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Saturday, July 31, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Monday, March 09, 2009
Oh crap! Very belated happy New Year! I came to post something else, but then noticed when I last wrote anything. Sorry to you, my legions of loyal readers!
Anyway, what I wanted to say...
Scientology is inherently silly. That said, anyone who believes in angels, demons, or gods being their own sons sacrificing themselves to themselves has no place mocking someone else for their ridiculousness.Labels: mockery, religion, ridiculousness
posted
by Tabby at 3/09/2009 01:50:00 p.m.
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Thursday, December 11, 2008
So here's the thing. Depending on where you are, you can discuss racism and things are fine. Depending on where you are, you can discuss homophobia and things are fine. But don't assume just because those topics have come up in the past that people are okay with discussing misogyny, because if you try that, things aren't so fine. Men get all huffy and you get smacked down for getting people upset.
I won't say where this conversation took place, but you won't be able to find it so don't waste your time trying to find it. I will copy and paste my part of the conversation only, the text in bold, so these are my words as is and I will describe what followed in italics.
It would be nice if religious was solely at fault, but a deep-rooted hatred and contempt for women is so deeply ingrained culturally throughout most of the male world it's a shock that we've managed to make inroads anywhere.
I won't even change the typo where I wrote "religious" instead of "religion". That one paragraph ended with me being accused of sexism for using the term "male world", and the poor, put-upon man who accused me of being sexist and took such umbrage over this then brought up the example of female genital mutilation being supported performed by women while ignoring the cultural brainwashing that leads to this happening. Of course I replied.
I know a lot of misogyny is absorbed and perpetuated by women against women, but the roots are still patriarchy and trying to make men happy. Female genital mutilation is supported and performed largely by women, but it's to please men and make their daughters into acceptable marriage material as they are of no use if they can't find husbands to bear sons for.
It's sad that so many women have accepted and bought into the lesson that they are lesser than men.
Maybe if I left it there, all would be fine. But there were replies to this, none of which accused me of sexism this time (I wonder if it would be racist of me to lay the blame for racism in the American south on white folk down there even though African Americans have used the n-word too). Anyway, I didn't leave it there. I then wrote the following concerning someone doubting misogyny being natural, which I sadly think is how it started out...
Actually I suspect it did start out from a natural state and became something very ugly. We are animals after all, and one of the primary objectives of pretty much every sexually reproducing species is to pass on their genes. Preaching monogamy is one way to try to ensure one's genes are passed on. However, it's within the male of the species to try and pass his genes on to as many females as possible, and it's within the female of the species to try and get the best genes possible which isn't necessarily from one's mate.
I can see our species as we grew more intelligent taking these instincts and twisting them into something very horrible.
"I must pass on my genes" becomes "I must ensure it's my genes that are passed on" becomes "You must be with only me so I can be sure you're only getting my genes" becomes "I will dominate you so you do not stray" becomes "Look how I dominate you, you are pathetic and should be grateful for my genes".
It's like how territorialism, which is natural, becomes war, which isn't, but is a result of our so-called intelligence mightily fucking over instinct.
And while I haven't been completely ostracized, I have been punished.
I've been on message boards for a long time. Frankly, I'm disgusted when crap on a board gets taken elsewhere. Why then am I posting this here?
Because my feminism has been stirred up and I'm not going to be made to shut up. Do women need to stand up and not buy into misogyny anymore? HELL YES! The treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the recent American presidential election was horrifying, and the sheer number of women who attacked them as women instead of attacking policies they disagree with was saddening, but that doesn't change the fact that just because women buy into misogyny doesn't take away the blame men must bear as a sex for starting it (I'm sorry, but I guarantee it wasn't a woman who first came up with the concept of female misogyny). Of course not all men are responsible for carrying it on, but blaming the victim for believing what they've been told all their lives just shows a shocking lack of empathy.
Even now I'm torn about hitting the "Publish Post" button. If this is read by someone from there, it could end up in me being banned. You'd think that wouldn't bother me, but I prefer to leave message boards on my own terms. The thing is, you've now read every word I wrote in the thread on the subject. This has been weighing on my chest for a while now, so screw it, I'm hitting the button...Labels: misogyny, petty message board politics
posted
by Tabby at 12/11/2008 03:33:00 a.m.
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Saturday, November 15, 2008
This is something I find very cool and fascinating, but may bore other people silly if they can even work up enough interest to care that much.
Starting with yourself - and only biology and genetics matter in this exercise - go back one generation. There will be two parents, one mother and one father. Go back two generations, and there will be four grandparents, two grandmothers and two grandfathers. Another generation will bring eight sets of genes.
The doubling up happens every generation. A mere ten generations gives you 1024 great (x9) grandparents. Twenty generations brings us to 1,048,576. Thirty will be 1,073,741,824. And we'll end at forty, which will be 1,099,511,627,776 great (x39) grandparents, more people than have ever existed throughout history.
Of course this means that certain sets of couplings will duplicate many, many times - more and more as you go back and there were fewer people living.
Remembering that people use to have children at much younger ages than is common today, if we assign an average age of 20 to each generations, 40 generations is only approximately 800 years. Even if you want to raise that average age, it's still a remarkably short time in human history. Go back a thousand years, five thousand, ten thousand, the numbers will both be mindboggling large yet increasingly small.
One thing science agrees with the major religions on is that we have a common ancestor. Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythology starts with Adam and Eve (or even Noah, but his sons all had wives who had parents, so we need to go back to Eden for this to work, and unlike the Torah-Bible-Quran, I'm not about to ignore mothers when it comes to begatting). Depending on what sort of time frame you accept if you're a muddle-headed young earth creationist, if you go back six to ten thousand years, we go from one set of parents to one set of ultimate grandparents. Maybe. We'll come back to this later.
