The Jolly Racism Thread

[End Master]

And on a lighter note...

I'm sure Ves probably knows about this one, but here's more fuel for the PC fire.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...onologues.html

Obviously I'm a proud member of the rapist patriarchy so I found some of this a little amusing, but this is just another example of the PC bullshit getting out of hand as usual.

[Drakoblare]

I sure enjoy these small bits of retardation that the FEMEN movements spout. Wait, "all female" colleges exist? Are they there to protect uni students from Greek gangbangers (not ethnic, the jock kind) ?

[Vesnic]

Obviously I'm a proud member of the rapist patriarchy.

End, whenever you take the opportunity to remind us of your proud membership in the Rapist Patriarchy, I know we're in for a good time.

...just another example of the PC bullshit getting out of hand as usual.

Well yeah, I agree, obviously. This is just two more steps to the left of the last go-round we had with this. Thanks for tipping me off to it though, because I hadn't heard about this specific case yet. I generally try to ignore Mt. Holyoke, as she's seen as the mentally unstable/borderline retarded one among us Seven Sisters. Which makes me have to address the following:

Wait, "all female" colleges exist?

Um, yeah. Did we lose you somewhere along the way here? I'm a graduate of just such an institution, of the most elite and selective amongst them I might also add. Also statistically the least lesbian. Actually I'm not sure about that. All I know is we have the highest SAT scores.

I think you might be wanting some more background on the peculiarities of American history and especially of the American educational system (not inherently an oxymoron). Women's colleges (meaning post-secondary education) stemmed mostly from the fact that the doors to many of the nation's best universities were closed to women for a shockingly long time. You might find this link interesting. These are major American universities, and just look at how many had no women until the 60's, the 70's, or even later. What else were you supposed to do if you were a smart gal on the make but the best places wouldn't have you?

Make your own place, of course.

Ergo Wellesley, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, etc. There are fewer women's colleges now than there were back when the practical need was greater. Vassar College, for example, opened to men in 1969. My male cousin went there because he's pretty much a pussy.

Anyway, are you curious to know what my experience was like at an all-women's college, especially as the notorious red-blooded heterosexual slut that everyone here knows I am?

It was great, basically.

I saw the lack of men around as just one less thing to worry about. There were a ton of you just down the road or a bus ride away on what we lovingly called the "Fuck Truck" so quite frankly I didn't really miss your presence in the classroom. I hope you're not offended.

I didn't set out to go to a women's college. It just sort of worked out that way. The PR worked on me and I thought it might indeed be good to foster my intellectual growth in an atmosphere without sexual tension. For the most part, that turned out to be true. Then again there was always the rugby team to contend with, not to mention the strange coterie of Russian lesbians who I could never completely shake off. Oh, and one of my closest friends dumped her boyfriend for me, just to be spurned by me before I even understood what was happening and that what she really wanted was a good-night kiss. She never spoke to me again. Emma, if you're out there, I'm so sorry! I didn't understand!

Where was I? Oh right. Women's colleges. Worked fine for me. But in my time there, we were still allowed to call it a women's college and to flaunt our vaginas around, sometimes literally (like at the Naked Ball). As for the Vagina Monologues, I've never been much for dubious academic disciplines steeped primarily in identity politics (hence why I never took a women's studies class), so I never read the play or analyzed it academically. I saw a production while still in high school when it was still very much the hot new thing. I remember it voicing a strong indictment against rape and domestic abuse. I also remember it having a surprising amount of humor. Something about a guy named Bob who was just totally gaga for jay-jays...

Have you ever actually seen the play? May I suggest just a little dash of don't knock it till you've tried it? Just for shits and giggles?

The Daily Beast article is right, however, in that it is dated and I sort of doubt its ongoing relevance or value as a work of art, for those very same identity politicking reasons. When it was written, it was still sort of shocking to announce the word "Vagina!" in public or to discuss it in any real way beyond the strictly euphemistic or pornographic. That same pussy cousin of mine just delighted in going up to his sex-ed teacher when he ran into her at a restaurant and loudly asking her in front of all her guests to remind him of the difference between the cervix and the vagina. God, I really hate that guy...

Vaginas haven't fared well since then. Now you can see one anytime you want, in a single click or maybe two, although I shudder to give that shaved-down, surgically altered, sterilized and disembodied gaping thing the same name as what Ensler and innumerable others, both men and women, have been romancing, defying, loving, fearing or otherwise having real human thoughts and feelings about since the dawn of time.

I don't know what the fuck Mt. Holyoke thinks it's doing and the fact that there seems to be no real cohesion to any of its out-of-left-field decisions just reaffirms the suspicion I've had all along and that I've voiced about a billion times: that these latest rumblings are egoically and not ideologically motivated.

