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June 8, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
25:35
This Week in Stupid (07⧸06⧸2015)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 7th of June 2015.
This week I'm going to start with the least stupid story I have and this will give you an indication of just how dumb last week was.
Homeless people to be fined up to a thousand pounds for sleeping rough.
Just, motherfucker, that is just so fucking stupid.
Homeless people could be fined up to a thousand pound for sleeping in doorways near popular tourist spots under new rules launched by London Council.
However, it's not clear how destitute rough sleepers are expected to pay.
No fucking shit.
Hackney Council's public space protection order bans sleeping in public places.
Offenders are handed a £100 fixed penalty which can rise to a thousand pound in court.
Why £1,000 man?
Why stop there?
I mean did you think it was going to be ridiculous if you find a homeless person £10,000?
What about like £100,000?
What about a million?
Why put a limit on it?
Why not just say, you know what, you will just be indebted to the state in perpetuity.
But I can tell Hackney Council one thing right now.
You fucking idiots are not going to see a penny of any money from these fines.
I mean it's not like the council would be responsible for I don't know homeless shelters or something like that.
So when charities say these individuals need support to leave homelessness behind and any move to criminalize sleeping rough could simply create additional problems to be overcome.
I mean it doesn't make you guys look like money grubbing soulless sons of bitches.
What's really weird as well is that I was under the impression that Hackney was a labour stronghold as well.
Anyway, a lot of subjects this week are going to have plus at the end of them.
For example, we'll begin with rap plus, as white rappers need to stop using the n-word and check their damn privilege.
So white hip-hop artists are expressing themselves in a medium that is defined by its connection to blackness.
With more and more white rappers gaining visibility from white platforms and gaining credibility from white media outlets, it's important to recognise exactly what that means.
Oh I agree, and I know what that means.
This is cultural appropriation.
Appropriation is insidious.
If we're not vigilant, one day you're going to look up and see a Whole Foods where hip-hop used to be.
Oh yeah, that's not racist at all.
White Hollywood stars hopping on stage with harmonicas and shades to play music that was born of the pain of the black sharecropper was a distortion and erasure of the blues' significance.
And the essence of hip-hop gets sterilized and bastardized when rich white kids toss around terms like hating-ass niggers without ever having to feel the painful sting of being a nigger in society's eyes.
Well, I hear you bruh.
The gaming industry is having kind of its own problem with rich white kids as well.
So believe me, you're gonna have to tough it out.
Whether it's an early Eminem freestyle or Forregumps kid posting on Instagram, all white people must accept that nigger is not their word to say.
And a white rapper like Chet Hayes needs to check his damn privilege.
Well, I'm completely sure he does.
Realistically, he really should have thought harder about his decision to be born white.
He knew that he was going to have all this privilege.
He knew that he wouldn't be able to enjoy rap music or hip-hop or anything like that.
So, I mean, it was really a stupid decision on his part.
I mean, I know he must have been looking at all of those white privileges, you know, like the privilege not to be allowed to do something based on your race.
White's privilege doesn't believe anything should prevent my dreams from coming true.
White supremacy makes it possible for that belief to become a reality.
Okay.
So seven year old Emily gets to land in Africa.
24-year-old Chet gets to say nigger and play rapper without any of the struggle.
Being white and rich doesn't mean you can't rap.
It means that you can't wear blackness like a cool jacket whenever you happens to feel like it.
Okay, I see what you're saying is it doesn't mean you can't rap.
It means you're not allowed to rap.
You know, in the same way that white men should stop writing.
Which is actually the title of this article inspired by this anonymous letter.
I am a white male poet, a white male poet who is aware of his privilege and sensitive to inequalities facing women, people of colour, and LGBTQ individuals in and out of the writing community.
But despite the sensitivity and awareness, I am still white and still male.
This just sounds like a bad joke, doesn't it?
Sometimes I feel like the time to write from my experience has passed, and that the need for poems from a white male perspective just isn't there anymore, and that the torch has passed to writers of other communities whose voices have too long been silenced or suppressed.
I feel terrible about feeling terrible about this, since I know that for so long white men have made other people feel terrible about who they were.
