Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (14⧸09⧸2014)

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Sept. 14, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

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This Week in Stupid (14⧸09⧸2014)

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	Hello everyone.
	Welcome to this week in Stupid for the 14th of September 2014.
	This week is a special Moral Degeneracy of the Western World Edition.
	Let's start as we mean to go on.
	Rita Templeton wants her sons to see her naked.
	Why?
	Well, because she's fucking barking.
	But they all are this week, so let's get into it.
	I live with a house full of boys, four to be exact, but they're still relatively young, so there are no nudie magazines stashed between the mattresses, no stealthily accessed porn sites that someone forgot to erase out of the internet history, nothing like that.
	As much as I'd love to think my kids won't be curious, I'm well aware that won't be the case.
	Those things are looming and will probably start happening much sooner than I'd like.
	I mean if I had my drothers, they wouldn't even think about sex until they were like twenty-five, to which I'm sure you're thinking the same thing as me, why you sociopathic Puritan freak.
	But before all that happens, before they're exposed to boobs that are as round and firm as cantaloupes and pictures of taut airbrushed dimple as butts, I'm exposing them to a different kind of female body.
	Mine, because as she already stated, she wants to put them off sex for life.
	Ours is not a modest household.
	I don't lounge round in the buff like my boys do, but I've never refrained from changing clothes in front of them or leaving the door open when I shower or nursing babies without a cover, because I want them to see what a real female body looks like.
	Because if I don't, their first images of naked women are the impossibly perfect physiques in the magazines or movies.
	What kind of expectations will they have?
	And what woman could ever live up to them?
	Jesus Christ.
	Between you and me, I'm dismayed, big time, with my post-baby body.
	But for the sake of my boys and my future daughters-in-law, I lie through my teeth.
	When they ask about my stretch marks, I tell them proudly how growing a baby is hard work, and they're like badges I've earned.
	As much as I'd like to cringe and shrink away when they touch my squishy belly, I let them squeeze my flab between their curious fingers.
	Do I hate it?
	Yes.
	I want to wail, leave my fat alone, and run for the nearest oversized t-shirt.
	Maybe you're not doing this for your boys.
	Maybe just fucking maybe you are doing this because you're an escaped mental patient the sanatorium has stopped looking for.
	But she doesn't squirm away, because for right now, for these few formative years, my flab is their one and only perception of the female body.
	And I want them to know it's beautiful, even in its imperfection.
	I see.
	She's trying to turn them into chubby chasers.
	I don't want to do them, or any woman they might happen to see naked in the future, the disservice of telling them that saggy boobs are bad, or that a little bit of flab is something to be ashamed of.
	I want them to know that this is the norm, not the nipped, tucked, and digitally enhanced images they're going to be bombarded with.
	Listen, you gibbering maniac, they're not going to be reading cosmopolitan.
	Sure, they'll gawk at those bouncy boobies and flat stomachs and perky butts, but I have hope that, deep down inside, they'll know this isn't the standard to which they should hold women's bodies.
	Like ever.
	Trust me, after seeing you parading around naked, they are not going to be interested in women's bodies.
	There will come a time when I will cover up when they're around.
	Thank fuck.
	I'm sure at some point I'll hear uh mum put some clothes on, or they'll learn to knock before barging into the bathroom.
	But until then, I'll let them run their fingers along my stretch marks, and grin and bear it when they squeal with delighted laughter at the way my butt jiggles when I walk across the room to grab a towel.
	Good God.
	You know you are their mother, don't you?
	Because while they're young, I want to plant the seed, so that when they're older, their wives can say, I wish my thighs were smaller, and my sons can say, they are perfect just the way they are, and mean it.
	Well, I've got a couple of points for you there, love.
	They're not going to be married, like you are self-evidently not married.
	Because your husband, unless he was an insane feminist like you, would say, listen, your sons don't want to see you naked, and when they're older, they're going to regret seeing you naked, because those memories probably aren't going to fade.
	Also, no, they're not ever, ever going to mean it when they lie to their wives and say your fat thighs are perfect.
	They're just not.
	Unless, of course, your chubby chaser indoctrination is successful.
	I cannot describe how thankful I am that my mum was sane.
	I'm sure she's doing this because posing naked is one of the ultimate feminist acts.
	Except for when men are enjoying it.
	Of course, the body is a feminist issue if ever there was one, and the struggle to own it is never ending.
