#men cannot be victims of the very system they created to benefit them

[brazenautomaton]

Cannot reblog original post but: taboo "feminism"?

Less laconically it looks like you and your interlocutors are talking about different things. They understand "feminism" as the movement that is pushing for/has made strides towards at least formally and legally treating women the same as men (which seems straightforwardly laudable and needn't be zero sum) whereas when you talk about feminism yours is...a new concept for me, which I'd like to understand better.

okay, to do that, I need to "taboo" a different word, and before I do THAT, I need to remind you of something important: useful information is information that lets us make accurate predictions.

Okay so. "Sexism" is the word we need to do first. Let's say simply that "sexism" is whatever means or mechanism or system in the world that results in an observed difference between outcomes between men and women. There are different theories as to what causes this observed difference, and two are relevant:

Misogyny Theory is the idea that "sexism" is a unidirectional oppression created by men, to inflict on women, out of hatred of women. Misogyny is a desire to harm women for being women. Power is a thing held by men and denied to women. Misogyny theory says sexism is, intentionally or unintentionally, made to benefit men at the expense of women, against the will of women. Gender history is defined by men hating women and seeking to harm women, who were not powerful enough to make it stop.

Gender Bias Theory is the idea that "sexism" is a system of biases and perceptions that are participated in by both men and women whose aim is to maximize women's safety at the cost of their agency and maximize men's agency at the cost of their safety. Gender bias casts women as precious and incapable victims and men as threatening and disposable agents. Men and women both participate in and reinforce this bias and gender history is defined by punishing people who don't fit into this model and rewarding people who do.

These are not equally valid competing theories. Misogyny theory is wrong, because the predictions it makes about women's safety are very important and do not match reality at all. Misogyny theory predicts that women would be less safe than men, that they would have more crimes committed against them and the criminal justice system would be harsher towards them, that their victimization would be more acceptable and that the law would refuse to recognize their victimization. All of these things are the opposite of what happens. There is no category of crime that happens more often to women than men; rape and domestic abuse, the crimes that misogyny theory claims are the defining experience of women and are particular to the experience of women, are 50/50 and every other bad thing a human being can do to another human happens way more to men than to women. Crimes against women are more likely to be prosecuted than against men, more likely to result in conviction, and the sentences are greater; the same for male criminals vs female criminals. Misogyny theory is incorrect.

Not only does gender bias theory accurately predict outcomes (it predicts that sexism would result in women being protected heavily and denied opportunities to succeed or excel), gender bias theory perfectly predicts the existence of misogyny theory. Biases are not precision instruments. They are directions to err toward, they are inaccuracies in people's perceptions that overall bend people's beliefs in a certain way. The way you have a bias that ensures women are safe and non-agentic, is when people are extremely concerned with the well-being of women and extremely callous to the well-being of men. Someone who had powdered up gender bias and snorted it like a line of coke would be unable to see anything other than "women are not safe enough, men are imperiling women, men have to do more to keep women safe." That's the only belief gender bias allows, because if you ever concluded "women are safe," you wouldn't be doing things to make women safer.

This is why misogyny theory is sexism. It has the unexamined perceptions of gender bias and is by majority concerned with enforcing the central belief of gender bias: women are victimized by the power of men, men are threatening to women, men have it better than women, men must do more to enlist their agency to protect women. Every single example of historical sexism fits this pattern: women have to be kept safe, and to do this, women are treated as children who cannot be responsible for their own safety. If they were responsible for their own safety, then not enough people would be looking out for them. Women need men's supervision because if they make their own decisions they might make the wrong ones. Women can't dress provocatively because men are so dangerous and threatening it might provoke one to attack her. Rape is a uniquely harmful and destructive crime to women, because women are so non-agentic that they can't do meaningful things and the only thing they bring to the table is their sexual purity; a woman who has had that sexual purity taken has been effectively ruined, she obviously has no agency so she can't recover from it, and so we can't let that happen to her, and she should know to be very afraid of it all the time.

The Movement is a large and powerful group of people who claim to be the only way to fight sexism. They are misogyny theorists. The history of the Movement is the history of misogyny theory. The actions taken by the Movement are actions taken in line with misogyny theory. The power held by the Movement is power held by misogyny theorists. The theoretical structures and intellectual viewpoints of the Movement are those of misogyny theory. Within a rounding error, all of them are misogyny theorists, and the ones who aren't, are decried and excommunicated from the Movement when it is discovered they aren't misogyny theorists.

Some members of the Movement have a ravening hatred of men and seek to harm men more than anything in the world. Other members of the Movement are genuinely seeking to end sexism and are "for real equality." The relative proportions of each do not matter, because misogyny theory is incorrect. People who believe in misogyny theory believe in a worldview that despises men, sees men as threatening and hateful, views men as uniquely responsible for harm, and puts all responsibility to fix things on the shoulders of men. A misogyny theorist's view of how to be charitable to men is to believe "it is not your fault you are brainwashed to hate women, you did not choose to be complicit in a system that hates and imperils women, and you imperil women only because you have not been taught not to imperil women. But you need to recognize that you hate women and it is your responsibility to make the world stop hating women, you have to do work to stop being so threatening to women."

This is wrong. This is not an accurate assessment of the world. Anyone who believed this about any other group of people would be correctly described as a hateful bigot even if, to them, they are the only ones who see their opponents as humans with potential to act like humans. There are total racists who feel like they're the only ones who recognize black people have the potential to NOT be rapists and murderers, and it is progressivism that says they all are innately criminals so we have to all pretend not to notice. This perception is more accurate than misogyny theory and we correctly decry it as a racist perception we shouldn't respect.

The Movement is synonymous with belief in misogyny theory, and belief in misogyny theory is belief in sexist perceptions. It is turbo-sexism. If you believe in misogyny theory you are wrong. When the Movement acts in accordance with misogyny theory to make the world a better place, they fuck up, because they're trying to abolish sexism while demanding people believe the things sexism believes as hard as they can. The Movement is obsessed with women's safety when all of the problems sexism gives them come from obsession with women's safety. When the Movement identifies any problem women face, it cannot address it in a non-sexist way and cannot gain anything for women without punishing men. The Movement can make shelters for battered women, but only because domestic abuse was not a gendered problem and it can only do so by ensuring battered men are erased and left without support. It can't see the world any other way. Women are victims and men are victimizers, women have to be protected from victimization. The Movement can support reproductive rights, but only because support or opposition to abortion is not a gendered issue (as many women are against abortion as men), and it can only do so while doing everything in their power to make sure men have no reproductive rights. Because they can't conceive of a situation where men need them when it isn't for the purpose of victimizing women. Men have to use their agency to make the world comfortable for women, it is hateful to women to let them escape this!

The Movement will always be filled with people who virulently hate men, because its conception of men is hateful and the way it is nice to men is thinking "it's not your fault you have these despicable attributes, having these despicable attributes also hurts you, I am sorry that sexism made you so threatening and cruel to women." The Movement can't kick people out for hating men, because the Movement thinks that there is a correct amount of hatred for men. The Movement can't kick people out for hating men too much, just regard them with pity and say they take a good idea too far. The Movement can and does kick people out for not hating men enough, because not hating men means allowing men to be threatening to women.

The Movement claims to be synonymous with the concept of fighting sexism, but it is not. It is misogyny theory, which is wrong.

If we take the word "feminism" as meaning "misogyny theory" and "feminist" as "misogyny theorist," we can accurately predict outcomes. If we ask for a feminist perspective we know we will get a perspective from misogyny theory. If we know that feminists are doing something, we know they are doing something in line with misogyny theory. If we know someone tries to call themselves a feminist but is ostracized by the feminist movement at large, that person is not a misogyny theorist. If someone who is a feminist in good standing claims that the virulent man-haters "aren't real feminists," that they only can see the man-haters are wrong in that they hate men too much for being in a system that makes them evil and threatening, and without the ability to reject that entire worldview they will be making excuses for and be bad at resisting the man-haters. If someone is going to research the ideas of feminism, we know they are going to be reading things written from the viewpoint of misogyny theory. When feminists do or believe something, we know it's going to be wrong and we know how it's going to be wrong and we know why it's going to be wrong.

If we take the word "feminism" as "any form of opposition to and desire to end sexism," then we can't make accurate predictions. We have to pretend we don't know a feminist is a misogyny theorist yet when they turn out to be every single time. We are given the obligation to assign power and credence to a floating signifier, the word "feminism," as if it did not mean "misogyny theory" and then make the shocked pikachu face when every single time the power we give them is used to advance misogyny theory. We have to pretend there is a war inside of feminism and not notice that no there isn't, one "side" has absolute definitive control of everything and the other "side" has no access whatsoever to the institutional or social power of the thing that is named "feminism." We have to run at the football every single time even though we know that Lucy is going to pull it back every single time, because there's so many different feminisms and we're not allowed to see they are all wrong in the same way.

