Holy hell, fist!

By fist, I mean first, of course. Though the concept of a holy hell-fist is pretty cool, imo.

I agree with the main point, but not with the math. Jobs aren’t the same as job openings. When someone gets fired, there’s +1 unemployed person, +1 job opening, but no change in the number of total jobs. When someone gets laid off, there’s +1 unemployed person, -1 job, but no change in the number of job openings. Still, the statement “there are 8 million fewer jobs to be found” is accurate.

Very timely and necessary, given Bernie Sanders’s recital of the ongoing pain, trauma and agony he has repeated in the heartfelt letters sent to him by people who don’t know where to turn and are trying to stay alive.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-unemployment-high-because-people-keep-blowi,17803/

Yeah, as Greg says the math is off. By saying +1 job opening when someone’s fired and -1 when someone’s laid of there’s a difference of 2 job openings between the two, there’s just one and you can chose if you want to say there’s a plus one place and a zero the other or a minus on one and a zero on the other

Um, Amazon.com is currently hiring. My SO, specifically, is looking for programmers. Jobs link is at at the bottom of Amazon’s homepage – I believe that all jobs are in Seattle, WA, USA.
Feel free to shoot me an email at the link on my name if you’re interested.

I don’t know why the link didn’t show up.

OK, fine. renniejoy32 at hotmail.com.

@renniejoy: Lack of qualifications. I don’t have a CS degree. Who here has a CS degree? I appreciate what you’re trying to do but mismatched skillsets are a major problem in solving the unemployment problem in these conditions.

And it ties into extending unemplouyment benefits. Unemployment money gets spent, on rent, on food, on clothes, fuels, services and other consumer goods. Unemployment money goes back into the economy. Tax cuts for the wealthy don’t. They go into offshore accounts or high yield mutual funds. At most they get a new yacht or a new BMW. And if you are a yacht dealer or BMW dealer you benefit but that’s pretty much where trickle down economics stops.

I used to be an unemployment insurance appeals officer, back in the 90′s when we actually had an economy. There are a few things people need to know about unemployment insurance:
1. You don’t get it all if you get fired or quit without good cause.
2. You don’t get it if you aren’t looking for work. This is called being “able and available” for work, which means completing at least three contacts looking for work each week.
3. If you get a valid job offer and turn the offer down, you lose unemployment benefits.
So, all Slactivites, please remember these three things and tell anyone who accuses unemployed people of being lazy these facts about the unemployment insurance law.

I’d love to apply for one of the Amazon jobs, but I don’t live anywhere near Seattle.

Greg @ 6:01: When I was laid off I was not replaced. Shortly after I was let go, another development office worker was laid off and not replaced. The receptionist was laid off and not replaced. So, I agree with Fred: there are more people who need jobs and fewer jobs for them to potentially work in.

now we are going to bury you…
And the lesson from all of this? DOUBLE!
What do you want, you little ****ers?
more of these idiots
youtube.com/watch?v=q4C5yzFmC80
How N won all the paranormal prizes!
youtube.com/user/xviolatex?feature=mhum
…

@Davemarbus: “What do you want, you little ****ers?”
Less of you, for starters. Do that, and we’ll negotiate. Maybe. ^_^

Sorry, Pius and Sue W.

o hai. Im in yur aytheeyist convenshun, pullening teh fyre alarum.

@purplegirl: Fewer jobs, yes. Fewer job openings, no. Look at it this way: An office has a maximum capacity of 5 jobs, and they’re all filled. There are 5 jobs and 0 job openings. If someone is fired, there are now 5 jobs and one job opening. If someone is laid off, there are now 4 jobs, but still 0 openings.

Interestingly, and only slightly unrelated: I’ve started reading Simulacra and Simulation. Five pages in and I’m already seeing some unpleasant parallels with authoritarian “talking points.”

I’ll add another point to “getting laid off is not the same as getting fired”:
Unlike getting fired*, getting laid off is not a reflection of the laid off person’s character or work ethic.
* Usually. There are occasions when someone is fired unjustly.

If every single one of them keeps a positive attitude while still being willing to settle for less, if each and every one of them takes classes and volunteers to keep their skills sharp, if each and every one networks furiously, gets up every morning, showers, shaves and gets dressed for the office before sending out dozens of perfect, enticingly crafted résumés all day, every day, then 10.8 million of them will still not find jobs because there are 10.8 million fewer jobs than there are job seekers.
Just-world fallacy. So long as you don’t have to admit that it’s possible to do everything right and still not get a job, you don’t have to worry that you might be laid off and stuck in long-term unemployment and unable to get a new job no matter how hard you try. Keep asserting that Those People are somehow to blame for their own problems, and you get to cling to the illusion of safety, imagining that even if you do get laid off, your firm handshake, nice suit, and up-to-date resume will ensure that you have a living-wage job inside of a month.

This reminds me of a Bobcat Goldthwait bit:
“I lost my job. Well, I didn’t lose it, it’s still there, it’s just that there’s some new guy doing it now.
“I lost my girlfriend…”

And it ties into extending unemplouyment benefits. Unemployment money gets spent, on rent, on food, on clothes, fuels, services and other consumer goods. Unemployment money goes back into the economy. Tax cuts for the wealthy don’t. They go into offshore accounts or high yield mutual funds. At most they get a new yacht or a new BMW. And if you are a yacht dealer or BMW dealer you benefit but that’s pretty much where trickle down economics stops.

We should be so lucky that the tax cut to the rich goes to offshore accounts and yacht dealers. The reality is that all that money is going to go chasing the next deal. IOW, it’ll inflate the next bubble, just like the last round of Republican economic genius inflated the real estate and Wall Street bubbles that nearly destroyed the global economy and left the US short those 10 million jobs.
Trickle down economics not only doesn’t create a rising tide that lifts all boats, it creates a tsunami that drowns everyone who can’t use a government bail out to get out of it’s path. Anyone who tells you differently either has no clue whatsoever about what’s been happening to the economy for the last few decades or is just lying.

Lori: I don’t think that any Republican even believes it’s about trickle-down economics. I think it’s a mostly-naked grab on behalf of their wealthy pimps benefactors that’s just barely clothed in a scrap of translucent fabric called ‘trickle-down economics.’ They barely even try to pretend that it’ll mean more jobs anymore.

We should be so lucky that the tax cut to the rich goes to offshore accounts and yacht dealers. The reality is that all that money is going to go chasing the next deal. IOW, it’ll inflate the next bubble, just like the last round of Republican economic genius inflated the real estate and Wall Street bubbles that nearly destroyed the global economy and left the US short those 10 million jobs.

I remember the Planet Money crew saying (possibly on This American Life) that the chief reason why so many investors pumped money into mortgage bonds – so much money that Wall Street resorted to fraud to fill the demand – was because U.S. Treasury interest rates were so low.
That’s begun to worry me.

The other salient difference between getting fired and getting laid off is that ( in most states) if you are fired “for cause” it’s a lot more difficult to get unemployment benefits.

Gee, and I used to kinda like Bobcat. Well, I liked the characters he played; never heard him do stand-up. Glad I didn’t. That joke is just hateful to women.

The other salient difference between getting fired and getting laid off is that ( in most states) if you are fired “for cause” it’s a lot more difficult to get unemployment benefits.
And it is also very, very easy for an employer to trump up a “cause.” I was once that employee. A good friend was that employee early this year. My husband was that employee two months ago. No unemployment benefits and a honking huge amount of “I thought I was a good worker–what the hell happened? Maybe I really am a bad worker and didn’t know it?” that the rest of the world is happy to answer with “Of course you were a bad worker. You got fired, didn’t you?”
So: Daughter, when you say, “sometimes people get fired for no good reason,” I’d amend that with “People get fired for no good reason all the damn time.” And in your statement which that was intended to mitigate, “Unlike getting fired, getting laid off isn’t a reflection of the laid off person’s character or work ethic,” I’d prefer, “Isn’t as often used as an excuse to denigrate the laid off person’s character and work ethic.”
But I’d only go so far as “isn’t as often,” rather than simply “isn’t.” Because people who get laid off get a whole bunch of denigration too.

1. You don’t get it all if you get fired or quit without good cause.
This is up for debate. When I managed at Arby’s, we had a girl quit because she was picked for a random drug test and knew she would fail. She got unemployment. I know for a fact that the unemployment office knew, because I overheard the GM telling them why she quit.
But when the same GM rage-fired me because I dared make plans and couldn’t come in one of my days off (I’d done this pretty much every other time she called…They knew I was dependable.), nope. I didn’t qualify.
Bitter? A tiny bit. >.>

Maybe it’s a quirk of my brain, but to me if a job isn’t filled it isn’t an opening and fewer jobs means fewer openings if the organization isn’t going to replace a person they once had. It means I’m still jobless after two years and on the edge of the cliff.

“An office has a maximum capacity of 5 jobs, and they’re all filled. There are 5 jobs and 0 job openings. If someone is fired, there are now 5 jobs and one job opening. If someone is laid off, there are now 4 jobs, but still 0 openings.”
Or, more likely around here: One person is laid off, or fired, and position 5′s duties get spread to the four remaining people… who are slaving away like mad in hopes of not losing their jobs too and accepting of the overwork.

@Selaris: Call the State Dept of Labor and say they didn’t five you your last paycheck, and then call the IRS and say you heard a rumor they’re screwing with employee withholdings. Of course, do it from a pay phone, but give enough details they’ll actually swoop down and start hassling the GM.
Yeah, an eye for an eye and all that but sometimes you just have to hit back below the belt.

@Greg, @JE, and others: I think I see how the math works. (Hi, by the way. Long-time reader, first time contributor.)
If you’re person X, already unemployed and looking for work, when someone else is laid off, your chances of getting work are affected doubly negatively. The person losing their job is one more person in the pool of people looking for work, so that’s -1. The job that no longer exists means there’s one less place for everyone, including you, person X, to apply, so that’s another -1 to your chance of finding employment (even though the actual percentages are not nearly as integer-like). The net effect is -2, whereas if someone were merely “fired” and their job kept open, the net effect would be -1, for the addition of the extra competitor into the pool.

But yet this confusion persists — particularly on right-wing talk radio, on Fox News and among conservative pundits and politicians.

My first thought was Just World Fallacy.

I don’t think that any Republican even believes it’s about trickle-down economics. I think it’s a mostly-naked grab on behalf of their wealthy pimps benefactors that’s just barely clothed in a scrap of translucent fabric called ‘trickle-down economics.’ They barely even try to pretend that it’ll mean more jobs anymore.

The folks in power don’t believe it, but they’re madly still selling it to the masses on the Right. The asshats on Fox News right now are yammering on about supply side blah, blah, blah.
Every day I become more convinced that Matt Taibi is right—the very wealthy have completely written off the US. They’re just stealing everything that isn’t nailed down before they take off for greener pastures (aka their next victim). The merely wealthy are supporting them because they haven’t quite figured out that they’re not going to get to the top before the pyramid scheme collapses.

The company I still somehow work for survived for a couple of decades by buying other companies and cooking the books. (This ended with the CEO in prison; we now actually produce stuff and sell it). During the bad old days, we had annual layoffs. We didn’t fire people — we laid them off. Fred’s math still applies, but the attitude in the company was that the deadwood got laid off.
Result? No reason for the manager to go through the trouble of proving that someone SHOULD be fired, no reason to help them NOT get fired. Just wait a few months and you *will* be asked who in your organization you can do without.
I think it is a safe bet that this is not the only company that did that as a business model.
And THAT is why there’s no sympathy for the laid off. In many people’s experience, good people don’t get laid off. (Well, that, and the fact that the right wing in this country is a load of sociopaths who think that Onion article reflects reality)

How did we get this many comments in without anyone objecting to Fred’s use of the racially insensitive term “chinese fire drill”? I mean, seriously, I sometimes respectfully disagree about whether or not it’s really helpful or accurate to characterize certain things as racially or ethnically insensitive , but “Chinese fire drill” is a pretty forthrightly and unquestionably racist term.

I think most Americans only know “chinese fire drill” as that thing where people jump out of a car at a red light and change seats. IIRC the original, explicitly racist, usage of the term was far more common in England than it was here. Is there another name for the car thing that doesn’t have a racist origin?

You could always just call it musical chairs. *shrug*

Help the unwittingly racist Americans: what is the origin of ‘Chinese fire drill’? Wikipedia doesn’t seem to explain anything explicitly racist.

You could always just call it musical chairs. *shrug*

Not in this context. With the car thing, unlike musical chairs, the number of seats remains the same. The point (such as it is) is accomplishing the switch before time runs out. In musical chairs the number of seats decreases, which is sort of the opposite of the point Fred was making.

Help the unwittingly racist Americans: what is the origin of ‘Chinese fire drill’? Wikipedia doesn’t seem to explain anything explicitly racist.

The term originally referred to a disorganized, confused effort. It was one of many anti-Chinese slurs (Chinese = inferior) that were common back in the late 19th & early 20th century.

@Lori: “Ersatz” musical chairs then. Good god, I’m trying to suggest a non-racist alternative here.

@Lori: Though musical chairs is an apt illustration of the current situation.

Pius Thicknesse: I understand you’re trying o suggest an non-racist alternative. My point is that IME if you want people to stop using term A and start using Term B the new term has to “work”. Breaking a habit is difficult. Breaking it for something that seems less useful or less clear is a really tough sell for most people.

The racist term describes the situation where someone is fired and the job is open. The are the same number of positions as applicants (more or less).
Musical chairs describes the situation where people are laid off. More applicants, fewer positions. Everyone is scrambling for the same chairs, and someone is going to be left out.

Though musical chairs is an apt illustration of the current situation.

But when Fred used the term “chinese fire drill” he wasn’t describing he current situation. He was describing the situation where people get fired, rather than laid off.

That means it wouldn’t matter if every unemployed American followed all the advice for what job-seekers are supposed to do. If every single one of them keeps a positive attitude while still being willing to settle for less, if each and every one of them takes classes and volunteers to keep their skills sharp, if each and every one networks furiously, gets up every morning, showers, shaves and gets dressed for the office before sending out dozens of perfect, enticingly crafted résumés all day, every day, then 10.8 million of them will still not find jobs because there are 10.8 million fewer jobs than there are job seekers.
I keep telling Dad that. It keeps not working. ‘Course that strategy did work for him.

My company, a gigantic megacorporation which has essentially a license to print money, given the fact that its major competitor is itself, doesn’t lay people off.
It downsizes, rightsizes, rationalizes head count, outsources, and otherwise changes the terminology every year.
And every year, it does this. Every year, it reduces staff.
It is making money hand over fist, mind you. My division in particular is doing so.
Yet every year, we are asked to eliminate a percentage of our employees.
The reason? They say that they are ‘concerned’ that there might be an economic downturn and they want to be ‘ready’ by ditching all possible employees prior to that time.
And of course, to increase short-term profit margins, not that anyone officially admits that.
Because the rest of us have pulled together to get the job done anyway last year, they assume we can do it again this year. and we can’t.
So, what might be called the plus side is that we end up hiring short-term contractors to support our efforts. Thus, some percentage of good paying, high skill jobs are replaced temporarily with semitrained workers getting low wages, but that cost the company twice the wages of the former employees, because their contracting company charges lots for their rental. And those folks go bye-bye without notice when the budget runs out, even if they are still needed.
And at the end of the year, they tell us what a good job we’ve done and how the instant they find anyone who’ll do our jobs a penny cheaper, we’ll be replaced.
If I didn’t love my job, I’d have to think about that.
–Longstreet63

…keeps misreading the title of this post as “Getting laid is not the same thing as getting fired.”

Me, too, Jason. It’s kind of like that geography kink discussion on the other thread.

Getting laid isn’t the same thing as getting fired, however, although both may involve spending more time in bed.

But when Fred used the term “chinese fire drill” he wasn’t describing he current situation.

Yeah, I know. He was talking about people being fired. I was just running with his metaphor and saying that people being laid off is more like musical chairs.

The place where my sister works just changed owners.
They made all the employees resign, in writing, and apply for their jobs again. (AFAIK, everyone was re-hired.)
Also, they’re getting much more in the way of internal security controls.

now we are going to bury you,
And the lesson from all of this? DOUBLE!
____________________________
What do you want, you little ****ers?
more of these idiots
youtube.com/watch?v=q4C5yzFmC80
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal
HOW N WON ALL THE PARANORMAL PRIZES!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus
pz myers does not exist…
richarddawkins.net/discussions/543672-inhertitance-of-acquired-behaviour-adaptions-and-brain-gene-expression-in-chickens
atheists, we’re gonna cut off your heads…
THE HIGH PRICE OF REVOLUTION
youtube.com/user/xviolatex?feature=mhum
…..

How about when you are “let go,” because the job “just isn’t right for you?”
*is very bitter at a local small-parts factory.*

@ Longstreet63
The overhead for contractors is something like 20 to 30 percent of their pay – it’s a contract item that the victim contract employee doesn’t usually know about (and certainly not officially).
Why yes, we do have a lot of contractors where I work. One-year deals, unless they’re good enough to be converted to direct contract (where one gets a year-to-year contract from the company, with benefits that the external contractors don’t have, and has more responsibilities and duties).

Hmm, getting fired is kind of like being relegated in the Premier (or other non-American football-soccer) League? You get sent ‘off’ to the second division, but someone from the second division gets the chance to be sent ‘up’ to your spot.
Though most Americans I know aren’t familiar enough with soccer to have that analogy make sense w/out explaining.
Or, to continue w/ football analogies, getting fired would be like getting substituted, whereas being laid off would be like being red-carded.

I don’t know jack about soccer but the analogy makes sense to me.

I think most Americans only know “chinese fire drill” as that thing where people jump out of a car at a red light and change seats. IIRC the original, explicitly racist, usage of the term was far more common in England than it was here. Is there another name for the car thing that doesn’t have a racist origin?

The only other name I know for it (which is more common here) is “Bavarian fire drill”. I’d no idea that either were racist.
Given context, how does “Wall Street Fire Drill” work as a replacement?

@MercuryBlue – Err, now I see I phrased that clumsily. I really didn’t mean to imply that Americans are stupid (I am one, fwiw) – just that a lot I’ve talked to aren’t familiar with relegation in sports leagues. .

Gee, and I used to kinda like Bobcat. Well, I liked the characters he played; never heard him do stand-up. Glad I didn’t. That joke is just hateful to women.
Thank you. I was still trying to decide how to respond to that one, and now all I have to do is second you.
The only other name I know for it (which is more common here) is “Bavarian fire drill”. I’d no idea that either were racist.
“Bavarian fire drill” comes from the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, and refers to a different phenomenon. In a Bavarian fire drill, some Discordian goes down the line of stopped cars, pounding on hoods and announcing “Bavarian Fire Drill! Everyone out of their cars!” along with some assertion of authority. The Discordian then leaves all the people who got out of their cars standing around and wondering what the hell happened and if they can get back in their cars or not, and leaves. It’s used to demonstrate people’s reaction to assertions of authority, and to cause some chaos and confusion. It’s called a Bavarian fire drill after the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, AKA the Illuminati, because in the universe of the trilogy, the Discordians understand the Illuminati to be all about authority.

Or, to continue w/ football analogies, getting fired would be like getting substituted, whereas being laid off would be like being red-carded.

I would say that getting fired is like being evicted from your home, and getting laid off is like being evicted from your home and then the bank comes to burn down your house and fence off the land so that no one can ever move there again, even nomads living on the land itself without using in the actual house.

MadG: Apparently the two terms have ended up conflated amoungst my circle of friends, which I could see, since I’m pretty sure at least one of them’s read the Illuminatus! trilogy, and is a fan of Discordianism.

Discordianism has fans? Do other religions have fans?
I used to be a practicing Discordian, indeed an Episkopos of my own Cabal (the Nu Mu Mu Cabal, to be precise), back in college. It was a lot of fun, and very silly, and actually spiritual. College is a really chaotic time for many people, and me more so than most, because the bipolar was getting really bad and I was cycling once a month, so having some way to make sense of the chaos, a way to think of it as potentially productive, was really helpful to me then.
I do still like a good game of Sink, and I do occasionally invoke Eris, but that’s about all now. Maybe, what with the current chaos at the restaurant, I should reconsider.

Help the unwittingly racist Americans: what is the origin of ‘Chinese fire drill’? Wikipedia doesn’t seem to explain anything explicitly racist.

The term refers to a sort of fratboy game where the occupants of a car stopped at a traffic light jump out and circumnavigate the car before the light changes.
I once looked up its etymology, and it appears to be one of the few survivors of a class of expressions that used “chinese” as a synonym for “harried and confused”, which may have originated with the expression “chinese landing”, which was when you landed a plane with “one wing low”

I’ve no idea if other religious have fans, but he likes many of the tenants of Discordianism, but is not himself a Discordian. I think. He might’ve been pope for a day once, but I don’t recall for sure.

Discordianism has fans? Do other religions have fans?

Wouldn’t that be an interesting concept? Some guy who sits in the back of every religious service that he can find in his town.
In the trunk of his car, he has a JESUS ROCKS giant foam finger, a Muhammad (pbuh) T-shirt — no logo of him on it, of course — a pennant for Ahura Mazda, some commemorative mugs for Odin, Thor, and Freyja, a Horned God bumper sticker… He doesn’t actually believe in any of them, he just likes rooting for them, and he gets antsy when there aren’t any good cheer-able sports on the tube…

I mean, if you think about it, would someone like that be significantly less sincere than most of the religious types we see on TV? Someone who claims to believe in the peace of God condone war, deny the Holocaust, heap scorn on the sick and poor, and lie, cheat, steal, and betray in ways more sinister than most atheists could even contemplate? They might sit in their little churches and mosques and temples and smile encouragingly but it’s clear that they don’t really listen or care about 90% of the message anyway.

Yeah I also don’t get how fire drills are like spontaneously swapping places. Why not call it a “mad tea party”?

I don’t have much to say, but did want to show off my new sig line…
I came here to unwind after my last finals and a long day, I probably shouldn’t be reading something that makes me freak out about my probability of getting a job any time soon. Grr. I’m trying to think it’s not as hopeless as it looks…anyway I’ll just keep trying and see what happens. Happy end of semester to any other students!

Congratulations, Lunch Meat!
I like the “mad tea party” (the Alice in Wonderland reference, not the current usage.)

