I don't think unisex toilets are fair on men OR women.
A. No
man really wants to put on a public pee show, even infront of other
guys half the time. Men pee faster than women who as a woman myself I
can honestly say our average cubicle use time can stretch a full half
hour. B. What about when that awkward moment arises that there
is only a young girl in there and a super creep stinking of piss with
his knob hanging out blocking the door? All it would take was one
predator and a vulnerable party who find themselves alone for a moment
for it to all go horribly wrong. Seperate toilets have always been in
place with protecting the physical wellbeing and dignity of the
vulnerable at mind. To undo this would be like asking for for a rise in
sex crimes. To top it off no woman wants to walk past a strange
guy peeing, or hear a constipated 18 stone construction worker trying to
lay a 200mm diameter brown cable. And no man wants a running moment by moment commentary about makeup or a detailed analysis on which is better between a pad or a tampon.
If we ever get unisex toilets we might as well legalise pissing in public while we are at it.
Secular is a political not a theological stance. Christians can be secular, Muslims can be secular.Secular means no comment from religion, not anti religion. Atheist
are atheist, but should that ever become anti-theist then that is
also an opinion based on (whether it agrees with or disagrees with)
religion, and that is not secular. If you are anti-theist you are not secular, you are a totalitarian, and that makes you a fascist hypocrite. No better than Sharia Law. There are fascist atheists that use the word "secular" it as a cudgel to attack ALL religion regardless of if only one religion in particular stands in the way of their political agenda.
When
people say religion is evil because it is a root of war I'd like to
just point out there are plenty of wars not being fought in the name of
god, but for barely covert greed of oil and political power. Even the
"holy wars" were fought for poltical power religion was just another
thing that got abused to execute it. It is not the root abuser.
Hiroshima bomb was not dropped for god. Religion is just another
scapegoat for greedy assholes who find it easier to blame others for their own
collective faillings. And if you where to ban religion they would simply find another scapegoat. Anti-theists use the scapegoat of the "greater good / freedom" as their perceived result of ending all religion, yet they fail to see that in the process of making this a reality the freedom of others would be disregarded, not upheld.
So there you have it. Whoever you are whatever you do, wherever you are. If you claim secular; Keep it SECULAR!
Veganism
is biologically unnatural, logically and morally flawed.
Vegans claim to love nature and
that is the reason they do what they do, but they confuse nature with animals
alone. Otherwise there would be a plants rights
movement (or atleast a serious one). Personally I love nature so much I want to
live as naturally and inline with my natural biology and environment as
possible (within reason) and thus I'm omnivore, also you can't be vegan and
natural / organic because the vital vitamin b12 would have to be replaced by a
man-made synthetic. Vegetarians can, but vegans can't, also you can't raise a
baby on a vegan diet as there is no comparable substitute to milk
proteins.
"WHEN Crown
Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan
parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta
recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty."..."Protein
deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to
speak of proteins as “first class” (from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second
class” (from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians.The fact remains, though, that humans prefer animal
proteins and fats to cereals and tubers, because they contain all the essential
amino acids needed for life in the right ratio. This is not true of plant
proteins, which are inferior in quantity and quality — even soy." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21planck.html?_r=0
If we were to subscribe to the ideals of veganism then
we'd throw away our computer, the plastic that makes it is an animal product
caused by the decomposition of animals into
oil. We'd take our chance with diseases and give up all medicine because at
some stage it was tested on animals.
You might say this is incomparable, but if you are "not going to use
animal products" then don't be a half assed hypocrite, don't use ANY animal
products, do it right or not at all. And you may say meat is immoral but the
majority think this is only because of the death factor, something still died
to make your luxuries.
Vegans will claim animal rights, (and I will too, death doesn't have to be a
drawn out torture. Infact I think the cruelty and immoral act is the poor
conditions the animals LIVE in, death is nothing compared to low welfare
intensive farming). Vegans will claim that animals are equal to humans. And YES
they are.
Do you know why animals are equal to people? Because people are animals too,
biologically programed and evolved for and omnivorous diet. Competition and death are a part of
nature. If you don't like it then you don't love nature enough to
fully accept it, and you aren't tough enough to function in reality. Nature is
brutal, it needs to be in order to function, but it is not a valid reason to
give up aspiring and adhereing (as best you can) to what is natural.
You could be vegetarian (different to vegan) and still live naturally, vegan
(specific) diets are so unnatural
they kill people and make them ill. You don't need more than half a braincell
to work out that means veganism is illogical at best and downright dangerously
incompatible on a biological level at worst.
"If it were not for humans eating
meat, specifically cooked animal flesh, our brains would
not have developed
(http://www.npr.org/2010/08/02/128849908/food-for-thought-meat-based-diet-made-us-smarter)
to the point where we could start making freeways and breakfast cereals and
digital video cameras capable of recording two females and their adventures
with a cup."
Read more at http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=115052&s=08f58289bc741cc310b5699b3c88ce2e#S8gLabBYGFtliXih.99
"From habitat destruction to combines that inadvertently
mince rabbits to the shooting of deer in farm fields, crop production is far
from harmless. Even in our own organic garden, my wife and I were battling
ravenous insects and fence-defying woodchucks. I began to see that the question
wasn't what we ate but how that food came to our plates. A few years later, my
wife -- who was studying holistic health and nutrition -- suggested that we
shift our diet, and my health improved when we started eating dairy and eggs.
It improved still more when we started eating chicken and fish. Two years
later, I took up a deer rifle." http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/eating-animals/250179/
As you can see babies have died
of veganism and it's not recommended for pregnancy either, it interferes with
one of our most basic functions as living beings (to reproduce) you don't need
to be a genius to figure out from that, that humans are not meant to be vegan. If the
world was to end tomorrow, all power and factories, and man made technology
shut down, and nobody produced their supplement pills anymore. When the
malnutrition sets in, and they realise they are starving to death will they
give in to their hypocrisy and eat the squirrel? Or be too snooty to love
nature in all it's imperfect glory and become a victim to natural selection?
