What is Your Desired Outcome?

I have not had a lot of time to blog, my familial and corporate duties are demanding at the moment, but there is much going on in my mind.  I have managed to take time off from colouring Easter Eggs with my family to point out the parallels between recent events and my own blogging life leading into a brief statement of my mission.

I have serious disagreement on parts of Amanda Blum's measured take on Donglegate, but I appreciate her tone and agree on the overall point, that Adria Richards made it harder for women in tech and we all lost because of her actions. I would just like to point out the advice provided for anyone faced with a similar situation:

All she had to consider was “what outcome am I looking for?”.

In Adria's case, if she had asked herself the question and her answer was to gain more attention for herself and her blog, destroy the life of the offender and raise a hoopla over nothing, then she accomplished her goals and much much more. One should also consider the potential negative outcomes of one's proposed action.

I remember thinking that exact phrase when debating what to do in my own situation when faced with offensive material displayed publicly. My primary desired outcomes were: to stop this person from spreading hatred more towards men, make a point about the true nature of contemporary feminism and to put feminists on notice that their public displays of hatred will not go unchallenged.

I admit that the idea of gaining notoriety was enticing, but, this was not the way I really wanted to go about it.  If that was really my primary motivation, it was certainly a risky method - there obviously were people supporting this author of the posters. I did not want to hurt anyone, including the author, despite her opinion of me. I thought long and hard and initially tried to send this to a prominent MRA, but, had to post it myself when nothing came of it. Once the ball was set in motion, I was not going to let it go, so the AVFM article came about.

In the end, my decision to take the actions I did was demanded by the primary goal of this blog - to inspire others to challenge ideas - any ideas - which seem contradictory to reality or common sense. I am not afraid to challenge ideas which are generally accepted by the masses, simply because they are told that they must and they do not have the tools or knowledge to challenge them themselves. If I was truly The Cul-De-Sac Hero, it was time to stand up and show it.

Science and the lexicon of political ideology are weapons used against individuals who would challenge the powers who use them. I am not the best equipped to fight them, but, I have the most important weapon in anyone's arsenal, no matter who the foe. I have an independent, human mind.

With this tool, anything is possible. I hope that more people read this and make the same choice that I did - stop accepting the lesson presented by The Greater School System that is contemporary media and take appropriate action to bring more rationality into the common discourse.

Subjective Sexual Harassment -

Let's think of a reverse situation to the forking dongle episode experienced by Adria Richards.

There was an office party thrown by the executive in charge of my group. A few of us decided to share a cab, just because we were all working on a project together and working late. I sat in the front seat and three ladies sat in the back.

These ladies were a little older than me. I think of them with a twinge of sadness because they are the type of women who sacrificed their chance at raising families for their careers.

One of them once awkwardly mentioned how she wanted to have kids, when we were talking about mine. This was before I found the Red Pill, but I still realized that, pushing forty, she had little chance of meeting a man and having kids with him. I felt sorry for her because she seemed not to realize that her strategy for getting married and having kids was just not working out for her and the time was nearly up. I knew women her age that were hitting menopause. It was very awkward.

So conversation turned to our houses and gardening and one asked me if I enjoyed gardening. I do, in fact, since it was one of the first activities I enjoyed with my father who taught me a lot about growing vegetables and flowers.

"I like to watch things grow." I said, innocently.

"I like to watch things grow!" One of the women said.

I have to be honest, the joke went right over my head, partly, because I was facing front and couldn't see the facial expression and partly, because I was thinking about the state of the plants in my garden at that time. The snickers made me wake up to the connotation that had been made to the male member, but I was too slow and it was too late to make a come-back.

Now, it was a little uncomfortable to be in that situation because I was the only guy in the car (besides the driver) and I hadn't caught the joke. I realize that this is different than the situation in the conference, but, I bring it up to show that women are just as capable of making rude comments. I've been in many a public situation where similar things happened with women making lewd comments. Why are women making lewd comments empowered, while men doing so are harassing?

The problem with the word harassment in this situation is that focuses on the listener. It's subjective on the situation. If you make a joke to one person, everyone has a laugh. Another person becomes deeply offended by the exact same joke. Richards brings her traumatic past into it, her misinterpretation and the trigger of a little girl brought up in the speech to register action-worthy offense. I'm sorry, that's just too subjective to condemn a man or woman as a bad person who doesn't deserve to be included in society. People deserve leeway when it comes to their interactions. You can't designate one segment of society as the arbiter  of offensive comments and give them the power to ruin others. Feminists like to talk about language being a form of violence, but, the real form of violence is the action taken to silence and punish, especially when it's done on behalf of authority.

If I had been trained to see every awkward inducing comment as harassment and punishable, and men were seen as victims by society and society even considered harassment of men a problem, perhaps I would have felt obligated, empowered to report the comment in the cab. What would it have accomplished? Nothing but misery on all sides. I might have lost a coworker and created distrust at my workplace.