Woohoo! Congrats to Lunch Meat!
He might’ve been pope for a day once, but I don’t recall for sure.
He is a Pope. And so are you. And so is everyone else, unless they renounce it or something. The Parathea-anametamystichood Of Eris Esoteric (POEE) has declared every man, woman and child (and, for some reason, platypus, or maybe that was some other group) on the face of the Earth to be a Genuine and Authorized Pope. So please treat them right.
In the trunk of his car, he has a JESUS ROCKS giant foam finger, a Muhammad (pbuh) T-shirt — no logo of him on it, of course — a pennant for Ahura Mazda, some commemorative mugs for Odin, Thor, and Freyja, a Horned God bumper sticker… He doesn’t actually believe in any of them, he just likes rooting for them, and he gets antsy when there aren’t any good cheer-able sports on the tube…
That image? Is awesome.
Also, for the edification of the unilluminated, I here present the text of a page from the Principia Discordia, or, How I Found the Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her, the magnum opiate of Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst (titles omitted). Specifically, the page related to the nature and rules of the game of Sink, to which I previously referred. I hope some of you get a giggle out of it.

SINK
A GAME
by Ala Hera, E.L., N.S.; RAYVILLE APPLE PANTHERS
SINK is played by Discordians and people of much ilk.
PURPOSE: To sink object or an object or a thing…
in water or mud or anything you can sink something in.
RULES: Sinking is allowd in any manner. To date, ten pound chunks of mud
were used to sink a tobacco can. It is preferable to have a pit of water or
a hole to drop things in. But rivers – bays – gulfs – I dare say even
oceans can be used.
TURNS are taken thusly: who somever gets the junk up and in the air first.
DUTY: It shall be the duty of all persons playing “SINK” to help find more
objects to sink, once one object is sunk.
UPON SINKING: The sinked shall yell “I sank it!” or something equally as
thoughtful.
NAMING OF OBJECTS is some times desirable. The object is named by the
finder of such object and whoever sinks it can say for instance, “I sunk
Columbus, Ohio!”
“In a way, we’re a kind of Peace Corps.”
- Maj. A. Lincoln German, Training Director of the
Green Beret Special Warfare School, Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Blast. The stupid quote lost all its formatting. I promise, there were supposed to be paragraphs and everything. Not that it makes much difference to the sense of the text, I suppose.

XD
Did I ever tell you about how a domain name made me think for the longest time that the Discordian trademark phrase was “Hailer is Hail Discordia”*?
–
* hailer.is.hail.discord.ia, which is actually Hail Eris, Hail Discordia.

Drake Pope @ Dec 11, 2010 at 12:13 AM: Most atheists? Most people, I would imagine – I am hardly that cynical about the goodness of ordinary religious folk.
The odd thing I’ve found is that I’m often a fan of particular traditions within different religions – the rationalist tradition within Buddhism, the … “charitable” is not the word, but I hope you know what I mean, tradition in Christianity – but I generally find the holy texts to be offputting.

* hailer.is.hail.discord.ia, which is actually Hail Eris, Hail Discordia.

That actually makes sense. Eris is Discordia, isn’t she?

Drake Pope @ Dec 11, 2010 at 12:13 AM: Most atheists? Most people, I would imagine – I am hardly that cynical about the goodness of ordinary religious folk.

That’s very true. I just singled out atheists because some of the people who believe those things tend to be the ones who hold up atheists as embodiments of pure evil, Satanic voids whose evil is so alien that it outstrips that of even your standard heretic, Muslim, or pagan.

Did you even read the nonfootnoted part?

He is a Pope. And so are you. And so is everyone else, unless they renounce it or something.
I’m not a pope. I renounced it in college as part of my efforts to intermittently annoy an intermittently-smug Discordian guy. He was generally nice, but a bit too into the whole “I’m all clever and enlightened and I can completely rock your world with a few odd references and a handful of paradoxes!” I got sick of it and took to renouncing my papacy at him just to be irritating (also declaring I was a cabbage).

Speaking of broader economic effects… see here:

“Unintentionally, QE2 is leading to a fragmentation of global financial markets because each country takes actions to protect itself,” Mr Stiglitz said. “As more and more do that, it puts more and more pressure on those that don’t, and they will eventually be forced to take some form of action.”

Fact is, I’m not too fussed about this. The more countries insulate their financial markets from the viissitudes of the wealthy whose only interest is asset-stripping as fast as possible, the less financial contagions in the future will threaten world-wide prosperity. The Bretton Woods regime of fixed exchange rates and controlled capital flows certainly did no harm to the “Anglo” countries plus Western Europe.
This insulation will also be necessary to allow domestic finance to be directed to domestic goals, such as getting people back to work.

In the trunk of his car, he has a JESUS ROCKS giant foam finger, a Muhammad (pbuh) T-shirt — no logo of him on it, of course — a pennant for Ahura Mazda, some commemorative mugs for Odin, Thor, and Freyja, a Horned God bumper sticker… He doesn’t actually believe in any of them, he just likes rooting for them, and he gets antsy when there aren’t any good cheer-able sports on the tube
I want to put him in Gaiman’s American Gods ‘verse. The gods there find him amusing. Besides, even if he doesn’t believe, he keeps people aware of the older gods; you never know what’s going to inspire a new believer.

I want to put him in Gaiman’s American Gods ‘verse. The gods there find him amusing. Besides, even if he doesn’t believe, he keeps people aware of the older gods; you never know what’s going to inspire a new believer.
It took me a few seconds to parse the apostrophe on the front of ‘verse, so now I want a poem about the religion fan living in the American Gods ‘verse.

I’ve been saying this for years, and the just-world fallacy seems to have most of the luckily still-employed tightly in its grip; the terror that any one of them could be next probably makes them very easy prey for it. I don’t know about the US, but here in the UK the primary response to the shortage of jobs is still largely to tell the unemployed to simply look harder for jobs, as if the mere act of searching for it could call work into existence (I imagine there are obvious parallels with certain kinds of religious thought here). I don’t know if the powers that be honestly believe this, or whether they just keep loudly reiterating this worthless advice to try and hide the fact that they’ve got nothing else.
More recently, there was inexplicably a lot of noise made about getting the “career unemployed” back to work, i.e. those people who lived on state benefit and refused to work even back when there actually were jobs available that they could do. This, to me, seems like a patently diversionary tactic, designed expressly to appeal to the just-world fallacy mentioned earlier, reinforcing the general perception that the unemployed deserve their plight by diverting attention (and aid) away from those who do want to work and can’t get any. There’s no other plausible reason; it’s simply madness, upon having a huge rise in the numbers of people who genuinely want to work and power the economy but can’t, to suddenly make an extra push to employ those who have no interest in it, and couldn’t be persuaded to do any even when it was available to them.
If you couldn’t get the career-jobless into work even when the economy was good, no sane person could ever expect to make a dent in their numbers when there isn’t even any work for them to do. It’s pure displacement activity, and damn disturbing, because it shows beyond shadow of doubt that those we have elected to take charge and fix things for the able and willing of us don’t have a clue how to do it. At best they’re playing for time so they can think of something before we’re in open rebellion; at worst they’re playing for time in the desperate hope that the situation will eventually fix itself. In either case, this is also working to turn the employed against the unemployed and worsen social division.
The only sensible thing the UK seems to be doing is making a desperate drive to stimulate entrepreneurship. This isn’t exactly a bad idea, new businesses certainly create new jobs, but it is, shall we say, an extremely optimistic one. There’s no shortage of ideas for new products, but it’s rare indeed that one of these new products will turn out to be indispensable, and most will be considered unnecessary luxuries. In a stagnant economy, it’s extremely difficult to find markets for new but non-essential products, and those markets grow sluggishly, if at all. Even if a huge wave of entrepreneurial new business is sufficient to solve the problem, and of this I have my doubts, it’ll probably take an unpleasantly long time to have an impact.

Does anyone else think that the just-world fallacy might be at least slightly helped along by all the job scams out there? Like the ones posted over and over again on careerbuilder promising that with no experience necessary and working from home, you’ll be making $500 a month, and they’re desperate to hire someone because they have so many openings. Or the ones that post something that looks legitimate and attractive, and then introducing the scam after you apply. I wonder if some people ever look at all these postings and think, “There are so many jobs out here, these people must be really lazy if they don’t even want to work from home.” Or do you think that gives them too much credit for paying attention to job postings?

To a first approximation, it’s safe to assume that any expression of the form [Ethnic Identifier]+[Something Not Obviously Relevant] was originally coined with negative intent – Dutch courage; French leave: guess who England was mostly at war with in the 17th/18th centuries. So if you’re not sure, it’s a good rule to avoid them.

“Chinese fire drill” is a term with an unfortunate pedigree but as far as I know there is no other term for “an activity where everyone stands up and runs around and sits back down in a different place than they stood up from” other than that explicit description, which isn’t useful.

I’ve been thinking about the Bobcat Goldthwait joke, and I’m having a little trouble understanding what’s objectionable about it. It seems to me to be a joke where the humor comes from two things — one, an observation about how we use terms like ‘I lost my job’ and ‘I lost my girlfriend’ in ways that don’t really make sense when you think about them, and two, sex. (Sex is just about always funny if you introduce it with the right timing, and make it implied rather than explicit.) It seems to be more self-deprecating than deprecating of the girlfriend, suggesting that he was so pathetic a boyfriend as to be nothing more to her than a body to fill a role, kind of like his former employer. (This does imply callousness on the part of the girlfriend, of course. But surely one can make a joke about a callous woman without it being a slur on all women?)
I admit that I’m coming from a perspective of privilege, however. Would anyone care to help me unpack this and explain where the misogyny they’re taking from this joke can be found?

[Ethnic Identifier]+[Something Not Obviously Relevant]
What blew my mind was when I learned in my late twenties that “Indian Giver” (a term we had used since I was a little kid, in between Polack jokes) was actually derogatory to the Palefaces, not the Indians.

Would anyone care to help me unpack this and explain where the misogyny they’re taking from this joke can be found?
It reduces the girlfriend to a thing to be “done.” Any time you use a parallel construction, you end up comparing the things so paralleled. Sometimes, if the two things are unrelated enough, it can be funny. But in a world in which women are often treated as objects instead of people, and are harmed by it, this joke really is that reductive.

We called the car-at-a-red-light thing ‘fruitbasket turnover’.

The confusion isn’t really between getting laid off and getting fired. It’s between different types of layoff.
Suppose you have a situation in which an industry, on the whole, is growing or stable. But companies are born and companies die; projects are established and some of them fail, but others succeed.
People still get laid off in such times. Sometimes, there are even mass layoffs. But the people find new jobs rapidly if they are at all attractive candidates. The number of job openings doesn’t shrink, because new jobs are being created. The platitudes about how laid-off people who do the right things get hired actually apply in that situation.
Even in tough times, when the job pool is shrinking, a smaller amount of job creation goes on. Some individual industries may even have growth. So some people are going to get lucky and be re-hired after a time. Some may even get hired rapidly. These people will often tend to believe that they were rewarded for their efforts (which is to some extent true) and that other people who do the same things they did will have no trouble (which is not true).
Most American workers at this point probably have some experience with being laid off. Certainly, in the sector where I work, everyone does. But if they haven’t been laid off into this environment, or if they did but were among the lucky few, they don’t really have experience of what the typical laid-off worker is going through, though they may think they do. This is the gap into which you can insert demagoguery about lazy workers looking for handouts.
Also, it’s worth mentioning the situation in which the jobs don’t all go away, but are replaced with openings at lower wages. This is more or less the squeeze that was going on for years even before the financial crisis and the current recession. People can get jobs, but only if they’re satisfied with declining wages. This is the situation that you really want people to resign themselves to if you want to pull extended unemployment benefits. The people are too “lazy,” which is to say desirous of compensation, to settle for less money than they were making before.

Congratulations, Lunch Meat!

“Chinese fire drill” is a term with an unfortunate pedigree but as far as I know there is no other term for “an activity where everyone stands up and runs around and sits back down in a different place than they stood up from” other than that explicit description, which isn’t useful.
Musical chairs? Or is Chinese fire drill less organised?

I’m still fond of ‘mad tea party’.

the terror that any one of them could be next probably makes them very easy prey for it.

I think that explains Just World Fallacies in general, except applied broadly to any sort of suffering or misfortune.

there was inexplicably a lot of noise made about getting the “career unemployed” back to work, i.e. those people who lived on state benefit and refused to work even back when there actually were jobs available that they could do.

If the person making the noise was a white American, I would instantly suspect him or her of speaking in racist code.

I learned in my late twenties that “Indian Giver” (a term we had used since I was a little kid, in between Polack jokes) was actually derogatory to the Palefaces, not the Indians.

I had always thought it was unintentional racist irony – the whites were accusing Indians of taking things back, when it was the whites taking land after promising the Indians could have it. Sort of how scapling was misremembered as an Indian practice when it was much more common for whites to scalp Indian captives.

Congrats to Lunch Meat

yay! Lunch Meat! *fist bump*

Congratulations, Lunch Meat!

Rock on, Lunch Meat. *boogies*
Ahem.

Chris Y: I agree about French leave – though not sure about French horn v Cor Anglais – but I assumed Dutch courage referred to the origins of gin in Holland, and extended from there to refer to all alcoholic forms of en-couragement, while retaining its specific use to refer only to gin. Dutch auction is the way they sold bulbs …

The author of the book Eaarth (highly recommended, btw) suggests that locally-grown organic veggies can be a source not only of cheap, healthy food (much organic food now is expensive due to transport costs) but also of jobs.
See, organic farming requires more hands to weed and monitor the crops than modern, chemical-based farming. A lot more hands. So we’d be able to eat healthier, and we’d cut down a bit on unemployement as well, by simply getting rid of government subsidies to big, one-crop agribusiness and provide incentives to organic intercropping instead. We’d also get a lot more food per acre, which is always a good thing.

Dutch auction actually still is a term of art among auctioneers. Since the origin is from an actual historical event, and doesn’t carry negative stereotypes of Dutch people, I don’t think the term is insulting in the same way that “French leave” or “Chinese fire drill” is.
The L — I’m not really sure that organic farming is going to help much. For one thing, farm work doesn’t pay very well.

And why doesn’t farm work pay very well? The fundamental problem of lax labor laws and weak unionization of that sector.

The concept of religious fandom brought to mind an observation I’d made recently on some types of Christian apologism. Particularly with regard to Pascal’s Wager, it seems that there is an undercurrent of choosing to be a follower of a given god because one thinks that god is going to ‘win’ and be in a positon to reward you.
This ties in to thoughts raised recently about the nature of Satan. Satan was an angel who rebelled and took with him a third of the angels (according to, mostly, tradition) and then set about opposing God in any way he could. And the way he did it was to give knowledge to mankind (as well as telling the truth about the fruit not killing you), which allowed them to become independent beings. He also tried to divert Jesus from his gruesome death.
And he did this, knowing from personal experience that God could not be defeated and in the end, only eternal punishment awaits him, for Hell was originally created to punish him in (humans are just an afterthought in that respect).
So why did he do it? God’s propagandists say he’s just evil and the source of all evil. But how could that be? Where could the evil have come from in the first place? And if he’s evil, why not be self-centered and suck up to God?
It can only be a matter of principle for Satan to oppose God. Maybe God’s dictatoral manner is the issue. Maybe something else. We couldn’t know for sure, but Satan sat at the right hand of God. He knows him better than anyone, but rebelled anyway, knowing he would lose.
This is surely a better example of a principled moral stand against evil than a series of blood sacrifices.
Yet,then, why do believers still stand with God? Perhaps because they want to be on the side of the winner, regardless of the nature of the winner? They make the opposite decision that Satan made to save themselves.
Oh, I know nobody thinks about it like this. Probably once you get to choosing sides, there’s no belief left. But if one takes it seriously and objectively, being on the Lord’s Side is not the side of moral courage.
–Longstreet63

@The_L: What about people who live in urban areas? How are we going to work on organic farms? I live in a major city and don’t have a car. Do I commute to where the fields are every day, which would take *hours* each way, or should I leave everything behind and become a migrant worker?
I got laid off in 2008, and since then I have had only two temp/contract jobs, each for about 10 weeks. Every week I talk to my mom and she is always, “Have you tried this? Have you tried that?” I wearily say, yes, yes, yes. I know she simply worries about me a lot and hopes that something comes my way soon, but it gets very frustrating because sometimes I just want to yell, “I HAVE TRIED EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING!”
And frankly, I’m far more worried about her. She’s been paying my rent, and now she’s getting strapped for cash herself, and sometimes I feel like committing ritual suicide for being such a lousy daughter. She’s in her 80s — I should be taking care of HER!
BTW, Radio Shack wanted me to submit to a drug test and background check for part-time holiday work with no benefits. Because selling radio-controlled cars to 10-year-olds for four weeks is such highly sensitive work that you need a security clearance, I guess. And I still didn’t get the job because I’m overqualified.

Adding to the congratulations to Lunch Meat.
He is a Pope. And so are you. And so is everyone else, unless they renounce it or something.
I renounce my Papal privilege!

Oh by the way, congrats to Lunch Meat! I didn’t see the sig line so I had to go back and see what people were congratulating you for. But now that I do, applause and congratulations!

Congratulations to Lunch Meat, as well.
Arania, my sympathies to you, and my petitions to The Intelligence of the Universe on your behalf.

@ schweinsty
In the US, it’s usually described as ‘being sent down to the minors’ – this is baseball talk, where there are the major (‘big’ leagues, that get the money and the attention, and the minor leagues (of various grades), where players stop on their ways up and down, learning or teaching the finer points of the game (at least in theory).

{{{{{{{{{{MG}}}}}}}}}}
who sounds like she needs it.
===
I like ‘fruitbasket upset’ as a replacement for ‘Chinese fire drill’.
===
One of my friends tells about layoffs during a previous recession: when someone suggested being retrained for a high-tech job, she responded that her last job was high-tech, and what did they suggest when those jobs were being sent to India? The response was [crickets].

Sympathy also to Arania. And I wish I knew what to do about it.
BTW, Radio Shack wanted me to submit to a drug test and background check for part-time holiday work with no benefits. Because selling radio-controlled cars to 10-year-olds for four weeks is such highly sensitive work that you need a security clearance, I guess.
Sympathy mixes with frothing rage. What is wrong with these people?
—
Because everything I know I learned from poems and songs, I know about relegation:
He watched his team go tumbling down the table,
To relegation, as the whistle blew for time.
To take that, was more than he was able.
“That’s it,” he said, “I’m jumping in the Tyne.”
- Jez Lowe, from “It’s a Champion Life”
(After all, they say the water tastes like Newcastle Brown!)

Arania: I understand and you have my sympathy. (I was separated at the end of November 2008. I’ve tried everything and still no interest. Of course, I’m older and overqualified.)
P.J. Evans: That retraining and skills mismatch stuff is such a crock. I’ve worked as an Administrative Assistant. I know how to use a computer. I know how to do internet research. I know a lot about working in an office. At my age it does not make sense to retrain in Computer Science. No one will give me an entry level job — I have no experience and with health issues I can’t haul around equipment and set it up.

Congrats, Lunch Meat, and good luck, Ariana.
RE: farming. A lot of urban farming efforts are going on across the U.S. that reclaim empty lots or build gardens on rooftops. But it’s doubtful that expanding such efforts can be enough to provide a significant number of living wage jobs for the currently unemployed.

“I lost my job. Well, I didn’t lose it, it’s still there, it’s just that there’s some new guy doing it now.
“I lost my girlfriend…”
I admit that I’m coming from a perspective of privilege, however. Would anyone care to help me unpack this and explain where the misogyny they’re taking from this joke can be found?

Most people don’t know this (few even think to ask the question), but his ex-girlfriend was a former Moroccan spy who, among other things, was known for trying to “nudge” the Soviet Union toward a “new world order.” Of course, in the typical Moroccan tradition, she was “burned.” Which meant cutting her off from all her funds, her resources, passports, friends, her ties to the Covert Operations Agency, her family, her…er…virginity. So you can imagine it does a slight disservice to her to use her in a joke like that.
Plus, his ending comment notes that “some other guy is doing it [her],” which, even if it doesn’t objectify her, it still seems somewhat dismissive (i.e. “Oh no, Robin’s dead! Oh, well, time to find a new one now.”)

“In the trunk of his car, he has a JESUS ROCKS giant foam finger, a Muhammad (pbuh) T-shirt — no logo of him on it, of course — a pennant for Ahura Mazda, some commemorative mugs for Odin, Thor, and Freyja, a Horned God bumper sticker… He doesn’t actually believe in any of them, he just likes rooting for them, and he gets antsy when there aren’t any good cheer-able sports on the tube…”

I keep several of those things in my closet, just in case the world ends and I need to get on Odin’s good side or find some virgin sacrifices for D’zzibrxyzi, the demon goddess of merchandising (who, word to the wise, gives salespeople first dibs once she/it/they has (have) decimated the world). I also keep a cellar handy to honor Dionysus, the Greco-Roman god of wine and winemaking–I celebrate whenever I’m in a really good mood, or in a really bad mood. In fact, I’ve been due for a celebration since I got that loan extension in the mail a little bit ago.

Bobcat Goldthwaite’s voice was always so goddamn unpleasant I couldn’t stand to listen to him for more than a few moments at a time. I’m just thankful he didn’t have many speaking lines in Police Academy.
So yes, I have another reason now to dislike him.

“To a first approximation, it’s safe to assume that any expression of the form [Ethnic Identifier]+[Something Not Obviously Relevant] was originally coined with negative intent – Dutch courage; French leave: guess who England was mostly at war with in the 17th/18th centuries. So if you’re not sure, it’s a good rule to avoid them.”
Especially with a certain contraceptive device being called either a “French letter” or and “English letter” depending on which side of the Channel you’re fucking…

We don’t get French benefits?

And why doesn’t farm work pay very well? The fundamental problem of lax labor laws and weak unionization of that sector.
I thought it was just we like having cheap food, and why should the companies give a crap how strong the labor laws and unions are when they’re just going to ignore them and hire illegal immigrants to do the stuff that citizens won’t do without better pay and benefits and safety precautions.

Has anyone else here read Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles’ report on the National Debt? It urges drastic cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Welfare, and pretty much every program to help the poor. These steps would certainly reduce the Debt, but I think they would immediately erase millions of jobs. As an example, my mother is living on Social Security. She, like millions of others, is not getting a cost-of-living increase to her monthly payments next year. She has decided to cancel her Denver Post subscription. I wonder how many other people here in Colorado will cancel their subscriptions for the same reason. That could easily cost jobs in Colorado (and make the Denver Post’s future even more uncertain).
Speaking of jobs, somebody out there should offer Fred a book contact!!!