Fucking hell.
The sins of the fucking father.
Sometimes I write from other perspectives via persona poems in order to understand and empathize with so-called other, but I fear that this could be construed as yet another example of my privilege and that I am appropriating another person's experience.
This can't be real.
violating that person by telling his or her story fucking it's like a catch 22 Write what you know and risk denying the voices of those stories who are more urgent.
Write to learn what you don't know and risk colonizing someone else's story.
I am genuinely troubled by this.
I want to listen, but I also want to write.
Yet at times these impulses feel at odds with one another.
How can I reconcile the two?
Short answer is, you can't.
I think this might actually be proof that you have gone crazy.
You would have thought that such an insane letter wouldn't have been worthy of being given a response.
And yet here we are with a response.
Dear Anonymous, I've thought a lot about your letter.
I know that you're not the only white male writer asking these questions.
As a white writer myself, I'm not necessarily the best person to answer.
And yet, us two white guys are going to advise other white guys on how to not be sexist and racist.
This guy actually feels like he has to try and persuade the anonymous author to continue to write.
Because the social justice warriors are guilt-tripping him to make him feel like he should fucking leave the industry that he's a part of.
Instead, you should do what you can to make sure your own perspective is not getting more exposure than it deserves.
Who decides that?
That you're not taking up more than your fair share of space, you fucking manspreader.
Many people have been angered rightfully by recent stunts in conceptual poetry that exploit real tragedies like the death of Michael Brown for the benefit of white artists.
So I think you're right to be concerned that persona poems could come off as a form of exploitation and appropriation.
There's also a risk of self-congratulation and unexamined complicity.
Even if your goal is to learn and to empathise, one wonders why your act of inhabiting a woman or a person of colour's perspective would be more deserving of readership than writing by someone who has lived that experience.
Why indeed?
I mean, it's not like the quality of the writing varies from person to person.
What matters is the race and gender of the person writing it.
Which is incidentally the next point.
You were in fact born as a white male and therefore whatever you do write is easier to publish.
All other things being equal, whether or not you or your editors or readers are aware of it, you automatically get bonus points.
You're on the lowest difficulty setting in a video game of life.
That's fantastic.
I do love it when someone else tells me how difficult my life is.
And, unsurprisingly by comparison, theirs is a lot more difficult.
I'm really having trouble believing this is real.
To be honest, I really am.
When VIDE accounts come out and multiple publications are shown to publish far more men than women, with the numbers from people of colour writers looking even worse, Editors make excuses about their submission pools, but they get far more submissions and pitches from men than women.
Then people inevitably respond by telling women to write more, submit more, and pitch more.
I think this is exactly the wrong response.
I can guess what you think that people should do.
It's not that men should stop writing, it's just that they should just really cut back on how much of it they do.
You, white men, have all the advantages here, so you should work to fix the problem of imbalance.
Couple of things there, right?
First, it's not really an advantage when everyone's telling you you should just piss off.
Literally to your face, and you're like, dear electronic literature, should I piss off?
But let's also address the problem of imbalance.
As if this is a problem, people choosing to do things at different ratios to each other.
That there is no actual problem here, and a voluntary cull of people from this industry is just going to reduce the quality of work produced by the industry.
The solution is, of course, to read more books by women, people of colour, and LGBTQ writers.
Make their experience a bigger proportion of your reading.
And learn that way instead of by appropriating their voices.
Then amplify what you love.
Recommend these books to friends, teach them if you teach.
Give them away as presents.
Oh, that'd be wonderful.
Thanks very much for this wonderful present that I really am not going to read.
If you edit a magazine, make sure you're not overexposing white male authors.
Giving them too much space because it's what you relate to.
Even if you don't edit or teach anything, you can still promote more diverse authors to editors and teachers you know.
There is, of course, a word for people like this in English, and that word is proselyte.
Don't be a problem submitter.
Of course, men submit far more than women do, and therefore you should submit far less.
So not only is our author not going to tell you to stop writing, he's not even going to tell you to not write about race or gender, even though you might be obligated to do so.
Obligated to write about a topic.
There are surely non-exploitative ways to do so.
I wish I knew the formula for how.
