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July 27, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
26:59
This Week in Stupid (26⧸07⧸2015)
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Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 26th of July 2015.
This week we've got a really nice cross-section of idiocy from across the board.
But before we begin on that, let's start with something that isn't necessarily stupid, but is highly amusing.
Mind-controlling spunk.
According to New Scientist, semen has controlling power over female genes and behaviour.
I can't imagine why feminist media hasn't touched this story.
So in many animals, seminal fluid alters both the bodies and sometimes even the behaviour of females.
Human semen too triggers changes in the uterus and might have wider effects on women aimed at just one goal, which according to Sarah Robertson of the University of Adelaide in Australia is all about maximising the chances of the male reproducing.
The effects are most striking in fruit flies.
Seminal fluid can make the females eat more, lay more eggs and be less receptive to other males.
This work was followed up by Tracy Chapman at the University of East Anglia.
Chapman thinks that seminal signalling is widespread in the animal world.
The semen of people, pigs and mice affects the female reproductive tract, and the question is whether it can also produce behavioural responses in female mammals similar to those seen in fruit flies.
There have been claims that semen can do everything from making women sleepy after sex to strengthening the emotional bond with a partner.
One 2002 study based on a survey of 300 students found that women whose partners did not use condoms scored lower on the measure of depression.
Now I know what you're thinking.
Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation.
But in this case if they are linked, depression in some people might be treatable with artificial semen suppositories.
Apparently it's not clear whether any components of human semen get into the bloodstream, but it could be possible.
But as for seminal signalling, she thinks it's more likely to be indirect, with semen causing the cervix to produce molecules that influence the rest of the body.
But whatever the mechanism, both Chapman and Robertson say it's plausible that semen could have effects on women well beyond their reproductive tract.
As I said, this isn't stupid, but I do find it really fucking amusing.
Do you know what else I find really fucking amusing?
Is that there is someone on earth who will defend Gorka.
An op-ed in the LA Times says, why Gorka and gossip are good, or, as I like to put it, Gorka didn't do nothing.
This is a marvellous propaganda piece, and we'll go through these first three paragraphs in some detail, just to really draw out just how slimy this author is.
So I mean, the way it begins is perfect.
Last week, the gossip cite Gorka.
Just the gossip sites.
It's just, it's just a rag.
It's just like a crappy thing.
It's just bloggers.
Except, when you ask Gorka's staff if they're journalists, they categorically tell you that they are.
Therefore, it's not just a gossip site, it's a news site.
But anyway, Gorka published a story apparently outing a heterosexually married New York media executive of high social class connections and a reputation.
There's no apparently about it.
It's not something that needs a court and a jury to discern.
People didn't know he was gay, and now they know he is gay.
But if we put the word apparently in there, it introduces an element of doubt.
The story came from a gay male escort who had tried and failed to persuade the executive in question to help him resolve a housing dispute.
Because of the subject's relatively low public profile and the impression that he had done the right thing in not pulling strings, the piece was widely denounced as the gratuitous doxing of a private individual.
What marvellous propaganda.
He absolutely had done the right thing by not pulling strings.
Pulling strings is corruption.
You're not supposed to pull strings to get your friends or lovers issues sorted out behind the scenes.
That's the wrong thing to do.
Then to say that this gave the impression that he had done the right thing as well, well yes, it would give that impression.
When someone does the right thing, it does leave the impression, but to say the impression again leaves it open to interpretation.
In a case that frankly isn't open to interpretation, but this was then denounced as a gratuitous doxing.
No, no, no.
No one said it was a doxing.
That's inaccurate terminology, but it sounds like it might be something someone would say.
This is simply an outing.
A public revealing of private information that does not need to be made public, especially if the person hadn't even told his family.
So despite the executive having acted ethically, and Gorka acting unethically, our author then attempts to try and poison the well for people who support this executive and oppose Gorka on this issue.
Gorka's noisy enemies, from the men's rights activists of Gamergate to the soy-dissant free speech libertarians of Reddit, had a field day.
There's a deliberate attempt to make these groups sound bad.
A they're the noisy enemies.
But the men's rights activists of Gamergate, well, that's only scary if you're a feminist.
If you're not a feminist, then you probably don't know what any of that means.
