Recess


 
 12 Feb 2013   Recess

val7

 



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Nona and Kylie are butt-kicking web mods who are dedicated to curating the finest internet content.

  • DanielCopeland

    We have the sort of firepower to WIPE NORTH KOREA FROM THE GLOBE. They’re a threat in the same way that someone sneezing in a cubicle down the hall from you is a threat.

    Perhaps a little less bellicose posturing, Mr. President?

    • ErzengelDesLichtes

      I don’t understand how the US having the offensive capabilities to destroy the planet is the same thing as being safe from attack. Sure, the retaliation would be terrible, but that only comes into play if the attackers are sane and rational. History is full of monarchs and other hereditary leaders who were completely off their rocker, and, regardless of the name, “The People’s Republic of North Korea” is a hereditary dictatorship. What guarentee do you have that Kim Jun Un is sane and rational? How do you know he won’t randomly decide “The US doesn’t have the will to retaliate, and if they do retaliate I’ll just hit them with more nukes!”?

    • PapaSloth

      So, assuming N. Korea completes a small nuke and the rocket to deploy it to America, and assuming it uses those weapons, how many American losses do you consider acceptable before America retaliates and “wipes North Korea from the globe?”

      I don’t understand why you consider this “bellicose posturing.” It does seem like a highly provocative act and a threat to the US.

      • DanielCopeland

        That requires the assumption that they use it.

        Of course it’s a provocative act. The DPRK is attempting to flex its muscle, expanding its global influence. They are not suicidal, and any assumption that Kim Jong Un could unilaterally decide to attack us is woefully ignorant of politics within the DPRK leadership.

        • PapaSloth

          I’m willing to admit to ignorance (even the woeful kind). I thought Kim Jong Un was, in fact, the supreme dictator of N. Korea and could, in fact, unilaterally decide to attack us. But, I’m willing to learn if you’re willing to teach.

          • DanielCopeland

            North Korea is a military dictatorship. While he is in a position to make many unilateral decisions, he still requires the cooperation of the leadership that that he relies on to keep the country in some semblance of order. Should they decide it were in their best interest to support him in a strike against us, then sure, it would be a worry, but they’ve shown themselves time and again to be very canny when it comes to their own prosperity and survival, and I simply don’t see them as being foolish enough to assume that any of their tenuous allies would back them up in an openly aggressive attack. It would be suicide by superpower.

            They’re very good, in every discussion I’ve heard or read of their negotiating tactics, at misdirection, at getting what they want via distraction. Direct attack doesn’t seem like their style; if anything, they’d be more likely to attempt placing us as the aggressors.

          • Slartibartfatsdomino

            I’m in agreement with DanielCopeland. There is an entire regime, not one lone dictator, that is important to whether they would use those weapons. They will work for regime survival, it doesn’t matter if Kim Jong Un is off his rocker or not, they are therefore easily deterable, just as the Russians were and just as the Iranians would prove to be should they actually build a bomb (which I don’t actually think they are doing). The N. Koreans have had the artillery capabilities to virtually wipe Seoul off the maps for decades. If they were as crazy aggressive as US officials would like for us to fear them to be, they would have used that capability long ago, instead of just blustering threats about it. Same goes for the nuclear weapons.

            Speaking of “rational” behaving states. I can think of one that has spent the past decade destroying whole societies. I bet everyone can guess which one I’m thinking of.

            • PapaSloth

              Oh! Oh! I know this one! I just saw it elsethread!

              http://images.sneakhype.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/aliens-meme.jpeg

            • TruuuV

              In regards to the second paragraph, Australia right?

              They’re dropping wildlife bombs over countries to just shit all over everything with venom and defence mechanisms that the rest of the world have never even seen, like…. Badgers with laser mounted kneecaps.