	Again, they write like they're fucking children.
	It really throws me off just the complete lack of professionalism.
	I first posed nude in my twenties.
	What a surprise.
	When it seemed important to me to explore the meaning of nakedness.
	Oi, idiot, it means not wearing clothes.
	Is it really that hard?
	As a young woman, I was acutely aware of the vulnerability of the unclothed female body.
	A naked woman might be decorative, stretched out on a chase lounge.
	Although I mean, maybe it's a chase long, I don't know what a chase long is, I assume it was lounge, in high art, but she might also be a potential victim of male violence.
	Yes, she might be anything.
	Might.
	For a time, I looked at men's magazines, which appear to be the only source of representation of women's naked bodies, but all I found were pictures taken for the pleasure of male readers.
	Don't worry, you can probably start filling these male magazines of pictures of their fucking mothers.
	So I decided to pose nude to see what it felt like.
	Could I take off all my clothes and feel not just unembarrassed but powerful?
	It was surprisingly easy.
	Perhaps because I was reading so much feminist material and I felt as if I was throwing off years of conditioning.
	I think it's because all you have to do is stand there naked.
	That's not a difficult job.
	I didn't do it for the publication or any reason other than curiosity, but I think it's one of the reasons I've escaped all the body anxiety that was so common among women of all ages.
	May well be.
	Who knows what kind of madness goes on in the minds of feminists?
	Of course, there is another factor to consider here.
	On the one hand, commercial porn and page three push images of women that are passive and degrading.
	On the other, reactionary religious leaders tell women they have to cover up.
	Somewhere in between, ordinary women and celebrities alike struggle to feel okay about themselves, worrying about showing too little or too much.
	Stealing intimate, private pictures is a new front on this battle, but the women have nothing to be ashamed of.
	Posing nude, in my experience, is one of the ultimate feminist acts unless you're doing it for the pleasure of a man, in which case, it is passive and degrading.
	Seriously, this woman is the stupidest woman so far.
	The other one was just crazy.
	This woman is saying, well, when I do it, it's empowering, but when you do it, it's degrading.
	You idiot.
	How do you know that these women simply wouldn't turn around and say, actually, I find it empowering too.
	You know what?
	I'm not pissed off enough yet.
	The little boy who started a sex change aged 8 because he and his coincidentally lesbian parents knew he always wanted to be a girl.
	The lesbian parents of an 11-year-old boy who was undergoing the process of becoming a girl last night defended the decision.
	Surprise, surprise, claiming it was better for the child to have a sex change when young.
	No, it's mind-bogglingly abusive for you to help your child to have a sex change before they've even hit puberty.
	But let's continue.
	The three mothers say that one of the first things Thomas told them when he learned sign language aged three because of a speech impediment.
	I'm not sure that three-year-olds have speech impediments.
	I think that the problem is that they are still learning to talk.
	And even if a three-year-old says, I am a girl, that doesn't necessarily mean they know they are actually a girl in a boy's body.
	But apparently at age 7, after threatening genital mutilation on himself, psychiatrists diagnosed Thomas with a severe case of having batshit crazy gender ideologue parents.
	Oh, sorry, I mean gender identity disorder.
	By the age of eight, he began transitioning.
	Yeah, of course, because an eight-year-old is absolutely in a position to make an informed decision on such a thing.
	This summer, he started taking hormone-blocking drugs, which I imagine he got up out of his chair, left school early, went to the doctor and said, look, Doc, I'm having a real problem with my cock.
	I'm just, I'm not a man.
	I'm not a man yet, and I don't really feel like I'm going to be a man.
	And I really think that I actually want to grow up to be a woman because I know exactly what I'm talking about.
	And this has nothing to do with my lesbian parents.
	The hormone suppressant, implanted in his upper left arm, postponed the 11-year-old developing broad shoulders, deep voice, and facial hair.
	The couple faced intense criticism from friends and family as a result.
	No way.
	I can't believe they weren't all wildly supportive of you abusing your adopted child.
	Everybody was angry with us.
	How could you be doing this?
	You might be ruining his whole life.
	But they don't give a fuck.
	Citing a statistic from the Youth Suicide Prevention Programme, oh, statistics, I like statistics, they apply to everyone.
	Miss Marino noted that over 50% of transgender youth will have at least one suicide attempt by the 20th birthday, which means he must definitely have a suicide attempt before his 20th birthday, and therefore the only logical thing to do is turn him into a girl before he's even old enough to legally have sex.
