Optimus Prime vs. Jesus Christ

The Church of Optimus Prime

We will be comparing the acts, history and philosophy of Autobot leader Optimus Prime against those of religious icon Jesus Christ.  Each character will be marked in a series of categories, with recorded feats being submitted as evidence.

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Marriage is an obsolete technology…and so are women?

You’ve got it all backwards. Men invented the technology that liberated us from the parasitic housewife. We invented the washer/dryer, toaster, microwave ovens, electric stoves, refrigerators, modern plumbing/electricity, and most of the things that made the traditional housewife obsolete. We liberated ourselves from you. We don’t need you in the house anymore; so, get the fuck out. You don’t need liberation from patriarchy, and by extension, liberation from men. In reality, you need liberated from your own obsolescence. Perhaps you should consider making yourself useful as something other than a sandwich-maker and create a meaningful existence for yourself, one that doesn’t rely on an identity as a victim of patriarchy. Again, you’ve got it all backwards.

We live in an amazing time. When, in the history of humanity, has there ever been such cultural pressure (and opportunity) for women to create their own identity, meaning, and purpose? Their default position and role within societal structures has typically and historically been one that entails their utility as mother, caregiver, and housewife—all cultural constructs that likely emerged from lower biological drives and that have evolved to exist primarily in the form of relationships to family, to husband, and as part of a marriage.

If we view marriage and the role of the traditional housewife as a form of cultural technology, it is an obsolete piece of technology—no more useful than the vacuum tubes in an old radio from the 1930s. As these vacuum tubes gave way to transistors and those to silicon chips, so too marriage is giving way to other forms of cultural technology. (See the SCOTUS decision on DOMA.)

Our culture is experiencing this transition right now. With the advent and proliferation of those aforementioned modern amenities and technologies, the housewife and marriage itself have become (and are becoming) obsolete pieces of cultural technology. If we view these pieces of cultural technology as extensions of a woman’s identity, meaning, and purpose, women have been and are experiencing a loss; it is a loss that exists in the form of their own obsolescence. Prior generations of women, unlike today’s generation, did not have to concern themselves with creating an identity, meaning, and purpose, at least not to the extent required today. Such things were built in to the culture for them. They could simply rely on the old cultural technology of marriage, housewifery and reproductive duties to find relevance and a sort of fulfillment. Given that such things as marriage and traditional gender roles are becoming less relevant, women are now confronting this sort of obsolescence.

In this way, the plight of the modern woman can be viewed not as a struggle against patriarchy, but as a struggle against their own obsolescence. It’s a struggle to remain relevant, to find identity, meaning, and purpose. It’s a struggle for fulfillment given the present absence of a cultural technology that once provided for them, as Heidegger might say, a “ready-to-hand” construct, a prefabricated role as mother, caregiver, and wife. With this “ready-to-hand” obsolescence and malfunctioning of these traditional roles and of marriage, a divide has emerged from within the once great gynocentrisms that enveloped prior cultures. As such, this divide reveals itself in the forms of radical traditionalists and radical feminists.

The traditionalist sort of right-wing feminists (think Phyllis Schlafly and her ilk) are nothing but a hodgepodge of stereotypically grumpy luddites concerned with a sort of radical conservatism that attempts to maintain the old cultural technology and stubbornly refuses adaptation to and adoption of new cultural technologies—ones that might replace the traditional housewife and marriage. They are like neophobe geeks raging hard for a return to the HD DVD or to Betamax or for the Microsoft Zune.

 

Of the more radical leftist feminists and their ilk, we can view them not as luddites, but as misguided revolutionaries who have created an identity for themselves as antagonists of the patriarchy. They are women compelled to create a narrative (a cultural technology, if you will) within our social-cultural structure—an astonishing attempt to create something that might restore to women an identity, meaning, and purpose.