@ Jeff Wescamp
Add to that that none of the people on that commission will ever be dependent on Social Security or need Medicaid or food stamps. In fact, they could live quite well without ever getting anything from SS, and so can everyone they ‘know’ (quotes because their housekeepers, cooks, and gardeners aren’t going to do so well).

Ok, I know I don’t often post in the comments, but I have to ask – what, what, what is up with the “Now we will bury you” comments? I’ve seen, like, three so far just in this thread – am I missing a context or something?

Ok, I know I don’t often post in the comments, but I have to ask – what, what, what is up with the “Now we will bury you” comments? I’ve seen, like, three so far just in this thread – am I missing a context or something?

You can’t base them.

Add to that that none of the people on that commission will ever be dependent on Social Security or need Medicaid or food stamps

No one ever wants to the cut the government programs that they might actually use. Even though food stamps are one of the most efficient and productive government programs we have right now, and Social Security can easily be saved by actually following the law that President Roosevelt signed and not stealing the funding for random nonsense…

Ok, I know I don’t often post in the comments, but I have to ask – what, what, what is up with the “Now we will bury you” comments? I’ve seen, like, three so far just in this thread – am I missing a context or something?

Sorry, that should have said, you can’t base them on any context. They’re just the ramblings of some kind of obnoxious troll / spammer.

dmab aka dmabs aka dmabus:
THE HIGH PRICE OF REVOLUTION
youtube.com/user/xviolatex?feature=mhum
Okay, so I followed dumbass’s YouTube url and…? Wait, so “THE HIGH PRICE OF REVOLUTION” is…a Depeche Mode video?

@ Drake pope
You’re missing that SS is the greatest portion of retirement income for people making less than a 6-figure income. Like, 80 percent of it. So any cuts, or even raising the age for full benefits (which is already 67) is going to disproportionately affect the poor in a bad way.
The wealthy – including every member of that commission – aren’t going to be affected, because they aren’t going to be getting 80 percent of their retirement income from SS, and they can afford to retire any time they want.

Social Security IS NOT CONTRIBUTING to the deficit. SS has a dedicated revenue source. The wars and the Bush tax cuts for the uppermost 2% of the population are the reasons for the deficit. Continuing lack of revenue due to continued high levels of unemployment is not helping either. But, to repeat, Social Security is not part of the deficit problem.

You’re missing that SS is the greatest portion of retirement income for people making less than a 6-figure income. Like, 80 percent of it. So any cuts, or even raising the age for full benefits (which is already 67) is going to disproportionately affect the poor in a bad way.

I know that; I just thought that people knew less about programs like food stamps and Medicaid so I focused on that instead!

Okay, so I followed dumbass’s YouTube url and…? Wait, so “THE HIGH PRICE OF REVOLUTION” is…a Depeche Mode video?
Will they let you down? Will they let you go? Will they turn around and desert you? NEVER!
Random thought: wouldn’t farm subsidies be a good target for people trying to “deal with national debt”? What would be the full knock on effect of the decreasing or elimination of farm subsidies?

Ok, I know I don’t often post in the comments, but I have to ask – what, what, what is up with the “Now we will bury you” comments? I’ve seen, like, three so far just in this thread – am I missing a context or something?

They’re by a man named Dennis Markuze, who’s an incredibly obnoxious fellow who’s been posting that sort of thing on atheist/skeptic-friendly blogs and forums for the past decade or so. He used to be sort of semi-coherent, but now he just copy-pastes disjointed screeds. He doesn’t even engage in conversation anymore. There’s speculation that he’s suffering from an untreated mental illness.

Okay, so I followed dumbass’s YouTube url and…? Wait, so “THE HIGH PRICE OF REVOLUTION” is…a Depeche Mode video?

Apparently, back when he was at least somewhat coherent, part of his argument for why he should win the prize from the Randi foundation for evidence of the supernatural was that Nostradamus had predicted Depeche Mode and, by extension, 9/11. (Don’t ask me to explain his reasoning. There doesn’t appear to be any.)

@Raj -
The high price of Revolution will not be televised.

The author of the book Eaarth (highly recommended, btw) suggests that locally-grown organic veggies can be a source not only of cheap, healthy food (much organic food now is expensive due to transport costs) but also of jobs.
See, organic farming requires more hands to weed and monitor the crops than modern, chemical-based farming. A lot more hands. So we’d be able to eat healthier, and we’d cut down a bit on unemployement as well, by simply getting rid of government subsidies to big, one-crop agribusiness and provide incentives to organic intercropping instead. We’d also get a lot more food per acre, which is always a good thing.
Interesting proposal. But where will the money to pay these extra workers come from? People will not likely want to pay more for labor-intensive food, least of all during a recession.

Random thought: wouldn’t farm subsidies be a good target for people trying to “deal with national debt”? What would be the full knock on effect of the decreasing or elimination of farm subsidies?

We might have to scale back on free and reduced lunches for poor schoolchildren and food stamps for the poor, as well as the popular WIC program targeted towards women and children living in poverty. I’m not comfortable with doing that right now.
Some people have suggested repealing President Bush’s 2002-2003 billion dollar farm bill which allowed non-citizens to apply for food stamp benefits. Getting rid of this adjustment worries me too; while giving handouts to agribusiness might be unpalatable, giving good food to poor people is one of the few policies that Democrats and Republicans can consistently support nowadays and I’m not sure if risking that would be worth it in this economic and political climate. Besides, with this new tax cut deal, it’s not as if we’re going to be closing the deficit any time soon anyway; why suck the blood of the poor over something that won’t even please the deficit hawks?

Longstreet63: And at the end of the year, they tell us what a good job we’ve done and how the instant they find anyone who’ll do our jobs a penny cheaper, we’ll be replaced.
For extra fun, despite what the Republicans say about Lower Taxes being the key to all ills, we could cut the tax rate to ZERO and most of the lost jobs are never coming back. Why would a corporation pay Americans 10$/hour to do something when they can pay some Third-World peasants 10$/MONTH?
It’s a race to the bottom.

Amaryllis: Sympathy mixes with frothing rage. What is wrong with these people?
I don’t understand why, but it seems to me like the worse a job pays, the more hoops you have to jump through to get it. This is based on my own jobhunting experiences & a friend’s experience trying to get an entry-level job at OfficeMax, which involved a 20+ page application form.
—-
Jeff Weskamp: Has anyone else here read Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles’ report on the National Debt? It urges drastic cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Welfare, and pretty much every program to help the poor.
I’d ask it they advised any cuts in _military_ spending, but I think I already know the answer.
On the bright side, all the deck-chairs will be well-arranged by the time the ship goes under.

Great! wooow… Getting laid off is not the same as getting fired? Voting for One Book, One Twitter. I think its unfortunate that Digitech’s Papervision Capture and PaperFlow were not rated or mentioned. Why is that? Capture professionals in service bureaus predominantly use this product and it shows up #1 in the executive forum survey every year.

Congratulations, Lunch Meat!

‘Social Security IS NOT CONTRIBUTING to the deficit.’
Actually, it is, but in a subtle way – the funds Social Security collects have been placed in a trust fund, a trust fund which invests in the safest and most secure form of investment currently known – U.S. Treasury debt instruments (‘bonds’ is fine, but there are technical distinctions which may not be relevant in this case). And of course, those debt instruments pay interest. So when Social Security acquires 100 billion dollars worth of debt instruments paying 5% for 20 years (just an example), the U.S. government (in the form of we, the taxpayer) needs to return both the principal and pay the interest to Social Security, just as the case with any other holder of that debt (including me, proud owner of some hybrid inflation protected U.S. debt instruments from the mid-1990s with a 30 year term).
There are all kinds of fun implications involved, to be honest, ranging from the undeniably mathematically (ask an accountant) quantifiable to the most tin foiled hatted craziness. Nonetheless, the interest which is currently being paid by the federal govermment to the holders of its debt, including Social Security, is part of the ongoing deficit problem with the U.S. actually being unable to pay its current expenses from the revenues it collects.
—-
Japanese beetle, Norwegian rat, German cockroach, Colorado potato bug, Canadian goose, Siberian tiger – hmm, might be a bit more complicated, since I am certain in the case of the German cockroach that Germans don’t call it that, would be very surprised if Norwegians (apart from those using the latinized form) call it that either, and am also fairly certain that nothing in Japan is called ‘Japanese’ by those speaking the language called Japanese in English (also applies to ‘German’). In the case of the Colorado potato bug, the Nazis actually tried to claim that the bug was part of a devious American biological warfare plot responsible for devastating German potato crops during WWII.

A librarian friend of mine often uses ‘Various ethnic fire drill’ in describing that sort of anarchic confusion.

Getting laid off is also not the same as getting laid… although you do get screwed…

OTIC, the greatest part of the deficit is due to two wars that are funded by ‘emergency’ appropriations (and so not actually in the budget) and Medicare.
SS would be completely in the clear if they raised the income cap (which is not indexed for inflation or anything else). The interest the trust fund collects is how they can pay you benefits twenty years after you retire. (Or pay you as much as they tell you they will.)
What the people complaining about SS are trying to do, is to get all that money dumped into Wall Street companies, who then have a new, huge, source of revenue for their next decade’s bonuses, since the last one (based on mortgages and the refinancing thereof) has completely collapsed. ANd how else can they buy their next couple of sets of politicians?

What the people complaining about SS are trying to do, is to get all that money dumped into Wall Street companies, who then have a new, huge, source of revenue for their next decade’s bonuses, since the last one (based on mortgages and the refinancing thereof) has completely collapsed. ANd how else can they buy their next couple of sets of politicians?

This is the thing a lot of people seem to be missing. Wall Street gets paid no matter how things turn out for their customers. If they make you millions of dollars they get paid, but if you go broke and spend your golden years eating out of garbage cans and living without heat, they still get paid. And they’re too big to fail, so no matter how shitty a job they do they’re not going to go out of business. Under those circumstances their advice on what should be done about SS is not exactly the Word Of God.

Japanese beetle, Norwegian rat, German cockroach, Colorado potato bug, Canadian goose, Siberian tiger – hmm, might be a bit more complicated, since I am certain in the case of the German cockroach that Germans don’t call it that
WE SHALL FIGHT THEM IN THE KITCHEN, WE SHALL FIGHT THEM IN THE BATHROOM, WE SHALL NEVAAAH SURRENDAAAH TO HITLAAAH AND HIS GERMAN COCKROACHES!

And don’t forget filigree Siberian hamsters:

Oh hey. Thanks back to MadG for unpacking the unpleasantness of that icky joke. Because I was hoping like hell I wouldn’t have to. My single line response would be, “Any ex who thinks of me solely in terms of ‘who’s doing me now’ deserves the title ‘ex.’”
But – @The Question’s “who was his girlfriend” reveal – really? I… am uncertain how to respond to that. Really? Given your Justice League namesake, I’m inclined to clutch my salt shaker very tightly indeed. And yet I’m nowhere near confident enough to call BS on that story. ‘Cause if it’s true, that would be damned insensitive of me, wouldn’t it?

And don’t forget, MadG, that Bobcat Goldthwait was the one who said “He has to drink the whole potion, EVERY LAST DROP!”
But the joke only reminded me of the tagline to My Boss’s Daughter.

You’re welcome, Nicole.

I keep on asking the conservative at work if welfare, food stamps and unemployment benefits are, collectively, cheaper than the cost to build and staff a bunch of new prisons for all the poor people who will turn to crime when it becomes a choice between that and starving, but they all just do that patronizing laugh where they pretend I’m making a joke, and give examples of “that guy who lives near me who could get a job in a heartbeat if he went to Virginia, but he won’t because it’s easier to just collect unemployment”

Another example of wingnut empathy dearth

And if we’re going to ask more of ourselves, my question is what poor excuse for a parent can’t rustle up a bowl of cereal and a banana? I just don’t get why millions of school children qualify for school breakfasts unless we have a major wide spread problem with child neglect.
You know, I mean if that’s how many parents are incapable of pulling together a bowl of cereal and a banana, then we have problems that are way bigger than… that problem can’t be solved with a school breakfast, because we have parents who are just criminally… ah… criminally negligent with respect to raising children.

Did anybody here do the “you fix the US budget” NY Times puzzle? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html
It makes it pretty clear that just cutting aid to poor doesn’t do the job.

It makes it pretty clear that just cutting aid to poor doesn’t do the job.

Often people who oppose that aid claim to want to cut the deficit, but that isn’t supported by their other arguments against such aid. Even though many of their objections to the aid are racist, if one peels those back I suspect their core motivation is “It’s not fair!”

I want to add my congratulations to Lunch Meat as well.
And if you want a bit of adventure before you settle down, I can tell you a bit about working abroad.. (my e-mail is coffee4christine at lycos dot com) and I’d be happy to help you –or anyone else who would like to consider it. It was a great decision for me.
The problem right now is that we seem to be punishing the poor for being victims of policies of companies that are acting if not in criminal ways, at least in un-ethical ways. It is so sad and so pointless, there is so much that needs to be done, so many people who want to work, and no will to get the two together, instead just talk of cutting aid to the weakest and poorest of us. It makes me sad and angry at the same time.

Jenk, you’re expecting these people to look at hard facts. Looking at facts risks OMGEVILLIBERALSOCIALISM.

@The Question: I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a cue from Wikipedia and label your story of Bobcat Goldthwait’s ex-girlfriend as [citation needed]. A quick survey of reporting on his personal life shows relationships with Ann Luly, Nikki Cox, and Sarah de Sa Rego. None of whom are remotely similar to Moroccan spies or anti-Soviet provocateurs.
As for the joke at issue, I’m not sure it’s a line I can get too out of sorts about. I view it as more self-deprecating than misogynistic: he was fired (and clearly replaced) from his job, so if you are holding to a strictly parallel construction, he was “fired” and replaced by his girlfriend, too. But that point notwithstanding, I tend to afford stand-up comedians some measure of laxity. After all, their routines, while generally based on their own life and experiences, are a fictionalized persona. And I’m hesitant to condemn the producers of creative fiction for the flaws of the characters in their works — I’ve seen too many people who decry authors because they disagree with the actions or motivations of the characters they have written.

About Job Offer Scams: When I was unemployed, I recieved an “offer” for an office job. At the interview, I was “offered” the opportunity to purchase job training ($500) and a laptop ($500 for a laptop worth almost $150) that would allow me to work on commission selling insurance. I told them “Pay me at least $12 an hour during training, give me the laptop, then pay me $15 an hour plus commission and I’ll consider not reporting you for fraud.”
They rejected my counter-offer, and withdrew the original offer. I reported them, and haven’t heard from them since. I have no doubt that by this time next year they’ll be doing the same thing with a different corporate name. Every time I’m unemployed, I get this offer shortly after posting my resume. Every time I go in, it’s a different office, different corporate name, and the same people. Next time (hopefully not soon) I’m going to hit them up for lunch and gas money.

@Hawker Hurricane: Sounds a bit like the Primerica scam I nearly got roped into.

And why doesn’t farm work pay very well? The fundamental problem of lax labor laws and weak unionization of that sector.
Posted by: Pius Thicknesse | Dec 11, 2010 at 11:37 AM
————————
It doesn’t help that a certain anti-union President offered amnesty for immigrant farm workers the purpose of derailing unionization.
=============================

@Jenk: Yeah, I did that one. I got it to balance in 2015 easily enough _without_ starting Operation Fuck-The-Poor, 2030 was tougher.
It does rather ignore the likely fallout of some of the choices – cutting farm subsidies, for example, seems to me like it would probably raise food prices and cause an ENORMOUS political grudge in the midwest…

Has anyone here besides me read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book “Bait and Switch”? She spent a year trying to find an office job. Went to seminars, networked, ran afoul of a few scams like Hawker and Pius mentioned, sent out resumes like mad… no job.
I liked the book, but BOY was it discouraging.

And there’s also the “expose” by the Daily Caller that — gasp! — people on food stamps buy food with it!
I’m not linking to the story, not giving Tucker Carlson the hits he needs, but in essence, an enterprising young “journalist” who works for the Daily Caller and attends graduate school at American University applied for food stamps. His parents pay for his rent, but he basically lied on the application and showed his income was less than his rent and got $120 worth of food stamps a month.
He then went out and bought a fancy salmon steak and other high end gourmet food with his food stamps. Now your usual person on food stamps would need to stretch out that $120 to last the entire month. Not our entrepid hero. Another month he bought $100 worth of candy.
And he extrapolated that of course others on food stamps must do the same because the cashiers never raised a protest or even an eyebrow.
James O’Keefe lives in others!

they all just do that patronizing laugh where they pretend I’m making a joke, and give examples of “that guy who lives near me who could get a job in a heartbeat if he went to Virginia, but he won’t because it’s easier to just collect unemployment”

How much does the job in Virginia pay? Is it in line with the cost of living in Virginia, because Virgina is not cheap. How secure is said job? How much would it cost “that guy” to move to Virginia? What happens to “that guy” if he moves, and either the supposed sure-thing job doesn’t materialize or he works for a short time and then gets laid off?
When rich people make calculations about trade offs and do what is in their best interests it’s “just business”. This is proof of their skill as businessmen and no one is supposed to say boo about it, not matter how skanky the maneuver is. When poor people make that kind of calculation they’re proving that they’re lazy and worthless.
The swear that there are days when my commitment to nonviolent solutions wears a trifle thin.

And he extrapolated that of course others on food stamps must do the same because the cashiers never raised a protest or even an eyebrow.

Maybe it’s better that I’m not in school this semester because I’d be tempted to look this little shit up on campus and have a word. I certainly hope that both AU and social services are looking into punishing him for committing fraud. Most of the students are AU are really nice. However there is a strong element of rich kid syndrome, especially among the undergrads. The unfortunate but sort of true joke is that AU is were rich Republicans from New Jersey send those of their offspring not smart enough to get into an Ivy.
Years from now when people are trying to figure out what caused the great peasant revolts of the early 21st century this sort of shit is going to be discussed in great detail.

The solution is simple, and it won’t be done: The US federal government should hire 10.8 million people and put them to work, just like FDR’s Works Progress Administration did. Fred’s alluded to this before in his numerous posts on fixing the federal infrastructure debt.
Pay each worker roughly $20K/year ($10/hour for 2000 hours) and find them a job at whatever it is they do. Tradesmen can build things, programmers can write code, writers can write things. No one is going to get rich at this, but they’re also not going to starve, and at least they’ll be doing something productive. 10.8M workers * $20,000 + 15% for administrative costs is on the order of $250B (unless I dropped a decimal point somewhere). That seems cheap compared to a lot of things that the US government pays for. You could increase the funding if you wanted to give incentives for training or moving to regions that need more workers.
Here’s the best write up of the WPA that I’ve ever found. It’s definitely worth checking out. It also points out that most, if not all of the busy work that the WPA did is still being used and that the program ended up paying for itself in the long term.

How much does the job in Virginia pay? Is it in line with the cost of living in Virginia, because Virgina is not cheap. How secure is said job? How much would it cost “that guy” to move to Virginia? What happens to “that guy” if he moves, and either the supposed sure-thing job doesn’t materialize or he works for a short time and then gets laid off?

His assumption was that the guy should commute from Pennsylvania to Virginia every day because “You do what you gotta do”
I’m not making this up.
(The guy lives in PA and commutes to central maryland, because land is cheap in PA)

His assumption was that the guy should commute from Pennsylvania to Virginia every day

Because of course driving gawd only knows how many miles every day is totally free.

Speaking of.
Bout ten or more years ago I heard some stories about entitled rich people up in the British Properties (which has some of the richest people in North Vancouver, already a rather wealthy community) who were too cheap to pay their kids allowances so they took advantage of an NDP-era law which said that anyone under the age of majority who could prove estrangement from his or her parents (for fairly elastic values of estrangement) could get the shelter and support allowance of $221 a month.
Unfortunately this is largely anecdata so take it with a fair grain of salt.
But it does show the sense of entitlement rich people have about the very government they resent paying taxes to.

Lori: Because of course driving gawd only knows how many miles every day is totally free.
It does seem like an awful lot of our urban ‘planning’ is based on that assumption.

As for the joke at issue, I’m not sure it’s a line I can get too out of sorts about. I view it as more self-deprecating than misogynistic: he was fired (and clearly replaced) from his job, so if you are holding to a strictly parallel construction, he was “fired” and replaced by his girlfriend, too.
Fucking seriously? I don’t care whether or not you’re bothered by it, but the jokes reduces the putative girlfriend to a sexual object, and so is plainly sexist. Please do not defend sexism or dismiss it as being something else.

Oh, and if you, Heretical Voice, tell me anything along the lines of, “It’s just a joke,” or tell me that I’m censoring artists, I will verbally eviscerate you immediately.

But that point notwithstanding, I tend to afford stand-up comedians some measure of laxity. After all, their routines, while generally based on their own life and experiences, are a fictionalized persona. And I’m hesitant to condemn the producers of creative fiction for the flaws of the characters in their works — I’ve seen too many people who decry authors because they disagree with the actions or motivations of the characters they have written.
Dude, the fictional or non-fictional status is not what’s at issue here. The issue is that it’s supposed to be funny to his audience that “doing it” can be said of a person, because she’s female. LOL, women are “it,” right? It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s his girlfriend or a fictional girlfriend.
Re: food stamps manufactured controversy -
1. And these are probably the same people who think that soda taxes and bans on transfats are the government taking away our freeeedom, because the government shouldn’t care if we eat right.
2. As someone else on another blog pointed out, this guy couldn’t get an actual food-stamp recipient to act stupid, so he had to do it himself. This proves nothing about people who get food stamps.

Oh, and if you, Heretical Voice, tell me anything along the lines of, “It’s just a joke,” or tell me that I’m censoring artists, I will verbally eviscerate you immediately.

But surely you are censoring artists, because criticizing a stand-up comic for sexism on a blog is EXACTLY LIKE the government deciding what that stand up-comic can say in his act. Exactly. No difference at all.
(On the subject, can anyone think of a male stand-up comic whose routines do not involve sexist jokes? When I was asking before, I didn’t see the sexism in that particular joke at first, but I’ve heard other sexist stuff from every male comic I can think of, even ones like Robin Williams where the jokes are generally not at anyone’s expense. I think some comics are probably adopting an attitude of sexism for the purposes of the joke that they don’t actually follow, but it’s hard to say. For that matter, I can hardly think of a female stand-up comic whose routines don’t include the equivalent, but directed towards men. Stand-up comedy in general is pretty misanthropic, and usually when we laugh with the comic, we’re laughing AT some other person or group.)

Dude, the fictional or non-fictional status is not what’s at issue here. The issue is that it’s supposed to be funny to his audience that “doing it” can be said of a person, because she’s female. LOL, women are “it,” right? It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s his girlfriend or a fictional girlfriend.