	He favoured headbands to baseball bats and picked out bras and dresses to start wearing when given the choice and clothing to wear.
	I'm sure.
	And the change in his personality, Ms. Marino says, was instant.
	He was in his own world just completely detached.
	And that was a problem we always had was getting Thomas to participate in life, she said.
	What we saw emerge when Tammy was allowed to be Tammy is whoa.
	It was an immediate transformation.
	She was so giggly and was now interacting.
	She was now making it a point to defend herself.
	I can see what they mean.
	That kid is clearly incredibly outgoing and confident.
	Really happy with the way her life is going.
	And those two old, fat, unattractive lesbians who have got the haughtiest, snootiest, goddamn air I've ever seen, they had no part to play in this decision.
	Not even a little bit.
	We swear, Your Honour, but for some reason, they don't interview Tammy.
	The diagnosis has been hard to accept for Tammy's parents.
	The couple were married in 1990 by a rabbi and have two older sons and grandchildren, but they insist their sexuality has nothing to do with it.
	It was odd to us, she said.
	Even though she has lesbians as parents, this is all new to us in every possible way.
	We'd never heard of transgender people.
	We have no idea what you're talking about.
	We know what it's like to feel different.
	We've got that one.
	But to feel like you're not in the right body was something we could not put our heads around.
	Yep, just no idea.
	Just, I mean, when would they ever have any experience with transgender people?
	Fortunately, the family has a vast support system.
	The couple credits Tammy's teachers and officials at the Children's Learning Center in Alameda, California, and their religious community for being open-minded about their son's decision.
	We live in the Bay Area, where lots of alternative lifestyles are in place.
	Oh, so you do know exactly all about this, and what a fucking coincidence that you live in the Bay Area.
	We belong to a religious community that's incredibly supportive.
	They make a point when we're in synagogue to come over and tell Tammy, oh, you look so pretty today, adding, there's never going to be enough gratitude for them.
	I bet.
	San Francisco, right by Berkeley, is one of the four cities in the United States with a hospital that has a program for transgender children.
	What a marvellous coincidence!
	The University of California, San Francisco, is home to the Centre of Excellence for Transgender Health.
	Amazing!
	These coincidences just keep piling up.
	What fortunate, fortunate child Tammy is.
	Children are seen at length by mental health professionals and then treated by pediatric endocrinologists.
	I am absolutely sure they are.
	I am absolutely certain that this is happening.
	And I'm certain that this is all a giant fucking surprise for her lesbian parents.
	Good God, these people should be in jail.
	I am fine with this kid wanting to be a girl, if they really want to be a girl.
	But I am not fine with it happening when the kid is a child.
	They cannot give informed consent on almost anything.
	Certainly not having a transgender operation.
	Bloody hell.
	Just think back to the stupid shit you thought as a kid.
	And imagine if that stupid shit affected the rest of your life in such a dramatic way.
	Would you have wanted the adults in your life going along with it without any kind of oversight by someone with half a brain?
	It's unfair to just say this degeneracy is going on in the Western world because Egyptian feminists bleed and shit on ISIS flag to protest misogynist Islamic state.
	You don't have to protest something everyone is already against.
	You absolute morons.
	Egyptian mental patient Alia Magda Elmadi and an unnamed collaborator have made an incredibly bold statement against the Islamic State.
	This past Saturday, the exiled Elmadi, probably exiled because she's clearly a threat to the decency of everyone else around the world posted her most daring and controversial photo yet.
	She is seen squatting over a black ISIS banner which reads There is no god but Allah.
	Elmadi is menstruating onto the flag while a second woman dressed in an Islamic veil simultaneously defecates on it while giving a middle finger to the camera in a new high for feminist achievement and artistic expression.
	Dropping eggs of paint out of your vagina is so passe And like all of these feminists, the attempt at a sincere look that they always give just makes them look like they are desperately looking for a purpose in life.
	They look absolutely insane.
	Jesus Christ, I cannot believe how beyond the pale these people are.
	El Mahdi did not specify why she posted the photo, because I imagine she has absolutely no idea what's compelling her to do this.
	Though past controversies, such as a 2011 incident in which she posed in only stockings and red shoes for her blog, to protest against Egypt's conservative culture, suggest that she is opposing the Islamic State terror group's brutally restrictive, misogynistic ideology.
