September 03, 2004

• now is the time... ...but is this the place?
• Here's a link to help decide. I want 'em both.
• I can't look at either of them without thinking that they were once a sparke in W's eye and a stickiness in W's gonads. Put me down for "neither".
• Another vote here for neither.
• Look, we don't vote President based on their family members. Granted, the girls were not ready to make a speech in prime time.
• I'm with warwaw. I'd be the baloney in a bush sandwich.
• That's nice for you.
• Thanks flashboy. I appreciate your support.
• One piece of trash or the other? I choose neither.
• Either, as long as I can leave afterwards without trying to have a serious conversation.
• neither
• who in their right mind, demo or repug, would give jenna the hot beef injection? imagine the frightening moment when you look at her face in just such a way that you see the commander in chimp (she's very "georgesque" a/o/t notjenna, who looks more like her mother). solution? a bag for her head, if you're really into moronic sorority girls.
• The brunette, fer sure.
• 1) tensor makes me laugh, and 2) I'll take the bullet.
• This FPP is making me cynical.
• Hmmm... Jenna or Notjenna...
• I'm taking BlueHorse's roll here since she hasn't been commenting lately. Go to your rooms right now! You should all be ashamed of yourselves! No tv for a week, and no internet access for three months. And, speaking for myself. This is pretty upsetting. I really hope that this tread will be deleted - and not just transferred to the double post section. "One piece of trash...or the other", "hot beef injection"???? Gimme a break here - I'm not a Bush fan, but the daughters are just kids trying to grow up. In spite of their past troubles, I don't think they deserve this kind of thing.
• path: Neither did Chelsea when the right-wing wierdos went after her and I don't hear any apologies for their shit-stirring.
• Yes, 23 years old, post-graduate... kids. Right. Guess how old Rachel Corrie was when she stared down a bulldozer. Though, I agree that this thread is sub-par.
• I'm just gonna take this opportunity to use the phrase "hot beef injection" one more time.
• No thanks, I'm a vegetarian.
• well, the blonde one's face/head is shaped weird, and the brunette is too pointy for my taste. i, on the other hand, am perfection personified. heh.
• If we elected presidents based on hot daughters, Al Gore would SO be president right now.
• I suppose this thread is as good as as any for me to opine that Washingtonienne is just not remotely hot at all. I mean she kind of vaguely fits the most popular specs as far as body form goes and that's about it. And I'm just talking physically here, I'm not even getting psychological with this. If we elected presidents based on hot daughters... would it really be any worse? I don't know any more. (But Bush and Kerry would still be tied.)
• I say we choose this time based on hot daughters. Kerry's a lock for the "me" vote.
• I agree. This thread is tasteless. "Let's sexually evaluate the Bush daughters" has no place as an FPP in this community. Take it to Fark or SA or something. Yes, I know we often have FPP links of questionable taste, from Real Doll to my own dead babies thread, but those are links to material off site, usually adequately marked, and for the purposes of generating discussion about the material itself. This thread's purpose seems to be to encourage crass, mean-spirited derogatory comments and otherwise bring out the worst in Monkey behavior. No, because you don't care for their father's (or even their own) political viewpoints doesn't make it okay; because they are adults and not children doesn't make it okay; because some republicans made similarly nasty comments about Chelsea Clinton doesn't make it okay. This is worse than mudslinging, character assasination, what-have-you. This is tantamount to name-calling, in that the intent seems to be to reduce the percieved humanity of the people in question. Alright, there's my four and a half cents.
• the intent seems to be to reduce the percieved humanity of the people in question You've gotta be kidding, right? Commenting on the attractiveness of females is dehumanizing? We're sexual beings. It's one of the primary forces of our genetic survival code - get food, don't be food, get laid. And besides, it's all in fun and nobody's getting out of line. Oh...and Jenna does nothing for me but Notjenna is a fiery temptress.
• "One piece of trash or the other" is certainly dehumanizing. "A bag for her head" is certainly dehumanizing. And yes "Republican Barbie doll" is dehumanizing.
• I'm embarrassed to have contributed to this thread.
• Nick, get off the soapbox. I'd have to say that posting dead babies is sicker and far more dehumanizing someone commenting on the bushettes attractiveness. Nonetheless, I don't begrudge you doing so, as it's all in fun.
• Would it be properly improper to use the phrase "hot beef injection" here again?
• Only if you're talking about this.
• Only if you're saying it with your mouth full.
• Jinx!
• BTW, all impish impulses aside, I hate the phrase "hot beef injection" because I have this image of Bovril being spewed onto an angel-food cake or something similarly disgusting. Drowning in a mixture of Bovril and Vegemite now comes to mind. Eugh, I think I'm going to be sick.
• I maintain that there's a difference between posting a link to something and actually creating content. That being said, I will get off my soapbox. I think I've made my point; those who take it have taken it, those who leave it have left it. And I believe you, Squidranch, when you say that you started this thread "all in fun." I just think it's got an ugly subtext, and I felt the need to say so.
• methinks nick is married to one of those humorless feminists. hee hee. now then, on to the debate: who is hotter, alan keyes or barak obama?
• Oh, I'd do Obama.
• (oh, and i think the GOP made this a legitimate issue -- hotness of daughters, that is -- when they put jenna and barbara up to counter those kerry chicks. so, yes, hotness of daughters is indeed a political debate. just think of it that way, nick. we are contributing to the discourse!)
• I'm the humorless feminist, SideDish.
• ah-HA! a humorless male feminist, the worst kind. i do hope you know i'm teasing you. (as sometimes you need to point that out to humorless feminists... oh, never mind)
• How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
• Humorless feminists don't screw in light bulbs, they screw in hot tubs. And it's not funny.
• What size lightbulb are we talking here? I mean minimum two feminists have to be in there for any business to get started, right?
• Fuck. Jinxed.
• THATS NOT FUNNY The Gore girls would have been foxier without knowledge of their dam, Tipper. Ugh. Chelsea had it easy, thanks to her parents taking the trouble to keep her out of the news. Anybody remember poor Amy Carter?
• I ♥ nickdanger and all the other humourless feminists here. This thread gave me an icky feeling, made worse by the bag comment. Construction workers who wolf-whistle and cat-call women on the street are just "sexual beings" too; being crude is in "our genetic survival code"?
• Second ilya on the bag comment.
• Crude is subjective. I find the level of discourse in this thread to be relatively tame.
• i think everyone takes everything way too seriously. you hit middle age and suddenly realize that very, very few things in this life are serious, or at least merit getting upset over. we're all here, then we're gone, that's that. i went to see b.b. king the other night, he said it all: "if you ain't gonna have fun, you might as well go to sleep." heh.
• Oddly enough, country music says it for me... When I see a pretty woman walking down the street, I think about you. Men look her up and down like she's some kind of treat, I think about you. She wouldn't dare talk to a stranger, Always has to be aware of the danger; It doesn't matter who she is, I think about Youuuu, eight years old, Big blue eyes and a heart of gold. When I look at this world, I think about Youuuu, and I can't help but see That every woman used to be Somebody's little girl; I think about you. Everytime I hear people say it's never gonna change, I think about you. Like it's some kind of joke, some kind of game, I think about you. When I see another woman on the news, Who didn't ask to be abandoned or abused; It doesn't matter who she is, I think about you.
• Have to agree with that. If the thread offended you, okay. If the dead baby thread offended you, okay. Don't read 'em. One man's trash, etc.
• By the way, I tend to agree with Nickdanger and ilyadeux and their ilk, which is why I'm embarrassed to be contributing to this thread. But apparently I can't help myself...
• don't matter which one, i'd hit it. no, really hit it. i got this aluminum baseball bat under my bed...
• oooh, quonsar wins!
• now who says the online community is full of uptight prigs?
• I like to be one step removed from any violence. *uses quonsar to hit it*
• i'd hit quonsar!
• fritz: Not me. Sorry Wolof, couldn't resist
• path, I call them trash because they are trash -- they expect, like every other member of the Bush family, to be accorded special treatment and allowed to violate the law based simply on their family name. That, to me, pretty much defines trashy behaviour. Aside from that, they are embarassingly inarticulate for college students (though we do know where they got that trait) and stand by their father's murderous policy decisions. Trash, through and through. And, NickDanger, I believe we reap what we sow. If the Bush family in general (and these two idiots in particular) would stand up and decry the dehumanization of the targets of the U.S. military and those marginalized at home, then they'd be worthy of praise. Until they stop shilling for their criminally violent father, they deserve all the scorn they can choke back, and more.
• ...Someone is beating a woman. Century on century, no end to this. It's the young that are beaten. Somberly Our wedding bells start up the alarm. Someone is beating a woman. But her light is unfaltering World-without-ending. There are no religions, no revelations, There are women. Lying there pale as water Her eyes tear-closed and still, She doesn't belong to him Any more than a meadow deep in a wood. And the stars? Rattling in the sky Like raindrops against black glass, Plunging down, they cool Her grief-fevered forehead. -- Andrei Vosnesensky, "someone Is Beating a Woman", translated by Jean Garrigue
• Deep.
• Way too late and probably unnecessary, but this thread is bad, especially the bag comment, as was pointed out. I hate Bush as much as most of you do, and I dislike the twins' selfish, arrogant behaviour too, but that doesn't mean they're pieces of meat and it doesn't mean that we should stoop to this level. Personally I don't find it "uptight" to not want to engage in calling people names behind their backs and being sexist. It's just that this site is usually so damn smart and funny. This? Not smart, not funny, just plain stupid. I hope tracicle deletes it. Sorry.
• coppermac - you don't know them personally. Neither do I, so I'm wouldn't malign them just because they grew up where they did, especially with words like "trash", and especially in a public forum. That's such an agressive, angry characterization, and it doesn't become you. You might be proved to be right, but we won't know for several years, really. So, come back here in 20 years and tell me how awful they are. And those of you who don't think a 23 year old who just got out of college isn't a kid just need to either get a little older or to remember back to when you were in your early 20's and just out of school and how much you've learned since then. If you didn't have the somewhat sheltered college experience, well, you have a few years of getting along in the other world which they haven't had. And, you know what, it's not the sexual aspect of this thread that I object to. (And "hot meat injection" strikes me as far from grown up sexuality as possible. Can't believe that anyone but a high school nerd, who never fucked anyone, but was trying to show how cool he was, would say that under these circumstances.) While I may frequently be humourless, I'm not reacting to this from a feminist perspective. I come from a different generation than most of you, so words like "inappropriate", "rudeness", and "bad manners", mean something to me. So, you know less about me than you do about the Bush twins. I'll give a bit more background and challenge you to treat me the way you have them. I'm an ugly old hag of 64, who spent some time in her youth trying way to hard to have fun. That should be enough. Are you up for it?