The best approach is likely to work towards good writing regardless of your subject matter.
Oh, well done, that would be easily the best approach, surely.
To me, that means choosing complexity of obvious, trite sentiments and avoiding self-flattery.
But don't cast yourself as the white saviour.
It sounds like a fucking minefield.
So at this point, you might be getting a little despondent.
You might be thinking, well, I was going to become a rapper, but I'm a white male, so obviously I can't.
And I was going to become an author, but it turns out that I'm a white male still, and it is verboten.
Maybe I will just go and get some exercise, because how could anyone criticise that?
Bloody hell.
Edmonton cyclist denied entry to bike shop based on gender.
On a recent Sunday evening, John, who asked for his full name to be withheld, was riding his bike with his wife and two daughters.
The family needed bike parts and was interested in buying a bike.
So they rode to the Edmonton Bicycle Commuter Society Bike Works South near White Avenue.
But at the volunteer staffed shop, people at the bike works allegedly told John he couldn't come inside, yet his wife could.
I was denied entry based on gender.
I was surprised.
Despite an open for business sign, John said he was barred entry because of the society's women, trans and gender non-binary programme that was being held at the shop that Sunday.
Now, John, this was an elementary mistake.
You could have easily said, well, I'm obviously non-binary.
Do I not look trans?
I am a woman, and simply by virtue of saying that I'm a woman, makes me a woman, or you are some sort of turf, exclusionary psycho-feminist.
So the society's website describes it as a safe space at Bikeworks.
If you do not identify as a woman, trans or non-binary, you can support this important initiative by respecting that space and not entering during the women's, trans and gender non-binary programme.
You need to remember that some people were just born wrong, and you're one of them.
However, Chris Chan, the owner of the shop, says, we offer a range of classes and programmes, because not everyone feels comfortable in every single situation all the time.
Wow, I never realised that that was a requirement.
That everyone needs to be comfortable in every situation all the time.
I mean, call me crazy, but it sounds kind of pie in the sky unrealistic.
Chris also says, we are certainly looking at this program and constantly thinking about it, and we are thinking about it more at the moment.
We've updated the wording on our website, so there's less confusion about what the program is.
I think there's a lot of it.
Yeah, I'm sure it's all down to the way you've worded it on your website.
I'm sure that now that you've worded it as, fuck off you white male nigger, then white men are gonna know that they're not welcome there.
God bless equality.
But you know what, if you were a disgusting white male nigger as well, don't feel bad.
It wasn't just you that was born in the wrong body.
God was also born in the wrong body, which is why Church of England vicars want to start calling God she to fight sexism.
A woman's Christian group called Watch, also known as Women and the Church, argue that describing God as a he in hymns and prayers makes men appear more godlike than women and reinforces sexism in society.
Yeah, this might have some sort of terrible knock-on effect of the rest of society.
Maybe we should just exclude men from churches.
Campaigners say that both male and female language should be used interchangeably to redress the balance.
I think that you need to take some advice from Tumblr.
What we need is a gender neutral pronoun for God.
I'm going to vote for Zeer.
When we use only male language for God, we reinforce the idea that God is like a man, and in doing so suggest that men are therefore more like God than women.
Do we do that?
Is God gendered?
Is it?
Of course, once again, the feminists are battling against the tide, as the average person, men and women included, are just fine with calling God a he.
They probably just feel like this is one of those issues that only people who spend their lives thinking about God have to think about.
For the rest of us, it's really not a big deal, and nobody really cares.
The thing is, if we make God a woman, aren't we then in danger of being casually sexist to God in the same way that Prince William is being casually sexist to his wife?
So when asked by Gary Lineker when he might take his son, the 22 month old Prince George, to a football match, William replied, I don't know, I'll have to pass that by the missus, see how I can get away with it.
Gah!
Gah indeed, what terrible, terrifying sexism the prince is displaying.
Now look, some of you might think I'm overreacting, but hear me out.
What are you talking about?
Nobody thinks you're overreacting.
Nobody thinks you're overreacting when you're about to accuse the Duke of Cambridge of being sexist towards the Duchess of Cambridge because he thinks he needs to ask her permission to go to a football game.