              Fucking Australia…

    • ErzengelDesLichtes

      Whoa, jeeze. I’d just like to point out that if the mass of Men’s Rights is a pile of misogyny, you’ll find similar misandry among the Women’s Rights. And just because some people use the issue to legitimize their hatred means that we should just abandon the issue? Better let the African Americans know that the Black Panthers nullified their rights, then.

      • whycantwejustloveeverybody

        The point he is trying to make is that the platform for men’s rights is caused by their own doing. Their issues are with a patriarchal society just as women’s rights are. We don’t need to be fighting each other or battling for power we need to reconstruct what masculinity and femininity is and their role in society so that we all have equal rights.

        • ErzengelDesLichtes

          …which means that men can’t bring attention to their own plight?
          And no, it’s not their own doing. Men aren’t a single entity. The patriarchal society is a concept that has been ingrained by the older generation through no fault of the younger generation. Why should the younger generation pay with suffering for the mistakes of the elder? A separate group whose purpose is the rights of men can help to tear down the patriarchal society from a different direction. Rights aren’t a zero-sum game, providing rights to men won’t take away rights from women. Pointing out that men can be just as vulnerable as women doesn’t deserve to be mocked.

          • whycantwejustloveeverybody

            Of course they don’t deserve to be mocked but you cannot compare masculism with feminism in that way. It’s insulting to women who have shed blood sweat and tears to fight for equality (which we still don’t have) and compare it to the plight of men, it is not the same and it will never be. I’m not saying that their concerns aren’t valid but men’s rights as it is right now doesn’t make any sense. You can’t compare the two and they cannot fight against each other. The cause for masculinity as it is defined right now doesn’t make any sense because it is the cause of the problems for both feminists and masculinists(?) The idea of masculinity is the problem and that is what needs to be addressed.

      • DanielCopeland

        Can you show me a Men’s RIghts forum, article…anything, that discusses these issues from a point of view that recognizes the overwhelming extent to which we still control the power, we still define the social mores,and doesn’t simply lay blame on women for “emasculating” men? Can you show me a single discussion with MRAs that doesn’t devolve into blaming feminism and women in general, and instead intelligently and soberly discusses the extent to which men, who are sexually assaulted at a far, far lower rate than women, are shamed into silence not by feminists, but by a male-dominated society that acts as if a man who is a victim is less of a man?

        This is not a case of a vocal minority defining the movement. This is the movement defining itself. As I said, there are legitimate issues brought up, such as men being victims of sexual assault and other acts of violence, but, to borrow your medical metaphor, you cannot save the stump by only bandaging the severed hand. So long as discussions focus on some mythical concept of women, and feminism specifically, being responsible or in being in any way unjustified in fighting for their own rights, the movement leads nowhere, it simply provides angry boys a way to release their anger.

        I’m not even going to address your puerile second point. What an idiotic assertion. Try not to place words in my mouth, thank you.

        • ErzengelDesLichtes

          I don’t generally participate in a Male Rights movement, so no, I can’t point that out to you. Maybe the movement needs to be cleaned up, I don’t know.

          But in the case of the twitter masculism, the only blame on feminists I see are toward those who mocked the airing of difficulties. The below all seem to be legitimate grievances that need to be dealt with:
          http://cdn0.dailydot.com/uploaded/images/original/2013/2/11/masculin.jpg

          • DanielCopeland

            So you’ll ignore that the tag started as a prank intended to mock feminists?

            You’re right, those are legitimate. They’re also in the minority, which was my entire complaint about the movement. The vast bulk of it is not drawing attention to those issues, but blaming women for our problems. The feminist reaction was against the misogyny.

            Do man-hating women exist? Certainly. Do they often identify as feminist? Likely. Has the bulk of the history of the feminist movement been about opposition to men? Not at all. For every legitimate grievance we might air, they’ve had 50. And as much as we may face these problems, they’re problems that we have always had the institutional power to correct, while women have had to struggle for that same power.