It's interesting, because I have done something similar to Richards. The artist who created those posters directed them toward the public, not a private conversation. They were blatantly hateful toward men in general, not a puerile joke. For holding feminist to the same standards to which they hold men, I was laughably accused of appropriating the language of the oppressed and using it against them. But, in Feminist Land, two wrongs make one wrong and a right (when the oppressed group performs one of the wrongs). Richards has received much praise and support as well as backlash and the loss of her job. No doubt, feminists will rally around her to support her chastising of behaviour that everyone does.

Richards doesn't know it is an unwitting victim in the feminist play. Now that she has been fired, she becomes a martyr for the cause, a casualty of the war on men. Trained to sacrifice her happiness for the feminist agenda like a foot soldier in the army.

I hope, at least, that she demonstrates to all, the pitfalls of the victim mentality. You can't rely on authority to protect your delicate sensibilities. This will only lead to a world with animosity and suspicion.

Rape Culture vs. Chivalric Code

It seems harder to get Feminists to challenge their belief in Rape Culture and Patriarchy than it is to get a devout theist to question the existence of perfect beings capable of creating imperfect worlds and then abandoning the inhabitants to go it alone. Both usually come by their beliefs through indoctrination and intense psychological abuse. Religious people are indoctrinated in churches, synagogues, temples and mosques. Feminists receive their beliefs from government institutions called schools.

Both groups have unfounded beliefs and customs that seem bizarre to the uninitiated. Religious people believe that they must adopt certain formalized manners of dress and behaviours as dictated by the leaders of their faith. Feminists have no formalized codes of dress, but many have fashions that could be described as counter-cultural identifying their members through rebellion against perceived oppression. Feminist orthodoxy states that adherents must believe that women are oppressed by the Patriarchy. This Patriarchy is not indestructible, but, it is enduring, ever-present and oppressive, a bit like the omnipotent beings believed to exist by many religious people.

Well, I am not trying to draw comparisons to famousphilosophers, but, this has to be said:

The Patriarchy is dead.

How do I know that Patriarchy is dead?

Women can vote.

Women can own land.

Women can hold positions of political power.

Women can work anywhere.

Women can start businesses.

Women can hire people.

Women can fire people.

Women can marry a man and keep her original name.

Women are not considered property.

Women can divorce their husbands.

Women usually have custody of children after a divorce.

All of these things were not true under the patriarchy. Today, women have equal or greater rights in every modern Western country. Due to intense indoctrination techniques feminists still believe that patriarchy exists, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Another odd belief related to Patriarchy, Rape Culture. Oddly enough, I’ve never seen it. Somehow, these feminists have grown up in another culture within the same culture in which I grew up.  I grew up in a culture of chivalry. There was nothing rapey about the culture in which I was raised. The rape narrative went something like this. If a member of your family was raped, your whole family was destroyed and shamed. You failed to protect her and you must avenge the act to achieve justice.

Here are two examples of common narratives of this culture:

1. A girl is raped. Her brother kills the rapist. He now lives in jail where he is regularly raped by the scum of the earth who also reside there.

2.  A father dies in jail where he was spending time for fighting. His last words to his son are that there is no honour in fighting and it shows more character to be passive. His son lives by these words, but, this perceived cowardice means that worthless thugs believe that his girlfriend is unprotected. He becomes enraged when he discovers she’s been raped and realizes that his ethos must be adjusted in certain circumstances and enacts his revenge.

How is rape excused in this culture? Did I miss something? I find this behaviour rather chivalric.

Feminists in this case are kind of putting the cart before the horse. They assume that rape exists because it was allowed by society. Well, this is completely backwards. Rape has always occurred since the dawn of humanity. As society became more civilized, it began finding ways to reduce the risk of rape, first, by civilizing men. Institutions like marriage were developed to protect women from opportunistic men. Chivalrous knights and later security forces, police and courts were formed. Of course, incest and other types of rape still occurred, but, as society became aware of more types of rape, and more techniques were invented to prevent rape more efforts were put forth to stop it.

The risk of rape is reducing as time and civilization progresses, much like the risk of being eaten by predatory animals has been all but eliminated. Every decade, fewer and fewer lives are lost due to predatory animals because we are dealing with the problem with increasing knowledge and techniques. 200 years ago, the land where I live was populated by bears, wolves and probably other predators that caused the residents a certain amount of realistic fear. These days, people react with hysteria when a coyote approaches their pet dog's kennel. The risk has been largely, but not totally, reduced due to the increase in civilization. If you were to say that coyotes attack dogs because society allows it, I'd say you're attributing a little bit too much power to the organs of society. We are trying to deal with coyotes, but, dammit, those creatures are wily and their nature makes them much more difficult to eradicate than wolves were.

If you don't believe that society is dealing with rape better than ever, look at the amount of furor and the level of punishment leveled for the Stubenville assault case.  If this type of assault is treated with every bit as much outrage as a brutal, traditional rape, we must realize that the world is much nicer than at any time in the past. Mind you, the publicity of You Tube makes this case unlike any other in the history. The outrage over rape is actually increasing even as the expanding definition of rape makes the crimes covered by the term less extreme and traumatic.