	Well, if there's any way of convincing conservative Egyptian Muslims and ISIS radical terrorists that feminism is actually a great and grand thing, I don't think it's shitting and menstruating onto a flag, no matter whose flag it is.
	I rather think that's probably going to entrench them further into their belief that feminism turns women mental.
	I really think you're doing more harm than good.
	Also, I can't help but notice how little effort it must have been to arrange this art piece.
	The Germans are taking notes from the Scots and declaring independence from the United States.
	The majority of German citizens, for the first time in history, insist on less dependence on the United States in terms of their national security and diplomacy.
	For the first time in history, in history, I'm sure that Bismarck was just like, thank God the Americans are protecting us from France.
	The US and Germany have been at odds in a spying row ever since Edward Snowden's National Security Agency revelations in June 2013.
	In October, it was revealed that the NSA had been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's calls since 2002.
	A German parliamentary committee has since been holding hearings on the NSA spying activities in Germany.
	Seriously, Americans, you need to get your government under control.
	You are alienating all of your allies.
	In response to the espionage scandal, Germany promptly expelled the Berlin CIA chief.
	German government officials readily acknowledge that anti-Americanism, fuelled by these revelations of NSA's spying activities in Europe, plays a significant role on how the public perceives the Ukraine crisis, and has bred reluctance among many Germans to side with the US.
	But don't worry though, Americans, the favourability of the United States and Germany has dropped from 68% in 2013 to 58% this year.
	However, at the same time, 70% of respondents are viewing Russia unfavourably.
	That's right, the Germans have realised that they're trapped between two giant assholes.
	But the thing is, Russia hasn't really done anything to Germany that Germany didn't totally deserve.
	I know, I know, oh, you keep defending Russia.
	But there's a good reason that these things happen.
	The Russians didn't declare war on Germany and then go and storm Berlin because they're a bunch of ass goblins.
	All this talk of independence has been what's probably caused women, but most likely I think feminists, to basically declare independence from men.
	What if men weren't allowed on Facebook?
	The internet is an egalitarian wonderland, which is clearly why the feminists hate it so much.
	Where women are free to voice their opinions, dodge rape gifts, meet new people, field rape threats, forge communities, and get asked to show strangers their boobs.
	Tim Berners-Lee, what have you done?
	How could you not know that one day women would look at the internet and go, you know what, men shouldn't be allowed to use this.
	I don't care if they built it, I don't care if they built Facebook, they shouldn't be allowed to use any of it.
	And can you, Adam and fucking Eve it?
	Surprise, surprise, women.com, the social network for women, was developed by two men.
	Please attempt to suspend your disbelief for just a moment.
	I swear to God, I'm not making this up.
	Women.com is a new echo chamber, exclusively for women, that is currently testing that premise.
	launched by former facebook employee susan johnson launched not developed by women dot com is a social network that encourages women to pose questions to the community Currently queries range from, how do I get paid what I'm worth?
	Which is an easy question to answer, because the answer is, you already do.
	You're just not worth that much.
	To bra or no, brah.
	Tackling the really deep and tricky questions that humanity has been asking for millennia.
	Upvote the most relevant answers, and if all goes according to plan, engage in the kind of brain-mashing sycophancy that only groupthink can really provide.
	So what are women talking about on women.com that you don't see them talking about on sites like Facebook?
	Susan, the internet has traditionally not been a very safe space for women to speak their minds, presumably because more logical people turn around and say that's a stupid thing to say.
	Women dominate all these social platforms online, with 58% of Facebook and 84% of Pinterest, but our offline conversations aren't matching our online conversations.
	If you look at a conversation in real life that's just women, there's something really special about that specific interaction.
	Remember that special is a term that has many connotations.
	The same is true for men.
	If there's a group of all guys, the tone and cadence of the conversation is just different with one specific gender, which is true.
	But most sites now are not encouraging women to interact in a really well-lit, positive manner.
	A lot of comment sections are hidden below the fold or overrun with trolling comments.
	I think it's official now.
	Trolling has literally just come to mean someone who disagrees with you.
	On Facebook, we're talking with seemingly everyone, so we're not necessarily sharing our thoughts on the Middle East, or even what we bought at Nordstrom.
	I can only imagine what their conversations about the Middle East are like.
	I found someone else's burqa in my husband's car.
	Should I confront him about it, or should I go and report him to the Mutaween?