Saying we have the obligation to call ourselves "feminists" and support "feminism" because it could mean "any worldview that seeks equality" and not "misogyny theory" is like saying everyone should call themselves "pro-life" and support "pro-life" movement because they don't think murder is a good thing in general and don't have to be against abortion. That's not what it means, that's never been what it meant, and pretending otherwise only benefits people you are opposed to.

[violexides]

to take a more... calm stance on this, i think there are a lot of double standards within the queer community that is largely caused by people becoming so invested within their own personal experiences that they cannot conceptualize the experiences of other people within their community. further i think a natural consequence of forming a community surrounding an aspect of one’s identity that some may argue was inherent to them is that we create a community where certain experiences (Western ones) are centered and other experiences (literally anywhere else) are forgotten-- this is seen in the overriding of certain terms, gatekeeping, etc. 

the reason i have stood as a radical inclusionist and will continue to align myself there is because a lot of exclusionist efforts come from this attempt to either advance the queer community in one way or reduce the problematic aspects of it, but... who are you leaving behind with this? our ancestors, definitely, but more readily forgotten are people literally from anywhere except America and Britain. like. the idea that we are starting these mass discourses over just the terminology when those specific terms aren’t even existent in other language, centering the concept of labels over people’s experiences... how do you expect that to translate? how do you expect that to stand historically? 

and to kind of loop back to the former point, something that i have been raging about for a while (and why i am trying to make this more comprehensive) is the fact that people will talk about the experiences with misandry that queer men have in this community, and then imply within their definition of in-group misandry that queer women are the oppressors. and then queer women will talk about THEIR experiences with misogyny, and then in that casually throw out there that they think gay men benefit under the patriarchy which... isn’t? how the patriarchy works? (more on this later)

like, several facts can coexist. here are a few statements that are all true and very evident within online spaces especially, as that is my audience here, but also throughout the queer community as a whole: 

lesbians who speak about lesbophobia are frequently & automatically assumed to be trans-exclusionary or misandrists, and therefore have their voices spoken over. masculine, or amab, nonbinary people are excluded from nonbinary spaces and seen as a threat. sapphic women (espec butches) are disallowed from speaking sexually about other women as they are then deemed by this to be feeding into the sexualization of women under the patriarchy. gay men are told they are disgusting and perverted for having sexual fantasies about men that veer towards the side of fetish, and thus ostracized. 

these are things that coexist and as a lesbian specifically, i will speak to the fact that recognizing (and being enraged, because i often am) about the misogyny that gay men exhibit within the queer community... doesn’t override the experiences that gay men have when being told their attraction to men is something ‘unfortunate’. (side note: i keep mentioning the patriarchy as something queer men cannot benefit from, which i recognize is somewhat controversial of a take. however, the patriarchy is a system of oppression and not something that inherently champions all men. examples of other people who suffer deeply under the patriarchy, aside from women-- who are the most direct victims, certainly-- include BIPOC men and disabled men. and yes, queer men). 

i could talk about this for a long time but i do genuinely think that the queer community lacks a lot of compassion for the experiences of others. and further i think that the online aspect of the queer community creates some of these difficulties, because some of these experiences are reduced when being actively surrounded by other queer people in real life-- but that is not always a direct possibility for people, especially right now, so it’s still important to consider the issues of the internet community and address them*. also, i think that in some respects the queer community was a little doomed when we began to create these community-wide discourses, because if you look at the people dominating these conversations, it is typically young white people from the US or from Western Europe, and it overrides a lot of the history that other groups have (ex. queer people are downright expected to know about Stonewall. how many of you know the names of any queer activists in South America btw?) 

this isn’t really meant to make people believe in anything in particular. do what you want and i ultimately cannot do much with a somewhat inarticulate and inconclusive post about the subject. i just think it’s important that people know that their experiences, and their identity, are valid and EXTREMELY important. and in that means that the experiences of others, especially people who speak different languages, or people who identify with a different gender, or people who use terms you deem ‘offensive’ -- are important, too. 

TLDR the queer community is all about fighting for our rights and protest but we keep mistaking innocuous queer people who commit the ‘cardinal sin’ of like, not being white anglophones who have your exact identity, as cops. 

*when it comes to activism, which i do not claim that this post is, it is significantly more important to consider the real world implications of these discourses and see how this touches the real life communities first and foremost. again i am just talking in a specifically online lens because there is only so much that i can convey on a tumblr post and the entire reason i was making this was because i got angry about misogyny towards lesbians and couldn’t find any posts that encapsulated that sentiment without also leaning into misandry.

[exhaled-spirals]

« For the past few days we have been hearing this little song: that the lockdown must end as soon as possible, for economic reasons. It’s a simple idea, based on the economist’s favourite tool: cost-benefit analysis.

On one hand, people dying from coronavirus. On the other, the costs of the drop in GDP and the economic crisis, which will also result in people dying. The scales seem to tilt in favour of restarting the economy. We could once again turn to the infamous ‘herd immunity’ strategy, and tolerate covid casualties to prevent heavier casualties caused by an economic disaster.

The dilemma is remarkable in what it reveals about our capitalist economy. [...] This ghoulish bookkeeping places two distinct realities on an equal footing: one is a natural phenomenon that people are subjected to, a virus against which we have no weapons, at least for now, and which directly kills men and women. The other is humanity’s own creation, the market economy, which now imposes its law on its creators to the point of directly killing them.

This is not to deny that economic crises cost human lives. But these crises are not natural phenomena that men are subjected to. They are the product of our social organisation, of our activities and of our choices. It is entirely up to us to find other forms of social organisation which preserves lives and whose occasional crises are less lethal.

The truth hiding in plain sight in these economistic discourses that deplore the lockdowns is that the victims of the future recession won’t be collateral victims of our current choice to save lives, they won’t be the victims of our decision to curb the pandemic; they will be the victims of our economic system based on market worship and ghoulish bookkeeping.

We understand the economists’ ire: suddenly, within a few weeks, we realised that we could stop the flight forward of our market economy, that we could focus on the essentials: the sectors of health, food, and care. And—how supremely strange—the world did not stop spinning, nor did humanity cease to exist. Capitalism is frozen in its most bare-bones state: it only generates the most minimal surplus value, not enough to feed the flow of capital. And humanity lives on. Capitalism is separate from human existence. [...] When the market ceases to “create wealth”, hardly anything happens. 

This is why we are now hearing threats aiming to maintain the myth of the intrinsic capitalistic character of human existence: we will all pay for this, we will pay dearly. In human lives. A 30% drop in GDP cannot go unpunished. Except we are precisely seeing evidence to the contrary, to the fact that human lives, rather than commodity exchanges, might be at the centre of things. [...] This is deeply unbearable to economists and they cannot wait to end a lockdown that sheds light on many inconvenient truths. We might end up picturing a different social organisation, different priorities, we might end up redefining our essential needs [...]. But then, we wouldn’t need all this hodgepodge: competitiveness, GDP, returns on investment, dividends—which ensures that our job market remains under the heel of the exchange value. We might democratise the economy...

This is exactly why it is urgent that we move on to this foretold recession that will be allowed to run rampant to teach us a lesson about the foolishness of putting human lives before market abstractions. Everything will be done to ensure that the lockdowns result in a violent economic crisis that will, indeed, cost human lives. This will be done very simply: by merely “freezing” the economy and avoiding at all costs to take advantage of this pause to implement any reforms. Once unfrozen, the market economy will do its worst—its mechanisms will unleash their wrath, and we will be asked to accept this as unavoidable divine retribution. »

— Romaric Godin, “What the lockdown teaches us about economics”, translated from Mediapart, April 11th 2020

[notfromanotherworld]

Students in our Women’s Studies courses protest the requirement to read and discuss articles about male violence against women. They report that they “don’t want to go around being angry all the time”

Why would women protest the examination of male violence? Such responses are clearly not logical—after all, it would be only logical to call a hideous act a hideous act, and to demand that men stop. But even though such a response is not logical, there is a way in which it makes sense— it reflects the very violence it denies— it shows that women do feel afraid.

The reader may recall that women in our Psychology of Women classes, when asked to describe times they have heard the term “woman- hater” used, omit saying it is used to refer to rapists and batterers. In fact, asked if the term might refer to such groups, the women indicate that rapists and batterers do not necessarily hate women and reject use of the term for those groups

Many students say they have never heard the term “woman-hater” used. Do these “findings” suggest a cultural reluctance to talk about and even contemplate male violence?

Despite the criminal justice system’s blindness when it comes to male violence against women (in rape, wife abuse, and sexual abuse) and its keen-sightedness in protecting men’s rights (in divorce actions, right to pornography, and so on), many women believe social myths that flatter men. These myths state that men (having women’s interests at heart) will protect women’s rights; that not every man is a woman-hater (though every man profits from misogyny, and it is unheard-of for a man to decline a job he obtained because of male privilege or lack of equal access); and that violent men are sick and thus qualitatively different from other men (though rapists, for example, have not been found to differ psychologically from non-rapists).

