There are photographs you can find on the internet (not going to Google for you) that show how progressive Iran was before 1953. I'm talking about women wearing Western clothing and attending university, completely unaccompanied by a male relative, moving as freely about the institutions of higher learning as Hypatia at Alexander.
Let's see. If we're going to blame a president, who was COC in 1953? Wikipedia? Looking at this graph, I blame Eisenhower (R)!
On the other hand, Eisenhower gave this famous speech warning about the Military-Industrial Complex in 1961, so the rest of the story is likely quite complicated.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial [sic] complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Would you allow Ford to design an automotive engineering course that danced around the actual principles of operation of internal combustion engines (2-stroke/4-stroke, carburetor/fuel injector, petrol/diesel, timing, intake/exhaust systems, operation of turbochargers for diesel, etc) the left the student out of their depth when presented with a Mitsubishi or Volvo design?
That being said, I always bring my Ford car to the Ford dealership because all the independent garages around here are incompetent scumbags, and I've come to trust in the dealership to ensure that its mechanics are at least experts on engine models used by Ford.
So, such a class does have limited value.
I, for one, and sick of the masses of MSCEs who can't function when I start talking about the LDAP, Kerberos, and CIFS components of Active Directory as separate systems and have conniptions when I even get close to mentioning that I can join my Linux box to their domain just fine. Given that there's nothing I can do about the mystification of computers as magical palantirs, as I've been saying, I'll just select a more rewarding career like flipping burgers.
Fuck 'em. The media and big players have no respect for those of us who know how information systems work from the low level to the high level. I'm not claiming to be an expert in everything. If I were still interested in the field, I would be studying distributed algorithms and protocols, high availability, and dynamic scalability. I would also like to know more about machine learning, machine vision, and natural language processing. All I'm saying is that I am tired of the constant mystification of computing and dancing around the fucking basics like filesystems, file formats, basic internetworking, memory management, data structures, etc and the constant trivialization of those subjects in the media in favor of the latest insecure shiny from Apple or Microsoft.
Sure, I can make a Disney princess ice skate with a few drag drops and clicks. Big fucking deal. Apparently that's all that's necessary to be a computer expert these days. I'm not tolerating it, but I'm also not sticking around to weather it.
To get back to the analogy: would you trust a mechanic who can't completely tear an engine down and rebuild it? What if that were the kind of lack of knowledge and skill Ford were passing off as fully-certified technicians? (No idea if this is actually the case, but the mechanics at my dealership seem to have a very good grasp on WTF they're doing and have never once led me down a $1,000+ we're not sure if that's the problem but give us $300 and we'll do $this which may or may not fix it goose chase.) What if the president changed the oil in his car and started calling himself a mechanic on national TV?
See, here we go. Somebody points out the obvious that this is a machine. Then you react and presume them to be a misogynist who routinely abuses women. This shuts down dialog.
Maybe you haven't run into the kind of "man"-hating TERF brand of feminism that's the only kind of feminism I could be certain existed up until recently. There's a difference between expecting to be treated as an equal and lashing out at anyone assigned the male gender at birth for being "incomplete beings" to the point of being able to implement obviously sexist policies.
Now you'll turn around and accuse me of routinely abusing women because you think I think a sexual harassment policy constitutes sexism. In general, the sexual harassment training I've had is similar to rape cultures: presume that by default men are sexually abusive to women. There's no room for individuality, but at least on paper sexual harassment policies are fair. You're even informed that "don't rape/sexually harass" is not a good enough tactic to ensure one doesn't end up on the wrong side of one of those policies. How often that really happens--somebody innocent being targeted--I don't know. It does happen with rape cultures.
What on earth was I supposed to conclude about feminism? Sure scared me away from worrying about making friends with a woman. Professional contacts who are women I've found end up being risks and not necessarily because of any of their actions or my actions. It's a shame since most of my childhood friends were girls.
Actual feminism is a breath of fresh air.
Instead my female co-workers persist in using sexist language (the plumber must be a man/the receptionist must be a woman) to the point I've given up. If they're not willing to fix their own internalized misogyny, there's nothing I can do to help that won't get them angry at me. Then TERFs retaliate against me because obviously as a "man," I must have personally put that misogyny there and my silence constitutes being complicit.
The "all men" thing wasn't made up from whole cloth by reactionaries, at least not by reactionaries who also call themselves feminists. I've been told many times that despite what I may think or believe, that I am "all men" and that's final. You can go lalalala, that's unpossible, "all men" doesn't exist, but that only lends credibility to the idea that TERFs are representative of feminism.
But nope, you'll reply that my complaint is that women desire to be treated like people without reading what I wrote at all.
It's hopeless really. The media goes Everyone Can Code! Somebody goes "I wanna be a programmer!" So we get a nifty Disney princess turtle.