	Today's main question was really interesting.
	My friend's husband is cheating, do I say something?
	Called it.
	I don't think anyone would ever post that on Facebook.
	Of course they fucking would.
	It's a true dilemma.
	Yes, however could it be solved?
	If only you could find the answer to this question, humanity's problems would just be over.
	You can Google that stuff, and Yahoo answers will be your only result, and you won't know who you're talking to, and the answer will be somewhat illiterate.
	The answer will be illiterate, not the person reading the answer.
	Or the question about how to raise a daughter who respects herself.
	What, you mean the sort of daughter who parades around naked in front of her children, or takes photos of herself menstruating and shitting on the flag of a terrorist state?
	I have no idea.
	How can you ever get answers to these questions?
	You can ask that on Facebook, but you won't get access to this larger community of women with experience.
	Honestly, women, don't join this.
	You're going to end up in an echo chamber of idiots, giving you idiot opinions that bear no resemblance to reality.
	Why we build a site around questions?
	I found them to be the basic foundation of a lot of great conversations I've had with my female friends.
	We're sharing stories, but we're also asking questions about things that happened in our lives.
	From our relationships to our politics to the face cream we're using at night.
	In true internet fashion, we launched a minimal viable product to see if the idea could get traction and take hold.
	But as the site evolves, we hope to see women starting conversations about articles they find interesting, or events they want to create, or books they're reading, and want to share with the greater community, and forming micro-communities around different topics that interest them.
	But they're not ever, ever going to build anything, or create anything from scratch themselves.
	Slate.
	There's one problem that's endemic to every community of women that's ever existed, so apologies if you can't solve it, is that while these communities start off with a goal of positivity, it's not always possible to be both positive and honest, because being honest can mean criticising other women.
	How will women.com deal with that?
	Are you fucking joking?
	You are literally saying that groups of women only lie to each other because they cannot take honest criticism.
	Let's see what they say.
	There's a difference between being mean and engaging in productive criticism, and we hope to err on the latter side.
	Yeah, women are famous for not being bitchy.
	Community management is very important to us, and that means giving tools to the community members themselves to report and flag specific kinds of content, trigger warning, as well as using technical means to get rid of really bad users.
	Are you expecting women to be trolls on this?
	This isn't going to end well, is it?
	We don't want hate speech or socially negative material on the site, but it's not all on us.
	It's on every woman who's in here to make sure that it's a home that feels good for everyone, because ultimately, feeling good for everyone is the most important thing about it.
	We take our invitation strategy really seriously.
	The initial early adopters of women.com will invite their friends in, and you don't want to embarrass your friend.
	You're also linked to your Facebook profile, so people kind of know who you are.
	We hope that this will set the bar much higher coming in.
	From there, it's just a matter of maintenance.
	I tell you what, if any women do go and join this, please do let me know what it's like.
	I would love to see some screencaps or just some descriptions of the environment that you find yourself in.
	Continuing the gender apartheid, taxi is exclusively for women coming soon to New York.
	A new library service starting September 16th in New York City, Westchester County and Long Island will offer female drivers exclusively for female riders, according to its founder.
	It will take requests for rides through an app and dispatch drivers sporting pink Pashmina scarves.
	The service will be called She Taxis.
	She rides in New York City because regulations barring it from using taxi in its name because it's gender focused.
	And aims to serve women who may feel uncomfortable being driven by men or who simply prefer the company of other women.
	The app will ask potential riders if there is a woman in their party.
	If not, they will automatically be redirected to other car services.
	You know what?
	Fine, just that's fine.
	I would really like it if women could just declare their own independent state somewhere.
	And these gender ideologues who are obsessed with their fucking genitals can just move there and they can live in their female paradise.
	Doesn't stop there though.
	Pink girl zones?
	This is what one PR company thinks Britain's roads should look like.
	That's brilliant.
	That's a normal road with a pink overpass that's only for women.
	I can't describe how entitled the people who made this must be.
	And for them just to not get laughed out of the fucking room after they proposed it.
	If women ruled the world, this is what London's roads would look like or something.
	One misguided insurance company has put forward the idea of pink lanes, female-only flyovers, so women can soar over busy roads and nip ahead of that early morning rush hour traffic.
	Another shows how a gender-separated lane would apparently allow women to freely zip along the motorway without fear of male drivers getting in the way, presumably as the battle for equality sits on the hard shoulder calling breakdown recovery.