And to the, quote, free speech libertarians of Reddit, as if free speech is not their actual objective.
All of this, despite the fact that Gorka turned around and said that they had done something wrong.
A mere culprit is an acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
An admission that led to the resignation of editor-in-chief Max Reed and executive editor Tommy Craggs.
But that's written in the most boring, mundane prose you can imagine.
And then we get to the author's actual opinion.
I'm sorry to think the executive's sexual practices may have come as a surprise to his family.
No shit.
But I can't help but approve that Gorka was, and it has consistently been and I hope will remain, unwilling to aid the rich and powerful in concealing their secrets.
You stated at the beginning of this that Gorka is a gossip site.
They're not WikiLeaks.
They're not speaking truth to power.
They're not helping uncover corporate corruption or industrial espionage.
What they're doing is fucking with a man's private and personal life.
A life that I don't care about and no one else cares about but his family.
And yet Gorka made it front and centre news.
And you're defending it.
Gorka is the cancerous boil on the underside of journalism.
Why anyone would defend gossip is beyond me.
But hey, Gorka didn't do nothing.
Just like Bernie Sanders.
He didn't do nothing.
And actually, he did do something.
He's actually a veteran activist for civil rights for black people.
But you wouldn't know that, because of hashtag BernieSoBlack.
Activists call out Bernie Sanders for white-splaining racial inequality.
So Black Lives Matter activists spawned a satirical hashtag about Bernie Sanders called Bernie SoBlack in response to what many saw as the Democratic presidential candidates attempts to white splain racial inequality from the perch of white privilege.
He's apparently weathering heavy criticism for appearing to gloss over the subject of race and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Well, he is white.
I mean, he's probably the sort of bigot that thinks that all lives matter.
So this was all caused apparently by Sanders' gruff reaction to protesters who demanded he recite the names of black people who had died at the hands of police or while in police custody.
As protesters began chanting, Say Her Name in reference to the recent death of Sandra Bland in a Texas police cell under what her relatives said were suspicious circumstances and Black Lives Matter, Sanders contemplated cutting his address short before saying, Black Lives of Course Matter, I spent 50 years of my life fighting for civil rights and dignity.
But if you don't want me to be here, that's okay.
I don't want to out-screen people.
Oh, Sanders, why won't you just bend the knee and do what the mob says?
I mean, they're chanting what you should do.
Why don't you do it?
What I really like, though, is how these bullying tactics have become synonymous with millennial activists.
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, then continued to talk about income inequality in the economy, central themes of his presidential campaign and career, and things you would think that black people would also care about, given how they apparently make so much less than white people.
Shortly after the event, idiots, I mean, activists took to social media to condemn what they perceived as Sanders essentially shocking racial inequality in favour of income inequality.
What is the difference here?
For fuck's sake, the senator who comes from America's second most racist state, after Maine, later attempted to convey that the two subjects were inextricably linked when he spoke of racial discrepancies in education and unemployment, which he linked to an overburdened criminal justice system.
I guess the problem Sanders is having is that the people he's dealing with are fucking moronic.
Calm down, Stormfags.
I'm not saying that black people are fucking moronic.
I'm actually saying white people are moronic and make themselves look as not racist as possible.
Such as Bernie so black, he's Rachel DeLiesel's grandfather.
Or Bernie's so black he's deliberately losing his hair so people will stop asking if they can touch it.
It's nice to see these witty hashtag activists actually doing something for black people.
You know, really helping.
Unlike Bernie Sanders.
I mean what's Bernie Sanders ever done?
You know, apart from being arrested, protesting segregation in the 60s.
But apart from like actual activism that actually did help black people, what has he done?
I mean come on.
But that's the thing.
No matter what Bernie Sanders says to black people, no matter what he does for them, no matter how many times he's arrested on their behalf, he's still white splaining.
Because he's a racist.
Just like the right-wing homosexuals who planned to do a gay pride march through Muslim areas of Sweden.
Long story short, the Sweden Democrats Party, which makes them roughly analogous to say the British or Canadian Conservative parties, making them extreme far right, have scheduled a gay pride parade to go through two areas of Sweden with Muslim populations of over 75%.
And as you can imagine, these parades are going to involve public displays of affection between two men.
