going to be a genuine asshole. They just seem that way because none of those guys are you and you happen to have an artificially inflated opinion of yourself to compensate for your insecurities. A guy who is rough around the edges but still confident enough to be upfront about his intentions instead of trying to weasel his way into her life is going to get more respect just for being honest.
Problem the Third is that if you are befriending or being kind to a woman with the end goal of having sex with her, that makes you just as much of an asshole. You're just more subtle about it. The reason it makes you an asshole is because just like the ones you think she's dating, you don't see her as a person, either. She's a prize. A reward for not being an overt douchebag. You are still objectifying and dehumanizing her, but doing so under the guise of friendship and caring. And frankly that just makes you creepy rather than nice.
See, nobody owes you sex or a relationship in return for pretending to be a decent human being. As a famous image macro says, women are not machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out. If you're being nice purely because you're expecting a reward, you're still an asshole, full stop. Women have the right to refuse your advances no matter how nice you're being, because nobody is entitled to another person in any way whatsoever.
It's your duty to handle rejection like someone who isn't an asshole.
Regards,
The Patron of Sarcasm
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Wendy Davis Teaches Us What the Filibuster Is
After watching the Republican minority in the U.S. Senate abuse the filibuster to the point of it being meaningless for the last 3 years, what Wendy Davis did 2 nights ago took on an extraordinary context. Rather than simply invoke the silent filibuster and sit there while jobs don't get created, Texas state Senator Davis stood up and talked.
And talked.
And talked.
For 11 hours.
That's almost half a day without eating or sitting or even exiting the senate chamber to use the bathroom.
No, it's not a record by any means -- the longest filibuster in U.S. history is courtesy of Strom Thurmond, who spent 24 hours and 18 minutes running his mouth in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1957 -- but it's nothing to sneeze at.
First, before I get too involved, have a short civics lesson. The filibuster is a check on majority power in the Senate by allowing the minority to kill a bill by running out the clock so it can't be voted on before the session ends. Before 2010, this technique was brutal. You had to talk, and you were not allowed to leave the Senate floor for any reason, and it takes 60 votes to shut you up. After 2010, the rules changed to allow the "silent filibuster," which required no talking, nor even for the Senator who invoked it to be present for its duration.
The rules in Texas are still the old-school rules. If you want to kill a bill that badly, you have to fight for it. The idea being that if a Senator truly cares about not getting this legislation passed, they will endure it. And fight Davis did, for 11 goddamned hours. More importantly, she won. At least for now, until Perry calls his special session and the bullshit parade starts all over again.
My point is that the other night, Wendy Davis showed us what a filibuster is supposed to do and the right way to use it, versus the cowardly shit her Congressional Republican counterparts have been pulling the last three years. Clogging up the system with nonsense filibusters they don't even have to be present for purely out of spite to the point that routine business stops, because how dare they have to concede final authority to a black guy.
Wendy Davis, while wearing a back brace and pink running shoes, displayed more spine than nearly half of the current U.S. Senate. Simply by refusing to shut up or sit down until she was forced to.
The problem we have with the filibuster being abused in the national Senate is because it's easier to hold one. There's been a lot of talk of filibuster reform, and I think besides limiting the number of them per year, the most important change would be to do away with the silent filibuster altogether. If you want to fight a bill, then fucking fight it and make your colleagues shut you down. If you walk away, you throw in the towel. Because if killing the bill is that important to you, you won't. You will stay there for the people who elected you, because you owe them that much.
Senator Davis more than repaid the people in her district. Let's see just how many U.S. Senators would be far too apathetic to do the same. Maybe then, Congress can actually get something done for once.
And talked.
And talked.
For 11 hours.
That's almost half a day without eating or sitting or even exiting the senate chamber to use the bathroom.
No, it's not a record by any means -- the longest filibuster in U.S. history is courtesy of Strom Thurmond, who spent 24 hours and 18 minutes running his mouth in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1957 -- but it's nothing to sneeze at.
First, before I get too involved, have a short civics lesson. The filibuster is a check on majority power in the Senate by allowing the minority to kill a bill by running out the clock so it can't be voted on before the session ends. Before 2010, this technique was brutal. You had to talk, and you were not allowed to leave the Senate floor for any reason, and it takes 60 votes to shut you up. After 2010, the rules changed to allow the "silent filibuster," which required no talking, nor even for the Senator who invoked it to be present for its duration.