Sadly, this cultural technology is a disaster loosely analogous to something like Windows ME. It was supposed to be a sort of revolutionary software technology making the home PC more useful and attractive to the home PC buyer. However, it was buggy, prone to crashing, unstable, and poorly constructed, with limited and restricted access to MS-DOS. Though some of the graphics and interfaces were stylish, the real-world user experience was painful, aggravating, and for Microsoft, it was a disaster—having barely one year of shelf-life.

Similarly, the shelf-life of these would-be revolutionaries of modern leftist feminism is also running out. That is to say; their product doesn’t perform as it should. It’s buggy and slow and prone to crash in the face of real-world experiences. Its logic is unstable and does not hold up under questioning about its foundational underpinnings. In short, their construct exists only in relation to patriarchy and if the narrative of patriarchal oppression of women doesn’t hold up under logical scrutiny, so too does their narrative and corresponding construct fail because their construct does not exist apart from its foundation—which is patriarchy. And patriarchy, as an overarching explanation for the oppression of women, is not a true paradigm. Again, it’s not patriarchy. It’s obsolescence.

If the modern woman wants to overcome this sort of obsolescence and create relevance for herself, if she wants to create identity, meaning, and purpose, perhaps she could take a clue from the philosopher Andy Clark. In Andy Clark’s Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, a phrase called the “scaffolded mind” is used to describe the “amazing capacities [of humans] to create and maintain a variety of special external structures (symbolic and social-institutional). [The scaffolded mind helps us structure] …our environment so that we can succeed with less intelligence. Our brains make the world smart so that we can be dumb in peace! Or, to look at it another way, it is the human brain plus these chunks of external scaffolding that finally constitutes the smart, rational inference engine we call mind…[and the boundaries of our mind]… extend further out into the world than we might have initially supposed (179,180).” Clark goes on to describe a “scaffolded action” as one that “relies on some kind of external support. Such support would come from the use of tools or from exploitation of the knowledge and skills of others; that is to say, scaffolding [that denotes] a broad class of physical, cognitive, and social augmentations…that allow us to achieve some goal that would otherwise be beyond us (190).”

If the modern woman has the goal of achieving something that is otherwise beyond her, she’d abandon the entire narrative of patriarchal oppression and create scaffolds for women that extend outward from her “present-at-hand,” as Heidegger might say, existence and into an existence of relevance—one that isn’t dependent upon being the victim of patriarchy, or some sort of revolutionary slayer of patriarchy. As the modern woman faces this Heideggerian “ready-to-hand” obsolescence, she must create her own relevance, one that is independent of false narratives about patriarchy. She must create a new sort of “scaffolded” cultural technology for herself—one that extends outward from the “present-at-hand” structure and into relevance. Without this sort of scaffolded mind to bridge the gap between obsolescence and relevance, women may as well leave their minds in a jar by the door and continue screaming like the stereotypical moustache-encrusted and incoherent purveyors of misandry who demand that men provide to them a scaffolded structure into typically male spaces of cultural technology a la Adria Richards and the Donglegate fiasco.

Richard Rorty makes a beautiful and profound statement in his later work—Philosophy and Social Hope: “Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on forever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction; you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations. (54).” If the modern woman wants to build her relational relevance, one that exists apart from the old cultural technology that provided a sort of prefabricated role of existence in relation to her utility as mother, caregiver, housewife, and etc., she must not fall in to the trap of trying to build a set of relations and scaffolding from the present absence of something—literally nothing, her Heideggerian “ready-to-hand” obsolete roles of previous generations. She also cannot extend scaffolds and relations from false narratives of patriarchy. These false narratives about patriarchy are a ground in which to try and stabilize such scaffolding and that ground is a sort of quagmire, a swamp that will swallow, envelope, and dissolve those relations and scaffolds, only to prolong the “ready-to-hand” obsolescence.

