Great Video

This is the worst thing

There is an amazing bevy of conservative commentators in the United States who say really messed up stuff. So it's really something when I come across something that is so horrible, so shockingly callous, as to leave me truly stunned.

Liz Trotta, from Fox News (where else), has really set a new standard. The executive summary of her comments is that women in the United States military should expect to get raped by their fellow soldiers, and spending money on trying to prevent these rapes is the epitome of government waste. If that upsets you as much as it should, be warned, video and quotes to follow:

TROTTA: ...just a few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commented on a new Pentagon report on sexual abuse in the military. I think they have actually discovered there is a difference between men and women. And the sexual abuse report says that there has been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? These people are in close contact, the whole airing of this issue has never been done by Congress, it's strictly been a question of pressure from the feminist.

And the feminists have also directed them, really, to spend a lot of money. They have sexual counselors all over the place, victims' advocates, sexual response coordinators. Let me just read something to you from McClatchy Newspapers about how much this position on extreme feminism is costing us. "The budget for the Defense Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office leapt from $5 million in fiscal 2005 to more than $23 million in fiscal 2010. Total Defense Department spending on sexual assault prevention and related efforts now exceeds $113 million annually." That's from McClatchy Newspapers.

So, you have this whole bureaucracy upon bureaucracy being built up with all kinds of levels of people to support women in the military who are now being raped too much.

SHAWN: Well, many would say that they need to be protected, and there are these sexual programs, abuse programs, are necessary --

TROTTA: That's funny, I thought the mission of the Army, and the Navy, and four services was to defend and protect us, not the people who were fighting the war.

It's hard to muster any kind of response to this. After calming down slightly, and trying to imagine a place where this kind of 'commentary' needs any response at all, I would think that if one was upset about needing to spend millions to prevent sexual assault within our military that person would be upset that people are getting raped and harassed in the first place.

Also, Fox News is a joke. The next time anyone tries to suggest that it's anything anyone should ever watch I'm going to send them this clip.

Nice Guy TM

Sometimes culture invents a new phrase or name. Sometimes these names are labels that name something we already understand. Swingrich, discussed below, is such a term. It's a great name for something we already understand.

But sometimes learning the meaning of a new label means learning something new, beyond the name itself. The concept exposes us to an idea which increases our understanding of how the world, or people in the world, work.

Nice Guy TM was such a concept for me. From seeking to understand the label, I gained insight into our culture and the people in it. I could write a lot on the idea of Nice Guy TM, but really I just wanted to take a minute to throw up a couple posts around the internet that explain and have various takes on the idea. I'd like to think that reading the content at these links would have done 16-25 year old me some good.

Nice Guy Syndrome

Nice Guy Comic

What is a Nice Guy?

Offensiveness and Hyper Sensitive Feminists

I stumbled across this article about a recent milk ad campaign that has been pulled.

The gist: An old study suggests that calcium can lessen the symptoms of PMS. So milk launched a campaign that can be summarized with a single picture:

So the article described the outcry over this add campaign, and it concluded with a simple question: is this add offensive?

The overwhelming percentage of online voters said that it was not offensive. The comments below the article lamented the "oversensitive feminists" for not being able to take a joke. (WARNING: it is highly recommended that you just take my word for it on this one, and don't venture into the msnbc.com comment thread on your own, that kind of thing can be dangerous).

A lot could be said about this add, and the idea of hypersensitive feminists who can't take a joke. But I'll keep it short.

I thought about whether or not I found the add "offensive." I did vote for that option at the end of the article, but it wasn't quite right. I don't get PMS, and I wasn't offended. The ad did upset me, but if I wasn't personally offended by it, why was I upset?

It's because the ad is harmful. Just like most jokes that rely on further marginalizing marginalized groups are harmful.

In the end the ad doesn’t offend me, it hurts me. It hurts me by making the culture I live in a little bit worse. It feeds a damaging stereotype that allows female thoughts and opinions to be dismissed at a higher rate than male. The idea that women who are PMSing are ‘crazy’ and ‘irrational’ as opposed to ‘in physical pain and discomfort’ is an idea which is used by misogynists (women included) to dismiss female emotions every day of the month.

The ad is clear, poor men suffer under the irrational oppression of their female overlords, and they should buy milk in a desparate attempt to seek a reprieve. Is that offensive? I’d say that really it’s more harmful than offensive. It *hurts* our society. It isn’t because it’s a joke, or because feminists can’t take a joke, but because it feeds a monster THAT EXISTS. Jokes based on stereotypes or assumptions, or pooling categories, are funny when they feed a monster that isn’t real. It’s a fine line, but I think it’s fairly distinct. PMS being used to marginalize women is common in our society. So a joke which feeds that concept is harmful.

When the Monsters Under the Bed are Real

Exaggeration is used a lot in politics. When you exaggerate in politics I find that it is often a extrapolation of an opponents position, which you frame and pull to the extreme.

Congressman Grayson stood on the floor of the House and said that the Republican health care plan was for 'you to die quickly.' He didn't mean it literally. He meant that he felt like their plan was callous to the point that if you got sick there wasn't recourse, so you better just die quickly.

It's an exaggeration. There were no Republicans during the health care debate who said the words 'I think sick people should die quickly.' So this is a kind of discourse of which I am accustomed.

So when I read feminist blogs talk about 'Men's Rights' groups, I thought they engaged in the same style. If I read 'they don't want women to have the vote' or 'they think women are spiteful bitches are out to get them personally' or some other extreme position attributed to some internet 'men's rights' blogger, I think in my head: 'Republicans want you to die quickly.' I assumed it was an extrapolation of hurtful, but far less insane, positions.

I was wrong. I was very wrong.

The other day I made the mistake of venturing to a couple sites: Men Going Their Own Way, and Feminist Apocalypse. Seriously, go there at your own risk, it is actually bad for the heart and soul.

I found out that crazy positions and opinions attributed to these authors are not exaggerations. These guys really do state that there are no women good enough to marry, or that women shouldn't vote, or that all women will cheat. The sites actually read like Colbert level satire, and in order to maintain my sanity, I'm forced to imagine that at least half the contributers and comments are elaborate satire.

In the middle of a slut shaming rant about how college women 'these days' will just sleep with anyone, anytime, anywhere, the author says 'I was born too soon.' Can't we all picture Stephen Colbert going on an identical rant, and stating the problem with women having promiscuous sex is that they aren't having it with him. That's satire! That can't be real!

So the next time you feel like a feminist seems to be going a little over board, maybe it sounds like s/he's over reacting to a situation, or exaggerating the level of misogyny in the world take a look at the people with whom they do regular battle. I spent half a day looking at the monsters under the 'men's rights' bed and I barely escaped with my sanity, but my decibel level on gender issues has probably been permanently turned up a notch or two.