I think it’s not that ‘doing it’ can be said of a person *because* she’s female. I think a female comic or a gay male comic could make the same joke about hir boyfriend and it would be equally funny. The problem is as MG said the historical baggage of women being systematically treated by men as ‘its’. It’s like a white male making a joke about a black acquaintance who happens to actually like gangsta rap, fried chicken and watermelon to the extent that the stereotypes suggest all blacks do. The problem isn’t with the way he made a joke about that particular person, it’s the baggage.

(On the subject, can anyone think of a male stand-up comic whose routines do not involve sexist jokes? When I was asking before, I didn’t see the sexism in that particular joke at first, but I’ve heard other sexist stuff from every male comic I can think of, even ones like Robin Williams where the jokes are generally not at anyone’s expense. I think some comics are probably adopting an attitude of sexism for the purposes of the joke that they don’t actually follow, but it’s hard to say. For that matter, I can hardly think of a female stand-up comic whose routines don’t include the equivalent, but directed towards men. Stand-up comedy in general is pretty misanthropic, and usually when we laugh with the comic, we’re laughing AT some other person or group.)
I watch the British program Mock the Week, and while some of the panelists absolutely use sexist, homophobic etc. humor (Frankie, aaaugh) some of the others are really quite good about it – Dara O’Briain and David Mitchell are two of my favorites. (Of course, I’m sure that now someone will link a really awful show by one of them.)
Also, Eddie Izzard zomg.
I think it’s not that ‘doing it’ can be said of a person *because* she’s female. I think a female comic or a gay male comic could make the same joke about hir boyfriend and it would be equally funny. The problem is as MG said the historical baggage of women being systematically treated by men as ‘its’. It’s like a white male making a joke about a black acquaintance who happens to actually like gangsta rap, fried chicken and watermelon to the extent that the stereotypes suggest all blacks do. The problem isn’t with the way he made a joke about that particular person, it’s the baggage.
Yeah, that makes sense. I was sort of getting at that, but not well.

I definitely agree about Dara O’Briain being an excellent stand-up comic who, IIRC, is not at all sexist.

GDwarf: I’ve no idea if other religious have fans, but he likes many of the tenants of Discordianism, but is not himself a Discordian.
That sounds not unlike me, actually, although I’d describe myself more as a fan of Discordians than of Discordianism.
Drake Pope: a JESUS ROCKS giant foam finger
… I kinda really want one of those, now. I think the Norse gods should have beer steins rather than mugs, though, but I agree with MG: awesome image.

I think the Norse gods should have beer steins rather than mugs, though
No, no, they must have drinking horns, of course.
Actually, I think I have a drinking horn with a symbol of a Norse goddess on it, somewhere.

@Andrew Glasgow: I think it’s not that ‘doing it’ can be said of a person *because* she’s female. I think a female comic or a gay male comic could make the same joke about hir boyfriend and it would be equally funny.
This.
I see three possible problems with the stand-up routine. I disagree with all of them. Now, I realize that other people — MadGastronomer, clearly — can and will have other opinions. That’s fine. As I’m entitled to mine, MG is entitled to theirs. However, I strongly disagree that my opinions constitute a defense of sexism. Other people can disagree with that, too, I suppose, but I reserve the right to not take any verbal evisceration on that grounds sitting down. With that said, the three problems I can perceive:
First, it could be inherently sexist to make jokes about the sexual activities of your ex-partner, or of people in general, because sex is Very Serious Business and is not fair game for humor and mockery. I’m not going to spend much time on this one. I think it’s wrong. There are no sacred cows. Sex is and can be funny.
Second, it could be that this sort of joke would be fine if told by a woman about her ex-boyfriend, or a gay man about his ex-boyfriend, or maybe even a lesbian woman about her ex-girlfriend, but that the history of sexual exploitation of women makes it inherently sexist for a man to tell about his ex-girlfriend because of the weight of history. In short, I believe that if an action, statement, joke, or whatever, is acceptable with some arrangement of genders, then shuffling the deck chairs should not make it a sexist one. And, no, because I’m sure this is the counterargument, this isn’t about some half-assed “reverse sexism” complaint. It’s about the principle of gender blindness: fairness works both ways. I view this joke equally — as the speaker offering self-deprecating humor about having been “replaced” — in any of the four gender configurations; thus, I do not find it sexist. For the record, that’s very much not true for many sex-themed jokes. I agree that a great many of them are sexist, and made at the expense of women. I just don’t consider this one of them.
Third, the problem could be that the structure of the joke objectifies women because the (grammatical) object of the first clause — a job — is a thing and because the pronoun in the first clause is the impersonal it. Here, I’ll both disagree and concede agreement in part. I do not see an object-to-person equivalence being made here. I see a role-to-role equivalence (job to girlfriend), and an antanaclasis involving senses (one slang, to be certain) of the verb “to do”. I guess others could find that use of the verb offensive on its own merits, but I do not. However, I will happily agree that the pronoun transition is awkward. The listener is forced to either break the parallelism or apply “it” to the woman. This is probably where I’ll be branded a Bad Person, but I’m just not willing to read sexist intent here. Pronouns in English are terrifyingly unhelpful. We’re all familiar with the lack of a gender-neutral third person singular personal pronoun. That’s why Andrew had to resort to “hir”, and I had to break number agreement and refer to MadGastronomer’s opinion as “theirs”. This joke is not the only situation in which an unfortunate it -> person mapping can arise, and there’s just no way to build a similar parallelism, even without the sexual content, without it happening here. When there’s no linguistic way out, and otherwise no intent that I consider objectionable, I am willing to simply read past pronoun problems (similarly, I see no need to avoid all uses of “generic he” although I strive to minimize them). I do understand, though, if others are not.

I was going to be emphatic about the drinking horns but MG has it covered.

In short, I believe that if an action, statement, joke, or whatever, is acceptable with some arrangement of genders, then shuffling the deck chairs should not make it a sexist one. And, no, because I’m sure this is the counterargument, this isn’t about some half-assed “reverse sexism” complaint. It’s about the principle of gender blindness: fairness works both ways. I view this joke equally — as the speaker offering self-deprecating humor about having been “replaced” — in any of the four gender configurations; thus, I do not find it sexist.

That doesn’t quite work for me; “shuffling the deck chairs” produces different power disparities in different cases. A joke, to be acceptable and funny, should favor the less powerful agent in the event of a power disparity. Otherwise, it’s a bullying joke, which isn’t funny and isn’t good.
But I’m speaking as a general rule; I don’t agree with this defense for that reason. But I also don’t believe that in this particular joke, the power imbalance is in the teller’s favor, because of the parallel construction

I consider myself very lucky to still have the job that I do. Maybe if I think hard enough, I can will some of my not-terribly-deserved job luck to you folk that need it? I’ll scrunch my eyes shut real hard and everything.
Also, yeah, too many comics are way more sexist than I can personally tolerate. I used to love stand up comedy compilations. Nowadays, I avoid them. I’m not in the mood to settle in for a fun viewing experience, and then get slapped across the face with the Cold Trout Of Women Are Horrible Creatures, Aren’t They, Hurr Hurr. My wife got fat! My girlfriend asks me to do housework, wah, she’s such a nag! I’d rather have sex with anyone but my significant other! Women just want shoes, stupid women!
I almost winged my saltshaker at a standup comic that went through a series of “women can’t play video games, and in fact if they made video games they’d be all stupid and ‘gay’” jokes. UGH. I PAID MONEY to see you! Why must you be so awful!?
I think it was Melissa McEwan of Shakesville that said something to the effect of I’m not a humorless feminist, it’s just that this stuff? IT’S NOT FUNNY.

And urk, I think I misworded my job-seeking well-wishes. I’M the one that doesn’t deserve all this good luck. So I’m gonna squint real hard and aim some of it at you guys. Right? Yeah?

@Ross: That doesn’t quite work for me; “shuffling the deck chairs” produces different power disparities in different cases. A joke, to be acceptable and funny, should favor the less powerful agent in the event of a power disparity. Otherwise, it’s a bullying joke, which isn’t funny and isn’t good.
I probably could have been clearer. If changing the gender roles in a joke substantially alters the power balance, the joke is more likely to be sexist. In the one under discussion, I don’t think they do. No matter whether the speaker is male or female, or the speaker’s ex-partner is male or female, the narrative is the same: the speaker was fired from their job and replaced … and dumped by their partner, and replaced there, too.
To provide a counterexample, here’s a joke with a somewhat similar structure (using paraprosdokian rather than antanaclasis) by none other than Dorothy Parker, “If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.” You will not see me offering a defense of this one. Changing the gender roles in this joke changes the fundamental nature of the narrative. Because, of course, the narrative presented is inherently a sexist one.

but I’m just not willing to read sexist intent here.
Intent =/= fucking magic. You may not read it as sexist, quite a few of us do.
as the speaker offering self-deprecating humor about having been “replaced”
That’s not what’s being criticised. What is being criticised is the equivalence of “girlfriend” with “something that is just there to be done by any man”, which though it may not be the point of the joke, is a condition that said point relies on.

In short, I believe that if an action, statement, joke, or whatever, is acceptable with some arrangement of genders, then shuffling the deck chairs should not make it a sexist one.

‘Gender bias’ refers to a conviction that one gender is inherently superior/inferior.
‘Sexism’ is when gender bias is backed up by societal power. On most of the planet and through most of history, only men have ben capable of sexism. So the transitivity doesn’t actually work here.

It’s about the principle of gender blindness

If you look up writings and discussions on types of ‘blindness’ (race blindness, gender blindness, et cetera) you’ll find that a lot of the people who are supposed to be benefitting from this blindness actually really dislike it, because they’ve noticed that it gets used to disguise or justify things that nevertheless continue to hurt them. Sort of exactly like this situation. So you can’t appeal to ‘gender blindness’ as a definitively good and worthy thing.
I originally read the joke in the ‘self-deprecating’ manner you favour, but once the problems were highlighted, I could see them too. I wonder if there is a different construction for the joke (one that turns the ex from ‘task that needs doing’ into ‘person of authority who has tasks that need doing’) that can actually remove the sexism, but it’s still going to end up indicating that the relationship was a job with services exchanged for rewards, which is still going to be a sketchy thing to say where gender politics are concerned.
—
My much-adored Canadian writer/actor/sort-of-comedian TJ Dawe is pretty good at avoiding sexism – aside from one instance of playing up some stereotypes about the burly men and beautiful women of frigid northern cultures (and about fifteen minutes later in the show, he reveals that this was a total fabrication that was intended to take advantage of people’s willingness to believe unverifiable things that ‘sound right’). One of his one-person* shows a few years back, caleld Maxim & Cosmo, was about gender roles and politics and the way they affect people. I was especially stricken by the anecdote in which he spent a night downtown in a city, worried that he was going to be attacked by a known gang of roving bigots hunting gay people – he told a female friend about how he had been scared by everything that night, always aware that any dark alley might contain an assaulter, to which the friend replied “That’s what it’s like being a woman any night.”
*I almost wrote ‘one-man’, since he’s the man, but I had a helpful reminder not to do so: I have copies of his work and they always say ‘one-person show’.

Will Wildman, that sounds like a very awesome comedian to look up. And a fellow Canadian, to boot! Thank you for bringing him up.

Lampdevil: I haven’t looked recently to see how easy it is to get copies of his plays, but the degree to which they are improved by live performance can be huge. A Canadian Bartender At Butlin’s is all right if you can just read it, but The Slip-Knot (my favourite, a masterpiece) really must be performed. And, after seeing a few of his shows, I found I was able to read Labrador, one of his earlier works, and imagine his performance so completely that I was later temporarily convinced that I had actually seen it.
He used to be a huge figure on the Fringe Festival circuit, but I think he’s mostly been working on other things since then.

@Serpent: You may not read it as sexist, quite a few of us do.
Nor do I wish to imply that you are wrong to think so, only to attempt to provide a cogent structure about the alternative viewpoint.
What is being criticised is the equivalence of “girlfriend” with “something that is just there to be done by any man”, which though it may not be the point of the joke, is a condition that said point relies on.
Is it? I certainly read the joke as saying that another man is now having sex with the speaker’s ex-girlfriend, but I don’t think I read into it the implication that said sex is the girlfriend’s purpose. Although even that might not necessarily be true because the character of the speaker (who has been fired and dumped) may not be a reliable narrator regarding his ex-girlfriend’s current sexual activity; if his opinion of his ex-girlfriend was such, that would explain why she’s not with him anymore, and would lead to a conclusion on his part about what her new boyfriend must surely be doing…
But again, I don’t think that the fact that what I believe are non-sexist readings of the joke exist mean that other people are “wrong” to view it otherwise. Just that it can be viewed otherwise, unlike that Dorothy Parker quote, which I see no way (and have no desire) to salvage.
@Will Wildman: If you look up writings and discussions on types of ‘blindness’ (race blindness, gender blindness, et cetera) you’ll find that a lot of the people who are supposed to be benefitting from this blindness actually really dislike it, because they’ve noticed that it gets used to disguise or justify things that nevertheless continue to hurt them.
It is my earnest opinion that this is because not everyone plays fair with the concept. I’ll agree that too many people claim to be condition-blind as an attempted defense against legitimate claims of bias. Here though, I’m going for the same manner as “race-blind casting” in theater or movies, where the goal is for the character to play the same regardless of the race of the actor. Or, in this thread, where the joke plays the same regardless of the genders of the participants.

@Heretical Voice:
My counterpoint to your last paragraph?
The Last Failbender, directed by He-Who-I-Refuse-To-Name.

Heretical Voice: I don’t mean that ‘blindness’ is only used to intentionally justify things that continue to hurt people – the harm may be entirely outside of the intent of the person doing harm. Let’s look at race-blind casting. Let’s look at Alfred Pennyworth. Who doesn’t like Alfred? (Well, probably someone, for reasons that make good sense but I am unaware of.) He’s uber-competent, compassionate, and contributes in a significant way to keeping the enterprise that is Batman running properly. Now let’s make him black, because we’re being race-blind and why shouldn’t a black person be allowed to be our beloved Alfred? No reason. It’s not like Alfred is inherently un-black or that black people would be incapable of playing Alfred. It would just have unfortunate gorram implications for Bruce Wayne to be a rich playboy with a vast mansion, cool toys, and a loyal black servant.
And you could tell that story, but telling it in exactly the same way, in this society with its history and current state of being, is sketchy. It must be – it automatically is – a slightly different story. And it would be nice to have a society where that wasn’t the case, but it is the case, so just leaping straight to ‘I’m going to be demographic-blind’ about X thing’ is dangerous, regardless of your intentions.

@Pius Thicknesse: The Last Failbender, directed by He-Who-I-Refuse-To-Name.
The problem with that film … no, wait, I’ll come in again. Among that film’s problems are a failure to understand that there are times when blindness to suspect classes is a bad thing. Even if you are rightly operating with the understanding that no race is superior to another (and no gender to another), that does make all races (or genders) actually identical. It is possible to create a work that includes race-specific aspects at a fundamental level without being racist. When that’s the case, pretending otherwise becomes the problem, which is what happened with this horrid, horrid film.
And, actually, that’s the explanation that gives said director the most credit. The alternative is that he knew what he was doing was terribly offensive, but went ahead anyway, because hey! White people!
But I don’t think that invalidates my previous point, which was that if you can change the suspect classes of a character without altering the point of the work, then the work is presumptively unbiased against the suspect classes that you do employ. This movie is what happens when you ignore that first part. And when you’re a catastrophic hack of a director.

@Will Wildman: “It would just have unfortunate gorram implications for Bruce Wayne to be a rich playboy with a vast mansion, cool toys, and a loyal black servant. And you could tell that story, but telling it in exactly the same way, in this society with its history and current state of being, is sketchy.
Do not get me wrong, I am sympathetic to this argument. And for this character, where the English butler archetype is so deeply established, and the black manservant archetype so deeply offensive due to historical abuse … I’m not sure that I’d be willing to make the switch in good faith. But I worry about the potential for it to become a trap, where more characters are created as white men than need to be not out of a sense of privilege or superiority, but out of a fear of offense. Must Batman’s servant be a white man as a result? If a black Alfred would be offensive, would any other racial iteration be so? Would Elfriede Pennyworth, his female counterpart?
I know that Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, wrote about something similar to this in regards to his Indian character Apu. All the Dilbert characters are deeply flawed people, but he wrote that the flaw he ascribed to Apu was naivete, the least serious of the characters’ flaws, because it is correctable with experience. Still, he got a lot of angry mail that he was being offensive to Indians. Of course, Adams’s answer was to declare (perhaps jokingly, it’s always hard to tell) that if people kept complaining about it, he’d make the character a crack dealer.

I thought the Indian character on Dilbert was named Asok.

@Winter: I thought the Indian character on Dilbert was named Asok.
Also, I fail. Because Apu is of course the broad stereotype Indian on the Simpsons, and Asok is indeed the Dilbert character. So, um, please pretend I didn’t stupidly switch them. Or something. I knew that looked wrong as I typed it…
/sigh.

Among that film’s problems are a failure to understand that there are times when blindness to suspect classes is a bad thing.
This got mixed up with a conversation on another page (or was it thread?) and now I really wanna see a gender-swapped version of MIRACLE ON MORGAN’S CREEK.

I thought the Indian character on Dilbert was named Asok.

It is. Apu is the Indian guy on The Simpsons

Asok, yes. The first Apu that comes to mind is from The Simpsons.
Adams also noted that he doesn’t get to choose the colors applied to the big weekend comics, which has led to at least one unpleasant case when, for example, he had a security guard team up with a janitor to ransack employee’s cubicles at night, and the newspaper-comic-coloration-authority decided to make the guard black. Maybe have been totally unintentional; we’ll never know.
Anyway, Heretical Voice, possibly the conclusion from this should be that, once we’ve decided that there are cases when a thing is not going to be okay to be demographic-blind on, we should ask the people who have a stake. (I wonder, vaguely, about the ethnicities of the people who complained about Asok; I have a vague feeling they weren’t all Indians.) In this case, the demographic who might be harmed by the joke is women. There are women telling you that they are not okay with the joke and it is not a case where ‘gender-blindness’ is a good thing. Their perspective should probably register as significant, y’know?

@Will Wildman: There are women telling you that they are not okay with the joke and it is not a case where ‘gender-blindness’ is a good thing. Their perspective should probably register as significant, y’know?
There are also women who think it’s pretty funny. I could quote my sister’s response (I asked, early on in my participation here, because I wanted to ensure that my interpretation was not the blindness of privilege), although I’m not actually sure it was in good taste.
I suppose it’s actually a broader problem, dealing with cases where some people read the statement as offensively sexist and others do not. I question whether there is any overarching method of resolving such conflicts.

There are also women who think it’s pretty funny.
There are also women who are pretty damn sexist. Because this sexist culture that men are steeping in? Women are steeping in it too. You think we don’t grow up internalizing that crap to some extent? A lot of the crap out there that hurts me, I had to learn to see it. Didn’t mean it wasn’t hurting me when I didn’t see it. Meant I laughed at a lot more jokes and was oblivious to the patterns made by the random crap that hit me out of the blue. These days I find a lot less funny than I used to, but I’m more empowered to name the institutionalized things that hurt me, and thus more able to help tear those structures down.
“My [non-privileged class] friend found the joke funny, so there’s an argument to be made that it’s not [bigotry]ist.” That’s barely one step up from “Hey, I have friends who are [non-privileged class].”

@Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: “My [non-privileged class] friend found the joke funny, so there’s an argument to be made that it’s not [bigotry]ist.” That’s barely one step up from “Hey, I have friends who are [non-privileged class].”
Perhaps. But I’m also distrustful of arguments of the form, “Because I am a [non-privileged class], and I think this is statement is [bigotry]ist, any [non-privileged class] who is fine with it still hasn’t realized that they have internalized the self-destructive attitudes of the culture of privilege.”
It’s possible to reasonably disagree on what constitutes [bigotry]ism. Or, at least, I’d think it should be.

It would just have unfortunate gorram implications for Bruce Wayne to be a rich playboy with a vast mansion, cool toys, and a loyal black servant.
This is actually lampshaded in season one of The West Wing. Does anyone know the story behind that? I read on Wikipedia that the aide character was re-inserted into the script after a few episodes since the NAACP criticized the fact that the cast was all-white, but were there off-screen issues around making the aide, specifically, black?

It’s possible to reasonably disagree on what constitutes [bigotry]ism. Or, at least, I’d think it should be.
There’s a voice in the wilderness crying,
a joke from poster bold:
“Prepare for subversive humor ,
that dares the weak to scold!
The privileged shall be exalted,
the women taught their place;
It’s okay for me to say this, since
I don’t see sex or race!”
Sorry, that’s just been stuck in my head, it being the third week of Advent and all.
But really, I think that the Baptist’s call, and the Song of Mary, pretty much sum it up as a general rule. When in doubt, I should ask myself: does this joke scatter the proud in the conceit of their hearts? Does it pull down the mighty from their thrones? Does it exalt the humble and meek? Does it fill the hungry with good things, while sending the rich empty away?
If I can honestly answer “yes” to these questions, then I think I’m probably safe.

Oh crud.
Quick clarification — Heretical Voice, that parody wasn’t meant to be a jab aimed at you, since you are obviously grappling thoughtfully with these issues. It’s just the combination of your nick, the seasonal ear-worm, and the latest round of concern-troll-derailment getting mixed up in my backbrain.
Consider the second part of the post my more sober response to your very reasonable question.