We do live in an amazing time. Women have the opportunity to create for themselves a new identity, meaning, and purpose. As men have created so many of the amenities and technologies that liberated us from the “ready-to-hand” cultural technologies of marriage and of the traditional parasitic housewife, it is now time that women step up and create something other than lamentations about patriarchy or the waxed poetic words of how great things were under traditionalism. The burden is on women to create, to remove themselves from the rut of traditionalism, and to remove themselves from the rut of blaming patriarchy. Until the modern woman removes herself from these ruts, she will be stuck in the wrongheaded direction and have within her perspective the kind of backwards thinking that gets her nowhere even close to being liberated from her own obsolescence. You’re not needed in the house anymore; so, get the fuck out.

Lies, Slithering, and Weasel Boobz: Washing the Walls of Smeared Excrement

I admit it. It all starts with a lie.

Lie No.1. 

Boobz claims that my screencap (the one not meant as part of my rewrite, but was posted by mistake via the editors at AVfM) is a forgery, saying that it is the result of the “AVfM Google forgery technique,” a process of sneak-typing the word “man” into the search bar to make it look like the search results are skewed. This is what he wrote in his piece of shit article, Worse than Wrong: A Voice for Men resorts to phony screenshot and outright lying to avoid admitting embarrassing error [UPDATE: Story gets stranger]

This is clearly speculation on the part of Boobz as Boobz has no proof or any kind of evidence at all (at least not that he has so far published) that the screencap is altered in any way. In fact, Boobz doesn’t even have evidence that the screencap is “phony.” He even admits in GWW’s comment thread that the “screenshot doesn’t seem to have been photoshopped.”

It is simply a screencap and that’s all. As such, we all agree. Nothing about the screencap has been “photoshopped,” or MS painted, or tampered with in any way. There is no question about it; the screencap is weird, but contrary to Boobz’ claim, there is nothing “phony” about it.  Here is the screencap in question:

Here is a screencap of the email sent to Dean Esmay about this screencap and its weird results.

As everyone can see, the only claim made by me about it is that it was taken today (which was 6.14.2013) and that I had no idea how search engines work. It was not submitted as part of the rewrite, which you can view here. It was not submitted as any kind of proof about my prior claim. It was submitted as proof of my confusion about my search results. (Scroll down a bit for my evolving understanding and hypothesis about these weird results.)

Since 6.14.2013, the weird results (as evidenced in the aforementioned screencap) happened at least 4 different times. I have screencaps of each and here are the other three.

The above screencaps are compressed into one .jpg for size considerations. Other than that, no alterations have been made to them. (The yellow lines on the far right screencap are an artifact resulting from my video capture software, which was running at the time of capture.) I’ve made a screencap video showing one occurrence of these weird search results in live-time. (Pay close attention to the first 90 seconds or so of the video.) I am more than willing to submit the full-size (individual and uncompressed) screencaps, as well as the aforementioned video, for expert analysis to show that no tampering ever occurred. They are in no way “phony,” “forged,” “faked,” altered or tampered. However, they are certainly weird. There is no question about it. Notice how the business results do not appear in the upper right corners of the pages. Also notice the contrast between the search bar terms and the terms listed at the bottom of the page. You will also notice in the video, at about the 18 second mark and under the search bar of the first attempted search, a momentary message popped up to indicate that “Google Instant” was unavailable.

The hypothesis I’ve developed over the past few days about the weirdness of these search results revolves around how Google’s Instant search results are affected by my broadband satellite internet service and the latency (lag) of that service. The service is very fast, but the latency of the service is about 20x greater than terrestrial internet service. Data has to be beamed off-planet and then back. (Gamers who play online first-person-shooter video games can tell you all about lag. Anybody who has ever tried to play a first-person-shooter video game online via this sort of satellite broadband internet will add many swear words to their fucking descriptions about lag.) If my hypothesis is correct, the “Google Instant” search results are somehow encumbered (or made to glitch) by this latency.