The contemporary poet Simon Armitage has warned that art trying too hard to be political or activist or to carry a heavy agenda is in great danger of becoming bad art. I've always taken this stance too, much to the horror of my writing professor in college who also happened to head up the all-powerful Women's Studies Department (you can't win 'em all). As Armitage acknowledged, the intersection of political perspective and art is in many ways inevitable, but there's a big difference between an uncomfortable side-swipe and a head-on collision. What Mt. Holyoke is doing to the Vagina Monologues is definitely the latter and I would be very curious, on a strictly critical level, to see if their new and "improved" version has any of the purely artistic merit that has given countless other works, some of them unfathomably misogynistic by modern standards, the staying power and the wisdom to continue reaching us down through the ages.

[Drakoblare]

Never bothered with the vagina monologue. I usually avoid "art" that is clearly propaganda and my experience with "girl power!" art has been real bad.

I don't think we have any pure-girls colleges here so I was confused. Glad to see it's not a new thing but aren't their reason for existance kinda absolute now? They sound pretty sexist to me. Can men who identify as women, or wolvs join them?

And don't diss shaved pussy, you barbaric swine.

[dreamshell]

Well, considering all the fun of potential date rape (and subsequent hush-hushing) women can enjoy in many co-ed colleges, it's easy to see how an all-women's school could still have merit today, in terms of peace of mind and, as Ves said, continuing one's education without the distraction of sex (at least for most of the gals attending). It's probably not a bad thing for either gender to experience a bit of a reprieve in regard to that latter point (the opposing argument being something like, "Hey, life is for living! Don't hide from your feelings! Express your sexual urges! Free love! T'n'A! Woot!," etc.).

Yeah, of course it's unfortunate we can't be completely integrated and always treat each other as genuine equals without concern for marginalization or sexual intimidation, but it's asinine to just act like everything's hunky-dory 100% of the time now between the sexes and that all these ladies making a fuss need to just "calm yo tits." These institutions aren't the only ones available for women anymore, so why begrudge anyone who wants them as an option? I'm not religious, but I don't give a shit that divinity schools and monasteries still exist. And while I suppose you could make the (fairly dubious) argument that all these places are any more are man-hating lesbian factories, you'd really just be doing little else than providing the real feminazis with ammo by saying so.

[Drakoblare]

I agree with you Dreamshell, though I'd like to think that not all male college students have creating a rape dungeon as their number 1 priority. :P

I don't mind the existance of these colleges, I just struggle to see the point.

[Vesnic]

Never bothered with the vagina monologue. I usually avoid "art" that is clearly propaganda and my experience with "girl power!" art has been real bad.

I'm sorry if one particularly well endowed Ukrainian lass from the FENEM nearly suffocated you between her ample bosoms and this has soured you on the otherwise delectably lactatious topic of Gurl Powr! Perhaps you should count yourself lucky. There are so many worse ways for a man to go in this world.

Glad to see it's not a new thing but aren't their reason for existance kinda absolute now? They sound pretty sexist to me. Can men who identify as women, or wolvs join them?

Whether or not women's colleges are obsolete is a recurring topic of debate and it has come up several times over the decades and at this point, centuries. The power of tradition holds many of the older institutions together, not to mention the many demonstrably favorable effects of that sort of an educational environment.

No, I don't think women's colleges are sexist. You're running into that problem of the majority (in this case the power majority, if not the numerical one) claiming that reverse discrimination is the exact same problem as classical discrimination, just in the opposite direction. This would only be true if you were starting on an equal playing field. This doesn't imply that reverse discrimination is inherently correct or justified, as in many cases it's downright horrific, but in the age-old battle of the sexes, I think the argument for women's colleges is really pretty justified.

Regardless of the insanity and PC-policing currently going on, there is still an underlying reality that women face, a set of parameters around life which men simply don't have to deal with. I don't want to belabor this a lot, but consider the following: where men feel free to speak, complain, make themselves heard, very often women are intimidated into silence, be it overtly or through generations of conditioning, or a bit of both. I guarantee you, for all the times you hear women publicly addressing their issues, there are many more times that you're not hearing it. For all the many occurrences of an injury felt or an injustice suffered, a great number of these instances will simply be washed away into silence. This is not history I'm talking about; it's the present day. It's something I've faced. It's something all women face. You might try asking us sometime just what it feels like in our own skin.

My lack of support for the self-aggrandizing loudmouths in these articles in no way implies that I'm not a feminist. I am a feminist. And by feminist, I mean nothing more and nothing less than that women deserve equal rights before the law and that they are nearly always the equal or potential equal of men in life's endless avenues and endeavors.