Now it's pretty obvious that this is a deliberate provocation to try and entice the Muslim communities to take physical action, aggressive action, against the gay pride parade in order to stir up trouble.
Because Islam outlaws homosexuality, sending a gay pride parade into a Muslim majority area is perceived as being an act of racism to deliberately provoke them to act in accordance with the Quran or something.
And because provoking Muslims to act in accordance with their own beliefs is somehow racist, this has led to left-wing activists forming a counter-protest against a gay rights march, arguing unironically that the parade pits two oppressed groups against each other.
I find this to be the most incredible piece of political theatre.
Actually managing to get progressives to demonstrate against a gay rights parade of their own volition is just amazing.
I mean what the fuck are they even saying?
I mean are they saying that Muslims shouldn't be expected to deal with homosexual people?
And then there's the complaint that this is a pattern that we've seen from other countries to make racist points.
How is this a racist point?
Islam is very much opposed to homosexuality, therefore a lot of Muslims are very much opposed to homosexuality.
How is this a racist point?
This is a problem with Islam as an ideology.
Idiotic social media activists have also called for the parade to be legally banned, and for the people who organised it to be arrested for hate speech against Muslims.
This is very much the same sort of argument I have against feminism.
It's implying that Muslims are dogs or something.
It's implying that they are so base, so unable to control themselves or to improve their own situation in any way, that all they'll do is they'll see gay people and like Pavlovian trained dogs, they will just attack them and kill them on site.
And it won't be the fault of the Muslims, just like you wouldn't blame a shark for biting you if you were swimming near seals.
Essentially what they're saying is that Muslims are animals, unable to reform their beliefs or their behaviours.
So we know that Muslims are higher than gays on the progressive stack.
But what I want to know is, are Muslims higher than trans people?
Because a gay pride event has banned drag queens in case trans people are offended by them.
So Free Pride Glasgow, which was set up as an anti-commercialist alternative to the main Pride Glasgow event, has made the decision ahead of the event next month, claiming that despite drag being a uniquely celebrated part of most prides, they would not be welcome to perform at Free Pride.
But of course, the usual progressive doublethink kicks in.
This does not mean that people of any gender can't wear what they want to the event.
We simply won't be having any self-described drag acts perform at our Free Pride event.
We hope that people can understand and support our decision, and we feel it's important to fully explain why we came to this decision.
So you can go there in drag if you want, you just can't say you've gone there in drag.
The decision was taken by transgender individuals who are uncomfortable with having drag performances at the event.
It was felt that it would make some of those who are transgender or questioning their gender uncomfortable.
Yeah, your right to free expression stops if there is a perceived possibility of someone else feeling uncomfortable.
Not being hurt, but just feeling slightly uncomfortable.
The explanation was that it was felt by the group within the trans non-binary caucus that some drag performance, particularly cis drag, hinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke.
However, transgender individuals do not feel as though their gender identity is a joke.
This can be particularly difficult for those who are not out and still present as the gender they were assigned at birth.
I fucking hate that phrase.
I really do.
I might do a series of very, very short videos just to address individual phrases I hear over and over.
Gender you were assigned at birth.
No one can assign you a fucking gender at birth.
All they can do is look at you and assess your biological sex.
Anyway, while it was discussed whether we could have trans drag acts performed, Jesus, I don't even know what a trans drag act is.
It was agreed that it would not be appropriate to ask any prospective drag acts whether or not they identified as trans.
Jesus, you self-police constantly with this nonsense.
It was therefore decided that having no drag acts perform would be the best option, as it would mean that no one would feel pressured to out themselves.
Fuck pressured to out themselves.
What are you talking about?
But this fundamentally is the problem with social justice.
In the desire to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.
I don't really know anything about drag acts, but I can imagine that people doing it have a great time doing it.
I imagine it's funny.
You know, it's just probably hilarious.
And the people watching probably have a great time watching.
And now this bunch of social justice killjoys have removed that fun completely because of the off chance that some trans people who simply can't laugh at themselves might feel that they were being pressured to out themselves for some reason.
I mean no one knows that they're fucking trans.
How would they be being pressured to out themselves for f- Hilariously the main pride event just aren't progressive enough and they're saddened to see the direction that Free Pride has chosen to take.