If my hypothesis is correct, does this mean that Boobz is lying when he makes claims about my screencap being a forgery or phony? Does this mean that Boobz is lying when he claims this?

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this one, which is contrary to Boobz’ previous claim about “photoshopping:”

Or this:

Notice how Boobz slithers to escape the possibility of making a false accusation here:

Here is some more slithering. It’s a bit like a news channel’s declarative statements that end with question marks. Jon Stewart breaks it down right here in “The Question Mark.”

More slithering:

In honor of Jon Stewart’s The Question Mark: is Boobz a liar who is making false accusations about fraud and phony screencaps? Could it be that in his zeal to hang AVfM, he has hanged himself? Could it be that Boobz has gone and fucked himself? Perhaps such awful things are true? Perhaps Boobz is a slithering sort of weasel who would fuck his own mother for a few extra hits on his blog? Is it possible that Boobz has smeared so much excrement all over the internet and on his blog and about others that he is slowly being buried under mountains of his own shit? Perhaps.

Lie No. 2. 

As my video clearly shows, there is no way to “sneak-search” about “violence against women” and make the results appear as a search about “violence against marmosets” (or “violence against men”). This sort of “sneak-typing” simply doesn’t work in Google’s Instant search bar. As such, there are 3 possibilities:

1. Boobz is using a search bar other than Google for his search results and Boobz is deliberately concealing this fact (a lie by omission), perhaps hoping that his readers “aren’t quite so gullible.”
2. Boobz has turned off “Google Instant” search results and concealed this fact from his readers by not mentioning it (another lie by omission), again, perhaps hoping that his readers “are gullible enough to believe.”
3. Boobz seems to be altering (perhaps forging?) his own screencap to try and concoct evidence for the lie that my screencap is a forgery and to make a false accusation about forgery.

Let’s have a look at Boobz’ search results.

1. If we believe Boobz’ screencap, we can rule out possibility number one. According to Boobz’ screencap, he is using a Google search bar.
2. We cannot rule out possibility number two. It is possible that Boobz turned off the “Google Instant” option in the settings of his browser in order to make his screencap, something that I clearly did not do for any of my screencaps or in my video—as my video shows. If he is running “Google Chrome,” the settings to do this are found on the “settings” page. Perhaps he simply “forgot” to mention this one requirement? Perhaps.

         3. If we could rule out possibilities 1 and 2, we would likely have pretty clear evidence of Boobz’ own fraudulent screencap.

Given that we cannot definitively rule out possibility number 2, we are left with suspicion and speculation. I suspect that Boobz may have deliberately turned off “Google Instant” search results in order to make his screencap. I suspect that Boobz “forgot” to mention the importance of this fact to make it look as though it was really easy to “fake” a screencap and to create leading evidence about me, my article, the credibility of AVfM and its editors, and to be able to make false accusations about forgery. Maybe Boobz suffers from a little bit of “Bombast Syndrome.” Perhaps it’s nothing other than a thoughtless/careless mistake (a lack of attention to detail), but I have my doubts and so would anybody who bothered to try Boobz’ marmoset challenge while using “Google Instant.” If using “Google Instant,” it’s practically impossible to get those sorts of search results, unless there is some sort of “glitch,” like the one I experienced in my video and like those that I screencapped. However, you wouldn’t know this from Boobz’ article. In fact, all Boobz has to say about it is this:

Notice how Boobz’ only stipulation is “don’t pay attention to the highlighted words in the search results.” He makes no mention of “Google Instant” or of turning it off. He only mentions “highlighted words.” Well, if you look at his screencap, there are no “highlighted words.” Given that he didn’t mention the necessity in turning off “Google Instant” (another lie by omission) and that he only mentions the importance of neglecting “highlighted words,” I suspect and speculate that Boobz may not have even known how to turn off “Google Instant.” And if he didn’t know how to turn it off, how did he get those results and correlating screencap? Was it fraud? Was it “photoshopped” or thrown into MS Paint? Did Boobz fake evidence in order to enable himself to make false claims about fraud? Would Boobz fuck his own mother just to drive some more traffic to his blog? Perhaps.

