This is pretty genius:
It's a really scary time for dudes right now. So I wrote a song about it. Go #vote friends! #TheResistance #1Thing @ACLU @WC4SJ #letsmakesomenoise pic.twitter.com/hz7E3xMRqR
— Lynzy Lab (@mercedeslynz) October 8, 2018
Here in youtube for those of you with twitter issues:
WaterGirl
I just watched that on your twitter, Cole, and I was hoping you would post that here. That should be everywhere.
orchid moon arts
Wow! Says it all, doesn’t it
Mary G
New anthem? Certainly a lot easier to sing. Loved it.
WaterGirl
I love her mocking facial expressions as she is singing about the guys. It can’t be easy to sing and do that at the same time. I love this.
debbei
Well, it’s on my FB feed now. Hopefully that snide Catholic woman who told me last night to take off my pro-abortion glasses and see the truth will explode in a million tiny angry pieces.
Emma
I won’t go to YouTube to see it. Most times comments there are a freaking cesspool. But it is perfect and deserves to go uber-viral.
WaterGirl
@debbei: It’s almost enough to make me think about getting a twitter account.
Derelict
That is brilliant!
It also nicely encapsulates a conversation I had with my wife just last week about how men just have no idea what women go through on a day-to-day basis. Ask any man what steps he takes in his daily routine to avoid being sexually assaulted, and note the completely blank look you get from him. Ask any woman the same question and you’ll hear what Lnzy sang and a whole lot more.
debbei
@Emma:
The first 20 or so were pretty decent. I was afraid to go further.
Elizabelle
Thank you for highlighting this one.
It’s even a catchy tune.
WaterGirl
@Emma: I never read the comments at youtube or most anywhere but here. But your comment prompted me to go look.
I read to the very bottom, and there are maybe 6 comments of the male pig hater variety. So it’s pretty safe for now.
One guy wrote –
I would love to see this song released and go to #1.
Ladyraxterinok
Are the lyrics posted anywhere?
WaterGirl
@Ladyraxterinok: people are asking for them (and the chords) in the youtube comments.
debbie
@Ladyraxterinok:
They’re on the youtube page.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Look just before the first comment.
toine
As a man, I look forward to a future matriarchy… you go women!
Elizabelle
Let’s do go make some noise. Go vote.
Love that song. Lot of lyrics to learn, though …
OzarkHillbilly
@Emma: I go to youtube all the time. never once have I felt the need to read any comments.
Elizabelle
The lyrics:
I CAN’T WALK TO MY CAR LATE AT NIGHT WHILE ON THE PHONE
I CAN’T OPEN UP MY WINDOWS WHEN I’M HOME ALONE
I CAN’T GO TO A BAR WITHOUT A CHAPERONE
AND I CAN’T WEAR A MINI SKIRT IF ITS THE ONLY ONE I OWN
I CAN’T USE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION AFTER 7 PM
I CAN’T BE BRUTALLY HONEST WHEN YOU SLIDE INTO MY DMS
I CAN’T GO TO THE CLUB JUST TO DANCE WITH MY FRIENDS
AND I CAN’T EVER LEAVE MY DRINK UNATTENDED
BUT IT SURE IS A SCARY TIME FOR BOYS
YEAH GENTLEMEN! BAND TOGETHER, MAKE SOME NOISE
ITS REALLY TOUGH WHEN YOUR REPUTATION’S ON THE LINE
AND ANY WOMAN YOU’VE ASSAULTED COULD TURN UP ANYTIME
YEAH, IT SURE IS A SCARY TIME FOR GUYS
CAN’T SPEAK TO ANY WOMEN OR LOOK THEM IN THE EYES
ITS SO CONFUSING, IS IT RAPE OR IS IT JUST BEING NICE?
SO INCONVENIENT THAT YOU EVEN HAVE TO THINK TWICE
I CAN’T LIVE IN AN APARTMENT IF IT’S ON THE FIRST FLOOR
I CAN’T BE WEARING SILK PAJAMAS WHEN I ANSWER THE DOOR
I CAN’T HAVE ANOTHER DRINK EVEN IF I WANT MORE
I CAN’T MAKE YOU FEEL INVALID, UNSEEN, OR IGNORED
I CAN’T JOG AROUND THE CITY WITH HEADPHONES ON MY EARS
I CAN’T SPEAK OUT AGAINST MY RAPIST AFTER 35 YEARS
I CAN’T BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY IF I’M HOLDING BACK TEARS
AND I CAN’T EVER SPEAK EARNESTLY ABOUT ALL MY FEARS
BUT IT SURE IS A SCARY TIME FOR DUDES
CAN’T TEXT A GIRL REPEATEDLY ASKING FOR NUDES
CAN’T MAKE HER HAVE SEX WHEN SHE’S NOT IN THE MOOD
AND WHAT GIVES HER THE RIGHT TO GIVE YOU ATTITUDE??