Then the first time somebody comes along and says, "I need something that will let me schedule at 10 hospital networks that have 20 hospitals each with 100 different departments that need on call for 4-5 shifts each" it ends in tears with everybody accusing everybody else of being sexist and racist.
Well that escalated quickly! Would you please elaborate? What do big banks have do to with this one?
I mean, they've been interested in developing a blockchain of their own, but that seemed like a stretch. Are you saying they're crowd sourcing their effort?
I've noticed the same thing but pretty much everywhere I look. Small stupid tweaks here or there that change nothing but hey, without those, I wouldn't have a job either. What's the alternative to having a large economy of people doing useless jobs that contribute nothing to the world? It's almost as though we could just pay a large number of people to just stay home and pursue a hobby.
We can't have universal basic income, though! That's communism, and the wrong person might get a free lunch! Also didn't you know?! If somebody doesn't have to work making somebody else money for a living, they just spend all their time doing drugs and getting drunk! So, we'll all continue to be employed, rearranging our UIs every few years, changing the reasons for absence available on an absence request form, switching the position of the email and phone inputs to where they were 3 months ago, etc, but we can all rest assured that nobody will get a free lunch.
The only thing I'd like to point out is that you should head to flyover country and talk to some of those low income women. They typically have their first baby between 17-19 years old. Often their mothers provide guidance about how to get all the assistance they need from the government even to the point of having no need for employment in some cases.
I'd say on average there are at least 3 fathers involved by the time she's had her 4th child. They literally recruit fathers by promising them that they just want a baby and won't try to get child support. Liars.
Those people themselves are pro-birth. I have no sympathy for their stupidity and closed-minded reactionary authoritarian mindsets. They are not victims by any measure.
It's one of the reasons I still have some support for the capital L Libertarian party. Gut all the welfare programs and let these stupid, inbred, lead-poisoned, dipshit talking apes starve to death.
If I had any more faith in this species, I'd say I was a bleeding heart libertarian who wants a universal basic income.
you are free to raise the fetus from a test tube yourself, because you shall not force a woman to be an incubator.
So much this. Except that raises the possibility of a trans woman being a legitimate mother. They would never allow this.
Sure, this will get modded to oblivion. Feel free to keep impoverishing yourself, USA, with your own stupidity so the wrong person won't get a free lunch. This especially applies to the assholes in flyover country. When the system comes crashing down, you will deserve every single death that happens.
Me? When it happens, best case, I'll be somewhere civilized like Germany. I'll make some popcorn for you. If I'm still here, I'll play the world's tiniest violin as I watch you kill yourselves because a number in a computer was too small.
Well, it all depends on whether you're a feminist or a Michigan-style FEEL GUILTY "feminist." Feminism is now solidly, I hope, as long as PTSD doesn't happen to me, and I will try to fight the PTSD, a positive term in my mind. I'm sorry I was confused for so many years about what feminism actually stands for. It won't happen again.
I had forgotten that AmiMoJo had revealed his gender. If it matters to you, I prefer to use feminine pronouns to describe somebody whose gender I am unsure of.
There was not a single thing in AmiMoJo's reply to my feelings about rape cultures that I disagree with.
This is an adequate rephrasing. May I make you my editor?
No wymyn crap here. Wymyn crap is what got this whole mess started roughly 25+ years ago, at least for me personally. It's destroyed two lives so far. I'm pushing a boulder up Mt. Purgatory for the slight chance of salvaging either of those lives.
Even if I die in a gutter at the end of it all, I will not blame feminism, only the TERF liars and bigots who convinced me that my target was feminism as a whole.
Let me help. This might take a few moments since I'll need to go back through my posting history for a couple of months back. Ah, the value of set-in-stone history. It's very difficult to gaslight when dealing with that. Also I'd like to put up here that I have confirmed pretty much beyond a doubt that my recent quarrels have merely been with a group of bigots who are butthurt about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and other organizations they wanted to be womyn-born-womyn only shutting down. Their actions in no way reflect the larger feminist movement, so I'm sorry to have dragged the entire movement and the lesbian demographic through the mud, especially for nearly the entirety of my 15/16-ish year posting history. I simply had no reason to disbelieve the lies that vocal minority of bigots had led me to believe as truth. It won't happen again.
Before we get into the meat and potatoes here, I would like to point out that AmiMoJo has offered me his condolences before and asked if there anything he could do to help. I don't believe AmiMoJo is an un-redeemable person. I also realize that I have a high UID and even then, this site is like the big city. I don't expect anyone to remember who I am. I'd only expect somebody to have some idea who I am over in the small town that the red site is.
However, I do believe he is a sexist who has closed his mind to viewpoints that disagree with him, and he needs to become aware of that fact, if only to improve his arguments and better protect girls without giving somebody like me, whose experiences I can only assume have been the polar opposite of his, the wrong impression.
