Monday, April 26, 2010

Reasons for Optimism.

Hello! It's been a while, but I think I can get back into the swing of things, I've been mostly reading articles and comments and even commenting on things.

Recently, Dr. Lionel Tiger (wow, two large cats in one name, no offense) debated with a DC area blogger named Amanda Hess on CBC radio about the need for Male Studies (not Men's studies, a feminist facade that's just another Women's studies course that's all about trashing Men), of which Dr. Tiger is a frontrunner in starting the Male Studies disciplines at... I believe Wagner College. That's where the symposium was held anyway.

One can learn more at:

http://www.malestudies.org/program.htm

As for the debate with Ms. Hess, it went rather well, as Welmer described in The Spearhead.

You can listen for yourself how it went (I think it's a pop-up when you click the link). Some have described him as being too soft, but I think the mere fact that he could stand his ground and she wasn't willing to start ad hominem'ing him over the air relentlessly just shows how much class he has. All I could really nit-pick about this was how he seemed a bit nervous (you could feel the unneeded adrenaline expressed in his voice), but that passes with time. I also tend to agree with one of the commenters on The Spearhead, Freepress, about how he could've torn her down by revealing that she is NOT for equality or for any such help for Men (warning, uncensored curse words follow):

Freepress wrote:

Also he didn’t do any research on Amanda so he didn’t even realize his enemy was a 2-faced cowardly bitch who regularly writes snide, sarcastic columns attacking men. If he had any sense, he would have immediately exposed her 2-faced position.

If you hadn’t read her column, you’d think she sounded reasonable. But after reading her column and hearing her on the podcast, you quickly realize she’s nothing more than a 2-faced cunt being diplomatic for the sake of the airtime. I would have immediately started reading off her own quotes to her and embarrassed the fuck out of that moron. Instead of explain himself to her, he should have been demanding she explain her hypocritical views to him. That would be more telling of a reason why male studies is such a necessity today.

The solution to a problem doesn’t become apparent until the root problem is EXPOSED. He completely failed to do that and he had the perfect opportunity with a hypocritical cunt like Amanda.


I didn't censor the curse words because, even though it's far from my style, the whole thing seems emasculated by censoring like changing it to c* or such. And just removing the words removes context. Let me know what you think in the comments.

This was just a snippet from his quote, the rest is more or less accusations that the MRA leaders are being too soft and passive, but its great he thinks that way. If he gets into the public view as Lionel Tiger and others have worked hard to do so, he can share his side, perhaps making all the "passives" seem more reasonable by comparison (not to call Freepress unreasonable, just how it'll be received).

In any case, this Man, Dr. Lionel Tiger, wasn't shouted down by either the host of the talk show... radio show... whichever it was, and he stood mostly firm on his points. My position differs from his more or less, but if he wins, I wins, We wins.

Why wasn't Dr. Tiger ad hominem'd and shouted down? I like Tim's explanation in the comments of The Spearhead:

Tim wrote:

I wasn’t sure what to make of Lionel Tiger’s thorough drubbing of Amanda Hess, when he lashed out at her for distorting his message. If he had remained silent he still would have been considered intelligent and well-intentioned, and the message would have gone out that Male Studies is a worthy and noble endeavor, regardless.

Which brings me to this thought: is it time for men now to stop looking down at their shoes and automatically apologizing to women when we debate them? Is it time now to be assertive, and even aggressive when it comes time to contesting our position regarding feminism?

I submit that it is, gentlemen, as long as it is calibrated correctly. Now is the time to throw out weight around -in the realm of ideas. Obviously I do not mean physically. However, when it comes to ideas, it is more prescient than ever to put the foot down, and even to lay the occasional verbal smackdown, if needed. We need not do this to ordinary women, who are merely going about their daily lives. But to self-described feminists? Hell yes. I don’t know about you guys, but I am smelling blood. Feminists are aware they are sitting atop a mountain of privileges and special protections.

Amanda Hess could have lashed out at Lionel Tiger just as he did to her…but she didn’t.

She didn’t because she knows that the so-called oppression of women is no longer axiomatic, and men are on to their game.

It’s time to lean on feminists, and lean hard.

Apply pressure. Lean. Argue. Apply pressure again.

Repeat.

Continue again.



Onto minor observations in television, if I see more of this, I'll post them. In new articles.

First off, I don't think this is "the end of misandry" (I like to pronounce it mizzandry, just kinda rolls off the tongue and sounds like misery, which it causes) "and we should all dance in the streets because our days of work are over".

Nope, not even close. Some companies and commercials may be willing to tone it down a bit, but that's not NO SIGN of a near end to misandry. In fact, what will end misandry will be the Misandry Bubble popping. I suppose we can think of what we're seeing as the first rats out of the burning barn, eh?

First, how swiffer has portrayed mops and brooms in the past has been, unquestionably to resemble Men being kicked out of relationships by Women.

No idea how to embed videos just yet, so until I know, go ahead and open in a new tab or whatever's most convenient for you.

swiffer 1

swiffer 2

swiffer 3

Really kind of annoying so far, but nothing to get all bent out of shape about right? WRONG. In a way it's revealing of how even a TOOL, an object that works until it doesn't, can't be appreciated by Women, especially since they're personified. Now, it's a bit hard for me to equate this to being objectifying of Men, because these are objects. Objects personified. Personified Objects are not the same as Objectified Persons... get it? It still shows that if you replaced each cleaning utencil with a Man it could be its own show on "lifetime" or "oxygen".