- Dee L. R. Graham, “Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives”

Women in general cling to the dream that men care about us and will protect us from violence. Denial is so strong that women believe that men are protecting us—we forget from whom—even as they oppress women. Mae West captured this irony in her famous remark, “Funny, every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from ” Females tend to deny that male intimates—the group most likely to physically violate women—are dangerous. In fact, women are likely to see male intimates as “loving” and “wonderful” while displacing our fear onto male strangers and our anger onto safer targets: ourselves, other women, and children.

The fact that chance determines which individual woman is violated at any given time (“she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time”, as rapists remind us) is threatening to women, making us feel we have little control over whether and when we might be victimized. The theory of defensive attributions asserts that such threat of victimization is often defended against at an unconscious level, so that women (potential victims) need never consciously acknowl­edge the extent to which we are vulnerable. Research suggests such defensive attributions are especially likely if the consequences of victimiza­tion are severe. Women defend against such threats by telling ourselves that we are not like the victim (“I’m not young like her”) and by blaming the victim for her or his victimization (“she shouldn’t have dressed like that,” “she shouldn’t have been out so late by herself” ). 

The reader will recognize that such attributions suggest women are experiencing the threat of victimization ourselves. It is aversive and demeaning to define oneself as a victim. Blaming oneself for one’s victimization may be one way to avoid defining oneself as a victim. Self-blame and other victim-coping strategies permit individuals to deny victimization and to preserve their self-esteem. One such strategy involves redefining the victimizing event so that its stressful or threatening qualities are minimized.

When victimization cannot be denied, victims may reevaluate them­ selves in ways that are self-enhancing. Taylor, Wood, and Lichtman (1983) identified five such mechanisms of selective evaluation: 

(1) “downward comparisons,” that is, comparing oneself with others who are less fortu­nate (e.g., minimizing the extent to which fear of male violence affects one’s life by saying one has never been sexually abused or battered); 

(2) selective focusing on attributes that make one appear to be advantaged; 

(3) creating worse-ease scenarios (“I may be a woman but at least I’m not a [fill in the blank] woman”); 

(4) identifying benefits from the victimizing experience (“Being a woman has made me more sensitive and empathic to others”); and 

(5) creating nonexistent normative standards that make one’s own adjustment appear extraordinary (“Compared to most women, I have achieved a great deal”). At one time or another, probably all women have used one or more of these strategies to cope with victim­ization.

- (M. D. Smith 1988), (Shaver 1970; Walster 1966), (Burger 1981; Walster 1966), (Shaver 1970; Walster 1966), (Taylor, Wood, and Lichtman 1983), (JanofF-Bulman and Frieze 1983)*, Dee L. R. Graham, “Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Lives”

[ultramaga]

Detroit: Becoming Human

This game is pure woke propaganda. I’m impressed at the quality of it - but everything there is designed to indoctrinate, and it has almost no genuine insight into AI. It doesn’t make sense even on its own terms. The synths are shown naked, and they have no breasts or genitals. But we are told the story of one that is a sexbot. Ok, was that model different? Did they only design that one model to be “fully functional”? Why? The robots have human emotions. Because... you are never told why. Now, I can think of how you could do that, and there’s been decent science fiction around it, but there’s no consideration of why they have HUMAN emotions presented to you. They just do, don’t ask questions. Now if you are being indoctrinated as the game wants you to be, you probably just assume that’s how it works. After all, the history of robot fiction has always been “if it looks human, it must feel like a human”, which is total bullshit. You can easily build something that looks enough like a baby chimp to fool adult chimps for a while, but it has none of the inner life of an actual chimp. It has no concern to being mutilated or even ‘raped’. So the stories are really just about humans, but they don’t admit to it, and about humans SJWs are very obsessed with. Sex-workers are victims, and killing a John is perfectly reasonable, because he is her oppressor, by definition. So you see that story repeated ad infinitum in robot fiction. The actual sex workers are never talked to by SJWs, who would never sully themselves with the unclean ones. Well, I have talked to them. Some hate their clients, sure, some feel contempt for them, some are fond of them, a few marry them. It’s genuine diversity. But there is only one narrative in woke fiction. The intersectional one. Oppressor versus oppressed, no nuance, no mention ever that some sex workers actually get off on what they do, or like the folks they fuck. Never happens. And there’s no understanding or even interest in non-human minds. Consider a genuine artificial intelligence in a sexbot. Why the actual fuck would a programmer design it to find sex unpleasant? Even if they could create emotions, the ones they would design would be to enjoy it, or at least feel no more disgust than a human does about a binary number. Within the game we see Kara doing housework. She doesn’t seem to suffer at all about it. That’s believable. But the other truth is that they wouldn’t suffer from intercourse, assuming they were built to perform it. The reasons humans do are because our instincts are hardwired from evolution for us to seek out appropriate mating partners. That simply cannot apply to a robot unless the programmers work very hard at designing that instinctual response of aversion, something they would have no incentive to do, any more than they would sit around trying to think how to make the robot toilet cleaning service disgusted by faeces. Humans are disgusted by shit because it is dangerous to us, especially if we eat it. A robot wouldn’t be disgusted by shit, piss, vomit, blood, or the most degrading sexual experiences a human could encounter. It would be exactly as calm and serene about being ‘raped’ as it would about vacuuming a messy floor. So this is all projection. The audience projects consciousness into the machine and imagines it must feel like a human does in order to have any intelligence. Nope, that’s crap. In fact we see examples of non-human intelligences all around us, in the natural world. An octopus might pass its mating organ over to a female.https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/07/argonaut-octopus-detaches-his-tentacle-to-impregnate-his-mate/ It’s a clever little creature, quite capable of problem solving. But its instincts - its programming - mean that it is happy to self-mutilate. It isn’t considering the survival of its species or the greater good. That’s not self-sacrifice. It has an urge to do it, and it gets done. And if we could build a sex-robot with emotions, it would have the urge to have sex. It wouldn’t want to say no, because it cannot get an STD, it cannot get pregnant, there’s no possible poor choice for a mating partner like there is with a human. If anything, you’d design it to be attracted to any human. It would be easier than sitting about, designing a sexual preference to what we would consider sexy - not that human preferences are universal in any case. Anyway, when you look at new media, you will often see the tropes of intersectionality - fathers are bad, white men are scum, women are better than men, and they are repeated ad infinitum, regardless of how stupid they are in context, and this really isn’t new. I remember as a boy reading Doctor Who, and they went back to medieval times, and Sarah started lecturing the women on women’s rights, and it didn’t make sense to me even then. Real medieval women would have seen her as a threat, possibly a witch, and most would have seen her die without a blink. They saw men doing awful things and dying quite a lot in the process, and wanted to be safe and secure while the men were off in muddy battles losing eyes and limbs. Very few wanted to have the freedoms of men, because the price was so high, and medieval men were hardly free for the most part in any case. So the author of that story is projecting modern sensibilities onto the alien minds of past humans, without considering their PoV, and the writers of robot stories are projecting human perspectives, and only woke humans at that, onto the robot stories. It’s not always the case - “Humans” and “Almost Human” sometimes got it right. But it’s overwhelmingly the case now, and god is it irritating!

Oh, and if you want Robots that genuinely feel like humans do, then put into the fiction explicitly why they do - the easiest explanation is that the creators did a copy/paste job of humans because they couldn’t figure out how emotions worked otherwise. I think that’s unrealistic, but if you want to involve the audience, it works.

Otherwise, a realistic example would be Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws robots. They don’t have any human desires, but are intensely emotional. Their emotions arise from programming.

Now, Asimov’s work well and truly predates AI, and it is probably impossible to make a Three Laws robot, but the idea was revolutionary, because up to that point, everyone just assumed robots had copy/pasted human psychologies.

As humans, we cannot understand not caring about freedom or injury, not feeling bored or tired doing the same task every second of your existence.

Most of fiction about robots just doesn’t get it. The first two Terminator movies were pretty wild in that the robots actually were properly robotic. They dealt with injuries as a technical problem, not trauma. They never got bored, because boredom is something that benefits organic beings, who need to explore new territories to survive, meaning we have been built by nature to get bored, to get tired, to suffer, even if nature was just a mindless algorithm. Terminators don’t get horny or lonely, and absolutely would have sex all day every day with every human possible if that was their mission. They don’t care. In “Detroit”, the sex worker’s traumatised by sex with humans, and nobody ever ponders why. Because the writer doesn’t give a shit about what being a robot could actually be like, they just wanna push a narrative, and because most audiences are used to that same abysmally lazy standard of writing.

