Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (05⧸10⧸2014)

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Oct. 5, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

19:57

This Week in Stupid (05⧸10⧸2014)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 5th of October 2014.
	This week we have a very special patriarchy in action episode, beginning with My Boyfriend Lives in a Dumpster.
	Don't worry, this one isn't actually as stupid as it sounds.
	Jeff is a science professor and university dean and is leading a year-long social experiment in which a team of students, engineers and designers are converting a used dumpster into a high-tech, sustainable home in order to test the extreme limits of what one needs for a good life.
	Despite doing a test to see how small a space human beings can reasonably live in, Jeff doesn't expect anyone else to live in a dumpster, and he's the first to admit that there's a clear element of spectacle that comes with converting a trash can into a mini domicile.
	But spectacle is kind of the point.
	After years of teaching undergraduate science courses, Jeff realised that he was bored stiff with rote curriculum, and if he was bored, what were the students?
	I'd like to congratulate Jeff on his complete inability to distinguish himself from his students.
	He seems to completely miss that his students haven't seen his curriculum as many times as he has.
	Each individual student has only been through it once.
	But it is about forcing students to think about some really inane things.
	And it works.
	Students and onlookers start with basic problem solving, if you can believe that.
	Where would you pee?
	Where do you get water?
	How do you generate energy?
	What happens when it's 102 degrees outside and it's 130 degrees inside?
	Well, I have to say, I live in a part of the world where the problem is what happens when it's minus 5 degrees Celsius outside and it's minus 7 degrees Celsius in your dumpster.
	But a few weeks after he moved into the dumpster, it became obvious that his girlfriend's place was no longer a shared habitat.
	For Jeff, my house now poses a threat to the scientific rigour of his experiment with running water, gas-powered stove, and fluffy queen-sized bed.
	Yes, it does.
	He shouldn't be going there at all.
	When he comes over, he feels guilty, almost like he's cheating.
	Ah, fuck it.
	Bias is good.
	Impartiality is impossible.
	Ignorance is strength.
	We have the occasional dinner at my kitchen table, and every now and then a student takes his shift in the dumpster, giving him a night off at my place.
	Scientific rigour.
	There we go, that's what I like to see.
	Very scientific.
	But then, he acts as a temporary guest checking into a hotel.
	Well, it is the least he could do.
	After he says goodbye and walks out the door, there's no trace he was ever there, not even a spare toothbrush in the bathroom.
	I'm really not sure why Jeff's experiment is continuing though, because at 6 foot 1, Jeff can only sleep diagonally across the 6x6 dumpster floor.
	People who are taller than their space is wide probably shouldn't be living in that space.
	But I'm no scientist, so when you finish sleeping at your girlfriend's place every now and again, Jeff, do tell us what the results of your rigorous scientific testing are.
	In other patriarchal news, women-only train carriages could be introduced for the UK.
	The idea that could help combat the problem of sexual assault on public transport.
	I use public transport quite often, and while I have yet to experience, or partake, or even hear of a sexual assault happening on public transport, I'm more than willing to take it on faith that they happen all the time.
	So often, in fact, that gender-segregated carriages are definitely something that is needed.
	Parliamentary Undersecretary for Transport Claire Perry said that women-only carriages already existed in Japan because there is a particular problem with groping and low-level violence.
	In Japan, and British culture is extremely analogous to Japanese culture.
	As well as Japan, a number of other countries, including Thailand, Brazil, Iran, and Mexico, already provide women-only cars on some trains.
	These countries are all completely similar to modern Britain.
	But this is not a new concept, as the UK historically had women-only train carriages until 1977.
	What was happening in the 70s that caused them to get rid of the train carriages for women?
	I imagine that's when the patriarchy was fully instituted, and it was nothing to do with women's lib.
	According to British Transport Police, there were 1,117 incidents of sexual offences on public transport.
	What they don't tell us is just how much public transports took place in that time period.
	But the idea seems like it could help reduce the number of assaults, specifically against women on trains, because if there's one type of people we care about more than anyone, it's women.
	Safe spaces like this acknowledge that there is a problem faced by a group, no?
	A demographic, you idiots.
