Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (24⧸05⧸2015)

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May 23, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

22:48

This Week in Stupid (24⧸05⧸2015)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 24th of May 2015.
	Unlike last week, this week we have some very diverse stories.
	First on the chopping block, Boy Scouts ban squirt gun fights and limits size of water balloons to no larger than ping pong balls.
	This is already pathetic.
	So apparently water guns are okay for target shooting, but not for firing at other scouts.
	Apparently, pointing a firearm simulated or otherwise at someone is not kind.
	Apparently, the emphasis on kindness also restricts scouts from pointing rubber band guns at each other and details that water balloons should be small and biodegradable and filled no larger than a ping pong ball.
	It's not going to fucking burst at that size for fuck's sake.
	This is not a new guideline or regulation.
	The BSA's guide to safe scouting allows youth members to use water guns and rubber band guns while shooting at targets but not each other.
	Because they've always been a bunch of fucking killjoys.
	Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Sea Scouts and members of other associated groups are allowed to play paintball or laser tag providing they're shooting at non-living targets that don't resemble humans because they have so little faith in their scouts that they think they may at some point mistake actual humans for range targets and shoot them instead.
	Anyone else remember when it was just like fun to be a kid?
	You know, you could like not worry too much about stuff, play games and have a good time?
	You know, water pistol fights were okay when I went to scouts and I did go to scouts.
	I had like three badges and a fucking dropout, but they weren't illegal.
	Just like sword fighting with rulers wasn't something you had to worry about.
	I love how this is worded.
	An angry mother has hit out after police were called to her son's primary school when he was caught playing Knights and Dragons with a ruler, which he was pretending was a sword.
	Caught playing a game as a kid.
	Can you imagine?
	This nine-year-old kid was in a playground at school when he was spotted waving the ruler around as he played with his two pals and the teachers presumably saw him having fun and thought, well we need to put we need to put a stop to this.
	For reasons unknown, teachers at the school decided to report the incident to the headteacher and you would have thought she would have gone, so what?
	I have real work to do.
	But she didn't.
	Instead, she decided to report this to the fucking police.
	How did that conversation go?
	Excuse me, police.
	There is a nine-year-old in our school playing a game called Knights and Dragons using a ruler as a sword.
	I repeat, he is using a ruler as a sword.
	And the police were like, don't worry, ma'am, barricade yourself in the classrooms, we will be right there.
	Obviously, I'm being facetious.
	The police were like, why would you call us about that?
	You're the head teacher.
	Can you not deal with a nine-year-old waving a ruler about playing a game?
	Except the exact opposite happened and the police agreed that they would come to the school to speak to the child for some fucking reason.
	The mother dealt with this already, not that I personally think there was anything for her to deal with, and I doubt she really did either because she seems like the sane sort.
	And she was like, I don't know what the problem is.
	Why are the police being involved?
	And in the end, she was so upset by this whole thing, she ended up bursting out crying in the headteacher's office.
	Presumably because she was sat there thinking, well, holy shit, the world has gone mad.
	What are they going to do?
	Take my fucking child away.
	But surely, by the time this reached the fucking papers, this has been written off as a giant misunderstanding.
	Everyone involved realised, well, wow, haven't we been silly?
	Worrying about a nine-year-old playing a game with a ruler.
	Or headteacher Geraldine Shackleton might double down on being a fucking moron.
	Sometimes having a gentle conversation with children with parents or guardians present can help young people fully understand the possible consequences of actions they've taken.
	Yet the possible consequences is that all of the adults around you might go fucking nuts and call in the cops despite there being no victims and no fucking crime.
	I am expected to use my judgment and act appropriately to ensure children and staff are safe and my school are safe.
	Well your judgment is bad and you should feel bad.
	She goes on to say it would not be appropriate to discuss individual situations.
	Well that's convenient, isn't it, Geraldine?
	Because otherwise we'd talk about this individual situation in which you look like a hyper-reactionary hysterical fool.
	The work these officers do plays an integral part in helping to keep young people safe and build on community relationships.
	The whole school takes responsibility to keep children safe very seriously.
	I can only imagine that they do.
	I mean there is no chance of that child accidentally injuring someone while pretending to be a knight chasing a dragon.
	Good God.
	That was very very well done.
	You are definitely keeping those kids safe.
	Unfortunately one of them might bring in a protractor.
	That might be used as an axe.
	Frankly, I think you're gonna have to ban stationery altogether.
	For the safety of the kids.
	God damn, that actually pissed me off.
	Thankfully, halal pork never fails to amuse.
