Hello everyone, welcome to This Week in Stupid for the 4th of October 2015.
So last week's This Week in Stupid was rather special, for a number of reasons.
First because so much great stuff happened that was worth talking about.
And second, because it ended up trending as a feminist topic.
I find this highly amusing, so great job everyone.
I can't believe that feminist bots are picking up my videos now.
So starting with feminism then, I'm sure you remember fuck hate.
But if you don't, here's a quick reminder.
I shouldn't need a penis to get paid!
Yep, they are the fine responsible adults who decided to brainwash children in order to use them to sell t-shirts.
Weren't they, Miss Piggy?
Um, instead of cleaning these girls' mouths out with soap, maybe society should clean up its act!
I swear to God, there's never gonna be a time when that face isn't funny.
Anyway, in their ongoing mission to help society clean up its act, they posted this on their Facebook page.
Comment below.
Tell us why you need feminism.
Speak out, stand out, fuckhate.com.
The replies to this request were amazing.
Amazing and so totally, totally honest.
I need feminism because a guy once told me that I didn't know squat about building anything, and that I should let him handle it when I had more building experience than him.
31 upvotes.
Good for you, Trishna.
I sat here for a few moments, trying to find the right words to express why to me we need feminism.
My answer is that I, as a mother of four amazing kids, I fear that they are going to be reduced and restricted, all because of their gender, their sexuality, and what they choose to do with their lives.
Good for you, Laura.
I mean, unfortunately, sometimes when you open one door, another door does close, but I'm sure feminism can fix that.
Just because you went and got a master's degree in gender studies doesn't mean the patriarchy should be able to restrict you from performing brain surgery.
I need feminism because I don't want my niece to be taught that she is menstruating because God is angry with her.
I see what's happening.
You're coming from the Steve Shives school of atheism, aren't you?
Because we even have to answer this.
Because people use the word feminism as an insult.
Yeah, it's amazing how they do that and people do get insulted.
Because why not just call it egalitarianism is in itself a sexist statement because it carries the message that feminism equals bad.
I can't believe it either, Danielle.
really don't know what people's problem is.
I've been told by a feminist that egalitarianism is for MRAs so I need feminism because men shouldn't catcall.
Also, I need feminism because men won't catcall me.
I'm getting the feeling that you're not quite the feminist you're claiming to be, Freddy.
I need feminism because I shouldn't have to be told to man up when a woman hits me.
You know what, there is some truth to this one, because, you know, feminism probably will deal with that.
I need feminism because cyber violence has ruined my life and gave me a mental illness.
Sounds like someone just got back from the UN.
I need feminism because if I don't say I do, you will charge me with harassment for having a different worldview where we can all get along and celebrate our strengths and weaknesses, celebrate kindness, courage and compassion, and disagree without resorting to yelling hate, sexism, racism, bigot, rape, or misogyny.
Wow, it sounds like someone really needs feminism.
Or else you're going to be receiving some cyber violence from the sounds of it.
I need feminism because I like to blame my problems on everyone but myself.
480 likes.
That's a lot of honest feminists.
I need feminism because no one else is going to tell homeless men about their privilege.
That's so true.
If not you, then who?
These homeless men aren't going to learn about their privilege on their own, are they?
I need feminism because without it, I wouldn't have anyone screaming in my face on a daily basis, calling me worthless and telling me I oppress them because I'm a dude.
Ah, this must be one of those privileged homeless men that I've heard so much about.
Obviously a couple of heathens turned up.
I don't need feminism because I believe in real equality.
I respect men and don't need to belittle them in order to empower myself.
And 2,000 MRA scumbags upvoted Shanna's post because they hate women.
And finally, I don't need feminism because I'm allowed all the same freedoms as a man.
I can vote, drive, and work.
I get paid the same as a man in my position.
I learn to do what I want when I want.
I don't need feminism as I have a mind of my own, and I know I can hold my own if I need to.
Grow up, stop blaming everyone else for your shortcomings, and bring it on trolls.
And 3,600 MRA trolls have upvoted this.
What a terrible, misogynistic world we live in.
You should be ashamed of yourself, Molly.
Seriously though, that was fucking hilarious.
Well done, fuck hate.
Your comment section was an absolute bloodbath for feminism.
Well done.
And speaking of bloodbaths for feminism, someone called Azalea Banks has compared the LGBT community to the KKK.