            • ErzengelDesLichtes

              I can’t speak to the movement as a whole, I can only speak to the article. As I said elsewhere in the discussion, it may have started as a prank, but it brings up some good, real points that people should think about instead of mocking. That’s my point.

    • Deer_God

      Sir, I would just like to offer this internet high-five as a token of my appreciation for your excellent post. Thank you.

    • IronEdithKidd

      You, sir, win the interwebz today. I’d like to offer not just a high-five, but also a respectful ::golfclap::

    • http://dailyoftheday.com/ Lascivious Lass

      Work is busy; glad I did some catching up and saw this. Typing painfully with a sprained wrist just to let you know you’re awesome.

      Errr…you don’t happen to like The Sharks, do ya? ;)

  • ErzengelDesLichtes

    By “feminist victory” we mean “feminist mocking and ridiculing men”. I believe in equality. The social patriarchy has inequality both for and against women, and both for and against men. As pointed out by “masculism”, there is a real problem with women thinking that only women, exclusively, live in constant fear of violence and sexual assault. Guess what? Men are victims of sexual assault and regular assault as well.
    Say one of my male friends, who’s kinda thin, is out alone at night and some big person approaches him. He’s going to be afraid for his life. It doesn’t matter that he has a penis: he wasn’t in the military, he doesn’t know how to fight, he’s small, and the other person is big. OTOH, if one of my female squad-mates is approached by the same person, she’ll stand confident and prepare to throw said person through a wall if he or she tries anything. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t have a penis, what matters is her ability to defend herself.
    Men can be good fathers and women can be terrible, abusive mothers.

    But that’s not the way society at large, and feminism in general, sees it. And THAT is a problem that should be brought to attention by “masculism”, not mocked and derided as “if all you have to worry about is paying for dinner…”, etc, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the overall issue.
    The world is not as simple as you think.

    Whew, wall’o'text.

    • PapaSloth

      …He’s going to be afraid for his life…she’ll stand confident..

      I agree that men are sometimes the victims of abuse as well. But, here’s a thought experiment. Is it not true that whites are sometimes the victims of discrimination? So, why are white power groups considered so heinous? Partly because of a long-standing history of inequality among the races, giving white people extraordinary advantages, and partly because of all the terrible crimes that have been committed in the name of “white power.” So why is masculism mocked and derided? For the same reasons.

      Personally, I find most advocacy groups humorless and overly strident, EXCEPT THE ONES I BELONG TO. STAY AWAY FROM THOSE, OR ELSE.

      • ErzengelDesLichtes

        …What? White power groups tend to be derisive of other races, they are for white POWER. Hence the name.

        “Masculism” may have been a prank, but it brought up many good points and overall wasn’t directly deriding toward women. It simply brought up the problems that society foists upon men. It was about the PLIGHT, not POWER.

        And I don’t understand your first line. Why do you repeat my words?

        • PapaSloth

          “Why do you repeat my words?”

          I thought the kerning was particularly nice on those quotes, and wanted to draw your attention to the patterns of light and darkness.

          • ErzengelDesLichtes

            …OK, can you elaborate a bit? Are you trying to draw my attention to my own point, which is that gender is immaterial to whether someone is afraid of a big person approaching them at night? That males can be afraid while women can be confident?

            • PapaSloth

              My point is that strength and fearlessness lie on a bell curve. You can always find women who are powerful and fearless at one end of the curve, and you can always find men who are powerless and afraid at the other end of the other curve. So, the statement I quoted was correct. But, what it doesn’t take into account is the means of those distributions. And, for the most part, more men are relatively powerful and more women are relatively powerless. So, when most people encounter terms like “masculism,” they view them not as serious attempts to remedy a problem, but as satire against something that is very serious: feminist attempts to achieve some measure of equality in this society.

              • ErzengelDesLichtes

                …and that’s a problem. People are acting on prejudice rather than taking a serious look at the problem.

                • PapaSloth

                  Well, that’s true. But if I’m in a car wreck and lose a hand, it’s appropriate for me to be more concerned about my bloody stump than about the booboo on my knee. There are issues of scale and priority here.