Which I have always viewed as the message of the Muppet version of that song: “Gee, look, Miss Piggy is TOTALLY RAPING Baryshnikov? Isn’t that funny? Guys? Guys? Why aren’t you laughing?” Of course, that may be my irrational love for All Things Muppet talking.
Totally adopting this view now.
And speaking of sub-clinical synasthesia-like perceptions, for me, dishes have equations, and to get the right flavor, I have to balance the equation. Whatever ingredients are missing are the variable I have to solve for. There are a couple of other things, but that’s the weird one.
With that said, the three problems I can perceive:
Then your reading comprehension sucks, because the problem as already fucking stated is none of those. The problem is that it reduces a woman to the role of sex object. She is nothing more than something to have sex with, as a job can be nothing more than a chore to be done. And the joke absolutely does that, and that is absolutely sexist, and you are attempting to absolve the joke of that, so you are defending sexism, you beckwit.
There are no sacred cows.
This argument is typical of defenders of sexism, and amounts to the idea that if it’s funny, then it’s ok for it to be sexist. Yes, I took it a bit out of context here, but a) the context in which you placed it (that the objection was that one shouldn’t make jokes about sex or exes) is an obvious strawman position, and yet you injected this idiotic concept into the argument anyway, and b) you are still using this idea to defend the fucking joke. You asswipe. Funny does not justify sexism, nor does it make a joke not-sexist.
Second, it could be that this sort of joke would be fine if told by a woman about her ex-boyfriend, or a gay man about his ex-boyfriend, or maybe even a lesbian woman about her ex-girlfriend, but that the history of sexual exploitation of women makes it inherently sexist for a man to tell about his ex-girlfriend because of the weight of history.
This one, somebody actually said, but it certainly wasn’t me. It is still a problem to reduce a man to a sexual object. It is less of a problem because of the history of sexual objectification of women being used to harm women, while there is no significant history of this happening to men on a wide scale, but it is still a problem. You jackass.
And, no, because I’m sure this is the counterargument, this isn’t about some half-assed “reverse sexism” complaint.
It is, though. You claiming it isn’t doesn’t make it not. “Gender blindness” doesn’t exist, and the very concept is privileged. As has been discussed in this space before. The history and the context absolutely fucking matter, you fuck.
Third, the problem could be that the structure of the joke objectifies women because the (grammatical) object of the first clause — a job — is a thing and because the pronoun in the first clause is the impersonal it.
This is closest to the actual objection, asswipe. But you’re still way off base, and, as I said, the actual reason has been given, meaning that your reading comprehension skills are sadly lacking. Once again, the joke reduces a woman to an object not by a parallel with a job, but by reducing her to nothing more than something “to be done.” It turns her into nothing more than a sexual object, you fucking lackwit, an object of sexual desire and sex acts. You conceded the role-to-role equivalence. Well the “role” of the job is to be done, and therefor so is the role of the woman, which does indeed reduce her to a sexual object. I have repeated th
I do understand, though, if others are not.
Aaaaand now you’re being condescending. Fuck you, too, asshole.
Nor do I wish to imply that you are wrong to think so, only to attempt to provide a cogent structure about the alternative viewpoint.
Oh, bullshit. You ARE saying we are wrong to do so. Go fuck yourself.
I certainly read the joke as saying that another man is now having sex with the speaker’s ex-girlfriend, but I don’t think I read into it the implication that said sex is the girlfriend’s purpose.
And yet, that’s just what the joke DOES say. By ignoring it, you are giving its sexism a pass. You douche.
Just that it can be viewed otherwise
Only by people who do not want to see the sexism.
But I worry about the potential for it to become a trap, where more characters are created as white men than need to be not out of a sense of privilege or superiority, but out of a fear of offense.
Oh, waaah waaah waaah, the big mean liberals don’t want us to cast offensively, it’s going to be damaging to the media. Oh, fuck you, you asshole. You’re giving a series of classic defenses for racism and sexism in media.
Look, douchebeck, whatever-blind casting historically far and away favors the privileged rather than the disadvantaged. Casting with careful thought about what’s appropriate and what’s insulting does not. So fuck you.
There are also women who think it’s pretty funny.
Another classic defense of sexism. “But it can’t be sexist, this woman over here doesn’t think it’s sexist!” Bull. Nicole covered this one well, so I won’t again, but your argument fails to hold water, fuckhead.
But I’m also distrustful of arguments of the form, “Because I am a [non-privileged class], and I think this is statement is [bigotry]ist, any [non-privileged class] who is fine with it still hasn’t realized that they have internalized the self-destructive attitudes of the culture of privilege.”
Because you are a privileged asswipe who wants to use the “But $disadvantaged person agrees with me!” Fuck you.
It’s possible to reasonably disagree on what constitutes [bigotry]ism. Or, at least, I’d think it should be.
It is. But not in the way that you’re doing it. You are a privileged person coming in and telling committed feminists that a joke you think is funny isn’t sexist. You aren’t the one who can be hurt by the attitude embodied in the joke, you haven’t spent years of your life studying the phenomenon, and the phenomenon privileges you over us. If you had actually approached the joke from a feminist standpoint and defend it then, you would have had a better and more reasonable position, but you approached it from a privileged position and used the arguments that privilege uses so often to defend itself.
So, in conclusion, the joke is still sexist, because it is part of a sexist tradition of reducing women to sex objects, which the structure of the joke absolutely does. You are defending the joke by dismissing the sexism, so you are defending an instance of sexism. You are a douchebag. Fuck you.

Sing it, brother.
I got laid off 17 months ago and am still looking…. making do with unemployment and with sporadic consulting jobs, but it’s still no fun. Still have a home, still have a car, still have health insurance, and food and heat and all that, but one disaster could easily see me out on the street.

@MadGastronomer: I’ll play. You’ll forgive me if I don’t end every point with some sort of insult, though.
This argument is typical of defenders of sexism, and amounts to the idea that if it’s funny, then it’s ok for it to be sexist.
Speaking of strawmen, I did not say this. I will not say this. I do not believe this. In fact, I provided an explicit example of a line, intended to be humorous, that I found offensive in an effort to provide an active counterexample to show the defenses I made of the original quote are not absolute.
Because you are a privileged asswipe who wants to use the “But $disadvantaged person agrees with me!”
No, I mentioned my sister’s response because I asked an actual honest living human being who is a member of the disadvantaged class and whole opinion I trust. Because I’m fully aware that I’m not a woman and so I see women’s issues necessarily through a different lens, and no action that I can take will alter than inalienable fact. I’m fully aware that one person’s opinion, whether mine, yours, or my sister’s, is an anecdote and not data, but in the very hard times in my life — and do not get me wrong, while I’m not a member of THIS disadvantaged class, I am of others, and those hard times have been plenty — it has been her opinion and resolve that, along with the grace of God, have seen me through.
But that aside, arguments of the form I mentioned as suspect are suspect. Or they should be. It is, ironically, an argument from privilege, that the person making the argument is that much more enlightened about the realities of their class than the person making the other argument. In this case, it is you claiming that because my sister agrees with me, that she is, essentially, a self-hating sexist tool of patriarchal oppression. Not that you care, clearly, but she begs to differ.
Once again, the joke reduces a woman to an object not by a parallel with a job, but by reducing her to nothing more than something “to be done.” It turns her into nothing more than a sexual object, you fucking lackwit, an object of sexual desire and sex acts.
I am absolutely in agreement that the sexual objectification of women — scratch that, that sexual objectification at all is wrong. I depart from your interpretation because I don’t think the joke does that, on several grounds.
Obviously, the speaker of the joke says that someone else is having sex with (“is doing”, to follow the antanaclasis) his ex-girlfriend. I have a sex-positive view of feminism; it is not objectifying for a woman to have sex, most especially not with someone with whom she is engaged in some sort of an actual relationship, which the parallelism implies (in that she now has a boyfriend/partner other than the speaker).
Why do I believe the reference to sex is incidental despite it being the only reference made to the girlfriend? For one thing, because this isn’t a social commentary joke, it’s an antanaclasis. It’s a pun. It’s a linguistic observation that “to do” has multiple non-overlapping meanings. In fact, if you’re arguing that the joke literally equates “doing” a job to “doing” a woman, then it’s not an antanaclasis at all, and not a joke. If someone used the same words in another context, it’s quite likely that I would view it more as you do, but context informs intent.
But, even accepting that the speaker does refer only to his girlfriend in terms of sexual activity, the entirety of the joke comes at the expense of the speaker. Even if you ascribe the motive of objectification to the speaker, the speaker is not presented as a symbol of worth, but of failure. Even if the statement is taken to imply objectification, that provides only additional reason for his former partner to have kicked his sorry ass to the curb. Ignore this particular joke for the moment; is self-deprecation mocking the speaker for being sexist itself sexist? I would answer no, because for such a conceit to be self-deprecating at all, sexism must be a flaw.
Oh, waaah waaah waaah, the big mean liberals don’t want us to cast offensively, it’s going to be damaging to the media.
Actually, I presented it as an observation, not a defense. Not enough women / minorities / non-cis-gendered / etc. are depicted in media out of fear of backlash for their flaws. And that’s wrong. Okay, okay, I’ll concede that historical precedent means that actual blindness is probably not going to achieve the desired effect (I really don’t have a cogent counterargument to a black Alfred Pennyworth being a train-wreck of a bad idea). I do think that in a better world, it should be.
Aaaaand now you’re being condescending.
None of what you quoted from my previous responses was in any way intended to come across as condescending. Text is a terrible conveyor of emotion and intent. On the other hand, especially given that your response comprised, at some dozenish points, the Name-Calling Style of Debate, parts of this post, yeah, are probably intended to be a little condescending.

Speaking of strawmen, I did not say this. I will not say this. I do not believe this. In fact, I provided an explicit example of a line, intended to be humorous, that I found offensive in an effort to provide an active counterexample to show the defenses I made of the original quote are not absolute.
But you are saying that you find this line to be funny, and then defending it. You are excusing it apparently because you find this instance to be funny.
It is, ironically, an argument from privilege, that the person making the argument is that much more enlightened about the realities of their class than the person making the other argument.
Not enlightened, knowledgeable. And it is an argument about privilege, not from privilege.
In this case, it is you claiming that because my sister agrees with me, that she is, essentially, a self-hating sexist tool of patriarchal oppression.
Actually, that was someone else. I simply argued that just because one woman says it isn’t sexist, or just says she thinks it’s funny, doesn’t make it not sexist.
Not that you care, clearly, but she begs to differ.
Of course she does. Who wouldn’t?
I have a sex-positive view of feminism; it is not objectifying for a woman to have sex, most especially not with someone with whom she is engaged in some sort of an actual relationship, which the parallelism implies (in that she now has a boyfriend/partner other than the speaker).
I am myself a sex-positive feminist. The objectification comes not because he says that someone else is having sex with her, but because it reduces her to that role and nothing more. The joke frames the job as merely something one does and nothing more, and then in parallel frames the girlfriend as something one does and nothing more.
Why do I believe the reference to sex is incidental despite it being the only reference made to the girlfriend? For one thing, because this isn’t a social commentary joke, it’s an antanaclasis. It’s a pun. It’s a linguistic observation that “to do” has multiple non-overlapping meanings. In fact, if you’re arguing that the jokeliterally equates “doing” a job to “doing” a woman, then it’s not an antanaclasis at all, and not a joke. If someone used the same words in another context, it’s quite likely that I would view it more as you do, but context informs intent.
There are other ways to make the same antanaclasis that do not reduce a woman to nothing more than a sex object, though. That the comedian chose one that does, in a society that regularly reduces women to sex objects, is problematic. It is one instance of a larger pattern that has been harming women for thousands of years.
But, even accepting that the speaker does refer only to his girlfriend in terms of sexual activity, the entirety of the joke comes at the expense of the speaker.
And yet, it still reduces the woman in the joke to a sexual object, even if that is not the point of the joke.
Even if you ascribe the motive of objectification to the speaker, the speaker is not presented as a symbol of worth, but of failure.
I ascribe no motive whatsoever, because intent has nothing to do with it. I am talking about the effect of the joke, what the joke actually does.
Ignore this particular joke for the moment; is self-deprecation mocking the speaker for being sexist itself sexist?
It depends on the joke. If it manages to do it in a way that upholds sexism, then yes, it fucking is. This joke reiterates a sexist idea without challenging it.
On the other hand, especially given that your response comprised, at some dozenish points, the Name-Calling Style of Debate, parts of this post, yeah, are probably intended to be a little condescending.
Defending a sexist joke is a douchey thing to do, so I’m going to call you a douche. That’s all there is to it.

@MadGastronomer:
But you are saying that you find this line to be funny, and then defending it.
Not that it is remotely relevant, but I actually don’t. Antanaclasis was probably totally awesome when Shakespeare presented Hamlet, but after spending a couple of decades as the advertising industry stylistic trope of choice, I’m mostly tired of them. I don’t think it’s a very good joke, but I don’t think it’s an inherently sexist one.
The joke frames the job as merely something one does and nothing more, and then in parallel frames the girlfriend as something one does and nothing more. … This joke reiterates a sexist idea without challenging it.
We agree on some fundamental principles. Sexual objectification is bad. Reinforcement of sexism is bad. You believe this joke embodies said objectification, and fails to challenge the attitude behind it. I believe this joke stops short of sexual objectification, but likewise challenges through deprecation the attitudes the workaday arguments that lead to it.
I simply argued that just because one woman says it isn’t sexist, or just says she thinks it’s funny, doesn’t make it not sexist.
So long as it is a reasonably informed and education opinion, one person finding that a statement is not sexist does make it not sexist … for them. Of course, that door swings both ways.
There are likely no shortage of statements that would be deemed sexist by anyone who is concerned about such things. There are, of course, no shortage of other statements that no one would consider to be sexist in good faith. Sexism is not objective, and in between those poles are a wide spectrum of statements, on the nature of which people who are interested in combating sexism will nonetheless disagree. I pretty clearly have a more conservative view of the topic than you do. I do not think that makes me right and you wrong. I do not think that makes you right and me wrong. I think we disagree.
I do not, on the other hand, think that makes me a douche. With no small sense of irony, I will close by noting that another feminist I have interacted with in a different venue objects strongly to the use of that word as an insult. I happen to disagree with them as well.

Sexism is not objective

Gender bias supported by institutional power imbalance. Which part of that is subjective?

@Will Wildman: Gender bias supported by institutional power imbalance. Which part of that is subjective?
Not trying to be evasive here, but how is it not? Not everyone, even with similar intention, necessarily views all actions and statements in the same manner. Setting aside this stupid Bobcat Goldthwait joke and looking at the question in a broader theory sense, there have been considerable movement-level disagreements in feminism about what constitutes the limits of sexism. For example, the separatist movement as described by Roxanne Dunbar and others has stated that all actions taken by men, even those purportedly in support of women’s rights or of feminism as a movement were nevertheless inherently sexist. That’s clearly in direct conflict with the “First Wave”, which focused on sexism primarily as a matter of law.
Those are probably the endpoints of a continuum, and there are about a zillion positions between them. But I think it’s self evident that a Separatist would identify as sexist certain statements that a classical First Wave feminist would not necessarily object to, which implies rather strongly that no objective set of rules to identifying the presence or absence of sexism can exist.

But I think it’s self evident that a Separatist would identify as sexist certain statements that a classical First Wave feminist would not necessarily object to, which implies rather strongly that no objective set of rules to identifying the presence or absence of sexism can exist.
Or that the classical First Wave feminist was the product of a more sexist society than that which produced the Third Wave feminist. Or that the classical First Wave feminist picked her battles.

@MercuryBlue: Or that the classical First Wave feminist was the product of a more sexist society than that which produced the Third Wave feminist.
Arguably bad pairing on my part, since they’re movements separated by a fairly considerable amount of time. Still, I think the point holds. Roxanne Dunbar and Ann Braithwaite and Janice Raymond would almost certainly not universally agree on what constitutes sexism and on whether certain statements are sexist.

Roxanne Dunbar and Ann Braithwaite and Janice Raymond would almost certainly not universally agree on what constitutes sexism and on whether certain statements are sexist.

This is true, but not the question being asked, so yeah, you were evasive. They would disagree on the definition of sexism, but I’m not asking you to reconcile their perspectives. I’m putting forth a single definition and asking which part of it is subjective. The options, roughly, are that ‘gender bias’ is subjective, ‘institutionalised power imbalance’ is subjective, or that the description does not define sexism (and if that’s your answer, then it would be good to back it up with why it’s not a good definition of sexism, and possibly even offer an alternative definition that works better).

Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me! Some people think no gender bias is evident when a group of people selected by qualities other than gender has at least one woman. Others think that scenario only reflects a lack of gender bias if about half the group is female, which, in a group with only one woman, means a group of one to three people. Therefore gender bias is subjective. As for institutionalized power imbalance, well the Supreme Court’s thirty-three percent female, the US Cabinet twenty-seven percent, the Senate’s seventeen percent. So, if a ten-percent-female group has no gender bias, the highest levels of the US government skew female, proving that no institutionalized power imbalance exists.

I’m not up-to-date with what the conservatives in America are saying, but what brought this on again? I remembered one of the articles here that resembles this one.

@Will Wildman: The options, roughly, are that ‘gender bias’ is subjective, ‘institutionalised power imbalance’ is subjective, or that the description does not define sexism (and if that’s your answer, then it would be good to back it up with why it’s not a good definition of sexism, and possibly even offer an alternative definition that works better).
Sexism is: 1 Any action, statement, attitude, or belief which, 2 whether explicitly or implicitly, 3 states, suggests, or implies that one sex or gender as a class, 4 or an individual representing that class, 5 is inferior to or less capable or competent than another sex or gender or its members, 6 on the basis of the difference in sex or gender.
Regarding #3, I suppose gender bias is different than sex bias, but the two are closely related and seem reasonable to consider together. I considered something in #5 to take into account those few circumstances with an objective difference in capabilities (men are inferior at at childbearing and natural breastfeeding, as they are biologically incapable), but that struck me as pedantic and prone to abuse.
Not here? Institutionalization of sexism worsens its detrimental effects and makes it harder to correct, but isn’t a requirement for sexism to be sexism. Likewise, misandry and heterophobia can and do exist; they are without question much less common and because their victims are beneficiaries of privilege, they are protected. But that doesn’t make those forms of bias right, excusable, or not sexism.
Still, it’s subjective. It’s possible to disagree on implicit effects. It’s possible to disagree about whether judgments are made on the basis of gender (or other protected classes, frankly). And so on.

Institutionalization of sexism worsens its detrimental effects and makes it harder to correct, but isn’t a requirement for sexism to be sexism.

I intended to draw a distinction between institutionalisation and having the support of an institutional structure. Men in our society have more institutional power. Using either of our definitions, it is possible for men to take actions that are not sexist, and in fact take actions that counter sexism – and the actions of men in some situations may get more results for less effort because they are men and thus can direct that extra power. That’s independent of whether institutions are inherently sexist (such as patriarchal lines of succession). Two different things. And the reason that this is important is that it means that while misogyny and misandry are both real things, misogynists have a huge capacity to actually oppress women while misandrists have a lot less practical ability to oppress men.

It’s possible to disagree on implicit effects. It’s possible to disagree about whether judgments are made on the basis of gender

(Addressing these in reverse order.) It is possible to disagree on the intent of the person making the judgment, but that only matters if we care what their intent was. This was what was covered earlier with POC-Alfred-Pennyworth – whatever the judgment might have been, it would have the effect of reinforcing racial stereotypes and power imbalance, and the effect is what’s important.
It’s further only possible to disagree on implicit effects when operating in a theoretical framework. If something has an effect, then that effect can be observed and indicated. If we can’t see the effect, then it’s important to consider that other people might see effects that we don’t. And that doesn’t mean being absolutely subservient to other people’s perspectives, but it does mean that we might not be able to completely and happily resolve the issue with the conclusion that we are right. And now I’m going to link to a blog post about the FedEx arrow and the idea of Arrows as a whole concept of implicit effects/messages, because I enjoyed it so, and it hasn’t been linked around here lately. From the step-by-step at the end of that post, I think we’re currently on Step #2 If Yes, but I could be wrong.

@Will Wildman: It’s further only possible to disagree on implicit effects when operating in a theoretical framework.
I’ll have to wait until later until I’m able to follow that link, unfortunately. It sounds interesting. But I can disagree that, well, disagreement on that implicit effects is only plausible in theory. Here’s an example:
Let’s say I’m making a film. One of the characters is important to the plot, and gets a great deal of screen time, but time constraints mean we don’t get to explore too much of their background. That character is, by profession, a hospital nurse. Nursing is a profession that is stereotypically a “woman’s job”, but that is held by an increasing number of men. The gender of the character doesn’t matter to the plotline, only their profession, so we’re free to do as our conscience directs.
If I make the nurse a woman, am I perpetuating sexist stereotypes about gender-acceptable job opportunities? Am I showing a sexist disregard for male nurses, a group that actually has had documented concerns about misandry and homophobia? If I make the nurse male, does that contribute to the bias created by the unnecessarily large fraction of all characters portrayed as male by the film industry? Does it show a sexist disregard against the still-majority female nursing population? If I make the conscious effort to avoid the appearance of misandry, is that in itself inherently misogynist, because misandry is so much rarer and less damaging than sexism against women that taking action on its account is itself sexist? Do any of these answers depend on the gender ratios of the rest of the characters?
Is it sexist to apply this sort of calculus to the question in the first place?
And are any of these answers different if the nurse has been stealing oxycodone from the pharmaceutical stockroom and selling it on the black market, solely in order to live above their means?
If we can’t see the effect, then it’s important to consider that other people might see effects that we don’t.
Obviously, this is a contrived, hypothetical situation. But it’s not an entirely unrealistic one. I think it’s possible to make well-reasoned arguments for either answer to just about every one of those questions. Obviously the class attributes of characters can have implied effects, and those effects, as you’ve noted, can be independent of the intent of the creator. What happens if different people see mutually irreconcilable effects from the same action?
Regardless of the decision made, is it possible to say objectively whether the character (and its creation) is sexist? I do not believe that it is. With issues like implied bias, I believe it is possible for mutually contradictory viewpoints to nevertheless both be “right” so long as they are made in good faith.

I think I’m using ‘theoretical’ the way you’re using ‘hypothetical’. The question may be very complex, as you note with the nurse, but the fact that we can have all sorts of abstract discussions around the point doesn’t mean that it’s all abstract and there is no real effect (which should trump abstractions). And I don’t think there is any way to create a single rule that’s going to determine How To Solve The Nurse Problem; it’s always going to be a matter of discussing the specifics of the exact situation until everyone is more or less at consensus. Very tough. Worthwhile things generally are.
Back on abstraction-vs-effect. Take economics (my field). Around any particular issue, it’s possible to have vast discussions about what might or might not happen if a particular policy is followed. Two different economists will happily give you three opinions about whether a particular tax cut will benefit a particular part of the population. But that doesn’t mean that they are all Zenfully Both Right And Wrong or that the tax cut will have some kind of Schroedinger effect where it simultaneously benefits or doesn’t benefit the target group. It will have an effect. It might have multiple effects, which leads into the next bit…

What happens if different people see mutually irreconcilable effects from the same action?