The rules in Texas are still the old-school rules. If you want to kill a bill that badly, you have to fight for it. The idea being that if a Senator truly cares about not getting this legislation passed, they will endure it. And fight Davis did, for 11 goddamned hours. More importantly, she won. At least for now, until Perry calls his special session and the bullshit parade starts all over again.
My point is that the other night, Wendy Davis showed us what a filibuster is supposed to do and the right way to use it, versus the cowardly shit her Congressional Republican counterparts have been pulling the last three years. Clogging up the system with nonsense filibusters they don't even have to be present for purely out of spite to the point that routine business stops, because how dare they have to concede final authority to a black guy.
Wendy Davis, while wearing a back brace and pink running shoes, displayed more spine than nearly half of the current U.S. Senate. Simply by refusing to shut up or sit down until she was forced to.
The problem we have with the filibuster being abused in the national Senate is because it's easier to hold one. There's been a lot of talk of filibuster reform, and I think besides limiting the number of them per year, the most important change would be to do away with the silent filibuster altogether. If you want to fight a bill, then fucking fight it and make your colleagues shut you down. If you walk away, you throw in the towel. Because if killing the bill is that important to you, you won't. You will stay there for the people who elected you, because you owe them that much.
Senator Davis more than repaid the people in her district. Let's see just how many U.S. Senators would be far too apathetic to do the same. Maybe then, Congress can actually get something done for once.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Another One Sees the Light
Alan Chambers, head of the defunct-as-of-four-hours-ago "reparative therapy" organization Exodus International, has effectively said this shit was a bad idea and is closing down the entire operation.
In case you're not familiar with the term, "reparative therapy" is a thoroughly misleading moniker describing the various psychological tortures used to try and "cure" homosexuality. In the sense that "cure" means "hate yourself until you can't get it up anymore."
Today, Chambers not only announced the dissolution of the organization, but posted an apology to the LBGT community on the organization's website. And not one of those dickish I'm-not-really-sorry-but-I-don't-want-to-be-seen-as-an-asshole apologies, either. A genuine "I fucked up royally, I'm sorry, this shit stops now, and while I hope you'll forgive me I don't really expect you to."
It is all too tempting for us Not Straight people and our allies to be gleeful. I freely admit, I did a fist pump and cackled when I read the headline. But then I read the apology, and I was no longer laughing and jubilant.
See, Chambers himself is gay. Chambers is a gay man who subjected himself to this very same "therapy" in an effort to "fix" his attraction to men. And he finally realized that not only did it not work, but it made him feel like shit. And then he realized just how many other people his organization had put through this same hell on earth, and had an epiphany. An awful epiphany that probably made him feel even worse (and rightly so).
This is not something to be gleeful about. This is not something to be smug and greater-than-ye about. This is not the time for a petty I-told-you-so no matter how good it would feel to say it.
Because this guy is one of us.
It's easy to feel superior if you've never grown up Not Straight in a very conservative household. It's easy to say "wow, the dumbfuck finally got it, shame it took so long." But the reason that's easy is because not growing up with that baggage affords you the privilege of being an outsider. It affords you a clear head.
For those of us who have grown up as such, it's a different ballgame. You are conditioned from a very young age to hate not just that one aspect of yourself, but the entire package because of it. You are made to feel it's a choice even when you know it isn't. You hate yourself because that's the only way you're accepted by your family, and as a teenager you're fucking terrified of getting disowned. You will, quite literally, do anything to resolve this conflict. And the easiest thing at that time is to just stop being Not Straight. You can't hate yourself if you are not the thing you're raised to hate, after all.
It can and does frequently take people half a lifetime to figure out that the path of least resistance only works for electrons. Some never do. And when you do finally realize it with the knowledge that there's a whole shitload of people mad at you, it really does take the courage of a comic book hero to stand up and say "wow, did I ever fuck up. I'm so, so sorry."
Alan Chambers did just that. He faced the anger of both his own organization and the LGBT community and said "fuck it, this isn't working, I'm done, and I'm sorry."