Because as outdated cross terms go, the missus surely tops the list.
Does it?
There's nothing affectionate or complimentary about it, isn't there?
How would we have reacted had William called Kate the ball and chain or her indoors?
And that's before we even mention the see how I can get away with it part.
Yeah, that sounds like rape culture.
It's like Wills has positioning himself as a lad in every sexist beer advert we've ever seen, where a group of blokes engage in some mutual backslapping and congratulate themselves on escaping from the little woman for a few hours.
Well, honestly, it sounds like Will's balls are in a fucking vice.
To women, he's not even fucking.
Believe it or not, bitch, it's not actually sexist to want some time away from your wife, nor is having pet names sexist either.
Frankly, this is this sort of casual misogyny that the future monarchy really needs to ditch fast.
What needs?
Needs.
You mean you want them to ditch it?
And is this really hatred of women, or is this really William just being a bit cute?
But what gets me about this whole article is the entitlement, as if the author really feels entitled to have people listen to her opinions and take them fucking seriously.
You see, William, you were born into royalty, and there's nothing that you nor we can do about that, so let's make the best of it.
And that starts with behaving like a human being and not some puerile pastiche of the British bloke.
That's right, let some woman boss you around because you were born as royalty.
Just fucking believable.
Okay, so Prince William isn't going to receive the Feminist of the Year award.
But do you know who is?
Miss fucking Piggy.
I always wonder if there's a bottom to how dumb feminism's gonna get, and we're still yet to reach it.
Miss Piggy is going to receive a feminist award.
The Muppet will be honoured by the Brooklyn Museum Sackler Center with the first award, which is typically given to a female trailblazer.
Past recipients include American novelist Toni Morrison, director Julie Taymor, and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
And what they've run out of female trailblazers to the point where they have to give it to a fictional pig.
But I guess Miss Piggy is exactly the right mascot to represent feminism.
She is, after all, a self-centered, entitled, narcissistic, belligerent killjoy who is constantly bossing around her passive boyfriend and making unreasonable demands at him.
And when he somehow goes against those demands or fucks up, she just beats him.
And of course, nothing even approaching self-awareness penetrates through her thick, warty hide because, goddamn it, she is the most important thing in the universe.
Yes, she is the perfect feminist.
God, feminism is fucking retarded.
And then you get some fucking knackerless beta like Mark Ruffalo going, People who don't like feminism are ignorant and they can kiss my ass.
Oh, really?
Is that before or after you present Miss Piggy with her good feminist award?
So he decided to post on Tumblr in response to the I am not a feminist internet phenomenon by saying, First of all, it's clear that you don't know what feminism is.
Do you want to um get the dictionary definition up for me, Mark?
Oh, but I'm not going to explain to you.
Oh, don't worry, Mark.
I can google it myself.
To quote an old friend, I'm not the feminist babysitter.
This is how entitled feminists are.
You think that your ideology is more important than everything else and everyone should be a feminist, but you are unwilling to take the time to try and explain why people should become feminists.
This, you think, is the burden on them.
They should already want to be feminists.
They shouldn't require persuading.
You fucking maniac.
The post goes on to present a strong argument for feminism.
It reads, You're insulting every woman who was forcibly restrained in a jail cell with a feeding tube down her throat for the right to vote less than a hundred years ago.
Uh, fine, I don't care.
That she was forcibly restrained in a jail cell with a feeding tube down her throat was because clearly she was going on some sort of hunger strike, which I don't think was actually necessary.
You're undermining every woman who fought to make marital rape a crime.
It was legal until 1993, yeah, but I mean, bestiality is still legal in some places just because they've never got around to criminalizing it, because it's not really a subject that comes up all that much.
And let's be fair, fought to make marital rape a crime.
I think they probably just petitioned the government, didn't they?
It's not like there was a civil war, it's not like anyone died.
And it concludes, in short, kiss my ass, you ignorant little jerks.
But why don't you want to become a feminist?
Why don't you just educate yourself on feminism?
But I'll tell you what, Mark, since you're here and telling me all about feminism because you're the authority, could you tell me if a all-male version of Hooters called Tallywhackers is sexist or not, please?