Then that would be kind of cool (or awful, depending), and yes, totally possible, but I’d go into that situation expecting that different people were having very different experiences. Now, if it’s a totally binary situation (one group says a joke places men above women, another group say the same joke places women above men) then I’d be tempted to say ‘That is a terrible joke, let’s bury it and move on’. But if it’s less so – such as in this case, where one group says ‘that joke is hateful to women’ and another group says ‘no it isn’t’ then… well, what in the world is the upside of just going along with the second group? More importantly, why in the world is it important to tell the first group that they’re wrong? And this is where the link I provided comes in, because its conclusion is ‘At the absolute least, if you can’t see a problem with something and someone else does, then let them say so and move on’.

@Will Wildman: Finally got a chance to read your link.
[W]here one group says ‘that joke is hateful to women’ and another group says ‘no it isn’t’ then… well, what in the world is the upside of just going along with the second group? More importantly, why in the world is it important to tell the first group that they’re wrong?
In the FedEx logo, there is objectively an arrow. The guy who designed the logo intended there to be an arrow. There is an arrow in that logo. If someone doesn’t see the arrow, and you show it to them, they’re almost certainly able to perceive it. As a result, it’s not really possible to make a reasonable claim that the logo is arrowless.
But what about the other arrow, the one formed by the shape of the first letter E? Personally, I don’t think there’s an arrow there. But someone does. No, our arrow fan says, just look. The shaft is where the E almost closes, and the head is under the round bit. It’s easy to miss because it’s pointing backwards.. There’s probably nothing to be gained by trying to convince him that he’s wrong, that’s just the way lowercase letter E’s look. Or even if it were an arrow, it wouldn’t be a very good one; the arrowhead only has a point on one side. It would never fly. Exactly the point, he says.
[I]t’s always going to be a matter of discussing the specifics of the exact situation until everyone is more or less at consensus.
There are a lot of people, and a lot of different kinds of arrows. In fact, it’s probably possible to find someone who finds an arrow in anything, especially online. A lot of those arrows weren’t put there on purpose. Some of them are awful hard for anyone other than their “discoverer” to see. It’s almost never a good use of anyone’s time to tell someone who has found an arrow that they didn’t find one; they did! And, that was never my intent — trying to tell people who thought something was sexist that they were wrong.
But there’s a difference in those “two” arrows in the FedEx logo. One’s really there. It’s hard to make a coherent argument in favor of its non-existence. It isn’t in color, so it doesn’t count, I guess. But when all the people reading just the colored letters have been ignoring the whitespace, that’s sort of the point. Making that sort of argument, even if you’re not trying to convince anyone with it, is bad form. But that other arrow, the one in the E? You can be aware of arrows, and still say … I’ve looked at arrows, and at that E, and I just don’t think there’s an arrow there. Now over here, that? THAT is an arrow.
I see a lot of arrows. In a lot of places, and pointed at a lot of different causes. Sometimes people see arrows that I don’t see. Most of the time, I just shrug, and move on. But sometimes there’s reasons to believe it isn’t an arrow, like with that FedEx E. If I can say, “I’m not sure that’s an arrow because…”, and it’s a a place where that sort of debate is welcome, I might. There is a benefit to learning where reasonable people differ about arrow-spotting. Sometimes it takes a little more to see an arrow. Now and then, someone realizes they were trying too hard. Most of the time, everyone just moves on to the next arrow. But that’s the nature of that sort of debate; it doesn’t presuppose that either side is wrong. Both sides simply are. The point is to try to understand why.

I’ve looked at arrows, and at that E, and I just don’t think there’s an arrow there. Now over here, that? THAT is an arrow.

I think you’re kind of missing the point on the FedEx thing; you’ve broken it down very well, but there’s still a bit of the thesis that you’ve left out. I think partly because you’re still assuming that intent is relevant – you note that the logo-designer probably meant to put in the Pointy Arrow but that the Round Arrow was probably an accident. That is quite explicitly not meant to be the point – the point is that there is a thing there that is a Round Arrow to some people. We can’t say that it’s not there; they see it, and that makes it real to them.
You’re arguing that there is an objective difference between the Pointy Arrow and the Round Arrow, but that objective difference ultimately comes down to the fact that you think one is an arrow and one isn’t. And sure, it could be edifying and interesting to discuss the nature of a shape and what is or isn’t arrowlike about it, but to the other person in the conversation, that can feel like they’re arguing over whether the Pointy Arrow exists, and that is going to irk, especially when there are lots and lots of people arguing that there is no such thing as a Pointy Arrow. And if it becomes clear that this is the sort of situation you’re in, you can’t really expect a positive response to ‘I’m just debating the nature of arrows’.

I realised (as I was discovering that the laundry dryer is borked, sigh) that I could probably have clarified the above a bit better. For one thing, I wanted to emphasise that the difference between the Pointy Arrow and the Round Arrow isn’t that the Pointy Arrow is definitely there and the Round Arrow might be. The difference is that just about everyone sees the Pointy Arrow and only some people see the Round Arrow.

@Will Wildman: I typed this, and then saw your postscript. Going to let my response stand and go from there.
I think partly because you’re still assuming that intent is relevant…
As it happens, I do think intent is relevant, though not wholly exculpatory, mind you. But I know that you, and at least some others here disagree, and I really didn’t have any intent of walking any further down that particular road right now.
You’re arguing that there is an objective difference between the Pointy Arrow and the Round Arrow, but that objective difference ultimately comes down to the fact that you think one is an arrow and one isn’t.
But that’s not my argument.
I’m arguing that Pointy Arrow is objectively an arrow. Not only is it very clearly arrow-shaped, but the creator said that it is supposed to be an arrow. It’s an arrow. If someone says that Pointy Arrow isn’t an arrow, even after being presented with the quite frankly pretty conclusive evidence that, yes, that’s an arrow, then we have reason to question the good faith nature of their objection. In fact, continuing to assert that there is no Pointy Arrow is suggestive that that person is an … erm, Pointist? We’ll run with that. A Pointist.
I’m also arguing that Round Arrow is subjectively an arrow. That doesn’t mean that people who believe Round Arrow is an arrow are wrong, or arguing in bad faith, because they see an arrow there, and they have valid and coherent reasons to defend their identification of Round Arrow as an arrow. On the other hand, at least some people who do not believe Round Arrow is an arrow are also not wrong, or arguing in bad faith, for the same reason. Some of the non-Round Arrow people, sadly, probably are Roundists, but being willing to explain why someone doesn’t think there’s an arrow there shouldn’t be a priori evidence of that person’s Roundism.
Both the Round Arrow people and (some of) the not-Round Arrow people having this argument agree that Roundism is wrong. But dealing with Round Arrows is harder when there are legitimate disagreements about where they are. That’s especially true because both groups of people feel they have something to lose if they just concede the others’ points on Round Arrows in general. The Round Arrow group sees that Round Arrow, dammit, and so letting the not-Round Arrow people have their way means compromising on their principles, disbelieving their lying eyes, and letting the Roundists win. And that’s not good, or really acceptable. The not-Round Arrow people really, honestly are sympathetic to the concern, but are worried that without some better framework — or at least some way to discuss the issue — that simply agreeing that anything anyone thinks is an Arrow should be treated like one seems like it will cause its own problems, like creating other Arrows for other people along the way. And that’s not good, or really acceptable.
Real-life example. God’s honest truth. A woman that I went to college with was very, very serious about the linguistic structuralism as a vehicle for sexism. Much of the time, I agreed with her, because there really is an unfortunate amount of sexism encoded into the way we speak and write (agreed, there are arrows there). I try to be pretty vigilant about things like “police officer” instead of policeman and trying to shy away from the most obviously problematic phrases and metaphors (yep, that’s an arrow!). I can see the point that gendered pronouns are an issue, and I do what I can, but I don’t think any of the proposed solutions are universally acceptable or that every use of the “generic he” is a tool of the patriarchy (this is a subjective arrow). And despite her protestations that the collective noun for the entirety of our species should be changed to hupersonity, the most I was willing to do was to try really hard not to talk about my “Humanities” course in earshot (you see an arrow there? really? o…kay…).

I admit that I didn’t realize at first that the FedEx arrow was being treated “as a symbol of gender/race/sexuality/ability fail.” I wondered if the arrow was being treated as a phallic symbol like in Wilson Bryan Key’s Subliminal Seduction.

The not-Round Arrow people really, honestly are sympathetic to the concern, but are worried that without some better framework — or at least some way to discuss the issue — that simply agreeing that anything anyone thinks is an Arrow should be treated like one seems like it will cause its own problems, like creating other Arrows for other people along the way. And that’s not good, or really acceptable.

But this is again something where we can look at the actual effects instead of working entirely in hypotheticals and abstractions, and we can continue to adapt and improve over time rather than worrying about having a rigid principle to apply. If your reason for wanting to debate the existence of the Round Arrow (with people who find the Round Arrow hurtful) is that you’re worried that “Okay, I don’t see it, but we will move forward with the assumption that there is a Round Arrow” will hurt someone else, then you are prioritising hypothetical potential harm over actual harm that people tell you they’re experiencing.
So moving on to the person* who wanted ‘hupersonity’ to become the common term… well, okay, that’s just bad linguistics (why keep the ‘hu’ prefix? It’s pointless) but the core concept of ‘I would like it if we had a word for the species that didn’t feel to me like it preferred men’ is, like you say, not bad. And your response seems pretty reasonable to me, because you did your best to adapt to that person’s wishes. Whereas in the case of the joke that sparked all of this, that was not so much your response.
*I assume she didn’t like ‘woman’ any more than ‘human’. She’s not alone, and although ‘womon’ and ‘womyn’ don’t seem like ideal solutions to me, I’m sure not going to tell people not to use them.
(On the subject of ‘generic he’, I favour my philosophy-of-language prof’s view: “You tell me not to use ‘they’ because it means more than one person. Then you tell me that there’s a kind of ‘he’ that doesn’t mean male. Well, if you can use ‘he’ and say it’s gender-neutral, then I can use ‘they’ and make it numeric-neutral.”)

Will, I sometimes find myself using “they” as gender-neutral singular in casual conversation. While I wouldn’t label that use as flat-out wrong, I see it as an inadequate substitute. When writing, I frequently long for a true gender-neutral singular pronoun that would apply only to a person and not to an object, and I usually construct sentences that don’t require such a pronoun.

although ‘womon’ and ‘womyn’ don’t seem like ideal solutions to me, I’m sure not going to tell people not to use them.

That’s my stance as well.

If “they” was good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for me.
As a woman, a feminist, and kind of a bitch, I actually will openly make fun of the womyn/womon people. And probably would have tried extra-hard to “casually” refer to my Humanities course in front of the woman Heretic Voice talks about, because…it seems dumb, and I’m mean, and there we are. I’d probably feel more hesitant about it if I was a guy, though.
Likewise, the original joke doesn’t bug me so much, but, first of all, I have no problem with objectification in the abstract, just the uneven way our culture applies it–I’ll frequently say things like “been there, done that” in re: my exes, or talk about how boys don’t have nearly as much replay value as video games–and second, I grew up in a time and place where I didn’t feel so much of that inequality. So I figure that people coming from a different perspective, particularly on the latter, are probably seeing things that are actually there and that I miss.

@Heretical Voice and Izzy:
Have you noticed that in the last decade, concomitant with the resurgence of 1960s-era architectural, clothing* and decorative styles, that there’s also been a resurgence of the kind of sexist language that was largely dead by the late 1980s and early 1990s?
A movie made in about 2004ish actually had a female cop call herself a “lawman”, for example. I just went “wait, WUT?” (o.O)
—
* one of the reasons I wish I wasn’t as wide is because knowing how I looked when I was younger I’d love to be able to wear those retro clothes and then look in the mirror and say, “Damn, $MYNAME, lookin’ good.”

Pius: Whoa, hadn’t noticed. But–as you say–weird.

Izzy, my friend Ravyn Wyllowwynd would like you to be part of her Womyns Empowermynt Cyrcle. I took the liberty of telling her you would be delighted.

Raj: I swear, one day I will develop telenuking powers…

Izzy, I thought you did have telenuking powers. Guess I won’t need this.
*takes off foil hat*

Izzy, if you’re still here, how are you doing with that cold?

Have you noticed that in the last decade, concomitant with the resurgence of 1960s-era architectural, clothing* and decorative styles, that there’s also been a resurgence of the kind of sexist language that was largely dead by the late 1980s and early 1990s?

My guess would be that they’re happening at the same time, but have 2 different sources. The popularity of 60s stuff seems to be just the usual trend cycle at work. It seems likely to me that the resurgence of sexist language is tied to the unfortunate conservative BS that’s been in full force in the culture since 9/11. “Lawman” for example has that lovely Western white hats/black hats vibe that people love so very much when they’re scared.

Oh, here’s another good snap from that movie:
Check it out.
I really like the juxtaposition there.

Frig. Well, the movie was called “Love Lies Bleeding” and apparently it’s from 2008 not 2004. Here is an IMDb link.
I had this lovely writeup for it before but typepad eated it.

“You tell me not to use ‘they’ because it means more than one person. Then you tell me that there’s a kind of ‘he’ that doesn’t mean male. Well, if you can use ‘he’ and say it’s gender-neutral, then I can use ‘they’ and make it numeric-neutral.”
I am also a believer in singular they, and personally do not think it is nonstandard English. “Shakespeare used it” almost certainly constitutes an appeal to authority, but, well, he’s a pretty good authority. In many contexts, it’s still judged as improper, however, which is why it isn’t an ideal solution. At least at the moment.
And your response seems pretty reasonable to me, because you did your best to adapt to that person’s wishes.
This may mark me as a bad person here, which I suppose I am willing to take ownership of. I tried to keep track of her substantial list of terms likely to provoke offense because, frankly, it limited the drama. That’s not to say I didn’t, or don’t, support her cause. There really are a lot of ways everyone could use language in a more fair, more neutral manner, and God knows that I’m not perfect, but I try to do my part. But a righteous cause can be taken too far, and can feel to others less like a cause and more like a crusade*, even (especially) if the one leading it is still a passionate believer in its necessity. A stacked arrangement of bread, meat, and lettuce is not a instrument of entrenched sexism on account of the 4th Earl of Sandwich (who was fond of such things) having been a man named John Montagu. And while the Christian religion certainly hasn’t been kind to women, the word which ends Christian prayers does not serve to reinforce a fundamentally male-centric creed on account of its last three letters. Still completely serious. Strike me down have I not been true.
Whereas in the case of the joke that sparked all of this, that was not so much your response.
Somewhere out there in the nebulosity of implied sexism, I perceive two personal lines.
One of them is the line past which I am not personally able to perceive the sexism. That line is obviously a lot more conservative than people here, and to be honest, I know that. I understand that others find that joke sexist. I cannot see it. For better or worse, I see that joke as ridiculing the man for his failures and attitudes rather than setting a social expectation for the role of girlfriends.
I’d like to think of myself as a male feminist these days, although apparently I’m a pretty shitty one. I’d like to move that line. But the only way I can do so is to have the chance to discuss the reasons why I see things on one side of it that other people see on the other and try to learn to recognize what I don’t see. Sometimes I’m better at it than others. After all, I sat real close to the patriarchy for a very long time and it probably screwed up my vision. I’ve never been able to see those Magic Eye things, either.
For quite a bit of my life, including all the parts where I learned how to learn things, you could without question have counted me as an enemy of many of the causes I now support. I’m a verbal person, and maybe a little confrontationist at time. This is how I know to learn. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
However, I do admit, I believe in another line, way past the space that bad stand-up comic routines occupy, the line past which it is neither reasonable nor appropriate to concede. I don’t know where that line is either, exactly. If I had to guess, I’d say right about the point where not using “hupersonity” labels me as sexist. Renaming sandwiches to avoid invoking the name of an 18th century British aristocrat who didn’t want to get grease stains on his cribbage cards and finding linguistic sexism in the Classical Hebrew-derived “amen” are both a good bit past it.
Even typing that out, those sound to me like caricature positions, but I’ve heard them from a real person who was at least to all appearances heartfelt in her belief that those positions were not merely reasonable but necessary. It is with a sad sense of irony that I note her vehemence** may have done harm rather than good. I believe that we are all of us created as equals under God and that striving to achieve a worldly equality is among the greatest works that humanity could hope to accomplish. But I know that there is a fine line between justice and vengeance, and that it is possible to take any faith too far. And it is for that reason that I cannot automatically concede any time anyone finds an arrow. If you go hunting for enough arrows with enough zeal, you can find them everywhere, even if you must place them there yourself.
*I should probably get out of the habit of using this word, too.
**It never came up, but this would wouldn’t have made her happy either, I expect.

Also, unrelated to sexism, if I’m going to stick around here, I’m clearly going to have to learn to type shorter or faster to keep up. Or both.

I tend to use generic she as my default.
(This is largely the fault of the BtVS RPG. D&D tends to alternate between “he” and “she” in every example; the BtVS book said in the intro “This is a book about Slayers, and they’re all girls. We’re defaulting to female.”)

Reposting a couple of articles, because apparently some people Don’t Fucking Get It:
Feminism 101: “Sexism is a Matter of Opinion
And the classic, Intent! It’s Fucking Magic!

@MadGastronomer: I’m going to disagree with some fundamental points in some of what you linked. I suspect that means that our differences are irreconcilable, but I hope that I am wrong. Quotes from your linked sources will be in quotation marks, but not italicized, in no small part because using more italics here than I have to scares me.
“Whether something is sexist (be it a word, a consumable item, a practice, or anything else) is neither dependent on how it is intended nor how it is received, but on whether it serves to convey sexism, which itself is determined by its alignment with existent patterns.”
I reserve judgment for the moment about using this framework as the central definition for sexism. But that notwithstanding, I object strongly to its characterization as a wholly objective process. There are at least two subjective components to what is described in that article. First and foremost is the identification of the patterns themselves. The big ones — rape culture, the beauty myth, the Male Protector archetype — are indisputable. Given time, I’m sure I could write quite a treatise listing them. But so far as I’m aware, and that article made no effort to inform otherwise, there’s no accounting of patterns which are inherent embodiments of sexism. In fact, I would go so far as to state that by the nature of societal patterns, there cannot be one. The other subjective component is the matching process itself. It’s easy to match “2 + 2 = 4″ to “2 + 2 = 4″. Rape jokes perpetuate the rape culture and are inherently sexist (and, frankly, loathsome on their own “merits”). But when you move away from the easy targets, you’re no longer looking at “2 + 2 = 4″, but rather increasingly complex “equations” of implications that, should they come out as 4 in the end, are matches to the pattern. And if those really were equations, this really could be an objective process. But it isn’t. And they aren’t.
I’ve even got a constructive example here that will hopefully avoid having me called a fucking fucker of fucks or whatnot. Although I am not a teetotaler and have no objection to responsible adults consuming alcoholic beverages, I oppose the bar and nightclub dating scene as being inherently sexist due to its implicit support of the rape culture. Consent to sexual activity is not an option, but an absolute mandate, and the existence of an organized industry that encourages the lowering of inhibitions (and the consequential devaluing of any given “consent” by the same margin) while at the same time knowingly and willfully serving as an environment for socially or sexually available persons to interact is incompatible with that mandate. Anything which weakens the mandate of consent serves as at least a weak apologia for rape. Conclusion: nightclub dating venues further the rape culture.
I’m sure some people here agree with me. Maybe, MadGastronomer, you do as well. Maybe you don’t. But either way, the chain of reason that brings me to the understanding that leads me to I’m not okay with that industry and this is why requires my personal judgment call on the pattern-matching. If anyone sees that as objective, they are not using the word the way that I use that word.
And that’s very closely related to why I think intent can matter. Let’s take two hypothetical men, both of whom go out to the club, hoping to leave with a willing and mutually interested woman and have consensual sex (notwithstanding the merits of that in general for the moment, if you will). The first one plans to up a woman who is pretty close to being cut off by the barkeep, pour her a couple more drinks back at his place before, half passed-out, she slurs that sure, she’ll sleep with him. It doesn’t matter if he thinks his plans represent some back-ass version of liberation empowerment. His “intent” doesn’t matter, and those actions are still wrong. He’s a sexist pig for having the idea and a date rapist if he succeeds at it.
The second man understands that some people take inappropriate advantage of the environment, but he vows to be guided by his better angels. He won’t ever hit on anyone who is visibly impaired. He intends to drink only lightly, in moderation, and will encourage prospective partners to do the same, if at all. If he leaves with a woman, mutually interested in sexual activity, he will not ply her (or himself) with more alcohol, and will try to make certain that a reasonably sobering amount of time has passed if at all possible. He never engages in sexual activity without a clear statement of consent for each act, and is always responsive to his partners’ concerns and needs if any aspect of that consent changes. But, fundamentally, he’s still supporting the same environment that allows for that first guy to act, and that environment is sexist, so his actions are, too.
Not everything fits those patterns with equal congruency. The tighter the fit to the pattern, the less intent matters. When you hit the pattern nail on the head, the weight of intent is exactly zero. Actually, it might be less than zero, because direct hits on the big patterns would require a callous disregard to excuse. But when situations are less-perfect matches for those patterns, when the social equations involved are more complicated and it is less readily visible that the end result is still going to be 4, then intent holds an increasing value.
In both examples, taking part in and supporting the bar scene is (assuming you agree with my pattern matching at all) a sexist action even if neither of them even actually do so much as speak with a woman; their presence supports an environment that empowers the rape culture. But the intent matters. From how I look at this, the first man is sexist (and pretty much a blight on my gender). The second man is not, even though the actions he take support the continuance of an environment that is sexist itself.

Sure, intent can matter. But the consequences also matter.
Here’s an example. Suppose your roommate kindly takes the pop cans from your room to return them, but spills the leftover dregs on something expensive and doesn’t notice.
Well, even if the roommate protests that he or she wanted to do something nice for you, the consequences, unintended, but they occurred, was that something of yours got ruined, and when they don’t acknowledge it, it’s kind of a piss-off.
In the same vein, a man intending to “be funny” with a tasteless rape joke still ended up making a tasteless rape joke. It doesn’t matter if he wanted to insert levity. He chose a pretty piss-poor way to do it.
Does it make the rape joke any less offensive than if a misogynistic jackass purposely told the joke to upset women? I hardly think so!
What may matter to intent is that the first man will, if he has a working brain, immediately apologize and not do it again if called on it. The second will probably just HAW HAW HAW and refuse to be educated.
So intent may not be fucking magic, but too many privileged people act as though it is, and that’s why saying, “but I didn’t intend to” tends to get squinty eyes.