Unsurprisingly the NUS has previously voted on a motion to enforce a zero tolerance approach to drag and cross-dressing at all student union events.
A zero tolerance!
As if someone turned up with a fucking gun and a needle full of AIDS!
They resolved to issue a statement condemning the use of cross-dressing as a mode of fancy dress.
They also resolved to amend the NUS zero-tolerance statement policy to cover all NUS events and conferences, and to encourage unions to ban clubs and societies from holding events which permit or encourage cisgender members to use cross-dressing as a mode of fancy dress.
Because here come the fucking fun police.
Oh look, here's a man dressed as a woman and he's not actually a trans person.
This might offend someone.
You know what to do.
Time to make up that mythical person who fits exactly the right criteria to be deeply and mortally offended by exactly what's happening now.
I know what you're thinking though.
Well at least the fun police will leave me alone in my own home.
Well, you're fucking wrong.
One of them might even be your own mother.
I'm not letting my son see Pixels.
Here's why.
And no this isn't Bob Chipman's mum.
Chipman saw the film and went on a giant SPAC attack on Twitter.
Not that that matters, I just thought it was funny.
The film probably is exactly as bad as he says it is.
Anyway, our Killjoy says, A few weeks ago, I let my seven-year-old son see the goonies.
I figured that as a boy who likes to get himself in as many life-threatening situations as possible, he'd enjoy it.
I'd completely forgotten that the first line a child says is, oh shit.
And then the word is repeated a lot throughout the film.
Yeah, how awful.
It won't happen again with Pixels, no matter how much he begs.
It has zero occurrences of what my son now calls the S-word that means poop, but its language is much more harmful.
Uh-huh.
Beyond language, I am in no mood for a conversation about why every woman in the first 18 minutes of the movie is either sexualized or ridiculed, a trope that by the end of the film extends to Serena Williams and Martha Stewart, or why Josh Gad ends up married to Lady Lisa, a kitana-like video game character who's apparently mute and literally a trophy.
Oh, and don't worry, there's a good dose of homophobia and a sprinkling of racial fetishization in case the misogyny doesn't bother you.
In her opinion, the overarching attitude of Pixels teaches that the gaming world has no space for women unless they are generated by a computer.
And so I've told my son he won't be seeing it.
Now I have a very mad little boy, but I'm pretty confident it'll make him a better man in the end.
Yeah, I think you might be on something there.
I'm pretty sure that when he was seven years old, Elliot Roger watched a sexist film and he turned into a spree killer.
So I think you've really saved a few lives there.
But obviously Pixels is just the latest event in a long line of events or situations that are just terribly sexist towards women because everything is sexist.
Literally everything.
Imagine for a moment just how first world you have to be to find your air conditioning sexist.
And the thing is if this was in Jezebel or something I wouldn't even look at it.
But it's in The Telegraph, an otherwise respectable, conservative leaning paper.
So Radhika Sanghani says, I am freezing cold as I write this article at my desk.
I'm wrapped up in a jumper with my legs crossed under me to keep warm and my sleeves are pulled down as far as they go.
My two female colleagues are sitting opposite me wearing jackets and there's a stack of emergency desk jumpers in case things get worse.
Jesus Christ, drama merch.
But this is just part of their daily struggle.
The men around us are all pretty much jacket free.
Well, it's the fucking summer.
In fact, most of them have their shirt sleeves rolled up and religiously maintain that the temperature is fine.
Welcome to office life, where women battle daily with the air conditioning and men have no idea there's even a problem.
Those fucking sexists.
So you can really empathize with her when she says, The Washington Post recently highlighted this in a piece that made all my female colleagues and I fist pump the air with joy.
This is such a big deal.
They all unanimously fist pump the air with joy just because the Washington Post said something about it.
Well, let's have a look at that Washington Post article.
I'm sure it doesn't sound like it was written by a fucking child.
So it's entitled, Frigid Officers, Freezing Women, Oblivious Men.
An air conditioning investigation I can't help but feel that you're running out of problems.
You can spot them.
The frozen ones who come outside at lunch like sun-seeking turtles.
Cardigans balled up next to them, bare shoulders defrosting in the noon sunlight, no matter how wilting it is outdoors.
Every single woman I talked to in downtown Washington on a hot, humid July afternoon was thawing out.
