From writers more productive than I:
Feel free to drop me anything interesting you’ve read (or written) lately in the comments. Yes, I am sneakily trying to connive you into doing my work for me. Is that so wrong?
UPDATE: Okay, let’s try this again: NORMAL PEOPLE, please feel free to drop me anything interesting you’ve read or written lately. Men’s rights activists with lame links to Livejournals relating anecdotes–shocking, shocking anecdotes!–about matricide in primates killing their little monkey babies, and how that proves bitches is evil, please commence shutting your fucking pieholes.
26 Responses to “Middle of the Night/Early Bird Stuff”
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Wow, ilyka, I’m really sorry you’ve become a target of MRA hostility. I think we are all going to have to expect more and more of this because the internet allows MRA’s to timeshift their anger at women just like it allows other people to timeshift their shopping. As their own wives, girlfriends, mothers and daughters start to refuse to put up with their shit they’ve got a whole new world to try to dominate and control and its the women they identify as “the enemy” on the internet. The barriers to entry are too low and the joys of attempting to control, distract, humiliate, and parody the work and ideas of complete strangers is jus ttoo tempting for these guys.
aimai
Well, they are single-mindedly obsessed with punishing any bitch they see out of line. You can see why they hop to protecting guys they see as fellow sexual harassers, particularly those who may have been brave enough to get into the bitch-punishing line of sexual assault.
That said—obsessive misogynists and white supremacists, ilyka gave you your thread to demonstrate your sickness. Try to derail others, and you’re getting deleted and banned.
OK, not your usual fare, but I take Discovery Institute ‘technoguru’ George Gilder to task for engaging in ‘anti-education.’
Since you solicited this, Ilyka:
1. why did nobody pick up the story about Texas legistating in favor of cervical cancer? The lopsidedness of the vote against the governor must have some kind of lesson for us.
2. Do you surreptitiously pick up a copy of Mens Health now and then just to oggle a well chiseled torso? I don’t pick up Cosmo but I almost did.
Wait, this is a trap isn’t it!? Now I am subjecting myself to YOUR opinion of whether I am normal. Damn
anecdotes–shocking, shocking anecdotes!–about matricide in primates, and how that proves bitches is evil
Why on earth would anyone think that matricide in primates suggests that women are evil? Maybe I’m better off not knowing . . .
Ilyka,
I’m really sorry that you interpreted my post that way - it wasn’t intended, and I’m not an MRA. I just happenned to read that via a thread at Pharyngula, and it was the most interesting thing I’d read this morning.
I didn’t have a further agenda, and I certainly didn’t say, and nor do I think, that it ‘prove[s] that bitches is evil’. If I think there is any larger point about how women are perceived in society, it’s that there is a sexist tendency to assume that women have inherently wonderful ‘mothering instincts’ - hence the reported horror of most of the scientists.
Again, I apologise for posting it if you think it was inappropriate. I didn’t intend to piss you off.
I thought this article from was pretty interesting:
Female Boss Walking Around Like She Owns The Place
SACRAMENTO, CA—Lydia Bernoldini, the CEO of financial services firm Bernoldini & Co., consistently uses her personal carriage and manner of verbal address to establish a commanding presence in the workplace, her staff reported.
“I don’t know where Lydia gets off acting like the big cheese all the damn time,” said James Halterfeyer of his boss, whom he described as “bossy.” “She acts like what she says goes, even if I don’t agree with it entirely.”
Roughly 65 percent of Bernoldini employees echoed Halterfeyer’s sentiments, specifically mentioning her refusal to be addressed as “Lydia” and the fact that female employment had swelled to 35 percent of the company since Bernoldini took over from her father in 2002.
© Copyright 2007, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.The Onion is not intended for readers under 18 years of age.
It’s the American way!
But since you asked so nicely… how about this?
Heh. I love The Onion.
I don’t know if I am going to have time to blog this
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/science/01duck.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Coturnix pointed to if from his science blog.
The funny thing to me is imagining men had this uh “feature” growing and losing their manhood to the beat of a biological clock. Men joke that women are crazy because of their periods but something like duck dong days in human males would doubtless bring about the end of civilization in one month. Thank god men were made in the image of the creator and just left that way
[what, you didn’t know god had a paunch?]
Greensmile: …please, just don’t tell the ’round hole, square peg’ heterobigots about this. I don’t think my heart could take the new talking points.
greensmile,
It was the Pharyngula thread on the duck story that led me to the post that I sent Ilyka and annoyed her so much.