	I'm glad this article is mocking the idea so I don't have to.
	The company claims the mocked-up images would remove them from a potentially dangerous environment.
	Albeit it's being a futuristic concept, or absurd, I think is the word you're looking for.
	The proposals hopefully aren't entirely serious, but Sheila's Wheels spokesperson claims the company is serious about creating a safer road network for female drivers, and we believe a discussion about how best to achieve this is long overdue.
	Helpfully, the company has also done the maths after looking at road safety data and claims that implementing pink zones would cost Britain a mere £880 million.
	I imagine that women will be donning their work clothes and getting out their tools as we speak, and these women workers will be funded by all those women who are going to cough up all this cash to pay for this.
	But what are men going to do when the women have seceded from them and they don't want to know them anymore?
	Obviously they're going to invent misogynist things, like fetuses and artificial wombs, medical marvel or misogynist malpractice.
	I don't know, Paula Major, why don't you tell me?
	Is this misogynist?
	I think it probably is, isn't it?
	Reproductive Health and Social Justice's Soraya Chemele wrote about the developments by two leading scientists in the ectogenesis field.
	In Japan, Yoshinoro Kuro of Wherever University successfully nurtured goat embryos in a machine filled with amniotic fluid, while Helen Hung Ching of Cornell University's Reproductive Endocreme Laboratory at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility grew a mouse embryo in an artificial womb in 2003 and kept a human embryo alive for 10 days in 2011.
	Current legislation halts research projects involving human embryos after 14 days, so it will be a while, at least a decade, according to Istvan, before ectogenesis research can fully gestate human embryos.
	Although it holds the potential to be an efficient and occasionally life-saving procedure, ectogenesis is already sparked a debate.
	Is humans still applicable if embryos are not technically bred of a human womb?
	Yes.
	What about mother?
	There wouldn't be a mother.
	Or at least, you know, there would be a biological mother.
	Istvan notes that the most prevalent philosophical issue driving ectogenesis is that it will shift perceptions of women in society.
	Oh, don't worry, Istvan.
	These women are doing a great job of shifting the perceptions of women in society without your help.
	Will the feminine mystique be lost by such an artificial process replacing what's long been a mainstay of the female domain?
	Mate, there is no feminine mystique anymore when you have women exposing themselves all over every kind of media.
	The feminine mystique is gone, man.
	The feminists have already destroyed the feminine mystique for you.
	You really don't need to worry about that.
	The question has caused a rift between leading scientists and feminist propagandists, I mean scholars, who state that ectogenesis could hand over women's sacred birthing ability to science.
	In her book, The Captured Womb, A History of the Medical Care of Pregnant Women, Anne Oakley claims that ectogenesis encourages long-standing misogynistic medical practices.
	Hang on!
	Long-standing, misogynistic medical practices.
	Name one!
	Name one long-standing misogynistic medical practice!
	How can a medical practice hate women?
	Medicine is about the saving of human beings' lives and improving their health.
	How can it be misogynist?
	Now, okay, it's bound to be.
	Of course it's misogynistic.
	There are men doing it.
	Appropriating women's wombs for science's sake.
	I bet if they said, you know what, we can actually create human sperm in the lab now, you guys would be like, fucking finally!
	Ectogenesis is problematic for the socially conservative and religious too.
	Journalist and Green Mountain College professor John Nassivera wrote in America, the National Catholic Review, I'm expecting some words of wisdom out of that, that depriving a growing fetus from the intimacy of its mother's body is a very serious thing.
	Well, I actually agree with that.
	I think that this isn't something that should be taken lightly.
	And honestly, is this really where we want to go?
	Is this the sort of Jurassic Park theory that we're using?
	It's like, well, it's possible, therefore we must do it.
	I mean, is there ever going to be a time when we go, you know what, do we need this?
	I mean, do we need artificial wombs to make human beings in?
	Aren't there enough human beings that are coming out of real wombs to go around at the moment?
	I don't really have an opinion on this, really, but I just, it's so freakish.
	I just kind of want to be like, you know, let's just, let's just not.
	We don't need to do this.
	And if there ever comes a time where we do need to do it, then we can research it.
	But it's not all smiles and sunshine for the Christians, as California derecognised Christian ministry for requiring leaders to be Christian.
	California, we need to have a conversation.
	You guys have gone fucking insane.
	You are mental.
	You are seriously deranged.