I am freezing.
Feel my hand, I'm still cold, said Ruth Marshall, 64, who is seated on a park bench face to the sky.
And yes, her hand felt like a cold steak.
Fucking hell, I don't care.
I have to come out here for 30 minutes just to warm up, said Marshall, the director of administration at a construction firm where the air conditioning is set to Arctic.
Fucking hell, where are the white knights defending women from this oppression?
Honestly, this article is so stupid, I'm expecting the author to turn around and say the air conditioning is some kind of sexist plot.
Okay, but that's surely a joke, isn't it?
Well, only partially.
So there you have it.
The gender divide, thermostat edition.
All these women who dress for the season, linens, sundresses, flowery silk shirts, short-sleeved tops, you know, really cliche, stereotypical women, changing their wardrobes to fit the sweltering temperatures around them.
Then there are the men, stalwart in their business armor, manipulating their environment for their own comfort.
Heaven forbid they make any adjustments in what they wear.
Yeah, modern feminism is fucking pathetic.
Feminists sitting in offices thinking, well, what can I bitch about today?
You know what?
It's a really warm day outside, but the air conditioning is really high.
So I'm actually kind of cold.
I should blog about this.
Thank God I work for the Washington Post or The Telegraph, where the power of feminist nagging has enabled me to get paid to whine at untold thousands of people about my immediate surroundings and look no further than our fucking vaginas.
The thing is, it's not like there's anything better to talk about, is there?
It's not like a retired, decorated general recently called for internment camps for American citizens.
Oh, oh wait, no, no, that actually happened.
Generally, you know, a lot of people would say you report yourself.
So how do we fix self-radicalized lone wolfs domestically?
Well, we've got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized.
We've got to cut this off at the beginning.
There are always a certain number of young people who are alienated.
They don't get a job.
They lost a girlfriend.
Their family doesn't feel happy here.
And we can watch the signs of that.
And there are members of the community who will reach out to those people and bring them back in and encourage them to look at their blessings here.
But I do think on a national policy level, we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists.
They do have an ideology.
In World War II, if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn't say that was freedom of speech.
We put him in a camp.
They were prisoners of war.
So if these people are radicalized and they don't support the United States and they're disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle, fine, that's their right.
It's our right and our obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.
And I think we're going to have to increasingly get tough on this, not only in the United States, but our allied nations like Britain and Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.
So you think the U.S. government should have the power to call people radicals and then take those people and incarcerate them into segregated camps, internment camps, for the duration of the war with what?
ISIS?
The war on terror?
How long do you think these wars are going to last?
I mean, the war on terror has been going on for what?
14 years now?
Do you think it's going to end anytime soon?
For the fucking love of God, it's like you're suggesting we just build a totalitarian state and, you know, America and her allies should do this.
and then what just this is fucking absurd wesley And do you know what pissed me off the most about it as well?
Is I actually really like this guy.
He's a Democrat.
He's a critical of the Bush administration.
He's not a neocon.
Although he might well sound like a neocon.
Fuck you now.
Just listen, this is just going to end up as a new Japanese internment.
But it's going to be for Muslims.
And don't get me wrong, I've got no love of Islam, but I don't think the people who have done nothing wrong should be incarcerated just because people who look or sound like them have done something wrong.
And let's be honest with ourselves, you know that's what's going to happen.
And do we think the average person is really going to be able to tell the difference?
It's not that they're Muslims, it's that these guys are radicals.
And yes, they all just happen to be Muslims.
Yes, they all come from Muslim communities, but we're not demonizing Muslims doing this.
Look at Guantanamo Mobe.
He's a Muslim.
The government has declared him to be a terrorist.
They get called detainees and they're just left to rot there.
I'm against terrorism as much as anyone else, but imprisoning people for crimes they haven't committed because other people like them have committed crimes is just flat out wrong.
There has to be a better way.
The long campaign for redress and the perseverance of the Japanese American community culminated in the signing of the redress bill on August 10th, 1988 by President Reagan.
The legislation that I am about to sign provides for a restitution payment to each of the 60,000 survivors, Japanese, surviving Japanese Americans of the 120,000 who were relocated or detained.
Yet no payment can make up for those lost years.
So what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor.
For here we admit a wrong.
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