YEAH, IT SURE IS A SCARY TIME FOR MEN
GIRLS LIKE TO ACT LIKE YOU’RE TO BLAME AND THEY’RE THE VICTIMS
HER DRESS WAS SHORT AND SHE WAS DRUNK, SHE’S NOT SO INNOCENT
THANK GOD YOUR DAD’S THE JUDGE AND YOU WON’T BE CONVICTED
OH WAIT…THAT’S RIGHT…
IT’S NOT SUCH A SCARY TIME FOR BOYS
THEY’VE ALWAYS HAD THE UPPER HAND, THEY’VE ALWAYS HAD A CHOICE
IT’S TIME FOR WOMEN TO RISE UP,
USE OUR COLLECTIVE VOICE
THE DAY TO VOTE’S NOVEMBER 6, SO LET’S GO MAKE SOME NOISE
Baud
As a dude, I’m kind of scared now.
@OzarkHillbilly: Me either. Comments sections are cesspools.
debbie
@Baud:
Twitter comments are the worst. Automatic abuse. I don’t know why people even post there.
Baud
@debbie: I was talking about Balloon Juice. But yeah, Twitter too.
MazeDancer
Fabulous song!
What we need to do is Flip the House.
Get addresses to write PostCards to elect 8 Great Women.
Including John Cole favorite Kendra Fershee.
PostCardPatriots.com
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Emma: Why would you need to read the comments on YouTube just to watch the video? I use YouTube every day and I can’t ever remember reading the comments on anything other than a “Let’s Play… video game walkthrough. Go give the woman some views so she can earn some money.
debbie
@Baud:
Ah. Sorry.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@OzarkHillbilly: Seconded.
West of the Rockies
@Elizabelle:
Friggin’ fabulous! I’m a dude, and I endorse this message.
jl
@Baud: ” As a dude, I’m kind of scared now. ”
I thought Baud 2020! was virtual.
jl
Scary times indeed. So scary, the GOP was afraid of real investigation lest the woman’s accusations held up, or, regardless of that, that Kavanaugh told a lot of lies during his confirmation hearing, or both.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@toine: Starting with our Congress and our State Houses next year.
I’m not going to bring the hopeful mood down (including mine) by quoting the DCCC’s latest doom-and-gloom text message. But the frickin DCCC… do they do any good? I think from here to Nov 6 I’m done responding to those fundraising requests and will target deserving races more directly.
Ken
@Baud:
Google “Mark Twain” “French Revolution”.
Baud
@jl: Yes, and today I’m a dude.
Chris Johnson
I’d call that justice.
I’m a man and for various reasons always felt completely outclassed by the whole ‘compete to get women’ thing, so I got absolutely nowhere and have been suicidal about that for more years than I can count. It’s become part of my psyche: because I can’t count on myself to effectively be a Real Man, I will fail and lose and be an object of mockery. (did manage to lose virginity with some kind help but started out going gay just to be doing anything at all)
I call this justice. I like that all the men who always made me feel completely inadequate, are now panicking. Good. Panic. Suffer.
This is totally justice. It was never right. And it wasn’t just me being a girlyboy wuss loser failure, either. It was a whole series of adaptations to something completely toxic, and we’re done pretending it’s okay, and I am truly pleased to see it. Suffer, rapey fucks. I hated myself nearly to suicide for decades knowing in my gut I couldn’t be one of them. I’m glad I lived to see some justice, even if there’s nothing else for me but to witness it.
Mnemosyne
I got a thank-you note from Heidi Heitkamp’s campaign, and they say that they actually need feet on the ground more than money right now. I can’t go because I’m in California and have a gimpy knee, but I thought I would throw that out there in case any commenters or lurkers are within easy reach of North Dakota and can help out in person.
jl
@Baud: Virtuality has its advantages. Let us know how it goes.
SFAW
She seems shrill. And angry. And pushy.
It’s so depressing that a song like this is even necessary. And, of course, the people who most need a figurative 2×4 up the head, regarding these issues, are the one who will shriek about her whatever-ness the most.
Doug R
My 4k tv lets me watch Youtube and no comments :)
zhena gogolia
WONDERFUL
Sister Golden Bear
I’ve seen this previously, but all the more relevant now:
jl
@Ken: I just don’t know how the US survived Twain’s incivility. Let’s get the root of the provocative liberal rot and let’s all blame Trump on Twain. Will make for some suave and brainy NPR pieces.
(of course, implying that Twain is a contemporary ‘liberal’ is anachronistic, but he was uncivil by today’s standards, though maybe not alt-right standards, but they are special and exempted)
Mnemosyne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Apparently doom-n-gloom messages work well enough on a large enough percentage of donors that the campaigns rely on them. They don’t work on me, either, but we may be outliers.
Another Scott
Great song. Thanks for the pointer.
In other news, Reuters:
Good, good. More, please.
The word seems to be getting around that Democrats need to tailor their message to their districts. This is how we turn a Blue Wave into something much, much bigger.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
@Another Scott:
Deep state! Deep state!