                  • ErzengelDesLichtes

                    There are a lot of people handling the issue of women’s rights, and there has been a LOT of progress. That priority is being fulfilled. It’s time for equality to broaden its perspectives.

                    To extend your analogy, your stump has been bandaged. It’s time to work on healing the rest of you while still performing maintaining treatment the stump in parallel.

                    • PapaSloth

                      Women still only make 82 cents for every dollar men make. I don’t consider the priority as having been “fulfilled.”

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      Just because your stump still hurts doesn’t mean you should ignore your broken leg after the stump is bandaged and the bleeding stopped.

                    • PapaSloth

                      Well, that’s exactly where we disagree, isn’t it. You think things are pretty much OK, and that men and women are pretty much on equal footing, and it’s time to move on. I think women are still massively mistreated and undervalued in this society, and that we have a long way to go before any kind of equality is achieved. As long as we disagree on that point, we’ll never reach agreement on whether “masculism” makes any kind of sense.

                    • whycantwejustloveeverybody

                      agree so much!!

                    • Conspiracy Einstein

                      I didn’t read any of this.

                    • whycantwejustloveeverybody

                      tl;dr men and women need to work together instead of against each other to topple the patriarchal society that limits equal rights.

                    • Conspiracy Einstein

                      Totes. Done.

                      NEXT PROBLEM?!

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      So a 20% less money is worth ignoring male rape victims? Sorry, I don’t think money is more important than seeing people recognize that men can be victims of assault and rape.

                    • PapaSloth

                      I googled “woman was raped” and got 2,240,000 hits. Then, I googled “man was raped” and got 169,000 hits. That’s 13 times as many hits for “woman was raped” than “man was raped.” So, yes, I know exactly which problem I think is more important.

                      Edit: Also, most likely the majority of rapes against women were committed by men. And, the majority of rapes against men were ALSO committed by men.

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims

                      “2.78 million men in the U.S. have been victims of sexual assault or rape”

                      Yeah, it’s less than the number of females raped, but it’s still a lot of people.

                      I want the social stigma to end. I want people to accept that a man CAN be raped, and not enjoy it. I want people to accept that a man CAN be assaulted, that a man CAN be just as defenseless as an “average” woman without thinking less of him. I think this is a more serious problem than money.

                    • PapaSloth

                      OK, I thought we were having a different discussion, so I’ll just move on. I didn’t know that there was still anyone (with half a brain) that wasn’t aware that men could be raped at this point. I mean, anyone who has seen Shawshank Redemption should know that. So, if that was your mission, consider it accomplished.

                    • DanielCopeland

                      And that’s a justifiable cause. And we should be looking at the reasons why men are made to feel as if being assaulted is their own shame. But you might find that that particular fight is the same one the feminism has fought, the fight against a definition of social values that sets unrealistically broad expectations for both masculinity and femininity, that treats us as victims of our own lusts and them as responsible for our failings.

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      YES. It is. Exactly. Feminism has been fighting against it from the female side. What I would like is that Masculism be commandeered (as it seems to be in the article) and used to fight against those broad expectations from the male side. Maybe together, male and female, we can bring down those societal expectations by working together in parallel.

                    • DanielCopeland

                      Ok. So how do we explain that to the morons arguing that having to pay for dinner is a feminist plot to emasculate them? Because if you look into the roots of how this situation started, that’s what we’re dealing with.

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      Without going beyond the linked article, please provide evidence of the phrase “feminist plot to emasculate them”. The closest I see is “women demand special treatment”.

                      And once again, it may have started as a prank, but it brings up good points. I think women should be registered for the draft, too. Women Warriors were some of the strongest in the Air Force when I was in it. I think men should be “allowed” to be a homemaker. Etc. The original intention doesn’t matter, what matters is that they made good points that should be discussed.