It also contains a quite interesting, though rather heated, discussion of whether one should use the term ‘rape’ or the term ‘forced copulation’ when speaking of ducks and other non-human animals. It’s here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/twisty_maze_of_duck_oviducts.php
Ilyka, if you are stil looking for blogfodder, you cold always apologize to Duke students, something to the tune of
we are so sorry your university recruits people whose only ethics are “well the other guys were doing it!”
I am sure Duke students are not to blame so it must be liberals or feminist or something. They are probably waiting for an apology.
Well, I did read this a couple of weeks ago. It made me think of Amanda, but I assumed you guys had already seen it:
Christopher Hitchens Visits St. Margaret’s School for Young Women, Where He Discovers Little Girls Aren’t Funny, Either
I had a couple of others, but now I can’t find them.
Hey Ilyka! Thanks for the props.
Why do I think I’m glad I missed that one?
what about gay tamagotchis? I thought the idea was entertaining. check out my blog if you are at all curious, haha. ^_^
http://rebelgrrrl.wordpress.com/
As the likely source of the controversial remark, I’d like to point out that Brad’s post referred to a book by researcher Sarah Hrdy (yes, Hrdy) and not an anecdote. Nor does it refer solely to infanticide by other primates. Nor do I recall a single comment on Brad’s original post that called women evil, though some did talk about the consequences of a world without abortion.
Huh, did I forget the link to the comment at Pharyngula or did the program eat it?
And did I close that tag? If not, this should fix it.
Yeah, I read that link about matricide this morning and I didn’t catch a whiff of MRA on it at all. It’s actually really interesting and worth talking about — matricide as a “reasonable” reaction for some circumstances, and an instinct that many animals have, including maybe humans. Of course humans have a lot of abilities that other animals don’t… like an adoption system, and in theory a desire and willingness to try and make sure all children can be cared for. But yeah, I don’t think matricide makes women evil at all… the most unexpected thing to me was that in a lot of countries in Europe, matricide is not even considered murder.
Actually, that should probably all read “infanticide by mothers” since “matricide” is “killing your mother.”
I’ve read Hrdy’s book (yes, her name really does appear to have no vowels) and found it to be interesting. She was specifically researching this so-called “maternal instinct”, and discovered that female mammals of several types — not just primates, though they appear most in the book — are just as much of a danger to their own offspring through neglect/abandonment/outright killing, as any territorial male of the same species could be.
I thought the book was a great refutation of the “but women are made to be mothers!” argument, not a justification for “women are evil” — but I’ll admit that might be my biases showing more than Hrdy’s intent. If some MRA doofus is now using it as justification for his He-Man Women-Haters Club, that actually makes me laugh. I’ll have to wander over and look as that thread, and see what’s going on.
Rabbits, rats and some birds are known to kill their young when under stress, starved or overcrowded.
I read the research Brad reports as, essentially, supporting the idea that infanticide is a natural behavior among primates, and is an essential survival strategy under some circumstances.
He reports that early infanticide has not been treated as felony homicide in European culture, even in predominately Catholic areas, until very recently. He also points out that mothers are so crucial to their babies’ survival that making the forensic call for murder is very difficult–it’s just too easy to let your baby die by “accident”.
He makes the case that if you want to reduce abortion rates, the best strategy is to remove the environmental pressures that make abortion (or infanticide) a desirable alternative, rather than persecuting the mothers.
I don’t think Brad is advocating either side of the abortion debate, he’s just reporting Hrdy’s research.
I see nothing there to support the idea that mothers, human or otherwise, are evil, or even so much as uppity.
[And, yes, Holly’s right about infanticide versus matricide.]
I think this is interesting: strip club workers in Ohio have organized a group called Dancers for Democracy to help fight proposed legislation (likely to pass, from what I hear) championed by conservative christian groups that would effectively shut down strip clubs throughout the state, or at least make it a lot harder for the women working there to make money, on no other plausible legal grounds then they don’t like strippers and strip clubs:
http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/05/01/ddn050107strippersweb.html
I went to a talk by the author of The Feminine Mistake
http://www.amazon.com/Feminine-Mistake-Are-Giving-Much/dp/1401303064/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7866058-1031147?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178393979&sr=8-1
and am in the process of reading it now. It has a lot of fascinating statistics that explain in detail how incredibly risky & expensive it is in the long term to take time off / opt out of the workplace to be a stay at home mom.
I recommend it highly - especially if you have any friends/relatives that are considering it.