@Pius Thickness: Suppose your roommate kindly takes the pop cans from your room to return them, but spills the leftover dregs on something expensive and doesn’t notice.
That sucks. If the reason he didn’t notice was that he was acting with callous disregard, then his intent was outweighed by his execution. If what happened was actually an accident and he was genuinely ignorant of having caused offense (here, the accident), then I’m not willing to hold him culpable. Sometimes good efforts have bad ends. But, for example, I wouldn’t call him a vandal.
In the same vein, a man intending to “be funny” with a tasteless rape joke still ended up making a tasteless rape joke. It doesn’t matter if he wanted to insert levity.
It doesn’t matter. Rape jokes cannot be funny, or tasteful, or good ideas. Ever. In the model I outlined above, rape jokes are very close to a direct hit on the rape culture pattern, far too close for intent to be worth a whit. In fact, the only way that anyone can still think rape jokes are funny — or even acceptable — is if they are willfully blind of the increasingly outspoken condemnation of them. Willful blindness, especially of this sort of thing, is distinct from ignorance, and is not okay.

You did notice I air-quoted the “be funny” part, right?

@Pius Thickness: You did notice I air-quoted the “be funny” part, right?
Oh, absolutely. I certainly don’t think YOU thought they could be. I meant that it doesn’t matter if the speaker thought he was being funny or not. Intent presses on the scales of justice, but its touch is light. There are things that not only cannot be excused by intent, but that profession of intent serves only to compound.
Like rape jokes.

Heretical Voice:
But the intent matters. From how I look at this, the first man is sexist (and pretty much a blight on my gender). The second man is not, even though the actions he take support the continuance of an environment that is sexist itself.
That sounds like you’re implying that the basic result of their actions was the same: supporting the club culture.
But actually, the MAIN result of their actions was (a) getting a woman so drunk she’s unable to resist his advances, or (b) having fun sex with a woman who’s interested in fun sex!
…rather different results, over-all.
Please stop pretending the results are the same to help you prove your point.

@Deird: That sounds like you’re implying that the basic result of their actions was the same: supporting the club culture.
They have different results if someone goes home with them. They differ in the outcome they want to have, yes, and when they get to follow through on their plans, the situation is not at all the same. But if they both leave alone, then there is no visible difference between the “main result” of their actions. Both of them contributed to an environment which perpetuates the ability to Example A to act in the way that he intends to act. And that is true even if Example B repudiates his counterpart.
They differ by intent, and that difference matters a great deal. Even if the better participant is tainted by his participation.

They differ by intent, and that difference matters a great deal.
Why?

…or to put it more clearly, if two people have carried out precisely the same action, then “But… he’s a really nice guy! ” is really not all that important.
Yes. He’s a nice guy. A nice guy who did something really douchy.

Voice, you’re defending instances of sexism, on a lot of spurious grounds. You are defending things that hurt people, that hurt me and people I love. Fuck you.
Intent doesn’t mitigate results, and so it is meaningless. If it has the effect of sexism, then it is de facto sexism, regardless of intent or cluelessness. It still causes the pain, the harm, regardless of intent. You want to handwave away things that hurt people, and so I say again, fuck you.

@Deird: Why?
I guess … because I believe that to be true. Maybe it’s my religious background talking, I don’t know. I know I’m drawn to an answer that is based on faith, so for better or worse, that’s what I’ll give. The environment that they support is one which promotes a sin. Here, that sin is sexism*. Supporting an institution that promotes a sin, when you know it promotes a sin would seem to be sinful. So supporting the business is sexist, too.
*Run with me for the moment that none of these people ever get what they want, so the sin here isn’t actually rape and so forth. I realize this isn’t exactly going the best for my oratory skills here.
But the Good Man in my example actively tries to disengage from the sin being promoted. In a Panglossian world, where the only men who patronized the club were Good Men, there would be no sin being promoted at all. It would be that “vanishingly rare” case from the linked article where 2 + 2 actually did equal 5. It might be possible to artificially construct such a place in our world. A membership club, perhaps, with conduct restrictions and background checks. But this is still not the best of all possible worlds, even if we pretend it to be. The Bad Man is still going to the same club he was going to, hoping to do the same things he’s always been hoping to do. And now there’s one less Good Man in the crowd. Is that a better outcome than the way it was before the Good Man left? Is that less sexist? Less sinful?
I believe that Jesus Christ, God-as-Man, walked among the sinners and gave them comfort, but that he took on no sin from so doing. I believe that he said that the path to redemption was through him — and that means that in his words, and his deeds and the meanings behind them are the whole of the wisdom of his teachings, if we can see it. I believe in doing the right thing even in the wrong place, and that the light of virtue is a brighter beacon when it is forced to be alone. I believe in trying to do the right thing even if I’m not very good at it. Even if I don’t succeed at all. And so, yes, I believe that intent — real intent, in the heart, not the false intent that comes with someone saying “not that I mean to offend, but…” — matters.
I also believe that this has been in whole a terrible answer, that it doesn’t really do justice to my thoughts on the matter, that it probably isn’t going to satisfy anyone, and that it will likely annoy people who do not share my faith (which, technically, is sadly everyone). But it seems to be the best that I can do at the moment.
I have tried.

Intent might matter to the person who’s accidentally (or not) hit someone in the face with a hammer.
It doesn’t matter so much to the person who’s just been hit.

and that it will likely annoy people who do not share my faith (which, technically, is sadly everyone)
Huh? What is your faith? Are you seriously the only person who has it?

HV: In this case, it is you claiming that because my sister agrees with me, that she is, essentially, a self-hating sexist tool of patriarchal oppression.
MadG: Actually, that was someone else. I simply argued that just because one woman says it isn’t sexist, or just says she thinks it’s funny, doesn’t make it not sexist.
In fact, it wasn’t me, either. I can sort of, if I squint, see a passing familial resemblance between what I posted about “we’re marinating in this sexist culture too” and HV’s “yes, I know, we’re all terrible horrible unredeemable people” take on it*, but in the end, the only person calling HV’s sister a “self-hating sexist tool” is HV.
*When I was a teenager, my mother’s standard response to any criticism from me — regardless of any validity my criticism might have had, which amount varied depending on the instance — was “Yes, I know, I’m a horrible terrible mother.” I wish I had a pithy phrase to call out this sort of dishonest debate strategy, where someone (like HV) attempts to discredit an argument (like mine) by exaggerating its logical conclusion and then attempting to conflate that ridiculous exaggeration with the argument actually made. Maybe “Inflatio Ad Absurdum”, if I may be forgiven the Potteresque faux Latin?
In any case, I can’t say I’ve read HV’s subsequent walls-o-text with any care, despite his insistence that he is trying to learn more so as to be a better feminist. The moment at which he committed Inflatio Ad Absurdum was the moment at which I decided I no longer needed to presume any sort of good faith in his arguments. Also, I have a limited tolerance for attempts to mansplain away the very real and entrenched sexist attitudes that actively hurt me, upon which the joke’s “humor” relies.
Look: We are in a culture in which “I’d totally hit that”** is an accepted synonym for “I’d like to have sex with her.” Fucking think about it for a moment. At least in the phrase “someone else is doing her” I get to remain a her, and the verb is less violent.
** Gods bless XKCD.

Intent might matter to the person who’s accidentally (or not) hit someone in the face with a hammer.
It doesn’t matter so much to the person who’s just been hit.
This.
When I was a teenager, my mother’s standard response to any criticism from me — regardless of any validity my criticism might have had, which amount varied depending on the instance — was “Yes, I know, I’m a horrible terrible mother.”
Did we have the same mother somehow? Mine did this too, at least part of the time. It’s where my occasional comments along the lines of, “Yes, I know, I’m an awful person/big meanie/whatever” comes from.

I believe in doing the right thing even in the wrong place, and that the light of virtue is a brighter beacon when it is forced to be alone. I believe in trying to do the right thing even if I’m not very good at it. Even if I don’t succeed at all.
Here’s the thing though. What you’re doing is the wrong thing. When you excuse instances of sexism, allow them to stand, prop up arguments in their favor, you are supporting something that hurts people.
Insisting on focusing on the intent of the person who did the sexist thing is focusing on the perpetrator instead of the victim. Didn’t Jesus focus on helping the victims, the poor, the downtrodden?
Defending the good intentions of the perpetrator doesn’t help the perpetrator, either. Showing the perpetrator the truth, and helping them to stop hurting others, that can help the perpetrator. But even that should be secondary to helping the person who was hurt.
Ask yourself: how is defending a joke from a charge of sexist effect being Christlike?
I am not a follower of Christ, although I acknowledge his divinity. I do think that he had the right idea in helping the people who have been hurt and oppressed, though. And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to help the disadvantaged, the oppressed, by standing up for them/us, and, secondarily, trying to help those who hurt the disadvantaged by educating them.
Who are you helping? What good are you doing here?
I tell you again, as I have told you before, that you are helping others to do harm to me and to all women. It is a wrong thing to do. I usually phrase that as “being an asshole” or “being a douche,” but I’ll try this language and see if it gets the point across better.

@Heretical Voice
A few pages ago you asked about “douche” being sexist when used as an insult. We’ve had this discussion, and it’s occurred elsewhere as well. The conclusion was that although douches are historically associated with women, they’re not inherently associated with women in an physical fashion to the extent that e.g. “cunt” and “pussy”, where the insult in question is in being equated to a part of the female body. Instead, being called a douche, you are being equated to a tool that as traditionally used is useless for its express purpose (cleaning out the vagina and improving its general health), and in fact can be actively harmful. I should also note that douches of a different sort can be used by both men and women and actually are useful for something (i.e. douche-style enemas).

Oh, hey, thanks Andrew. I missed the question. You covered it very well.

Here’s a take on intent and effect that hadn’t occurred to me: Nixon’s Jewish Problem. I don’t know yet whether I agree with the conclusion.
Ripping on Jews is a Nixon loyalty test: Can his staff pass it? He consciously sets Jews up as objects of hatred and loathing for political ends (where have we heard that story before?), hardening his men to go wherever he wants them to go to do whatever he wants done. Nixon’s routine vilification of Jews for political gain wasn’t anti-Semitism. It was something worse.

Y’know, after I wrote the response about doing the right or wrong thing, I went out into the lounge at work and sat down to talk to some regulars. They’re activist types as well, and we ended up commiserating about online experiences, including mine here. I was talking about the recent threads, about tone arguments and magical intent, and I wound up summarizing HV’s latest argument as, “No, but intent MUST be important because JESUS.” And honestly, that’s about all I got out of it at first.
But on my drive home, I started thinking about it some more, and I eventually came to the conclusion that HV’s thought process (which appears to be largely subconscious) must be something along the lines of:
Sometimes I fuck up even though I mean to do good. God knows my intent, and will not condemn me for errors as long as my intent is good. Intent must be important to God. Therefore, intent should be important to humans as well.
There are some problems with this line of reasoning, though. I assume, because HV is apparently Christian, that the god he believes in is both omniscient and omnipotent.
An omnipotent being cannot be harmed. A human can. An omniscient being can know intent. A human cannot.
Sure, to a being who can actually know intent, and who cannot be harmed by mistakes, intent can matter. But a human being, who can be — and is — harmed by bigotry repeated by accident, and who cannot actually know the intent of the person committing the bigoted act . . . why, exactly, should intent matter to them?

As I understand it, Immanuel Kant was all about intent. I’m not really a follower of that philosophy myself, but I imagine it’s defensible to some degree.

I haven’t read Kant, but I somehow doubt that he was talking about it in the same context we are. I and others are saying that when someone says or does something that is effectively bigoted, whether or not they intended it to be bigoted is irrelevant to the discussion of whether or not its effects are bigoted, and that people hurt by those bigoted effects are not obligated to consider the person’s intent.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable

Whoops.

There we go?

Damn, did I break the italics?

There. I hope.

Thanks, Interleaper!

Raj: Better, thanks! (And good morning!) Or at least it’s moved to my chest, which isn’t as gross and doesn’t cloud my brain as much.
On topic: I think intent only matters to the perpetrator–in that, if you didn’t mean to do something, you’re obligated to apologize and stop doing it.
On sexism-as-subjective…hm. There are points on which I would argue the “no, that’s not sexist” line, but they’re things like porn and prostitution in the abstract (and, indeed, club culture). In the real world, most things that people think are sexist really *are*: the subjective bit is often how to respond–I tend to go for the just-apply-it-to-everyone, which is why “I’d hit that” and similar don’t push my buttons as much, whereas statements about how men are horrible violent lustful beasts piss me off like anything because of what they imply about women.
I think that made sense. I need breakfast.

True. Kant would argue that the intent, in the sense you’re using it, was improperly considered.
He was, as you say, a real pissant. And Heidegger? Boozy beggar – could drink you under the table.
Now David Hume, on the other hand, could out-consume not merely Heidegger, but even Hegel. But Wittgenstein? Bah. Beery swine. Just as schloshed as Schlagel.
Etc.

And so, yes, I believe that intent — real intent, in the heart, not the false intent that comes with someone saying “not that I mean to offend, but…” — matters.

We’ve somehow scaled up to the cosmic level now, so I’m not sure to whom you’re saying intent matters. The perpetrator, the victim, or your god? If you’re saying intent matters to the victim, then – well, there’s the Magical Intent page that MG helpfully linked again. If you’re saying intent matters to the perpetrator, then I can only assume/hope you’re saying that a person will watch to see whether their effect matched their intent, and learn from it, and alter their behaviour in the hopes that one day all their effects are precisely what they intended.
And if you’re saying that intent matters to your god and the judgment of your immortal soul, then you’ll do well to realise that lots of people disagree about whether that’s true or whether either of those are real things, and so you probably shouldn’t expect them to be particularly excited about that part of your concerns. Your sins (according to your definitions, received or designed) are your thing to cope with, and you can’t put any of that weight on others. You can’t ask others to make sacrifices for you.
Aaaaand looping back to the beginning of all of this, you’ve characterised your entry into the conversation as seeking to discuss and learn. We have lots of evidence on the subsequent pages that, whatever your intent was, it was expressed as “You’re wrong, this isn’t sexist” and so this is where we end up. Your effect has not matched your intent. What are you planning to do about that?

@Deird: Intent might matter to the person who’s accidentally (or not) hit someone in the face with a hammer. It doesn’t matter so much to the person who’s just been hit.
Surely that’s not true, though? I … I am utterly unable to contemplate someone who feels the same about being the victim of a brutal assault as being the victim of a tragic accident, simply because both involve the same ultimate outcome of a hammer to the face.
Huh? What is your faith? Are you seriously the only person who has it?
I describe myself as a Christian. Or, in places like the internet where I can do so safely, a Christian heretic. My faith is certainly no longer compatible with the Catholicism of my childhood. I may or may not be truly unique in my beliefs, but I am alone in them. I did not leave the Catholic faith voluntarily. I was excommunicated lata sententia for heresy and schism. I was free, of course, to request review of the declaration of censure by the bishop, but a great deal of time was spent making me very clear in the understanding that excommunications confirmed by a bishop in communion with Rome are a matter of public record…
@Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little: Maybe “Inflatio Ad Absurdum”, if I may be forgiven the Potteresque faux Latin?
You’re looking for reductio ad absurdum. But I don’t think what I said was. You responded to the comments I made on my sister’s behalf, “There are also women who are pretty damn sexist. Because this sexist culture that men are steeping in? Women are steeping in it too.” Is there a way to read this other than “Your sister is pretty damn sexist” and the implication “Your sister’s beliefs further the sexist culture”?
@MadGastronomer: I don’t really have a specific bit to quote here.
I can’t reload the pages you linked from where I am at the moment, so I cannot quote that directly either, but one of them talked about a situation in which a woman might wind up on the street, and how the “menz” were likely to rape or harass her. I took offense at this, because I am a man, and I read it to imply that all men — or at least so many men that the odds were all but certain — were rapists or harassers. I took offense at this, because I am a man, and the cutsey spelling serves to belittle me and my opinions for the biology of my birth (I’m similarly not much fond of “mansplain”; really, if someone said, even sarcastically, that your arguments were “woman-talk”, I would expect that your wrath would be vigorous and righteous). I took offense at this, because I lived for five months on the street, and I read it as providing yet one more reason that people should hurry past that homeless man on the corner, should turn from him in fear.
You are right that we are none of us divine. No one save the God and the author can know their intent. Perhaps the author really does mean to paint men with such a broad brush. Perhaps they have had past experiences, of which I can know nothing, that give them reason to fear that man on the corner. I cannot know their intent, but I do not suspect it was intended to cause injury. After all, the rest of what they wrote was about NOT causing offense. I suspect that they erred — or that they and I simply disagree about when offense would be likely to be taken.
I would not say to the author, “You are someone who hurts others.” Even if it was true, in a way, because I was hurt.
There was a joke discussed in this thread, and people said that it caused offense, that it was sexist. And furthermore, that the man who told that joke must be a sexist himself, because in telling that joke, he is someone who hurts others. Maybe he is. I can’t know. I posted a disagreement, that it was possible to have concern for the cause of injury to others — for sexism — and nevertheless not believe that that joke would do so. I was told that the act of disagreeing about whether the joke was offensive was, itself, offensive. I was told that in so disagreeing, I was someone who hurts others.
If that’s all it takes, then so are we all. Me. You. The author of that essay you linked. If there is no difference between accident and malice, between someone who wills others to come to harm and someone whose actions bring harm despite their best intent, then … Then I don’t know. Because I am either not willing or not able to envision such a world, because I do not believe there is salvation to be found there.

@Will Wildman: We have lots of evidence on the subsequent pages that, whatever your intent was, it was expressed as “You’re wrong, this isn’t sexist” and so this is where we end up. Your effect has not matched your intent. What are you planning to do about that?
Perhaps I’ll try in fewer words, not that I’m very good at that.
There was a joke. It seems quite a few people think that it is sexist to them, and for good reason. Other people see the joke in an entirely different manner and so do not think it is sexist, again, to them, and again for good reason. Is it possible for these two opinions to co-exist without causing offense? In general, if someone finds some given statement offensive, does that always mean it is an offensive statement? And does trying to make a statement non-offensive change the outcome of those questions even when those efforts are not successful?

I can’t reload the pages you linked from where I am at the moment, so I cannot quote that directly either, but one of them talked about a situation in which a woman might wind up on the street, and how the “menz” were likely to rape or harass her. I took offense at this, because I am a man, and I read it to imply that all men — or at least so many men that the odds were all but certain — were rapists or harassers.
You may take offense at this all you like, but the odds are all but certain that if I walk downtown by myself, I will be harassed in some fashion ranging from minor to major. Someone will make a comment about my hair or my face or my weight, and it will stick in my mind and make me feel Not Safe for the rest of the day. I will not remember the ninety-nine men that I passed by who were perfectly normal people; I will remember the one asshole.
If you find this to be unfair and uncool, you can help out by NOT DEFENDING THINGS PEOPLE SAY ARE SEXIST.
See, the difference between accident and malice is that the person who commits an offense by accident listens to the person who says “Hey, you just stepped on my foot.” They stop stepping on that other person’s foot; they apologize for what they’ve done, and they make an increased effort in the future to avoid foot-stomping.
Someone who does it out of malice (also, someone who is a self-centered asshole) doesn’t care about the toes they just squashed and will defend their right to step where-ever they want. Malice-person may even make statements like “well, if you hadn’t put your toes there,” or “you know, if you just had thicker boots, it wouldn’t hurt so much when I stepped on them.”

I took offense at this, because I am a man, and I read it to imply that all men — or at least so many men that the odds were all but certain — were rapists or harassers.
Then you are an asshole. If it’s not about you, then it’s Not About You.
I took offense at this, because I am a man, and the cutsey spelling serves to belittle me and my opinions for the biology of my birth (I’m similarly not much fond of “mansplain”; really, if someone said, even sarcastically, that your arguments were “woman-talk”, I would expect that your wrath would be vigorous and righteous).
Yep, asshole.
Dude, before you go trashing things like that, you need to learn more about them. More and more, you express actual sexism, masked with concern-trollidm.
I took offense at this, because I lived for five months on the street, and I read it as providing yet one more reason that people should hurry past that homeless man on the corner, should turn from him in fear.
It’s not prescriptive, asshole, it’s DESCRIPTIVE. Women DO do this, not SHOULD. Women ARE afraid, or at least cautious, every fucking day out on the streets. Most women, most of the time. Get your head the fuck out of your ass, and stop pretending that women’s lives and experiences are all about how YOU feel about this. You sexist fuck.
Perhaps they have had past experiences, of which I can know nothing, that give them reason to fear that man on the corner.
Asswipe, I do not know a woman who does NOT fear the man on the corner, at least some of the time. We ALL have experiences — or nearly all — that lead us to do that.
I suspect that they erred — or that they and I simply disagree about when offense would be likely to be taken.
Or, in this case, you did, by running these concepts through your privilege, instead of hearing it as many women’s lived experiences. You douchehat.
There was a joke discussed in this thread, and people said that it caused offense, that it was sexist.
It IS sexist, and you do not see that because you do not want to. Defending that joke is defending sexism. You are acting like a sexist douchebag. If you want to not be treated like one, then stop.
And furthermore, that the man who told that joke must be a sexist himself, because in telling that joke, he is someone who hurts others.
No one said that. We said the joke was sexist. You ass.
t seems quite a few people think that it is sexist to them, and for good reason. Other people see the joke in an entirely different manner and so do not think it is sexist, again, to them, and again for good reason. Is it possible for these two opinions to co-exist without causing offense?
No, it is not. Because you are defending an instance of sexism. A real one, not one about which there can be a difference of opinion, the way there could be about Baby It’s Cold Outside. And it has been treated very differently.

Reposting a couple of articles, because apparently some people Don’t Fucking Get It:
Feminism 101: “Sexism is a Matter of Opinion

I agree with that link as far as institutionalization goes, but then I read paragraphs like this:
Whether something is sexist (be it a word, a consumable item, a practice, or anything else) is neither dependent on how it is intended nor how it is received, but on whether it serves to convey sexism, which itself is determined by its alignment with existent patterns.
Isn’t that viewpoint incompatible with the “standing on my foot” analogy? I thought the point of the “standing on my foot” analogy was that offensiveness IS subjective and people have an obligation to avoid offense even if they don’t think the offended person has any rational basis for finding $something offensive. But then the essay in that link claims that sexism can be objectively determined based on whether it “fits with existing patterns,” and claims that whether something fits with existing patterns can be objectively deduced by analysis.
Is offense objective or subjective?