You yourself are a bit of a feminist if you not only tolerate as normal, but actively accept that I am here on this forum talking to you, that women attend your school, that it's wrong to beat up your wife or your girlfriend. This puts you strongly in the feminist category. Sorry?

And don't diss shaved pussy, you barbaric swine.

Don't diss hairy pussy, you savage snotbag. Being sexually attracted to rubbery surfaces covered in Saran wrap is pretty gross and makes me think that maybe you did some nasty things to those little lunch boxes your mommy packed for you in grade school.

[Drakoblare]

I wouldn't mind dem Ukranian dykes so much if they weren't so damn ugly, like wow, so many tits and not a single pair of them is nice to look at.
Just kidding, I'd still wish to execute them either way.

Well, I don't mind women in education and men who beat their wives (for no good reason) are the lowest scum. I'd argue that the introdaction of women in the work force has shaken and degenerated traditional family values and that it's partly why today's society is so rotten, and that women and men are meant by nature to have different roles, but I'm way too lazy to do that here... So I'll just say that I'd never vote for a female MP and leave it at that.

And jokes on you, we were too poor to afford lunch boxes!

[Vesnic]

So I'll just say that I'd never vote for a female MP and leave it at that.

Not even little old me?

And jokes on you, we were too poor to afford lunch boxes!

Well then you should also be too poor to afford razors! HA!

[Drakoblare]

Not even little old me?



Well then you should also be too poor to afford razors! HA!

Oh dear God, especially not you...

I was referring to women. Men gotta keep the stache... Joking again, hair is annoying to have there.

[dreamshell]

Well, since this has sort of become the 'unpopular opinion' thread, I'll throw this article up that I stumbled upon and found to be fairly sober reading:

https://medium.com/@aristoNYC/social...tion=suggested

It's fairly long and I haven't bothered to do my own comparative study of cited articles or statistics (I sort of don't trust the latter as a rule), but it all sounds pretty reasonable. Granted, I would identify myself as a feminist and would argue some of their points are just as valid, but my casual approval of the article comes mainly from my fervent distaste for language-policing and general Tumblr activist priggishness. That said, I learned about this by reading the page of someone who seems to favor what they identified as "female anti-feminist MRAs," which is a rather baffling concept to me based on what I know of that movement.

Anyway, I'd be curious to read others' thoughts.

EDIT: Okay, initially posted a nifty fan poster of 'Alien,' which was not even remotely correct. Amended. :P

[Vesnic]

Thanks for the post, dream. I've read a few articles about this sort of thing, though I have to admit that my absence from almost all social media meant that I had no idea of the extent to which the "social justice warriors" will now go to shut up any dissenting opinion. I'll try to keep my response here kind of short (by my standards) and to the point.

My initial thought: there is way too much conflating moronification with democratization. Systematically destroying all of society's vetting processes for discovering where people's true talents lie, regardless of their race, creed or color, has led to an unbelievable rise of idiots in high places. These idiots all have internet connections too and the old adage holds true that the dumber you are, generally also the louder.

This feeds into what I think is the first of the two biggest causes for this very serious problem: AN ABSOLUTE SHIT EDUCATION SYSTEM. We have systematically obliterated what used to be known as a liberal arts education; you know, the kind that included that perfect trifecta: humanities, sciences and critical fucking thinking. I've read more than once, and just watching a single episode of What's my Line? featuring a 1958 farmer from Wichita will prove it: today's kids are the dumbest little fuckers around, way less able to string together a cogent sentence than old Grandpappy, with the delicious irony that the latter did not attend college while the former did, at least in a physically present sort of way.

I fell just on the elder side of this particular cusp in my own school days. I missed the real impact of the incoming "competency" tests by the thinnest of hairs. In my year, we studied the ancient precursors of the Western World. The next year, it was switched to Mesoamerica, and little things like Ancient Rome and all the ways that place and time have colored who and what we are now was forever dumped from the curriculum. There's nothing wrong with Aztecs. But why did they have to go and kill the losing team just like those damn heathen virgin-carving cannibals (*see edit note)? Classical education might be the province of privileged and now mostly dead white men, but it also enabled the great achievements of our civilization. I was reading a Sparknotes review of The Scarlet Letter today, to see how good a grip they really had on it (not too bad, as it turns out), but I was amused to see that DancePrincess14 was just soooo grateful for old Sparky because she couldn't stand all the "olde English" in Hawthorne's book. Being an illiterate chump isn't exactly encouraging for developing a deeper understanding of, well, anything.

Second is the UTTER AND COMPLETE DEATH OF COMPASSION. In order to be capable of compassion, you need to have feelings of your own that relate to the feelings of another. To relate to the feelings of another, you need to be convinced that other people do actually exist and that their pain could be yours too. Say what you want about the evils of organized religion, but one thing it did achieve for fucking centuries was a sense of "we" and "us" rather than just "I" and "me", a moral code and something bigger than the individual self for and towards which to strive. This problem is now especially pronounced in America, where we also have no real cohesive culture to fall back on or recent memory of atrocities on our own soil to keep us good and 'umble.

