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One of my responsibilities in my part time job is to ensure that the bathrooms are reasonably clean and stocked, this equates roughly to once a shift boogieing around the building with a cart full of TP and paper towel (or many times during the most dreaded of all times on campus, dance festival season, but that is a different post). I’m not sure if behaviour in bathrooms are a psychological goldmine for understanding the human psyche, but a couple of interesting behaviours come to mind when it comes to maintaining the Water-closets where I work.
1. The amazing stupidity of people who think that wetting a bit of paper towel or TP and putting it on the roll of TP; thus ruining an entire roll of toilet paper. For what? What brave crusade are you fighting here dudes (and it is always dudes, not once in my 10 years working have I seen women be this stupid)? Your brave ‘fuck the system’ stance starts with destroying 45 cents worth of TP? Your cherished radical narchism has no room for bumfluff? The fuq? I just don’t get it.
2. For point two we have pictorial evidence. Observe.
Aww, you don’t want to catch anything from the nasty toilet seat, amiright? Your fine sense of hygiene is protecting your valued tuckus by laying down that half-micron thick patina of toilet paper protection. You are good now, “golden” even. You can do your business confidently and securely. Your commitment to cleanliness and hygiene should be applauded.
So, hyper hygiene freaks, why do you leave the TP on the seat? What is your reasoning behind this? Is pushing the TP the two centimeters into the bowl some sort Everest K2 type of task? Is Atlas pounding on the door demanding that you save some of that world-lifting action for him? If you’re all squicky about touching the TP your ass was just on could you not use your foot and nudge the now “toxic” paper straight into the loo (it is what I do after shaking my head for having to deal with your idiocy)?
Here is my hypothesis – and this applies to both dudes and dudettes – you are worried about your hygiene, but in your cravenly small self centered universe you really don’t care about the next person who has to deal with now adorned porcelain you’ve left behind. You exhibit a glaringly pathetic of empathy and consideration for the next person by not taking the two seconds to move your butt-shield into the loo. Concomitantly you are also slavishly embracing the foolhardy notion of the world revolving around your special-snowflake axis of posterior protection; and that positively pisses me off.
And thus, you too my toilet dressing friend are lumped into the same opprobrium deserving category as the brave anarchists sticking it to the Man by wetting toilet paper rolls.
Do you do this? If you do, please consider reforming your behaviour as I am sure it is furrowing brows everywhere for those who have to look after restrooms and puzzle why people do such inane things on such a regular basis.
Gaah!
Light posting week, driving fourteen hours has effectively turned off my synapses. :)
It is embarrassing when your hometown makes news on the Internets for having induhviduals who think that rape apologia is a-fucking-okay. These vats of douche have co-opted what was a successful campaign against sexual violence at the University of Alberta and other locations back in 2010. Here is the original poster.
Great poster. Great message promoting the idea that it is sexual assault when there is no consent. Let’s take a look at what our home town misogynists ginned up with their mad photoshop skillz.
How to prove your ‘movement’ is absolute shite.
Yah. They went there. Victim blaming, rape apologia all sung to the insidious drone of “what about the menz!!11!!!1!!!!”. And as with all Men’s Rights Activist content, it is nothing but baseless assertions tinged with whinging about how tough men have it in society. Almost like the Patriarchy didn’t exist. Making shit up is nothing new for MRA’s though, as evinced here:
Karen Straughan, spokesperson for Men’s Rights Edmonton, believes the original “Don’t be that guy” campaign demonized men.
“It frames all men as potential sexual predators,” she said.
Ah yes, because somehow the idea of consent being a necessary part of any sexual encounter demonizes men.
Lise Gotell, chair of women and gender studies at the University of Alberta, worked on the original “Don’t be that guy” campaign. She believes the new posters send the wrong message.
“They’ve perverted the message,” she said. “And they’ve transformed it into a rape apologist message and it’s just very disturbing.”
It is very disturbing because the message being sent reinforces the rape culture women have to deal with every day.
I’m disgusted with these MRA failsauces and their blatant misogyny. Go to rainn.org to get the real deal on what is happening violence and rape with regards to women.
Watch how TV helps women garnish the yummy shit sandwich of patriarchal norms.
Thanks Clorox, because we need more vectors of misogynistic oppression, not less!
Bleh!
One of the neat features of a model is that it allows you to strip down the gloss and inessential features that can sometimes clutter arguments and details about a particular topic; in the case of this post the prevalence of the Patriarchy. I am certainly not part of the Blamatariat yet, but I feel that I am moving across the spectrum toward a more informed, knowledgeable state of affiars.