Lie No. 3.

Boobz is claiming that Dean Esmay (an AVfM editor) made the claim that the screencap was taken “BEFORE” publishing. In the comment section of GWW’s blog, Boobz makes this claim:

No claim of the sort was ever made by me and the editorial note clearly shows that Esmay didn’t make the claim either. So far as I know, the only person to claim otherwise is none other than Boobz himself. Here is what the editorial note actually said.

Contrary to the excrement smeared by Boobz, the editorial note made no claims about the screencap being made “BEFORE” the article published. At best, Boobz’ claim is a misreading of the editorial note. At worst, Boobz’ claim is a blatant lie. Is it possible that Boobz “misread” the editorial note? Is it possible that Boobz deliberately “misread” the note in order smear excrement all over the internet, making a pathetic attempt to drive traffic to his blog? Is it possible that Boobz would fuck his own mother for a few extra hits on his blog? Perhaps.

Admit it, Boobz. It all started with a lie—the lie that my screencap was a forgery. “You’ve gotta fess up, dude. That’s how it’s done.”

Other Assorted Pieces of Fecal Matter

My name is Jason Gregory. My name is not Jason Thompson or Joshua Thompson. Yes, it’s embarrassing that the editors got my name wrong. I believe the editors, via some weird clerical error, confused my name with the name of another contributor. Given that I’ve never talked with anybody from AVfM and that I’m a new contributor, that sort of error isn’t hard to believe. I don’t believe it was part of some cover-up to try and bury the story—just a fuck up.

Why wasn’t my damage control rewrite published? I don’t know. That is a good question, given that “tallwheel” and Dean suggested doing one. I even suggested a “rephrasing” in the comment thread. I did submit a rewrite, as it appears on my personal blog. Here is a screencap of the email sent to the editors of AVfM and the email contains the MS Word document file of my rewrite.

Perhaps the editors saw my screencap and didn’t bother to understand it—that it was a post-publication screencap and proof of my confusion about the weird search results. My guess is that—a lack of attention to detail.

Why did Dean Esmay suggest in the Monday Roundup that we found screencaps?

I don’t know. That is a good question. My guess is for the same reason that my rewrite didn’t get published. Dean probably saw my post-published screencap in the email and saw my screencaps in the rewrite and thought they were pre-published screencaps. It is probably a lack of attention to details—especially details about some new contributor and his little article.

I am Jason Gregory. I am nobody. Thanks to Boobz, however, I’ve gotten over 1000 views on my less-than-one-month-old blog. Thanks Boobz! “Go fuck yourself.” –Bill Burr

Perhaps. See above. 🙂

[Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Rock Cellar Magazine for the great music.]

Ignatius

Jaguars Only and All Others Need Not Apply

A modern man’s online dating profile:

Hello, I don’t have any kids and probably will never want any. If you’re not capable of hitting the snooze button on your biological clock, I’m not interested in you—dual incomes and no kids (DINKs). If all you have are boobs and booty, move along. Those aren’t enough anymore. You better have a science degree, make good money and not be a shallow imbecile who has a fetish for fashion. I don’t care about your silly shoes, your clothes, or your entitled attitude. If you want marriage and commitment, you can get down on your fucking knees, humiliate yourself, and beg for it. Where’s my ring, bitch? What have you done for me lately?

Finding a 30-something woman who isn’t desperately single, divorced-with-children, a single mother, bat-shit crazy, or who doesn’t look like bigfoot is about as rare as actually spotting bigfoot. Their rarity, as well as other attributes, is what makes these jaguars so special. They don’t complain about the ticking of their biological clocks.