It doesn't matter if the rapist is the Gattlin boys in the Kenny Rogers tune or football players, rapists are considered the lowest form of criminal.

A burgeoning Rape Culture (later snuffed out by Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little)

Childhood Creativity

Somebody once told me
The world was macaroni
So, I took a bite out of a tree

It tasted kind of funny
So, I spate it at a monkey
And the monkey just stared at me.

Then Darth Vader
Threw his light saber
And missed me be metre
And hit Justin Bieber
Who said, 'Baby, baby, baby Oooohhh!"

My seven year old son picked this song up at school and taught me. By taught me, I mean repeated it over and over until I couldn't get it out of my head. It's a thoroughly annoying little ditty. I only hope that it stays with you, dear reader. If you do not get any enjoyment, enlightenment or perspective from my blog, at least you get a stupid song stuck in your head. If you don't have any children, this just gives you a tiny taste of the warfare they wage on your mind.

I do have a serious point. Songwriting such as this is ingrained in human behaviour. It is as natural as language itself - I believe it is the one of the most important instincts in the development of human intelligence and language.

When I was seven, we had many of our own little songs like this. However, I don't remember anything like this one. Here's why, it's a take off on a late-90's song by Smash Mouth called All-Star. Children have taken the basic lyrics and twisted them around using current pop-culture icons. The Justin Beiber part could have been added to an older rhyme - I just googled it and found many You Tube versions going back to 2009.

Who knows how many versions are going viral around school yards right now or what new creations will catch on and get spread around in the future. I just find it fascinating how people constantly twist the language and pop culture into all of these new forms. Modern technology lets us document it and spread it quicker, but this has been since the dawn of man. My sons still sings the old Jingle Bells, Batman Smells parody every Christmas that used to get punished by detention in my old school days.

Is it evidence of a rational, creative mind or genetic determinism at work?

BTW, here is the original song, All-Star by ska-rock band Smash Mouth:
http://www.slack-time.com/music-video-3228-Smash-Mouth-All-Star

I kind of like it.

Edited, March 16, 2013.

The Destruction of Female Through Sport

Back in 2010, I blogged about transgendered people and sport. I have no idea what has become of Lana Lawless. A cursory google search showed only outdated links.

The issue has come up again now that female male Fallon Fox has admitted to fighting in MMA in the women's division. I commented at AVFM and GLPIGGY.

My argument is that Hormone Replacement Treatment (HRT) amounts to doping. Although estrogen is not considered performance enhancing, it is in the same category as testosterone which is definitely performance enhancing. Paul Elam states in his response, "without the estrogen the individual would not have qualified to compete, it would make sense to me that this is a form of doping."  I agree.

Taken to its logical end, the argument that a man should be able to compete with women if he undergoes gender reassignment (GR) and HRT means that the reverse should also be true. This is why, in my comments at both places, I posed the question: when will women be allowed to dope with testosterone in order to "fairly" compete with men in men's only divisions?

I don't think that this idea quite sunk in with readers yet.  This is the inevitable conclusion of this gender defining nonsense. If gender is only a construct and we consider someone who undergoes HRT and GR to be identical in every way to a naturally born member of the chosen sex, then a woman should have the right to compete with men and use PED's (testosterone) to level the playing field. In the Liberal, post-modern mindset, giving women this advantage would only be fair since without it, women are excluded.

I'm taking this line of thought to its inevitable conclusion. It starts as allowing only male females (women who have been given GR to become men) into male sports division. But eventually, more and more women will want to compete and will start altering their bodies to become more male-like. If they can take that advantage in order to compete, some will. The flood gates will open and soon you'll have divisions filled with men competing against steroid-pumping females and nobody will be able to say one word or even construct an argument within their own mind because they won't understand how wrong it is.


Secondary Point:
The Science Whore is in full view in this issue. Fox uses the argument that "Doctors" have stated that using HRT negates all advantage of being born a man. I'm assuming that "Doctors" means her own pro-Gender-Reassignment doctors. This appeal to authority is pathetic. "Doctors" are not scientist. The opinion of two doctors is not substantive evidence any more than the opinion of 2 out of 3 dentists means that one toothpaste is better than another.

Define Rational Mind

I haven't had time to post anything recently. So, in light of the recent long discussion about moral free agency over at AVFM, in which I argued with Steve Moxon (who seriously out classes me in the academic department, but I will not agree to his statements about free will and rationality), I am going to post a question/challenge to anyone who happens by.

Can anyone provide a definition of a rational mind? What could possibly be capable of producing a rational mind? Would a rational mind be capable of performing anything of its own volition or would it only be capable of thinking if challenged by outside forces - less rational minds?

Steve Moxon states that evolution could not possibly produce a rational mind. It begs the question, indeed. For, evolution has produced the only mind of any kind that we are aware of.  So, is it even possible for a rational mind to exist? To answer this question, first the term must be defined.

Please send any links or publications that you might think help to answer this question.

CDSH