There has been a furour on the Intertoobz as of late over the decision (now repealed) by Blizzard, the makers of World of War Craft, to attach players real names to their characters in game and while posting in the game related forum. The frantic typing and posting resounded across the Net, there are threads about this topic everywhere from Pharyngula to Shakesville.
The questions and concerns raised range from harassment on forums to IRL stalking and worse. A jumping off point in one of the threads took me here to a brilliant post by Nattie on a thread from MetaFilter. I suggest you go read the entire post with the idea in mind that this could be viewed as a primer for understanding Patriarchy 101. To the uninitiated the patriarchy can seem a little bit of a fuzzy concept due to the implicit and ingrained nature of how the P functions. In light of potential learning from this piece I have added hyperlinks to the Shakesville Feminism 101 section for those seeking more illumination than the limited scope provided here.
Nattie says [italics, underlining and links, mine]:
“* If you do post a picture (I never did) people either go nuts over how hot you are and won’t leave you alone –– and the guys that perv on you treat you in a condescending way because hot=stupid; having to hear that shit addressed to other girls on Vent was really infuriating and uncomfortable — OR they make a point of constantly telling you how ugly you are and won’t leave you alone. There is no middle ground. They either want to fuck you or deride you. And it actually doesn’t matter how hot or how ugly you are, either; the hottest girls will get called ugly (and FAT, ALWAYS FAT), and the ugliest girls still have to deal with lonely guys who aren’t superficial. Any time the girl posts something thereafter, people will comment on her appearance, even though it has nothing to do with whatever is being discussed.”
The italicized statements are nothing new to the advanced Blamer, but to the uninitiated parsing them out can be
No objectification going on here. We are most definitly not appealing to the male gaze.
very illuminating. For instance, the options faced in the the statement A)”oh I you’re sooo hot I want to frak you” or B)”oh you’re so ugly, you are not soooo not”frakkable”. Both “choices” revolve around the idea that the primary feature of a female is her beauty as viewed by how attractive she is to the male gaze. Not the content of her character, not her opinions, not her factual claims, but just how she looks. So female worth is judged by how good of a sexual object they appear to be.
This ugly fact has a one to one correspondence to the real meatspace world. Women deal with this 24/7,all the time, on all stations full on assault on their identity as human beings.
“* If you ask someone to leave you alone, you’re a stuck up bitch. That means you always have to be nice to everyone. This was both unfair and character-building, because now I’m really good at talking to and disengaging from socially ill-adjusted people without hurting their feelings.”
Again, the social expectations of women are quite explicit and when you go against them you get flayed to the bone because you are not properly performing your sanctioned role. Since when should a person have to ‘be nice’ or be anything all the time or be labelled a ‘stuck up bitch’ (insert your gendered insult here)? As a woman you get to deal with this as well, just because you happen to possess a double X chromosome. There are severe repercussions when Patriarchally sanctioned behaviour expectations are not followed.
* Some people think anything you do or say is attention-whoring, even if you never wanted the attention. If a guy makes a joke in a forum post, he’s a funny guy. If a girl makes a joke in a forum post, she’s an attention whore. If a guy makes a good argument in a forum post, he’s a smart guy. If a girl makes a good argument in a forum post, she’s doing it for attention. She’s ESPECIALLY an attention whore if people like her or agree with her.
* Similarly, people assume that the only reason anyone likes you is because they’re one of your fanboys. So people don’t genuinely think women or funny or make good arguments, they’re just fanboys. If other girls like you, then it’s because women form cliques — even if in the previous breath they were saying that women are all catty and hate each other.
Do you notice the pattern of choices that is become prevalent? Women are presented with two choices both equally shitty that do nothing to further her own autonomy or identity. You can choose either one patriarchally approved stereotype or the other, both damage you as a person.
“A sizable portion of [the population in general]gamers are racist. (Sexism, racism, and homophobia are what make me most uncomfortable about the gaming community; in a serious way I feel more connection to gamers than any other group, so this pains me. Plenty of gamers are none of these things and I love them to death, but I think those same gamers realize what a huge problem it is in the community in general.) An even bigger portion of gamers are just not very racially sensitive — they’ll use “nigger” or “Jew” a lot, for example, even if they don’t think they actively feel anything against those groups, because they think it’s funny. In the same way that saying stuff is “gay” is especially pronounced in the gamer community, even the people that say slurs ironically or by force of habit inadvertently make actual bigots in the gaming community feel empowered because they don’t realize other people don’t mean those things like they do. It is much more common and acceptable to express racist opinions in the gaming community than society at large.”
The quote really speak for itself, but the tacit acceptance of gendered insults and racist putdowns only reinforces the negative stereotypes that have such corrosive effects in our culture.