If we want more Christians like him, we can't be smug. We can't sink to our base emotions and point and laugh. We have to show them this is right, and to do so we have to be the bigger people and say "hey, better late than never."
We don't have to forgive them for the pain they've caused. But we do have to meet their decision and their change of heart with the support and kindness we want to see in them now. Not derision and mockery.
Me? I get him. I grew up with the same baggage and no matter how much I think I've conquered it, some days I still lug it around like ten-tonne shackles because that kind of programming is exceedingly difficult to even erase, nevermind rewrite. This is a guy who is a decade my senior and is just now attempting to take those shackles off.
So yes, better late than never, Mr. Chambers. You're on the right track. Just keep going.
In case you're not familiar with the term, "reparative therapy" is a thoroughly misleading moniker describing the various psychological tortures used to try and "cure" homosexuality. In the sense that "cure" means "hate yourself until you can't get it up anymore."
Today, Chambers not only announced the dissolution of the organization, but posted an apology to the LBGT community on the organization's website. And not one of those dickish I'm-not-really-sorry-but-I-don't-want-to-be-seen-as-an-asshole apologies, either. A genuine "I fucked up royally, I'm sorry, this shit stops now, and while I hope you'll forgive me I don't really expect you to."
It is all too tempting for us Not Straight people and our allies to be gleeful. I freely admit, I did a fist pump and cackled when I read the headline. But then I read the apology, and I was no longer laughing and jubilant.
See, Chambers himself is gay. Chambers is a gay man who subjected himself to this very same "therapy" in an effort to "fix" his attraction to men. And he finally realized that not only did it not work, but it made him feel like shit. And then he realized just how many other people his organization had put through this same hell on earth, and had an epiphany. An awful epiphany that probably made him feel even worse (and rightly so).
This is not something to be gleeful about. This is not something to be smug and greater-than-ye about. This is not the time for a petty I-told-you-so no matter how good it would feel to say it.
Because this guy is one of us.
It's easy to feel superior if you've never grown up Not Straight in a very conservative household. It's easy to say "wow, the dumbfuck finally got it, shame it took so long." But the reason that's easy is because not growing up with that baggage affords you the privilege of being an outsider. It affords you a clear head.
For those of us who have grown up as such, it's a different ballgame. You are conditioned from a very young age to hate not just that one aspect of yourself, but the entire package because of it. You are made to feel it's a choice even when you know it isn't. You hate yourself because that's the only way you're accepted by your family, and as a teenager you're fucking terrified of getting disowned. You will, quite literally, do anything to resolve this conflict. And the easiest thing at that time is to just stop being Not Straight. You can't hate yourself if you are not the thing you're raised to hate, after all.
It can and does frequently take people half a lifetime to figure out that the path of least resistance only works for electrons. Some never do. And when you do finally realize it with the knowledge that there's a whole shitload of people mad at you, it really does take the courage of a comic book hero to stand up and say "wow, did I ever fuck up. I'm so, so sorry."
Alan Chambers did just that. He faced the anger of both his own organization and the LGBT community and said "fuck it, this isn't working, I'm done, and I'm sorry."
If we want more Christians like him, we can't be smug. We can't sink to our base emotions and point and laugh. We have to show them this is right, and to do so we have to be the bigger people and say "hey, better late than never."
We don't have to forgive them for the pain they've caused. But we do have to meet their decision and their change of heart with the support and kindness we want to see in them now. Not derision and mockery.
Me? I get him. I grew up with the same baggage and no matter how much I think I've conquered it, some days I still lug it around like ten-tonne shackles because that kind of programming is exceedingly difficult to even erase, nevermind rewrite. This is a guy who is a decade my senior and is just now attempting to take those shackles off.
So yes, better late than never, Mr. Chambers. You're on the right track. Just keep going.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Why Real Men Hate Rape Culture
Again, massive trigger warning for discussions of rape and rape culture following.
So, we ladyfolk already know why we should hate rape culture and everything it stands for: the victim blame, the suppression of women's sexuality, and the attempt to control our thoughts and actions through the fear of violence if we don't comply.
But you know what? Men, real men, should hate this idea just as much as we do, if not a little more.