What I see in these petty little online squabbles isn't idealism. It's just plain old ego. It's me being right and basking in my rightness and my righteousness and not really caring whether what I'm espousing is the truth. I certainly am not about to go examining my own conscience or some silly outdated thing like that. Why should I? I'm too fucking special for that and I am inherently right. Also, truth is relative because, like, you know, Einstein. And stuff.

Yet the truth, in almost all meaningful, realistic, practical and world-affecting situations, is most demonstrably not fucking relative. We could argue epistemology all day, but that's also completely not the point because these people aren't philosophers, they're just the same aforementioned super-egotist hukt-on-fonix doucheballoons with too many toys and too few responsibilities. It doesn't matter if we're all just brains in a vat because they're making my vat and yours an increasingly acidic, narrow and brain-in-a-vat-destroying place to be.

The following citation really got to me, because I've been the personal target of it on numerous occasions, as I'm sure many of you have:

"What is the issue here are the tactics used by some from a purported place of moral high ground to immunize themselves from criticism while promoting a close-minded authoritarian vice-grip on society through chillingly sinister tactics."

Sinister indeed. The enemy has gone underground and we don't even know what he (or she, because I'm a feminist) really, truly looks like.

[Vesnic]

Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner winning the Arthur Ashe Courage Award is just the kind of stupidity we've come to expect from our corporate overlords, with the requisite shady deals, promotions, contracts and Scrooge pools full of Disney-minted coins. I know satire has become redundant many times over, but man, woman or beast, all the indicators point to Jenner being a pretty poor specimen of a human being.

What a desecration to the memory of Arthur Ashe and to all people who have overcome real discrimination, the kind that isn't pretty and doesn't have millions of Twitter followers applauding, doesn't wear designer dresses or spew platitudes, the kind far more likely to end in anonymous tragedy than in triumph.

[Vesnic]

Vive la FRANCE!

When is enough going to be enough? Just because Germany's sense of guilt has festered into some deranged drive for self-annihilation does not give it the right to drag the rest of the world down with it. Overreaching, overbearing as always, dear Angie and Co. think it is their prerogative to decide the fate of the entire European Union and beyond. Fuck the Dublin Regulation! Let's just unilaterally do whatever the fuck we want, let in the whole ravening horde, manipulate the media, and while we're too busy being greedy trying to create a new underclass of cheap labor, let's officially give zero shits what the repercussions are, neither for ourselves nor our supposedly beloved allies! Deutschland, Deutschland, überalles! It catches in my throat.

If Alanis wants something ironic to sing about, she could do worse than starting with the EU. Formed with the intention of creating regulatory benevolence in the face of democracy gone awry (Hitler, Mussolini, et al) and especially to ensure that Germany never again ascended to a position of dominance, just look what's happened! Germany is barking orders and France is getting slaughtered. If only my Granddaddy were still alive, he'd be telling me he's getting an awful big feeling of the day-jaw-voo right now.

Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán has sadly gone off the deep end with his assertions that the migrant crisis is a multinational conspiracy to import left-wing voters. It's really a pity, too, because just before that he was actually making a modicum of sense. First of all, he was acting as a democratically elected official should: reflecting the actual views of the majority of his people. Hungary, like most of its neighbors, has had a hard enough time pulling itself out from the cesspit of life behind the Iron Curtain, with precious little assistance along the way. The East-West divide in Europe has never disappeared, despite all the lies the EU power brokers like to tell. It was never even close. In my experience, Romania and Austria might as well be different planets.

Why is it that the United States started a completely pointless invasion on scant to no evidence in 2003, completely destabilizing an entire region. Now, however, when there is every reason for military intervention so that those Syrians who truly are refugees can just go the fuck home without getting their heads blown off, why is nothing happening? Wouldn't the logical first step be to try to fix the underlying problem so we're not faced with this enormous wave of asylum seekers, mixed in with a good number of IS operatives who can now move freely throughout Europe? What the fuck aren't we being told? It beggars logic, it confounds any sense of governmental responsibility and it absolutely tramples the last remnants of human decency.

Unfortunately, we will never know what's going on because democracies like the United States are too corrupt to find any answers and the European Union never claimed to be a democracy in the first place. Everything there happens behind closed doors and is then enacted by fiat.

What kind of answer can be given for the 127 people (and probably still rising) who were senselessly, brutally murdered in their own city streets? Would this attack have been possible if Merkel hadn't trounced everyone's vocal objections? I doubt it. I believe she has blood on her hands. A lot of blood.