Because I personally have no problem with it, but I get the feeling that you should have a problem with it.
Unless, of course, you've got some wonderful feminist rationale that prevents you from having to take issue with this, whereas you obviously would take issue with Hooters.
Maybe it's something like power plus prejudice minus banana hammocks multiplied by oiled biceps or something.
I don't know.
I'm not a feminist mathematician, Mark, but I know that you are.
And I know that it takes a lot of time for you to explain this, and you're impatient.
You know, I don't want to make you angry, but I really need an answer to this.
You know, every week there is always one article that has sent to me en masse because people take exception to it completely.
And this week, that article is becoming disabled by choice, not chance.
Trans-abled people feel like impostors in their fully working bodies.
Trans-abled.
Just.
There is no depth to which we won't sink.
When he cut off his right arm with a very sharp power tool, a man who now calls himself one hand Jason lets everyone believe it was an accident.
But he had for months tried different means of cutting and crushing a limb that never quite felt like his own, training himself on first aid so that he wouldn't bleed to death, even practicing on animal parts sourced from a butcher.
But at no point did he try therapy.
My goal was to get the job done with no hope of reconstruction or reattachment, and I wanted some method that I could actually bring myself to do.
His goal was to become disabled.
Well, you're already retarded, so it kind of seems like you're halfway there.
People like Jason have been classified as transabled, feeling like imposters in their own bodies, their arms and legs in full working order.
We define transability as the desire or need for a person identified as able-bodied by other people to transform his or her body to obtain a physical impairment, says Alexandra Barrel, an apparent academic who will present on transability this week's Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Ottawa.
Holy fucking shit.
The person could want to become deaf, blind, amputee, paraplegic.
It's a really strong desire.
Yes, but it's also really clear evidence that they have a mental illness of some kind.
I mean, this strikes me as the very apex of first world problems.
How could you get a first world problem more ridiculous than wanting to be made disabled?
Most of them are men.
About half are in Germany and Switzerland.
Hmm.
He knows a few in Canada, most craven amputational paralysis, although he has interviewed one person who wants his penis removed.
Well, fuck, that's not an uncommon procedure these days.
Another one wants to be blind.
Fucking why?
Many people like one hand Jason arrange accidents to help achieve the goal.
One dropped an incredibly heavy concrete block on his legs, an attempt to injure himself so bad an amputation would be necessary.
But doctors saved the leg, unfortunately.
He limps, but it's not the disability he wanted.
Oh, fuck me.
It's like it's like a Christmas, isn't it?
When Santa brought you the wrong kind of transformer and you're like, well, it's a transformer, but it's not Starscream.
Some of his study participants do draw parallels to the experience many transgender people express of not feeling like they're in the right body.
Baldwin says this disorder is starting to be thought of as a neurological problem with the person's body mapping, rather than a mental illness.
God forbid that we classify this as a mental illness.
It's a problem for individuals because it's distressing, but a lot of things are.
He suggests this is just another form of body diversity, like transgenderism.
An amputation may help someone achieve similar goals as to someone who, say, undergoes cosmetic surgery to look more like who they believe their ideal selves to be.
You know what, I tell you what we'll do.
I will, I completely agree to this, but the proviso is that they have to spend a year living alone on a desert island.
And if, after a year of living on a desert island, alone, living by their wits, they are not fully appreciative of being a whole, able-bodied person, then sure, she'll just start chopping off bits of their body that they want.
Unsurprisingly, this has been met with great resistance in both the disability activist community and in transgender circles, argues Burrill, a visiting scholar of feminist gender and sexuality studies at the University in Connecticut.
What a surprise, they are doing gender studies and now they are advocating for trans ableism.
I've seen feminism support a lot of wacky bullshit, but supporting people's desire to mutilate themselves for no benefit.
I mean, it's not like these people are trying to become another gender.
I can understand that.
I really can.
But wanting simply to become fucking disabled is insane.
That is fucking mental.
And I can't believe these psychos.
Well, I can believe it.
I was going to say, I can't believe they'd support it, but I absolutely can believe it.
I put nothing past modern feminism.
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