Ive followed your blog for some years now but your recent war against stupidity is mind-blowingly awesome. Just wanted to voice my support. It's a crying shame that any effort in this campaign is a little bit like holding your hands up and chanting to stop an oncoming tsunami.

Some days I dream of giving up my current life and roaming from town to town with a big hammer named common sense, beating the stupid out of people.

The basic problem with this post is that, due to low reading comprehension, those who most need to understand it won't.

Blog Proof Failure

I remember losing all kinds of points in Geometry class for failing to employ the identity principle and say things like zero equals zero. Of course it does, why do I have to say that. Thus, if you feel rape is a terrible crime, you would likely not feel the need to differentiate it from lesser crimes since it is differentiated in your head as it should be in all rational people's minds. The implication that we need to qualify our feelings every time we mention the word rape is just the reader projecting their belief that we believe it is trivial. It does not mean our writing is sloppy.

@SerenityNOW

I totally get you now. Sorry if I responded with a sharp stick.

I actually totally forgot about the rape thing. Yes people !$%* bricks when that comes up. Actually I've been a bit bothered lately by people repeatedly listing rape alongside tweeting naughty pictures, but whichever.

We know Scott's just thinking out loud and doesn't mean any ill intent. In one of the linked posts the other day of people complaining, someone actually referred to him as a men's rights campaigner in reference to the post where he was pissing on the men's rights folks. F-ing painful.

@Frapazoid
I'm sorry... I blame myself for not being clearer. It might've been better if I'd not @ed you but @"Frapazoid's angry audience that Scott should've seen coming". A case of referential confusion... but after assigning the new @ my post should be easier to understand and you ought to feel less personally attacked.

My only comment to you (rather than your referenced audience) would be "Saying that Scott should've seen this coming is assuming quite a bit, IMO."

The "angry audience" you mention has willfully taken things Scott has said out of context and so their anger is more their fault than his. If I take something someone else has said and restate it until I find a way to make myself angry (it might not take long!) then I am hijacking what the original author said and making it something *I* am saying.

Nevertheless, I think we all understand that the word "rape" is what set off the !$%* storm here. Victims of rape rightly feel a lot of strong emotions about that experience--unfortunately so much so that some people are willing to transfer that emotion to *topic unrelated*.

I can't believe you wrote that about my Mother?!?

I can only infer from your questionnaire that you, Mr. Adams, are a racist, socialist, cannibal. And do you still beat your wife?

Scott, you made my day, that was the funniest in a long time. Mostly because that was precisely what the feminists got wrong in your pegs post.

That said, rape is such an awfully terrible thing to live that I can understand the emotion when the thing is mentioned. I'm sure most feminists would pass this test, and the reason they failed on the previous post is because it mentioned rape.

@SerenityNow

"You also assume a writer must conform to an audience rather than provoke or inform"

That's an interesting hallucination of what I said.

"Being offended doesn't make anyone a victim."

So is that...

I didn't say anyone was a victim, seriously, put down the pot for second.

I suggested that Scott is well aware that people get angry about things and sometimes tune out of Dilbert, and then I suggested that he is in fact trolling by specifically avoiding clear and useful communication.

I am not saying that a writer should provoke or inform. I'm saying he's doing a bad job of it, and should be doing a better job.

"It also doesn't make sarcasm ineffective at getting across a point."

I quoted Scott who wrote that "analogies are always fighting words", emphasis on always, fighting, words and analogies. Not long after he described how arguing with women is like arguing with retards. I understood him perfectly well, but exactly as he said would happen in the analogies post, most folks just turn their brains off and are no longer able to read.

A bit like you, actually. This is like talking to a schizophrenic person who just starts making things up in his head. [/analogy]

How did _you_ do on that reading comprehension test?

@Frapazoid
"If you realize that, it's nobody's fault but your own if people are upset at the things you say and that hurts you economically and if you don't, maybe you need some kind of vacation. "

Being offended doesn't make anyone a victim. It also doesn't make sarcasm ineffective at getting across a point. You also assume a writer must conform to an audience rather than provoke or inform.

Scott has been the subject of a personal attack bordering on defamation and libel. The so-called "feminist" reaction to Scott's comments have been pretty bizarre and not clearly based on any kind of rational thought. Scott is pointing this out.

Just 'cause you feel it doesn't mean it's there.

Scott,

Who taught us that analogies are always fighting words?

I think you're just venting from the start.

With respect to your previous post, asking if you might be the idiot, I might humbly point out that you're not being tactful, clear, you're not communicating on the level of the audience and are not minding your own (sometimes very good) advice. You seem to be making every effort to have a fight.