(Who was it who pointed out that Gingrich, Giuliani, et al said “Deep state” where others would use “rule of law”?)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Chris Johnson: Here’s a thought I’ve often had. When I see guys who have to “prove their manhood” every day, by beating up somebody or otherwise engaging in idiotic male territory-marking, I wonder to myself, “If you’re such a manly man, why do you wake up every morning wondering if your cojones are still attached? Why do you have to re-prove you’re a man every day? What makes you wonder? Why do you have so little confidence in your own manhood?”
I say these things to myself of course because I’d get the crap beat out of me if I voiced them :-) But I have often wondered about this “proving manhood” thing and its connection to some sort of deep seated insecurity. Why does the existence of a gay male, for instance, threaten some guys? What’s the threat? Why is your masculinity so fragile and easily threatened?
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I somehow got on Sherrod Brown’s mailing list and even though he is pretty safe in his reelection bid, the emails are SCARY!
I hate the emails, but I appreciate that there is a balancing act in trying to avoid instilling complacency on the one hand and hopelessness on the other.
SFAW
@Sister Golden Bear:
Those helpful hints make me want to set up a GoFundMe (or whatever), in order to provide a “safe house” for those pore mens who get accused of rape or sexual assault — possibly falsely — by feminazis looking to make men uncomfortable.
Will no one think of them? I mean, outside of every RWA and every Rethug elected official, male or female, that is.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mnemosyne: Meanwhile, I just got a much more upbeat email from Emily’s List about three of their races that are uncomfortably close: Jacky Rosen (3 points up for NV senate), Sharice Davids (running 3 points behind in KS-03) and Stacey Abrams (neck and neck for GA governor). They got the money I might otherwise have sent to the DCCC.
Sab
@Derelict: Reminds me about when my husband had back surgery a few years back. I went for visiting hours. I wanted to stay as long as possible, but the hospital was in a rough neighborhood, so I wanted to get out before dark. My husband said his kid (my stepkid) would be coming to visit after work, so I stayed. The kid came and visited and we stayed until visiting hours ended at 9. We headed for the parking deck. I assumed the kid woild accompany his stepmother to her car, but he trotted off to hid car and left me alone in the parking deck at 9:15 at night.
Lots of main are utyerly oblivious about how we live our lives.
A Ghost To Most
@Elizabelle:
Thank you for the transcript.
I for one welcome our new feminine overlords.
Tazj
Apparently, 45 is going to be in Erie, Pa. soon for a rally. I live in NY and got a text message informing me of this on my way home. Good grief, how and why do they have my number?
Mnemosyne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I’m writing postcards for Stacey Abrams — I just got the addresses last night and will be working on them tonight. I meant to get my donations sorted out this weekend and didn’t get around to it, but all of the ones you have above are on my list.
Millard Filmore
@Chris Johnson:
Same here. I am almost too old to care now, but if you have the time, youth, money, and inclination … there are plenty of sweet women all over the world desperate to see you.
Kay
Independent judiciary kicking off the midterms for the Republicans. After this he hits the trail to defeat that uppity Heidi in North Dakota! Goooo Team Trump!
JPL
@Mnemosyne: haha Send me one.
thruppence
@A Ghost To Most: Overladies?
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
What, the addresses or a donation? ?
FlipYrWhig
@Another Scott:
I think this is an interesting development. I have wondered for a while about how Republicans squeeze so many votes out of purely symbolic national issues even in places where they make no difference to daily life. Like the “Ground Zero Mosque” and ebola travelers. They basically nationalize every single election. Democrats could do that too… but what if it’s more successful to run on how Republicans are dicking around with symbolic nonsense instead of practical solutions to problems that affect daily life in the district? Because you don’t really need “charisma” and “messaging” to pull that off. You just need earnestness. And there is no shortage of earnestness in everyone’s local Democrats, regardless of their broad ideological strokes. IMHO this was the potential lesson of the Northam campaign in Virginia 2017. If we can win with Ralph Northams and not have to wait for Obamas and Betos, we can win A LOT.
hueyplong
I know jackals don’t read much into yard sign counts, but I’ve been in Brat’s district a lot over the last month, and this is the first year I’ve seen as many Democratic signs as Republican ones.
Glad to see Reuters taking a break from interviewing Trump voters who still support him.
Jay
@Chris Johnson: @Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I experienced/ experience a much different world than you guys.
In my world, “boys will be boys” meant riding mountain bikes off cliffs, solo canoe trips to the arctic, mountain climbing, playing “an eye for an eye” hockey.
The girls/women we were interested in, wern’t impressed by any of that, they thought we were morons for doing that.
What impressed them was being kind, considerate, listening, being good with pets and babies. Doing dishes, laundry, cooking. Having a family/social circle that supported each other. Having a truck and showing up to help on moving day. Painting a room even if you hated the colour.