                    • DanielCopeland

                      Women getting to combat units has been a long struggle. It was a long, tough fight to even allow them to serve. Who do you think is responsible for women not being part of the draft registration?

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      The older generation, patriarchal society. I doubt the overall younger generation has the same qualms, yet you lump them together as “men”. I have some problems with this prejudice.

                    • whycantwejustloveeverybody

                      The patriarchy and prejudice still exist! The younger generation takes part in it and then bitch about feminists instead of addressing the real issue.

                    • Conspiracy Einstein

                      If I’m following along correctly … Is it “men”?

                    • DanielCopeland
                    • Conspiracy Einstein

                      Dang it. Well, maybe next time.

                    • whycantwejustloveeverybody

                      Even if male rape victims were reported more, how much do you think PapaSloth’s figures would go up by?

                    • DanielCopeland

                      No one’s claiming that it has to be ignored. That has been your argument alone. Ironic that you referenced my “zero-sum” argument concerning rights, but seem intent on treating which issues we’re paying attention to as zero-sum. Violence against men (which is overwhelmingly at the hands of other men) should be addressed, but given the massive recent efforts to step back women’s reproductive freedoms, to pretend that our own rights are threatened to anywhere close to the same extent is naive at best.

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      Male rights are not threatened to the same degree. But people who joke that men only have to worry about “paying for dinner” are the people who are ignoring other problems of male rights.

                    • DanielCopeland

                      I just did a search for that phrase on this page, and the only one saying it is you.

                    • ErzengelDesLichtes

                      I’m referring to the article. Try reading the source of the discussion.

                    • DanielCopeland

                      You mean the ONE Twitter quote? Made by a man? You’re right, that one guy is ignoring that there are other, legitimate problems.

                      I would note that, as the article points out near the end, there IS decent recognition that we do have these problems, and there has been intelligent, rational discussion about it.

    • http://dailyoftheday.com/ Madame McThunder

      … Actually, feminism (Particularly third wave feminism, the prevailing movement at the moment) is about equality of both sexes, and attempts to address inequalities for both. It just so happens that the issues women face tend to be more numerous and more immediate than those men face, but that does NOT mean that feminists disregard the problems of gender roles, health inequalities, male violence and rape, and inequalities in court proceedings. In many cases, feminists are the most vocal supporters of men suffering gender-based injustices. Despite this, however, it is generally agreed that the issues feminists are most vocal about are the most immediately damaging and need more effort to be changed. Your argument is ill informed.

      • ErzengelDesLichtes

        My only argument is that there are a lot of women who would call themselves feminists that don’t pay attention to male issues at all. Many feminist groups and feminist leaders are equalists, certainly, and I won’t argue that. But the broad base… I’ve met many so-called feminists that will say being a woman is tough because (and I’m literally quoting one here) “men don’t fear for their life when walking down a dark alley at night.”

        • whycantwejustloveeverybody

          you’re talking to the wrong feminists

          • ErzengelDesLichtes

            They’re the ones I’m complaining about, and the ones that mock on twitter. They exist, and they require education.

        • SumAnon

          I don’t see any of the twitter comments in the link mocking the men who say ‘I’ve been sexually assaulted,’ or ‘I am constantly pressured into a level of sexuality.’ I see people reacting to a 4chan thread that a) was initially started to ‘piss off feminists,’ and b) equated systematic devaluation and societal prevalence with sexual assault with paying for dinner, increased sexual allowances, and outright pop culture fallacies.

    • SumAnon
  • https://twitter.com/knowyouronion Pascal

    “Why not just drink coffee? Or, you know, regular Mountain Dew?”

    Why not both? mexicangirlsayingwhynotboth.jpg

    • TruuuV

      *GotYouCovered*

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=509835768 Kira Quinsey

    Tyrannical Valentine’s Day Cards are originally the work of Ben Kling. Check out his site, he has some other great stuff! http://benkling.com/valentines

  • Mr. Sarge