Pledge Drive: Fluffy Cat Rolling In Money Edition!
Making it rain
Welcome to the First Quarter Man Boobz Pledge Drive 2014: Fluffy Cat Rolling In Money Edition!
To repeat my simple pitch from my previous pledge drives: If you enjoy this blog, and can afford it, please click on the “donate” button below and send a few bucks my way. Or, if you’d prefer, a lot of bucks. You don’t need a PayPal account to donate; you can use a credit card, and there are other options as well. If you’re outside the US, PayPal should be able to handle your weird foreign money.
I appreciate any and all contributions. Of course, if you’re broke and can’t swing a contribution now, I understand. Really.
Your donations — and other forms of support -keep this blog going, by keeping me going. (Yes, the money goes to me. And my cats.)
Enormous thanls to everyone who donated during the last pledge drive. (I know I didn’t get back to everyone personally, and I apologize.) Thanks as well to those who’ve donated since the last pledge drive, and extra special thanks to those who’ve made a point of donating on a regular basis.
Man Boobz has now received more than 13 million page views since its inception on Blogger in 2010. Even more impressive: you all have posted close to 400,000 comments. The community that’s grown up around this blog is, as always, amazing to me. I couldn’t do it without you.
Posted on January 24, 2014, in announcements, kitties, pledge drive. Bookmark the permalink. 135 Comments.
Also, FFS, why can’t anti-feminist folks ever have a discussion of sex differences without throwing trans people completely out of the picture? Our biology is just as relevant as that of cis folks.
@MEZ, but I thought one can only copypasta if one has been touched by one of the FSM’s noodly appendages. Otherwise, surely that would be heresy?
Kitt/GT/MEZ, protip: You are very bad at deception, it really pissed you off getting banned huh?
You need to try and be a better person, you need to make friends and do positive things, you need to fuck off now.
I emailed David Boobzers, sleep tight.
I love all the kitty videos that show up on here. I adopted my male cat in 2007. In 2012 I adopted a female and he got jealous. Am I misandrist for doing that to him?
@weirwood, yes because anthropomorphism!
Ally S, most of them think trans people only exist because trans women were brainwashed, and trans men are just dykes.
Mez,
I Google image searched for “pug rolling in money” and got… nada. Well, I got lots of photos of pugs, but none rolling in money.
Besides me, my cats (male and female) are lazily swatting at each other. This right after my female cat licked/neck bit the male cat. They are both under 1 year old, so my assumption is that they’re playing.
It looks kind of like this:
@ Ally That’s an excellent point, one I sometimes forget about when someone mentions biological differences in sexes. I get too focused on the fact that even if there were significant differences it doesn’t actually prove anything. Biology doesn’t determine everything, it’s different for everyone. What these asshats fail to realize is that people experience things individually and there’s a lot of room for nuance. The world would be a really weird place if we simply acted on our basic “needs” or “instincts”. I think it’s safe to say that despite being animals we have a complex understanding of the self and our own individuality that goes way beyond biology.
The thing that bugs me about evolution used by MRAs is that they think every possible trait they think is universal (most of which are not) means that evolution thought it was a good thing so that’s why it exists and it means we must follow it. But, evolution doesn’t work that way it’s not perfect and it’s always changing. People, like animals, are continually evolving we just don’t typically see it at our time scale.
ophelia, I’ve seen MEZ around here before being completely non-trollish and they seemed to be sarcastic in that comment. But kitt33 and GT need to go for sure.
Oh god! I’m so sorry MEZ! I know you’re not Kitt, I’d just read your comment and accidentally wrote your name. I am really sorry, that was not meant to be there.
Just to clarify after pooing that up, I emailed David about kitt/GT, not MEZ. Gah! Sorry again.
Speaking of that, is OH 100% troll? I saw them the other day drunk trolling, but I swear I’ve seen them around before not trolling…
@wordsp1nner: I LOL’d at the video. Three of our ragdolls are seal points as well. While ragdolls are closest to my heart, I do love your persian as well.