• For what it's worth, my main objection is to you treating MoFi like a chatroom. Yeah, discussion is a large part of the site (which is good), and hell yeah it's mostly about having a laugh, not taking things too seriously. I like the funny stuff, the trivial stuff, as you may have noticed. But the point is also that however we choose to discuss something, the thing we're discussing should actually be, you know, something. As in, something more than whatever vague thought happened to pass across your mind. I don't want to make a big thing of it, because I hate the endless self-regarding cries of "but that not what the site's for!" on MetaTalk... but there you go. It's not what the site's for. The fact that I think the thread itself was dull, moronic shit is simply a matter of personal taste on my part. And I'm only a 23 year old, and therefore a kid, so I wouldn't dream of imposing my taste on anyone. (By the way, was the timing of this - and the pants and socks threads - deliberate, waiting until tracicle was away all weekend and so couldn't delete any threads?)
• flasyboy, you'r older than your years. Thanks for the reality check.
• preview would have been good.
• What I want to know is when we all hit the time warp and wound up back in junior high. It reminds me far too much of the cliques of "cool" kids standing around and rating and/or dissing everyone they considered beneath them. This is such a similar level of mean-spiritedness. Having fun is one thing. Having fun at the expense of others - whether or not they know you're doing so - is another. This thread has just gone a long way toward making me far less happy and proud of my Monkeydom. Definitely not one of the shining moments of MonkeyFilter. Thank you to all my fellow monkeys who spoke up about being uncomfortable with/dislike of/disgust with this thread. I don't feel quite so alone reading this and having those reactions myself.
• Your point, Christophine and others, would be more valid if we were indeed dissing everyone we considered beneath us. We were only dissing (Not)Jenna Bush, which is sort of like dissing that Dell dude or Britney Spears. That only makes us--the dissers--assholes, not teenagers or uppity snobs. Other than that, I agree with everyone here.
• I in no way condone sexism or the objectification of women (or men), path. However, I stand by my comment. When busted attempting to illegally buy booze with falsified id, the Bush daughters immediately asked the question "Don't you know who we are?" and had their family quash all the charges against them. What sort of maturity or class does that show? So, I say, if they want to act like trash, they can damn well accept being called trash. It's neither angry or aggressive -- it's honest to say so. I don't have to wait twenty years to speak of their character now. I'm in my late 40s, and not a college boy with a perpetual hardon. My characterization of these women as trash has nothing to do with sexuality at all -- it has to do with the fact that they feel they are superior to law and the herd and deserving of pardon and worship because of it. I also find their politics, and the politics of all Bush family members, disgusting, offensive and, to be quite accurate, trashy.
• It's neither angry or aggressive— it's merely judgemental as all fuck.
• it's merely judgemental as all fuck. Who among us is not, goetter? I'm one of those humorless feminists, but this thread made me laugh.
• I didn't like it, but then I have a perpetual hard-on. And in perpetual motion, mmmrrraaarrwwl!
• what this thread needs now is puppies, fisheye puppies
• frankly, what i think is judgmental is telling people that their opinions (and/or sense of humor) are not the correct ones. we are getting WAAAAAAAAAAY too serious about this, folks. this is not a thread poking fun at domestic violence. this is not a thread demeaning women. *this is a thread about the president's daughters, both of whom are cute.* sorry if that offends you, but they are. who's cuter? well, let's chat about it, and toss in a few stupid jokes along the way. personally, i find it amusing that first the dems presented the cool kerry chicks, then the GOP countered with the cool bushie chicks. heh. friday postings probably are the lamest, simply because folks are bored at work. if you don't care for a FPP, just don't comment. some of us enjoy endulging in hopelessly stupid, inane banter -- probably because we're just as bored at work. heh. i'm 44 years old, i'm a woman, i'm a feminist. really. i think by now i know an insult to women when i see it, and personally i don't think this thread is one. and, of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinions of the post. but scolding people because their sense of humor is different from yours -- well, that just seems sorta un-mofilike.
• Don't blame me, I ordered the chicken.
• Chicken tastes like people. I eat people.
• Soon they'll be breeding us like cattle! You've got to warn everyone and tell them! Chicken is made of people! You've got to tell them! Chicken is people! Damn you all to hell!
• So, who's up for the hot chicken injection?
• From today's WashPost "Names & Faces" column: ...Meanwhile, ex-"Bachelor" Aaron Buerge tells USNews&World Report's Paul Bedard that if he had to choose between Jenna and Barbara, he's taking Barbara every step of the way. "She's very warm, very friendly," he says -- no doubt a conclusion he came to after Babs actually took the time to talk to him, unlike her sis. And, he says, he likes the brunette's "wild hair." Interesting. We didn't realize Barbara had "wild hair." Maybe that's just us, though.
• Well, no, this actually is a thread demeaning women. Not that I'm any fan of these particular women, but let's not sugarcoat it. It's true that progressive people tend to turn "waaaaay too serious" when confronted with a crude sexual joke, but this is not because we lack humor. It's because, while the joke itself may indeed be amusing, the attitude behind the joke is not amusing at all. There's a major difference between criticizing the morals and actions of the Bush twins (see coppermac's comments) and criticizing their physical appearance in terms of whether you personally would have sex with them. Many men fail to understand the level of physical fear that most women have to deal with every day. A sexual remark isn't just a joke -- it's a verbal expression of how you think about women, and it's not a very big step from verbal disrespect to physical disrespect. Maybe there would be a little less "humorless feminist" backlash in this thread if the original post had included a current news story or some hint of relevance, but it didn't. Those who enjoy indulging in "hopelessly stupid inane banter" already have Fark and chatrooms and the office watercooler for that, so they should have plenty of witty intelligent conversation saved up for MoFi.
• I'd hit something or other.
• I'd hit myself; repeatedly, violently. Possibly with a chicken.
• "Hot chicken injection" is arguably the funniest thing I've heard/read in the past day or so.
• I'm now waiting for an opportunity to use the phrase "hot monkey injection," even if "monkey" is not as funny as "chicken" in this context.
• Hot or not?
• i can't believe we're still debating this. look. this was the original post: Curious George - Which of my daughers are mo hotta? Ok kids, now is the time for a bit of irreverence about W and his campaign's putting the Bushettes on display. Which one is the foxier republican Barbie Doll? I vote for the brunette. where in the world does it say ANYTHING about having sex with them? frankly, i think your interpretation says a lot more about the people who are getting insulted here... WE'RE TALKING ABOUT WHO'S CUTER, FOLKS. it's done all the time -- miss america, miss universe. commenting about beauty, both male and female, it's been done for ages. and, as i posted above, *the washington post*, for chrissakes, carried a similar item today. GOSSIP item. GOSSIP is the silly stuff we talk about, who's dating who, who's cuter, who did what stupid thing now. THE POST WAS NOT ABOUT WHO YOU'D WANT TO FUCK. now then, if someone cared to make a comment to that effect, well, then, go right ahead. myself, i'd like to fuck hamid karzai. there, i said it. i think he's so fucking hot, with that sexy profile and shiny bald dome and fashionista sense... i'd jump on him in a second. does that demean hamid karzai? i hope not, because i'd like to stay on his good side because i really do want to fuck him someday. heh. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS FOLKS: mefi self-destructed NOT because of inane FPPs. it self-destructed because people began pissing on each other's opinions within the threads, and that escalated into viciousness. and, again, if you think a FPP is stupid -- or you think you'll be offended -- why on earth would you click on it? i click on maybe half the FPPs each day. >>Many men fail to understand the level of physical fear that most women have to deal with every day. i am sorry, but i find that *horribly* insulting and misleading. the "physical fear most women have to deal with every day"? wow. if you're that frightened of life, or men, or whatever it is that's freaking you out, take an assertiveness training class or self-defense course or something! buck up! it's NOT THAT BAD out here. remember, good karma out, good karma back. live in fear, scary things will happen to you. sorry, but i think a woman who thinks that "most women" walk around in "physical fear every day" is *far* more destructive to the feminist movement (whatever the heck that is) than a thread debating which bush twin is cuter. and if by chance you are fearful because you've been a victim of sexual violence, i feel for you, i truly do. three of my best friends were raped, one especially brutally. i know what this means. but i also know rape is a crime of violence, not sex. *rape* demeans women. beauty pageants don't, this thread doesn't. let's talk cuteness, for chrissakes. there's enough hideousness in the world. my 2 cents, plus $1.50 p.s. hamid karzai, if you're out there, you kick major manly ass.
• (squid, this whole thing is all your fault. go into that corner over there and self-flagellate. and don't return until you're good and bloody.)
• I was beating something earlier. Not sure if that counts.
• Meeeeooouch!
• Actually, after this AskMe thread, I wanted to Curious George and see what monkeys thought of the topic and this particular discussion, several posts in which I rather liked. This seems like a good place to do it.
• ...sound and fury...
• PF, not my cat. Remember, I pee on him.
• Oh, that was you? Evidence has disapparated.
• But apparently not memory, otherwise you wouldn't have posted "Meeeouch!".
• Akchumally I had forgot but now I do recall twas you sorry for the stumblin
• wow, PF, that ask me thread is really sad. one of the main -- if not THE main -- idea of the feminist movement was *empowerment.* the move to help women feel more in control of their lives, and how they moved through life. i feel empowered, i assumed most other women did, too. wow. this is indeed worthy of an entire thread. (i guess i'd define empowered as: secure in myself and my abilities -- a strong woman.) that said, i think there are indeed situations to be *cautious,* such as stranded on the highway. but that goes for women *and* men. for instance, in my 'hood there's been an upswing in street violence and a murder two blocks over. so i try to make sure i'm in my apartment by midnight. but, yeah, i do think it's worth a new post to discuss all this fear that, apparently, many women are experiencing. none of my friends, but, i guess women out there are scared. that's really sad. again, i suggest assertiveness training or a self-defense class. and just a little common sense, which can go a long way.