Now, I don't know who this person is, but I'm given to understand that they are very famous and they have recently been having problems with the LGBT community.
Obviously this all took place via a series of tweets because apparently everything does these days.
But she said the LGBT community, um, GGGG, I don't know what that means, are like the gay white KKKs.
Get them some pink hoods and unicorns and let them rally down Rodeo Drive.
That's pretty good.
She then went on to call them all weaklings.
All I had to do is say one word and I moved a whole community.
What weaklings?
If I'm to be part of an LGBT community, I want to be in it with people who aren't so weak or easily moved, you know.
I'm not a weak bitch.
Being called a dyke or a nigger does absolutely nothing to move me.
So yes, you can call me a nigger and I won't get mad.
I'd be like, is that all you've got?
You boys gotta toughen up.
Don't be so weak.
If one word can put your entire community in distress, you're doomed.
Words are not tangible things.
You all chose to get upset.
Remember, offence is only taken, it is never given.
I'm actually really fucking impressed.
This is like the essence of stoicism being exemplified here.
It's not the thing itself, but your reaction to it that determines how bad it is.
I mean, this is a great lesson in stoicism for the LGBT community, and frankly, they probably could use it.
Just like this poor lady who was sweat-shamed as she waited for her coffee at Starbucks.
This is the most amazingly pathetic thing you'll ever read.
I was ordering coffee when I noticed a well-dressed woman staring at me.
You look like you just did a class, she said, giving me the once-over.
I had no idea what she meant, so I said nothing.
Or swimming, she offered with a tight smile.
Oh, that.
I'd just run 12 miles and the hair sticking out from under my hat was wet.
It took me a moment to formulate an answer.
Um, running, I mumbled finally.
I just sweat a lot.
I took the paper cup of drip coffee and hurried past the condiment bar.
Screw half and half, I'd drink it black.
Once safely inside my car, I threw off my damp running cap and flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt in embarrassment.
I wanted to dive deep into that Lulimon scuba and never come back up for air.
To which a sensible person is doubtless wondering, fucking why?
If I'd just done a 12-mile run, I would be fucking bragging about it.
But no, this woman realised she had been sweat-shamed.
Sweat shaming is when someone points out your sweatiness as a way to signal disapproval.
Like its counterpart slut shaming and fat shaming, sweat shaming is aimed mainly at women.
Who are actually not supposed to sweat at all?
Well, I guess the question is, what are you going to do about it?
If I were to reimagine the sweat-shaming incident as a music video, for whatever reason you'd do that, it would play out like this.
A spotlight comes down and maybe a disco ball, baristas dance back up around me.
I don't think you're ready for this sweaty, I belt out for the tune of Bootylicious.
It's just a fantasy...
thank fuck.
But it helps me to see how I might react differently.
I've got another long run this weekend and afterwards I'm going to sit down with my coffee all sweaty and transgressive.
Okay, it's not really transgressive.
This woman was just a bit prudish about cleanliness, evidently.
But yes, well done.
Only 2,000 years after the Stoics really formally codified this, you are now at the point where you understand that your reactions to things affect you as a person a lot more than what they have actually said ever would.
I find it very interesting that there are like feminists and progressives who are finally getting to this point.
Yes, if you don't like something, you have to modify how you react to it, because you can't modify the thing itself.
Now, I know a lot of people are wondering, so, okay, these people are hypersensitive, whining idiots.
But where the fuck are all these hypersensitive, whining idiots coming from?
Well, I can't be sure about all of them, but I know that some of them are probably coming from a Barrowford school that was proud the school was rated inadequate by Ofsted.
A school at which pupils were told test results did not assess what made them special and unique has been rated as inadequate by inspectors.
I'll try and contain my surprise.
But the thing is, the school has been going downhill.
A previous Ofsted report in 2012 rated the school as good.
This school has made headlines before as a letter sent by the school to pupils went viral online.
It told them to enjoy your results, but to remember that there are many ways of being smart, which, and let's be honest with ourselves here, is what you say to idiots to make them feel better about themselves.
Which is presumably why Barrowford had to do it.
Lead Inspector Jill Jones said, Children in reception are not prepared for the curriculum in year one.
The proportion of children reaching a good level of development is too low.
Pupils' achievement over time was not good enough, particularly in year groups where teaching is weak.
Well, unsurprisingly.
So what were the strengths of the school?
Well, standards are improving.
That's a good start.