No, those aren’t my cats
They just play like mine. I haven’t got a good video of mine playing yet-they run around too much. (I love it when they start playing while cuddling with me and end up playing on my lap 
)
I have a longhair dilute torbie and a short-haired brown tabby with white-both strays. See my icon
Yeah I wasn’t aware OH was a troll. I don’t remember their comments but I do remember not being annoyed, so I’m fairly certain they aren’t (?)
MEZ’s sarcastic comment totally cracked me up.
There’s also the implication that our evolution = perfect morals and society. We have laws against murder, stealing, etc, but those things probably are “natural”(I’m not going to say they’re hard wired, since we could have learned them, but it’s not impossible. Evo psych logic is basically if a lot of close mammals and human societies share a behavior, it’s hard wired in is). Even if men and women were hard wired to do certain things, that doesn’t actually mean anything as far as what society “should” do.
Also there’s the implication that if you’re born in a group that’s more likely to be X, then people in that group who aren’t X don’t exist, or can’t exist. Like if women are hard wired to have more trouble with math, that doesn’t mean that no woman ever is going to suck at it. Different circumstances might push her towards that. Like a woman who happens to love math, and maybe avoided non math classes growing up due to bullies or whatever, probably has a better chance at math than a man who loves English, hates math, avoided math due to bullies in those classes, and took English because his friends were taking that class.
They act like success is 100% how your mind is biologically made, and it’s ridiculous in itself to suggest that the mind is seriously influenced by these Bio truths.
@wordsp1nner, oh, was confused. Your cat photo is lovely too. I was also looking at the bedroom and thinking “wordsp1nner has a much tidier bedroom than me, where does she find time???”
@cupisnique
Objections to biological determinism can extend even farther beyond the arguments you outlined. The dominant discourse of human biology is cis-centric. A discourse that made no connection between sex and gender would avoid things such as labeling certain chromosomes, hormones, etc. female or male. For instance, in current biology discourse, we always refer to the penis as male and the vagina as female, but in an alternative biology discourse, we could instead refer to them only in non-gendered ways that specify their reproductive function.
I mean, sex is as much of a social construct as gender is. And I mean that not in the sense that biology never matters ever, but in the sense that we understand and interpret biology within discursive structures. Human bodies already exist - it’s just that we use particular discourses to make sense of them. Once the discursive limitations of science are acknowledged, we can have a meaningful discussion of sex differences, although even the term “sex differences” implies a clear male-female sex dichotomy, which I contend is merely part of a dominant cis-centric discourse. A more relevant term would be “gender differences”, because that’s what actually matters.
(Sorry if none of that made sense; I’ve been reading some post-structuralist philosophy these days and the texts I have often describe things in very wordy and confusing ways…)
For MEZ. Hope it makes you feel better and more non-erased.
http://mugsofpugs.tumblr.com/post/36246907965/show-me-the-money-submitted-by-capepugslife
And with that, good night all.
I’m a firm believer in that there are very few truly stupid people in the world* and that the difficulties people have are due to the teaching method not matching the learning style of the person. I’ve handheld undergraduates through statistics and watched while they changed from “noooooooo, not stats, I have to pass, but I don’t understand it” to “oh, that’s what it’s all about”.
The issues (at university) are:
- students having teaching classes palmed off onto them who don’t have any teaching pedogogy
- too many students in classes, so struggling students can’t get someone to help them unless they pay for private tutoring themselves
- too much maths being given without contextualising the problem that the maths is going to solve, and why that particular approach is being made
- making students learn by rote, so it’s boring, boring, boring (like the way I had to learn enzyme pathways, which I forgot pretty much after the final exam, but spent hours ahead of those exams sketching out each pathway to try to remember it).
*MRAs fit into the stupid category.
@ Ally nope, it made sense! It was very well articulated. Gosh, are you really only 18? You write so much better than students in anthropology courses writing about gender. I don’t research this particular area (I am actually an archaeologist that studies ceramics) so you are much more versed in this than I am, but I am aware of some of the fundamentals such as biology being a social construct, and I completely agree that our understanding is so completely based on a male-female sex dichotomy.