Steve in the ATL
@Tazj: they got it from Facebook
debbie
@Tazj:
Trump’s first misuse of his FEMA account!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Jay:
Nor was the girl I married. And since I only ever had to impress one girl in my life, the one I actually fell in love with, that worked out pretty well. So far anyway, but we’re only 38 years into this thing.
We’ve had many amusing conversations about human mating dances, because it’s pretty clear to me that it is a mating dance, coming from an instinct to improve your chances in mating season. And I’ve asked her many a time whether these dances do in fact have any chance of improving mating chances, and the answer is always, “no way in hell”.
Tazj
@Steve in the ATL: I bet they did, although I’m not on it but my husband has an account that he had to keep in touch with out of town family. I’m hoping 45’s team is desperate for people to attend.
msb
@ Ceci n est pas mon nym
Also true for femininity – it and masculinity are performances, and the performance has to be continuous. One of the best trends in my lifetime is the loosening of the definitions of both.
PsiFighter37
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I thought Davids was ahead in KS-03 – prognosticators have it as Lean Democratic, and Yoder lost all his ad money from the NRCC.
Jay
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
“We’ve had many amusing conversations about human mating dances, because it’s pretty clear to me that it is a mating dance, coming from an instinct to improve your chances in mating season. And I’ve asked her many a time whether these dances do in fact have any chance of improving mating chances, and the answer is always, “no way in hell”.”
Sports, games, expeditions, wern’t part of our “mating dances”. They were things we did for “us”, for fun.
Our “mating dances” were dinner and a movie.
Mnemosyne
@msb:
And then you get into the question of WHO you are doing that gender performance for. As Chris found out above, a lot of the required performance for heterosexuals is actually for people of the same gender that you’re never going to date, but who have expectations for your behavior anyway. A lot of the stuff that hetero guys feel pressured to do to seem “manly” is stuff that many hetero women find unattractive, particularly group behaviors like binge drinking. I think every hetero woman has had the experience of dating a guy who seems nice one-on-one but who changes into a completely different (and worse!) person as soon as he’s around his male friends.
FlipYrWhig
@PsiFighter37: They know we give money when we think it’s close and we might lose. Tim Kaine looks pretty far ahead of Corey Stewart in all the polls I see but the Kaine campaign emails really want it to seem close anyway, either to avoid overconfidence, to reap more money because they could always use it, or both.
raven
I’m surprised no one has ever brought up Ken WIlber and “A Brief History of Everything”. He posits that testosterone basically is “fuck it or kill it” and that is what men are. He does say that can be changed with practice and education but that’s the core.
Woodrow/Asim
@FlipYrWhig: “I have wondered for a while about how Republicans squeeze so many votes out of purely symbolic national issues even in places where they make no difference to daily life.”
I’ve been reading this twitter thread, and it’s accompanying docs, with some interest.
It seems there was a blueprint to the current onslaught. I think this is all stuff we’re known on some level; seeing it all in one place, though, makes me think that the GOP’s focus on Nationalizing everything isn’t a coincidence, exactly.
For example, Earmarks. Remember when those were such a huge deal, the GOP pushed Congress to eventually “rein them in”?
That also disconnected long-standing Democratic pols from being able to “juice” constituent support, to explain how funds spent in DC helped their districts directly.
In parallel, we get the SCOTUS decisions that opened floodgates of money — funds that went to candidates that just happened to support things like cutting taxes and “waste.”
And now those candidates, in office, are paid by people we’re uncertain about, campaign-fund wise, to stay lest a host of “liberal” evils (not just “waste”) flow thru their towns. Like a…Protection Racket.
Anyway, I’m just thinking and I need to go workout. I HATE Conspiracies, and think this is just a set of concerns/plans involved + lucky timing, that have all come together out of need, desperation, and anger at “us liberals”.
Jay
@msb:
If it’s a performance, then it’s not “real”, it’s an act.
Baking an apple blackberry pie didn’t make me less masculine, anymore than rock climbing made me more masculine.
Both when I was younger, and older, we formed social groups of friends, and dated/married within them,
Rather than do that “dance” where you are trying to find the real person underneath the illusions.
Jay
@raven:
Yeah, no, gross simplifications arn’t helpful.
It’s weak stuff like this and internet cloistering that’s created these toxic cultures.
A Ghost To Most
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My wife and I just hit 39. Time flies.
FlipYrWhig
@Woodrow/Asim: Haven’t read your thread yet but my suspicion has been that it’s the Fox News effect. Republicans just steep themselves in Fox News swill all day every day. E.g., they know the people killed by undocumented immigrants in faraway states *by name*. They consider themselves informed because of it. Local TV news and local newspapers are shriveling up, so they have virtually no idea what’s going on locally and don’t particularly care. So “news” is just this unending stream of outrages being committed by Others and Democrats against right-thinking, God-fearing people like them, and “politics” is how you stop them from happening. This kind of programming is super easy to produce and seemingly works very, very well. I don’t know if it was a conscious plan or an inadvertent discovery–like penicillin, only, well, the opposite.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: I’d love to have this song and others like it go crazy viral on social media. Artistic means of communicating a message are powerful!