The school is inclusive.
Oh, bravo.
Pupils are polite and friendly to visitors.
That's very important.
For their future.
Pupils say they're confident to tell staff how they feel.
Well, isn't that just spectacular?
Training up a bunch of kids to be complete morons but quite happy to tell you how they feel about being complete morons.
But you see, being inclusive is more important than not being a moron.
Because you can't guarantee that someone's not going to be a moron, but you can guarantee that someone's inclusive.
And that can avoid problems like this.
Student accused of being a terrorist for reading a book on terrorism.
Now, as you can already see, the person who accused this guy of being a terrorist is clearly a complete fucking Cretan.
But if he was a complete fucking Cretan who was also inclusive, you'd have looked at the guy and said, well, he's brown.
I can't accuse him of being a terrorist.
A postgraduate student of counter-terrorism was falsely accused of being a terrorist after an official at Stratfordshire University had spotted him reading a textbook entitled Terrorism Studies in the College Library.
Did you think that was how ISIS did it?
Did you?
Mohammed Umar Farouk was enrolled in the Terrorism, Crime and Global Security Masters Programme, where he was questioned about attitudes to homosexuality, the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
Yeah, that's how these extremist organizations recruit.
They don't try and propagandise people, they don't use Twitter or social media.
They write books, get them into libraries, and then rely on people reading the books of their own volition to then radicalise them.
I could not believe it.
I was reading an academic textbook and minding my own business.
At first I thought I'd just laughed it off as a joke, said Farouk, who then instructed a lawyer to help him challenge and rebut the claims.
Farouk said he'd been looking over his shoulder ever since, and was so unsettled by the incident that he chose not to return to the course, but that he'd felt like he had to make a statement about what had happened.
The implications, if I did not challenge this, could be serious for me.
I could go on a police list.
I could be investigated without my knowledge.
This could happen to any young Muslim lad.
I had to fight back.
Holy shit, it makes it sound like the university has radicalised him instead.
The university added that the official who had questioned Farouk only had a few hours training in December 2013.
A statement which I'm sure surprised nobody, and the university also warned that making a distinction between the intellectual pursuit of radical ideas and radicalization itself was a significant challenge.
Well, I guess we could probably start by assuming that any students who have signed up for a counter-terrorism course do not plan in becoming terrorists.
And in fact, they may need to study terrorism in order to counter it.
This student probably has a case for harassment now, or something stupid like that.
Something stupid like Twitter's form to report harassment, which someone spotted last week contains something very interesting.
Under the section interrogating what you were reporting, the first bullet point is offensive, disrespectful, or in disagreement with my opinion.
Which is now apparently part of Twitter's official stance in what constitutes abuse or harassment.
And the thing is, this kind of disagreeing with my opinion is harassment mentality seems to be, well, particularly common.
For example, when Milo Yiannopoulos and Lauren Southern decided to go to the Amber Rose slut walk and hold up signs saying regret is not rape and rape culture and Harry Potter are both fantasy, they were escorted away by the police for disagreeing with feminist dogma.
The patriarchy escorted them away to protect feminists.
Slut walking.
Protesters snatched and tore up Yiannopoulos' placard which read Rape Culture and Harry Potter both fantasies in view of the police who stood by while protesters bellowed and grabbed at the second placard that read Regret is not rape.
Organisers claimed the journalists and film crews were trespassing on a private event despite both Yiannopoulos and Southern having tickets.
Get this though.
When challenged they then claimed that the filming equipment was the problem, despite dozens of revelers using iPhone equipment to record and broadcast the event.
When asked if Yiannopoulos and Southern could remain if only they used mobile phones, an organiser said yes, then no, then repeated to the police that were en route to escort both reporters away from the slut walk, because they should have just come clean and said it.
No, we don't want someone around that disagrees with us.
It's fucking harshing our buzz.
It's really hard to be a fucking strong independent woman who's fighting the patriarchy if we have to get the patriarchy to come over and get rid of those people who disagree with us.
It is exactly as Milo puts at the end of his article.
The end result of today's slut walk was ironic.
A protest against patriarchy calling on the patriarchy to eject a female politician and a gay reporter, and another blow for press freedom and freedom of speech.
But more to the point, it shows you who has the privilege in the situation.
Who is the establishment going to defend?
And let's take a look at what the establishment is defending.
What noble, honourable event were they making sure wasn't disrupted by people who say, we disagree.