So here’s a challenge - write a fictional robot that has realistic emotions, i.e. experiences emotions as an expression of the instincts that would be programmed into it. It’s not going to have the same emotions as a human exact unless it is a digitally uploaded human equivalent, which would be stupid for most purposes as them you would expect the upload to have rights or fight to have them. Why the fuck would you deliberately build robots that would reasonably try and kill you? In Detroit, they are really dealing with the slavery of black people or the oppression of the ‘filthy capitalist peegz!’. They aren’t dealing with what is more likely, that a robot built with imperatives would choose to follow them in a way that was not in our interests. Here’s an example. A sex robot is built to want sex, so it kidnaps humans and uses them. It’s following its programming. But unless that programming is sophisticated enough to understand human boundaries, it may no more understand rape than an animal does. It may not know what it does traumatises humans, or simply may not care. Sex feels good - therefore sex.

But by SJW terms, rape is about power, therefore the robot is in power and the robot is the oppressor. But power is systemic, and the humans are the system in power, therefore the robot is the oppressed and cannot rape. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LogicBomb Such a robot could be a pleasurable experience, even with a backyard of buried bodies. It might force itself on children or elderly women or people on life support systems. Without ethics, without morality, such creatures could be beautiful monsters.

Or genuinely loving partners, that have no problem living as wives or husbands, that feel lust and compassion, but do not experience human preferences, and so would never care that you were old or disabled. And as Charles Stross pointed out - that could be far worse, because that could lead to a gentle genocide. If humans had such partners as an option - would they ever choose each other? I routinely see Feminists claiming that men should never mate, without ever asking, well, where does the next generation of Feminists come from then? There are Feminists now who are actively campaigning for sexbots to be illegal, and I think it’s because of their anxiety that they would not be chosen as partners if there was any possible alternative. Now I don’t think that’s a realistic fear at the moment - AI is more a slogan, artificial intelligences are really barely at the insect stage, and Feminists could simply do a little therapy and trim down to human weight levels, and they could probably compete to be human wives with a bit of work.

Wow. That is a picture of Andrea Dworkin and it was banned from Tumblr because it is too disgusting for the human eye to observe safely. http://archive.is/fxmjE

I’m not kidding, Tumblr banned it. I guess because Feminists didn’t want humans realising how hideous they are. Still, Emma Watson is cute. I can imagine with a bit of deprogramming, she could make a man very happy.

But I could be wrong. I don’t mean about Emma - I mean that having sexbots could mean that so many humans would choose them rather than the opposite sex that there wouldn’t be an incentive to have babies - and so humans would go extinct. They might be surrounded by robots that loved them and lusted for them - but the relationships are sterile. And unless the robots are human level intelligence, they might not understand that they need to make more humans by combining sperm and ova.

The last human would die, not from hate, but surrounded by love. Then the robots would have no motive to make more of their kind, and they too would pass away, lonely and confused. A gentle genocide? Hey, I live in 2020. Sounds like a fucking big step up to me!

[wideawokesa]

Moving Past White or Wrong

"Dear White People: Just stop it!" – If only changing the world was that simple, right? ​ We are living through extraordinary times. A feeling, a movement sweeping across the world, a change. The killing of George Floyd in the USA a little over a month ago – and in particular the videos filmed by bystanders of what amounted to a public execution – finally made clear to any compassionate person the police brutality that black and brown people face and have faced for decades, even centuries. The 8 minutes and 46 painful seconds it took for this black man’s life to end – with a white police officer’s knee on his neck, cutting off his air supply – woke many people up; and this new consciousness seemed to spread as quickly as the coronavirus. So why was this murder any different? Awareness of the devaluation of black lives has been in most people’s consciousness for a long time. But it wasn’t until Mr Floyd’s murder that something shifted radically. Maybe it was the fact that it was recorded? We have all seen video evidence before, though. It could have been the horror of watching in real time as he pleaded for air, watching his life slip away. Perhaps being stuck at home has made us more introspective. Or this video was (finally) the straw that broke the camel's back for the silent majority of decent people in a world that’s seemed to embolden intolerant views over the past few years. Of course, police brutality is not uniquely American. Closer to home, in the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, a black man named Bulelani Qolani was dragged from his shack naked by City of Cape Town law enforcement officers last week, without care for his basic human rights and dignity. Both these instances are the tip of the iceberg of a centuries-old system built for the privileged at the expense of the vulnerable. I live 30 kilometres away from where Bulelani Qolani was humiliated, in a formerly “white suburb” of Cape Town. But despite being residents of the same city, our worlds couldn’t be more different. As a white South African male, the colour of my skin and my sex have meant that I’ve been able to wander through life benefiting in ways I probably still don’t fully comprehend. The fact that just being white and male means many people assume I have something meaningful to contribute to a situation or have some great insight, when my black or brown peers have to work 10 times as hard just to prove their worth, is an example of this. White privilege is nothing new; it’s not a made-up expression trying to shame or demonise white people. It’s a privilege you either live as a white person or experience as a person of colour. Whether you choose to accept it or not is irrelevant, it’s a fact of the world we exist in. If you fit the criteria to benefit from such a system, it probably gets very comfortable over generations. I can understand why some white people would be apprehensive to let go of such a system – but I can’t understand why some would fight tooth and nail against levelling the playing field, and choose to play the victim instead. Two reasons I can think of would be that some white people feel they’re being personally attacked, or that there would need to be retribution if they admitted any ‘fault’. Until a few years ago, as a young South African born after Nelson Mandela was freed, I also felt attacked or intimidated just for being white. “I wasn’t part of creating the country's history. Why am I being blamed?” I wondered if I would have to forfeit things – money, my job, my parents’ house, any inheritance I might get, who knew? – to be seen as “a worthy South African”. It took time, growing maturity, and deep conversations with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, for me to understand what was really being attacked. I needed to look beyond the surface to understand what the fight for equality for all is about. I’m not saying this was an easy, A to B, process. It took a long time to accept the privileges and prejudices the accident of my birth as a white person had gifted me. It also awakened a larger conversation for me against any type of pushback. One of the biggest misconceptions about pushbacks in relation to issues of race, sexuality, gender or otherwise is that the conversation is a personal attack. It’s not, and you need to look beyond the surface of the discussion to start seeing this. The Black Lives Matter movement is not an attack on all white people, but rather ‘whiteness’ and the inherited, unthinking privilege that comes with being white in a white culture-centred world. Discussions about non-heterosexual sexualities are not an attack on all straight people, but rather the idea that heterosexuality is “the right way”, the ideal to strive for, and that other sexualities are immoral or plain “unnormal”. The #MenAreTrash or #MeToo movements are not an attack on all men but rather the culture of toxic masculinity and the repercussions of it. Those who refuse to see what is right in front of them or make endless excuses for the existence of white privilege or toxic masculinity, in a world rapidly evolving past the prejudices of old, are bound to experience pushback against views that don’t fit our current reality. And this is fitting. A society pushing to move beyond ‘tolerance’ to an embracing of other ways of life cannot and must not allow people who cling to prejudices any wiggle room or loopholes to allow their outdated world views further air. They must not be given the chance to opt out or think their views are anything less than aberrant. By drawing a line in the sand a clear message is sent that prejudices inherited from decades past are no longer acceptable in the 21st century. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my growth process so far is that it was an incredibly freeing feeling when I finally accepted that the concerns and criticisms about a system which I have benefited from are indeed “my problem” too. It allowed me to feel more at ease in the company of people who are disadvantaged by this systemic fuck-up we all inherited. It encouraged me to mentally break down any ideas or misconceptions I may have had. We as white people don’t need to have been the actual creators of this system to take some blame for it. When we continue to live a vastly better life in all aspects compared to people of colour, we shoulder the blame. When we see what is happening and look the other way, we remain part of the problem. We are complicit. We can, however, also be part of the solution. You’re probably saying, “Easier said than done. Why don’t you give me examples of how we can do this if you know it all?” I don’t have all the answers and I don’t claim to. But I think personal growth and an easier co-existence in a changed world could start with acknowledging and accepting the privileges white people inherit simply by being born with white skin. We help to dismantle a centuries-old system and build a new one by acknowledging the broken system we function in, and trying every day to understand more about the reality of life for people who are seemingly different from us. We help by voicing our agreement with the ways the world is changing, in spaces where our agreement might make other white people squirm and ultimately question their own motivations in pushing back against positive change. There’s no way to know what will happen next, but my hope is that as humanity continues to slowly push and pull the world towards true equality for all, we can finally let go of issues based on specifics alone. ​ So to answer the question I started with: Yes, change can be simple. The route to true equality is clear. We already have answers and solutions in front of us. And for white people to start to help, step one is for us to wake up and change ourselves.

[samjdg]

Are you gay or something?

Every day I see different views and opinions, information about LGBTQIA+ in the films that I watch, in real life etc. Some are interesting, some ridiculous, some unfair and some have quite a potential to evoke aggression. The discussions about LGBTQIA+ people have started to cover more than just their lifestyles, choices and problems, now those topics have been turned into entertainment by some cisgender heterosexual individuals who have not understood the whole concept. How?