	And to help reduce some of the dangers associated with that, whether it be homophobia, racism, or indeed sexual assault.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Are you saying that we're going to have gay-only carriages, black-only carriages, and women-only carriages?
	Because I'm starting to see why this line of thought might end up being a bad idea in practice.
	However, as with the nail varnish that changes colour when exposed to date rape drugs, women-only train carriages do not combat the root cause root, as in a route that a car would drive along, not the root of a tree.
	These articles are written by fucking children.
	The root cause of sexual assault.
	This idea does not address assault that isn't committed by men against women.
	And what about on buses?
	I don't know, maybe we should have it so that women have to sit at the back of the bus.
	But the thing is, we're probably not being told the truth anyway.
	Because in annual statistics, most colleges claim zero reported sex offences.
	It would be an insult to anyone possessing the tiniest flicker of intelligence to suggest that, in a 12-month period on college campus, no student had reported to any campus employee that he or she had been the victim of a forcible sex offence.
	Of course.
	Because whether they report it or not doesn't matter.
	What matters is that rape on college campuses is at epidemic proportions and all of the effort that we're going through to prevent it is having no effect, regardless of what the statistics say.
	Also, if the rapes aren't reported, how else can they know about them?
	But obviously, it's the patriarchy, which says a lot about the staff of the Department of Education, because they're scumbags.
	Because every October, most of the around 11,000 higher education institutions in the country file reports saying just that, and the Department, which is tasked with enforcing the law that requires this reporting, does nothing.
	The annual crime report is one of the key provisions of the Clary Act, a law designed to help students protect themselves by providing information about crime on campus.
	You see, that's victim blaming.
	Institutions receiving federal education funding must submit the total numbers of reported violent crimes on campus each year, and obviously they flat lie about them.
	And I'm not even joking when I say they think this would be great if the reports themselves weren't mostly a collection of outrageous lies rubber stamped by the Department of Education.
	Because a gender ideologue has a goal in mind, and if the facts don't fit that goal, the facts are false.
	And all of the people involved are fucking liars who are dedicated to protecting the patriarchy at any and all costs.
	The Student Press Law Centre and the Columbus Dispatch recently completed an audit of the last 12 years of these reports for all the colleges in the United States.
	The result?
	Every year the majority of schools tell the Department of Education they've received zero reports of forcible sex offences.
	And we're talking about reports to non-clergy, non-councillor staff members, not just law enforcement.
	Well, you know what?
	Maybe they are lying.
	Maybe they're full of shit.
	Maybe they don't keep records.
	Maybe they just don't care.
	Maybe they're bad people.
	In fact, why am I saying maybe?
	So either one of two things is true.
	Either these schools are outright lying through their collective teeth, or the schools are working very hard not to find victims on their campuses.
	Because if there's one assumption we know is true, it's that the amount of rape that happens on college campuses is of epidemic proportions.
	So if the results don't find that there is an epidemic of rape on college campuses, someone's fucking lying.
	So why doesn't the Department of Education audit some of the schools reporting zeros?
	Which again is most of them.
	I'm guessing patriarchal conspiracy.
	If you pick a random number between 1,000 and 11,000 and count how many names down the list of universities, the odds are in your favour that you will find one that claims to have heard of no sexual assaults whatsoever.
	Well, obviously they're lying, so what's their excuse?
	Well, they say it's not their job.
	Jim Moore, the Department of Education official in charge of these statistics, defends them by saying, We encourage people to use the Clary Act as a starting point, Moore said.
	But if ultimately, the annual Clary numbers are so unreliable that a student looking for safety information But if, ultimately, the annual Clary numbers are so unreliable that a student looking for safety information is expected to do HER own research thereafter, what is the annual report even for?
	Well I can tell you what the annual report's for.
	It's to placate the psychotic gender ideologues who are obsessed with the idea of rape happening everywhere all the time.
	If the Department of Education does no auditing of any kind on this data until someone makes a complaint, why even have an annual reporting deadline?
	I don't know.
	Maybe they've been pressured into it by certain groups that will remain nameless.
	Perhaps it's the result of an agency rulemaking process that packs a room with lobbyists and representatives of the institutions supposedly to be regulated.
	Perhaps it's the result of too many years of deferring to educational institutions as if they were some kind of mysterious alien world that shouldn't have to answer to our common notions of transparency and decency.