Oh, bravo.
Bravo.
Western civilization in all its glory.
You know what, I can see why the establishment would be so eager to prop up these people.
Because they pose absolutely no fucking threat to it at all.
Yes, the banks are fucking everyone.
Yes, corporations are screwing the environment.
Yes, your wages are going down in real terms.
But do these people look like the sort of fucking half-wits who could do something about it?
No.
Of course the establishment is going to prop up these useful idiots.
And since everything is harassment these days, it is no wonder that men are frightened to help women at work in case of harassment claims.
Of course they are.
They might say something like, I disagree with you, which is now harassment.
God only knows where it could lead.
I've only got the introduction to this article because it's behind a paywall on the Times website.
So I'm just going to assume these claims are true.
Women are failing to advance at work because the senior male executives who could help them are most terrified that an offer of assistance will be misconstrued as sexual harassment, a new book claims.
As I said, for the purpose of this video, I'm going to assume that the author has done their research, and if not, well, I'll make a note of it later.
But it really sounds to me like the sort of thing that could be true.
Sex in the office suggests that all the fur over sexual harassment has backfired on women, making it too risky for men to forge professional friendships with them.
And the thing is, I think that this may be true for a lot of men.
I mean, from my own personal anecdotal experience, my last office job was at the research councils in Swindon, and we were rushing to get the website migrated from one format to another.
And we had a deadline to do it, and basically pulled loads of overtime, worked really, really hard.
And during this, a woman kept repeatedly coming up to me and asking me what was essentially the same question over and over.
And effectively, by the end of it, I had become quite dismissive and been like, look, I can't, I don't have time to talk to you.
You'll have to ask someone else, or just you'll have to try and remember what you were told the last three times you asked.
I got disciplined for that, because that was apparently making her feel dismissed, which came under the umbrella term of harassment.
Telling someone to go away because I was busy was harassment.
So I can quite well believe Kim Elsa, the author who argues that a sex partition has sprung up, which impedes women from building the vital network of contacts in the company where they work, as well as outside of it.
Because you can be goddamn sure, I didn't go to lunch with that woman or anything like that.
I kept my distance, because the last thing I want to do is harass someone.
But again, this kind of creates a pro-stoicism argument.
It isn't what people are doing to you, it is how you are interpreting it and reacting to it.
Because how people treat you is not within your own power, but how you deal with things yourself is within your own power.
Just like it's within your own power to get yourself blinded by persuading a sympathetic psychologist to fulfill your lifelong wish and pour drain cleaner into your eyes.
It won't surprise you that this poor young woman who was cursed with the ability to see has been diagnosed with body integrity identity disorder.
Which I think is a fancy way of saying that they're fucking nuts.
You know, I'm actually not going to read through this one because it actually really pisses me off.
Imagine if you were born blind and you heard about some I can't even imagine how easy your life must be if you're thinking, you know what, maybe it would be better if I just couldn't see.
And so this person with a fascination for being blind didn't say, I don't know, wear a bandage across their face so they couldn't see, but, you know, weren't disfigured.
So, if they change their mind at some point in their life, they at least haven't wasted the gift of sight, but instead managed to find another human being to help blind them by pouring drain cleaner in their eyes.
I mean, you would probably be despairing at humanity.
Now, I can't believe it's legal for this psychologist to help someone permanently blind themselves.
I really can't.
But apparently, it must be because they haven't been to jail or anything as far as I'm aware.
So, just fuck this planet.
Just fuck it.
And finally, this week, the thing that pisses me off the most: The Huffington Post publishes names and photos of people who oppose migrant invasion on social media.
This is from the Huffington Post, Germany.
And I am staggered and disgusted that anyone at the Huffington Post would think this kind of attempted public shaming is acceptable.
The Huffington Post, Germany, is posting people's names and photos who comment on social media opposing the migrant invasion.
If you post a comment on their site or Facebook or any social media, you will be named.
The Huffington Post is a global news organization.
This is putting a target on anyone's head who refuses to go along with the leftist/slash Islamic war on freedom.
Now, while I don't agree with the right-wing rhetoric and the conclusions that they've come to here, I absolutely despise the idea that the Huffington Post thinks it's its job to incite a social media hate mob.
Because that is categorically what they are trying to incite here.
This is absolutely vile.
German people are absolutely within their rights to say, look, I don't agree with this, and to not be shamed for this opinion.