They are not hysterically desperate to find a man and make babies. They are actually independent, responsible, and have made a life for themselves, a life that isn’t dependent upon being a sandwich-maker and/or the victim of patriarchy. They don’t blame patriarchy and, by extension, they don’t blame men, using them as scapegoats to express a sort of sociopathic lack of empathy, compassion, and care about men. They don’t play some silly game about how women are the longest suffering long-sufferers in the history of long-suffering. Oppression Olympics are not sports for the jaguar. As such, they don’t feel entitled to a man or to his provision and protection.

Feminists are supposed to be strong and independent, kind of like the elusive jaguar. Perhaps we can spot one of these jaguars at Jezebel. Take Meher Ahmad as an example. She published this bitchypocritical piece of shit last week, a few days before Father’s Day. Ms. Ahmad’s piece of shit was a response to Laurie Shrage’s Is Forced Fatherhood Fair?—a balanced and fair look at the lack of men’s reproductive rights, from the perspective of a feminist-philosopher. Notice how Ms. Ahmad excoriates Shrage’s “sympathetic view of a man who accidentally conceives a child.” Ms. Ahmad, in a stereotypically feminist sort of sociopathic way, expresses no compassion, empathy, or care about these forced-fathers. She writes. “Boo fucking hoo. At the end of the day, the only thing the government, and society, requires fathers to do is pay money, which is a hell of a lot easier than raising a child alone, as most mothers who have children out of wedlock are forced to do. Yeah, it’s unfair for them, but it’s not nearly as unfair as forced motherhood.”

Let’s unpack this sociopathic and bitchypocritical drivel. Men effectively have only 3 options regarding their reproductive rights—condoms, abstinence, vasectomies. That’s it. Ms. Ahmad complains that in some states, “abortion is virtually illegal/impossible to get.” That’s right. However, unless Ms. Ahmad lives in some bizarre virtual world, it’s not even “virtually” possible for men to get abortions. Although a woman can terminate her pregnancy, a man has, so far as I know, no right to terminate his legal obligations to support a child, even if the child was created without his consent. (Consent to sex is not consent to fatherhood.) A man who does not submit to this legal obligation can be thrown into a cage, treated like an animal, and denigrated as a “dead-beat-dad.” Perhaps we should refer to mothers who terminate their pregnancies as “dead-beat-mothers,” just to be fair. Nah…that’s kind of sociopathic. Some people might get the idea that we don’t have any compassion, empathy, or care about these mothers.

Ms. Ahmad seems very willing to express compassion, empathy, and care about single mothers. However, and contrary to tripe like this about the virtues of single motherhood, Ms. Ahmad presents the idea that mothers are victims, dependent upon a man and/or father-state, due to their lack of reproductive rights. Ms. Ahmad tries to bury the fact that women have more reproductive rights than men under the narrative that single mothers have a hard time of it—that they are the longest suffering long-sufferers in the history of long-suffering. There is no strength, independence, or responsibility in that sort of sociopathic bitchypocrisy of a narrative. It’s rather pathetic and certainly not very jaguar. Ms. Ahmad, if you want a father’s commitment (child support for a child he did not consent to create), you can get down on your fucking knees, humiliate yourself, and beg for it. I don’t care for your silly narrative, your imbecilic fetish for victimhood status, or your entitled attitude. I’m sure there are other reasons to disqualify you from jaguar status, but I’m going to reciprocate your sociopathic expressions and simply not bother to give any shits about them. The elusive jaguar remains elusive. The modern man remains single. Jaguars only and all others need not apply.

Shehadic Sobbings of the Waah-Waah Sisterhood

Must read! Perfect 10.

Violence Against Women: Spreading Gynocentric Lies & Fear

Domestic violence and abuse are practically gender symmetrical. The cycles of violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships are incredibly complex and blaming one gender over the other is an oversimplification and wrongheaded approach for addressing these problems. This gynocentric focus on violence against women discriminates against male victims of this sort of violence and abuse. The gynocentric focus neglects violence against men, which is the overwhelming sort of violence in this world.