	It's exactly as you'd expect.
	After mistakenly selling halal meat products containing pork to unwitting customers across the UK, supermarket chain Aldi has been forced to apologise.
	Now, don't get me wrong, I can completely understand why a lot of Muslims would actually be pissed off by that.
	If something was not clear that it contained pork originally and was marked as halal, you would eat it, you would have eaten pork, you'd be annoyed by that.
	For example, this Muslim man says, this is absolutely outrageous and I'm deeply offended by this.
	Okay, calm down.
	Offense is never given, it's always taken, and Aldi have said this was an accident, they didn't mean to do it.
	It is what you would call an error.
	Apparently, some pigskin and blood was used in halal black puddings that infuriated shoppers at the chain, which I agree, completely legitimate for practicing Muslims, as some of the complainants were.
	But some weren't.
	And I really want to know just who were those complainants who weren't practicing Muslims, but were offended by this.
	I mean, was it like just die-hard pedants who were just petitioning?
	Or was it social justice warriors going, look, there are people who are offended by this, so we're offended too.
	Interestingly, last year in France, a special kit went on sale to help detect the presence of pork in food products.
	If you are somehow unaware, this is because God ordains that Muslims must not consume pork.
	But that very same God has also ordained for Christians that it's just fine, because if you're going to be tolerant and inclusive, you've got to accept that sometimes God is just a dick and will literally say one rule for one, one rule for another.
	And it's just that kind of inconsistency that David Cameron wants to bring back to politics.
	He does actually think that British Christians should be unashamedly evangelical.
	Yeah that's, that's not gonna be really fucking awkward.
	It's just as awkward as people talking to you about their fucking race.
	It's just impolite.
	I just don't want to fucking talk to you about it.
	Britain should be unashamedly evangelical about its Christian faith and actively hand churches and other faith groups a greater role in society, David Cameron has insisted.
	For fuck's sake, Cameron, people voted for you because they thought you were less shit than labour.
	Most people didn't vote for you to go on an evangelical mission, and if you'd suggested it before the fucking election, they would have laughed at you.
	He also attacked those who demand strict neutrality in public life on religious matters.
	I would be one of those people, arguing that it would deprive Britain of a vital source of morality.
	You know what?
	I should probably apologise to my religious viewers.
	You know, I'm sorry, I'm not religious, and so I can't take this kind of thing seriously.
	I find it rather ridiculous.
	I don't really mind if anyone is religious.
	It doesn't bother me.
	As long as we keep it to ourselves, I won't mock your religion openly if you're not shoving it in my face.
	And David Cameron is asking you to shove your religion in my fucking face.
	I don't want that.
	I'm sure you don't want to be mocked after you do that.
	So you should be fucking furious at David Cameron for trying to encourage that.
	And the thing is, it's just fucking pointless to talk about.
	You can't prove anything either way.
	Nothing ever gets changed or decided.
	And it just brings another layer of baggage to the table.
	If some people think, well, my religion is important, well, ours is too.
	Well, our religions are mutually exclusive.
	Well, now we're going to have to have a fucking argument about it.
	Or an impasse.
	Nothing can ever change.
	And it will just go on and on and on until we realize that there's no point bringing any fucking religions into the public sphere like this.
	It doesn't help.
	Incidentally, that is why sensible and rational people want a fucking secular society.
	Even if we were all deeply religious, I would be arguing for a secular society.
	All you get when you make religion important in politics is segregation and persecution.
	No good comes of it.
	I guess I should be thankful that David Cameron is probably doing this for cynical political reasons.
	But the people that he's going to encourage by doing this won't.
	And you know what?
	The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England thinks this is a brilliant idea.
	I think people will be glad to see the gospel getting back into politics or explicitly back into politics because the Catholic Church is just renowned for having its finger on the fucking pulse.
	Forget the fact that out of 65 million people, only 800,000 people attend church on Sundays.
	Just forget that.
	It's not that people don't really want religion.
	It's not that people are getting less religious.
	I mean, you have almost 40% saying, we're not religious, and then the other 50% of people saying, we're Christian.
	And then the Christians were asked, are you religious?
	And 29% of them said yes.
	Well, 65% of them said fucking no.
	So they're Christian in name only.
	And that was four years ago.
	A poll done last year found that 77% of the population did not consider themselves to be religious.
	Including 40% who just weren't religious at all.
	Not even people in name.
	And you will not be surprised to hear, young people are much less likely to believe in God than older people.
	The Catholic Church isn't just out of touch in Britain though.