Put simply Veganism is unnatural (or atleast total FAIL), because those
unwilling to diversify go extinct.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent
who will survive but those who can best manage change.” - Charles Darwin
Source:Imperial Cancer
Research Fund, Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Oxford, United Kingdom.
key@icrf.icnet.uk
Abstract;
We combined data
from 5 prospective studies to compare the death rates from common diseases of
vegetarians with those of nonvegetarians with similar lifestyles. A summary of
these results was reported previously; we report here more details of the
findings. Data for 76172 men and women were available. Vegetarians were those
who did not eat any meat or fish (n = 27808). Death rate ratios at ages 16-89 y
were calculated by Poisson regression and all results were adjusted for age,
sex, and smoking status. A random-effects model was used to calculate pooled
estimates of effect for all studies combined. There were 8330 deaths after a
mean of 10.6 y of follow-up. Mortality from ischemic heart disease was 24%
lower in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians (death rate ratio: 0.76; 95% CI:
0.62, 0.94; P<0.01). The lower mortality from ischemic heart disease among
vegetarians was greater at younger ages and was restricted to those who had
followed their current diet for >5 y. Further categorization of diets showed
that, in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from ischemic heart
disease was 20% lower in occasional meat eaters, 34% lower in people who ate
fish but not meat, 34% lower in lactoovovegetarians, and 26% lower in vegans.
There were no significant differences between vegetarians and nonvegetarians in
mortality from cerebrovascular disease, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung
cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, or all other causes combined.
^Vegans do not live the longest.^ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10479225
As for your "moral obligation" and a plants rights
movement?
"She said: ‘Everyone knows that
plants react to light, and scientists also know that plants use volatile
chemicals to communicate with each other - for instance, when danger ,
such as a herbivore, approaches.’
Dr Gagliano said the research
‘opens up a new debate on the perception and action of people towards
plants’ which are not objects but should perhaps be treated as ‘living
beings in their own right.’" Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2157221/Maybe-Prince-Charles-right-British-scientists-reveal-plants-really-talk.html#ixzz2KOxW1A3D
If we looked at the evidence, that plants can show fear we can rationalise because they react to damage they must ergo/ subsequently feel pain. But nobody gives a shit about them or
fights for their "right" to not be eaten, because plants aren't cute and
don't bring in good money or publicity. And we see the same in the animal world, almost everybody loves Fido and Mittens but everybody given the chance would also have a bug zapper.
See also: http://letthemeatmeat.com/post/3141542244/interview-with-an-ex-vegan-tasha http://www.didyouwonder.com/do-plants-feel-pain/
I'm not sure if this counts as a review or whether it's just a collection of thoughts about the film/films to come. (I've tried my hardest not to include too many spoilers btw.)
5/10
I will say that this is a painful experience, well in some ways it is, in others it is a pleasure. As a fan of the book I was perplexed how The Hobbit needed 3 movies to cover it when the Hobbit book is probably only half as long as the Fellowship of the Ring (the 1st book) in the LOTR trilogy.
Screen time comparison to LOTR?
I remember when the 3 LOTR films came out about 12(?) years ago, I
reminded myself to cut Peter Jackson some slack, the books could be a
slog to read in places and very long; the fact that they would be
condensed into 3 movies was amazing. So I understood that in the
adaption process there would be characters and details lost, some event
changes, and various other "not quite book-exact" funny business going
on to make the whole thing workable. I forgave the LOTR Trilogy simply
because I had to, and if you took it on it's own merit (and I often do
with book-to-movie adaptions) (pretend there never was a book to start
with) it was very, very good. It had an epic-proportion story, a plot
that was interesting and followable and it had great actors playing the
characters. With LOTR they had to take lesser characters out and fill
their places with other re-occurring characters (Arwen taking Frodo to
Rivendell) simply because with the screen time limit to include all the
main characters, the lesser characters and the one-off-appearance
characters wouldn't leave a lot of the time required for the main actors
to flesh out their characters and give them the back story they needed
to be in some ways relatable. (Insert more over-use of the word
"characters" here!) It was much harder to do this in the Hobbit. With 13 dwarves finding the time to give them all a sufficient amount of lines to keep them as anything other than feeling like a side note or misc-role-fillers was clearly difficult. The funny thing about adaptions is that in the book 13 dwarves feels like a tool used to pretty much tell the story that situations Bilbo finds himself in are often imperfect and complicated. Bar the first meeting underhill to start the story, and the fact that if you didn't have all 13 dwarves traditional Tolkien fans would really have gone mad. The story would have worked just as well, if not better with less dwarves. In fact there is a voice at the back of my head that wonders if it's taking 3 films to tell the story just because all the actors want their pound-of-flesh/screen time. Especially as it feels like a nod towards Snow white, where the dwarves seem to have set roles, happy, grumpy, dopey, bashful, hungry (if Bombur had a SW counterpart), and little else resulting in 2D personalities with very little depth. Rather than blame this on the actors however it makes me feel for them, there are a good handful of well knowns that don't get adequate chance to bring their characters to life.
The actors themselves?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_%28film_series%29#Cast TBH I really liked Martin Freeman as Bilbo. And I think this is an easy role for Martin, since he played
Arthur Dent, another character who was an accidental adventurer who
liked his home comforts. There are a lot of similarities between Bilbo and Arthur even though they have different stories and settings. Martin certainly lived upto Ian Holms predefined eccentricity quota for Bilbo, and for book fans this definitely was the "Tookish" streak spoken of in the book being fulfilled and not left out. Ian McKellen I had assumed would be reprising the role of Gandalf and as ever did his job of playing him very well, though again with the screen time limits had I not seen LOTR I wonder if I'd have felt the same character depth as someone who had already SEEN INTO THE FUTURE as it were... (Ditto: Andy Serkis as Gollum, and Hugo Weaving as Elrond.) I didn't recognise most of the actors playing the dwarves, but I recognised Aidan Turner right away (as a Being Human fan) and James Nesbitt took a bit to figure out under the costume but was familiar immediately even if the name didn't come to mind as fast. Oh and I totally want to go live in the woods and become a shroom-head with my new adopted grandad Radagast (AKA Sylvester McCoy).
