But first, news!  A month ago, a men’s right’s discussion was interrupted when angry feminists pulled the fire alarms to disrupt the lecturer, but free speech prevailed!  You can check out hilarious responses of the angry feminists on youtube, here, here or this very angry lady over here.  So anywho, yeah, men and women are supposed to be allies in the fight for gender equality, right?  But, it seems like we’ve really turned the issue to an attempt at listening to whichever side has the loudest mouths.  The problem is that sane people, because they are sane, are very very quiet.  Insane people are the ones who loudmouth their issues everywhere, and really, who does that help?

So, since I’m a male, I guess it would behoove my clout within the feminist community if I discussed smashing the patriarchy.  Because really, if you think about it, the patriarchy really is fucked up:

Because, any society where this hambeast landwhale is considered entitled to a man who works hard for a six figure salary is disgusting.

So, for convenience, I’ve included a rough draft of a plan I think we can begin implementing almost immediately, together I think we can do a lot for gender equality. 

One of the first things that men have to deal with is the fact of male disposability.  Men have always been seen as “not necessary,” to society and in fact here is the unfortunate truth: we are.  One (gleeful) male could serve as sole sperm donor for the entire repopulation of the Earth in case of a major natural disaster that reduced the human race to a few dozen individuals. So if one male dies, hey, it’s not a big deal, right?  

Ladies, if you want the same rights as men, you must advocate the installation of female disposability.  You must be ready to have the expectation that you lay down your life for children, the elderly, and strangers you do not know.  You must advocate to ride the world of social norms that say “women” and children first.  We can change it to “children first.”  

Ladies, if you want the same treatment as men, like male disposability, lets make sure you are required to sign up for the draft when you turn 18.  Selective services shouldn’t discriminate, as you gals so boldly point out that a women can fire a gun just as well as a man.  Hell, modern warfare has changed the game completely, even if women aren’t as athletic as men, they don’t need to be!  There are plenty of service positions where you (and men) can sit on your ass all day.

Ladies, if you want the same treatment as men be prepared for longer prison sentences.  As of now, we treat you like children, totally incapable of being held responsible for the consequences of your actions.  Society, on average, gives women 40% shorter sentences for the same crime as men.  That’s not being treated equally, we’ll start treating everybody the same! 

While we’re at it ladies, let’s treat you same at the workforce – where 97% of all workplace deaths are male(1).  So, let’s put you in those high risk jobs that men have traditionally occupied, because fuck patriarchy right?  

And lastly, let’s talk about the morbid task of suicide.  Women, you suck at it.  Men try it less often, but are more successful because of the means they use (guns, ropes, jumping).  So, women, let’s stop being little pansies, don’t swallow your prescription of prozac, it wont kill you(2).  Try jumping in front of a train.

Honestly, I’ve just really been wanting to use this picture.

Because, quite honestly, I’m tired of having all of this male privilege. 

Down with p-patriarchy! 

Am I just crazy for being livid about these? Maybe I am.

1. We imprison more people than any other country on the planet.  We are taught to hate the Chinese and the Russians in school, yet WE INCARCERATE MORE PEOPLE THAN THE COMMUNIST “SCUM”
2. We lead the world in defense spending & spend more than the next leading 26 countries combined.  (25 of which are our allies)
3.  One in three citizens believe in Ghosts.
4. Just how bad our educational system is fucked: one third of Texans believe that dinosaurs and humans were alive at the same time, and 51% of adults believe in creationism.

via  IAOCT

cheers.

Just never ask an Islamic woman this…

Theocratic empathy

I’d probably be incapacitated via culture shock if I ever lived in Saudi Arabia, if many of the things my roommate and his fellows have told me are true.  From the extremely low taxes to the relatively high GDP per capita (it’s about $30,000 which isn’t much lower than the $45,000 here in America), the arid Arabian peninsula doesn’t seem like such a bad place to live.  I mean, they have different definitions of “equality,” than we do and of course segregation of women is still an issue (of course they don’t see it as segregation), but all in all they’re just a various group of people trying to figure it all out, just like us.  Teasing out the truth from his statements of how Islamic law coincides almost perfectly with Arabian law I realized how grateful I should be to not live in a theocracy.  Living somewhere that hasn’t culturally shifted the way they view morally in 1,500 years would be hell.

Maybe they just don’t know how to prioritize what’s wrong and whats really really wrong.