Of course in reality the world is not only much older than that, so is humanity. However, this is where things get muddier for the exercise. Do we only count human ancestors? I wouldn't. Why should we discount our non-human ancestors, without whom we wouldn't exist? We shouldn't!
Therefore we get to back even further. Millions of years further. When we do the doubling now, the numbers are astronomical and very hard to comprehend. Other numbers are changing too. You think going back far enough we'd end with one pair of ancestors. You'd be wrong. We go back further than that. We have one set of birth parents, two people. But the number at the start is even less than that. Despite all the doubling that has gone on, once we go back far enough it gets down to one. One single cell organism. We can go even further to proteins and stuff, but to me, one ancestor is good enough. From this all life as we know it sprang. Yes, we are closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas, but we are also distantly related to goldfish and tigers. And pigs too, but damn it, I'm still going to enjoy a good pork chop.
I mentioned getting back to Genesis later. If you think about it, even then we go back down to one. Adam. The patriarchal nonsense contained in that book says Adam was created from dust, but Eve was made from one of Adam's ribs, essentially making her his clone. Unfortunately you don't get the really great related to all life part of this if you accept Genesis as literal truth.
That said, one thing we can all agree on (except for the most racist fantasist) is that if you go back far enough, we are all related. So, cousins, please be nice to each other. We're the only family in this universe we've got.Labels: ancestry, generations, relationship to each other
posted
by Tabby at 11/15/2008 09:44:00 p.m.
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Sunday, November 09, 2008
I've tried twice now to post a reply in my own comments section (hi, Icarus!) and twice now it's failed, the first time telling me my comment was rejected as spam and the second time giving me a 404 error. YACCS has been pretty good for the past - HOLY CRAP! I've had this blog for over eight years now! Anyway, it's been glitchy a couple of times, but for the most part it's worked fine. But this has annoyed me so I'm going to move to the built-in Blogger comments that weren't available when I first started this whole thing.
This means, unfortunately, that all previous comments will be lost once the switch is made and I'm sorry for that. Thank you everyone who has ever commented and I hope you do so again.
Update: As it turns out, I was going to have no choice in this matter. When I went to YACCS to see if I could remember my login information, I saw this...
YACCS will discontinue service on Dec 23, 2008
YACCS will discontinue its service on December 23, 2008. After this date, you will no longer be able to access comments, either on your site or through the YACCS homepage. Please download/archive your comments before this date. Thanks to all the supporters, translators and bloggers who have supported YACCS over the past seven years.
The timing couldn't have been better.Labels: Blogger, comments, YACCS
posted
by Tabby at 11/09/2008 11:20:00 a.m.
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Congratulations, America. Congratulations on your presidential election finally ending, and congratulations on electing your first African-American president. I'd be happier, so much happier for you if it wasn't at the expense of turning the progress of women back by years as demonstrated by the open and blatant misogyny we saw in the horrendously sexist attacks against Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. You know, it's possible to disagree with their policies and not call them "shrill bitches".
I've been chided for not letting people bask in Obama's victory. Well, I'm sorry I can't get behind the prejudice against women that ironically helped him get to the presidency. Advancement for one oppressed group shouldn't come at the expense of another. Speaking of which, I'd also like to congratulate all the African-Americans and Latinos who voted not just for Obama en mass, but for Proposition 8 in California, the move to add anti-gay bigotry to the California constitution. I hope you're all proud of yourself in moving from oppressed to oppressor status.
I really wish I could be happy for you, America. Obama's win is truly historic, and frankly I'm pissed off that I can't be happy for you.Labels: a sad day for feminism in America, bigotry, disappointment, irony, politics
posted
by Tabby at 11/09/2008 08:25:00 a.m.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008
As of this writing, Stephen Harper's Conservatives have missed their dreams of a majority in parliament by just eleven seats. Just eleven friggin' seats short of a national nightmare. What the hell is wrong with us, Canada?!?! The Tories are a disaster with their ugly environmental record and no plan that will make any difference at all, their cuts to programs that help the poor, their cutting of women's programs, their slashing of funds to adult literacy programs, and all this hand-in-hand with their tax cuts to corporations and wealthy Canadians.
I'm sick to my stomach at these results. I knew going into this that no matter how ridiculous it is to give them power that they would still form the government anyway, but to increase their representation like this?
Look around! We are seeing the disastrous results of right-wing economic policies! ARGH!
Then there is Alberta. As always, I really hate living here. There is one bright spot, Edmonton Strathcona, that is looking good to go to the NDP right now by the skin of their teeth. Other than that, nowhere else in the province was even close. Welcome to the conservative armpit of Canada.
Sorry, I'm just really pissed off right now.Labels: Anybody hiring in Ontario?, boring Canadian politics, Canada is going downhill, loathesome Alberta politics, wrong-headed voters
posted
by Tabby at 10/14/2008 10:41:00 p.m.
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The
critics are calling
I
Was an Atomic Robot Jungle Vixen...
"Very
cool!" "Awesome!" "Good times!"
"Inspires
me..." A Critic - I
respect
"Cool.
And miles more exciting..." Someone Else -
You
might not know
"I
totally love it!" Whoo hoo! -
Posted
somewhere
"All
I have to say is... Cool!" Another Critic
"I
like the look..." An Opinion - YACCS
Comments
"You
think I have time to give you a quote? You're out of your
mind!" Wil Wheaton -WWfreakin'DN!
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