• (oh, and i just emailed my editor, i'm pitching a story about this. this is fascinating to me.)
• SideDish, I'd really like to know more about this. Let me know if you get something published about it. The whole thread was fascinating to me. Othermonkeythoughts?
• I think that a discussion about women's levels of free-floating anxiety about gendered violence is difficult - it falters on the language. I read SideDish's comment as very similar to the majority of comments in the AM thread (of course, with some who experience daily anxiety to a much higher degree). If I say "I live there, sometimes", what I mean is exactly what SideDish expressed: I pay attention to my surroundings, and take into consideration factors outside myself, which tempers my general optimism about others and faith in myself. However, that may sound to you like I'm saying "Fear influences my life" - it doesn't. I do as I wish, when I wish and where and so do most of my friends. There have been moments when I'm walking home alone a night and I have to pass a group of loitering men and I wonder if they have any idea that they appear immediately to me as red flags. But as I live in a not-great part of South London, and I lived in a very not-great part of Brooklyn before I lived in a not-great part of Toronto, it would be frankly stupid of me not to be aware of what is going on around me, even when stumbling home drunk.
• it would be frankly stupid of me not to be aware of what is going on around me It would be frankly stupid of persons of either gender not to be aware of what is going on around them. Pay an appropriate level of attention to your environment, and keep the antennae up for the unexpected. Stop the poo before it starts.
• amen, wolof. what i thought was especially sad were the comments that at least hinted that it's *men*, particularly *unknown men*, that women are frightened of. it also puzzles me as to why i'm *not* that way, because reading so many comments along those lines would lead one to believe that many, if not most, women are. i've traveled the world, lived in small, medium and big cities, now live in an inner city neighborhood in d.c. -- and i constantly, every day of my life, speak with men (and women) i don't know. i approach them, they approach me. and what i've found is, people surprise you. when i'm walking widget i'm often approached by people who want to pet her. and it's especially interesting when it's an "intimidating looking" person -- say, baggy jeans, gold teeth, mean looking -- and they kneel down and say, "aw, what a great doggie! hi doggie!" i may be naive, but nothing in my 44 years has caused me to be personally afraid of my fellow human beings. and i'm very, very sad that so many women describe their lives as living in constant fear. because that's not a life. that's a state of mind that's keeping you from having a life.
• (oh, and a side comment from my sweetie: he recalls living in chicago and jogging along an isolated bike path. it was a narrow path, and he ran past a woman. he still doesn't know what happened, but as he passed her he felt a sharp pain in his arm. he looked back and there was the woman, an angry and frightened look on her face, a key in her hand. all he can figure is, she was anticipating some guy coming after her and had a key at the ready. weird.)
• SideDish, you seem to be interpreting the word "fear" as a constant and crippling terror of all men. I certainly do not feel that. Like you, I'm generally very comfortable around men, whether strangers or friends. I also consider myself to be a strong woman. But unlike you, I do not take my physical safety for granted. You are very fortunate that nobody has ever harmed or abused you. Perhaps your own good fortune explains why you express such casual derision for those who have not been so lucky. One in eight U.S. women, or about 12 million people, have been raped in their lifetime. This figure does not include attempted rapes, sexual abuse, or physical assault (*). These threats are not imaginary. When you say that a woman just needs assertiveness training to feel safe, you ignore the unfortunate reality of many women's lives. More than half of all reported rapes and sexual assaults are committed by family members or domestic partners. Being hurt by a trusted person tends to make you less trusting of the outside world as well. I especially take issue with your blanket statements that women who worry about being raped or assaulted are weak, or un-feminist, or choosing a sad pathetic life, or that they are building up bad karma by being fearful and therefore deserve what they get. Just because it's never happened to you doesn't mean that you have the right to dismiss the experiences and feelings of those who haven't been so lucky. Or to accuse another woman of being "destructive to feminism" because she tried to explain why sexist jokes bother her. And yes, I realize this discussion now has nothing whatsoever to do with the relative cuteness of the Bush twins. Apologies to squidranch.
• mefi self-destructed This is news to me. Thanks. I was icked out and surprised by the bag-over-the-head comment, as it was more farkish than the kind of comment I'm used to seeing over here.
• onlyconnect, yeah, if you've been reading mefi for as long as many of us have, you'd agree that, indeed, it has self-destructed (or is in the process of self-destructing). years ago it used to be discussion of interesting FPPs, now it's a series of callings-out in metatalk because the FPP discussions so often dissolve into bitter bickering. that general atmosphere in mefi is one of the reasons mofi was founded. >>I do not take my physical safety for granted. i never said that. i said i use common-sense caution, as everyone should, male or female. >>casual derision no, no, please go back and read what i said. three of my best friends were raped, one especially viciously (she was kidnapped outside her job, forced to drive into the woods and repeated violated on the hood of her car -- and she was a virgin at the time). casual derision? definitely not. i went through this with them. *but being attacked is the exception to the rule.* for every woman (or person, for that matter) who is attacked on the way home, hundreds of thousands of people make it home safely. the controversy over rape statistics would make an interesting thread on its own. what i wanted to get across is that i'm sad so many women feel this way, so fearful. because -- and we have to keep this in context -- a *minority* of women are victims of crimes. a *minority* of people, period, are victims of crimes. crimes are news because they are out of the ordinary. many crime rates have fallen, some dramatically. i think one thing that may be contributing to this fear is the 24-hour news channel media. they take stories like laci peterson and lori hacking and keep them in the public eye for so long, perhaps women start thinking: hell, two pregnant women, snug in their homes, brutally murdered -- no one is safe! when, again, that is the exception to the rule -- millions upon millions of women live happy, healthy lives and are never victims of violence, be it random or family. i think it's probably getting off-course at this point to debate whether feminism has failed women or vice-versa. that's a whole other thread. as far as women living in fear (or an overly cautious state of mind, or however you'd like to put it), i've always been one who believes strongly that if there's something wrong in your life, *work to fix it.* if indeed you are frightened, try to find something to empower yourself. if it's a family member, seek counseling or other support. make positive changes. very few people live in totally dead-end circumstances, most have options -- granted, some harder than others. another story that's been on my list for years is a series of profiles of those who work with battered women only to watch so many return to be abused over and over again. why anyone, female or male, possesses a mindset that drives them to live such horrible lives is a source of great interest to me. but i think between this thread and the askme thread, yes, it's obvious that many women are overly concerned about being victims. that's a huge problem. that's why i hope to write about it.
• and let me also apologize if anyone else has taken offense at my comments. i still think it's silly for women to get upset about the original thread (jenna vs. babs) but if those emotions are somehow rooted in this generalized fear, well, rest assured i'm not "derisive" of your feelings. puzzled by them, and saddened by them, but not derisive of them.
• onlyconnect, yeah, if you've been reading mefi for as long as many of us have pssstt...
• SideDish, I do honestly believe you when you say you are not 'derisive' of the feelings of women who do live with some degree of fear about the men (known and unknown) in their lives. I would like to say, however, that at least two people read your puzzlement as at minimum being dismissive or cavalier about women's experiences of and reactions to gendered violence. Two is, meh, nothing, true, so this is a weak caution but I suspect we were not alone. As to battered women: the inside of that situation looks so so much different than the outside. It isn't that those inside aren't aren't taking up the option, but from their perspective, there literally is no option available.
• onlyconnect, yeah, if you've been reading mefi for as long as many of us have, you'd agree Since spring of 2000. I do not agree. I'm a member of and enjoy both communities. another story that's been on my list for years is a series of profiles of those who work with battered women only to watch so many return to be abused over and over again. why anyone, female or male, possesses a mindset that drives them to live such horrible lives is a source of great interest to me. Wow. Read up on domestic violence much? Many battered women are stalked by their abusers. Most fatalities of battered women occur after they leave their abusers, not during the relationship. Many women go back largely out of fear that their abuser will find them and kill them if they don't. (And there may also be some amount of Stockholm Syndrome going on there as well.) Studies confirm that battered women usually make two to five attempts before successfully leaving their abusers, and that women who leave experience even higher levels of homicide than women who stay. See L. Okun, Termination or Resumption of Cohabitation in Woman Battering Relationships: A Statistical Study (1988); American Psychological Association, No Safe Haven: Male Violence Against Women at Home, at Work, and in the Community 75-82 (1994); Council of Scientific Affairs, American Medical Association, Violence Against Women: Relevance for Medical Practitioners, 267:23 J. Am. Med. Ass
• that general atmosphere in mefi is one of the reasons mofi was founded. I thought tracicle started monkeyfilter up because so many people wanted to sign up for metafilter, but couldn't.
• spackle, if I agree with you that I couldn't understand what it's like to be a woman, I hope you'll concede that you can't be sure what's in the minds of the men who make sexual jokes. The way I see it, anyway, jokes about the sexual attractiveness of women are not "a verbal expression of how you think about women." They're a verbal expression of how they think about the sexual attractiveness of women. Sexual attractiveness is not necessarily all there is to their conception of women.
• "i went through this with them." No, you didn't; they went through it. You watched them go through it, and apparently you didn't learn very much from that experience. "no, no, please go back and read what i said." I have done so once again, and now I think the word derision is too mild a descriptor for your comments. You said: "remember, good karma out, good karma back. live in fear, scary things will happen to you." So it's totally my fault if someone hurts me. Thanks for clearing that up. You said: "none of my friends, but, i guess women out there are scared. that's really sad. again, i suggest assertiveness training or a self-defense class. and just a little common sense, which can go a long way." So again, it's my fault if I ever feel scared -- and you can tell this even though you don't actually know me -- because I lack common sense and assertiveness. You said: "i'm very, very sad that so many women describe their lives as living in constant fear. because that's not a life. that's a state of mind that's keeping you from having a life." So a woman must either live in your Pollyanna-land where bad things don't happen to good people, or she has to be a pathetic girly idiot with no life. You're right, that is sad. It must be great to be you, SideDish -- you have all the answers, you're never afraid, you've never had a close encounter with a bad human being, and you're just packed to the brim with smug bullshit advice for all the millions of imperfect women whose lives you know nothing about.
• Um... this deteriorated quickly. Someone post either kitten pictures or poetry, stat!
• Kitten poetry
• Oh man, MoFi is starting to disintegrate. Time to start a new Filter.
• Yes, I am so fucking redundant. I'd kill myself, but like that hasn't been done before.
• SideDish is just alright with me.
• Semantics, Smo? I think how a man views a woman's sexuality is a fairly important factor in how he views her as a whole person. I'm not saying that sexual jokes are never funny or appropriate -- they can certainly be both, especially when made between equals. I am confident that most people on MoFi make such jokes with the feeling that they are among appreciative equals, not intending to offend. But intentions don't always square with results, and that's what happened here. In my personal experience sexual jokes are often used as a tool by a more powerful person or group in order to demean or shock or exclude the less powerful. A parallel would be racial and ethnic jokes. When the line is crossed between funny and nasty (even if we're demeaning Republicans) it makes me uncomfortable. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
• Okay, fair enough. I'm not sure I agree with how much weight you give these things, but I see what you're saying and I think I get where you're coming from.
• Funny how this discussion has now turned into one between (mostly) women - but it is a more interesting topic. Shocking (and yes, they are) statistics aside, I understand what Sidedish is talking about. A minority of women are assaulted and raped. But I (as one of the aforesaid females) cannot let this dictate my life. It's like that bad cliche - otherwise the terrorists/rapists have won. There were a series of sexualy assualts at my former university. At first I thought, maybe I shouldn't be walking through dark empty parking lots on my own at 11pm at night. But then I said to myself that I was being silly - he was on the other side of campus, and was targetting fine-boned asian women, and would be very unlikely to be be interested in a well-built caucasian woman who probably weighed more than he did. That's not to say I didn't keep my keys at easy reach, and I was prepared to thump anyone who tried to grab me with my very large bookbag. But unlike some female friends (who were reluctant to walk around even with other people), I couldn't let it dictate my life to me - I would stay on campus when I needed to, and I would take the short bus I had to walk far to. And no one ever bothered me. I have also travelled alone (hiking, cross-country, occasionally a hitched ride when it was raining) and I felt much safer with people in the middle of nowhere. The weirdo count (which is always a small percentage) was way down, and everyone I met was really nice. I met Navy officers, hunters, fishermen, and CBC afficianados - all of whom I was glad to see. But again, why would someone have even wanted to assault me? I hadn't showered for a week, had a crew cut, and a 40lb knapsack that mad eme look like the hunchback of Notre Dame. Not exactly someone to inspire desire. But there is something I've talked about with people - why don't women slap rude men anymore? The rapist on my campus began by pinching women's bums in bars - and then escalated (culminating in a rape at knife point). But what would have happened if the first woman had just hauled around and slapped him really hard? Would he have escalated then? He was by all accounts a coward, bolting off at the first sign that he might be seen by anyone other than the victim (one woman escaped this way). My mother was groped once on the street by a neighbour she didn't know well - she whalloped him with her knapsack full of books. The next day he crossed the street to avoid her, and never bothered her again. So yeah - that's very long, and this is a very long thread. I think I would sum it up - this is a discussion between women, and women disagree on it. There are reasons to be concerned about safety, but we all have different responses - some avoid dark alleys, some might go down them thinking about how their boots have steel toes, and those really can hurt when you kick.
• Oh - and dng was right. mofi was created by mefi lurkers who hoped accounts would open, with only an occasional mefi vacationer/exile (who are none the less loved).
• wow, spackle, i'm bowing out of this. you're totally reading me wrong here. and for that, i'm sorry.
• (oh, and as far as mofi's founding, as it says on the front page: "MonkeyFilter is a Metafilter clone, **only with more bananas and less flinging**." granted, it began as mefi wannabes, but as a group we're also united in the hope that participants won't stoop to bitter comments like, "you're just packed to the brim with smug bullshit advice." goodbye, folks.)
• jb, thanks for sharing your perspective. I'm certainly not advocating that women should let fear rule their lives. I do not want other women to be afraid. I just disagree with SideDish that it's irrational and unfeminist for a woman to experience fear. My boots do have steel toes -- I've never kicked anyone with them but once punched a guy who grabbed me on a busy sidewalk. I stick up for myself when men make crude remarks about my ass, legs, etc. and I'm not generally lacking in physical or mental courage. But I know that it's possible for fear and courage to reside in the same person, and I resent having my life experience declared invalid by a person who has never felt that fear. That's all. On preview, SideDish, I acknowledge the possibility that I'm reading you wrong -- but your actual words are pretty extreme. For example, if there is a kinder gentler meaning to "live in fear, scary things will happen to you" that meaning is unclear to me. You said you were "*horribly* insulted" when I merely expressed a differing opinion from you, so maybe you can permit me the right to feel insulted by your snap judgment of me.
• I merely expressed a differing opinion from you You were claiming to speak for "most" women. That's what SideDish found insulting.
• If that was the problem, then maybe SideDish could have expressed that opinion herself, in a way that was at least marginally respectful of my right to hold a different point of view. But she didn't, did she?
• I've tried so hard not to post anything else here, but I lost the battle. SideDish, if you were the one who was only attractive enough to have sex with a guy with a bag over your head, would you accept that? With a bag over your head, you're not "you." You're just jugs and a cunt, and maybe a few other body parts, depending. And neither of the Bush twins is so ghastly that a bag should be necessary. My thought is that sex is only not masturbation if you accept the whole, physical person. Accepting the emotional person is better, but doesn't always happen. Besides, a bag would eliminate all the kissing stuff, and even a blow job, which really takes us back to the "you're really just some body parts that don't take any reciprocity" for the guy to get off. So, we should accept being a slightly better solution than a blow-up doll?: I don't care about the "I'd hit that" comments, I can easily scroll past them. And, I truly don't think the guys who've commented here really believe that bags, or any of the other comments I've mentioned. are appropriate when you're talking about people you really know, but that kind of testosterone rattling can bring up some really bad memories from some of the women here. My own are not as devastating as spackle's, but they are the basis for my comments.
• If it's any help, reading all these comments anew, I really don't see that Dishy or spackle are saying anything substantively different from each other - you're just approaching it from different perspectives; occasionally in language that could perhaps be a little more temperate, but all of it essentially understandable, reasonable and interesting. Maybe it got a little bitter, but I thought it was fascinating to read how two different approaches to essentially the same point of view can arouse such disagreement. It's all about fresh perspectives, innit? Certainly, it was engaging and though-provoking, which is a hell of a lot more than can be said for the upper half of this bloody thread. Which, it occurs to me, is why I like MoFi.
• "ray, flashboy. Differnt perspective are (maybe?) what we're here for.
• I still like the brunette.
• How did a thread about the relative cuteness of two young women, which was meant to be all in fun (which should have been obvious to everyone), become a debate about rape and domestic violence? If you can't recognize a joke for a joke, and not a subconscious desire to rape a woman at knife point, then I think you have a serious problem. Are you really such a humourless group? The sense of fun and immature silliness is why I've been visiting Monkeyfilter for so long, and it seems to be waning. I've been liking this site less and less lately, and I think it's because we've been turning on each other more. In short...try to lighten up, and if you can't, then don't deny others an opportunity for a lighthearted chuckle now and then.

• jb: why don't women slap rude men anymore?

  Because that would be "assault", a criminal offense. Perhaps in some distant, chauvinistic past where women were pathetic creatures who couldn't possibly hurt a man, a special dispensation was given to physically attack people who say something you don't like. In this modern day and age when women are supposedly the equals of men, hitting me will get you the same reaction a man hitting me will: a punch in the mouth, or a trip to the cop shop.
• And a pinch on the bum isn't unwanted physical contact? That was the context of the statement. I say that a man has every right to charge a woman with assault for slapping him. And they can let the judge decide whether attempted sexual assault justifies a minor physical assault.
• Oh, and any man whose bum gets pinched should also have the right to slap the man/woman who did it. Try not to do it so hard you leave bruises - that might loose you the sympathy. It doesn't have to be a slap, a verbal reaming might work well. Difficult in a loud bar, though. Basically, what I was wondering was if women let men like that know how they felt about that kind of behaviour with something unmistakable, then maybe the man would change his behaviour. Certainly it worked for my mum. And funny, no, he didn't charge her with assault. Maybe that was because he didn't want to admit in court that he had just goosed her.
• Keep in mind she was the only girl there, out of twenty people. So, some asshole says to her (no preamble, mind you, and she doesn't know him) "I'd like to put it in your ass." I don't know if it meets the legal definition (help me out here, Jacob Levy), but where I come from, them's fighting words. So, she did what any red-blooded American girl would do, and threw a drink at his head (in the glass) and kicked him a few times in the kneecaps with her combat boots, which are, as I recall, steel-toed. Now he makes his big mistake. He kicks her back, and hard, too.
• If you can't recognize a joke for a joke, and not a subconscious desire to rape a woman at knife point, then I think you have a serious problem. . . . In short...try to lighten up, and if you can't, then don't deny others an opportunity for a lighthearted chuckle now and then. Whaaa? No one said anything about anyone on MoFi having a subconscious desire to etc. Isn't it possible that some jokes are in poor taste and risk alienating or offending the group they mock? Surely you would agree that some jokes are out of bounds; we just probably disagree over where that line is drawn. A little sensitivity would go a long way here, and I can't imagine it would be that hard to resist making bag-over-the-head-type comments, unless I am seriously underestimating the frequency with which bag-over-the-head-type comments pop into people's heads.
• No one said anything about anyone on MoFi having a subconscious desire to etc This is the comment I was referring to: "A sexual remark isn't just a joke -- it's a verbal expression of how you think about women, and it's not a very big step from verbal disrespect to physical disrespect." And it's simply not true. Not only that, but it's an insult to anyone who appreciates and tells a joke. The vast majority of people who tell a sexual joke or make a "bag on the head" comment aren't closet women-haters. I know because I'm one of them, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let anyone make accusations like that about me.
• Not only that, but it's an insult to anyone who appreciates and tells a joke. Do you see no irony in the fact that you think it's an overreaction and "a very serious problem" for me to feel insulted by the "bag-over-the-head" comment, yet you yourself feel insulted at the mere possibility that someone might misunderstand your joke? See how easy it is to take offense at words typed on the Internet? And to take them personally? ("I know because I'm one of them.") If I now joked that you should lighten up and not take things so seriously, would that be okay because hey it's only a joke?
• make a "bag on the head" comment Jeez, that's fuckin' funny.
• I'm still traumatized by the "are" in "which of my daughters are mo hotta". I think it reflects a subconscious desire of monkeys to see J/nJ as mere shells around their hive-mind controllers from Quux IV, instead of individuals.
• Which of you are throws the firstest stones?
• subconscious desire of monkeys How is it that we are *all* to be painted with this? And what do you mean by "subconscious"? Be careful now.
• All your base jokes are belong to us.
• All your base jokes are belong to us. *applause*
• (with one second left on the clock, he cuts the red wire ...)
• (with one second left on the clock, he cuts the red wire ...) Too subtle for me.
• Unless herself means the red thread between nothingness and eternity. (Or the red thread between London and Vancouver.)
• ...So Jenna, then? sorry
• i wanted to let everyone know my story pitch on the level of fear/discomfort amongst women is a most probably a no-go. from my editor: >>I'd want to see some survey evidence that this attitude in fact grips the majority of women. I'm skeptical. i'll poke around for surveys or polls, if anyone knows of any factual evidence specifically addressing the topic, i'd be most grateful.
• blaise... hee hee!!! have a good day, all! or night, depending upon your monkeylocale
• Scientific surveys and analyses from the U.S., from the U.K., from South Africa, from Canada, from Iraq, from Australia...
• ...and from a worldwide perspective, and here's another global view.
• thanks, spackle, i'm sending those along to my editor (i'm off today for labor day). i'm also trying to find a story i did several years ago you might find interesting; i profiled two very different women, one a fundamentalist christian, the other a feminist activist, about how they were each seeking empowerment in their own way. if i can find the link i'll post it.
• found it! here's that story.
• Your remarkable facility for changing the subject is certainly interesting, true, but that article doesn't have anything to do with the question at hand -- which is whether or not a majority of the women who live in this world experience some level of physical fear (justified or unjustified) on a daily basis. I say yes; you say no. I'm done responding to your opinions, SideDish. There's no positive outcome to an argument with someone who says that women who experience fear deserve to be hurt. Read the surveys, look at the statistics, draw your own conclusions.
• spackle - Sidedish isn't the only person saying that the majority of women don't live in fear on a daily basis. I know that some do, justifed or unjustified, but I wouldn't say it's a majority, not on a daily basis, or anything close. Certainly not me, not my mother, not most of my close female friends. Also, I feel you are being unfair to Sidedish, who has been very polite and open to your opinion. Her article has everything to add to the discussion - it is about how women approach empowerment differently, as we were discussing. She certainly never said that anyone deserved to be hurt - and to imply otherwise is just plain mean debating tactics. And I happen to agree with her when she says that it's up to us women whether we want to live in fear, or get on with our lives. I will keep walking in dark places, and hiking alone (but never without telling someone where I am - that's just plain unsafe as the man who lost his arm knows) - and I know that no matter what happens to me, I will have lived a happier and more peaceful life for it.
• spackle, please, i don't mean to make you angry. i said i was SURPRISED AND SADDENED if indeed a "majority of women" live in fear or discomfort every day of their lives. and i never, EVER said ANY woman "deserves to be hurt." your own experiences -- and i have no clue as to what they are -- seem to be coloring your reaction to what i'm saying. again, what i said is, i am SURPRISED AND SADDENED to think that there might be *any* women living like this, and that those women should be assisted in empowering themselves to get themselves OUT of that situation. you said i learned nothing from supporting three close friends who were raped; you're wrong. what i learned was those three women came out strong and unafraid, refusing to be victimized by circumstances. all three worked closely with authorities and saw that their attackers went to prison, which was terrifying in itself (the trials, etc.). all three had counseling and struggled and emerged changed -- damaged, but strong. *none of those three now live in fear.* all women are different, all react in different ways to what life hands them. i was hoping you'd see from my article that women can and do seek empowerment in different ways. being empowered is the root of the conversation about women being victimized. again, i'm sorry you're reading my comments so wrong. if we were speaking in person i could clear this up, but it's difficult online. so please, take this away from this thread: * i am SURPRISED AND SADDENED that any women are fearful living in our society. **that doesn't mean i deny their fear;** in fact, i've told you i want to write about this. and i thank you for your statistics. * I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYONE, WOMAN OR MAN, *DESERVES* TO BE HURT. for any reason -- their beliefs, their situations, whatever. I NEVER SAID THAT. i never would, that's unthinkable to me. if anything i'm an overly kind person, i do lots of volunteer work, including in the intensive care unit of a hospital. i'm just not who you appear to think i am. again, thank you for the links to the statistics, as i said, i've forwarded those to my editor and i'll be sure to let all the monkeys know if a story comes of it.
• and, spackle, i've contacted hannah scott, who wrote the "stranger danger" analysis you sent along. thanks again.
• Maryland woman obtains protective order against abusive boyfriend preventing him from all contact with her; he breaks in and stabs her so many times police have trouble counting the wounds.
• i've been culling through the links spackle sent, as well as researching crime statistics. interestingly, statistically, *young men* are the most likely victims of crime (that's worldwide), far more so than women, although women are indeed the most fearful of crime. here's a report i found interesting (PDF file): "The Commercialization of Women's Fear of Crime"
• Maybe it's me, but that makes sense worldwide. I'm not entirely sure why. However, it would surprise me to find that that's true for the U.S.
• mid, do you mean you'd be surprised that young men are more often victims, or that women are more fearful of crime in the U.S.?
• here's an explanation from spackle's first link (actually, it's a Canadian crime study, not a US study): "Stanko (1992) noted that although traditional victimization surveys demonstrate that young men are at the highest risk for victimization, women consistently report, on average, fear of crime that is three times higher than males. One would expect that fear of crime is related to likelihood of victimization. Yet, women report higher fear even though official reports indicate they are less likely to be targets of crime than males. This paradox has led Skogan (1987) to observe that fear of crime has often been perceived as "irrational." Stanko agrees with Smith (1988) that this fear of crime paradox may fail to capture the lived experiences of women's physical and sexual violence. Stanko argues that conventional criminology tends to look at street crime and not crimes happening behind closed doors between non-strangers and thereby undermines the detection of crimes of violence against women."
• Doesn't it just make sense that women take more precautions in certain situations than men (walking around at night, in unpopulated areas, stalled car, etc.) and may experience heightened or in some sense different awareness of safety issues than men in those situations because a woman is more likely than a man to get raped in those situations? If a guy is walking down a street in the dark, someone might try to get his wallet or there's a very small chance he could be victim to a fatal act of random violence. There is a perception that rape for him is unlikely. A woman walking down the street is a target not just for her wallet, but for her body as well. It just makes sense to me that she might have additional issues to consider here. A guy is protecting himself against x, and she is protecting herself against x + y. Conversely, I bet the situation is reversed if you look at all male and all female prisons, with men having more heightened fears of such issues than women (except maybe in terms of the guards). It does not surprise me that young men are more victimized by crime than women; they also commit the most crime (in the askme thread there's a link saying 93% of carjackings are done by men). But after years of listening to "her skirt was so short she was asking for it" conversations, I don't think it's that silly for women to be more conscious of what they are doing to protect themselves from crime than men before they take that long dark walk across the supermarket parking lot.
• I meant I'd be surprised to find that young men are more often the victims of violent crime in the U.S. than women. Even taking gang violence, etc. into account, I'd think there would be more rapes, sexual assaults, wife beatings, etc.
• Just to complete that thought following SideDish's last comment: "A guy is protecting himself against x, and a woman is protecting herself against x + y. Even if x happens ALOT more to men, the existence of y arguably gives women a whole host of additional issues to think about than men have." And there *is* a problem with the underreporting of domestic violence acts against women. From the DV Post article I linked above, the woman who was killed by her boyfriend had been beaten up several times in the past, but was afraid to report the beatings to the police. Then of course when she did report it and get help via a protective order, her boyfriend got angry and killed her, which is kind of a deterrant to other women in the same situation who are thinking about trying to escape from their abusive relationship. (Best solution is probably to pick up and move to where he can't find you, but not everyone has enough money to do that.)
• Hmmm, come to think of it my comments above are basically riffing on CunningLinguist's comment here in that AskMe thread.
• One must also suspect that a proportion of the young men who became victims of violence were not afraid, but relatively sanguine about the prospect of a fight, or even that some merely failed to get in first. Not all, of course. I was beaten up myself once many years ago when I lived in the East End, and I certainly wasn't trying to start a fight!
• i spoke with a researcher who specializes in women's fear of crime about a possible story. as she pointed out the problem is, it's tough to write about it without exacerbating the problem (exploring why women are fearful has a tendancy to make them even more fearful). and, as seen in this thread, suggesting positive steps that women (or any crime victim, for that matter) might take may be misconstrued as "blaming the victim." it's also tough finding hard statistics on this. "fear" is a nebulous term, and of course those most frightened aren't speaking out. i risk again offending spackle, but it's also important to examine the *source* of statistics. it's best to rely on (at least relatively) unbiased studies/research, i.e., university or federal studies, instead of agenda groups. stats can be very, very deceptive. it's a challenge journalists face very day. numbers can be, and often are, inflated or lessened to make political statements. that said, yes, i agree that domestic violence numbers are horribly underreported. which takes us back to the subject of empowerment. i'm not blaming the victim when i say, i just wish there was some more effective way to help women overcome any kind of violence in their lives. because what we're doing now obviously isn't helping them enough. and no one should live in fear.
• bingo, pleg. from the researcher: "Women are more likely to be a victim of crime than they are to be offenders. This may also contribute to collective fear as women do not use violence to solve problems as often as men do."
• >>numbers can be, and often are, inflated or lessened to make political statements let me rephrase that: numbers can be, and often are, *used selectively* in order to make political statements. (numbers that support a group's efforts are hyped, while conflicting numbers are downplayed.)
• My Personal Gospel no affiliate link attached; I'm not THAT mercenary
• precisely, wendell! good for you. all statistics should be viewed with a critical eye. here's a great example: after n.j. gov. mcgreevey came out of the closet, i wrote a piece on gays married to straights. i asked one researcher, are there any numbers on how many of these couples there are? she said, "2 million." i was surprised that, A) she was so definite about that number, and B) that the number was so high. so i pressed her and it turns out, that was her own "extrapolation" of many sources (census bureau, gay groups, support groups, etc.) that's farrrrrrr too soft a number for a news story. needless to say, i didn't use the number. instead i wrote that between 6,000 and 7,000 members were active in a straight-spouse support network. that was a verifiable number. a few days later newsweek did a similar story and used the 2 million stat from the researcher. apparently they didn't even question her on it.
• i risk again offending spackle, but it's also important to examine the *source* of statistics. it's best to rely on (at least relatively) unbiased studies/research, i.e., university or federal studies... Which is precisely why the links I provided are from, in order of appearance: a Tennessee university, the British government, the South African government, a Canadian nonprofit that provides sources for its stats, Human Rights Watch, the Australian government, the United Nations, and a Minnesota nonprofit that provides sources for its stats. Once again, I do not understand the point SideDish is trying to make. Her statement above implies that my links are dubious, when in fact I did take the trouble to locate reputable sources. I am, also, familiar with journalistic standards due to my professional experience as a reporter for a million-circulation daily newspaper. Let me state my opinion one more time for those who continue to misinterpret what I'm saying: I assert that a majority (standard definition = "more than half") of all women do experience some level of physical fear on a daily basis. SideDish and others assert that I must be wrong about this, because it doesn't match their personal feelings. I have not claimed that general fear levels are necessarily an accurate reflection of the real physical threats women face. I do claim that the fear still exists, whether it is justified by reality or not. SideDish says that if you "live in fear, scary things will happen to you." To me, this is a classic example of blaming the victim. I think that it's possible, and indeed common, for a woman to feel fear yet still live courageously. SideDish states this as an either/or issue: you can live in fear, or you can have a good life, but not both. I find many of SideDish's statements in this thread to be uninformed and insulting in their flippancy. Granted, the written word can be easily misunderstood. But she has had plenty of opportunity to explain her previous statements to which I took specific offense, and has not done so. It's always easier to say "you misunderstood me" and change the subject, rather than admit to making a dumb remark. Was it really too much to ask that y'all would read up on this issue before rehashing your previous assertions? I already know that you think I'm wrong, so merely repeating that I'm wrong doesn't make it true. And linking to "How to Lie With Statistics" is not very helpful, as it implies once again that my sources are invalid. Police crime reports and nationwide opinion surveys are the best I can provide to support my belief -- sorry if that's not good enough for you.
• Spackle - Sidedish did not need to explain herself, because only you are taking her badly. She, along with the rest of us, simply want to discuss this issue objectively and constructively, and it is deeply insulting of you to impugn someone else with little basis. Statistics regarding sexual assualt are controversial. I have situations in my life where someone else might have construed it as unwanted sexual contact, even assault. I have been seduced, and I certainly have made bad decisions which I was later deeply uncomfortable with, but I do not feel that I have ever been assualted, nor was there ever any intention of assault on behalf of the other person. However, some groups choose to characterised all undesired sexual contact as assault, and thus come up with statistics that are not invalid, but do not mean what people think they mean. I find that very disturbing - it characterises pinches on the bum with everything short of penetration, and belittles more serious assaults. However, to contribute to the discussion as a whole - statistics don't lie, they are just used badly. But academics and professionals, like epidemiologists, are really quite rigorous about how they use statistics - explicit on the definition of what is being counted, on their sample size, potential biases, and on the statistical significance of their findings (fancy math thing that says how much is likely due to chance or too small a sample.) As Sidedish points out, the media are not always careful with what they are given. I don't think that means we should distrust statistics, but to do exactly what Sidedish suggests - be careful about where we get them, and ask questions about how they were derived. About the men vs women as victims, I would not be surprised if men were more often victims, but it is definately a good point that what women fear is a higher level of personal violence (and sexual violence is in itself very disturbing to contemplate). What is interesting is how often women fear stranger violence, when domestic and aquaintence violence seems more common.
• spackle, i was simply reminding people how complicated statistics are. for instance, one of your links is titled, "stop violence against women." and human rights watch? an "unbiased source"? sorry. don't know what j-school you went to or what paper you worked for, but.... no. >>But she has had plenty of opportunity to explain her previous statements to which I took specific offense, and has not done so. *sigh.* WHAT, SPECIFICALLY, HAVE I SAID THAT SET YOU OFF??? for the comments *you* have misinterpreted, i have TRIED to explain HOW you misunderstood. i can't do anything else here. do you want to post the EXACT WORDING that is ticking you off? i'll be happy to explain that, too. for instance: you mistakenly accuse me of wishing harm on women, on blaming victims. that's not only wrong, it's insulting. who on earth would wish harm on any living thing? i have no idea where you're getting this. as i said, something is coloring how you're reading my posts. you accuse me of having "learned nothing" from supporting friends who have been raped. that especially enrages me. i learned a very important lesson: that every individual experiences life on a unique basis. my friends had awful times but emerged stronger women. i know you're probably going to come back and say, "GOOD GOD, SIDEDISH THINKS RAPE IS GOOD FOR WOMEN." so i'll nip that in the bud -- no, i'm not saying that. i'm saying, not all victimized women are victims. and one more thing -- why on earth do you seem to take some perverse pride in the "fact" that a "majority" of women around the world are living in abject fear every day of their lives??? why, when i suggest work needs to be done to empower these women, you get all insulted and scream i'm blaming the victim? hell, it's not their fault they were victimized. but empowering them, building them into strong, resilient women, will keep it from happening again. which is why i posted my article. empowerment. that's the root of everything we're talking about here. you don't seem to understand that. i think what it comes down to is this: you see a link between a posting about which twin is cuter, jenna or barbara, and hideous violence against women. i say that's too far a leap to make. you think berating men for posting silly FPPs on mofi will advance the feminist cause. i say, work more directly to empower women. guess we'll just agree to disagree.
• and, spackle, for what it's worth, i am NOT trying to piss you off. we both have strong opinions on the subject. i'm just sad you're misinterpreting mine.
• and in the spirit of reconciliation, i give you, not only fluffy kittens, but fluffy kittens with ice cream!
• Those cats are really gonna poop later. Just sayin'.
• I hesistate to jump in, but to be fair to spackle I do think she has pointed out several times at least one of the things SideDish said that rubbed her the wrong way which SideDish has not directly addressed. Specifically: "remember, good karma out, good karma back. live in fear, scary things will happen to you." Also, I wish people would stop overstating the *level* of fear that spackle says women experience. I think she is saying (and I would agree) that many women experience a low but sufficient level of fear to take reasonable precautions to protect them against crime. I don't recall her ever saying anything about "living in abject fear" or "living in constant fear," and by continuously mischaracterizing her comments in that way people are making her out to be some sort of nutball, which isn't fair. Similarly, I'd agree spackle has mischaracterized several of the things SideDish has said, several times in a way that's very insulting to SideDish.
• Also, I see nothing wrong with calling out men in a thread for dehumanizing (but funny! ha ha oh so funny!!!) remarks that objectify women. Empower women, sure, but if that's all we do, we take the unnecessary burden of suffering in silence upon ourselves and only solve 50% of the problem.
• i attempted to clarify my "live in fear, scary things will happen to you" comment with my sweetie's experience jogging in chicago... he simply brushed against a woman's sleeve and she keyed him. purposely. *she was anticipating something bad happening.* does that mean she was "asking for it"? certainly not. all i'm saying is, if anyone lives fearful and paranoid, they'll start to see lots more things to be more fearful of. and, again, if anyone mistook my comment as crime victims are "asking for it," i'm telling you, that's not what i meant. and, once more, if that angered spackle, i'm sorry. but i'm not going to apologize for my feelings on this issue, as i wouldn't ask her to do. we obviously each have our own (strong) opinions.
• onlyconnect, again, that goes back to opinions. you and spackle were insulted by this original post, i wasn't. as i pointed out, a very similar item ran in the washington post. you might say that is part of the problem -- a respected newspaper running this item with no regard for women's feelings. i just see it as a frivilous gossip item. and i'd like to state for the record that i'd jump hamid karzai regardless of whether or not he's got a bag on his head. but then, obviously, i have a sick sense of humor.
• I wasn't offended by the post. I was offended by the bag over the head comment. But I'm sorry for missing the "my sweetie got keyed" explanation of the good karma/bad karma comment. I was previously interpreting that comment as meaning that people who are watchful will bring actual crime upon themselves, which seemed like a strange thing to say! I see you are saying instead that people who have a fearful attitude may see more things that are frightening to them. Okay. I still think it's okay to have a healthy amount of caution about going out at night, but we're not so very far apart, I think. Frankly, I agree with earlier comments that even you and spackle hold basically similar views here, and we're just using different vocabularies.
• You know what I love? Doughnuts. And while we're on the subject, I hate that the 'donut' spelling has taken over. It's too, I don't know, fast-foody. 'Doughnut' has a certain panache, I'm sure you'll agree, because adding unnecessary consonants to a word makes them look more official and time-honored. Same reason why I prefer 'dialogue' and 'catalogue' to 'dialog' and 'catalog.' Furthermore, I'm not convinced that low-carb diets are a good idea. I'm more about balanced diet and exercise, myself. Why starve yourself of the good stuff? All things in moderation, I say.
• "I see you are saying instead that people who have a fearful attitude may see more things that are frightening to them." And I should have added to this the fact that sometimes the frightening things such people see may be false alarms, but sometimes they may not be. Alertness may not be a mistake after all if it allows you to evade that one mugger, etc. Just try not to key innocent joggers!
• >>I still think it's okay to have a healthy amount of caution about going out at night, but we're not so very far apart, I think. i totally agree. in certain areas, that's smart not only for women but also men. that's why, as i said, i try to make sure i'm in my apartment by midnight. i guess some people may see that in and of itself by living fearfully -- i prefer to see it as living with common sense! and i do hope spackle isn't mad. i didn't mean to make her mad.
• Also, I see nothing wrong with calling out men in a thread for dehumanizing (but funny! ha ha oh so funny!!!) remarks that objectify women. Empower women, sure, but if that's all we do, we take the unnecessary burden of suffering in silence upon ourselves and only solve 50% of the problem. What problem? Specifically, what problem will we solve 100% if we stop making jokes?
• and, yes, mid, might i add that i am indeed in favor of donuts/doughnuts/do-nuts. they just opened a Krispy Kreme near my metro stop.... arrrgggg, temptation! and of course now they have big posters warning commuters not to bring donuts into the subway. heh.
• what problem will we solve 100% if we stop making jokes? I am not against all humor. I discriminate only against bag-over-the-head humor. It alienates me. I think it's ugly to think about women as a torso with appendages but no head or personality, and then to express those thoughts. You never addressed my earlier comment to you. Surely you agree that some jokes are so offensive that they are out of bounds. I suspect we simply disagree on where to draw that line, and I think it only helps communication between us if I express where I think that line should be instead of concentrating 100% on empowering myself (and thus situating the problem 100% within myself instead of at least partly within my environment).
• I discriminate only against bag-over-the-head humor. It alienates me. I think it's ugly to think about women as... Will you allow that us males can make vulgar jokes about J/nJ without hating all women? If so, your alienation is only a misunderstanding.
• wha's J/nJ? shorthand for, Jenna/Not Jenna? i had no idea that's what the other one's name was...
• (onlyconnect, i think part of the problem with "bag over the head" comments is, guys don't see that as insulting. even if you TELL THEM it's insulting and explain very logically why. because to *them*, well, some/many of them would love it if we put a bag over their heads and screwed the hell out of them, as crude as is. am i making sense here? like when i told my sweetie about this whole thing, and he suggested we get a few bags and try it out. heh.)
• Yes, I adopted tensor's shorthand above. What's nJ's real name? I just want to call her J-no.
• Personally, I've never been so offended by a joke as to speak out against it, and I've heard some beauties. But I will concede that the company I'm in determines what jokes are too offensive to tell. There are jokes I'd never tell to my parents, or at work, or to people I barely know. Monkeyfilter is such a place, and it's appropriate that if someone is offended by a comment, that they speak up about it. I will also state that I'm not offended by any of the sexist comments in this thread, so far. As a community, we will eventually set the standard, and people will know what's appropriate. What I am offended by, however, is the implication that a comment made in jest has any bearing whatsoever on my (or anyone else's) actual attitudes toward women. I can make sexist jokes with the best of 'em...but when it comes down to real-life relations with any of the women in my life, I know I have nothing to be ashamed of.
• fuyagare, if about 10 women in the thread above have previously expressed to you that bag-over-the-head humor offended them, in the future, why on earth would you want to make a bag-over-the-head joke? What is the occasion where the bag-over-the-head joke is de rigeur? And why, here, is the feeling of alienation that I and these other women experienced necessarily my own misunderstanding and not, perhaps, yours? This sort of comment is why I'm cautious about concentrating 100% on women empowering themselves. You guys have got to help out and be a little sensitive; women shouldn't have to do 100% of the adapting. And SideDish: heh. He's a keeper. :)
• What I am offended by, however, is the implication that a comment made in jest has any bearing whatsoever on my (or anyone else's) actual attitudes toward women. I can make sexist jokes with the best of 'em...but when it comes down to real-life relations with any of the women in my life, I know I have nothing to be ashamed of. Well, but . . . would you allow someone to make racist jokes in front of you? Why are sexist jokes okay?
• You ask an interesting question. Why would I want to make a joke without taking into account every possible reaction? Because sometimes I find it liberating to throw caution to the wind. Note that this is an honest answer. If you tell me that MonkeyFilter isn't alt.tasteless.jokes, I couldn't refute it. Too many of these reckless comments would make MoFi a dreary wasteland. There must be balance, and on balance I find the headbagging comment to be on the borderline, but not worth this extended censure. This thread was, by design, not intended to be serious. Self-policing is terribly difficult. Famous filters have suffered for it.
• Oh, just read your comment more carefully, and you permit all humor, I think. I take a different approach, and think it's better to discourage racist humor in order to make sure people know that those views aren't okay with you. And I guess it's the same with sexism. I'd be worried that otherwise it's tacit encouragement of a bad thing.
• Yes, I permit all humour. Racism is not humour. 'Racist humour' is meaningless. A little colourful joke is not racism. I don't think we will ever agree.
• Why would I want to make a joke without taking into account every possible reaction? How about a reaction you can reasonably assume that you will get?
• That was directed at rocket88, who said he told "sexist jokes", so I asked where he stood on racist jokes.
• How about a reaction you can reasonably assume that you will get? Here's one reaction I always assume I'll get to every comment I make: no reaction. Should I take that into account as well? How about the reaction where someone thinks "not that guy again, why won't he shut up already?" How should I prepare for that? What reactions are worth considering? How does one know what reactions are reasonable? Where are my pants?
• Fuyugare's judgement circuits appear to be misaligned. Careful, when his head is sparking like that it gets real, real hot. :)
• Where are my pants? Why is it so dark in here?
• MonkeyFilter: gets real, real hot
• Maybe we could get along better if people would stop shouting at me. And read my actual words instead of making up new ones. Seriously. It's bizarre to me that many of you jump to challenge and berate me at every step, then state that I can't ask SideDish to explain her words because I'm "the only one" who has a problem. Thanks for listening, onlyconnect. I really am done discussing this now.
• White people are uptight and can't dance. All blonds are dumb. Black people like to eat watermelon. Every Mexican I’ve ever met is lazy. Polish people? Every one of them dumb as a doorknob. Germans? You know they are all Nazis. Can't trust those Asians. British food is terrible and British people all have bad teeth. Men are all sex obsessed idiots who can only have conversations about sports. Women are all frigid, shopping obsessed airheads. And Eskimos, don't get me started on Eskimos....
• It's Inuit, dammit! (Except that I heard that Inuit only describes some groups, especially those in Nunavut, but Eskimo is preferred in Alaska, and I don't know what they say in Greenland or NWT...)
• God damn Inuit. Sittin' around building igloos and eating blubber all day. You know they are all behind September 11th. They just made it seem like Islamic extremists were the ones, but oh no! They're crafty, those Inuit.
• Here's a great Eskimo joke I heard: Q. What do you call a single Inuit? A. Inuk.
• >>read my actual words instead of making up new ones see? spackle and i do agree on something. that right there. >>many of you jump to challenge and berate me at every step huh? interesting. the way i read this post, some folks were arguing spackle's side, some mine. it's called a debate. GET EMPOWERED, GIRLIE!!! hee hee....
• A man was walking down the street and saw an Eskimo looking at his car tire. So the man said, “You blow a seal?” And the Eskimo responded “No. That's just frost on my mustache.”
• onlyconnect: Yes, racist humour is OK with me, but racist attitudes are not. And yes, there is a difference. All those ethnic stereotypes that squidranch touched on make for good humour...and that includes my own ethnicity (Scottish), which has been the butt of many jokes, none of which offend me.
• Jock once attended a Temperance lecture given by Scotland's top medical man, a noted anti-drink campaigner. The speaker began by placing a live, wriggling worm in a glass of whisky. After a moment or two it died and sank to the bottom. The speaker said quietly to the audience, "Now my friends, what does this tell us?" Jock piped up, "If you drink whisky you'll not be bothered by worms!"
• So there was this Chukchee on a train. He goes walking down the train from car to car, banging his head on the walls as he goes. Conducter happens to be walking along behind him checking tickets. Funally he catches up to the Chukchee. Says: --Hey Chukchee, why are you banging your head against the walls? --Chukchee smart! Chukchee find soft car!
• A man goes into a bar in Aberdeen and asks for a double Lagavulin. The barman charges him 5p, and explains that it's a special promotion - all single malts at 1950 prices. The man notices that none of the locals are buying, and asks why. "Och," says the barman, "They're waiting for Happy Hour".
• Well, kudos to you rocket88 for being able to struggle through the intensely anti-scottish social landscape that is present day Canada, enduring job-related discrimination, racially motivated violence, and an entrenched anti-scots establishment, yet still be able to laugh at a good mexican joke. You are truly an inspiration. Now, why can't all those other races take an example from the white people? We don't mind racist humour!
• So ethnic/racial/gender jokes are acceptable only if the target is not currently undergoing any discrimination or oppression? Are you proposing a double standard for acceptable humour? Besides, that wasn't my point. All I'm saying is that racist/sexist humour is not evidence of racist/sexist attitudes. It's possible to enjoy the former without possessing the latter.
• You know, I prefer spelling "grey" with an 'e' instead of an 'a', even though most Americans prefer spelling it "gray." I'm not sure why, except to say that the spelling looks somehow "greyer" to me, if that makes sense. Makes me think of flannel and overcast days. Maybe it's that "gray" looks an awful lot like "gay," so I think bright colors, I dunno. Discuss.
• middleclasstool, I know someone who wrote an entire blog entry on the grey/gray question who comes out exactly in your corner. Well, kudos to you rocket88 for being able to struggle through the intensely anti-scottish social landscape that is present day Canada, enduring job-related discrimination, racially motivated violence, and an entrenched anti-scots establishment, yet still be able to laugh at a good mexican joke. You are truly an inspiration. Now, why can't all those other races take an example from the white people? We don't mind racist humour! Now that was good comedy! Kudos to you!
• i grew up down the street from a very polish family (still spoke polish at home) who prided themselves on telling the most and funniest polish jokes. heh.
• Eskimos, people, eskimos!!! Stay on track.
• OK, here's an eskimo joke: Hvad er det f
• There was once an inuk named Pukkeenegak who was always complaining about being cold, especially when he was out fishing in his seal-skin and blubber kayak. One of the other inuit said, "Hey, Puk, if you're always cold why don't you light a fire in your kayak to keep warm!" This seemed logical to Pukkeenegak, who on his next fishing trip took along copy of the Arctic Times and a few twigs for kindling. Soon, feeling the cold, he lit the fire. Being made of seal skin and blubber, the whole kayak burst into flames, which just goes to show, you can't have your kayak and heat it "
• On this topic, what do people think of Mr Wong? (... if you've seen it. I saw it when Icebox was free - so fuck YOU).
• That was a serious inquiry, btw, not my usual irrelevant shite. Well, not that last bit, obviously.
• Context is everything, Rocket88 , let me explain: I, too, am ethnically Scottish. I, also, am not offended by Scottish stereotyping jokes. However here in the U.S., anti-scottish sentiment is not something I have ever encountered, nor have I dealt with scottish stereotypes outside the context of a joke. To me, the stereotypes at the heart of a scottish joke seem a quaint holdover of "old-country" history, and I do not feel personally targeted by them. Now, for someone who is hispanic and living in Texas, a whole different set of circumstances comes into play. Anti-hispanic sentiment is prevalent here, stereotypes are common and inform everything from hiring practices to rate of pay to deciding whose daughter can date whose son, to who belongs in what bar. Anti "mexican" jokes spread and reinforce these stereotypes and contribute to racist attitudes. Permit me for a moment to get hypothetical here; if I were hispanic and had to deal with this every day of my life, I'd be pretty sick of this situation and, indeed, take issue with the anglo guy at the next table who's guffawing over a "lazy mexican" joke. Boiled down to its essence, a stereotype is a stereotype is a stereotype and the same faulty logic that informs the hispanic stereotype informs the scottish stereotype. However, in today's society one is a lot more harmful than the other.
• To address your second point: I'm not going to argue that telling a racist joke automatically makes you a racist, but you seem to be shocked that anyone might draw that conclusion. Let me tell it to you straight so in the future this won't come as a surprise: if you tell racist jokes, especially about races that are widely discriminated against, people will think you're a racist.
• Yes.
• Except when you're being ironic. Heh... Jew York.
• if you tell racist jokes, especially about races that are widely discriminated against, people will think you're a racist. And they will be wrong. I can accept that.
• Hi, are there going to be any more eskimo jokes forthcoming? If not, I can stop watching this stupid thread. Thanks.
• Nickdanger wrote: .....stereotypes are common and inform everything from hiring practices to rate of pay to deciding whose daughter can date whose son, to who belongs in what bar. Anti [insert race here; Nickdanger uses Mexican as an example] jokes spread and reinforce these stereotypes and contribute to racist attitudes. So, rocket88, do you not accept that this is a true statement? Because if it is, I would say that using racist humour under those circumstances is in itself a racist act (because it spreads and reinforces racism). And if engaging in racist acts does not make one a racist, then what does? (On original topic: I find this to be true of sexist humour too).
• You are dismissed, Fuyugare.
• Excerpt from 1993 academic study, "SEXUAL AND SEXIST HUMOR IN THE WORKPLACE: JUST "GOOD FUN" OR SEXUAL HARASSMENT?" As Freud had noted, joking is a relationship between an object, the joker, and the listener. As such, what is "funny" in any given situation is a matter for negotiation by the participants in that situation (Neitz, 1980). This is in fact supported by empirical studies of the subject. Hassett and Houlihan (1979), for example, in a survey of 14,000 readers of Psychology Today, discovered that not only did men, in general, like their jokes better, but there were major differences in the types of jokes men and women preferred. While sexual jokes were the most popular category for both sexes, men enjoyed the jokes in the survey substantially more than did females. In addition, the only type of humor that women clearly preferred was the silly jokes. Both sexes were equally amused by hostility. Chapman and Gadfield's (1976) study of British subjects found that men enjoyed sexual humor that was judged sexist toward women, but did not enjoy sexual humor when the status of men was threatened. In contrast, women did not enjoy sexist-sexual humor but did enjoy sexual humor that was not sexist. Smeltzer and Leap's (1988) study that specifically examined humor in the workplace reported that females considered sexist and racist jokes to be more inappropriate than did males. Females also found racist jokes to be more offensive than sexist jokes.
• enjoyed sexual humor that was judged sexist toward women, but did not enjoy sexual humor when the status of men was threatened To be sorted under "dishing it out but not taking it" file.
• When stereotypes are used for comedic effect, they're funny. When they're used to determine hiring practices, rates of pay, or any act of discrimination, they're not. I don't think people develop racist/sexist attitudes from hearing jokes. It's more likely that they've had role models (especially parents) who've taught them that discrimination is acceptable and justified. Real discrimination is the enemy, and that's where the fight against racism & sexism should be concentrating it's efforts.
• sexual jokes were the most popular category for both sexes i was a bit surprised by that...
• rocket88, that strikes me as naive. As though people process joke and work information with two separate and non-interactive brains. The jokes we hear inform our lives and give us an idea of what other people find acceptable, which in turn often affects what we ourselves find acceptable. Everything matters.
• I still like the brunette.
• So, did they find that women liked jokes belittling men? Or t-shirts that say "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them"? Heard they were selling well.
• Other items in the David and Goliath clothing line include slogans such as "Boys are full of it; fling poop at them" and "Boys lie; poke 'em in the eye." (you make a good point, jb)
• "Rather than making such hasty judgments of character, when ethically evaluating humor we should follow Smuts' razor:" 'Never attribute to an -ism what can be adequately explained by formal properties of a joke.' "
• For Fuyugare: Three eskimo were talking about how cold it was when one mentioned that his igloo was as cold as he could remember. The eskimo said, "Come to my igloo and I'll show you how cold it is." So the three men trodded off to the igloo and there they found a can of beer frozen solid. The second eskimo said, "My igloo is much colder than this; come over and see what I mean." So they took off for the second eskimo's igloo to find that a fresh pot of hot coffee froze as it was poured into a cup. The third eskimo said, "That's not cold, my igloo is so much colder than both of yours. Come over and see." So they tracked through the snow to the third igloo where the eskimo pulled down the furs on his bed. The other two eskimo stared in amazement at 3 frozen balls that lay on the bed. The eskimo lit a match and held it under the three frozen balls and they burst with a 'fart,' 'fart,' 'fart.'
• When ethically evaluating humor, I do my best to use Buddha's razor: If telling a joke would be likely to hurt the feelings of the person on the receiving end, then its better not to tell it. I must admit though, that I make exceptions for people who I think "deserve" it, especially if they are politicians: i.e. President Bush, Rick Santorum, etc., which I guess means I'll be re-encarnated as a cockroach. Oh, well. BTW, SideDish, I too have the hots for Hamid Karzai, and I'd do Barak Obama in a second, but Alan Keyes? Sex with crazy people is just too complicated.
• krebs cycle, I can remember many stories of Zen teachers using methods that might be considered to "hurtful" to the student. Physical pain, pointed criticism, and even full on mockery was often used to bring the student, often with inflated ego, to enlightenment. Admittedly Zen is but but one of many schools of Buddhism. For me, jokes are the closest thing that we have to moments of "enlightenment" or crazy wisdom that are acknowledged in the pedestrian, non spiritual sphere.
• Yeah, I must say that squid's frozen fart joke totally enlightened my day.
• fuyugare, tell your friends. I'm selling enlightenment by the bucketload.
• For krebs cycle: Q: What does Alan Keyes' ego have in common with the Great Wall of China? A: Both are man-made creations that can be seen from space. Q: What's the difference between Alan Keyes and the Hindenburg? A: One's a flaming bag of hot gas, and the other's a dirigible.
• From "The Use and Abuse of Humor" (looks to be a university writing workshop): Gruner notes that "[t]elling sexual jokes and expressing appreciation for them in the presence of females may be rooted in the (conscious or unconscious) attempt of the male to enhance opportunity for sexual activity" (Gruner 128). He even quotes Camille Paglia to show how sex and aggression are inextricably mingled: "
• and apparently this is the aforementioned Ryan/Kanjorski article... (i'm just finding/posting this stuff, folks, not trying to make any kind of statements with it. i've written about humor studies before and find them fascinating.)
• As Freud had noted, Haven't they buried him yet?
• Side Dish: Your posts are indeed fascinating. And I like that you present several different perspectives. squidranch: Interesting point about Buddhist use of potentially hurtful jokes. I guess I just don't think I'm smart enough to do them so that the recipient learns rather than just gets hurt with no positive effect. On the other hand, I think I can see how it might help some people if done right. Certainly its true one cannot learn without a certain amount of pain. On the third hand, I can't help feeling that maybe teachers don't need to be the ones to dish the pain out: it just comes naturally, that's part of life. Also, your Keyes jokes really made me laugh. Thanks.
• Not to get all esoteric or anything, but maybe the line is demarcated by the 7th Grave Precept: Not to praise myself while abusing others. If the intent is to heal and teach, okay. If the intent is make myself look cool and funny by hurting another person's feelings, not okay.
• If the intent is to heal and teach, okay just to play devil's (food cake) advocate, krebs, does that mean that all humor should be of the "nice and non-hurtful" variety? such as, "why did the chicken cross the road? to get to the other side"
• Good point Krebs. Can't say that I always keep all the precepts. Good to be constantly reminded of them.
• But I also like telling jokes.
• what's pink and fluffy? pink fluff. heh.
• Side Dish; No, I think its ok to tell jokes that might be construed as mean if the circumstances are such that one can make a reasonable assumption that no actual harm will come from them. Harm here includes hurt feelings, but also dissemination of damaging stereotypes. Of course, figuring out whether a joke will hurt or not can be a tricky business, and I think I sometimes err on the wrong side. But (IMHO) lots of times the answer is perfectly obvious, and people pretend the joke won't hurt when they actually know perfectly well there is a high chance it will. But they think its funny, so they decide the person on the receiving end should just suck it up. To me, this isn't the most shining behavior.
• (Although its certainly understandable)
• side, as a member of the pink fluff community, I find your fluffist humour offensive. Are you some sort of retard or something?
• squidranch-- sheesh, I wish I could manage to follow the precepts like 1% of the time.
• rocket88, that strikes me as naive. As though people process joke and work information with two separate and non-interactive brains. I'm genuinely surprised that anyone would say that. Am I really the only one who can differentiate between the two?
• No Rocket88, I can too.
• I didn't pay scarabic to post this.
• Sure, onlyconnect, sure.
• I'm not joking! :P
• Previously on Monkeyfilter.
• I gots big feets.
• What's brown and sticky? A stick.
• What's brown and sounds like a bell? Dung. What's long and sounds like a bell? Dong. What's concave and sounds like a bell? Ding.