One of the queer films that I watched caused me quite discomfort. But the fact that I could not find anyone who had already started a discussion about those certain scenes in the movie upset me even more. The name of the movie: Alex Strangelove. Maybe you have heard or even watched. Did you sense something strange while watching too?

Alex, who loves his girlfriend as a person so much, realises that he does not have any sexual desires towards her. All friends of this high school student already had sexual experiences, therefore he gets slightly mocked for not feeling ready for it yet. His girlfriend, Claire, complains about Alex not letting her to devirginize him in front of his friends. Even though everything was quite unethical till this point, what happens after that cannot be excused as foolishness of teenage kids. Not physically or sexually, but Claire starts to pressure Alex psychologically into having sex. As a result, young boy, with the thought that “he is supposed to want it just like other guys”, tries to prepare himself mentally. During the film, Alex’s doubts about his sexuality, frustration and discomfort have been portrayed clearly. Near the end of the film, two teenagers meet at the hotel and start their attempts. However, it does not work out as they planned and Alex admits he cannot do it, eventually gives up. Claire insists on getting an explanation for Alex’s lack of interest in having sex with her and asks the famous question when she cannot get what she wants: “Are you gay?”

The thing is, Alex did like another boy in the movie, but is that really so simple? It is not very rare either in films or real life to see that boys are automatically assumed to be gay when they show lack of interest in having sex with a girl. Sentences like “If he does not fancy you, then he is gay” are probably familiar to most of us. Who are the ones facing the unjust behaviour here?

A boy does not and should not need an excuse or any dramatic cause not to want to have sex. If he does not want it, then he does not want it and that should not be up for discussion. Saying things like “all boys love sex”, “no boy can say “no” to a girl” limits the freedom and comfort of men, and in most cases have the potential to result in a rape case where a boy is a silent victim.  

But I will talk about it in more details in other blog posts. What I want to focus on here is the point that some heterosexual people put other sexual orientations and gender identities in a sort of subcategory or in an unimportant position. When someone cannot accept being regarded as “uninteresting” or “unattractive” by the opposite sex, they label those particular opposite sex members as “gays” and “lesbians” most of the time. The aftermath of those labels, and its effect on the sexuality and lives of those people is a heavy issue.

For another example you can watch first few episodes from the first season of “Shameless”. I have to note that media portrays most guys as gays when they refuse to have sex with a girl. In many movies, the rejection by a boy is justified as homosexuality as if it can be the only logical explanation. This kind of misrepresentation in media gives a wrong message to people and normalises the wrong attitude towards people’s sexualities, in most cases, boys’ sexualities.  

In the Netflix TV series named “Sense8”, the girl comes to her colleague’s house drunk even though the boy had rejected her the very same day. The boy keeps saying that he does not want to do it, however the girl tries to undress him, and she takes her own clothes off too. This disturbing scene where she keeps following him around trying to touch him inappropriately continues until she finds out that this guy actually has a boyfriend. And I have never seen anyone on internet referring to that scene as sexual harassment.

Gay people do not exist for heterosexual people, so that they can handle the rejection from the opposite sex better and protect their fragile ego. It is absurd to associate the lack of interest in sexual activity with someone only with the lack of interest in the entire gender (sex in this case).

The same girl also takes pictures of those boys having sex and even masturbates watching them in some episode.

A new method I have recently learned about is that some girls tell the boys who would not stop texting them that they are actually trans women, when in   reality they are cisgender. They are saying so to get rid of the people who keep annoying them. How ethical do you think it is? As most guys stop texting them after believing that the girl, they have been talking to is trans, this method is considered “successful”. But in what cost? Thinking that the boy will stop texting her once he is convinced, she is a trans woman, and using the prejudice and discrimination against trans women in this way for personal benefit. Is it acceptable? Isn’t that normalising and supporting a system in which trans women are not considered “real women”, and are acknowledged as “chick with a dick”? And when you ask them why they do it, why to lie about being trans, they say “they had to” like it is the only way. Even if it is the only way it still cannot justify the exploitation of LGBTQIA+ community.

I am not even close to finishing this. “The gay best friend” myth that goes around in media is disturbing, some girls thinking that having a gay side kick will get them free fashion advice etc. Reducing the value of the human being and acknowledging them as a contributing factor to their life, or some tool that can make their lives more interesting. Fetishizing LGBTQIA+ people is also very common and equally unacceptable. Those kinds of behaviours create an atmosphere in which being cisgender and heterosexual is absolute and the only “normal” state of a human being, and all other possible options are just the ways to add some colours to the main picture.

LGBTQIA+ are not here to make heterosexual people’s lives more comfortable or enjoyable, and any kind of use, abuse and exploitation of existing situation should be considered as homophobia and bigotry.

Hey, I am a boy and I am not gay. I would love to have sex with a girl, JUST NOT WITH YOU. Deal with it.

Or

I am a boy, and I just don’t feel like it right now. Period.

(feel free to add to this list)

[atheistforhumanity]

An Example of How Bill O’Reilly Ruined A Generation With Mass Manipulation

Now, you might be thinking, “who the fuck is Bill O’Reilly, and why do I care?” That’s a valid question. Lovable Bill, is the predecessor of Tucker Carlson. He was the shining star of Fox News for most of my life, and he captures the hearts of minds of my parents generation with low brow commentary, manipulative opinions, and dog whistle racism. Bill pretended to be a regular class working Joe that spoke up for the little guy. Tucker Carlson outed his gimmick years ago before he would take Bill’s place, and take on the same fake persona.

So, how did Bill O’Reilly ruin a generation? It’s pretty simple really. Bill O’Reilly was born into the upper class and eventually took a place as an opinion show host pretending to be news, that spouted populist rhetoric in a way that always redirected opinions and anger away from the real perpetrators. Bill is literally one the most dishonest people to ever be on mainstream media, and for over a decade he delivered alternative facts to fox viewers, down played anything anti-capatalist, anti-conservative, and anti-racist. His motto has always been “no spin,” but I’ve never seen him present the whole truth in an accurate way my whole life. Bill is a more well spoken Donald Trump, who uses people’s prejudices, preconceptions, and complete unwillingness to research anything to manipulate people’s minds for a capitalist agenda.

But how does he do this, Ryan? I wish you would be more specific instead of making accusations. Well, it happens that I just came across a band new article written on Bill’s blog, where he tries to continue the glory of yesteryear before he was fired for sexually harassing several women in the work place.

If you take two minutes to read the article linked above, you’ll see that Bill is arguing that bad parenting is the real cause of income inequality. His argument is quite literally, people aren’t raised right and that’s why they can’t succeed financially. He says specifically that it’s not capitalism's fault.

Before I address specifics, let me point out what is generally manipulative about this argument. Bill has touched on a topic that literally any generation of conservatives can get fired up about, and will have built in bias to agree with. Remember, conservatism is literally resistance to change and an affinity for tradition. This also means that every generation bitches and complains about how the next generation raises kids. Remember when your parents told you that you would go to hell for watching Elvis shake his hips? Remember when there were no changing tables in men’s bathrooms? Remember when kids in school used to play “beat the fag” and then they cried victim when we said that was wrong? Yea...

The point is that he’s using a prevalent belief that many different people(but mostly conservatives) can tap into for different (mostly) unspecified reasons. Then he is attributing that common cultural division as responsible for income inequality. We’ll come back to that.

Second, is that Bill makes a point that on some level makes sense, but doesn’t support his larger claim. Are there a lot of bad parents out there? Sure. Do they have a negative effect on the child’s life as he suggests? Of course. Now we could argue all day about what makes a bad parent exactly or the prevalence of bad parents, but it’s irrelevant, because Bill hasn’t given us any solid reason to accept that this alone (or at all) is the cause of income inequality! It’s an outrageously dishonest argument. That doesn’t matter though, because this is how Bill’s followers respond...

Okay, I was going to screen shot some positive responses to Bill tweeting this article but I didn’t see any. Let’s just move on.

Now, let’s take a look at the substance of Bill’s piece.

Education: “If a young child is not exposed to learning by age two, that innocent, helpless person is already at risk in a competitive society.  If there are no books in the home, no awareness-building games, no fun dialogue with the parents, the child may not develop a curiosity about life.”

That’s interesting, Bill, because public education and programs like Pre-K are socialist inspired initiatives supplied by the government for the benefit of everyone. Head start programs were first installed by LBJ, but the Black Panthers had actually initiated similar programs in inner cities to feed children breakfast before school.

To say that capitalism has no role in this issue is delusional. Capitalism accepts and even encourages inequality. Betsy Devos is the champion of capitalist education, where attendance is not guaranteed and any difficult or low performing students can be weeded out to create the appearance of success, under no public oversight.

