#28

Ah but then you are the “crazy bitch” who “overreacts” to “just a bit of fun”.

#29

it’s weird how as a lad you internalise that attitude (i guess you do if you’re a woman too) and if you aren’t lucky enough to be educated otherwise it’s pretty much impossible to eradicate after a certain point. like i’ve worked in private firms where the way my fellow lads spoke to the lasses was really fucked up, went way beyond flirting to the point of a kind of verbal rape sometimes, and cos i was young, not very confident, i didn’t feel like i could step in and say something even though the girls were obviously uncomfortable and playing long for the sake of an easy life.

i work in the public sector now and while it’s far from perfect, it’s so much better than the private sector it’s unreal. there’s a far higher ratio of women:men, (better representation of minorities too) so it’s harder for bros to get away with that harassing kind of shit without an absolute fuck-ton of disciplinary measures falling on them. plus i think the nature of the work the doctors and nurses do demands respect (tho obvs a shame they can’t just be respected for being people). there are still a few old-school managers - male and female - who have those stone age views of gender and sex but there are plenty of younger peeps rising up now who are definitely au fait with workplace discrim/harassment and overall my hospital at least seems to be really switched on when it comes to workplace sexism. maybe cos the sheer amount of women working in your average hospital means you have to take reports seriously. can’t say if it’s like that everywhere in the service tho.

#30

really peculiar/nauseating exchange between two of those random middle-class commentators britain is infected with at the moment:

would happily pulp giles coren’s weird skull. also something a bit pedo-ish about those comments considering he was leaving university when EW was still in a crib.

#31

Even when men are on the surface polite, often there’s quite a nasty undertow. Especially men who to your face try to convince you they’re so “progressive” and “left wing” because they want to try to impress you and get your attention, but then when they’re speaking to other men and think you can’t hear, talk about women in really disparaging and demeaning ways. I guess because they’re essentially very weak people and desperately want to try to impress everyone. Even things like describing lots of women as “crazy” or referring to them as “birds” or “some chick” shows the level of underlying hostility.

There’s a surprisingly large number of men out there who deeply resent and fear women and feel the need to smack them down to feel powerful, because at heart they know how deeply pathetic they are, and the only way they can be “big” or “important” is to make someone else feel bad.

#32

There’s also the thing of the “ideal” woman being 21ish. I was on the train the other day, and a big group of pretty girls of around 16-17 or so got on, dressed up for a birthday party. I was thinking how society kind of pushes the idea that lots of men would act like they were in heaven to be surrounded by these pretty young girls, and thinking how fucked up that is.

Like there is little physical difference between a 20 year old and a 28 year old, except that the 28 year old has more life experience and is less likely to put up with crap or be easily impressed. The thing that makes it “ideal” is that the younger girl has barely lived yet, so is going to be much more impressed by basic things and be easier to control and manipulate.

Again, these men can’t be big or important by anything they actually do, and an equal is threatening, so they have to find someone they consider “lesser”. Again showing that inner patheticness. A 30 or 40 something who’s chasing after the 18-22 age group is such a massive loser.

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#33

eurgh… and the award for worst twitter exchange between two supposedly educated adults 2017 goes to…

image.jpg772×479 79 KB

I vomited in my mouth twice reading that.

#34

I will send you the bill for my brain bleaching. It will be extensive.

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#35

We’re not all complete lost causes though. I’ve definitely had my moments in the dim and distant past. A lot of it stemmed from 1) the people I surrounded myself with 2) my own inadequacies.

Yes I am saying that one day these men if very very lucky could be as enlightened as me. A cheery thought.

#36

That’s the thing, there’s a lot of very fragile and quite pathetic little egos out there.

I guess as well, society trains men to externalise their feelings rather than deal with them. The traditional method is: Feel shit about yourself? Get drunk and punch a stranger. Hit your wife. Hit your kids.

I guess a modern version is, now that society has actually started to think of domestic violence as an actual crime rather than a “private matter” is:
Feel shit about yourself? Invite a girl out for a drink. Following tips you found on the internet, make subtle remarks that imply you think she’s unpleasantly fat/not good enough in some other/play with your phone constantly whilst trying to imply that much hotter women are constantly chasing after you, and see her face slowly drop. Hopefully she’ll still sleep with you.

Weird how society still frames the “womaniser” as some kind of heroic stylish bachelor about town, like George Clooney or James Bond, but the actual ones you meet in real life are mostly people who have serious intimicay problems and are completely unable to sustain any sort of close relationship with another human.

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#37

Another one:

The article is about a radio host who had an on-air persona of being super-progressive and constantly pushed how he was such a feminist, but then turned out to be a total creep off-air. The story about him isn’t that important though, it’s the comments that are the thing really worth reading here, about social dynamics.

#38

And another good quote I found:

all women are forced.jpeg698×229 27.9 KB

(If the picture doesn’t work, text says: All women are forced to live under an arbitrary and unfair system which sorts us into the categories of “Fuckable” and “Worthless”. The solution to this is NOT to expand the definition of “Fuckable”.")

#39

Whoa easy, I’m not that pathetic

#40

Someone who behaves like that these days is a hell of a lot more pathetic than say 20 years ago or whenever you’re talking about though, seeing as there is way more awareness that it’s unacceptable now.

#41

This is good, all about why idiot male journos think female interview subjects want to fuck them

#43

all the deleted comments make me think some dudes were seriously losing it over this piece.

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#44

“Holsinger and some colleagues were recently discussing how often the wives of male academics do significant work for which they are rarely given proper credit. … Ridiculous numbers of men, it seems, still didn’t know how to type throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, or at least performed a kind of deliberate secretarial incompetence when it came to the basic mechanics of writing and transcription. … In many cases, these long-suffering wives were not even afforded the courtesy of their own names.”

#45

"They are necessary, though. All of these things, perhaps small in isolation, are basically social glue. At its most basic level, all of this emotional labour is saying to another human being “you matter. I will take my time to show you that you matter.” And maintaining that glue is something that devolves mainly onto women, 24 hours a day.

It feels like most men are taught (ex- or implicitly) to do emotional work only when it gets them
something they want"

A good primer on emotional labour:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk

#46

Second quote I meant to add to that:

"The thing about “but I don’t care about cards” is that they kind of don’t care about this stuff, and as a result they don’t have very many real, strong relationships. This really is a patriarchy-hurts-men-too situation, because reciprocal emotional labor is necessary for real intimacy, and life without intimacy sucks for most people. I don’t particularly care about actually sending cards, but the basic emotional labor of listening empathetically, attending to other people’s needs, keeping in touch, etc.? That stuff is really important. It’s unfair that women have to do most of it, but it also stunts and hurts men when they don’t do it.

#50

I was down the road from Appenzell (the place that held out until the 70s to give women the vote) in February. Vorlarlberg, the part of Austria that’s just on the border where I’ve been for work a few times now is basically the same culturally, except they have to comply with Austrian laws which are generally more progressive.

It’s a weird part of the world that very much still works on the assumption you have a housewife at home. Like restaurants will only open for lunch from 12-1pm, supermarkets are barely open at the weekends.

Appenzell only let women have the vote after the men had a referendum to allow them to. There are plenty of places in Switzerland where to become a citizen, the people in your village have to get together without you and have a vote on whether they want to give you a passport or not. Direct democracy, but also extreme small-town values.

#51

Edit: there were no public hospitals in Vorarlberg that perform abortions as of 2012, and I don’t think anything has changed there in the last 5 years (the only English info I could find was this Christian anti-abortion website)

https://www.hli.org/2011/08/austrian-health-ministers-abortion-proposal-is-social-suicide/