Some folks like to be pissed on. Some folks like to be spanked. Some folks like to lick the soles of shoes. Some folks like to make video’s like Stoid’s video.
But the people who want to watch it, those people are KINKY!
Those guys have NEVER worked in an office that was mostly staffed by women.
Those offices were obviously staffed by women who were lacking the Goddess Gene.
shuffles feet
I lost mine.
This conversation is surprising in its vehemence. Anything Stoid says guaranteed to be incorrect? Licking the soles of shoes? Suggesting some of the guys in the video are using drugs?
A gunman may be off camera? Really?
So much of what the Manifesto says seems clear enough, and yet some of us are presuming elaborations on it. They are clearly describing attributes that both sexes find in themselves, attributes for which there is plenty of precedent and a fair amount of evidence in every day life that we tend not to share them equally. And they are obviously trying to extend understanding and make affirmative progress towards healing what is pretty clearly a very old problem or constellation of problems.
Like I said, I can’t embrace the whole video completely. Yeah, the smarmy quality can be a bit cloying, especially depending on your mood and receptive frame of mind when you happen to watch it. But I don’t get how that translates into the strong reactions here. What about this is getting to some of us so?
The smamry, offensive, sexist nonsense was bad enough. But the guys in the video really put off either a Nice Guy and/or creepy, skeevy waiting-in-the-bushes-to-show-you-how-much-he-cares-about-you sort of vibe.
Oh but come on. You have to agree that religion is incoherent? At least all the ones you don’t believe in?
And American culture IS silly in a lot of ways. It’s known world wide for it and Americans own it. Jerry Springer, Ted Haggard, the second George Bush, Jersey Shore, the majority of the population not believing in evolution, the obesity, censoring swear words and boobs rather than gore and violence. The Tea Party and the mormons and the survivalists… there’s enough silly to go round.
So basically, even though you may not like to hear it, it’s not wrong. Might be impolite to point it out or annoying to hear, but it’s not wrong.
Eh… yeah. It does. If someone says “I think X is wrong because it is Z!” it is reasonable to ask “Do you think that everything that is Z is wrong?”. Because if they/you don’t, then you have to explain why it applies to some cases but not all.
This text is just signalling so much anger and resentment. One of my questions is why this set of ideas that these modern hippies are communicating is so provocative. I understand why people would agree or disagree with it, but why would it cause such vitrolic resentment?
If someone says to me “Hey, I believe in a loving God who had a son called Jesus. He wants me to be nice to other people, so that I can go to heaven when I die. So I try to spend as much time as I can helping others”. I’d be like “That’s nice. I think you’re wrong, because there is no evidence of a supernatural being or ‘heaven’ even existing, and there are perfectly rational, evidence based reasons to be nice to others but hey, at least we want the same things”.
If someone says to me “Hey, I believe in a loving God who had a son called Jesus. He wants me to make sure everyone thinks the same as him, so that I can go to heaven when I die. By the way, he really hates fags”. I’d be like “Hey, what the fuck? Stay away from me you crazy person! Jesus Christ… we need to get a working educational system in this country…”
This video I think is like the first example. You’re reacting like it is the second.
No I didn’t miss the point at all. You’ve created an clandestine structure and ulterior motive for them which looks very paranoid and isn’t easily or obviously supported by the facts.
And if I were to claim that:
The earth revolves around the sun (which is a huge hydrogen bomb sneding out radiation), we are biological conscious creatures living within a massive eco-system with limited mineral resources, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, Vanilla ice cream makes you happy, dolphins are fish that can talk. So you should recycle and be nice to animals, and you should use an umbrella outdoors because sunlight causes cancer.
Would that make me batshit insane and a danger to your way of life? Would I be mostly right, or mostly wrong? There is the factual incorrectness, dolphins aren’t fish. You could also argue wether dolphin sound making and social patterns should count as talking. You can also argue that this is not enough to logically support the theorem “be nice to animals”, or that recycling isn’t as important as economic growth. And even though sunlight is correlated to cancer, recommending using umbrellas when outdoors would only be reasonable under very specific circumstanses and considered an over reaction under the most common ones. So basically you can poke a lot of little holes in it and it’s easy to prove that it’s not 100% true, but that doesn’t mean everything in it is stupid or that you don’t agree with anything in it. And there’s definetely no point to be insulted or claim that whoever says that is trying to guilt you into living in a tent and starving by blaming you for murdering the planet.
In your example statement every thing was plainly false (except 2+2) and there was no connection between them any of the statements. It’s not a good analogy. Any main stream religious, or political, ideology and world view will do much better as a counter example to compare with. And unless you get really pissed off at everyone who don’t hold the very same views as you do, I don’t see any reason to get so mad at these guys (who seem to be about as dangerous as pacifist zen-monks).