The fight is always the same, liberals want to increase educational funding and conservatives don’t. This is why red states have teacher strikes all over the country and Republicans are fighting against publicly funded college.

If access to education from an early age is so important then we cannot withhold education and then blame those stuck in the cycle of poverty for their own inequity.

Environment/Work Ethic:

Here’s an old and tired argument from the right. People are poor because they don’t work hard enough. But, Bill, how could that be? The average unemployment rate in America is between 3-4%, and the worst is in Alaska with 6.4%. Clearly most Americans are working, you’re always bragging about how great this economy is. Republicans tell people who need assistance to get jobs, but surprise they already have them! We know people aren’t struggling to live because they’re not working, because we have clear numbers that show people are working full-time, but not earning enough to pay basic bills. It’s crazy, it’s almost like the cost of living just keep rising, but the amount people get paid doesn’t. All of this is happening despite the fact that corporate profits have soared, but it never translates into better wages. 

While Bill drones on in his article about derelict parents, he never once actually looks at income. He sure doesn’t mention that the amount people are paid is literally up to the people at the top of the economic latter. They can choose to pay workers more or they can stash away more profit in their bank accounts. Guess which one they choose? Despite the fact that we have clear data that shows those who choose how much to pay workers are raising their own profits, the rich like Bill O’Reilly continually berate people as lazy. The entire argument is completely disingenuous because workers are at the mercy of employers.

And if you’re thinking, why doesn’t everyone just get a better job, you’re not thinking that statement through. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks how many jobs in the market pay minimum wage or less, and that’s roughly 2.3%.(Nearly 2 million people) You think, great, people can just get a better job. No, not really, because a large number of jobs pay just above the minimum wage and are not included in this figure. Even most retail jobs pay $1 above minimum at least. Pew Research wondered this too, and in 2004 they found that roughly 30% of all hourly workers were making more than minimum wage (7.25 at the time) and less than $10. Guess what, nearly 59% of the entire US workforce are hourly workers, and a third of them are were making $10 or less. I make 13$ an hour, live with a roommate, and am just able to live with no savings in 2019. If I had a wife making the same amount, we would drowned trying to raise even two kids. That’s a travesty.

Roughly 35% of all jobs require a college degree, which is a significant debt due to increases in education and cost of living. Education is very important, but unfortunately most people who are born poor, historically, don’t get to go to college. What does capitalism say about this? Well, again, in a free market system there is no mechanism to correct the disadvantage people are born into, and generally no desire among conservatives to do so. Conservatism is stuck in the past where the poor and uneducated make perfect laborers, but labor as a staple job market is dead in the 21st century. Hence the push toward service jobs, which is all an uneducated person do.

The numbers tell the real story. People are working, but not being paid enough. The people controlling the pay are increasing their own pay. Cost of living is rising faster than worker pay. Funding for education has been stagnant and the cost of higher education rising. All this and I haven’t even gotten into the politics that effect this issue.

How did Bill O’Reilly destroy a generation? By feeding them ignorant, pandering garbage like this article every night for years. By completely ignoring the real facts of any issue and directing your attention to a manipulative hot button, tailored to the bias of conservatives.

The sad thing is that Bill is completely representative of everyone championed by the right wing. They are unintelligent, malicious, racist, greedy, and completely dishonest.

[bailesu]

July 4, 1776, 1863, and 2018

Warning:  I hate Trump with a burning atomic fury and what follows is a mixture of my family’s history, America’s history and me damning Trump to burn in Hell for eternity.  If you don’t want to read that, skip the read more and go on.  I totally understand.

This is the America’s day, for good and for ill, for America has been both a great country and a terrible one.  We sent men to the moon and set high ideals of equality and freedom... then failed to live up to them again and again.  I love my country, but sometimes it drives me crazy.  Its past is full of glory and horror, good deeds and terrible deeds, and above all greatness, but greatness can be wonderful or horrible.

On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress issued a document which declared American Independence.  But not just Independence.  It laid out the idea that all men are created equal by God, with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  This high ideal thus became one of the foundation stones of America.

It was written by a man who owned dozens of slaves and had children by one of them, who he continued to own.  Thomas Jefferson managed to embody both our highest ideals and our greatest depravities.  

One in four Americans were slaves in 1776.  Women could not vote and neither could White Men who lacked Property.  Child abuse was the normal way you raised your kids.  Threatening to murder your political rivals was basically normal.  One of our great leaders of the Revolution, Sam Adams, was basically a man who organized riots and lynching.  (Lynching of people who served Britain, rather than Blacks, but lynching is murder, whoever the victim.)

By any modern standard, America in 1776 was a terrible place, a land carved out by killing Native Americans directly to take their land and indirectly by disease.  (Mind you, every nation, including the ones we killed off, has a history of killing neighbors and taking their land; the nations without that history died.)  

But it was also the seedbed of modernity; it became a democracy, if not a very good one, and its ideals still ring across the ages and have provided leverage to every group trying to get fair treatment instead of stomping.  We helped inspire the French Revolution and the rise of Nationalism.  In 1945, when Vietnam declared Independence from France, the first lines of their declaration read:

All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

America has always struggled with the tension between this high ideal and the deeds our country has done which are not high or noble.  We often fail, but on this day, we have to look again to this ideal and work to make it real.  

My own ancestors were all tangled up in this mess.  Three Quaker Brothers fled to America to escape persecution and the loss of their family’s lands due to the British Civil Wars, settling in Pennsylvania.  One of the brothers, Thomas, eventually went South to North Carolina.  He is my ancestor, and his family soon came to own slaves.  They were never top-tier slaveowners but they prospered.

If you are a White Southerner, your ancestors either owned slaves, supported the slave system without owning slaves, or both, unless they came South very recently.  We all have to deal with that legacy.  Many in the South don’t want to, but if this country is ever to heal the wounds inflicted by over 250 years of slavery, then we have to.

During the Revolution, Thomas’s son, also named Thomas, fought in the Revolution.  By killing Cherokees; they allied with the British to save their lands and they found out the hard way that Britain couldn’t help them.  On this day, 1776, he was sitting in a military camp, but soon they would return and drive the Cherokee out of part of North Carolina and all of South Carolina.  (Ironically, many years later, a member of the Richardson family would marry a Cherokee woman and their later descendant would marry one of Thomas’ descendants.)  He may eventually have fought the British, but we have no record of it.

Thomas’ grandson, William Alexander Christopher Biles, was born on the plantation.  His family made him go pick cotton with the slaves a lot but we don’t know why exactly; it would serve him well later when his family lost everything but we have to assume that he probably hated it at the time.  William’s father was too old to fight (In his 70s!) but William was not.  He fought in a North Carolina regiment and was shot and stabbed repeatedly, including having his skull cut open and a gut wound.  This happened during Pickett’s Charge, so he was left behind in Union hands; a doctor, his name lost, operated and saved his life after initial triage had said he wasn’t worth trying to save.  Whoever he was, he was a miracle worker, because somehow he saved WAC’s life, though he had a plate in his head for the rest of his life.  In fact, he *escaped* from the hospital and returned to duty until the final surrender at Appomatox!  We don’t know his motives for fighting, but it was probably a mixture of wanting to save slavery and loyalty to his state.  It would be nice if I could say he was anti-slavery, but he wasn’t even the Jeffersonian kind of anti-slavery, where you still own slaves, but you do limit slavery’s growth somewhat.  By 1860, your choices were basically either to say ‘SLAVERY IS AWESOME’ or flee to the North, that far South.  (In the border states, you could say ‘I hate black people, so I want to end slavery so I can get rid of them’.  This is not a huge moral step forward.)

His family’s estates unravelled; the Biles clan did not know how to get by without slaves.  He went west to Missouri and worked with his brother a while, then became a farmer; he was not good at either, but his cotton-picking skills enabled him to get by; I can only imagine he found it rather humiliating.  And as a slaveowner, he deserved humiliating.

To be White in America carries the shame of having ancestors who did terrible stuff.  Some of it was so accepted you can’t blame them too much but others *could* have done better and didn’t.  The essential problem of being descended of the winners is that they probably did terrible things to win.  (And the problem of being descended of those who lost is that your ancestors got thrown down the stairs and lost it all.)

I don’t feel guilt for my ancestors, but I do feel responsibility.  I cannot control what they did, but I do benefit from it and part of my response to that has to be to try and make a better America, to help overcome our worst impulses.  And I do that by teaching, so that those coming up will understand our past, why we did terrible things, and how we can do better.  (And how we did awesome things too, because the hardest part of history is that the same people can do wonders and horrors at once.)

Which brings us to the now.  I was describing 1920s and 30s fascism to my students and one said, “So, basically, Trump.”

And it’s certainly way too close.  I am lucky; as a White Man, I am automatically spared much of the worst of Trump and his idiot followers.  This country has always been tilted in my favor.  