If you can’t see that violence against men is far more prevalent than violence against women, you have lost touch with reality. The very act of elevating violence against women as some sort of divine slight that is in some way worse than violence against men is sexist. The vast majority of all violence in this world is violence against men. Again, if you fail to see this, then you have lost touch with reality. If you fail to have compassion or understanding for the humanity of those affected by this violence, you are probably blinded by your hate or callous indifference. 

Men are humans too. We suffer and struggle for dignity, for love, for compassion. Those who promote this gynocentric focus, who so callously deny compassion to men, do nothing to effect change. They do nothing to reduce violence in this world. In fact, their hatred and callous indifference is a violence of silence that violates the humanity of men and women and our interconnectedness. Like it or not, to be is to be related. Violence doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In fact, violence is perpetuated by the narrowness of mind and illusion of vacuous human individuality. No person is an island because we are all related/interconnected. Violence against one person affects the whole community. The caring (or lack thereof) of a whole community creates the violence. If you want to make changes, then you cannot deny the violence against men. You cannot deny the culture in which men grow up. The culture, the community in which men live creates violence. You cannot simply say that men alone create violence because it is their nature to be violent. That is as bad as saying that blacks or Irish make good slaves because their nature is to be subservient. I challenge you to rethink your callous indifference/hatred toward men and realize that there is far more to the story than simply screaming about violence against women and the blaming of men as violent base animals. Men are humans fully capable and worthy of the deepest depths of compassion. If you believe otherwise, I challenge the depths of your humanity.

The above photo was pulled from the j4mb blog:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/facebook-censorship-of-an-image-of-a-male-victim-of-domestic-violence/

You’ve Got It All Backwards

Comic Blasphemy Vs. Divine Feminism

I watched a video the other day of a debate between the comedian Jim Norton and the feminist Lindy West. Here is the video. This discussion between comedians and feminists regarding “rape culture” has been raging for the past year. Type “Daniel Tosh rape joke” into a search engine to learn the backstory. Much has been said on both sides, discussions about free speech, censorship, comedy-as-catharsis, the trivialization of suffering, and the contributions made by comics to rape culture and violence against women. Those are all perfectly fine discussions and I’m glad that our society is having this discourse about such things. One thing that is not being discussed in this realm of discourse is the economic concept of “consideration.”

 We don’t have to be economists or legal analysts to understand this. It’s not some obscure jargon used only by economists and lawyers. It’s an old concept that has been around for centuries and most people understand it without even knowing that they understand it. Consideration is roughly the idea of fair trade. If I give you money, you give me an equivalent value of your services or products. It’s not complicated. Most people know when they have been ripped off. If somebody steals your car, they didn’t provide an equitable amount of consideration to you. Most people know this and generally expect to give and receive consideration for all sorts of things in their daily lives. Well, reasonable people have this expectation.

 Enter Lindy West. If we view the discourse between a comedian and the audience as a sort of economic exchange of ideas, thoughts, and feelings, Lindy West is demanding that this discourse provide consideration to her without her providing an equitable amount of consideration in return. She is demanding that the discourse between a comedian and audience provide to her a consideration in the form of sensitivity to her (and others like her) regarding what she labels offensive to her delicate sensibilities. The only consideration she offers in return is the absence of her feeling offended. That is literally nothing–the absence of something. In economic terms, she is a thief and ripping us off. Most reasonable people know this, but feminists are not typically known for being reasonable. They sometimes argue that reason is a violent assertion of patriarchal oppression. In reality, feminists like Lindy West assert a gender supremacist ideology that does violence to our reasonable sensibilities.

 One example of violence-doing to our reasonable sensibilities is hypocrisy. Most reasonable people understand hypocrisy. Perhaps Ms. West understands it, but simply feels some sort of divine feminist entitlement to being hypocritical. Notice at about the 5 minute mark in the aforementioned video that Ms. West actually performs a rape joke about audience members in the club rallying to rape a girl because they aren’t doing anything better and have the free time. The joke gets a laugh and Ms. West chuckles and smugly continues with her moral correction and shaming of comedians who make rape jokes.