I have barely scratched the surface of all the issues that could be covered, just with the quoted materials. Frighteningly there is almost a 1:1 correspondence to what happens in the gaming world vs. what goes on in the real world, it is just a little easier to see in the gaming world because people are less constrained by social norms and morality in the mostly anonymous world of gaming. (or shorter the vile sexism and batshite crazy stupidity is easily observed)
A big thank you to Shakesville for having such a comprehensive FAQ for dealing with the multitudinous issues that this particular world of warcraft blip brought up.
I guess I get to feel old and snarky today. So be it. I just shake my head when I read articles about people who value ‘sharing’ over ‘privacy’ when it comes to net usage. My cynical weasel whiskers get all twitchy when I read about the sheer awesomeness of social networking. I’ll explain why as we look at the article.
“Two-thirds of 895 technology experts and stakeholders surveyed about the future of the internet believe the millennial generation, born mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, will make online sharing a lifelong habit, suggests a Pew Research Center and Elon University study released Friday.”
Oh fantastic! The generation ahead of me feels all entitled and special enough to think that people actually care about what happens in their pathetically small, atomized existences. I would propose the only time people actually notice your ‘meaningful socially networked discourse’ is when you say something stupid or inappropriate.
Facebooking about the puerile experiences of your life and having them remain on the web for roughly forever just does not seem like a wise decision to me. Mistakes are learning opportunities, but exist only on facebook for the amusement of others. On the other hand facebook does serve a somewhat Darwinistic purpose; that of weeding out extra stupid people who get caught for making threats or cyberbullying while on FB or Twitter. I mean really? Posting threats to someone on your own FB page? You may as well begin playing in traffic right now.
“There were voices saying privacy is going to appear quaint, it’s completely changed, maybe privacy doesn’t exist anymore,” said Janna Anderson, an associate professor at Elon University School of Communications who led the study. At least one respondent wrote that publicness is becoming a public good. “And keeping information to yourself is going to be seen as antisocial.… There were a lot of people saying sharing is the new normal.”
“Sharing is the new normal”, indeed! The intense need for self-gratification seems to be winning out on any sort of rational view of this phenomena. Instead of actually doing something worthwhile you get your needs for acceptance filled by the number of facebook ‘friends’ you have?
“Young people enjoy the feeling of being connected and feel sharing benefits their personal lives, Anderson added. “They understand that there are negatives, but they believe that the upside is dominant.”
Young people are also stupid. They lack the experience and discipline needed to make rational decisions about relatively simple life decisions, nevermind the complexities of social sharing on the Internet.
Have the techno-youth really considered why it is so darn easy to get up and running in the various social networking sites? Why is that? Social networking is the advertisers wet dream. You have peoples private information and various applications and ‘fun surveys’ that collect information about an individuals likes and dislikes. By social networking you are essentially doing the leg work for advertisers as you data-mine yourself for free, plus you have no control over who gets to see your information once its out there. In Canada this has been addressed to a limited extent by the Privacy Commissioner, but I guarantee that the practice is still rampant. How else do you pay for the servers and the bandwidth to keep the FB servers operational?
“Many of those surveyed said new social norms are emerging that reward disclosure among young people, said Lee Rainie, director of the Internet & American Life Project, in a statement.
“Some experts also expressed hope that society will be more forgiving of those whose youthful mistakes are on display in social media such as Facebook picture albums or YouTube videos,” he added.”
Is that not a nice hope? ‘Society will be more forgiving of youthful mistakes…’. That is certainly not the case if you wish to run for public office. So naive experts whinge for a more naive society. Perfect. Anything (anything) you put on the web is fair game. Assume your scribblings will be used against you in the worst possible light devoid of context, to smear and sully your reputation or job application or whatever as IPIP (important people in power) will google you to see if you have indeed made an asshat of yourself on the Internet.
Notice the sand - Keep them at the beach, please, folks.
I get a little snarky during the summer as people decide that ‘everyday is a beach day’ and decide to wear thong sandals or ‘flip-flops’ as regular footwear. Aesthetically, the typical flip flop is an eyesore as it is usually grimy and worn down almost to nothing. Folks, replace your three dollar footwear if it looks ratty, I’m sure you have the spare change. The typical FF also as a recent article from the World Daily points out, is bad for you.
“When people wear flip-flops, the muscles on the front of their shins work harder than they do when people are barefoot. The increased muscle activity may be a result of the toes trying to grip the shoe to keep it in place.Flip-flops shorten your stride length and can cause pain in your lower legs.” (See the study here)
So, stop it and cure me of my vexation over your poor choice of footwear.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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