The Animation and technical Gandalfery*...
Animation was very good, for example the close ups of the wargs you fealt like you could reach out and feel individual hair tufts between your fingers (AND this isn't in the fad of 3D either). TBH I can't really say much about the special effects, I expected great quality animation and I got it. < insert smiley face >
Future films and other comments...
I know I just said "I understood that in the adaption process there would be characters and
details lost, some event changes, and various other "not quite
book-exact" funny business going on to make the whole thing workable." (re:lotr) and more or less said I'm applying the same logic to the Hobbit films but there is one thing that truly gets me and I'd be interested to see if it ends up true.
A female elf from Mirkwood. She is the Chief of the Guards for the Elvenking, Thranduil.
Her name means "daughter of the wood". Peter Jackson has confirmed
there will be no romantic connection to Legolas. Philipha Boyens stated
that she was there so that there would be a female character in The Hobbit:
"She’s our redhead. We created her for that reason. To bring that
energy into the film, that feminine energy. We believe it’s completely
within the spirit of Tolkien."[59]
I'm not annoyed at this because I'm an ex Orlando fan girl, I'm actually pissed at this because I don't believe it's in the spirit of Tolkien. And with the aforementioned screentime limit I can't see why they are inventing new and unnecessary characters to suck up time to when they could use the time better elaboratingng on other (actually-in-the-books) characters. Also I'm a little bit miffed PJ didn't just make the romantic connection (seeing as there are plenty of other fake/added events anyway) and feel the only reason he's said there isn't going to be a romantic connection is because Bloom's fangirls would string him up before you could say "shattered illusions". Speaking of which... If I had known that cinemas now showed 45 mins of ads before a 3hr approx film that included a behind the scene's featurette of the film I was just about to see ruining the immersion experience and stabbing you with the feeling of lost magic like a magician who has just explained how the trick works even before they do the fucking trick -BREAAAATHHEEE!!- I'd have waited in the lobby for another half an hour and took the oportunity for a last minute piss to avoid trying to hold it for about half the film. Which reallllllly didn't help me enjoy the film when coupled with my newly developed ADHD that comes with living in 2 hour segments thanks to a newborn. Alternatively (and I think I will do this with the 2nd and 3rd Hobbit films) I'll not give a flying fuck about the cinema, and just wait till it come out on DVD then I can pause it halfway to go to the toilet or have a real drink like a cup of tea rather than that watered down chemical compound that comes out of a plastic tap that they serve you in the Vue. :P
Summary
Take it on it's own merit. If you are a book fan that is what is best; take it on its own merit or pay a hypnotist to erase it from your memory. If you are not a book fan then skip this step and go straight to enjoying an over wise visually stunning and enjoyable film. That's all for now.
___________________________________________________________ *If you didn't get this joke you seriously need to gtfo.
Am I a feminist? The short answer is No. I'm an Equalitist.
Misandry
exists.It is why as a woman I
have turned my back on feminism.
This is the face of misandry, and sadly, and wrongly it is accepted.
I hate lies, I hate corruption and I hate hypocrisy. Not the smoking parent
that knows howtough it is to quit and so they tell their teenager not to start
smoking hypocrisy. But real dangerous, slanderous, prejudice, political,
hypocrisy. In the western world Men are objectified for their body, just as
much as women, maybe not in a sexual way but undoubtedly they are objectified,
they are seen as tools that can be disposed of once they have outlived their
usefulness. "Thanks for the kids, now get out MY house and NO you don't
get visitation." Even though the man is most likely to be earning the
money or the majority of the money that pays the mortgage. (*See other note.)
Is very common, but the system is sexist in that it just lets this slide as
though sexism only happens to women. It doesn't! "You
dumb pig" aimed at a man, for no reason other than gender is just as as
bad as "you dumb bitch" aimed at a woman. (First of all before I go any further, let me start by saying anybody can be
a feminist (anybody who wants to label themselves as such anyway). Some
feminists will say "this isn't me this is the extremists" and they
are probably right, it is extremist. If you are a woman who has never fell into
this misandric hypocrisy, this doesn't apply to you, but no matter how much you
self label yourself as a feminist, I'm not going to recognise you as such. I
refuse to lump good people in with the bad, and the bad people are not going to
ditch the label of feminism, so if you are a good person, do yourself a favour and
ditch the label, don't associate with the nut jobs, get out of there while you
still can.