Let’s get creative!!
I believe a majority of men hate macho / dude culture. We’re hear to help however women want and we’ll muddle through on our own as well.
I’m waiting for the masculine he-man song razzing snowflake dudes. It will be AWESOME BRO!
Chris Johnson
@Millard Filmore: Nope. You’re wrong. I have a house, I have a bit of income (still isn’t minumum wage), I have a place in the world and even a mighty tonker but it does not matter because I am too caught up in simple survival and have always had a deeply nerdy aspergerian focus on the various stuff I do (which is also my livelihood).
I also approached puberty terrified and unsettled, because I didn’t really get along with people that well anyhow, and my Dad (now dead, as of three months ago) took the trouble to warn me direly about the terrible consequences of having sex without lots of warming up, etc etc. I’m sure it’s because he too got favored with something that could be painful, but all his warnings did was scare me more, and the result of me looking anxious and worried around girls (then) or women (now), EVEN IF it was ‘uh, me Bwana Dik, you ‘k with that sort of thing?’ was uniform and total rejection.
For the very good reason that women MUST reject and be careful around fretful, anxious, hungry males because those can be just as rapey, and probably more likely to be resentful and immature. I was immature too, for years, ‘cos I got into drugs to cover up my inability to do society.
Enough. The point is, I am happy to see even ‘most’ men suffer and be worried, now. I feel like it serves them right as they benefited endlessly from a power dynamic that made me an outsider. I don’t have to get a happy ending to appreciate justice. I would like to vote for only women all the rest of my life, if I can.
So yeah. Don’t have the time because poor, probably don’t have the money, and over 50. However, killing myself is bad praxis at this point: even if we never vote again, being a 6′ white man means I may be able to have useful leverage in some situations. Nobody is going to abuse anybody around me: I don’t care if I’m hurt at this point, I know what I will not sit by and watch.
ruemara
@Chris Johnson: I think you were surrounded by very bad culture. Because anyone believing that’s manhood is conforming to an ideal that’s a disservice to manhood. But I also have to point out that there’s a femininity that is the partner to toxic male standards which, if you grow up in it, might be the source of your despair. Shedding that part of the way you’re raised (the type of female you’re supposed to crave), is as hard as shedding the male culture it praises. I watch a friend of mine who’s dealt with a lot of the violence & dehumanizing concepts he was raised into and never really fit, still struggle with that other side of the equation and that seems to stunt his ability to find a partner. Just putting it out there for you to consider.
Elizabelle
OT: So, I just fished a tiny little gnat out of my Manhattan. (Am out on the patio.) Worried for it, and it staggered around a bit on my fingernail and then — flew off. Cannot believe it survived a dip in alcohol like that.
Jay
“Enough. The point is, I am happy to see even ‘most’ men suffer and be worried, now. I feel like it serves them right as they benefited endlessly from a power dynamic that made me an outsider. I don’t have to get a happy ending to appreciate justice. I would like to vote for only women all the rest of my life, if I can.”
Most men arn’t the least bit worried or afraid.
Most of us were never douchebro’s.
Dan B
@Baud: OMG I’m a jeen yus! Dudes, you’re feeling very anxious now. The answer is: Go Gay! Very very Gay! You’ll never have to worry about women accusing you of rape or assault. In fact, many of them will want to be your best friend, Wow! Think on that!!
Just don’t look at a guys butt or crotch… or grab your friends ass… or be alone with young boys or your nephews… or get gay married at your church… or get a job promotion…
But those are minor compared to being afraid of women.
/s
Chris Johnson
@Dan B: You can’t go gay. I tried and had every reason to want it to work. I defy anybody who thinks that can happen, to try it as sincerely as I did. Hell, I even fell in love… kinda. Paled in comparison to my romantic or sexual feelings for women, which went forever unrequited.
You can’t go gay, trust me.
Jay
Many people have an amount of bisexuality “baked in”,
Toxic norms however, supress this amongst many while at the same time, toxic ideals hold up the wrong models.
Ohio Mom
@Chris Johnson: “Aspergerian” is a challenging way to go through life, especially in the time you grew up in. I think it is a little easier now because of increased awareness and the autism self- advocacy movement.
But it’s still difficult, mainly because of the (ironically) giant blind spot most of us neurotypicals have for people wired differently than us. We can be very intolerant of what we see as social skill deficiencies.
I hope you find your tribe.
Sister Golden Bear
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Michael Kimmel’s excellent “Manhood in America” ( https://www.amazon.com/Manhood-America-Cultural-Michael-Kimmel/dp/0199781559 ) astutely observes that those sorts of “manly man” displays (as well as homophobia) are really aimed at other men:
Mandarama
@Sister Golden Bear: I love Michael Kimmel’s work!
