Comments on: Fan mail from another flounder saddens spinster aunt

By: Comrade Svilova

Comrade Svilova — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:36:41 +0000

Bushfire, I sympathize completely. But the thing is, if women do have better degrees, better jobs, better incomes, then the men they marry (because this is a hetero-normative world, of course) will be like women which would “end” men (defined, of course, as being Not The Other).

Of course, saying that being like a woman in a traditional family is The Worst Thing Ever is terribly, terribly misogynistic. However, I doubt the article writers would admit that. Because we’ve had equality, and we’re past it, and now it’s men getting the short end of the stick. Equality? That happened so long ago. And inequality was even further back (like decades, right?). Feminists should just get over it already and realize that they Rule the World with Iron Vaginas. Pity the poor men.

By: vitaminC

vitaminC — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:13:34 +0000

Time for the ol’ Internet Argument Techniques manual again. See number 8, First Amendment Reinterpretations:

http://www.cracked.com/funny-3809-internet-argument-techniques/

By: Bushfire

Bushfire — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:20:14 +0000

On a vaguely related note, I am really tired of this article going around called The End of Men. It’s a bunch of crap about how since women are getting more undergrad degrees and working more, that men are somehow going to “end”. At first I dismissed it as a bunch of MRAs whining but I keep seeing it everywhere and a friend of a friend just posted a damn link to it. I half want Twisty to do an analysis of the article to make fun of how stupid it is, but it’s so incredibly tedious I know it’s really not worth it.

I just had to get that off my chest. Thanks for listening.

By: bizzielizzie

bizzielizzie — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:07:55 +0000

> > I have in my daily life an arrogant dude I cannot just get rid of.

I do sympathise. The first question is how to go about it in a karmically sound way so as to avoid stubbed toes and seagull attacks. I hear there’s a fair bit of work transporting construction materials to the east. The money’s not bad. The second question is how to talk him on to the train…

Uh, Jill, is it permissible to employ the ellipse as a theatrical device where a full stop would imply inappropriate intonation? I’d have flung another one in there but I don’t want to spook the horses.

By: incognotter

incognotter — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:40:41 +0000

Hedgepig, that is exactly why I was never interested in honors courses in school. My mother’s way of presenting the idea was not “you can study fun things with smart kids” it was “you can do extra work for extra credit.” She never understood why I thought I had enough credit and enough soul-crushing classes. *SIgh*. I kinda wish I had managed to translate that from Mom-speak earlier because I probably missed some cool stuff.

By: Hedgepig

Hedgepig — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 07:11:04 +0000

speedbudget: my mother used to say “I’ll let you (insert description of chore)”, as if it was a treat. Kind of passive aggressive really. She had a perfect right to just tell us to do the chore, but she had to pretend she wasn’t just giving us an order, which she was.

By: wiggles

wiggles — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:08:30 +0000

The passive-aggressive approach can be pretty fun and effective, depending on circumstances. If somebody tells you what errands you can run for him, just nod along until he stops talking and then do whatever you had planned, except whatever the knob expected of you.
After so many days late on their sodding projects or so many library fines, the knob will eventually figure out that he can’t get shit accomplished by expecting you to do it for him.
A slower-witted arrogant dude who doesn’t catch on that he needs to ask and say please and thank you might get the impression that you’re very forgetful and unreliable, in which case he may stop expecting things of you altogether. Bonus!

You know where I learned this trick? From dudes!

By: Ron Sullivan

Ron Sullivan — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:41:33 +0000

Babtist. HAHAHAHAHAHA

It’s a direct transliteration from the Arkansas dialect. Don’t look at me, hon; I was raised RC and I don’t mean cola.

By: Mayday

Mayday — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:26:42 +0000

Susan, here’s a post on Restructure linking to a study about how men and women rate their IQs and areas of intelligences differently: http://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/men-overestimate-their-intelligence-in-all-12-countries-research-finds/
They didn’t test for the participants actual IQs or abilities, though, so it’s hard to say to what degree on average men are overestimating their intelligence versus women underestimating theirs.

By: Susan

Susan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:45:17 +0000

Vera
Thank you so much for naming the Dunning–Kruger effect. I had read one of the follow-up studies using self-assessment of competence in arithmetic as the metric, followed by a test to measure actual ability, but I couldn’t remember the name. It would be very interesting to structure a study in which men and women rated their competence in relation to each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if sexism caused the disparity between perceived and measureable ability to be even more pronounced in both, with women under-rating themselves compared to men, and most men believing themselves better than women at anything that “counts”.