Don’t worry I am a PhD student I can handle some jargon
Ug, just watched GT youtube vid. Let me sum up the main point.
1. Men are demonstratively stronger than women.
2. Evolution + Natural Selection favor the “fittest” for the environment. If a trait exists, it’s because it’s the “fittest” trait, no other reason for the traits existence could possibly exist.
3. Clearly, women had it good, and were hanging around popping bon-bons, because if they had it bad, then they would have evolved to be physically strong as well.
4. A bunch of “we hunted the mammoth” goes here. Oh and, women weren’t oppressed by the lack of vote/property rights/etc, because there was no women’s movement before 200 years ago (teehehehehehe), and if women felt oppressed before that we would have complained about it before the industrial revolution made our lives all comfy.
Why are men physically stronger than women? Probably for the same reason that male cardinals are “come eat me red” while the females are “camouflaged brown”. Bright pigment in cardinals, and markers of high testosterone in humans, both show a male in prime health that would produce successful young. Unless of course cardinals are now misandry. 9_9
@Ally, it’s not just cis centric, but somewhat white/western centric. There are many societies without binary gender.
Sorry to have been away. I was running an area at Arisia (i.e. I was supplying a 3,600 person convention with food for four+ days, it ate a week, straight up) there has also been some drama about one of the people who was at the con.
But I had a good time. I’m not typing at my best right now, because I cut my left index finger making supper.
Had my annual physical, I’m not dead.
Other than that, I have work, which means I’m not likely to be tackling the issues of the day (well, ok the whining of the Manosphere) until at least sunday,
@ auggz
That is very true and really just kind of drives home the point that biology (and our Western idea of biology) can’t be the “Truth” when clearly different groups make sense of the same anatomy in different and unique ways. There’s lots of cultures with multiple genders (although you wouldn’t know that if you read undergraduate papers).
No! The woodland creatures have been infected by the femiNAZIs!
I love those birds. I had a male one hit my window once. It was stunned, so I took it inside for protection. After an hour it was like “huh? FUCK WHERE AM I?!??”, so I let it go. My parrot apparently HATES outdoor birds coming inside. I showed him the cardinal, and he just glared, like “NO. This is house is MY nest. Go build your own, moocher”.
@Mez
Isn’t interesting that because strength = male that therefore strength was THE factor that “evolution” selected for? Yet, we know that the “gatherers” were the ones to have supplied the bulk of the diet hmmm….. maybe strength wasn’t as important as memory, knowledge, intellect, stamina, whatever else required knowing where the plants were located on the landscape, what time of year they were available, and how far they would need to travel?
(Not that I believe in one over the other because evolutionary explanations require a lot more evidence than that simplistic line of thought)
On the fourth point, that’s just a rather silly understanding of world history which ignores thousands of years prior to anything we would consider “Western society”. Cultures have and continue to have different understandings of gender, again just because that’s how it is/was in modern North America doesn’t mean it’s the way it is “naturally”.
@cupisnique
Thanks. =) I’m 19 now. My writing has been largely influenced by 1) being raised in a homeschooling household that made me sheltered and very nerdy 2) being forced* to study for the SAT, which has a terrible essay section 3) having an unusual preoccupation with linguistics 4) learning to write abstracts of philosophy papers (a highly valuable skill my philosophy teacher taught me) and 5) being helped by a very sweet and helpful English composition teacher from community college. There might be some other influences I’m forgetting, but it’s impossible for anyone to think of every single possible influence on their writing.
I generally don’t think highly of my writing, but I’m trying to get better at it every day in small ways. I’m kind of at the point where I look at something I wrote about a week ago and say “Omg, this is the worst thing ever I’m so pretentious how can I even bear to live with this writing.” That’s mainly because I have a very negative view of myself in general, but I digress.