I say this because largely I'm owning my own shit here I banged on the feminist
drum myself, until I found enough jigsaw pieces to see a bigger picture and
realised there was a group of people giving me a bad name. Extremists were
claiming MY label applied to them, slandering my good name, Feminism became
their label, so now it took on a new meaning for me I ditched it. Mislabelling
yourself is like an apple claiming to be an orange. Now in my mind I'm an
egalite, and any 'good feminists' well sorry but you are too, you're not
feminists, you don't deserve to get a black spot on your character record, and
the radicals don't deserve decent people like you bolstering their numbers. I don't need to be told I'm inferior to men by other women either, I fail to
see how that can possibly be called empowering, I'm also sick of being called a
traitor, seems to me the group that hates women the most is other women. Now
I'll tell you how I started putting the pieces together, this is going to seem
like a long story but bear with me. One day I was watching the TV when
a string of charity ads came on, I noticed that an overwhelming majority of
children on there were girls. Contraception isn't well used I understand that
but that doesn't mean that there are actually more girls than boys, in
birthrates it's pretty 50/50 give or take. I thought hmm must be the producers
of the campaigns ad thought boys weren't good for the sympathy vote. That was
piece number 1. And it first raised my suspicions. Piece number 2 was when I
saw this;
And
saw absolutely nothing wrong with it, it's not pro-feminism, but neither was it particularly anti-feminism, anti-woman or pro-male.The
logic was sound and I'd been on enough feminist pages to realise "hey
that's true you pretty much 99% of the time never see anything about the male
pill, or anything where men are anything other than a side note of snide
remarks.It's all the
pill, women, rape, abortion, rape, abortion, the pill, oppression, men are
vile, rape, abortion, and more rape." You can be forgiven for thinking I'm
poking fun, if you think "feminism is about equality" but I'm
completely serious about this. I've never seen a feminist site or FB page,
shout about the bias in custody battles, that men are ones that get drafted for
armies, or why men have to pay more for car insurance. If feminism is about
equality then so is my arse. Usually I pride myself in being a
pedantic pain in the arse and poking holes in the logic of other people, but I
couldn't, not with that one. So I started to actually question my part in the
feminist movement. Piece number 3 (or rather piece 1,
because in timescale it was the 1st) was a cold hard hitting reality that was
several years in the making, and this is where I own more shit (it's called
being an adult). I've casually slapped so many of my ex partners, and yes in
retrospect one of them deserved it but still the fact remains, 4
partners, thousands of slaps, and bites and kicks. None of them called the
police. Not one. I'd watched so many sitcoms where it happened it
was almost a comedic reference to copy the characters as a child, I even
flaunted "ha ha can't hit me back I'm a girl" in the playground and
by the time I'd hit adulthood it had sunk in that slapping men was fine, it's
what you did, it was even funny! Then I thought; "No hang on,
that's not right, I can do anything they can (I was and still am a tomboy-girl)
so why are they not hitting me back? Do they think I'm too weak to take
it?"
Click to full view some crazy blow up!
I was infuriated I thought
"how dare they treat me like a weakling, how sexist, they don't think I'm
equal!" But it wasn't that at all, I even asked to be hit back, I had
punched an ex in rage and he just took it, I felt bad, I realised my own
hypocrisy, I wanted to be hit back, after all that was fair. That's what being
equal is all about isn't it? If it flies for one it flies for all? But he
didn't not because he was sexist but because the system was sexist in my
favour. If he called the police on me he'd be a laughing stock, if I called the
police on him it would be an arrest and a criminal record. I looked up the statistics for it
and saw that it was actually pretty common, but I didn't need statistics to
tell me it happened or existed, because I experienced it, I was part of it. And
what is worse is I was the abuser. So much for "weak and feeble
women" huh? Pretending
women are the victim all the time is neither empowering or accurate.It's as if sexism is a one way street but
it isn't, just the majority of people have their blinkers on so they can't see
the oncoming lane.)
More than 40 percent of domestic violence happens to men, but nowhere near that percentage of
anti-domestic-abuse programs efforts or time is given to men, in cases of
domestic violence even when the women is the perpetrator she can do no wrong,
"it's OK she's a woman and he's a man, he can take it, he should take it,
stupid men have had it good for too long".
In reports it looks
like men are more often violent to women than the other way around, but the
key word here is reports, if something is not reported that just means the
stored data doesn't exist, not that what would be reported doesn't happen. Men
often don't report all the times their girlfriends just casually slap them
because society seems to think women hitting men is acceptable, so men either
don't report it because A, nobody will take them seriously (believe them). B,
nobody will take them seriously (do anything about it), and C, nobody will take
them seriously (even ridicule them for being a "wimp", or more
dangerously "not standing up for himself") and yet when he does
defend himself he's called abusive because "a man should NEVER raise his
hand to a woman". Really even if only to shield himself? Just because an
action looks aggressive and scary doesn't make it aggressive.
Some people are scared by horses just because of their physical size and
musculature so when the horse tries to get away from his attacker that makes
him aggressive? Of course not, but it does make him scary. And that is exactly
what society thinks of men who refuse to be taken advantage of they are scary
because they didn't just accept total dominance. Men are also targets of
emotional bullying by false accusation, any non female supremacist view they
express even if not male supremacist either is instantly labelled as men being
sexist against women. Man says "feminism causes more problems than it
solves" Woman says "that's sexist", no it's not, wanting true
equality is about balance. Women often use the slogan "Feminism; the radical
notion that women are people." and that is often seen as a cry for
equality. If men said the paraphrased "Masculinism; the radical notion
that men are people." it would more often be seen as a cry for male
"dominance". And in terms of domestic violence men are
expected to just "man up" translated it means "shut up, you are
male, you don't matter." Now THAT is sexist!
Some "studies" have tried
to accuse men of pregnancy coercion. If you look at it in terms of if it were a
criminal case, it's clear with the "pregnancy coercion" that they
have the wrong suspect, because there is no motive. Men wouldn't poke holes in
condoms if they were not paternal and had no intention of having a child, and
being involved in that child's life "hey lets set myself up
for no visitation and paying 18 years of child support for the hell of it
because I'm bored" said no man ever. Pregnancy coercion is almost always by women for emotional
'stay with me' blackmail, & financial gain.This is also sexist, but society
doesn't seem to notice. There is an elephant in the room and nobody wants to
address the issue in fear or rocking the boat even more.
*Note: Men are not given equal parental leave, this denies men the
time to bond with their children as much as the mother, and it affects women
that don't want to stay at home in that this stops them getting back to their
own careers either at the pace they'd like or indefinitely.This matters because it makes financial
sense to keep someone working for longer because maternity pay is not as much
as a normal working wage in most places and it's currently the way it is
because traditionally women are the ones who give birth (sorry this is a
tradition you CANNOT change) usually need the resting time post birth for
health reasons. This results in the male "dominated" workplace.