I have a strong reaction to condescending sexism, especially when packaged in the guise of some sort of lovey-dovey spiritual essence and which presumes to speak for large swathes of the planet with neutral-at-best, harmful-at-worst dreck which sets back equality and allows victimizers to spread responsibility for their actions across an entire population and forces the truly oppressed to combat the self-serving self-identified oppressed in order to be heard.
That enough for ya?
Ah, so not only are clueless men not intuiting the proper term, but the XX are as well. This does prove that you really aren’t an XX, though, despite the clever disguise. “Ms” indeed.
::Checks the the office pool::
You didn’t win the Life-giving crimson-glory of the Mother Earth Goddess Herself…text but the GIANT SIZE FONT category is still undecided. The optimists are out of the running, but most of the bets are around Page 8.
This drivel does save me from one worry. See, as the father of a toddler girl, I’ve been concerned about Mean Girls, but I never realized it was just so simple. I’ll just apologize to her for my gender, and no more problems, because “Mean Girls” don’t exist.
Wait… what?
You don’t want nurturing doctors, police officers with intuition, or peaceful members of congress?
You prefer greedy, calculating, and aggressive people with little or no empathy holding the structurally important roles in society? Congratulations are in order I guess.
I think that Odesio, Stoid and Captain Amazing are creating a lot of value in this thread with their high quality posts. I’d be willing to agree with all three of them, even though they don’t all three agree with eachother.
This is a tu quoque fallacy that has nothing to do with anything and doesn’t prove your point even if true. Whether or not it’s “wrong” has nothing to do with it. Even if America was the land of Kitten Juggling Wombat Lickers, that still wouldn’t be a valid point to bring up every time an American objects to any bit of absurdity. There is something wrong with your argument that you think ‘well… there are other bad things too’ is somehow presented as a counter to anything anybody has posted in this thread.
Ooooh, Internet Psychology. Awesome.
Shall I tell you what I think about seeing “anger and resentment” in a simple point about how absurd the word “playtime” is when talking about adults?
Ah well, not really relevant. You’re free to imagine “vitriolic resentment” all you’d like.
Not only have you aggressively missed the point and then went on to Internet Psychology, now you’re imagining that anybody has alleged any “clandestine” structure. Yet again, what actually happened is that some folks set themselves up as spokesmen for “conscious men”, talked about how other men had a host of negative attitudes, and explicitly set up a scenario where men either accept their claims and be good “conscious” men, or they’re not part of that group.
It’s not “clandestine”. It’s the explicit, logically necessary structural conclusion that they’ve set up. The whole title is “conscious men’s manifesto”, are you honestly contending that does not set up an explicit dichotomy between “conscious men” who accept their claims, and those who aren’t? Those who, in their words, are angry and such?
This whole thing has been some interesting insight into Stoid’s personality. Either she posted the link to the video believing fully that it really was amazing and that everyone was going to view it and agree with her that it was amazing, and is presumably somewhat bewildered that nearly 100% of responders to this thread disagree with her. (Well, except insofar as the video is amazingly awful.)
Or, she posted the link to the video knowing that everyone was going to think it was a bunch of smarmy dreck, and delighting in the inevitable multi-page thread that would ensue.
I am leaning towards the former, but could buy either as plausible. I’m also still not convinced that the video itself isn’t some kind of attempt at a comedic prank. I mean, it’s just so… lame.
No, of course not really. People are engaging in humorous hyperbole.
For myself, I come by my irritation honestly, I think.
I’ve considered myself feminist since early adolescence, a combination of growing up with a feminist mother and a belief that it’s just the right side of the issue to take, being pretty obsessed with issues of fairness and ethics. I read Gloria Steinem at a young age and really appreciated her.
Then my church’s philandering pastor’s ex-wife gave my high-school girlfriend some of the doozy feminist works: Dworkin and Daly. My girlfriend loved them, and when I tried to read them and was outraged by them, she was disgusted with me.
In college I hung out in leftist circles, and dealt with many different flavors of feminism, from the very sincere man-haters through the laid-back, funny, no-bullshit feminists. Among those were the ecofeminists: people who believe that women’s deep connection to the earth is why we should listen to women on environmental issues, or some such nonsense. I found those people increasingly inane and fuzzy-headed, and I started realizing that they had no more respect for women than many serious patriarch-types.
I also dealt, growing up, with the fact that I have a lot of traits more typically associated with women. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that, and what it meant. What I eventually decided was that gender is not an important identifier for me, that of the things I am, “man” is near the bottom of the list importance-wise. And I decided that these traits of mine (love to cook, work as an elementary-school teacher, don’t know anything about football or trucks, hate yardwork but love vegetable gardening, etc.) aren’t feminine traits, they’re my traits.