I posted this comment about rape cultures. (My views on feminism have started changing again now that the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is no more, and I've become convinced that I've just managed to run afoul of a vocal minority of local bigots, some of which happen to be homosexual. The post apprising me of the end of the MWMF is in that thread.) I think AmiMoJo simply got triggered.
I wrote:
What rape culture really means I've come to find doesn't really have anything to do with the act of rape. It's about FEEL GUILTY!
Somehow AmiMoJo managed to arrive at these gems and completely missed the fact that I offered for anyone to call their state university and ask to sit in on a rape culture presentation. I was required to attend a rape culture presentation by Grand Valley State University during orientation solely because of my gender on paper (all though, I hadn't fully realized at that point I was a woman, which made the presentation even more offensive and painful for me since I figured I was stuck as a guy forever and the only way out was suicide, which I very nearly carried through with a few times a year later).
All this crap about feeling guilty and oppressing men is just that, crap. If you feel guilty because someone pointed out to you that you should really get informed, enthusiastic consent before getting physical, you have to ask yourself why that makes you uncomfortable.
I'm a guy. When I touch a woman I want her to be happy about it, to enjoy it, to feel my expression of love or lust or whatever. Does this make me some kind of "pussy" or beta male? Is making her unhappy really the "masculine", manly thing to do? Or even the moral thing to do?
(Emphasis mine.)
Note, if one reads AmiMoJo's comment without any context, it makes a large amount of sense. I agree with everything he said more or less. That's what made the reply completely confusing to read.
See my (quite lengthy even for me) reply to that for more details about why AmiMoJo completely missed the target by posti
You can believe I think this all day long, but if you do, you've only demonstrated to me that you're a sexist. I will also not feel guilty about sexism, because I am not a sexist. I will be happy to consider you an asshole, however, should that be the case.
I realize my sarcasm detector is still in the shop.
I'm not going to try to find the other discussion right now but probably when I get home so I can link it here. There was not a single thing in AmiMoJo's reply to my feelings about rape cultures that I disagree with her/him about. Unfortunately, she/he posted what looked like a pre-written reply meant for somebody else. Maybe he/she just replied to the wrong comment and decided to quote stuff at random from my comment, but it would be nice to have confirmation of that since that would seem to be a bit extraordinary.
So this is the real trouble. When people like you and AmiMoJo believe you know what I believe and feel better than I do, you shut down communication. If I am somebody who sexually abuses women and doesn't care what women feel, maybe I should just stop reporting sexual harassment when a colleague tells me they've been sexually harassed.
I feel bad that the person got sexually harassed. I feel sorry for the person who was harassed. I feel angry at the individual, who is not me, that sexually harassed her/him, doubly so because that particular gaslighting asshole manager is directly, personally responsible for running a woman out of tech.
(If I could trust internet lynch mobs to accurately hit a target, I probably would have named him here and on the red site when I found out why the victim resigned. The asshole had retaliated against her and doubled down on the psychological abuse until she couldn't take it anymore and resigned. I had been worried the whole time after she resigned that I had done something wrong and offended her in some way I did not have a chance to apologize for. I will own up to one major mistake between her and I but hopefully that was history at that point. It also wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been informed by another feminist that I was considered a sexist and that I think that women shouldn't program computers. See? The cycle of hate goes.)
I just simply don't feel guilty for the actions and words of others. I am an individual. I think my own thoughts. I believe my own beliefs. Anybody is free to ask about them any time. Anybody who tries to tell me what I believe and don't believe is sooner or later going to cross the line and demonstrate that they are calling me a sexist or sexual harasser or rapist not because of anything I've done, but because they are the one who is a sexist asshole.
This type of racial discrimination is the SJW way of combatting racism.
Yup. Another tool in my bigot detector kit is watching for "two wrongs make a right" reasoning.
you are white, and male
Slight correction, but I guess it would depend who you ask. Yeah, I know there are no women on the internet. I may play dress up and present as male for my current job but most people I know outside of work use female pronouns for me--pretty much anybody except my parents and TERFs. Personally I guess I don't care any more right up until I'm being held accountable for the actions and words of others. Gender is in the eye of the beholder.
In my mind it just goes to further highlight how detached from reality the SJW is. The SJW says, if you're not a rapist, you don't need to feel guilty about rape. I relate an experience with a rape culture and how they try to make you feel guilty about rape. The I get condescended to and presumed to sexually abuse women (perhaps proving my point about what rape culture really is). WTF. I'm hoping AmiMoJo either replied to my other comment since the last time I checked or will reply here.
My suggestion would be to stop accepting social justice war bait. It may generate clicks and comments as everybody reposts the same conversation once more, but on the other hand it makes me seriously wonder why I even come here anymore. The topic itself is toxic. For a while it was mildly amusing at least.