I’m very disagreeable, as you know if you’re a regular reader, so for me to ask my roommate why this is the case without sounding combative is a pretty hard task.  I don’t think I sound like an asshole when I say something like “You guys really think it’s fair that a thief should get his hands cut off?”  But their shifty glances told me otherwise.  “It’s justice,” they’d respond, “you do believe in justice don’t you?”

Of course I believe in justice, but I also believe in (A) a system that punishes in proportion to the crime (B) a system without cruel and unusual punishments and (C) Not mutilating criminals because of something I read in a 2,000 year old book.

That’s just blatant hypocrisy.

I hypothesis that their worldview is just a result of their upbringing, as my worldview is, in part, a result of the American education I received.  Islamic indoctrination in the Middle East can most perfectly be seen to be a much more effective tool because of the theocratic intertwining of state and faith.  You’ve probably heard that Muslims pray five times a day.  And my roommate does that shit like clockwork.  I notice this as being a salient difference between American Christianity and Islam: Muslims take their faith far more seriously, because it is a part of their law.

Then again, Maybe anachronisms are cool?

My roommate is literally on the other side of the world from his home, yet he still prays without fail.  He’s very familiar with the Quran, and he says many of his friends and family members have memorized the entire holy text.  How many Christians do you know that can even name the ten commandments off the top of their head?  (I can, because I’m an atheist that does his homework.  But the sad thing is, I’m the only one in my family who can spout out all ten.)  I know that I’ve taken a very haphazard road to getting my point about Middle Eastern Theocracy across, but the central thing that is important to think about is this: if the founding father’s did not establish that a separation of church and state were important, America would be almost exactly the same as those countries we see as oppressed with respect to Christianity.

Then again.. We believe this shit, so maybe we are oppressed…

The hollow bet on God

It’s very hard for me to see what makes the God of Christianity so special.  It shares a lot with the Judeo God of Abraham (except I personally think the Jewish God was much more kind because at least he didn’t threaten to burn nonbelievers in hell for all eternity), and shares even more with the Islamic god Allah.  In fact the faiths are so similar objectively that when I presented Pascal’s Wager to my roommates they thought he was speaking of Islam!

For those of you who don’t know about Pascal’s wager you should probably look a bit into it, it (kinda, not really) goes like this:

If god doesn’t exist and I believe in him, I don’t really lose much.  But if he exists and I do believe in him, I’ll win big time!

It’s equivalent to a theist asking an atheist their favorite defense: “Well… what if you’re wrong?”

It’s an utterly empty question [as my experience with my roommate illustrates] when the thousand other religions with a concept of heaven and hell can ask the same of you.  What if you’re wrong about Christianity, what if Islam is the truth and you wasted your life?

No seriously, what if you’re wrong?

Thanks for reading, as always, this is just a primer before I start writing full fledged critiques on the Islamic faith.  I’m just beginning to get my feet wet, if I missed anything let me know in the comments or send me an email lpowel22@gmail.com, check me out on tumblr here, cheers!

Sound off.

[lp]

“Why are atheists so angry at god all the time?” Is a common question leveled to nonbelievers by the faithful.  They are unknowingly attributing that anyone who doesn’t believe is a misotheist, a person who hates god.  But this pitiful mistake stems from an ignorant understanding of what non belief really is.  Saying that somebody automatically hates an entity simply because they don’t believe in them is patently absurd.  Let’s go through a few thought experiments to show how silly this attribution really is.

Claim:  If somebody does not believe in X, that means they hate X.

                         Now, let’s replace X with literally ANYTHING.

If somebody does not believe in Pink Leprechauns, that means they hate Pink Leprechauns.

 

If somebody does not believe in the Minotaur, that means they hate the Minotaur.

 

If somebody does not believe in French performances of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, that means they hate French performances of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

You guys see how silly this is starting to get, right?  Which is why it’s hard for me to take people seriously that think just because I don’t believe in God, that I hate him.  The thing that I find odd is that the God presented in the bible is a morally reprehensible character, even by his own standards.  How can theists both believe all the woeful things he has done and still praise him for doing so?  Christians, if anyone, are the ones who should be hating god, because they believe in him.

If there was somebody who said it was within his will for countless women to be raped, when he had the full capability to stop it, wouldn’t you hate this person?  Is stepping back and allowing a horror to happen not similar to causing it? If God’s will is never wrong, and therefore all the misery in your life was within god’s will, how are you not disgusted?  If all the suffering that goes on in the world, and in your own life, could be removed with a metaphorical snap of the wizard’s hand why would you continue to not hate this being?