So when I see someone making sweeping generalizations about masculine energy and feminine energy, even if they throw on some disclaimers, I find it pretty annoying, whether they’re Andrea Dworkin types or Rambo types.
And then Stoid’s obnoxious defense of the video, in which she assumes that almost anyone who interprets it differently from her is either an idiot or a liar, is pretty great at getting my hackles up even further.
Why are you so frenzied with anger?!?!?
(Am I doing this right?)
Maybe Gary Taubes ghost wrote it.
That’s my problem as well. I don’t think the goddess/women as intuitive and peaceful thing is true. Women, like men, are just as capable as being evil, controlling, violent, domineering – whatever adjective you want to use. There’s nothing inherently graceful or dignified in being the oppressed gender. This video reminds me of people who think of Native Americans in terms of the noble savage stereotype – as a beautiful, oppressed people who are just so much more in touch with the natural world than we could ever hope to be.
Speaking of feminist writings as you were earlier in your post, fiction writer Margaret Atwood is someone (who, while not perfect) I’ve enjoyed because she has no qualms about addressing the fact that men have no monopoly on evil – women in her books are equally twisted, perverse characters.
Individual men or women can be empathetic, intuitive, kind, good–whatever nice adjectives you want to be. But I’m wary of anyone who wants to ascribe adjectives to entire groups of people.
First off, it would be nice of you to respond to the rest of my post as well. You only responded to a very small part of it and I’d like your thoughts on the rest as well.
Ah. Let me explain the misunderstanding here. I’m not saying “You mericans believe all kinds of crazy things, why not believe in this too!”, I’m saying “You mericans have all kinds of crazy things, why is this freaking you out so much?”.
If you say I’m imagining it, I’ll accept that. Even though you obviously did not intend it, the tone your message communicated to me was one of emotional resentment. I did not intentionally misunderstand you, and at least as a result of me bringing it up you were able to correct the misunderstanding.
Yes, if you make definitions of who is part of a group, the result will be that those who the definitions do not apply to will not be part of the group. I for example am not a member of the Socialist party since the definition of that is someone who shares the core values and ideas of the socialist party and has paid the annual membership fee. In reality it’s kind of hard to “prove” that someone doesn’t share the core values so the membership fee part is in reality usually the only way to decide. Unless you can prove that someone doesn’t share the values of the group, they are assumed to do so.
To be part of the group of “Conscious Men” seems pretty easy. I checked the web site and you don’t even have to be a man. Sounds pretty inclusive to me.
I realise that is not what you ment by being part of that group, and that in order to be a “real” part of the group you’d probably have to subscribe to some ideological things as well. Or at least not flaunt any idea that would indicate that you’re actually against the ideology. Like join their forum and say “Hey guys. I’m just here to see if I can make contact with some emotionally vulnerable women and try some new pick-up lines on them. If that don’t work, there’s always roofies! Am I right?! Right? Ahh… you’re all boring fags anyway.”
But that’s not the actual point either. What I am trying to explain is that nobody believes that someone rejecting something proves the truth of it. No one. Not these guys, nor anyone else. But that the way someone rejects something could be an indicator.
Example: I believe that a virus has infected mankind, a virus attacking the cerebral cortex and making people rude and aggressive. So I talk to a person saying what I believe.
Scenario 1.
His response: “I don’t think there’s any evidence of that. In fact, it doesn’t make much sense at all. Sure, theoretically a virus could cause specific changes to a brain that would bring about these symptoms but there is no reason to believe these is such a virus or that it has infected all of mankind. Some people are rude and aggressive, it probably has more to do with culture than biological reasons. Besides, rudeness and aggressiveness has always been around”.
Scenario 2.
His response: “Go fuck yourself you disgusting cocksucker.”
Although scenario #2 wouldn’t prove there was a virus, it would fit very well into my idea system. Especially if this was a common scenario.
Logically if you say you’re either a Gneebu or a Zeebox, I guess you’re either a Gneebu or a Zeebox. Just as you’re either a Christian or you’re not.
I’m not, so obviously I’m a worthless, evil and immoral person who a righteous god will torture for eternity once I die. According to some Christians. According to other Christians I am someone they should pray for and treat with respect and show the virtue of the Christian way by leading by example. Both are of course wrong, but I don’t mind the second type. (In fact, I kind of prefer the second type of Christians to atheists who are jerks.) I don’t think they are bad people and I have no strong desire to make them change their mind. I think they’re wrong about the God part but right about the being nice part.
Excellent deduction, for indeed I’m a card carrying feminist XY.
And she is far more in touch with the land than most people – she is at ease in a canoe as she is in a city.