This site is close to going back into my hosts file. I forgot if I left it in my bio, but I am trying to get out of tech as fast as I can because of the social justice war. I am simply sick of being presumed a sexist. It makes me uncomfortable when others presume I hold beliefs I don't and try to shame me to my face (not just this site but IRL) without even asking about my beliefs because the media and other sources for whatever reason have decided to throw programmers under the bus. I can't change how I was born or which fields are popular among women, but I can change how I make a living and switch to a career like burger flipping where I won't be presumed to be a sexist. I've also been on the receiving end of sexism that had very real material consequences for me many times. etc, etc.
It also distresses me that tech has lost 2 women I know because of asshole managers, and it will lose another one when I'm ready to leave tech due to the social justice war itself. Yet, nobody seems to be worried about the asshole managers or the fallout of this war.
Another alternative would be to categorize it somehow and give me an option to hide it. I know we can do that with different topics, but I don't for example want to hide all political stories or all video/board game stories. I think the trouble with that would be that the category may wind up too broad (like topics are) or too narrow to be of reliable use for my purposes.
I don't mind the occasional "yay, we made progress!" article. It's the "so-and-so is a sexist!" and "so-and-so hates women!" and "everyone can code!" and "programmers are pro rape!" articles that get under my skin.
It would also be advisable that when somebody relates the experience of a college campus being a hostile environment due to say a rape culture, to not presume they're a heterosexual male who sexually abuses women.
I find your speech offensive in that you believe that it's not possible for somebody assigned the male gender at birth to be a victim of sexism.
I find your speech annoying in that you desire to shut down any and all dialog about whether it's right to presume somebody is a sexual harasser and a rapist based either on their legal gender or what you presume their gender and sexual orientation are.
This is how we got into this mess in the first place.
I am an individual, and I will answer for no crime I have not committed. I will not feel guilty because of my assigned gender at birth. I will not feel guilty because women do not choose programming careers, because I am not the gaslighting asshole managers people like you keep mistaking me for who is chasing women out of tech. I will not feel guilty about rape, because I am not a rapist. I will not feel guilty about sexual harassment, because I do not sexually harass.
Let me use a better term than our ill-defined 3 letter acronym to describe you. You are a sexist. Plain and simple.
rape epidemic moral panic... campus sexual assault kangaroo courts
The term rape culture accurately sums up these things.
Here's the thing. This is sort of my bigot detector kit. Criticize a rape culture for creating a hostile environment, and somebody will fly out of the woodwork and leap to the conclusion that one is:
#1 Male #2 Heterosexual #3 Sexually abusive towards women
That's how one knows one has a bigot on one's hands. Apparently if the environment is hostile towards trans women and men, who are informed by university policy that they are already considered guilty of rape, that the task campus officials have is one of actively trying to catching you in the act, that they have their eye on you are are trying to find some excuse to expel you after taking your money, it doesn't count.
It's telling that expulsions and suspensions because of rape cultures don't lead to criminal prosecutions.
Another way to use the bigot detector kit is to ping on someone completely misinterpreting what Cleese is saying here to conclude he's an asshole. He might be an asshole. I find him to be funny as hell.
Basically, if somebody who is not of the correct demographic raises a concern about wrongful pro/persecution or notes that they feel they are in a hostile environment with unfair policies, and that's the basis for somebody else to conclude that the person raising the concern not only has never been on the receiving end of sexism but acts unethically or rudely on a daily basis, that somebody else, not the person raising the concern who's of the wrong demographic, is a bigot, plain and simple.
But hey, I'll never have the privilege of being unaware of what it's like on the receiving end of sexism and sexual harassment!
I guess I'll have to come back in an hour or so when the real gems are posted.
Fwiw, I tell guys who are attracted to me that it doesn't mean they're homosexual. Unfortunately, you've just demonstrated that you're the transphobic one here.
I mean, seriously, I don't get it. You lash out at trans women for the actions of a demographic that hates them as much as you do.
But why roads? Of all the places we could put solar panels, why roads? I mean, I just can't comprehend how this is even a proposal in the first place. I haven't been able to since the first time I heard about the idea, and I still can't. There are too many things that can go wrong, too much engineering involved. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine. The solar panels are better on my roof and in my backyard. If we want solar power from roads, then why not just mount the panels on poles along the roadway?
Slashdot Mirror
Bwahahaha! I expect better out of you, Cold Fjord!
From Wikipedia:
In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected as the prime minister. He became enormously popular in Iran, after he nationalized Iran's petroleum industry and oil reserves. He was deposed in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, an Anglo-American covert operation that marked the first time the US had overthrown a foreign government during the Cold War.
There are photographs you can find on the internet (not going to Google for you) that show how progressive Iran was before 1953. I'm talking about women wearing Western clothing and attending university, completely unaccompanied by a male relative, moving as freely about the institutions of higher learning as Hypatia at Alexander.