Questions for christians,

Musings on a summer day.

Please, Sound off dear reader.

lp

You don’t have to be a fantasist to understand why women get so offended by rape jokes, but here I was closing out the second semester of my junior year “education,” enjoying a nice amphetamine binge to cram for exams when I scroll over and see the #killallmen hashtag is popular on twitter.  The social networking site is an often informative, though sometimes misguided, place to get news quickly.  It’s also a corner of the internet where people can scream absurdities and other screaming crazy people will actually listen and join in.

I wrote a little piece on feminism last year when I was young and restless, and it actually brought quite a crowd.  So, maybe a few people will enjoy an earnest critique on what these zealots are doing nowadays. There are a few members of the current wave of feminists are a bunch of loud mouthed, clueless, proselytizers.  I repeat this again, not all feminists are crazy, most of them are very level headed.  Now granted, most people who view themselves as feminists aren’t these tyrannical vampires, and in their defense – the feminists I’m discussing here don’t see those detractors as “real feminists.”  Yeah, I’m talking about “those” feminists.  The gang like ones.  If it makes it easier for you to mentally replace the word “feminist” with feminazi, go for it.  I don’t control your thoughts.  Quick, think about watermelon.

how could you not?

But thoughts are directly what they are trying to change, and if the proper feminist in our society want to be taken seriously they really need to distance themselves from the extreme end of the spectrum.  So ladies and gentlemen, here’s my central thesis: Feminism has turned from a reasonably flexible, honest, equality ideology and been perverted by a small minority of it’s adherents into a patently ridiculous, loudmouthed philosophy that uses embarrassingly absurd “myths” to propagate an ironically disparate agenda.

Seems legit

Currently there are so many different definitions of feminism out there it will make your head melt, the one I like most is easy and pretty straightforward.  A feminist is anyone who supports equality of both sexes.  Simple and easy, right.  Yeah, I like equal rights for everybody, cool.  But here’s where the hilarious irony begins – at the name.  If you’re somebody who supports equality, why not just say that?  Why create a gender biased name, with the prefix -fem, to support a political philosophy that already exists?

Egalitarianism.  Or something, I’m not a political theorist.

It seems silly that feminisms claim for equal rights so quickly show the world that they don’t really understand what the power of words can do.  Think of it this way, the civil rights movement didn’t call itself blackinism, that would be silly, and probably offensive.  (I know there were plenty of violent individuals who supported civil rights that advocated african american supremacy, but you see my illustration.)  What I’m really trying to get at here is the issue that feminists have the high hopes of creating a society where both sexes are equal, but to do this monumental task we should only focus on the issues of one.   So before I get to that, I have to talk about how a lack of understanding propagates the feminist agenda.  I’m completely prepared for the inevitable shitstorm of emails I’m going to get because I’ll be attacking the number one tool feminists have: rape hysteria.

Now every so often you’ll see a bunch of people coming together for intellectual conferences in the social sciences and every so often some academic will put forth a new and improved theory about rape.  Some people blame our “rape culture” others blame the fact that all men are pigs, and some people even blame porn.  (Please, don’t take away the porn.)

Personally, I blame the rapists.  Yeah, I know it’s crazy for me to point the finger at the person committing the crime and making some odd claim that they’re the one that should take responsibility for their actions instead of blaming a plethora of arguably unrelated factors.  So silly of me, right?

If I were a misogynist I would blame beautiful legs

BUT, (and I know this digression will take some heat), I DO think the victim CAN play a role in SOME cases.  Mind the emphasis I put on the do, can, and some.  The apologists often use the defense that “oh, yeah that girl who dresses like a slut was asking for it,” and for the most part this excuse is a load of garbage.  No girl deserves to get assaulted, ever.  However, here’s the grey part on this touchy subject.  Men are biologically programmed with a high sex drive.  In modernity we have cell phones and self control.  But even a cursory reading of any evolutionary theory will tell you that men want to have sex (a lot).  The cry that feminists make when they say women can’t (ever) ask to be assaulted by the symbols (aka clothes) that cover their body is like saying that I can’t ask to be assaulted by flipping off (a symbol) a thug.  We communicate via expressions of our self, what we say, who we associate with and the notion that you can’t communicate something to somebody that invites them to beat the shit out of you is ridiculous.  Of course that doesn’t make the assault any less reprehensible.  (I’ll get back to this point of assaulting someone for something they say below when I talk about tumblr girl.)