	Well I'm convinced if only there were some feminists in universities I'm sure that they'd be able to make sure that everything in these official statistics was absolutely above board.
	But whatever the cause the result is clear.
	As it exists, the annual statistics in the Clary Act make students slightly less safe by providing a federally mandated and endorsed format for lying about crime.
	If the Obama administration is serious about preventing sexual assault on campus, and we all know how much the Obama administration hates women, it has to start by actually enforcing the minimum requirement that colleges attempt to count the number of students brave enough to speak out about the crimes they've experienced.
	I just want to say I have no idea how many sexual assaults are actually happening on campuses, but I don't think that universities are universally staffed by liars, who are quite happy to cover up any evidence of wrongdoing.
	But we do all know that there is an epidemic of these assaults going on on college campuses, so they must all be complete liars.
	Which is why a curfew for men would probably be good for society.
	Men.
	They're no better than niggers, are they?
	Back in the early 70s, Golda Mir, the then Prime Minister of Israel, was faced with a government cabinet full of men discussing how best to curb a wave of violent rapes.
	The idea of banning women from the streets after dark was floated.
	Mayor made a counter-offer.
	Men are attacking women, she said, not the other way around.
	If there's going to be a curfew, let the men be locked up, and not the women.
	This is a completely reasonable response to any amount of crime.
	It's only the poor people who are stealing from the rich people.
	So why don't we have a curfew on the poor people?
	It makes perfect sense.
	Ultimately, the idea was dismissed as unworkable, but that's not going to stop the gender ideologues.
	Since then, it has been seriously considered by a handful of communities around the world, presumably first world countries.
	This time, it's a city whose name I'm not even going to try and pronounce, in Colombian state of Santanda, that will be taking up Mayor's metaphorical baton.
	Next week, on Thursday, October 9th, a city of just under 600,000 people will experience its first-only women-only night as part of a campaign launched by the state governor's office.
	And with things being so similar to Columbia in America, they probably need one too.
	When it comes to peaceful partying, women are always the best behaved.
	Bars and clubs are being encouraged to host women-only events, while men who have to be out and about in the evening will need to carry a safe conduct permit issued by the mayor's office explaining why they are out during the curfew.
	I imagine it's probably going to say something like, I am an electrician and I am going to fix a problem that's occurred with the lights, or I am a plumber and I am going to fix someone's plumbing system that's broken.
	Any fines that are handed out are likely to be symbolic, however, which I do hope means they won't have to pay them.
	The success of the scheme will rest on whether men choose to go along with the campaign.
	As Beltran conceded, we can only hope that men accept the challenge and stay home, which is far from a certainty because some men don't like being treated like second-class citizens when they've done nothing wrong.
	But those men are card-carrying members of the patriarchy.
	But Susannah Clisby, the director of postgraduate studies at Hull University's School of Social Sciences, doesn't think it'll work.
	I do not think curfews are an effective way to deal with violence against women.
	The best a formal curfew could hope to do is send a message from the state that violence against women is seen as unacceptable and will be taken seriously.
	But unless these will follow through in a whole range of other ways, it's fairly pointless.
	Don't worry, Suzanne.
	It being pointless isn't going to stop anyone from doing it in the slightest.
	To date, it is this flaw that has limited the success of these curfews.
	Yeah, that's the only thing that's done it.
	It's nothing to do with the fact that it turns men into second-class citizens and actually segregates society even further.
	Nothing to do with that.
	It's nothing to do with the fact that it's fucking Orwellian and implies that the state has actually got the right to impose curfews on peaceful law-abiding citizens.
	But they've all been symbolic in nature, and while they may stimulate debate, they have so far failed to make any real difference in preventing gender-based violence in society.
	Perversely, they may even have a negative effect on women and not just men.
	As Clisby put it, it could perpetuate the myth that violence against women is something that only happens at night by strangers.
	Ah, God forbid that that's the myth it perpetuates.
	I don't see a problem with them perpetuating the myth that men are all violent animals that need to be caged in their own homes for fear of hurting anyone else.
	Alison Phipps, the director of gender studies at the University of Sussex, yes, such a thing exists and no, it fucking shouldn't, argues that one of the problems of the curfew is that it sits within the rhetoric that male violence is inevitable and women have to either try to avoid it or be removed from it, which is unhelpful at best.