 Hypocrisy is offensive because it does violence to reason. Being morally excused from saying one thing and doing another is that which the divine Law-Giver does and this is what feminists like Lindy West often do. She is clearly an inconsiderate hypocrite. She does not give consideration in exchange for a comedian’s sensitivity. She does not practice what she preaches. She gives nothing in exchange for her demands. She simply asserts a sort of divine right to demand control of the narrative in exchange for literally nothing–the absence of something, her offence. Lindy West, you are a bigot, a hypocrite, a gender supremacist, and not much different than a racial supremacists. In the words of the great comedian, Bill Burr, “go fuck yourself.”

American Heroism: A Story about Doug Stanhope and Erectile Dysfunction

Doug Stanhope is one of my all-time favorite comedians. He is an artist, a true master of his craft. Of course I follow him on Twitter. A few weeks back, he tweeted about a marine who threw a fit of road rage. Here is the video. There were a lot of people criticizing the marine for going bezerk. There were many wishful thoughts for the marine’s death, some comments about his flag-draped coffin and etc. I thought those comments were a fine and comical way for people to lament about the sort of men we raise these days.

No offense to the good soldiers who signed up to protect the country and slaughter other people, but where else can murderous psychopaths go for work these days? With the faltering economy, it’s hard to make a living as a killer. Hard times are upon us and joining the military seems like a good choice for the aspiring killer. It’s a sound career move. He’s doing the right thing for his career and country, paying taxes, bills, and supporting his wife and kids. He shows up for work everyday, jazzed up on some ‘Merica…Fuck Yeah tunes, ready to do some killing, some maiming, and some torture. We spent thousands of dollars training him to be “all he could be” as a killer in the military. If he got a little confused about who he is supposed to kill, it’s something that society can overlook. Clearly, it’s easy to confuse a traffic accident with the enemy or a terrorist threat. It’s a mistake that any man could make. People should lay off the criticism of his actions. Minus his confusion, his actions were a perfectly acceptable way to resolve conflict. As such, he is good man, a protagonist, a hero in the American story.

 As with any good story, a protagonist needs an antagonist. Enter the degenerate pacifist lovers of peace who sat in their seats recording the actions of this good man. Notice how the villain sits in his car. He remains calm, only to enrage our heroic marine even further, deliberately pointing out to the marine that his silly monkey-taunts were not effective. This only magnifies the marine’s experience of impotence. Heroes who experience this lack of power must act out with ever more aggression. Violence is the hero’s only power and this power is an expression of the hero’s lack of power. America’s hero is impotent. He has no power, only violence. He is just a pawn. His life is practically meaningless. The totality of his identity is his impotent power–his violence.

 Feminists will typically point to our hero’s behavior as a shining example of male privilege, domination, and power–the patriarchy in all its glory. Feminists may point to our hero’s behavior as proof that men are vile monkeys who will abuse each other and women to compete in some patriarchal hierarchy of dominance. Feminists and his critics will say that our hero’s behavior is evidence of his power, when in fact, our hero’s behavior is evidence of his weakness.

 If this society gave a damn about men, we would give men options other than violence. We wouldn’t sell them false ideas of heroics. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t create murderous psychopaths and call them heroes. We wouldn’t call the peaceful guy who sat calmly in the car a faggot or a coward. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t teach men that their value is derived from their ability to slaughter other people. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t teach men to be some sort of heroic pawns, willing to sacrifice their lives in a blaze of violent glory for pride, for money, for woman, for some corporate entity–America. If this society gave a damn about men, compassion for men wouldn’t be a revolutionary action. If this society gave a damn about men, Doug Stanhope and others would have no reason to lament about the sort of men we raise these days.