Now, what a big theme that I keep coming back to is how insincere the feminists can be while they engage in public dialogues.  They frequently say things like “all men are potential rapists,” and the insane #killallmen, mentioned above.  They say that 1 in 4 women are raped and call me an asshole when I laugh in their face.  Oh no, I’m not laughing because I think it’s funny, on the contrary, when this statistic comes up in conversation I know that I’m talking to another misinformed, and sadly misguided zealot which means that I can go ahead and stop wasting my time having that conversation.  According to the FBI, you know that Bureau that Investigates crime, (federally I might add), their study on rape in 2008 found that the incidence of rape was about 29 women for every 100,000.  Now, it’s been a long time since I took calculus, but those numbers don’t look anywhere close to 25%.  Go have a look see for yourself.  The fact of the matter is, rape studies are dubious at best.  Survey’s are the weakest form of data collection, and every new group that studies the phenomena gets a wildly different result.  Women’s rights advocates like RAINN or some fuckness like it probably purport the results from studies that fit their agenda.  Never underestimate the ability of large groups to scare people by circulating weak scientific research.  Clearly, the issue would be much better for both parties if we brought honesty to the table, engaged in earnest and rigorous research into the field – but no! we can’t talk openly about this because the cries of #killallmen are too loud when people like me to step up and the feminist respond by saying that I’m pro-rape, or some asininely immature shit like that.   Just don’t scare the general population by getting them into a hysteria by feeding them lies (or untruths) and stating it as fact.  That’s what religion does, and I fucking hate that shit.

Be reasonable.  Demand evidence.  Think Critically.  I don’t. Want. To Talk.  About. The bullshit. Coming. From this article here. Titled.A man is a rape supporter if.

The next thing I’m going to Not Defend is the apologists line that says that many rape claims are false.  Another dubious method of fact checking finds, yet another, cluster fuck of statistical results with some studies saying that false allegations are as low as 2% and others saying it is around 80%.  Now, you don’t have to be scientifically literate to see that something is weird here.  The important thing in this argument is noting, not how much it happens, but if it happens at all.  And if it does happen, men and women need to band together and do something about it so we can actually get to the conversation about rape.

And it does happen, no fucking shit people lie.  Let’s not pretend like we’re twelve years old anymore.  False rape allegations happen, and they are destructive.  An interesting thought experiment here is to ask yourself if you’d rather be raped, or have all your friends and family think you raped someone else, even though you didn’t.  If you thought about that for longer than two seconds before coming to your answer, then congratulations you’re a human being capable of thought.  We all remember the Duke lacrosse case and how destructive it was to all involved.  And how the woman who made the false claim got off without a day of jail time.  If we really want large portions of our population to start seriously discussing rape, we need to seriously discuss the ramifications of false rape claims.  There is no punishment for filing a false rape claim, and considering the wreckage that becomes of an actual rape victims’ life it seems abhorrent to me that feminists and men’s rights groups don’t advocate something to be done about this.

Something I came across while looking into the Duke lacrosse case highlights this whole critical thinking issue very well.  It’s about the group of 88, which were 88 professors at Duke who signed an ad, right after the woman made claims against the lacrosse team.  The ad appeared in the school’s newspaper and was worded in a way that claimed the charges as being true, before the case went to trial.

Signatories

Among the more celebrated of the advertisement’s signatories were Houston Baker, Lee Baker, Miriam Cooke, Anne Allison, Cathy Davidson, Ariel Dorfman, Michael Hardt, Alice Kaplan, Claudia Koonz, Pedro Lasch, Walter Mignolo, Mark Anthony Neal and Alex Rosenberg. The ad was spearheaded by faculty member Wahneema Lubiano.

In three departments, more than half of faculty signed the statement. The department with the highest proportion of signatories was African and African-American Studies (AAAS), with 80%. Just over 72% of the Women’s Studies faculty signed the statement, Cultural Anthropology 60%, Romance Studies 44.8%, Literature 41.7%, English 32.2%, Art & Art History 30.7%, and History 25%.

No faculty members from the Pratt School of Engineering or full-time law professors signed the document. Other departments that had no faculty members sign the document include Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Genetics, Germanic Languages/Literature, Psychology and Neuroscience, Religion, and Slavic and Eurasian Studies.