These next ones are a bit more realistic of the worse of what Men can go through:

swiffer 4 pickup

Wow, how entitled said bartender is. I mean, sure the feather duster isn't asking HER out, necessarily, but still, to expect that much (and even with that little feminist catch-phrase, "have it all"), that's just absurd and very princess of her/Women... and yet it's true. They DO expect all that, and probably won't get it, and if Men snap out of their daze and refuse to marry (ala Marriage Strike) then they won't get ANYthing out of Men. Also, she doesn't exactly say that Women's expectations are a bad thing with her "you're just don't get it, do ya?" and how she said "WE" when leading off this list of demands.

swiffer 5 court

Wow, "Can you point to the defendant?"... Did he seriously just ask that? Go on, go watch again, make sure he said EXACTLY that sentence, I'll be right here when you get back...

Did you hear that? HOW does that make sense? The defendant in a court is ALWAYS the defendant, that doesn't mean said person did anything, just that said defendant is accused. In a real court case, it could work out that she was describing someone else (though this whole thing is bogus for reasons I'll go into in just a bit) and then when ASKED to point to the defendant, a completely separate person from who she could've been describing, she'll point to the defendant! There's no link! This is just retarded!

Second, what's "he" on trial for? If this is a mockery of... cheating (perhaps?) then it probably wouldn't end up in any serious court, just divorce court, which wouldn't matter anyway because of "no fault divorce". Or is not picking up every last crumb now a capital crime? You probably can't even SUE the makers of said broom for not doing that. And the tagline after that? "Put your broom away for life"... wow, if they are supposed to resemble Men (again, it's hard to make the case that they are objectifying a personified object, but I'll let you make the call on that), they really don't care about the lives of Men at all, life sentences are no laughing matter, especially in issues of False Rape Accusations. Putting someone away for life is a very serious matter and should only be done when a crime is both heinous and provable enough that the law CANNOT do any harm to an innocent. Blackstone said it would be better for ten guilty Men to go free than for the government to falsely punish one Innocent one, and I agree, Justice has to be more discreet and work overtime to get any "perps" and it should be 100% certain, not just a "she said/he said and was ignored" issue, nor a "please point at the defendant... GASP!!!" issue.

swiffer 6 counselor

Going to be honest, when I started writing this, I thought it would be more positive, but it's starting to look worse. I hate this one too (counselor one above), and the only one I could find that didn't demonize an object taking the place of a Man in our everyday society was this FANMADE video (still kind of annoying, but dang is it the only one with a Man dumping a presumptively "female" mop.

swiffer 7 fanmade

EDIT: Oh wait, I found another, but it looks like it is on the boundary between "airable on TV" and "Fanmade", especially the last 7 or so seconds which really makes it look fanmade, but the whole thing looks well done... I guess.

swiffer 8 fanmade?

This ninth one is the one I've been looking for for quite a while, but the above 8 were what I clicked on in the "related" list before I finally found this one, I thought I'd only have like... 3 of these older ones, but look at it now.

swiffer 9

This one seems a bit more positive to me, for one, "he's" not actively getting "dumped", but it's more or less an assumed event of the past. Plus, there's music!... and "he's" DANCING!! Still annoying, but the rediculousness of it all makes it more lighthearted than the others.

Well, anyway, after a few years of THAT they finally changed it up a little. The mop/broom/whatever still gets "dumped" and trashed, but hey, he finds SOMEONE ELSE, rather than doing life in prison, or constantly hanging around her place forlornly.

swiffer 10 who's that lady (yeah, ignore the misspelling of the video's actual title, I'm sure the uploader [not likely the swiffer company] misspelled it)

It's still annoying, and still involves dumping, but it's definitely a more positive note for the broom, wouldn't you say? Again, this isn't the end of misandry, in fact I found more than I bargained for just writing this, but it DOES show, that on a theoretical level, maybe someone is listening to a growing concern not to treat Men like tools (okay... the broom is still a "tool"...), or rather, perhaps in some ways misandry is at least getting toned down.

I realize these are meant to be "jokes", I can laugh at myself, but when it's a full scale Men = Homer Simpson from the information mediums all day and all night, it starts to "educate" people incorrectly. Constant bombardment goes only so far from being "satirical" to being presumably "documentary", because a joke is funny when it's half true, but when its the same joke everywhere, we get the impression that it's ALL true, even if it was a joke about 0.02% (read: a fiftieth of a percent, or 1/5000) of Men, eventually it'll be presumed that most or even ALL Men are like that and deserve that... great.

How was this optimistic? Well, the last swiffer commercial was far more stomachable than the previous 9, you make the decision on what this means, let me know! If I find "more" (more is in quotes because someone may argue effectively that this wasn't a good result at all, thus any further findings would be the REAL first and this would be a "fake" first) I'll post them!

The False Rape Society is also an occassionally basin of optimism when false rape accusers get sentenced and the accused innocense realized.