	There is something wrong with your brains when you're looking at the text on the page and going, well, I'm not sure that this Christian ministry should be allowed to require their leaders be Christians.
	That seems unreasonable.
	That seems like the sort of thing we should actually probably have laws against.
	That you have laws against such things is stupid.
	Stupid beyond all belief.
	But let's get into this.
	California's state university school system has derecognized the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship on discriminatory grounds for requiring that the group leaders be Christian.
	The CSU system, the largest university system in America, with 450,000 students, has refused to grant an exemption for a 2012 anti-discrimination policy that requires all recognized student groups open leadership roles to all students.
	This new CSU policy does not allow us to require that our leaders be Christian, Intervarsity said in an article addressing California State University System policy conflict with Intervarsity's doctrinal basis.
	While we applaud inclusivity, hell, who doesn't?
	We believe that faith-based communities like ours can only be led by people who clearly affirm historic Christian doctrine.
	You bigots.
	CSU's policy states that student organisations Shall deliver to the Vice President for Student Affairs his/slash/her designist a statement signed by the President or similar officer for the local student organisation attesting that the organisation is nothing but fucking word salad and has no rules or policies that discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, colour, age, gender, marital status, citizenship, sexual orientation, or disability.
	I know you think that sounds like a good thing.
	And it is, for most things.
	But when you're talking about a religious organisation, remember that I'm not religious and I wouldn't ever join a religious organisation.
	I just support their rights to have religious organisations if that is what they choose, as long as they leave everyone else, and in this case children, alone.
	But when you have this, it ends up becoming stupid.
	Following the same logic, any group that insists on requiring its leaders to follow an agreed-upon set of guiding beliefs is no longer kosher, irony intended, at California State Universities, wrote Christianity Today's Ed Setzer.
	This will impact many other faith-based organisations with actual, well, faith-based beliefs.
	Presumably, even people for the ethical treatment of animals would have to allow Oscar Meyer to lead their campus chapters.
	It's a good point.
	Because the people who write this are so progressive as to be fucking retarded.
	The extreme left has lost its mind, and it seems to have gone power crazy, and doesn't realise that it is literally turning into a totalitarian mindset.
	I am fine with Christian organisations having Christian-only leaders.
	I am fine with people having private clubs that other people just aren't invited to, including me!
	I don't expect to be invited or allowed into some people's private clubs, and that's just But it's all terrible for Zoe Quinn.
	Misogyny, death threats, and a mob of people who disagree with her, inside the dark world of video games, with Zoe Quinn, the target of Gamergate.
	She's not, but okay.
	Video games developer, no inverted commas there, which I really think there should be, opens up to Radhika Sangani, or whatever, about how her alleged sex life triggered Gamergate.
	It did, and it wasn't alleged, was it?
	Let's be fair, it wasn't alleged.
	Admittedly, she hasn't been convicted in a court of law, but I think we can all agree she probably did do these things.
	A vile, hate-filled online campaign against her.
	No, not against her, but never mind.
	And what it's really like to be working as a woman in the field.
	There are plenty of women working in the field who aren't just degenerates.
	I don't know how else to say it.
	Who aren't immoral, degenerate scums.
	Zoe Quinn was recently the victim of a spiteful attack by an ex-boyfriend.
	Yeah.
	Why did he do it?
	He had no reason.
	He published a blog post naming a list of men she had allegedly slept with.
	No.
	She admitted to him that she had slept with them.
	And when he said, this is really upsetting me, all she said was, I think I'm going to be sick because she's insanely self-centered.
	A number of whom are video games journalists.
	Quinn, I should point out, is a video games developer.
	But you're not concerned about the ethical quandary that this presents, are you?
	The hashtag Gamergate is being used by some video game fans around the world, known as gamers, or terrorists, to troll Quinn.
	See, troll, it just means to disagree with or dislike.
	And a number of other women in the games industry.
	A quick glance at Twitter shows a number of misogynistic, sexist, and pretty shocking comments coming under this hashtag.
	Bollocks does it.
	But let's continue.
	They're just going after women, which presumably explains why Phil Fish flounced out of gaming.
	I can't go home because they have been posting around my home address, often with threats attached to it, says Quinn.
	My dad gets phone calls screaming his daughter's a whore and her dad's just like, look man, I know.
	They harass him and it's been recovering from a heart attack.
	I fear for him.