Let's see. If we're going to blame a president, who was COC in 1953? Wikipedia? Looking at this graph, I blame Eisenhower (R)!
On the other hand, Eisenhower gave this famous speech warning about the Military-Industrial Complex in 1961, so the rest of the story is likely quite complicated.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial [sic] complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
--D. Eisenhower. January, 1961.
Well, it was a nice spring, but it seems to have given summer and fall a miss and gone straight on to winter again!
Would you allow Ford to design an automotive engineering course that danced around the actual principles of operation of internal combustion engines (2-stroke/4-stroke, carburetor/fuel injector, petrol/diesel, timing, intake/exhaust systems, operation of turbochargers for diesel, etc) the left the student out of their depth when presented with a Mitsubishi or Volvo design?
That being said, I always bring my Ford car to the Ford dealership because all the independent garages around here are incompetent scumbags, and I've come to trust in the dealership to ensure that its mechanics are at least experts on engine models used by Ford.
So, such a class does have limited value.
I, for one, and sick of the masses of MSCEs who can't function when I start talking about the LDAP, Kerberos, and CIFS components of Active Directory as separate systems and have conniptions when I even get close to mentioning that I can join my Linux box to their domain just fine. Given that there's nothing I can do about the mystification of computers as magical palantirs, as I've been saying, I'll just select a more rewarding career like flipping burgers.
Fuck 'em. The media and big players have no respect for those of us who know how information systems work from the low level to the high level. I'm not claiming to be an expert in everything. If I were still interested in the field, I would be studying distributed algorithms and protocols, high availability, and dynamic scalability. I would also like to know more about machine learning, machine vision, and natural language processing. All I'm saying is that I am tired of the constant mystification of computing and dancing around the fucking basics like filesystems, file formats, basic internetworking, memory management, data structures, etc and the constant trivialization of those subjects in the media in favor of the latest insecure shiny from Apple or Microsoft.
Sure, I can make a Disney princess ice skate with a few drag drops and clicks. Big fucking deal. Apparently that's all that's necessary to be a computer expert these days. I'm not tolerating it, but I'm also not sticking around to weather it.
To get back to the analogy: would you trust a mechanic who can't completely tear an engine down and rebuild it? What if that were the kind of lack of knowledge and skill Ford were passing off as fully-certified technicians? (No idea if this is actually the case, but the mechanics at my dealership seem to have a very good grasp on WTF they're doing and have never once led me down a $1,000+ we're not sure if that's the problem but give us $300 and we'll do $this which may or may not fix it goose chase.) What if the president changed the oil in his car and started calling himself a mechanic on national TV?
No it isn't.
*ducks*
Yes it is!
Disregard. I suck cocks. Wrong comment and citation already provided above.
Citation provided!
See, here we go. Somebody points out the obvious that this is a machine. Then you react and presume them to be a misogynist who routinely abuses women. This shuts down dialog.
Maybe you haven't run into the kind of "man"-hating TERF brand of feminism that's the only kind of feminism I could be certain existed up until recently. There's a difference between expecting to be treated as an equal and lashing out at anyone assigned the male gender at birth for being "incomplete beings" to the point of being able to implement obviously sexist policies.
Now you'll turn around and accuse me of routinely abusing women because you think I think a sexual harassment policy constitutes sexism. In general, the sexual harassment training I've had is similar to rape cultures: presume that by default men are sexually abusive to women. There's no room for individuality, but at least on paper sexual harassment policies are fair. You're even informed that "don't rape/sexually harass" is not a good enough tactic to ensure one doesn't end up on the wrong side of one of those policies. How often that really happens--somebody innocent being targeted--I don't know. It does happen with rape cultures.
What on earth was I supposed to conclude about feminism? Sure scared me away from worrying about making friends with a woman. Professional contacts who are women I've found end up being risks and not necessarily because of any of their actions or my actions. It's a shame since most of my childhood friends were girls.
Actual feminism is a breath of fresh air.
Instead my female co-workers persist in using sexist language (the plumber must be a man/the receptionist must be a woman) to the point I've given up. If they're not willing to fix their own internalized misogyny, there's nothing I can do to help that won't get them angry at me. Then TERFs retaliate against me because obviously as a "man," I must have personally put that misogyny there and my silence constitutes being complicit.
The "all men" thing wasn't made up from whole cloth by reactionaries, at least not by reactionaries who also call themselves feminists. I've been told many times that despite what I may think or believe, that I am "all men" and that's final. You can go lalalala, that's unpossible, "all men" doesn't exist, but that only lends credibility to the idea that TERFs are representative of feminism.
But nope, you'll reply that my complaint is that women desire to be treated like people without reading what I wrote at all.
Yeah, just like they did in Dearborn, MI. The more of this reactionary drivel I read, the less I believe it.