	It's out of touch in Ireland as well.
	So this week the Irish have voted as to whether they want same-sex marriage to be legal and in their constitution.
	And it's probably passed by the time you watch this.
	There were of course some brilliant arguments made against the legalization of gay marriage.
	Such as you can't start a herd with two bulls.
	Well, I think gay people might already know that.
	And the brilliant, no legislation will change what happens on Judgment Day.
	Yes, they're not Christians.
	They don't think God is going to burn them in hell because they supported gay marriage.
	Or maybe it's that whether those homosexual couples realize that they're not going to produce children together, they will adopt kids and keep them deliberately in the dark about their ancestry, which means they won't know about their genetic heritage, which will cause health complications.
	Which is fantastic.
	How long do you think the parents will be able to keep up that lie about the kid not being adopted for?
	What do you reckon they'll be in their teens, maybe?
	When they realized, wait, I must be fucking adopted.
	These arguments, of course, didn't work, and Ireland overwhelmingly said yes.
	Apparently, there was a great many young people voting in this referendum.
	So they were probably not so much religious as they were progressive.
	Unsurprisingly, this ended up with about a two to one vote split.
	Which interestingly turns the Catholics who voted this way in this campaign into a persecuted minority.
	Obviously, I'm of the opinion that this is completely unacceptable.
	I don't think that they should be spat at and attacked simply for holding different views.
	This is what the referendum was for.
	For fuck's sake, you know this is going to be the more extreme progressive elements who feel that they have some sort of fucking mandate by being, in their minds, morally correct.
	Now, the Catholic Church, I presume, went and said, well, that's it.
	Fire, plague, drought, God's going to give it to you for letting the gays marry.
	But it's not going to stop progressives because they already have drought shaming.
	In all honesty, this is actually something that's probably really needed.
	There are record low levels of water in California due to a, I think, four or five year drought, and so something needs to be done about it.
	And naturally, people have taken to Twitter to start nagging.
	Hashtag fucking nagging.
	You know, I mean, I suppose something has to be done, and I suppose this is better than doing nothing.
	But it's the most annoying, passive, aggressive way of doing anything.
	If there are laws preventing people from wasting water on their lawns or whatever, fucking call the authority.
	Surely they're going to enforce them if there is actually a severe drought.
	It would make it a really high priority.
	There is apparently the threat of fines, so it's not like they can do nothing.
	Bino, I understand.
	You are too busy live tweeting Sansa Stark's appearances on Game of Thrones or something.
	I suppose I should give a spoiler alert because I will be talking about the events of last week's Game of Thrones.
	You know now to skip ahead and find a point where I'm not talking about Game of Thrones.
	You've been warned if you care about that sort of thing.
	So for those who don't know, Sansa Stark is a young female character on Game of Thrones who frankly is a perpetual victim.
	And for reasons unknown, she's really popular with feminists.
	They spend their time live tweeting about how they feel about how Sansa's doing in the episode.
	Which is completely understandable.
	They're enjoying themselves talking about Game of Thrones.
	They've got a penchant for tweeting en masse anything that Sansa says that they think is empowering to fit a feminist victim narrative.
	Sansa Stark has become quite an emotionally important person for these people.
	And then something triggering happened.
	The fictional character of Sansa Stark was raped.
	It did not take long for this to be called rape culture.
	Oh, how the salt did flow as it was collectively decided that Game of Thrones absolutely did not need to go there.
	Even the fucking Guardian posted, Game of Thrones walks a fine line on rape.
	How much more can audiences take?
	Audiences!
	How much more can a bunch of whining feminists on Twitter take?
	Is the question.
	And the answer to that question is that they didn't take it very well at all.
	The Mary Sue has a very long timeline of Sansa Stark worship and worship of the actress who plays Sansa Stark.
	They have even been warned that there are some very, very shocking things coming up, so maybe they should prepare themselves.
	you could call these trigger warnings.
	Of course the Mary Sue holds the show's creators responsible.
	Obviously it'd be irrational to lose themselves in the story and hold Ramsay Bolton responsible.
	No, when something happens in a TV show you're watching that you don't personally agree with on a moral level you go and complain about it to the people who wrote the show.
	They have decided that in this particular instance, rape is not necessary to Sansa's character development.
	They know because apparently she has already overcome abusive violence at the hands of men.
	Well, actually, she hasn't really.
	That's the problem.
	I think they're probably talking about when Joffrey had her shirt torn and the imp was like, oh, what are you doing with your future wife?