Gender roles
need to be challenged for men too. Equality of result in the workplace will
never be achievable with the parental leave laws in their current state,
because women are hardwired by nature to want to have children and more
flexible (not all but most) work hours, usually higher positions on the
corporate ladder are too inflexible and all consuming that women make the
CHOICE not to enter into those roles. Last I checked minimum wage
for me as a waitress is the same as my colleague who is a waiter, if he moved
up to management it would increase, if I moved up to management it would
increase to be the same as my colleague because tada we are doing the same job.
If he has more ambition than me and is cool to sacrifice home time to work the
extra hours that come with the management job and I don't want to loose Jr's
school play time etc then he takes the higher job and I don't. He is now a man
and earning twice as much as me, the sexist bastard(sarcasm). No wonder you aren't going to see
equality of result in the workplace when you don't see equality of ambition and
sacrifice. Of
the women that are working the majority of them all want glamorous jobs in hair
styling, nursing, (small animal)veterinary, office PAs, etc you rarely see
women in farm veterinary, tree surgery, or garbage disposal. Because it's icky,
no good for high heels and they are happy to leave it to the men.
Women
in the western world have equal employment opportunity, but they have to want
it enough to earn it by making sacrifices the same as a man does.Men
are hardwired by nature to be self sacrificing, and give up family time. Male
privilege is an illusion, caused by the fact that men have been making social
sacrifices so long we just don't notice them making these sacrifices anymore.And we unfairly expect men
to make them. (Men aren't always happy about that either, many men would
love to be a stay at home dad.) Because of this illusion of privilege some
women expect to be given higher positions for less effort because under the
illusion of male privilege that looks like it would be "equality",
but in reality it doesn't. It is not that men are sexist to women, it's not
that men are any more privileged. Nature has set us up to be a certain way and
be in certain roles for a very long time and challenging these roles is so new
that current laws have yet to catch up to account for physiological
differences. Please note different does not mean one is better than the other,
or any less deserving, just that they are different. (We are supposed to be a
new society that celebrates differences, but instead there is an erasure
movement that hurts everyone.) And focusing on the new needs of one gender
whilst ignoring the new needs of the other is not going to result in equality,
just a polar supremacy, and that is sexist too. (please view vids on youtube)
Misandry hurts both men and women
just like misogyny hurts both women and men.
I love women's lib, I love men's lib too, I hate "feminism" (fem-supremacism) just as much as I hate
male supremacism. I think human trafficking for sex
slaves is a completely asshole thing to do, and under 18, no-choice
circumcision for both little girls and boys is child abuse. Do I believe in
equal education? Of course I do. As long as it's unbias, true education and not
just some regurgitated brainwash bullcrap. I believe women should have
reproductive rights and equal opportunity to employment and career. However I
believe men should have the right not to pay for offspring he didn't want, and
full visitation to children he did plan for and does financially contribute towards,
if women have the right to abort a baby and dodge responsibility so too should
men have the right not to be "trapped by parenthood".
See this screen cap? You might be
forgiven for thinking I hate abortion, well news flash, I don't. I'm pro
choice. (But that doesn't mean I think it should be the first
choice, and that doesn't mean I think men aren't entitled to an opinion
about it either.) It's good to remember just because someone respects your
choice and won't try and deny your right to choice, doesn't mean they will
always agree with it, or why you made it. Lets not kid ourselves "there
has never been an abortion for purely selfish reasons" because we all know
that to be a lie.
To
quote a friend of mine Re: this picture; "because
ONE woman doesn't want ONE child, her partner should
make the choice to NEVER have ANY child? Yeeeeeeah....ok....." Nice to see I'm not the only one who sees through
this bullshit. Hypocrisy and
pseudo-logic really grinds my gears, fine people can do whatever with their
body, but women can't (and shouldn't) act like it didn't take two to tango and
it's not the guys baby too, (something that
alot of women later claim in court when
they want child support) because genetically it is. Telling men they are
misogynist because they mourn the loss of a prospective child that gets aborted
is just asinine, think of all the women who want a baby and the father doesn't,
said woman says "well poo to you, I want it and you can pay for it",
notice the hypocrisy that she is not called misandric? Women have the end say because it's their body that
carries it, and that is right. Birth can be like being in a car crash, and
parenthood is a BIG responsibility it's not something to be entered into
lightly. But this doesn't mean men have no right to be upset about
the foetus which is genetically his. Just because men have no right to make
laws about women's bodies doesn't mean they aren't entitled to a opinion about
their own child. Expecting a man to have no opinion about something which is
technically also his and just suck it up because you don't care about men, is
SEXIST too!
When I signed up to be a warrior for
gender equality I meant exactly that Gender_Equality, men and women, both, equally, 50/50, and
credit where credit is due to the success of men and women because contrary to
some "feminist" statements we can't actually live without each other.
Like I said I love women's lib, I love men's lib too, I hate
"feminism" (fem-supremacism) just as much as I hate male supremacism.
So I'm not feminist any more, and no I'm not masculinist either..............
I'm still pro-vote, pro-contraception (I even think men should have their own
pill too watch how the "accidental"/coerced pregnancies of
women would drop!) I'm still pro-equal pay (as long as the work is equal) and
prochoice. But I'm also pro-paper-abortions, pro-male-reproductive-rights and
rights for fathers. I'm not going to call it feminism because frankly I suspect
most feminists wouldn't appreciate me being a "traitor of equality"
and would only seek to silence the male issues and anything that doesn't sit
right with their prescribed doctrines! I've rejected any single gender
movement. I'm now an Egalite/Egalitarian, or Equalitist, whatever you want to
call it, it means the same thing. I never thought by being neutral
I'd become a radical.
I need feminism (<sarc), because being told I'm a defenceless child, all my
ideas are results of me being a weak minded woman who has been brainwashed, and
I'm a walking cum receptacle waiting to get used (raped) is so
"empowering"! (Did you know no man has ever said this to me, only
other women?!) Personally I think I'm empowered by
my superb personality and intolerance to bullshit. Gender has nothing to do
with it.