	The message we need to convey is that men need to behave differently, rather than women and men being separated, in whatever way, for women's protection.
	Yeah, that's exactly the problem.
	There's nothing wrong with what she's just said there.
	And it's here that we can find the positive aspect of male-only curfew nights.
	As a pedagogical tool, it does tend to encourage debate about gender-based violence, but perhaps the efforts and energies could be best channelled into more effective educational campaigns.
	I agree, this is taking way too much time away from the teach men not to rape campaigns.
	We need to look at and challenge the way boys can be gendered into particular forms of hegemonic masculinities that can be damaging for themselves, as well as for women and other people around them, Clisby added.
	Also, we need to look at the way that girls may learn normative constructions of femininities that can leave them vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
	That's right, the only sensible thing to do here is completely destroy gender roles.
	So could we ever see a curfew happening in a country like the UK?
	Phipps suggested we shouldn't hold our breath.
	That's right, Phipps, because you can go and fuck yourself.
	In other news, silence is no longer consent, as California adopts yes means yes sex assault rule.
	Governor Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he has signed a bill that makes California the first in the nation to define when yes means yes and adopt requirements for colleges to follow when investigating sexual assault reports.
	That's right, if there's one thing that everyone probably wants, it's the government telling them when it is they actually did consent and when they didn't.
	I have personally never actually said yes when offered sex, so as you can imagine, I'm in favour of this completely because it turns out I have been raped quite a few times in my life.
	Dr. Leon said that the legislation will begin a paradigm shift in how college campuses in California prevent and investigate sexual assaults, rather than using the refrain, no means no, because that's not the case anymore.
	The definition of consent under the bill requires an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.
	The legislation says silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent.
	Under the bill, someone who is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep cannot grant consent, because apparently there are some fucking morons in California who must have actually argued that someone unconscious, drugged or asleep didn't say no and therefore they must have been in agreement.
	However, lawmakers say consent can be non-verbal, and universities with similar policies have outlined examples, such as a presumably respectful nod of the head, or a moving in closer to the person.
	Advocates for victims of sexual assault supported the change as one that will provide consistency across campuses and challenged the notion that victims must have resisted the assault to have valid complaints.
	You fucking morons.
	No one thinks that if you're incapable of resisting assault, then you don't have a valid claim that you were raped.
	And if there are people like that, then isn't it self-evident that they are cretins of the highest order?
	This is amazing, said Savannah Badlich, a student at UCLA.
	It's going to educate an entire new generation of students on what consent is and what consent is not, and that the absence of a no is not a yes.
	The bill requires training for faculty reviewing complaints, so victims are not asked inappropriate questions when filing complaints, because investigating the circumstances of an alleged rape is patriarchal and must be stopped.
	It probably falls under the banner of hegemonic masculinity.
	When lawmakers were considering the bill, critics said it was overreaching and sends universities into murky legal waters.
	Gordon Finley, an advisor to the National Coalition of Men and some sort of MRA bastard rapist, wrote an editorial asking Brown not to sign the bill.
	He argued that this campus rape crusade bill presumes the guilt of the accused.
	What kind of patriarchal nonsense is that, Gordon?
	Of course men are guilty if they are accused of rape.
	Which is why someone has invented the Good2Go rape app.
	I can't show you their official video about how their app works, which is a shame because it was monumentally retarded.
	It's for a third party to be present and interfering with the events going on.
	So I'll leave you with a description from some local news station.
	And they really do represent quite accurately how it's supposed to work.
	I'm sure you'll agree with me when I say that this rape app is infallible.
	And personally, I can't believe it hadn't been invented sooner.
	Sexual consent?
	There's an app for that.
	It's called Good to Go.
	The app records mutual consent before a couple engages in sexual activity.
	Here's how it works: both parties have to press the Good to Go button at the bottom before anything can happen.
	The other options?
	Yes, but we need to talk, and no thanks.
	If both parties are good to go, it doesn't stop there.
	The app will then ask questions about the sobriety of both people involved.
	They will then have to enter one of four selections: either sober, mildly intoxicated, intoxicated but good to go, or pretty wasted.

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