When society says that it's the (usually female) victim's responsibility to cover herself up, not flirt, not drink or watch her drink, not walk home alone at night, not answer the door if she's alone, not accept a ride from a man, lock her door as soon as she gets home, not listen to music while jogging, or a myriad of other precautions, what society is also saying is that the reason she must do this is because men have all the self-control of Cookie Monster at a bake sale. Society is saying that men are slaves to their penises. That they can't help themselves. That their natural state is "rapist."
Being told that you can't help but rape and are always looking for a target because that's just what you do since you're a man should make you want to break shit. Because it's painting you as incapable of human cognition, reasoning, and compassion. As less than human.
If this doesn't piss you off, then there is something very wrong.
But of course, this begs the question: if that's the case, why are so many men either part of rape culture or not nearly as angry as they should be?
I'm not a psychiatrist, obviously. I'm merely going on my personal experience with men who endorse rape culture, as well as the experiences I've read and heard from other women. To me, the problem appears to be that rape culture itself is a double-edged sword; while on the one hand it's telling men they're natural rapists, on the other it's also absolving men of responsibility for their actions which hurt other people. And that absolution is very, very appealing and comforting to a lot of men who are constantly watching the privilege they've grown used to get eroded by feminism. Now, when bad things happen as a result of their own or their fellow men's actions, they can just turn around say "it's your own fault" instead of listening to the victim.
I see this attitude at work every time someone tells a rape victim (male or female) "well you were drunk/walking alone/not paying attention/leading them on/etc., what did you expect?"
Obviously, we all should be expecting to be raped (unfortunately, statistics are on their side on this one). Which makes our concern that we were raped easily dismissable. After all, not the rapist's fault that we didn't take proper precautions (or the ones we did take weren't good enough).
Why real men (and hell, women, we're just as capable of both rape and defending rape as men are) should hate this? Is because real good, honest people should hate being told they are natural predators. That they're inherently evil.
If you don't hate being told that? There's something broken inside.
So, we ladyfolk already know why we should hate rape culture and everything it stands for: the victim blame, the suppression of women's sexuality, and the attempt to control our thoughts and actions through the fear of violence if we don't comply.
But you know what? Men, real men, should hate this idea just as much as we do, if not a little more.
When society says that it's the (usually female) victim's responsibility to cover herself up, not flirt, not drink or watch her drink, not walk home alone at night, not answer the door if she's alone, not accept a ride from a man, lock her door as soon as she gets home, not listen to music while jogging, or a myriad of other precautions, what society is also saying is that the reason she must do this is because men have all the self-control of Cookie Monster at a bake sale. Society is saying that men are slaves to their penises. That they can't help themselves. That their natural state is "rapist."
Being told that you can't help but rape and are always looking for a target because that's just what you do since you're a man should make you want to break shit. Because it's painting you as incapable of human cognition, reasoning, and compassion. As less than human.
If this doesn't piss you off, then there is something very wrong.
But of course, this begs the question: if that's the case, why are so many men either part of rape culture or not nearly as angry as they should be?
I'm not a psychiatrist, obviously. I'm merely going on my personal experience with men who endorse rape culture, as well as the experiences I've read and heard from other women. To me, the problem appears to be that rape culture itself is a double-edged sword; while on the one hand it's telling men they're natural rapists, on the other it's also absolving men of responsibility for their actions which hurt other people. And that absolution is very, very appealing and comforting to a lot of men who are constantly watching the privilege they've grown used to get eroded by feminism. Now, when bad things happen as a result of their own or their fellow men's actions, they can just turn around say "it's your own fault" instead of listening to the victim.
I see this attitude at work every time someone tells a rape victim (male or female) "well you were drunk/walking alone/not paying attention/leading them on/etc., what did you expect?"
Obviously, we all should be expecting to be raped (unfortunately, statistics are on their side on this one). Which makes our concern that we were raped easily dismissable. After all, not the rapist's fault that we didn't take proper precautions (or the ones we did take weren't good enough).
Why real men (and hell, women, we're just as capable of both rape and defending rape as men are) should hate this? Is because real good, honest people should hate being told they are natural predators. That they're inherently evil.
If you don't hate being told that? There's something broken inside.
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