"Men who are unjustly
accused of rape can sometimes gain from the experience." Catherine Comins,
Vassar College Assistant Dean of Student Life in Time, June 3, 1991, p. 52.
"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in
his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." -- Andrea Dworkin
"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of
violence perpetrated against a woman." -- Catherine MacKinnon
Do women
really owe feminism anything?
I see this posed a lot online, not always worded like this but always
suggesting the same points so I thought I'd so a simple Q&A to address
these questions and accusations:
"You
owe Feminism a lot."
Do I?
I don't think so, the suffragettes and suffragists were suffragettes and
suffragists, women's lib, not feminists. They had no concept of the word and
even when it did start being used it was not used in the same
context like it is today. Lets look at it a bit shall we?
"The history of the modern western
feminist movements is divided into three "waves".[9][10]
Each is described as dealing with different aspects of the same feminist
issues. The first wave refers to the movement of the 19th
through early 20th centuries, which dealt mainly with suffrage,
working conditions and educational rights for women and girls.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_feminism)"
These women were not feminists, later feminists posthumously claimed them into
their movement to leach off their successes, and fame to drive their own
campaign. So "valued" by feminists that they were denied recognition
of their own movements individuality.
"The second wave (1960s-1980s) dealt with the
inequality of laws, as well as cultural inequalities and the role of women in
society.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_feminism)"
Ah this is the Feminism I thought I had joined, and the best form of an
imperfect movement as it also freed up the ability for women to go back to work
after birth and men to enjoy more time with their children (and the radicals
were less common in number). Some feminists are still clinging to this 2nd
(technically FIRST)wave (and I did until recently too), but times have moved on
and many of the 3rd wave are doing these women a disservice by association. 2nd
wave feminism was more on the lines of equality and members wanted men and
women to help each other.
"The third wave of feminism (late 1980s-early 2000s
(decade)), is seen as both a continuation of the second wave and a response to
the perceived failures.[11](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_feminism)"
Now what wikipedia doesn't tell you about the 3rd wave (although the use of the
word "perceived" is apt) is that feminism has taken on a different
meaning altogether. Radicals are rife, and the movement has taken on a bitter
man hating tone of female supremacism, and rape paranoia. Feminism has taken on
a new meaning, under which it's biggest achievement has been to create a cult.
I don't benefit from it and I owe it nothing.
"If it
wasn't for feminists there wouldn't be any contraceptive pill, if you hate
feminism you must hate womens reproductive rights!"
This is an informal fallacy.
Margaret Sanger was not a feminist she was an advocate of birth control and
women's health (anybody can be a reproductive rights, and equal opportunity
advocate, AND NOT be a feminist) who did the majority of her work before the
2nd wave (first wave of actual "feminism" when the term was in wider
use). Indeed the actual inventors of the contraceptive pill are men and were
not feminists themselves, further proving the idea of an oppressive patriarchy
to largely be a straw man.
"But
those are just radicals, that's not a reason to abandon feminism"
Really it's sweet that you think that, you're going to tell
me they are rare next. Radicals got into the feminist ranks at every level
(which is why I have so many scrn capped examples, if it's common it's hard to
hide) and incite hatred and advocate violence*, even if other feminists
disregard them at first the subliminal seed has been planted and eventually
more and more people will turn bitter too. Infact it's pretty much already like
that. It used to be that you found the odd radical in feminism (when feminism
used to be about equality) now you find the odd person about equality in
radical feminism (not a separate form of feminism but the transformed version
of the one and the same.)
It's even in the name, Feminism is not about equality otherwise it would be
Equalitism, just look at the word femin-ism and the key word here is
Femin(pertaining to woman ONLY) and here another "femin-";
feminising, fem·i·nize (Verb) Make (something) more characteristic of or associated with women. Induce female
sexual characteristics in (a male). It's about supremacy. It is sly and covert,
but it is. If you don't think it is or subscribe to that
ideal then change the name of it and kick out the man hating radicals. I used
to be a feminist... then I woke up.
"Whatever
you are a traitor!"
A traitor to a movement which is no longer fit for purpose,
run by and associated with misandric hypocrites who sully the name of gender
equality. I fail to see how that is a bad thing. And I fail to see how that
makes me anyless of a woman and a human being.
You can be an advocate for women's rights and not be a feminist, infact if you
are advocating men's rights too it help's if you don't bother calling yourself
a feminist, a lot of feminists would reject you as a woman hater, no matter how
much you push for availability of contraceptives, you like men, you don't want
to chop a peice of your sons penis off, how dare you, you sex traitor!
"Bitches be crazy"
Feminist
anti-choice?
"Feminism is about equality, equality is about
choice." Really? Why then do feminists hate it when women CHOOSE to base
their relationship on traditional roles? Remember freedom isn't freedom if you
force it on people.
"According to Hirshman: "The tasks of housekeeping
and child rearing [are] not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent
and educated human beings. They do not require a great intellect, they are not
honored and they do not involve risks and the rewards that risk brings." -
Huffpost, This is Why So Many People Hate Feminists.
So let me get this right, housework is not important, producing the next generation
of human beings is not amazing, and requires absolutely no knowledge or
expertise at all? Really no risk? How about your kids go out partying and
against your advice take drugs regardless and OD, heartbreak is not a risk?
Creating a whole new person that will in turn contribute to the world and
reciprocate the love you put into them and even care for you in your old age is
not a reward?
"she announced that women graduates of Ivy League
schools who had left their careers to raise families were making the
"wrong choice". There it was laid bare: feminism really isn't about
women having the freedom to make choices. It's about women making the
"right choice" as determined by people like Linda Hirshman. " - Huffpost, This is Why So Many People Hate Feminists.