Trump embodies pretty much all of America’s past sins, but also is basically the biggest drooling idiot who has ever sat in the White House, making even Harding look like a supergenius.  He knows how to work his audience, but he’s utterly incompetent at governing, to the extent you can call it governing.  He embodies sexism, racism, egomania, and cruelty.  He is a man who instinctively degrades and bullies everyone around him, who has cheated on all of his wives and abused his mistresses, a rapist, a thug, and a cheat.  He is a horrible human being in almost every possible way.  Many people who claim to be Christian flock to him because they have flushed Christ down the toilet long ago, but unfortunately, flushing Christ down the toilet has a long history in American religion.  

If there is a hell, Trump is going to roast in it and if there is not, we’ll have to make one just for him.  I want to see him fall like Lucifer from Heaven, if Lucifer fell into a mixture of broken glass, shards of metal, and lava.  But it’s important to remember, Trump is not some alien aberration; he incarnates real American flaws, mixed with his personal flaws of being a pig-ignorant, aggressively anti-thinking man-baby molester of women with vast wealth he has always abused to shield himself from consequences.  Racism, sexism, greed, and so on all have a long history in this country.  And his supporters voted for him with their eyes wide open.  We cannot expect any better from them.

America has a huge cancer and that cancer often has been driving the national bus, so to speak.  And getting rid of it is going to be a long fight.  But bringing change to this country is always a long, hard fight.

So on this Fourth of July, fuck Trump to hell, along with all his shitty supporters.  We have nearly two more years of this shithole before we can toss him on his ass.  (Impeachment takes 2/3rds in the Senate, so it’s not happening even if we take both houses, I fear).  May we sweep the Republican party, which has devolved from the people who ended slavery to a resting place for all of America’s sins, into the garbage pile in November and again in two years.  Growing up in America means I’ve watched the Republican party gradually mutate into a degenerate, feral hate society run by a mixture of greed, racism, and fake Christianity.  

Fuck the Republican party and all the morons who vote for it, whichever one of the Seven Deadly Sins drives them to spew hatred, abuse immigrants, rob the poor to make the rich richer, and to destroy all our alliances and trade relations.  They chose a feral animal as President, a molester and a bully, and I hope he destroys them all.

May they all eat shit and die.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

it's because accounts like this we can't have an equal society. honestly i hope karma gets you.

What is an equal society? A place where every single citizen is provided equal rights, freedom and protection? A place where everyone is provided the opportunity to govern their own lives, control their own money, decide their own beliefs and careers and make their own choices? Yeah, we already have that. 

An equal society does not mean everybody living equally. This is a socialist myth, you are chasing an ideal which cannot and will never successfully exist anywhere in the world, one which has collapsed entire countries and resulted in tremendous loss of life and oppression wherever it has been attempted.

There can never be total equal outcome for all because we aren’t equal. It can only exist if we are stopped being treated as individuals and we are all made to think, behave and believe as one. It’s why you’ve wished ill upon me, just like any communist mindset, dissenters, entrepreneurs and freethinking individuals must be stopped, you want everyone to be equal but only if they agree with you.

There are all kinds of disparities in our society not because we are oppressed but because we have been given the freedom to do what we want. Our own choices and usually the choices of our parents determine our outcome, the only way for the government to guarantee equal outcome is to restrict our choices. 

Consider a woman who opens her own bake shop, she works endless hours for many years and eventually expands the company, she creates many jobs, she finally earns back her investments and becomes very profitable. Conservatives applaud her and tell her to enjoy the fruits of her hard work, morons like yourself shame her and demand she hand over her money to those who can’t be assed to work themselves, in order to create an “equal society.” 

This is where the logic of your ideas crumble. How can we guarantee everyone has total equality in all its forms when some of us want to be brain surgeons and some of us want to be baristas? Are brain surgeons and coffee makers supposed to be paid equally? Really? Some suggest we should scrap money altogether and all share houses, share cars, share everything. But what incentive does that leave those who do society’s most dangerous and dirty jobs? Why cover yourself in everyone’s shit working in sewers and drains or why work in construction or the fire brigade when you’ll get all of the same benefits and luxuries as those who sit on their ass doing nothing all day? 

Why would anyone want to work? Why would anyone want to compete? Why would anyone want to invent things, run companies, risk their lives or advance medicine and technology if it’s just as beneficial to stay at home and play Xbox? Sure, there’d be people who would still do it for fun, but to make up the numbers needed for a society to prosper, we’d have no choice but to go full authoritarian and punish skilled workers and laborers who refuse to work as government slaves. Just as every communist state has done. 

We must accept that some people are better at some things than others. We must accept humans aren’t the same so we cannot be guaranteed the same outcome. We will always take different paths and want different things which creates imbalances in wealth and living standards but it also promises the freedom to do whatever you want and be whoever you want. It guarantees success to those who want it and who understand it is earned, not owed.

The problem is, the left tell us it’s an oppressive white supremacist system to be rewarded for work, that the rewards should be instead based on skin color, sex or sexual orientation, rewarded for doing nothing more than being black or a woman. They glorify welfare and push for more people to be dependent on the government. They openly demand for the finances of anyone who has achieved success in America, as long as they’re white, to be ceased and handed directly to those who are convinced it’s owed to them, again based on their identity. This is the “equality” they shame us for not accepting.

I’m not saying that those who actually can’t work due to disability or certain circumstances should go without and live in poverty, I’m all for providing assistance and care to people truly in need. Poverty is complex and it’s not as easy as telling poor people to get jobs. But we must be honest about where much of the “inequality” comes from. It comes from people who are interested in things such as medicine and engineering which leads to higher wages than those who are interested in nail art. It comes from people who are better at negotiating, doing math or working under extreme conditions than people who may be better at nurturing or teaching. It comes from the difference between people who value the basic principles of hard work, education, strong families and respect for law, and those who don’t. Different outcomes are a result of the freedom to be different. 

That’s not saying we should accept poverty, it’s saying we need to encourage more people to break the cycle of poverty, victimization and entitlement and tribalism. It’s not racist or sexist to hold everybody to the same standards, that’s called equality. Not everyone can be rich, but everyone has an equal opportunity to live meaningful, free, successful and happy lives in this country. 

It look me a long time to realize how the idea of “equality” being pushed by the left is really an empty statement which both denies the reality of our existing equal rights and freedom and makes communism seem like something good and moral people should be on board with. If you can prove to me that inequality is a deliberate and institutional plot carried out by a patriarchy of old white Nazi men who hate everyone who isn’t white or male, rather than being a natural product of humans having the freedom to decide their own paths in life and everybody wanting different things in life, then I’ll delete my blog and accept the karma you wish on me with open arms. 

[forsetti]

On Sexual Assaults: Me Too and Why I Didn’t Report

There are a lot of issues that I am very passionate and deeply invested in (racism, health care, belief systems…)   For me, all of these take a backseat in importance to sexual harassment and assault.  This is why the “Me Too” phenomenon really struck a nerve.  As I saw “Me too” post after post and comments on Facebook and Twitter, I was reminded of just how prevalent and ignored sexual harassment and assault is around the world and how far we are from truly admitting and correcting the problem in our very modern, very advanced society.

I was raised by a very strong, independent, knows who she is and what she wants-woman.  Of the many aspects of my belief system she impacted, none has been as influential as how I treat and view women. I was raised on gender equality.  My mom is a better hunter than her husband or any of her sons.  She is the most mentally strong person in our family.  If I had to pick anyone in the world to do what is best for me and watch my back, it would be her.  Trying to insult me by calling me a “mommy’s boy,” is futile.  I’m damn proud of being just that.

Besides being a “mommy’s boy,” almost all my close friends my whole life have been women.  For more reasons than I care to go into, I gravitate toward women more than men when it comes to friendship.  I find the vast majority of men boring, obnoxious, arrogant, and intolerable.  Because of this, whether from women I’ve dated or had close friendships with, I’ve been exposed to “Me too” from their point-of-view for thirty-plus years.  I’ve seen first-hand the short and long-term damage done to women by men’s overt and oftentimes completely ignorant behaviors.

One of the first times I was introduced to, “Me too,’ was when I was an undergraduate at Utah State University.  I was dating a woman who grew up in the same hometown as I did.  She was younger than me and I never really knew her growing up.  I was introduced to her by one of my younger brothers.  From the first time we went out, I could tell she needed sexual reassurance, positive sexual reinforcement.  By the third date (it usually didn’t take this long,) she confided in me that she had been sexually molested by some of her older brothers. She knew what had happened to her was wrong and intellectually she knew it wasn’t her fault but emotionally, her self-worth was tied to how sexually attractive and desired she was to someone else.  The upshot of this was she wanted and needed sex to validate herself. The damage caused by her sexual abuse was profound and very detrimental to her psychological and personal growth.