	I imagine he saw the photos that she was selling online of her naked body.
	And you know what?
	I'm actually not judgmental about that.
	If she wants to sell photos of herself naked, go ahead.
	Don't just sit there and say that she is a victim of revenge porn.
	No, she's not.
	She was just selling pictures of her own body.
	But trolling women is not what gamers claim that Gamergate is all about.
	They feel that Quinn's alleged sex life proves a questionable relationship between journalists and developers.
	To them, this is an issue of journalistic integrity and ethics.
	Gamergate is the hashtag they say that they're using to have a worthwhile conversation.
	Quinn obviously disagrees.
	They're attempting to hide their hatred of women behind a smokescreen.
	It's so thinly veiled.
	They claim to care about ethics and journalistic integrity, but the only people they have been going after are women.
	Bull shit, Quinn.
	You are full of bullshit.
	They don't speak about major game developers whining and dining journalists.
	Hey, Quinn, if you've got some fucking information that we could have from you, that might actually be the thing you could use to redeem yourself.
	You fucking moron!
	But more specifically, the current conversation is all about who Quinn has kissed.
	No, it's about who she fucked, but that was just the trigger.
	It's gone way beyond that now.
	But she refuses to comment either way on allegations made against her.
	You mean her admitting in text chats to her ex-boyfriend of who she fucked.
	She tells me that for two and a half years, she has been working in the games industry.
	She is she is a working girl.
	She has experienced a huge amount of sexism.
	At professional developing events, people ask if she's an enthusiast or a student.
	So?
	In actual fact, her award-winning game, Brilliant, The Depression Quest, has a million players.
	A million people looking at this thinking, what the fuck?
	And contrary to what people assume, she did all the coding herself.
	Well fucking done, Quinn.
	As a developer myself, I can tell you that that is a feat.
	I think it was that you managed to get strikethrough text on it that I was most impressed about.
	Actually, to be fair, I did actually like that aspect of Depression Quest.
	I really did find that to be quite informative about the pressure and concept of having depression.
	You know what you have to do, but for some reason you can do it.
	Didn't explain anything else about it.
	Didn't explain why you couldn't do these things.
	But that actually was a pretty decent mechanic.
	But still, it's really not a coding achievement.
	Her advice would be to stop using a hashtag that originates in hatred and a misogynistic campaign against a couple of developers and journalists who are women.
	Well, it doesn't, so we won't.
	And instead, she suggests they use another hashtag such as hashtag game ethics, which raises those same issues without the misogyny and sexism of Gamergate, and allows them to regain control of the narrative.
	I do not recommend anyone uses this hashtag of game ethics, because that is playing into their hands.
	They have lost control, and they should not regain it.
	But of course, other hashtags have been springing up that are less neutral than game ethics.
	One example is Not Your Shield, a hashtag that people of minorities are using to say they also agree with Gamergate.
	Let's ask Quinn what she thinks about that.
	Quinn thinks this is faulty as hell, especially as she is convinced by many of the Twitter accounts using Not Your Shield are false and started by online communities such as 4chan.
	They're essentially saying that you're a minority, you can't be shitty to other minorities.
	The whole thing is pretty freaking gross.
	Listen, dip shit, I'll tell you what's pretty freaking gross.
	You, your face, your fucking photos, your attitude towards gaming and the gaming community, and the fact that you think you can dismiss everyone coming out against you, as even, you know, like the people of colour and the minorities that you purport to represent and say that they are literally sock puppets and don't fucking exist.
	That is pretty freaking gross.
	I'm not quitting.
	As with Gamergate, she thinks that well-meaning people have now started using the hashtag without really understanding where it came from and all its connotations.
	Don't worry, almost everyone understands exactly what's going on here, apart from you and your side.
	She feels for them, but she also feels for the trolls, who are sending her nasty messages and threats.
	I'm sad for them, frustrated.
	The worst part is people I love are getting hurt because of this.
	Watching my friends still stand up for me and get smacked down aggressively for having my back is a hard thing to carry.
	I just want to move on.
	Now every time I go to a game event or have a publicized speaking event, I have to look over my shoulder.
	Everything that has happened sucks.
	I just wanted to make video games.
	It's frustrating, but I love what I do.
	I refuse to let these people win and run another woman out.
	I have the ability to carry on, and I will.
	Let's just hope her trolls don't have the same tenacity, and that Gamergate will come to a quick and well-deserved end.

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