Housework and motherhood is possibly one of the toughest jobs on the planet,
you are a chef, maid, porter, hygiene maintenance engineer, accountant,
gardener, teacher, child care worker, and therapist all rolled into one. All
jobs that require some form of pre training or certificate. To say that doesn't
require talent or intellect is an affront to every stay at home mother (and
father) on the planet. Without housewives or house husbands people would live
on microwaved meals eaten off dirty dishes, get very ill, and live in their own
filth.
Sure if you are a lonely boring fuck you could work 60 hours
a week and hire a surrogate/sperm donor, cleaner, accountant, and cook, but you
know what's sadder than a sad lonely fuck who has nobody who loves them to come
home to? A sad lonely fuck who has nobody who loves them to come home to and
pays other people for the "privelige".
You aren't single and you and your partner go out to work full time? Please go
on about how retched your kids lives are that they never see you and will feel
the scars of your absence and lack of input for the rest of their lives.
And lets not forget feminists really hate traditional family roles because
traditional family roles are (apparently) dangerous.
"(Unmarried career women) have more opportunity to walk
away from dangerous, immoral, or unfair relationships. A stay-at-home mom
certainly deserves the respect of a martyr, because (again God forbid) if she
is in an abusive, harmful or wholly unsatisfying existance, she’s probably
stuck.". - Click for linked comments.
And they say this BS excuse of an argument as if no married
woman has ever just upped and left and gone to her mothers to file for divorce
before hitting the scene again while claiming alimony or child support. No
woman has ever called the cops on their husband before and had him locked up
giving her a few days to pack up and ship off before he gets back home
<sarc'.
Feminist "logic" will
often paint housewives as inferior, subservient, defenceless. But this is how
feminists (lack) value motherhood and housework, not men. Feminists have a
pseudo(BS)-"logical" explanation for pretty much everything that is
traditionally feminine. Did
you know if you like pink you are anti-feminist scum (google: Pinkstinks)?
If you hate pink you are anti-feminist scum(because feminist symbols are usually pink)? You know what? Fuck feminism with
a cactus strap on.
__________________________
Re:
Surrendered wives.An
aspect of bdsm was dismissed as anti-woman for being pro feminine and against
dominace over men, ("Beware the anti-feminists. ") What feminists
fail to realise is that just because it has surrender in the name doesn't mean
wives and husband were ever truly at war. And it's even biggest blunder is to
not realise it is a movement that empowers women to treat themselves and not
feel guilty if they give into their biological natures, and that any perceived
submission is entirely concensual and women can leave these movements at any
time.
Re: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSIjfnpPCsg
It was clearly not about CHOICE. They didn't ban the "mandatory"
nature to give the muslim women a choice they didn't like it so they banned it
(mandatory non-choice) simple as that.
Don't you know? Feminism isn't about defending a womans
right to choice, when she makes the "wrong" (as defined by?!) choice.
Feminists
hate women who choose to be stay at home mothers, because traditional
apparently just aint girl power! Career feminists hate women that prefer spending time with their kids,
taking part in the miracle of life, creating the next generation of human
beings, and choosing to dedicate their life to them of their own accord! How dare they!
"I thought parents were selfish for taking their pushchairs on the
bus or train at rush hour and should be relegated to only using public
transport at times when the Busy, Important People weren’t around
.... I thought babies and children could easily be ‘controlled’ and that
any kid who threw a tantrum, screamed or cried incessantly was a brat
who needed to be immediately removed from the vicinity of my ears and my
precious public space, of which I was utterly convinced I had dibs on
over a snot-faced two-year-old ... I now know that parents (and kids) have just as many places to be and
just as much right to use public transport, dine at a restaurant, have
coffee on a Sunday morning, go to the cinema, shop at the mall or have
lunch at the pub as those rushing to and from work and those without
children. ... I believed that any woman who stayed at home to take care of her
children was wasting her education, subjugating herself to her husband
and would inevitably become completely boring and obsessed with her
children. I had absolutely no idea about anything to do with the
physical, emotional, social and financial repurcussions of pregnancy,
birth, breastfeeding, maternity leave, the costs and difficulties of
finding quality childcare, or the bonding and primary caregiver role
that is so vital to a new baby’s development.
I had no idea how hard it could be to take a child on a simple errand
without incident, when it wasn’t nap time, meal time, or rush hour. I
had no idea how much pressure parents are under to keep their children
well-behaved, well-mannered, quiet, compliant and taking up as little
space as possible, and what kind of mental strain that puts both the
parents and the children under. I had no idea that one day I would be
thinking back to the glares I have shot at chattering children or the
way I would sometimes mutter under my breath “Jesus, these women and
their pushchairs, they think they own the street,” as two women with
prams came my way, and I would be ashamed of how I behaved, would like
to find those cheerful but noisy children and those women just
struggling to make it through the day with their newborn babies and
unwieldy prams and apologise for my asshattery."(http://noblesavage.me.uk/2009/11/03/on-child-hate-and-feminism/) [ LET IT BE KNOWN; I SALUTE THIS WOMAN.]
Feminist "RIGHT choice" seems to boil down to aborting their
own flesh and blood to grinding misery in a rat-race("career") to
pass their biological clock's last tick childless, and ultimately die alone. Feminists do a great job of alienating other women through
their own hypocritical "us vs them" bullshit, if not by just coming
across as outright pathetic.
My oldest sister has 3 kids and runs a small business. I told her if
she ever calls herself a momtrepreneur I will stop offering to babysit
for free. The look on her face was horrifying and hilarious. I think I
put the fear of god into her.
See also:
http://leidenhousewife.webs.com/apps/blog/show/7222718-feminist-hate-housewives
http://dontmarrycareerwomen.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/dont-worry-men-youre-not-the-only-people-feminists-hate/
http://lunaticoutpost.com/Topic-Feminism-is-a-Hate-Movement-against-the-Housewives
^Especially that last one, complete ad homien and straw man responses.
Am I a MRA?