If you realize that, it's nobody's fault but your own if people are upset at the things you say and that hurts you economically and if you don't, maybe you need some kind of vacation.

Addendum:

Some guys like sex with big women.
Some guys like sex with thin women.
Some guys like sex with unwilling women.
Some guys like sex with women, consenting or not.

Some guys just want to hurt women - sex is irrelevant.


Feminists' reduction of all possible rape motivations to the last entry is frankly baffling. I don't know why they insist on it, but I guarantee it's flat wrong.

If anything, the idea that rape CAN BE sexual seems to be the linchpin of this conflict.

Some guys like big women.
Some guys like thin women.
Some guys like unwilling women.

Yes, some guys don't care about the sex and are just deploying an aggressive maneuver to achieve a goal. I don't have the stats derived from the exit polls.

But rape can be sexual. Idea: Scott, poll men and women, and you'll get very different results.

Seriously - I can't say the slang term for sexually aroused? As in, relating to a horn?

I don't see why (some) women seem to think forced sex is definitionally non-sexual.

It seems to point to a fundamental difference in how the genders' brains are wired: granted, ethical objections aside, most !$%*! guys would probably be prohibitively turned off by a crying, unwilling partner (I hope), but it seems weird to maintain that "sexual gratification" can only be attained with consent.

Some thieves are just greedy, even if most consumers wouldn't steal.

And speculating about the awful motivations of awful people is something non-awful people can do, even when those non-awful people are of the same class as the awful people. Just because you're strongly against something that only group X generally does, doesn't mean a member of group X talking about why it happens is endorsing it.

I just think it's sad that when people disagree with you, you think it's more important to belittle them than to try to understand what they have to say.

I thought that the writers from Jezebel and Salon were being very good sports to have responded to your irate "request for debate", and your responses to them have led me to believe you haven't even bothered to read their comments.

That's the funniest thing I've read since all of the douche comments directed at you! Thank you for the laugh.

What I don't understand... If one said, "Men are pigs, and women keep men from getting worse", why are women arguing this?

"...Those kind of dumb statements do a vast disservice not only to women, who are once again shunted into the unasked for role of moral guardians based on our ostensibly more restrained "natural instincts,.."

Sorry, I'll learn to control myself better so you don't have to keep reminding me... you have too many things to do already...

What was the fruckus about?

Oh, "rape" was the hot button word. And rape in their definition was purely and only a physical and violent act against a women, that does not require a penis, rape isn't about sex, it's about control.
Women don't want to be controlled by men, got it!

Time out for a musical number:

"The 7 things I hate about you
You're vain, your games, you're insecure,
You love me, you like her,
You make me laugh, you make me cry,
I don't know which side to buy,
Your friends they're jerks,
And when you act like them, just know it hurts,
I wanna be with the one I know,
And the 7th thing I hate the most that you do,
You make me love you,
But what I need to hear now,
Is your sincere apology,
And when you mean it, I'll believe it,
If you text it, I'll delete it.....
Miley


"I am a man who still does what he can
To dispel our archaic reputation
I am son who was raised by such men
I'm often reminded of the fools I'm among
I am a man who understands your resistance
Cuz I have been blamed and I have repented
I'm working my way toward our union mended
Alanis


"Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."
Carrie

------

Back to our show!

"What he does not seem to grasp is that the "Boys will be boys" ideology has been letting men off the hook for years.
Anne
-You are right, we should change society's organization to keep men on the hook and control the men's behavior.

"And it’s clear to me that often, men are absolutely awful. They commit the huge majority of violent crimes. Something like 95%. They commit nearly all sexu@l crimes. When I see a group of them on the street, I feel wary. Once I was hara$$ed by a group of them on the beach. For being a Jew. And for being a woman.
They write offensive messages to my friends on dating sites. They write offensive comments on the articles I publish in the Huffington Post. They seem to revel in anonymity, and they seem to be really angry about a lot of things.
Kate
-My bad

"The old "all men are animals" trope is certainly a convenient way of identifying yourself as one, but speak for yourself, pal. And if you truly believe the problem is that men are just square pegs in a world of round holes, maybe you should consider that men are not mere slaves to their pegs, and that women are a whole lot more than a pack of ca$tr@ting holes.
MEW
-You are so right, I'm being insensitive, I'm sorry I upset you, I apologize.
Oh baby, you know I care. I'll do better next time, I promise. It will never happen again.
How about I make you dinner and then finish cleaning the kitchen?
Does this mean we are not having $ex tonight?

Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue...