By David Futrelle
Another day, another batch of atrocities and embarrassments, from Donald Trump challenging his secretary of state to a public IQ-test bakeoff to the release of a vomit-inducing tape of Harvey Weinstein demonstrating his, er, pickup technique.
Let’s start with that one, huh, because it’s somehow even worse than it sounds — so much so that you may want to think twice before listening to it.
Weinstein, in conversation with Gutierrez, admits to groping her. Here’s the audio: https://t.co/zSQbK5NV0c pic.twitter.com/vmrrSUp43w
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) October 10, 2017
You can’t help but wonder how many dozens if not hundreds of times Weinstein has had similar, er, conversations with young, vulnerable women.
In other Harvey Weinstein news:
NYT: Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie say Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed them when they were young actresses. https://t.co/1n7FgrNmoW
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/rosemcgowan/status/917526296925683713
https://twitter.com/xeni/status/917805989511913472
In non-Harvey Weinstein News That is Not Actually From The Onion, No Really, This is the World We Live in Today:
NEW: Trump proposes ‘IQ tests’ face-off with Tillerson after secretary of state calls him a ‘moron.’ https://t.co/kuCOSALDUl
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) October 10, 2017
How long before Trump tweets a screengrab of an online IQ test.
— Jemaine Clement (@AJemaineClement) October 10, 2017
I challenge Donald Trump to a public Buzzfeed "Tell Us Your Food Preferences And We'll Reveal Which Instagram Cat You Are" quiz showdown.
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) October 10, 2017
Still have not heard back from the White House on this one.
More news from the alternate reality we’re now stuck in: Melania Trump is feuding with Ivana Trump (yes, Ivana, not Ivanka) over who is the true First Lady.
https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/917450380044390400
Blurgledsvgpo4qwbwd.
Henry Kissinger is definitely alive and absolutely not being Weekend at Bernie’s-ed pic.twitter.com/xdYNUlrwdC
— Ashley Feinberg (ashleyfeinberg.bsky.social) (@ashleyfeinberg) October 10, 2017
https://twitter.com/pattymo/status/917583613918695424
https://twitter.com/morninggloria/status/917808982819033088
https://twitter.com/lyssfame/status/917127717820153856
Now, cats:
— ねこばす (@neko_bus2010) October 9, 2017
https://twitter.com/MeetAnimals/status/917260879430811648
Ok, some dogs too:
https://twitter.com/dognkitty/status/917382725610332160
https://twitter.com/awwcuteness/status/917244228836691969
Ok, bye.
Thanks, POM and PeeVee.
I can see both sides of the issue so it’s been something that I personally see as an agree to disagree situation and it doesn’t bug me. But that’s just me and I don’t expect other people to feel that way.
Would it help if people made more of an effort to read other’s posts in a charitable light if they’re a regular or semi-regular known to be here in good faith? I do think there’s maybe a difference between making a stand alone post expressing your own opinion and blockquoting and nitpicking other’s posts?
Anyway, for whatever reason I have a much thicker skin when it comes to online interactions than I do for meatspace interactions, so I can volunteer to be on the lookout for purity testing and request people to chill a little if anyone wants me to. I don’t mind.
But anyway, it’s getting a bit heavy for a Friday night and the couple of glasses of wine I’ve had are kicking in. So even though I instigated the discussion, it’s probably best I put in a pin in it for tonight.
I’m thinking about stealing a little bit of pot from my dad. How silly is that? He’s pretty much quit doing it in recent years but I think he got a bag from one his friends from his hippie days when they had a little reunion recently. That’s the peril of having parents who are liberal baby boomers. They’re better partiers than I and my friends are.
There are definitely times when I take a break from WHTM because of the “purity-testing” as PoM put it (tbf, no doubt this is often just me being overly defensive/prickly).
I’m well aware of how demands for courtesy can be weaponised (i.e. respectability politics), but I also think there are times when there’s actually no need to jump down someone’s throat in order to make a point. To be clear, I’m referring to exchanges here, between commenters – not any other context.
If I may, I wanted to respond to PoM’s post about US-hate – not to disagree as such, but to add a different dimension.
I have no tolerance for reflexive anti-Americanism whatsoever. But for many people outside of the US, the resentment and anger is very, very real and not at all performative (“Tiny Country Victimized By America #28” btw, reads as a bit offensive to the multiple countries that have been well & truly fucked over by the US).
It’s also entirely probable that a given country would behave in exactly the same way – but that’s kind of beside the point, I think? ‘Cause they’re not, and the US is.
I get that this was in relation to the US not being uniquely evil, & this is absolutely correct; it’s not. As PoM said, many countries do similar things on a smaller scale – witness my own country re asylum seekers right now.
One thing that I do see as unique though, is exceptionalism, or perhaps the degree of it. Many countries have patriots or nationalists, but not the whole “we are the light of the world” type of conviction that characterises the US.
Anyhoo, I did go through the whole “America sucks” thing waaaay back when I was in the International Socialists. It felt good at the time, but it was stupid and really, really lazy, politically speaking.
I do believe I’m rambling :/.
I’ve been trying to think of a way to explain why it’s not really an agree-to-disagree thing. Let’s say there’s a thread in which everyone agrees that the US is just unmitigated awfulness, which we’ve established is something I do not agree is true. But do I say that I don’t think it’s true? It seems like everyone is fully on board with this opinion, but it may be the case that there are some posters who don’t agree but who have been silenced by the fear of starting a fight over a potentially emotional topic. Maybe if I say something, those silenced people will no longer feel silenced and will speak up. Or maybe I’ll wind up in a giant battle with some nonzero subset of the other commenters all by myself, and maybe I don’t want to risk that today for whatever reason. So I wind up silenced myself.
I don’t see how we can agree to disagree on whether that is OK. You know me, and you know that I can drag it down with the best of them, but that’s not true all the time and I honestly shouldn’t have to get into an internet battle to say that I disagree with the apparent consensus that my country is the literal worst ever.
I don’t know what would help. I would like to see less policing of people’s feminism and progressivism outside the core requirements, and less gatekeeping as to who is allowed to call themselves a member of Group Whatever. I don’t know what that looks like in practice.
Maybe if you asked he would share?
I didn’t actually count how many countries have been fucked over by the US but I guessed it exceeded 28.
Not even slightly beside the point? Was my point somehow unclear? Where did I go wrong with it?
Every great power has a national myth that it is exceptional. England had it when it was the undisputed master of the world. France had it. Spain had it. Russia has it today. This is just the nature of finding one’s society at the top of the world hierarchy. It’s just-world fallacy at work – if we’re the tops, then we must have earned it somehow through our sheer awesomeness. No one is immune to this fallacy. No one.
I do wish the blog would go back more to mocking the manosphere instead of doing political news and talking about Trump 24/7. It was a lot more fun to mock misogyny and political differences aren’t quite as important as long as we’re all on the bigotry = bad page.
I admit, I do sometimes wonder why commenters are sometimes upbraided swiftly and harshly for what seem like relatively minor infractions, while obvious trolls get pages and pages dedicated just to talking about whatever they want to talk about. I mean, they get called “chew toys”, but it’s clear they’re loving the attention and it completely derails the original conversation. Of course, the discussion here is still better than most places, so consider this a minor complaint.
I disagree about the non-mysoginistic incel. What about a guy who cant get laid , calls himself INCEL, blames himself and himself only, but loves his female family members and accepts that women can make their own choices too? Is that misoginistic.
How come it is misoginistic? Where is the misogony in that?
No I cant get laid. But then again there are lots of things I cant do. But there are things I can do, so Id rather focus on things I can do instead. There are lots of things going for me, dating isnt one of them. Thats life. Im not good enough. End of.
Ive heard that feminist is shit/bad blah blah blah, and I wasnt sure about the mainstream media and how it protrays feminism, so I came to find out for myself.
What I meant to ask Kupo was, what about a woman who says yes to sex but that yes has been based on lies and manipulation. Is that rape, or is it scumbag behaviour for men like HW to get his own way? Just wondering
Also, no one is born evil in my opinion, so (apart from banning of shitty guns) how do we stop people like Elliot Rodger becoming in what he became in the first place. Change in culture? Education?
Yes, absolutely. If he was going to talk about sexism, and how he and his campaign benefited from it, and that it was wrong, that would be one thing, but we all know that’s not going to happen.
Hambeast, I’m so sorry about your cat. Here’s one of my favorite quotes about cats, from Pudd’nhead Wilson (Mark Twain)
I’m really not seeing the difference between this and whatabout-y crap like “Sure, Trump’s pushing for war with NK, but Hillary would’ve totally pushed for war with Russia, therefore both sides.”
The difference is that I’m talking about states and societies, and you’re talking about individuals.
PoM skrev:
I’m sure there are comment threads in which this (or something that rhymes with it) has been said. I’ll have to take your word for it that any of those threads have been on this site, though, because I seem to have missed literally all of them. Could I persuade you to post a link to some?
Again, I’m not sure what sites you’re going to where this is the consensus, but I haven’t seen any sign that this is one of them, and I’d very much like to see an example.
Austin, that is kind of guaranteed to engender bad feelings, don’t you think?
The one Angry referred to should be pretty easy to find if your googlefu is reasonably good. But it is a minor theme in many threads, none of which I care to revisit.
With respect, @Austin Loomis, I don’t think that’s an appropriate or fair request to make of PoM.
As opposed to saying that the consensus on this site is that you must hate America and everything it stands for, which I’m sure can only have been meant to engender smiles and hugs forever all around the world.
My Google fu must really suck, then because the only comment from Angry that I could even find was this one from last June, which bears no resemblance to the one she writes about here:
(There may have been bashing of the military and everything it does, which I can say as a Navy junior myself would be over the top, but if one can’t tell the difference between bashing the military and bashing America, I submit that maybe one’s not as progressive as one thinks one is.)
You’re entitled to think that. I don’t think hers was an appropriate or fair claim to make about the readers of this site; in fact, I consider it an extraordinary claim, technically requiring extraordinary proof but I’ll settle for any proof.
Okay. I don’t have anything to prove to you, so … ???
Whatever, Austin.
Still not going to indulge your desire to name names…that’s why there were no specific names mentioned.
I’m just baffled that Austin thinks that his desire for proof creates an obligation on my part to provide it.
I owe you jack-all, Austin. WTF, for real.
PoM,
I believe he misinterpreted this passage in the first place:
(And, oh, yeah, do I understand where you’re coming from there!)
Because he pretty much answered me with
No, it’s just that particular thread, and the participants of that thread…
In any case, still not going to name names, because YEAH, AUSTIN, THAT WOULD ENGENDER BAD FEELINGS.
Can people see my replies?
They’re visible, peak.
Peak,
You seem to be stuck in the moderation filter. Email David and ask him to take you off moderation and your replies will post immediately.
That said, I stand by my opinion that the “involuntary” part of the term is inherently problematic.
I also think it’s pretty misogynistic to come to a post mainly covering a sexual harasser and rapist and whine about how horrible it is that some men can’t get laid.
I mean, really?
Really?
I will thanks
The “involuntary” part doesnt help but that doesnt mean that every INCEL believes that he is owed anything or women are oppressing him. I personally dont like generalisations about groups of people tbh.
And what more is to be said. HW is a scumbag of the highest order who needs to be made an example off. He only manipulated/raped women because he knew deep down he couldnt get a lady to willingly have sex with him. Freak
Does anyone who who cant get laid, blames himself and himself only, but loves his female family members and accepts that women can make their own choices too, calls himself INCEL?
The toxic that exists in that culture would drove anyone with normal empathy away.
It is the awful posts direct against everyone else, that makes the INCELs a topic for this site.
Virginshaming is something that is called out if it happens and on off the problems of the INCELs is that they don’t want help. (Their was a post about someone who wanted to make it illegal to help INCELs)
So if their is a non toxic part of the INCELmovement, please show it.
Apparently there is a lot more to be said, mostly about incels, mostly by you.
Dude, nobody wants to hear about incel sad boners, let alone on THIS post. The fact that this is your single note to which you return over and over and fucking over is old and tired.
INVOLUNTARY. That means that THE INCEL WOULD HAVE SEX IF SOMEONE WOULD HAVE SEX WITH HIM. There is entitlement baked directly into that, and if you can’t see it, then that is a problem with you and you only.
And? Your personal likes and dislikes mean what exactly?