Fuck no, I don't subscribe to any single movement.
What I do is sift through the bullshit on both sides and defend any truth still
to be found.
There definitely is sexism in the
world, but it is not as straightforward or as clear cut as some like to
suggest. In fact it is often very covert on both sides, though sometimes it's
delivered with as much subtlety as a loony tunes anvil dropped from 50 feet.
I've already stated else where that when I use the word feminist or feminasty
I'm referring to a specific type of person in the feminist ranks, not to be
confused with the nice people who just make what I feel to be a bad judgement
call and throw their lot in and label themselves associates with radicals.
Of course there are radicals in the Mens rights movement too. Some cannot
distinguish the difference between women and feminists. Despite the implication
of Moran's words neither are prerequisites to another, nor are they synonymous,
and the same can be said of men, MRA's and rapists, also not synonymous.
Now I'm not going to tell you you have to reject all feminist ideals if you
aren't a feminist, just because the movement is tainted by hate doesn't mean
there aren't some good people and good ideas in it. Same for the MRM.
I cannot possibly agree with half the stuff Caitlin Moran says, but I bought
her book and gave her a chance, and bar the hypocritical shit parts aside it
was actually kinda enjoyable.
"What is feminism? Simply the belief
that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed,
fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of
course you are."
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
Is clearly just as sexist in it's blanket overview and hypocritical as saying
"men should be pandered to just as much as women, even thought they maybe
hysterical, hormonal, dye and fake tan addicted bimbos."
But that doesn't mean she didn't come out with something golden;
"You can tell whether some
misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring,
'And are the men doing this, as well?' If they aren't, chances are you're
dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as 'some total fucking
bullshit'."
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman
So credit to her there, and ofc with any sex or race you can flip side it and
see two sides to an argument. Just switch the roles.
I've
said it elsewhere you can be pro-contraception, pro-choice, pro-vote,
pro-equal-opportunity and not be a feminist. The point of rejecting feminism
for me was I didn't want radicals speaking for me and claiming to know and
dictating what my ideals were as a feminist. And I see no point being
a part of a group that doesn't fit my ideals. It would be like if art stopped
being about the art and became about some weird lifestyle, I'd say fuck that
shit and leave, but keep on painting. Nobody could stop me, and nobody can stop
me, membership isn't a prerequisite. But although I'm also for male
reproductive and paternity rights, amongst others. I'm not an MRA either, well
I am in the sense of I advocate for mens rights, but I am not a member of the
MRA as a group because there is no sense looking at one side alone. Feminists will rant about the wage
gap and careers but the thing people so often overlook is giving men a greater
paternity leave so their wives can get back to their careers sooner and not
miss out on management or refresher training. would benefit both sexes. I've always thought about equality
being two sided. Unfortunately not a lot of people do. There is a tendency to
develop an US vs THEM attitude, which aside from being unhelpful is also
unhealthy.
Is it any easier to be an Equalitist? Not really it's about as easy as
being bisexual, you will see two sides to the story but you can get negativity
from both sides like biphobia. The problem with the us vs them mentality is
that if you express any view that can be taken as "the other=enemy side
speaking" you will more than likely be jumped upon on principle of you are
not an MRA or you are not a feminist, regardless of whether what you said was
actually sexist (to either) or not.
"I am not a
feminist, but I do believe in the strength of women," - Katy Perry
Katy
Perry is a good example of us vs them mentality. Katy NEVER said she was
against equality. But this STILL upset a lot of feminists and media
personalities in general, some even suggested making this statement meant she
should not have been awarded Woman of the Year, well frankly I think she
deserves it more for that statement than her music.
The problem with this is Feminists
wanted to claim Perry.But she disassociated herself from them.Any group that tries to claim you, is in some aspect trying toown you on atleast some level. Once you are claimed you are easy to use for
their own ends. Even if it is as passive (though equally damaging) as number
bolstering to gain repute and power. This is no different in principal to the
slave trade."I have these X/numbers behind me,
I have status, you must give in to my demands."
But my fave peice of bullshit recently has to be from the feminist ranks.
"Men
shouldn't have the male pill because it will encourage men to rape without
worrying about victims getting pregnant."
Um
pretty sure rapists never cared anyway, DNA can be extracted pregnancy or not.
It wont change anything, other than women won't be able to sperm jack men as
often, keeping men oppressed by a scam pregnancy, emotionally/or legally
blackmailed to stay with women they didn't want a family with and trapped into
giving said women money for upto 18 years.
"If you type the word “equalism” in
a blog’s text box you get that annoying little red line underneath it
indicating that you misspelled something. In other words, the English language
doesn’t officially recognize that word in any dictionary. I suppose this is apt
since for the last 50+ years the effort to feminize society has always used the
abstract concept of gender equalism as something ambient in the background of
the agenda. It doesn’t have an official definition because, collectively, were
supposed to take it as a given; something that should just be considered
“common sense”. To be sure, feminization’s plea for a more humane restructuring
of society has always been couched in terms like “equality”, which sounds
comforting when spoken, even if the intent is distracting." - http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/positive-masculinity-vs-equalism/
Now back to the US vs THEM for a moment and finding merit whatever the source.
I have a friend, and she is (or rather she self labels herself as) a feminist.
I don't consider her one in the radical sense, and she can identify
with and call herself whatever she likes. She is not misandric, nor a raving
loony. She is still holding onto an old idea that "feminism is about equality", which personally I don't buy. (As far as I'm concerned, definitions change and the last time feminism was about equality, gay
meant happy.) But still I'm more
concerned with the substance and content of her actions and views than what she
calls them. She is a "feminist" that expresses some pro-male
perspectives amongst the pro-female, and I dare say she has been attacked by
other feminists for it too. Am I going to disregard her because she's a
"feminist"? No. The only US vs THEM I'm interested in is the one
between the radicals and non-radicals, not "feminists" and MRAs.