	Which really isn't the same sort of level as being brutally raped by a really bad guy like Ramsay Bolton.
	After all, rape here, like in all instances, is not a necessary story-driving device.
	Not even in stories about rape.
	What a ridiculous line of reasoning.
	I see something in a fictional program I don't like.
	I disagree with it on a moral level.
	Therefore, it is illegitimate and should never have been used.
	This is either absurd, or the good senator Claire McCaskill, who is now done with the show and considered that scene gratuitous and unacceptable, is just fine with incest, theft, and murder.
	But she wasn't alone in this thought.
	It undercuts all the agency that's been growing in Sansa since the end of last season.
	Did it really have to be rape that brought her low?
	Was that really the only horror Game of Thrones can imagine visiting on its female characters?
	Well, probably not, no.
	But it is definitely something that women might well have to endure in a setting like Game of Thrones.
	Another thing that many feminists were very annoyed about is that in the scene, the camera begins facing Sansa and Ramsay as Ramsay begins to rape her, and then pans across to Theon Greyjoy, who has been forced to watch, Theon being a childhood friend of Sansa's.
	The feminists, needless to say, thought that the scene had been stolen away from Sansa by Theon, possibly forgetting and presumably not caring that Theon actually has a much deeper story with this guy.
	Theon, after all, did get his cock and balls cut off by this fucking guy, and now he's raping his childhood friend in front of him.
	But no, it's all about fucking Sansa.
	I know I'm going off on one wall, it's just a first world problem, but I like Game of Thrones a lot, and I'm really sick of this kind of bullshit attitude.
	I found it really, really amusing that the actress who plays Sansa really enjoyed that scene.
	She actually said she loved it because she found it really messed up and really challenging.
	So she's probably going to end up being one of those women who comes out and says, look, I'm not a feminist.
	I'm not really a censorship-loving man-hater who spends all my time whining about first world problems on Twitter.
	So finally, there seems to have been a lot of talk about segregation this week.
	And you're probably expecting me to talk about Bahamustafa, the lady who is unrepentantly anti-white at Goldsmiths University.
	I will do.
	She'll get her own video.
	So I will leave you with an ancient tweet that someone found from Anita Sarkeesian way back from 2011.
	In which she advocates for segregation.
	Which doesn't surprise me in the fucking slightest.
	But anyway, I did actually say that I would end on a feminist poem and someone found a remarkable feminist poem about Gamergate.
	Enjoy you get to call it misogyny when bad things happen to women in video games Why don't I get to call it misandry when bad things happen to men?
	Because the principles of character design mean that no matter the video game, you can always pick out a prostitute based on what she's wearing.
	Non-player characters have a limited range of action, so the prostitute is always asking for it.
	Because in the God of War franchise, you can literally fuck Aphrodite as part of gameplay.
	Even the goddess of love isn't immune to a little left-right-up-down ABA.
	Because when I put on the quote-unquote empowering metallic bikini of your favorite video game character and walk the convention floor, men touch me without asking.
	They ask me questions about my sex life and expect detailed answers.
	They treat me like so much public pixel and blame me for dressing in the only skin I get.
	Because Hitman absolution penalizes you for murdering a hooker, but gives you the points back if you use her corpse to distract the cops.
	Because Republicans won't sign bills into law if they contain the phrase violence against women.
	Because there was a list in the boys' bathroom of my high school titled Cute New Freshman Girls to Fuck.
	And I was so unversed in violence, I was hurt that my name wasn't on it.
	Because a new study asserts up to 40% of rape victims are male, but video games only imitate the kinds of tragedies men want to fantasize about.
	Because when I told him I didn't want another drink, I saw his eyes light up with a new achievement to unlock.
	Because when I talk less than men, they think I'm talking more.
	Because their voices crash into me like I am hoarding spinning coins and first aid kits.
	And they are cracking me open in the hopes of absorbing something valuable.
	It's not looting.
	The game was built this way.
	Because this is the second night death threats have driven game critic Anita Sarkisian from her home, her house flayed open like a wound.
	Because you don't understand when I say that you can't have my body because there's already somebody living in it.
	Because men may be more likely to die in war statistically, but you've never fucking been in one.
	Because you keep saying women.
	Like there's no telling between us.
	A catalog of stop-motion stereotypes, unpiloted pattern of color and sound by the logic of character design.
	I can infer that when bad things happen to women in video games, they're really happening to me.
	It's my shirt shredded, my neck snapped, my body breaking to prop open a gate, to prop up your mail, because nothing makes a more gratifying prop because she's playing the woman card.

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