Maybe you looked at that that list for a second and just chuckled to yourself.  Maybe you noticed something there.  Go ahead, look, think critically.  You see it yet?  No, I’m serious, there is something very very magical, something so magical that I believe it unravels the secrets of why we can’t have an honest conversation about rape ever.  Okay, so if you don’t see it yet I’ll spoil the fun.  If you read closely and see that NOT ONE faculty member who works in an empirical field of study signed the document.  Yet, the humanities – literature, english, romance studies (whatever the fuck that is) and WOMEN’S studies ALL jumped to conclusions without evidence.  Now as we all know, the woman who made the false accusation of rape ended up recanting, not without ruining the lives of three young men, the reputation of the University, the coach – who was fired, the disbarment of NC prosecutor Mike Nifong, and countless family and friends who were shamed and despaired during the entire ordeal.

This is funny, right?

These are university professors. At Duke University.  One of the most highly respected universities in the nation.  Professors who KNOW how the law works.  These professors should be fucking ashamed of themselves for jumping to conclusions.  And this is my point: if intellectuals that became university professors at one of the most prodigious universities in America can’t think about rape without kneejerk reactions of fucking redneck South Carolinian republicans, what chance do we have at making any rational progress.

My second claim in this article is to give a call to action for these feminists to promote sexual equality by actually promoting sexual equality.  You can’t be a feminist who promotes human rights for all if you punch men in the face for making rape jokes.  Which is what a 20 year old feminist on tumblr did.  Are rape jokes funny?  Of course not, but neither are racial slurs, 9/11 or dead baby jokes.  But if you think a woman is a hero because she is proud of felony battery because of a joke he made to his friend, I want you to think about the kind of world you’re propagating.  The type where any time someone disagrees with you, they can punch you in the face.  Good lord there are a lot of people who disagree with me.  You probably disagree with much of this article, Dear Reader.  Oh sweet reader who disagrees with me.  *cracks knuckles*

But in all honesty, take this story, a woman ties her husband to the bed, cuts his dick off and throws it in the garbage disposal.  Now you either had one of two actions after reading that sentence:  men just finished cringing in horror, women probably smiled and thought “right on, girl!”

This double standard is disgusting.  And it’s a prime example of the feminist hypocrisy of the #killallmen hashtag on twitter.  There is absolutely no public outcry for men when they are victims of assault via women.  We’ve ignored the fact that most general assault happens to men in America.  They are, obviously as you can see here, the larger of the two groups of perpetrators, but why do we focus on one side of the domestic violence issue?  Oh yeah, and what about the fact that men receive substantially longer prison sentences, according to a U of Texas, El Paso study.  Why is there no public outcry over that sexual inequality?  Is there some inherent reason why men need to be punished for longer periods of time?  Does penal reform work better for men?  Do longer prison sentences deter crime?  Note that the answer to all three of these questions can be answered by a freshman criminal justice student as No, No and No.

Oh yeah, and what about all those female teachers the are pedophiles within the school system that have sex with their students and get no more than a slap on the wrist?  Feminist often forget that their messiah, Simone de Beauvoir (author of feminist bible The Second Sex) fucked her sixteen year old students in threesomes with her boyfriend.

And breathe.

And digest.

And sound off.

-lpowel22@gmail.com

lp

I’m sure biblical writers cracked a little smile every time they talked about shepherds and sheep.

Well.  Not really, here are some facts

- SC has the 13th highest rate of functional illiteracy nationally.

- SC ranks 9th nationally for states receiving Federal Funding Aid.

- 62% of individuals in SC receiving services have not completed high school.

Again, South Carolina is one of those bible-belt states that operates under a dogmatic religious worldview.  “Forward thinking” isn’t a trait they are exactly big on because there really isn’t a need when God’s gonna take care of everything, right?  But it’s a weird contradiction, that these GOP “family values” of family, honesty and patriotism are supported by an individual who cheated on his wife, was dishonest about work for 6 days, and left the country.

Look forward to me going more in depth to this issue, I really am embarrassed by South Carolina and I’m trying my hardest not to lump them all together into a dumb, redneck, incest cesspool.  But, I lived there for a bit and.. well.. That’s pretty accurate.

Look out this weekend as I post my first critique on the Islamic faith, I’ve been doing a lot of reading into that tragedy of a religion and think I have a pretty accurate understanding of it so far.  Check out what I’m doing over here, read some stories or look at beautiful women, and as always sound off in the comments.

lp

Exactly