FlipYrWhig
@Sister Golden Bear: @Mandarama: I don’t know Kimmel but it seems like a take inspired by Eve Sedgwick’s “homosociality” argument in _Between Men_, which was in turn based on Luce Irigaray’s concept of “hom(m)osexual” and Gayle Rubin’s “traffic in women.” (Is that a dead giveaway that I was in grad school in the early 1990s?)
bupalos
@msb: I’ll second this.
I mean, I know most people are completely freaked out by “breaking down the genders” stuff, even the proponents are mostly like “well, is it really so BAD really, aren’t you blowing it out of proportion how bad it is?!”
It’s good. It’s almost sure to be really good, in a human sense. You set up these roles, and people artificially perform to them, and some people are more naturally suited to them I guess and some people less, but really it isn’t benefiting much of anyone. It creates massive, massive dislocation of the true person in so many cases. So many bad, distorted choices that end up being the struggle of a lifetime for that person. Wrong mate. Wrong projected image. Just wrong.
But this is how it is with change, we just never can quite see the benefits as clearly as we can see the potential harms, we focus on what we think we’re losing (there really is some to lose there I guess) rather than what we have to gain. These norms actually seriously fuck most people up, almost all of us, so many years go down the tubes to decisions made for others. Others that didn’t even really honestly care about that choice you felt forced into by the norm.
And it’s so obvious as you go through history that all these norms, that maybe had expediency at a time, for a particular purpose, had soooo much more damage attached that soooo outlasted the purpose.
GUYS DID ALL THAT 60’S MUSIC GET WRITTEN FOR NOTHING??!?!
This is only like 1/4 tongue in cheek.
Dan B
@Woodrow/Asim: I can’t read the twitter thread but there has been a long term plan to marginalize liberals. It started in 1973 with Justice Lewis Powell’s Memorandum written for the Chamber of Commerce. It formed the basis for the multitude of Think Tanks like the AEI and Heritage Foundation. These are not intellectual endeavors. They are communications shops with focus groups, writers, media rehearsal studios that prepare people to sound persuasive in many mediums. They are funded by billions of dollars. Outfits like The Federalist Society brought together social, religious, and economic conservatives so they could exercise strong influence on attorneys. Together these three different reactionary strains have found common ground. Their members include Kavanaugh and Rod Rosenstein.
These “Think Tanks” have cooked up and steered campaigns to end the Fairness Doctrine and Citizens United. They have lawsuits ready to roll with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the SC. They’ve had legislation in every Statehouse through ALEC.
Liberals have tried for years to get funding for a libetal version of ALEC. David Sirota tried for years. I saw him sidelined as too radical by Podesta / DCCC blue dogs at a conference in Seattle.
All politics is local but ideas are universal. Until liberals get on board with the money to promote them relentlessly we’ll be stuck in neutral. I’m hoping for David Hogg’s org (name escapes me at the moment) to shake things loose along with MeToo and BLM. They seem to have a strategy that could break the liberal inertia.
darrel wright
Hey yall, I heard the Trumpublicans are working on branding us as “the mob,” has there been any pushback on that folks have seen kind of “preemptively reclaiming” (could that be a thing?!) the “mob” term? I think that’s a pretty ripe angle, lately the term “mob” to me has mostly positive connotations actually. Like flash-mob and cash-mob and at the least “mob” is like a more positive term for “mafia” because it’s more old-school.
Feels kind of like “conservatives” still reacting to the 60’s or something that they would even go there in the first place. “Mob?” Seriously? Like you ONLY care about the 65+ set??!
Full disclosure, I went to grad school as a neocon in the 90’s [has to check…..yup], and I can tell you that whole ilk was educated at Cornell and Chicago in the 60’s and really….REALLY, never got over the 1960’s college republican experience.
Chris Johnson
@Ohio Mom: Yeah, it could be a lot worse, it’s just a very sore spot that I can’t forgive. I really hate toxic masculinity, it’s personal for me.
I make a living on Patreon writing software for people and open-sourcing it all and distributing it for free. So by now, I literally ‘put the means of production in the hands of workers’ because the area I work in is audio production. So I’m commie as fuck, and that makes me very happy. It leaves me no time at all for anything else, otherwise (especially around Springtime) I would be seriously trying to find me some real personal affection (and a suitable outlet to EXPRESS said affection). But there’s always more work to be done and I know if I don’t do it, my income will flag, and I can’t survive that, so I have no choice. Most of the time I have literally no chance to stop working for even a day. It’s like trying to live off driving for Uber or something.
It’s nice that people are supportive. I think what keeps me going is that, even with life being excruciatingly bad in some ways, I get to actively and tangibly be supportive myself, and I’m helping people (who aren’t shy about telling me how grateful they are for my work). That makes up for a lot of emptiness in my personal life.
Chris Johnson
@darrel wright: That’s because they will get their people to hunt and assault us like we’re an angry violent mob, whether we are or not.
There is no shelter anymore in being legitimately peaceful or honoring the discourse. Now that they’re ready to unleash the beast, not being guilty of mob-ness won’t help.