As for anthropology, really I think that’s the field from which one can construct the most decisive blows to evo psych nonsense. There are so many societies that have lacked all the traditional aspects of patriarchy that it’s nonsensical to assume that all aspects of patriarchy are rooted in biology. Some books I highly recommend on the subject are Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, Myths of Male Dominance by Eleanor Leacock, and Vaulting Ambition by Philip Kitcher. Sorry if you folks have already heard of those titles, but I know the first one is awesome and I’ve heard great things about the other two.
I wish I could share with you folks my philosophy teacher’s mini lecture on the flaws of evo psych (apparently the online portal from I used to be able to access it is buggy now). I was elated when I came to class and she was like “Today, I’m going to talk about the philosophy of science. I’ll focus on evolutionary psychology, and I’m going to explain why it sucks and is only really used to support sexism.” How many philosophy teachers do that?
*I understand that most families pressure children to study, but the studying schedule imposed on me was abusive and I mostly studied because I didn’t want to be seen as a failure. Unfortunately, I never got a score higher than 1780/2400, and I was aiming for the cream-of-the-crop universities.
Ally, just adding (and I know I’ve said it before) that your writing is fine. You explain things very clearly and cogently, and I’m always impressed by just how much stuff you know. Jerkbrain should sit down and let Rest Of Brain do stuff, cos it’s smart and skilled.
I get paid on the 9th of Febuary. I can totally donate a couple bucks then!
Elodie Under Glass is facepalming right about now.
Hi everyone. David, I’ll donate soon. (My mom died on Sunday, and I’m in a terrible state of mind but I’m sure I will soon want to mock misogynists again.) (2013 was all about “Fuck cancer” and 2013-2014 is about “Fuck strokes.”)
Cloudiah: So sorry to hear about that. All the hugs.
Oh gods, cloudiah, I am so sorry!
ALL THE HUGS
cloudiah, I’m so sorry. That is awful news. =[ Hugs if you want them.
Hugs are very welcome. You’re all wonderful, and anyone who has extra cash should toss some in David’s direction, and also to the Resources listed in the sidebar.
@cloudiah: sorry to hear that. Take care and be mentally kind to yourself.
@cupisnique The argument wasn’t just for “strength=providing” but for “strength=protecting” as well. Basically the argument was that if women lived dangerous lives and “needed” to protect ourselves, we would have evolved the strength to do so. Never mind that evolution doesn’t work that way. Evolution is mindless, it favors what produces the most successful replications of genes, which is not NECESSARILY whatever is the “best” or the “fittest”. “Survival of the fittest” is the old understanding of evolution, now it’s all about the selfish gene. These asshats spend enough time defending Richard Dawkins; I wish they would spend some time reading his books on biology.
The very basic reason why men are stronger than women is because men have more testosterone, and testosterone promotes muscle building and thick bones. If women increased the amount of testosterone in our bodies, it would raise havoc with our cycles, we would never get pregnant, and we would become IMMEDIATE genetic dead ends. No amount of “danger” in our environment could ever get us to evolve to be stronger than men. It’s the same with all of our great ape cousins; the males are stronger than the females. (And more violent, to boot).
Incidentally, since great apes are so much stronger than humans, is that evidence that great apes have evolved to provide for and protect humans? Sounds like a question for Mr. Owl.
@auggziliary Birds are almost as a rule selfish. What do you expect when you bring a feathered dinosaur into your home?
I have three little parakeets of my own, and they squawk angrily every time they see a robin outdoors. How dare another bird exist anywhere ever?
I like cardinals as well, and I think it’s awesome that feminists now get to have cardinals as familiars. HAIL TO THE GYNOCRACY!!!!!! WE WILL BRING DOWN THE MEN BY SHITTING ON THEIR CARS!!!!! THEIR POORLY BUILT KIT CARS BUILT POORLY ON A FORD FOCUS FRAME!!!! MISANDRY!!!!!!!!
@Ally S Oh I was DEAD SERIOUS11111. ;);););) Even though grumpycatisagirl CLAIMS to have found me a picture of pugs in money, that doesn’t change the fact that she is a dirty lying catist and that all of the stories of pugs rolling in money have been erased. A MILLION pictures of pugs rolling in money will not disprove me. So I hope you guys do report me to DAVID FUTRELL. I have a million burning questions for DAVID FUTRELL in my mind that I will not tell him about and will use his lack of rebuttal to my unstated questions as proof that he is terrible!!!!! He didn’t refute drinking orange juice this morning!!!! That means he beats puppies!!!!! With exercise equipment from the 80s!!!!! He only clips his toenails on Tuesdays!!!! Buns of Steel!!!!!
That is all.
Seconding cupisnique on your writing, Ally-you come across as very knowledgeable and articulate (to me, at least). I’ve also noticed how kind you are in addressing even the trolls/MRAs. You seem like a very good person.
While I did have to read through it a few times, I found your comment on objections to biological determinism very informative.
@cloudiah That sucks. My mom died on Jan 3rd. It still hasn’t really settled in. What is up with this January and manboobzer’s mothers? //hugs//
Should make it clear that I was having fun putting on my evolutionary biologist hat up there. Always amazes me how these intrepid “scientists” never bother to come up with any explanation other than screaming “just so! just so!”.
Considering that women’s relative lack of size and strength is shared with all three of our most closely related species (bonobos and chimps sharing #1, gorillas at a distant #3), its existence is not proof that it is adaptive in humans-it could have been adapted in a distant ancestor, and just never lost. (I’m not saying that this is true, but I am saying that “a trait exists exists” != “the trait is adaptive”, and sharing it with common ancestors is not strong evidence for recent adaptation.)
In fact, considering that our two closest living relatives include one two that live in promiscuous groups with multiple members of both sexes, one of which is female-dominated and the other male-dominated, and both have similar sex-based size differences to us… I’m going to say that size is not an accurate indicator of social organization.
(I actually suspect that one reason female mammals are often smaller than male mammals involves trade-offs between growth and pregnancy that males don’t really face. In birds and reptiles it is often the other way around.)
Also like Mez (fellow biologist?) said, testosterone promotes growth of muscles and bones, while estrogen actually promotes the closing of growth plates (at least according to my physio class in college). This arrangement likely goes back a long, long way, and unless there is good evolutionary pressure to change it, the default would be that males are bigger-which fits the general trend for mammals, at least.
So using it to argue anything about humans is… not useful.
cloudiah I’m sorry that happen.
Sounds like its been a rough year for you
MEZ, I present you with one gold-plated internetz. With pugs. (The pugs are invisible, though, ‘cos they’ve been erased.)
Regarding GenderTraitor
Do women wank? I don’t mean masturbate, I mean the verb. Does it work with women?
He has at least sparked an interesting linguistic debate.
TMI warning:
Well, you can consider me a woman capable of “wanking,” given that I’m pre-op trans.
Sadly, in order to humor the troll I checked out the link, “Report Reveals Massive Gendercide Against Men – News Media Barely Notice (NoH)”
The article quotes Dr. Adam Jones’ paper “Effacing the Male”.
This ignores how men are generally the default setting and, unlike women, are individuals rarely categorized solely by their gender. Jones offers an example where men are referred to as “ethnic Albanians,” “bodies,” “victims,” and “people.”. Calling men “people” reinforces, rather than diminishes, male victims’ core humanity.
The report being discussed is about photos of thousands of executed Syrian rebel prisoners, which only included one body identified as female.
It would make the news if they were all women, because people would be quite shocked to learn about an all-female Islamist rebel force being held in a military prison.
It’s true that civilian victims may get more sympathetic coverage and women and children signify “civilian”, but don’t overestimate how much the west cares about dead Syrians, civilians or not. Western governments don’t base foreign policy doesn’t value women’s live over men’s.
Here’s an article showing how Syria isn’t a great example to refute feminism.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/01/13/syria-extremists-restricting-women-s-rights
**Western governments don’t base foreign policy doesn’t value women’s live over men’s.
That monstrosity of sentence was meant to be more like the one below, but I’ve been drinking.
Feminist Critics is a terrible blog. Aside from its mediocre, pretentious articles, it’s full of regular commentators like Tamen and Toy Soldier. Nopety nope.
My Condolances, Cloudiah.
Someone thinking it’s male oppression that “male” is considered the default person makes my brainz hurt.
For just one of a billion examples of why being considered default isn’t oppression… crash test dummies being patterned after the average male body means cars are designed for male safety and women face higher danger in crashes.
Sending Internet hugs for Cloudiah and MEZ. Also a little spare sunshine from this and last week, since Autocorrect mentioned it’s cloudish.
I just want to call bullshit on the whole idea that there is such pronounced sexual dimorphism in humans. It’s not even close to comparison-wise that of apes. This is especially obvious if you look at historical photographs of men and women. In many cases the women are even larger than the men, but most of the time their size is about the same. Men have more capabilities for muscle because of more testosterone, and women have higher body fat because of the evolutionary advantages it lends to child bearing. Furthermore, in hunter gatherer societies both sexes would need to be equally strong because they carried all of their possessions. Women would have made up for their lack of muscle building testosterone by not only having to carry provisions but their children as well. Just look at some photos of current hunter gatherer societies to get an idea of what they may have looked like. Sexual dimorphism is almost entirely a contrived part of modern and comfortable living, not evolution.
That’s so true, and human sexual dimorphism is such a self-fulfilling prophecy in modern society. “Men are big and women are small” therefore girls are encouraged to diet and stunt their later growth, and as adults discouraged from having fat or muscle bulk while men are encouraged to be bulky, therefore…
Women are expected to differentiate themselves from men in so many ways, body mass, facial appearance through makeup, body hair removal, skin appearance through creams and treatments, clothing style, mannerisms, behavior, interests, profession, it goes on.
Cloudiah, don’t worry about me, take care of yourself! All the hugs!
And MEZ, so sorry to hear about your mom.
Thanks, again, everyone, for the kind words and the donations (and the impending donations). And the cat videos!
As for that other issue, GT is banned for being a sockpuppet. But even if he weren’t an obvious sock, he would deserve banning for marching into this thread, demanding that everyone talk about his pet topic, and throwing an angry, abusive tantrum when not everyone didn’t. That’s not rational discussion. That’s called being rude and hostile and disruptive and narcissistic.
Rarely has this cartoon been more appropriate:
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/index.php?date=032112
I’m always a bit puzzled when MEN’s rights activists get mad at feminists for focusing mainly on women and demanding that they devote equal time to men. How much time do MRAs devote to helping women?
And not only that, but even if I were writing a blog focused mostly on men’s issues, “media erasure of male victims” wouldn’t be on my radar because, as people have pointed out elsewhere here, it’s a bullshit argument.
Oh, and the other thing I wanted to say is: I love what happened with this thread! You all managed to turn GT’s obnoxious disruption into a really interesting and nuanced discussion of gender. With kitties.
Cloudiah: I’m so sorry. You have my email, if you need anything let me know. Hugs.
Sorry about your mother, Cloudiah. My condolences.
I’m sorry Cloudiah, *hug*…
Unless it’s a hawk. Then mine scrambles down and huddles under his food dish for a few minutes.
If anyone needs a photo of some fluffy saint bernards: http://images02.olx.in/ui/14/83/14/1388668607_583727914_5-StBernard-puppies-for-saleImport-champion-parents-Kci-papers-micro-chip-0989143-Tamil-Nadu.jpg
My condolences to Cloudiah and MEZ! And web hugs as well.
Thank you for the discussion and insights, Ally, cupisnique and everybody else. It is very interesting and made me think about various things I hadn’t really thought about before.
I am a little lost as, once again, I am late and missed the introduction of this new troll. I should get updated.
As soon as I can finally find a steady job, one of the first things I want to do is donate to this site which does not only entertains me but also brings on various interesting discussion points.
@auggziliary: who doesn’t need them? *___*
That’s the problem most their so called issues are bullshit .