<I.Isn't that viewpoint incompatible with the "standing on my foot" analogy? I thought the point of the "standing on my foot" analogy was that offensiveness IS subjective and people have an obligation to avoid offense even if they don't think the offended person has any rational basis for finding $something offensive.
Uh, no. Is whether or not someone is standing on your foot subjective?
No, the point of the fucking standing on foot analogy is the REACTION of the person doing the standing, whether the stander asserts their right to stand on the standee’s foot, or deny that they are doing so, or whether they fucking move and apologize.
HV is denying that he is standing on my foot, instead of moving. He began by denying that someone ELSE was standing on my foot, but now he’s moved on to doing it himself.
And offense may be subjective, but bigotry is generally not. Offense happens inside the skull of the person who is offended, but the bigotry that causes the offense does not, it exists out in the world, in the words and/or actions of the person behaving in a bigoted manner. There is a fucking difference.

(I’m similarly not much fond of “mansplain”; really, if someone said, even sarcastically, that your arguments were “woman-talk”, I would expect that your wrath would be vigorous and righteous).

I wanted to address this bit specifically; when I first heard ‘mansplain’ I had a very similar reaction. My response was to go and read about the concept and usage of the word, intently and intensely. It only took about an hour before I had figured out what people were talking about, and eventually I was able to see where it was showing up. I think the word ‘mansplain’ itself is suboptimal, but I haven’t got a replacement, so again: not going to tell anyone not to use it, might even use it myself on occasion. And it is identifying a real thing that can be identified and we should have a word for it.
It is not equivalent to “You’re a man so you’re wrong/don’t get it”. If you think that’s what it means, I recommend you read more.

I had a similar reaction the first time I saw a line about “men benefitting from rape”; I felt like I was being unfairly categorized.
But as has been pointed out by MG and others the key to recognizing the nature of this statement is that it is not about myself, it is how women as individuals and a group have to act in ways which men do not precisely because of the prevalence of rape. A simple example is the Schroedinger’s Rapist concept: a woman must ask this of herself of any man she meets whereas a man virtually never need consider it of any woman he meets.
Actually, I quite liked “mansplain” the first time I saw it. It always conjures up a mental image of a really snotty asshole talking down in a supercilious manner to someone else.

If you spend some time looking around the Internet, you can find people convinced that The Illuminati rule the world secretly. And then the Illuminati show off by putting Illuminati Symbolism _EVERYWHERE_. Album covers, buildings, TV shows, rap music videos, T-Shirts, government logos…
They can CLEARLY AND OBVIOUSLY see this, and the fact that we can’t indicates that we’re all fluoride-poisoned brainwashed sheeple who need to be educated.
Fnord.
(The first time I hit “submit” (TO THE ILLUMINATI, OBVIOUSLY!@), I was told that ‘Typepad cannot accept this data’. WHO ARE THEY WORKING FOR@!?!?!?!)

Tonio: Nixon’s routine vilification of Jews for political gain wasn’t anti-Semitism. It was something worse.
“If you’re so evil…._eat this kitten_!”?

In general, if someone finds some given statement offensive, does that always mean it is an offensive statement?

Well…yes. If it offended someone, then it was offensive, to that person even if not to the general public. Explaining how something was not actually offensive typically results in the people it offended getting very annoyed that you’re claiming their thoughts and opinions are somehow invalid. This is true even if it’s not at all what you intended to do.

Intent might matter to the person who’s accidentally (or not) hit someone in the face with a hammer.
It doesn’t matter so much to the person who’s just been hit.
Surely that’s not true, though? I … I am utterly unable to contemplate someone who feels the same about being the victim of a brutal assault as being the victim of a tragic accident, simply because both involve the same ultimate outcome of a hammer to the face.

You know, eventually, when I find out why on earth I got hit in the face with a hammer, yeah, it might matter to me.
Right then and there? My reaction could be summarised as “Ow! I just got hit in the face with a hammer! My nose! My teeth! Ow! Pain! Ow! They just hit me in the face! OWWWW!”
And frankly, the fact that I got a hammer in the face is much more relevant to me than why it happened.

*sighs*
Let’s examine this situation a bit further, shall we?
Intent: malice on the part of A.
Result: B gets a hammer in the face.
Intent: sheer accident on the part of A.
Result: B gets a hammer in the face.
There are two consequences here: the effect on A’s moral character, and the effect on B’s face. Both matter.
If A hits B on purpose, this is very bad for A’s moral character. She needs to spend some time repenting, and asking God to improve her.
She also smashed in B’s face – and needs to apologise.
If A hits B by accident, there is no real effect on A’s moral character.
But she smashed in B’s face – and needs to apologise.
…before examining her character, however, it might be useful to note that B IS BLEEDING ALL OVER THE PAVEMENT. SHE NEEDS TO GO TO HOSPITAL.
Right then, the effect on A’s moral character pales into insignificance compared to the urgency of B having been hurt.

From the perspective of your moral character – yes, your intention in telling (or defending) sexist jokes matters. Sure.
However, there’s a more urgent problem here: you’ve just hurt someone. Deeply. You don’t even have to figure this out for yourself – because there are several people, right here, pointing out that they’re getting hurt.
You rambling on in general terms about effect is pretty much like stopping for a serious discussion of ethics while still swinging the hammer around. You’re going to hit me in the face again. PUT THE HAMMER DOWN AND DEAL WITH MY INJURIES FIRST.

Now, you might be just having a nice theoretical discussion about ethics and jokes and sexism… but for us, it’s not so theoretical. It’s not just that we get hurt in an abstract way. We are getting hurt by this joke. Right now.
Stop trying to defend these things that are hurting us.

@Will Wildman: It is not equivalent to “You’re a man so you’re wrong/don’t get it”. If you think that’s what it means, I recommend you read more.
It’s not. I know what it means, and that’s not my problem with it. I just don’t think that gendered terms should be used for derogation or as epithets. Especially when they’re coined anew for that purpose.
@Baby It’s Cold Outside: Wow. Okay then. I hadn’t commented at all about that song because I’d never heard it. But, clearly, it was germane, so I went and listened to it. I find that song really, really skeevy. I cannot hear that song as about anything other than date rape. Not that my personal history really matters, but I’ll just say that I’m probably biased toward hearing it that way.
I know from the discussion here, that point of view isn’t universal, and other people hear different things from that song than I do. That song offends me personally, but I am not offended that the song means something different for some other people. I don’t feel that they have any requirement to condemn the song as offensive because it offends me. I would not think too kindly of someone who agrees that the song is about date rape and still thinks it’s okay, because that’s not okay. And I’d hope that no one would play the song in company where it is known that it would offend.
But would someone care to explain the difference, other than me being in the minority as finding the joke non-offensive? I understand that it means something offensive to many people (specifically, that it reinforces the sexual objectification of women). If what it meant to me was what it means to those people, I would not say that I was okay with it, because what it means to those people isn’t okay with me, either. But it means something different to me. I would not tell the joke … well, ever, actually. Why is it a support of sexism to do other than condemn it as sexist?

Why is it a support of sexism to do other than condemn it as sexist?

It’s not about failing to condemn it; it’s about actively arguing with the people who are condemning it. Not a binary situation.

I just don’t think that gendered terms should be used for derogation or as epithets.
I’m not using it to be derogatory – I’m using it as a descriptor.
Mansplaining is something I have seen many times. It looks very different to all other kinds of conversation, and I have never seen it from anyone who doesn’t identify as male. Never. It is invariably someone who identifies as male, talking to someone they believe to be female.
Seriously.
Do you have a better term that I could use to describe it?

I can’t really post the example I want without making things all about me, so I’ll just say this:
In my experience intent doesn’t make a damned bit of difference to anyone other than the person causing harm. (And possibly mind readers.)
To put that into hammer terms:
If someone hits me in the face with a hammer by accident and then tells me its my fault and they’ll keep on swinging hammers like that because what they did is not their fault, well that feels just like being hit in the face with hammer by someone who meant to do it and will keep on doing the same thing because they like hitting people in the face with hammers.
If someone hits me in the face with a hammer on purpose, immediately drops everything to get me medical attention, swears that he or she is sorry, helps me through post hammer impact recovery and takes steps to make sure never to hit anyone in the face with a hammer again, that feels just like like getting hit in the face with a hammer by someone who didn’t mean to do it and is genuinely regretful.

I just don’t think that gendered terms should be used for derogation or as epithets.

It gets a gendered term because it is gendered behaviour. Women don’t have the institutional power to mansplain. That is how it works.

Explaining how something was not actually offensive typically results in the people it offended getting very annoyed that you’re claiming their thoughts and opinions are somehow invalid. This is true even if it’s not at all what you intended to do.

I understood that HereticalVoice was initially simply trying to argue that an alternate, non-sexist interpretation of the joke was possible. Not that people who think it’s sexist have invalid opinions. Which, I think is a reasonable point, though I disagree.
Reminds me of the time when we talked about how much some of us hate the parable of the first-born son, because they can’t help but see their own family represented in it. I can’t help but see sexism in that joke, but I don’t think it’s necessarily bad if someone does not see it.
I, too, think he has gone too far in his defence, and should stop, apologize, and back down. But to be fair, with people calling him evil, a douche, a fucking fucker that fucks, and whatnot, he may not be seeing that as an option.
(one thing that’s bugging me, does anyone else think that the “hammer in the face” analogy is a a bit of an exaggeration? The “stepping on the foot” was much less dramatic)

Of course it’s an exaggeration – that’s why I used it. It is a situation where the effect is obviously and unambiguously bad.
The problem with “stepping on feet” is that I’ve occasionally seen discussions devolve into “yes, but aren’t they making a big deal out of something tiny? people step on my feet and I don’t complain…”

Why is it a support of sexism to do other than condemn it as sexist?

It’s not. You’re being called sexist because people disagree with your arguments for why the joke wasn’t sexist, and consider the arguments themselves sexist. (“If it makes sense with the genders reversed, it’s not sexist regardless of cultural baggage” and “English pronouns suck, so equating the girlfriend with “it” isn’t sexist,” as I recall.)

I understood that HereticalVoice was initially simply trying to argue that an alternate, non-sexist interpretation of the joke was possible. Not that people who think it’s sexist have invalid opinions. Which, I think is a reasonable point, though I disagree.

Oh, absolutely. We somehow wound up talking about offensiveness as well, though.

The problem with “stepping on feet” is that I’ve occasionally seen discussions devolve into “yes, but aren’t they making a big deal out of something tiny? people step on my feet and I don’t complain…”

Nitpicking the metaphor is going to be a common evasive response no matter what metaphor you use, so you might as well go with the one that is actually a closer fit.

On the “hit in the face with a hammer” metaphor:
It may be helpful to understand that when we’re talking about bigotry, it is not JUST A hitting B in the face with the hammer, it is every 3rd or 4th or 10th person hitting B in the face with a hammer. Some of them make a point of how they’re doing it on purpose, even. And some people say they did it by accident, but they won’t apologize and then they hit B with the hammer again. Repeatedly. All the while protesting that they didn’t mean to.
At that point, B isn’t going to care at all about intent, B just wants the whole fucking thing to stop.
I know what it means, and that’s not my problem with it. I just don’t think that gendered terms should be used for derogation or as epithets. Especially when they’re coined anew for that purpose.
But it’s gendered behavior. Yes, other kinds of ‘splaining happen, too, and other terms are used for that, but mansplaining is specifically what a man does to a woman. It’s an important part of the concept.
But would someone care to explain the difference, other than me being in the minority as finding the joke non-offensive?
Because there was a time when the song really did mean something very different. We hear it in now, and it’s skeevy now, but it wasn’t then. And some people are able to put themselves enough in that other mindset that it doesn’t come across as skeevy to them. But that joke definitely relies on reducing the woman to a sexual object, and there is no time at which it did not, and just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It’s like a Magic Eye picture: just because you don’t see the boat doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and doesn’t mean the thereness of the boat is subjective.
Why is it a support of sexism to do other than condemn it as sexist?
A) What Will Wildman said.
B) I said it was defense of sexism, not support. And then you started behaving in a sexist manner to boot.

Metaphors are always flawed – they’re not descriptions.
But hey, have a few more!
“Stepping on my toes” depends on context. If I am wearing steel-toed boots, it’s probably not going to matter too much. If I’m wearing open-toed sandals, yeowch!
“Hitting someone in the face” is over the top, deliberately so.
An in-between metaphor – “Someone bumps into you”. Is the person who bumps into (say that you’re standing still) going to notice? When they notice (perhaps you spoke up) do they:
A: apologize?
B: continue to ignore you?
C: tell you off for getting in their way?
Heretical Voice – Yes, some things are as easy as 2 + 2 = 4. Some things are not. But a person who has a lot of experience in higher level equations may be able to look at problem that would give me fits and say, “Oh, that really boils down to 2 + 2 = 4.”
The people who actually experience bias and harassment are the people who are most likely to be able to recognize the patterns of it, and be able to call it out.
Defensive reactions to said calling out tend to also follow patterns, and when you’ve seen enough of them (not mostly here, I’ve been educated elsewhere and it’s almost always the same reactions), you get tired of the merry-go-round.
This may be why some of the vehemence directed at some people seems to come out of nowhere – it’s crossing over from other sites.
On “mansplaining” – this article provides some “great” examples: Men Who Explain Things

Oy Vey- way behind…a few things I’ve noticed and want to comment on.
Intent might matter to the person who’s accidentally (or not) hit someone in the face with a hammer.
It doesn’t matter so much to the person who’s just been hit.
Err…it should. If I walk up to you on the street and hit you with a hammer with intent to rob you, I’m committing a crime, you are entitled by right to shoot me since I’m attacking you with a deadly weapon.
If we’re working on a building site and I swing my hammer too far back and clock you in the EXACT SAME SPOT JUST AS HARD, then I’ve still hit you in the face with a hammer. You can be mad at me, sure. But if you flip your lid over a fairly common accident (and I don’t mean just calling me a bastard, but getting enraged)you’re still acting like an asshole. Accidents happen. The real world is a place where people get hurt. A lot. And if you start flipping over every accident, people stop listening to you.
And I agree, most times intent is not magic. But it is sometimes. And it is mitigating. And, if you really don’t believe intent has anything to do with anything, I presume you oppose hate-crimes legislation? After all: does it really matter if that gay kid was beaten to death because he was gay or because they wanted his wallet?
I think it does. I think intent matters. I think its what separates first, second, and third degree murder. If I plow into you with my car, you’re still dead. But in front of a judge, it will matter greatly if I planned it for six months, did it right then because I just had a fight with you, was being negligently careless, or just had an accident.
(I really don’t have a cogent counterargument to a black Alfred Pennyworth being a train-wreck of a bad idea).
No, but Admiral Fitzwallace does:
“Leo McGarry: The President’s personal aide. They’re looking at a kid. You have any problem with a young black man waiting on the President?
Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: I’m an old black man and I wait on the President.
Leo McGarry: The kid’s got to carry his bags and…
Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: You going to pay him a decent wage?
Leo McGarry: Yeah.
Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: You going to treat him with respect in the workplace?
Leo McGarry: Yeah.
Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: Then why the hell should I care?
Leo McGarry: That’s what I thought.
Admiral Percy Fitzwallace: I got some real honest-to-god battles to fight, Leo. I don’t have time for the cosmetic ones.”
Also, I gotta tell you: I ASPIRE to be Alfred. I want to be the beloved manservant to a wealthy playboy who is also Batman-that sounds like the best job EVER. I don’t think it can be racist when everyone wants his job.
Ripping on Jews is a Nixon loyalty test: Can his staff pass it? He consciously sets Jews up as objects of hatred and loathing for political ends (where have we heard that story before?), hardening his men to go wherever he wants them to go to do whatever he wants done. Nixon’s routine vilification of Jews for political gain wasn’t anti-Semitism. It was something worse.
I think its racism- its Ur-racism. What matters with most racists is hating the other person. Not all people who hate black people also hate Jews (although there is probably a huge overlap) What mattered to Nixon though, was the racism itself- that his staff were WILLING, nay, EAGER to be racist. He didn’t care about oppressing Jews, he cared about OPRESSING. Jews were convenient.
If someone hits me in the face with a hammer by accident and then tells me its my fault and they’ll keep on swinging hammers like that because what they did is not their fault, well that feels just like being hit in the face with hammer by someone who meant to do it and will keep on doing the same thing because they like hitting people in the face with hammers.
If someone hits me in the face with a hammer on purpose, immediately drops everything to get me medical attention, swears that he or she is sorry, helps me through post hammer impact recovery and takes steps to make sure never to hit anyone in the face with a hammer again, that feels just like like getting hit in the face with a hammer by someone who didn’t mean to do it and is genuinely regretful.
If, on the other hand, someone hits you accidentally with a hammer, and you flip out and start screaming at them, and when they go “it was an accident” you KEEP SCREAMING AT THEM- not only are they not gonna get you any medical attention, but they’re gonna start having more accidents.
Whats more to the point- sexism is NOTHING LIKE BEING HIT IN THE FACE WITH A HAMMER. Sexism is more like having your foot stepped on. More particuarly, getting harmed by other people in GENERAL is like having your foot stepped on. It hurts. Sometimes people do it on purpose, sometimes by accident, sometimes without even knowing they’re doing it. Some people don’t really see a problem because they’ve got lil’ ol size 3 feet. Sure, they get their feet stepped on every once in a while, but its no biggy. Most people, through no fault of their own, however have big ol’ clown feet. People step on their feet all the time. Some people don’t realize they’re doing it. Sometimes it just happens because hey, you’re a size 58 in a size three world, a world built for and designed by size 3 people and parts of that world will hurt you. Sometimes people step on your feet because they think its funny. In both those cases, you have every right to complain that you are being discriminated against and get the situation fixed. Sometimes people just step on your feet by accident, and if you mention it, they apologize.
Unfortunately, once you’ve had your feet stepped on twenty times in the last minute, its easy to get pissy about it and start accusing the person who did it accidentally not only of doing it, but of being an asshole. This means that this person, who didn’t want to step on your feet, is going to feel attacked and defend themselves. They’ll defend their feet, attack your feet, ask “who the hell cares” and so on. They still stepped on your feet. On the other hand, no one is surprised that they’re defending themselves.
Ok, so you step on their feet back. Great, now you’ve both got sore feet, you’ve been arguing for two hours, you missed your flight, and half of congress is having stolen-wheelchair races up and down the ramp running over everyones feet.
Good. See the metaphor? Its crap.
Saying something sexist is very different from any sort of physical harm. It is emotional harm. Which does NOT MEAN ITS NOT HARM. It is harm- in many ways worse than simply punching someone.
On the other hand, it means that we are no longer dealing with facts.I can tease my best friend about being gay and he can tease me about being fat and that can say how much I love and trust him more than anything else.
From the cold hard facts, me answering the phone with “s’up, twinkletoes” and him replying “nothing much you fat sack of shit, whats up” sounds like a horrible exchange, except the nature of our relationship and our intent changes the literal meaning of the words.
Emotional harm is subjective. Which is good. Because it means that every time someone doesn’t want to hear a trigger word or term they don’t like, in theory all they have to do is ask without justifying themselves. (yes, ‘in theory:’ I know. Stick with me here.) And it means that all a decent person can do is not bring that up anymore.
It also means however, that things are and will be subjective. People’s triggers will always be obvious to them- if I’m allergic to peanuts, I can probably tell you exactly which candy bars are safe and which aren’t. And which ones have so little peanut that I can’t even notice it, but you say it will kill you. Well, ok, fine. I won’t give you that candy bar. But that doesn’t mean I can see the peanut. That doesn’t even mean I’ll consider it a candy-bar-with-peanuts. It means you, for your purposes, will be harmed by it and I should avoid that around you.
More specifically, perhaps. Niggardly. I know a LOT of people who are deeply offended if I use this word (I go to a historically black college.) So I don’t use that word because everyone I know would consider it racist of me to use that word.
So is it racist? No and yes. If I’m at lunch and I say “Oh, what a niggardly portion of okra” and it offends a bunch of my friends, yes it is. They are being offended on behalf of their race- more importantly, they have taken emotional harm as a result of my use of that word. But using that word is not, in of itself, racist.
Now, as it so happens, I agree, the joke is sexist. (and crappy. Lets not forget that.) I also agree with Heretical Voice that there will be many situations where one person sees sexism and another doesn’t. There will be times when people disagree. However, what is NOT debatable is that MadG is being harmed, in some way, by your insistence that it is not sexist. In which case, as a Christian, even if you don’t see the sexism in the joke,* its your christian duty to stop causing harm. Maybe apologize for causing harm. However, if you and your sister do not think the joke is sexist, then there would be no reason not to tell it to your sister, because your sister isn’t being hurt.
*I would like to point out in their defense that they’ve clearly said that they find all sorts of sexist things sexist: its just in this one case, the way they see it, it isn’t. I see it myself, but hey, as long as they’re on the ride for the principle, I could care less.

Shit…I apologize for any sucky parts of that last comment- I hit post without a chance to edit it.

You know what? You can shorten like…half of that into two sentences.
Do no harm.
No harm, no foul.
(also, ignore the hammer analogy because that just got away from me. I think the stepping on feet metaphor sorta kinda works though.)

It’s soooo hard to get into words, sometimes, isn’t it? :/

It’s soooo hard to get into words, sometimes, isn’t it? :/
I think its because when we talk about harm we can do that in physical terms. You step on my foot, I get hurt regardless.
Calling me an asshole, or a faggot, or a fat fuck, on the other hand, can be deeply hurtful or can be expressions of love, respect, and being so comfortable with someone that you can do it.

Subjective experiences are subjective, I guess. Hugs?

And context is the key to just about everything.

Indeed. It turns out sexism, like everything else except tic-tac-toe, is more complicated than that.
In general though, I think I’ve managed to distill a code of ethics that works in all situations:
Do no harm.
If you do harm, apologize and make restitution.
Seek, as effectively and harmlessly as you can, to stop others from doing harm.
And, most importantly for me:
You’ll be wrong sometimes. Actually, quite a lot. Get used to it, and learn to spot it before you start doing harm.

Oh and, of course.
*hugs*

I like that, Cary. I like it better with ‘no harm, no foul’ somewhere in there, though.

The Six Commandments:
Thou shalt do no harm.
If there has been no harm, there has been no foul, and yea, the basketball game shall continue until the reaching of the sacred fifteen.
If thou hast done harm, thou shalt not be a total cockweasel. Thou shalt apologize and repair the harm thou hast done.
If thou canst, stop others from doing harm, but do not forget the first commandment, else thou shalt too be a cockweasel and have to perform restitution.
Thou wilt be wrong. A lot. Thou shouldest get used to it, and learn to stop before thou violates the first commandment.
Sooner or later, everyone is a cockweasel. Thou should treat those who are cockweasels to you as you wish others to treat thou when thou art a cockweasel.
(I had to get the golden rule in there somewhere)