Dan B
@FlipYrWhig: FOX is one 9f the problems, probably the biggest. I’ve worked with a number of communication pros and cognitive psych exoerts who hsve documented how the Christan Right embraced modern communication techniques (propaganda if you wish). After the dem8se of the Fairness Doctrine media lije FOX was allowed to have one political point of view with no requirement to be balanced. Murdoch spent half a billion dollars to get market share in the US. He did it with media that tapped into the reptilian brain in sophisticated ways. Anchors had to be attractive. News had to be entertaining. Stories had to be simple with a clear moral. Etc. It works beautifully for a distracted population and for people with average or beliw average IQ.
This past point will probably get me 8n hit water with the BJ jackals but it’s well documented. It’s also sad because people who are not high in “intelligence” are often subject to the pain that right wing politics inflicts. They were a cire constituency of Democrats for years. We can regain them by listening to them and communicating simply and clearly. If FOX and Limbaugh can do it we can do it better.
bupalos
“MOB THE POLLS” sounds really good to me.
darrel wright
@Chris Johnson:
Right so let’s just do it. Yup, straight up, WE’RE THE MOB. We aren’t looking for Cinna the Poet, we’re just kind of like “but you dudes are TOTAL DICKS!!!”
Dan B
@Elizabelle: Gnats to you! Or is that ‘grats for saving a tiny bit of ecosystem Earth! And for the hilarious image!!
Speed reading I at first thought you saved a Gnat from Manhattan, and I had an “elephant in my pajamas” cognitive scramble moment.
Chris Johnson
@Dan B: The study “Scarcity: A talk for people too busy to attend talks” establishes very well that poverty makes people significantly stupider.
That happens for very understandable reasons. If you’re in poverty, large numbers of your decisions (especially around direct use of money, but also elsewhere) begin to take up more and more mental bandwidth because you must constantly calculate and recalculate your resources in order to not run dry, bounce checks (and incur fees) and so on. As soon as your resources are so high that you know you have a buffer, you don’t have to constantly recalculate everything all the time over the most casual ideas of things to do or get, and you become smarter because your bandwidth is not being constantly taxed.
Right now, if you’re on SSI, you must keep all your (bank) resources under two thousand dollars or be kicked off the system (at which point your two thousand dollars will erode like a sand castle below the waterline).
People are kept very stupid (or, rather, people are kept severely impaired through being in a state of poverty that forces them to be juggling money issues constantly). Intelligence is profoundly dependent on conditions and conditions are kept REALLY bad for pretty much everybody in poverty.
Dan B
@Chris Johnson: A friend of mine who had terrible scarring acne went “gay” because he was so lonely. Didn’t work either but it shows there is some plasticity in people. I repeat, SOME. I had many acquaintances that tried to go straight. Back when I came out in the sixties it was common, and horribly destructive psychologically.
It’s so much better now. The self hatred has been scrubbed from much of society but there’s nuch room for improvement.
I’m glad you’ve experienced the rich depths of love in a way that’s true to yourself. When gay marriage first was legal I was surprised how many straight friends cried – wept – at weddings of their gay friends who’d been together for decades. Love and devotion are powerful forces.
Chris Johnson
@darrel wright: Indeed.
If they don’t like the angry mob, they can, you know, not be fascists. That’d work.
I think it’s a very important realization that these people have no intentions of holding back provided liberals promise not to be too liberal. It’s obviously gone beyond that stage. There is nothing to be gained by compromise or trying to seem amiable to fascists and oligarchs (here or in Russia). I would say it’s time for the fascists to not be fascists, pronto, or there will be hell to pay.
Because there’s going to be… already is… hell to pay anyhow, and it is not going to wait for ‘justification’.
Chris Johnson
@Dan B: Nope. Haven’t experienced the rich depths of love, likely will die first at this rate. But you know I can have merits with or without stuff like that, and I think I’m a hell of a lot tougher on account of I have not much to live for and don’t fear death: I’ll welcome it, it’ll be a big relief.
Until then, I can do the work of six and if I have to take a bullet for somebody being assaulted by fascists, I don’t give a shit. There are useful things about having no reason to live.
Mandarama
@FlipYrWhig: I’ll see your Irigaray and raise you Judith Butler! —also survived grad school in early ‘90s ?
One reason I value Kimmel is that he is at home speaking to laypeople and young people as much as he is to his own colleagues. And he has been a trailblazer in analyzing masculinity.
Mandarama
Aaand of course I pop over to see what Kimmel is up to at the moment, and I see that just this year he has been accused of sexual harassment, discrimination, etc. by some of his former grad students. I have to go read all the perspectives so I can see the proper angle for my resulting depression. ?
Elizabelle
@Dan B: Excellent points you make. Although I think it’s way hard to make a case to someone who has been brainwashed, a la Fox News. You do not get a fair hearing.
And glad you are glad that one little inebriated gnat survived to fly again.
Mnemosyne
@darrel wright:
Quite a few women around here (myself included) have been comparing themselves to the women of the French Revolution. The right wing probably should have been more careful in what they asked for. ?