It's hopeless really. The media goes Everyone Can Code! Somebody goes "I wanna be a programmer!" So we get a nifty Disney princess turtle.
Then the first time somebody comes along and says, "I need something that will let me schedule at 10 hospital networks that have 20 hospitals each with 100 different departments that need on call for 4-5 shifts each" it ends in tears with everybody accusing everybody else of being sexist and racist.
Yup. Pirated Windows 8.1 here. The tile menu thing works pretty well for launching games. Not sure what your point was otherwise.
Well that escalated quickly! Would you please elaborate? What do big banks have do to with this one?
I mean, they've been interested in developing a blockchain of their own, but that seemed like a stretch. Are you saying they're crowd sourcing their effort?
I've noticed the same thing but pretty much everywhere I look. Small stupid tweaks here or there that change nothing but hey, without those, I wouldn't have a job either. What's the alternative to having a large economy of people doing useless jobs that contribute nothing to the world? It's almost as though we could just pay a large number of people to just stay home and pursue a hobby.
We can't have universal basic income, though! That's communism, and the wrong person might get a free lunch! Also didn't you know?! If somebody doesn't have to work making somebody else money for a living, they just spend all their time doing drugs and getting drunk! So, we'll all continue to be employed, rearranging our UIs every few years, changing the reasons for absence available on an absence request form, switching the position of the email and phone inputs to where they were 3 months ago, etc, but we can all rest assured that nobody will get a free lunch.
All of your points are 100% true.
The only thing I'd like to point out is that you should head to flyover country and talk to some of those low income women. They typically have their first baby between 17-19 years old. Often their mothers provide guidance about how to get all the assistance they need from the government even to the point of having no need for employment in some cases.
I'd say on average there are at least 3 fathers involved by the time she's had her 4th child. They literally recruit fathers by promising them that they just want a baby and won't try to get child support. Liars.
Those people themselves are pro-birth. I have no sympathy for their stupidity and closed-minded reactionary authoritarian mindsets. They are not victims by any measure.
It's one of the reasons I still have some support for the capital L Libertarian party. Gut all the welfare programs and let these stupid, inbred, lead-poisoned, dipshit talking apes starve to death.
If I had any more faith in this species, I'd say I was a bleeding heart libertarian who wants a universal basic income.
you are free to raise the fetus from a test tube yourself, because you shall not force a woman to be an incubator.
So much this. Except that raises the possibility of a trans woman being a legitimate mother. They would never allow this.
Sure, this will get modded to oblivion. Feel free to keep impoverishing yourself, USA, with your own stupidity so the wrong person won't get a free lunch. This especially applies to the assholes in flyover country. When the system comes crashing down, you will deserve every single death that happens.
Me? When it happens, best case, I'll be somewhere civilized like Germany. I'll make some popcorn for you. If I'm still here, I'll play the world's tiniest violin as I watch you kill yourselves because a number in a computer was too small.
Well, it all depends on whether you're a feminist or a Michigan-style FEEL GUILTY "feminist." Feminism is now solidly, I hope, as long as PTSD doesn't happen to me, and I will try to fight the PTSD, a positive term in my mind. I'm sorry I was confused for so many years about what feminism actually stands for. It won't happen again.
I had forgotten that AmiMoJo had revealed his gender. If it matters to you, I prefer to use feminine pronouns to describe somebody whose gender I am unsure of.
There was not a single thing in AmiMoJo's reply to my feelings about rape cultures that I disagree with.
This is an adequate rephrasing. May I make you my editor?
No wymyn crap here. Wymyn crap is what got this whole mess started roughly 25+ years ago, at least for me personally. It's destroyed two lives so far. I'm pushing a boulder up Mt. Purgatory for the slight chance of salvaging either of those lives.
Even if I die in a gutter at the end of it all, I will not blame feminism, only the TERF liars and bigots who convinced me that my target was feminism as a whole.
Let me help. This might take a few moments since I'll need to go back through my posting history for a couple of months back. Ah, the value of set-in-stone history. It's very difficult to gaslight when dealing with that. Also I'd like to put up here that I have confirmed pretty much beyond a doubt that my recent quarrels have merely been with a group of bigots who are butthurt about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and other organizations they wanted to be womyn-born-womyn only shutting down. Their actions in no way reflect the larger feminist movement, so I'm sorry to have dragged the entire movement and the lesbian demographic through the mud, especially for nearly the entirety of my 15/16-ish year posting history. I simply had no reason to disbelieve the lies that vocal minority of bigots had led me to believe as truth. It won't happen again.
Before we get into the meat and potatoes here, I would like to point out that AmiMoJo has offered me his condolences before and asked if there anything he could do to help. I don't believe AmiMoJo is an un-redeemable person. I also realize that I have a high UID and even then, this site is like the big city. I don't expect anyone to remember who I am. I'd only expect somebody to have some idea who I am over in the small town that the red site is.
The thread is here.
However, I do believe he is a sexist who has closed his mind to viewpoints that disagree with him, and he needs to become aware of that fact, if only to improve his arguments and better protect girls without giving somebody like me, whose experiences I can only assume have been the polar opposite of his, the wrong impression.
I posted this comment about rape cultures. (My views on feminism have started changing again now that the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is no more, and I've become convinced that I've just managed to run afoul of a vocal minority of local bigots, some of which happen to be homosexual. The post apprising me of the end of the MWMF is in that thread.) I think AmiMoJo simply got triggered.
I wrote:
What rape culture really means I've come to find doesn't really have anything to do with the act of rape. It's about FEEL GUILTY!
Somehow AmiMoJo managed to arrive at these gems and completely missed the fact that I offered for anyone to call their state university and ask to sit in on a rape culture presentation. I was required to attend a rape culture presentation by Grand Valley State University during orientation solely because of my gender on paper (all though, I hadn't fully realized at that point I was a woman, which made the presentation even more offensive and painful for me since I figured I was stuck as a guy forever and the only way out was suicide, which I very nearly carried through with a few times a year later).
All this crap about feeling guilty and oppressing men is just that, crap. If you feel guilty because someone pointed out to you that you should really get informed, enthusiastic consent before getting physical, you have to ask yourself why that makes you uncomfortable.
I'm a guy. When I touch a woman I want her to be happy about it, to enjoy it, to feel my expression of love or lust or whatever. Does this make me some kind of "pussy" or beta male? Is making her unhappy really the "masculine", manly thing to do? Or even the moral thing to do?
(Emphasis mine.)
Note, if one reads AmiMoJo's comment without any context, it makes a large amount of sense. I agree with everything he said more or less. That's what made the reply completely confusing to read.
See my (quite lengthy even for me) reply to that for more details about why AmiMoJo completely missed the target by posti
I mean, they are just asking for it
You can believe I think this all day long, but if you do, you've only demonstrated to me that you're a sexist. I will also not feel guilty about sexism, because I am not a sexist. I will be happy to consider you an asshole, however, should that be the case.
I realize my sarcasm detector is still in the shop.
I'm not going to try to find the other discussion right now but probably when I get home so I can link it here. There was not a single thing in AmiMoJo's reply to my feelings about rape cultures that I disagree with her/him about. Unfortunately, she/he posted what looked like a pre-written reply meant for somebody else. Maybe he/she just replied to the wrong comment and decided to quote stuff at random from my comment, but it would be nice to have confirmation of that since that would seem to be a bit extraordinary.
So this is the real trouble. When people like you and AmiMoJo believe you know what I believe and feel better than I do, you shut down communication. If I am somebody who sexually abuses women and doesn't care what women feel, maybe I should just stop reporting sexual harassment when a colleague tells me they've been sexually harassed.
I feel bad that the person got sexually harassed. I feel sorry for the person who was harassed. I feel angry at the individual, who is not me, that sexually harassed her/him, doubly so because that particular gaslighting asshole manager is directly, personally responsible for running a woman out of tech.
(If I could trust internet lynch mobs to accurately hit a target, I probably would have named him here and on the red site when I found out why the victim resigned. The asshole had retaliated against her and doubled down on the psychological abuse until she couldn't take it anymore and resigned. I had been worried the whole time after she resigned that I had done something wrong and offended her in some way I did not have a chance to apologize for. I will own up to one major mistake between her and I but hopefully that was history at that point. It also wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been informed by another feminist that I was considered a sexist and that I think that women shouldn't program computers. See? The cycle of hate goes.)
I just simply don't feel guilty for the actions and words of others. I am an individual. I think my own thoughts. I believe my own beliefs. Anybody is free to ask about them any time. Anybody who tries to tell me what I believe and don't believe is sooner or later going to cross the line and demonstrate that they are calling me a sexist or sexual harasser or rapist not because of anything I've done, but because they are the one who is a sexist asshole.
This type of racial discrimination is the SJW way of combatting racism.
Yup. Another tool in my bigot detector kit is watching for "two wrongs make a right" reasoning.
you are white, and male
Slight correction, but I guess it would depend who you ask. Yeah, I know there are no women on the internet. I may play dress up and present as male for my current job but most people I know outside of work use female pronouns for me--pretty much anybody except my parents and TERFs. Personally I guess I don't care any more right up until I'm being held accountable for the actions and words of others. Gender is in the eye of the beholder.
In my mind it just goes to further highlight how detached from reality the SJW is. The SJW says, if you're not a rapist, you don't need to feel guilty about rape. I relate an experience with a rape culture and how they try to make you feel guilty about rape. The I get condescended to and presumed to sexually abuse women (perhaps proving my point about what rape culture really is). WTF. I'm hoping AmiMoJo either replied to my other comment since the last time I checked or will reply here.