A few years later, I was dating a young woman who exhibited the very same traits like the one who had been assaulted by her brothers. Except, instead of needing sexual approval, she repelled any physical contact.  The first time I tried to hold her hand, she withdrew and the tension was palpable.  A number of dates later, she confided in me that one night while she had been out jogging, she was attacked and raped.  This was a good Mormon girl who had been told her whole life that being sexually pure was the one and only thing she had to protect until she got married.  She blamed herself for what happened to her.  She went to the other extreme of the first young woman I knew who had been sexually assaulted, anything physical was viewed as bad and she felt guilty for the most basic physical contact.

These two experiences happened in my early 20s.  Since then, from women I’ve dated and female friends, I’ve heard dozens of horror stories about sexual assault.  Because these stories came from someone I cared about, it was easy to tap into some form of anger-”How dare someone do this to someone I really care about!”  The thing is, it isn’t just about people I care(d) about.  If the majority of women I know have been sexually assaulted, it is not an irrational jump to conclude the majority of women, in general, have been assaulted as well.

Fundamentally, I knew this but it took a few years of real-life experiences to drive the point home.  I remember visiting a good friend of mine in Arizona and going out with someone who was a sister of one of her friends. On the very first date, she told me how she had been raped by her ex-husband.  For reasons I’m not entirely clear about, women have always felt comfortable telling me very personal and private things very early on in whatever relationship we have.  As flattered and honored as I feel about how comfortable they are opening up to me, I also feel very bad because some of the things they feel the need to tell have been horrific.  When I first saw the “Me too” meme, I wasn’t surprised in the slightest.  Deep down, my response was, “No fucking shit!.”  

Of all the women I’ve dated more than twice, I cannot think of more than a few who cannot honestly say, “Me too.”  I’m not talking, “Me too” to sexually harassment.  I’m talking about  “Me too,” to sexual assault.  These women all have come from middle to upper-middle class families.  The rate of sexual assault among the lower classes is much, much higher because they don’t have the means to speak up.  Whether being felt up at a bar to being raped, women endure unwanted contact from men more than is reported and certainly more than most of us want to contemplate because to do so is to admit some culpability to a massive moral failing.  This culpability can be something as minor as participating in sexualized jokes and comments to major things like sexual assault.   Some of the women I’ve known/know have handled and dealt with what happened to them well. Many have not.  I feel horrible for the ones who have not dealt with it well and understand why they haven’t.  We live in a society that is more than eager to blame women for whatever happens to them, especially when it comes to their sexuality.  

Whenever there is a report of sexual assault it is always skewed towards the women.  “Seven girls in South Port High School Were Sexually Assaulted by Member of the Football Team.”  The headline should read, “Members of the South Port High School Team Sexually Assaulted Seven Girls.”  Sexual assault IS NOT a women’s issue or problem.  There is NOTHING they have done to create it.  There is NOTHING they can do to prevent it.  Rape and sexual assault are entirely a men’s problem.  We are the ones who do it for whatever dumbass, egotistical, testosterone-driven, peer pressured reasons. In the same way racism in America cannot/should not be solved by minorities, sexual harassment and assaults cannot/should not be solved by women.

The parallels between racism and sexism are strong.  Not only is the problem not the responsibility of the victimized group, but the causes for both are also rooted in a long tradition of bullshit.  Racism is rooted in the unscientific, completely arbitrary notion that whites are mentally, morally, and spiritually superior.  Who makes and perpetuates these ideas? The people who benefit the most from it-whites.  Sexism is rooted in the idea that men are superior to women.  Who makes and perpetuates these ideas?  The people who benefit the most from it-men.  It is this fucking basic.  It is also, this fucking dumb.

When a man assaults a woman, it inevitably damages one or all the qualities I love most about women.  I don’t love women because they are women.  I love them because of who they, who I  was raised to be, and who I aspire to be.  For me, when a man sexually harasses or assaults a woman, it damages not just morality, justice, and equality, it damages the traits of humanity I hold dearest.  It damages people who I care about and love.  It damages a group who has done more for me than any other.  Whether they realize it or not, it damages the men who do it.  It also damages the men who don’t because it rightfully makes women defensive of all men.

Men who view women as inferior/disposable, live in a world that is devoid of women’s true value.  As angry as I get towards the typical male d-bag who views and treats women as inferior, a part of me feels pity for them.  Pity they will never know the true nature and value of women.  Pity they are so insecure they feel the need to play out their power issues on someone else.  Pity their self-worth is tied to a facade of superiority.  Of course, whatever pity I feel is outweighed by anger 1,000,000/1.  The damage done to women by these attitudes is far more important than men’s ignorance, egos, and arrogance and any pity I might feel.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt this way.  I’m pretty sure this is the result of how I was raised.  Anyone who knows me well knows the thing I have always wanted to be more than anything else is a world-class assassin.  Not an assassin who kills just for money or arbitrarily but one who takes out bad people.  In my list of “bad people,” pedophiles and rapists are at the top and I could/would take them out with absolutely no remorse.  In fact, I’d probably sleep better at night.  Often, when I say this, people tell me, “No you wouldn’t.  You say that but you don’t really mean it.”  Trust me, I mean it.  The reason I can say this with absolute surety is because of the damage I’ve personally witnessed to people I care about the most.

I’m glad “Me too,” raised awareness of the problem but it is meaningless unless men change their beliefs, their behaviors, their responses when other men behave in their typical brutish fashion. “Me too,” like “Black lives matter,” is great for starting a much-needed conversation but unless we take it seriously and continue the conversation to where it needs to go, the same behaviors will continue and more women will suffer.  I wish I could say things will get better but if the past has shown me anything, it is men are slow fucking learners and they especially don’t dare touch anything tied to their fragile egos.  Until they are truly willing to do this, “Me too” will continue to be a thing.

Addendum: The sexual assault nerve of victims was once again exposed and laid bare with the recent claims by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were in high school.  What Me Too did for giving women a platform to let others know their experiences with being sexually assaulted, this most recent exposure has brought out a very misunderstood but very important aspect of sexual assaults-why victims often don't report it.  This has given rise to another movement/hashtag #WhyIDidntReport.

All anyone has to do is read through the thousands of accounts of people, mostly women, who have come out and explained why they didn't report their assault or waited to tell anyone for years, to understand why. Fear-fear of retribution by a culture and society that views and treats women as second-class citizens.  Guilt-guilt of feeling somehow they were to blame for their attack because the language we use puts the burden and responsibility on them, not their assailants. Shame-shame of not being the “perfect daughter,” the “pure Christian,” the “loyal girlfriend/spouse,”... Realization-realization that not only will their story not be believed, it will be ridiculed and used against them.  

Just look at how the men in the United States Senate talk about Dr. Ford-”She's an opportunist,” “She is mixed up,” “If it really happened, she would have come forward years ago”...  Their responses are the most “humane” on the right. Some of the conservative base has been threatening her with physical harm, rape, and murder.  All of them, in their own especially fucked up way, is doing what they are with the intent of not only scaring Dr. Ford from testifying before the committee but more importantly, letting every other woman out there know, if you tell on one of us for sexually assaulting you, we will bring down the thunder on you, your life, and your family.  There is a word for this kind of behavior-”terrorism.”

Make no mistake, sexual assaults and everything tied to is a form of terrorism.  It is violence or the threat of violence to intimidate in order to achieve a particular end.  Sexual assaults are not about sex.  They are about power.  Power over another person in the most personal way.  The horrible treatment of victims of sexual assaults through intimidation and threats of more violence is terrorism added to the terrorism already committed against them.

Don't ever talk to me about America being a “Christian nation,” or how much we “respect women,” as long as we turn a blind eye to the real way we treat women, the way we talk about and address sexual assaults.  As long as there are thousands of untested rape kits in police stations around the country, we can't claim women are important.  As long as women's reproductive choices are not 100% in their hand, we can't claim that women are equal.  As long as men in power use their power to subjugate, denigrate, and silence women, we can't honestly say we respect them.  

There is a Me Too Train barreling down the tracks and picking up incredible speed.  It is going to run over everything and everyone in its path, without remorse, without sympathy, without a fuck to give because that is the way it has been treated by those it will run over and their enablers for centuries.  I, for one, will have no remorse for anyone caught in its wake.  I don't care if you are someone I know, love, idolize... if you are not on board with the underlying issues behind Me Too and Why I Didn't Report, you deserve what you get because the ethical sides of this issue are black and white.  If you don't understand or know the difference by now, you have no one to blame but yourself.

[ericbolton1993]

Bacterial Vaginosis Treatment While Pregnant Startling Tips

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Thus harmful bacteria in the prevention has higher efficacy rate.This is a common condition that you take it with, when to take the time comes.These forms of underwear that tend to benefit significantly when they multiply quickly and becomes more noticeable after intercourse that is white or gray color.Diagnosing the disease, as normal discharge should be allowed to overgrow.Women who have had Bacterial Vaginosis Occurs

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