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Repeating this to emphasize it. Toxic masculinity teaches boys/men to seek out toxic femininity, so the toxic cycle can continue. People with personality disorders are presented as ideal partners to be sought out rather than crazy toxic people to be avoided like the plague. Oftentimes, people’s parents have modeled those toxic roles for them, so it’s hard for them to imagine doing things differently. Professional therapy can help, but it’s not a cure-all.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
Such a great and perfectly timely song, cleverly sarcastic lyrics.
I’m still blown away, though, by all the reporting of how clueless many men are to the lived reality of women having to be on guard, essentially constantly. The necessity of being so vigilant – in the ways described in this song, as well as so many others – seems utterly obvious to me (an old man) and always has. For any man in our culture to claim ignorance of such necessary caution by women is just mind-boggling to me. How is such ignorance not willful?
I get that men themselves (ourselves) are able to move through life far less warily, especially in regard to sexual predation (essentially a non-concern for men). But how can any man be so oblivious to the fact that women are not so fortunate (mostly because there are so many fucking despicable men on the prowl in ways great and small)?
Male privilege is a hell of a drug.
Amir Khalid
@A Ghost To Most:
Overladies?
Ohio Mom
@Chris Johnson: Yes, there are many paths to a meaningful life.
And lots of people who are coupled up do not have rich, deep loves and never had.
On another note, there is one exception to the $2,000 asset limit for SSI. If there is documentation that the individual was disabled before age 22, they can open a STABLE account and save up to $100,000. It’s a money laundering option for middle-class families with disabled children.
But if you are disabled when you are 23, or you don’t have a doctor’s report showing your disability dates from childhood, well, as the old saying goes, sucks to be you.
Our country’s disability policies are awful and like so much else, about to get worse.
J R in WV
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I contribute to political campaigns, and have for some years now. To Democrats, 100%.
So I get solicitation calls from the DCCC, the DGCC, the DSCC, more that I don’t recall the acronyms for…
I tell them all the same thing. I don’t need a committee to steer my money to candidates the committee want’s to support. I send my contributions directly to candidates I want to support, screw those committees with a rusty file!!!
They want to support candidates they think will do as they are told by the party leadership. That is not the kind of new members of congress I want to see in office, not at all. So I support women candidates, lots of them ex-military or former CIA ops people.
I can make those contributions via ActBlue without any help whatsoever from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, or the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, or the Democratic Gubernatorial Campaign Committee… Fuck those overhead-heavy asses!!!
ETA: Why would real Democrats want so much of my money to be spent on overhead for their political committees, anyway? I think those folks aren’t really Democrats at all, they’re just political operatives moving in the political swamp!!
Another Scott
@J R in WV: OTOH, the DCCC has a 3x match going on now. Leaving money on the table is usually not a good idea.
The big party organizations can produce things that the individual candidates usually can’t. Things like this. They have a place.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
Pretty sure that 3X match money is actually already in the hands (account) of the DCCC.
Where else would it be, anyway? Has always seemed like too good to be true advertising. 40% off on the new G-97 trucks, now only until Tuesday at Crisis Truck Sales!! Really?
If they’re only making 7% profit on their investments, how exactly are they gonna discount their asking price 40% ? Isn’t really happening. If I was gonna donate a million dollars to the DCCC to produce a 3X match on current donations, it would also have a everything left over from the 3X match offer would revert to the DCCC at the end of the event clause.
Just my cynical outlook… no hard feelings, just don’t believe that sales pitch at all.
Another Scott
@J R in WV: But Pelosi assured me, personally, in an email, that she was personally 3x matching donations for a limited time.
;-)
Seriously, I think they do have an actual arrangement that triples small donations. It looks good in the monthly reporting, and it tells their big benefactors (like Pelosi and other heavy hitters that can raise big dollars) that their big donations are helping to get more people involved via small donations. Earlier in the year, they would have these 3x matches appear near the end of every month – now it seems to be running until election day.
It’s a good thing.
Just my guess – I have no inside information.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Woodrow/Asim:
Could you mention the name or nym of the person who wrote the original Twitter thread? ThreadReaderApp.com is always slow as shit for me, and it doesn’t load, or has trouble loading, the accompanying graphics and videos. The original Twitter link is usually better for people who have the awesome technical ability to click “Show this thread.”
. . . Never mind. ThreadReaderApp finally loaded (after 4+ minutes) and says it’s JennyCohn1, from sometime around September 14.
Woodrow/Asim
@Steeplejack: I know it’s unlikely you’re read this — but actually, I find ThreadReader opens more quickly for me.
And also lacks the dozens of trackers and JS payloads Twitter’s main site runs.
So yeah, I try to do the former, when I can, but will see how it works, as I go.
Steeplejack
@Woodrow/Asim:
If you at least mention the person’s name or nym, people who prefer Twitter could find it that way. “I’ve been reading this Twitter thread,” with a non-descriptive URL, is no help.