I didn't read the other 1200+ comments.
My suggestion would be to stop accepting social justice war bait. It may generate clicks and comments as everybody reposts the same conversation once more, but on the other hand it makes me seriously wonder why I even come here anymore. The topic itself is toxic. For a while it was mildly amusing at least.
This site is close to going back into my hosts file. I forgot if I left it in my bio, but I am trying to get out of tech as fast as I can because of the social justice war. I am simply sick of being presumed a sexist. It makes me uncomfortable when others presume I hold beliefs I don't and try to shame me to my face (not just this site but IRL) without even asking about my beliefs because the media and other sources for whatever reason have decided to throw programmers under the bus. I can't change how I was born or which fields are popular among women, but I can change how I make a living and switch to a career like burger flipping where I won't be presumed to be a sexist. I've also been on the receiving end of sexism that had very real material consequences for me many times. etc, etc.
It also distresses me that tech has lost 2 women I know because of asshole managers, and it will lose another one when I'm ready to leave tech due to the social justice war itself. Yet, nobody seems to be worried about the asshole managers or the fallout of this war.
Another alternative would be to categorize it somehow and give me an option to hide it. I know we can do that with different topics, but I don't for example want to hide all political stories or all video/board game stories. I think the trouble with that would be that the category may wind up too broad (like topics are) or too narrow to be of reliable use for my purposes.
I don't mind the occasional "yay, we made progress!" article. It's the "so-and-so is a sexist!" and "so-and-so hates women!" and "everyone can code!" and "programmers are pro rape!" articles that get under my skin.
who are chasing women out of tech
That was almost pithy. Oh well.
I doubt there's anything I can say to effectively communicate how livid I am.
It would also be advisable that when somebody relates the experience of a college campus being a hostile environment due to say a rape culture, to not presume they're a heterosexual male who sexually abuses women.
I find your speech offensive in that you believe that it's not possible for somebody assigned the male gender at birth to be a victim of sexism.
I find your speech annoying in that you desire to shut down any and all dialog about whether it's right to presume somebody is a sexual harasser and a rapist based either on their legal gender or what you presume their gender and sexual orientation are.
This is how we got into this mess in the first place.
I am an individual, and I will answer for no crime I have not committed. I will not feel guilty because of my assigned gender at birth. I will not feel guilty because women do not choose programming careers, because I am not the gaslighting asshole managers people like you keep mistaking me for who is chasing women out of tech. I will not feel guilty about rape, because I am not a rapist. I will not feel guilty about sexual harassment, because I do not sexually harass.
Let me use a better term than our ill-defined 3 letter acronym to describe you. You are a sexist. Plain and simple.
rape epidemic moral panic... campus sexual assault kangaroo courts
The term rape culture accurately sums up these things.
Here's the thing. This is sort of my bigot detector kit. Criticize a rape culture for creating a hostile environment, and somebody will fly out of the woodwork and leap to the conclusion that one is:
#1 Male
#2 Heterosexual
#3 Sexually abusive towards women
That's how one knows one has a bigot on one's hands. Apparently if the environment is hostile towards trans women and men, who are informed by university policy that they are already considered guilty of rape, that the task campus officials have is one of actively trying to catching you in the act, that they have their eye on you are are trying to find some excuse to expel you after taking your money, it doesn't count.
It's telling that expulsions and suspensions because of rape cultures don't lead to criminal prosecutions.
Another way to use the bigot detector kit is to ping on someone completely misinterpreting what Cleese is saying here to conclude he's an asshole. He might be an asshole. I find him to be funny as hell.
Basically, if somebody who is not of the correct demographic raises a concern about wrongful pro/persecution or notes that they feel they are in a hostile environment with unfair policies, and that's the basis for somebody else to conclude that the person raising the concern not only has never been on the receiving end of sexism but acts unethically or rudely on a daily basis, that somebody else, not the person raising the concern who's of the wrong demographic, is a bigot, plain and simple.
But hey, I'll never have the privilege of being unaware of what it's like on the receiving end of sexism and sexual harassment!
I guess I'll have to come back in an hour or so when the real gems are posted.
Fwiw, I tell guys who are attracted to me that it doesn't mean they're homosexual. Unfortunately, you've just demonstrated that you're the transphobic one here.
I mean, seriously, I don't get it. You lash out at trans women for the actions of a demographic that hates them as much as you do.
That's because you're a damned moron if you can't figure out why auto insurance is different from health insurance.
(Please be trolling! Please be trolling!)
But why roads? Of all the places we could put solar panels, why roads? I mean, I just can't comprehend how this is even a proposal in the first place. I haven't been able to since the first time I heard about the idea, and I still can't. There are too many things that can go wrong, too much engineering involved. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine. The solar panels are better on my roof and in my backyard. If we want solar power from roads, then why not just mount the panels on poles along the roadway?