Nothing like having a beer with some great union workers and ?yes, that would be @JoeBiden? in Superior, Wisconsin. ?@AFLCIO? pic.twitter.com/caMGiRXjPe
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) January 25, 2024
Opened in 1961, the Blatnik Bridge connects Minnesota and Wisconsin over the St. Louis Bay.
For decades folks talked about replacing it, but it never happened. Until today.
Today, I’m proud to announce over $1 billion from our infrastructure law will be used to get it done. pic.twitter.com/WIkhZ3asdo
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 26, 2024
The governors of Wisconsin and Minnesota, thanking Pres. Biden and all who voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law… and taking a dig at the Republican House members on either side the bridge who voted against the bill: Pete Stauber from MN, Tom Tiffany from WI. https://t.co/zQnEdh7IWG
— UpNorthNews (@UpNorthNewsWI) January 25, 2024
President Biden, visiting WI, touts new surge in consumer confidence.
"Things are finally beginning to sink in. We passed a lot of really good legislation. We knew it was going to take time for it to begin to take hold. But it's taken hold now and turning the economy around."
— Joey Garrison (@joeygarrison) January 25, 2024
If you have tended to view America's economic decay through the prism of a half-century decline in manufacturing and infrastructure then Joe Biden is the Celtic God of Renewal. https://t.co/4OGp4kqalx
— zeddy (@Zeddary) January 25, 2024
So inconvenient that you have to cover a President who is getting things done. We know you much prefer (ironically) waiving snarky tweets in the faces of Senators to torpedo Biden's nominees. https://t.co/8LLjj19iTE
— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) January 25, 2024
haha Biden economy so powerful even breitbart losers can’t deny it
vibecession in full retreat https://t.co/G4PBPhQRd7
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) January 26, 2024
https://t.co/XdLwkJhNok pic.twitter.com/YEY17pHErD
— vocational politics appreciation account (@Convolutedname) January 25, 2024
On The Road – Dan B – A garden on Whidbey, main collector’s garden
Baud
This election is a Rorschach test for voters.
Especially ours.
J.
Sadly, none of this will make a difference to the Trump/MAGA/Fox News-watching cult. But maybe it will sway some supposed independent voters. Fingers crossed.
Princess
I know some who are failing that test. A dear friend told me her kid won’t vote for Biden (Gaza) and she wishes both candidates would die so other people would run. She’ll vote Biden in the end and will work on her kid but such profound ignorance about what Biden has accomplished did nothing but depress me. She’s an intelligent person.
Baud
@J.:
I wouldn’t vote GOP if the economy were good under a Republican president, because of other issues. Same with their base.
The goal is convincing everyone in the middle.
Dorothy A. Winsor
“How many genders are there, according to one GOP Super PAC? Three: ‘Male,’ ‘working woman’ and ‘homemaker.’”
From a Montana PAC. I may puke.
Baud
@Princess:
We just need their votes, not their love.
J.
@Baud: Same and good point.
Mousebumples
In other Wisconsin news, the State Assembly thought it would be smart to pass a 14 week abortion ban.
https://heartlandsignal.com/2024/01/25/wisconsin-state-representative-says-abortion-isnt-health-care-and-he-knows-because-he-was-a-veterinarian/
😒 Oh, look, another White guy who thinks he knows what he’s talking about.
Justice Protasewicz ran on fair maps and abortion. She won by 🔟 points. I’m looking forward to having this politically dumb* anti-women and anti-freedom vote for GOTV against these GOP cranks.
* Politically dumb because while it may appeal to their base, Gov. Evers will veto if it passes the State Senate. Clearly these guys (mostly men) have no idea how to run in competitive races.
satby
@Mousebumples: another guy who disrespects women by equating them and their pregnancies with animals.
Mousebumples
@satby: yup. I know we’re both so surprised. /sarcasm
Baud
@satby:
Hopefully, enough Wisconsin women see themselves as human.
gene108
I think the economy makes the case for the Dean Phillips to win the Democratic nomination for president.
– Dean Phillips
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: They forgot eunuchs.
gene108
@Mousebumples:
If he was a veterinarian for farmers, I wonder how many abortions he’s performed for unwanted cow pregnancies resulting in bull fetuses, for example.
Geminid
Republicans to Fed Chair Jerome Powell:
“You. Had. ONE. Job!”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I can attest to the huge impact this bill is having. I just retired from one of the DOT agencies that has a massive role in infrastructure projects like this; the last year and a half has seen us ramp up in a way I’ve never seen before, and that’s after having been with the agency for 27 years.
What makes this different? I mean there have been lauded infrastructure bills over those 27 years. In this case the differences are twofold:
1) It wasn’t bipartisan in the sense of how previous bills always had overwhelming both-sides-of-the-aisle support as such bills (Pork, Baby!). The token GQP support for this is simply there to appease the Beltway Press Corpse and their God of Eternal Centrism & Goddess of Bipartisanship. In the past, an administration could toot it’s horn on such a bill but only so much given how inherently bipartisan the bill actually was. Biden and Nancy Smash crafted something that allows the administration to toot its horn (which it’s actually doing; that’s typically a weak point in Dem administrations when it comes to *effectively* messaging such things) *and* deride the Tire Rims and Anthrax Party for it’s basic non-support.
2) It’s massive as in New Deal massive. Previous bills provided funding for really only the highest priority items, meaning the most visible ones and even then, such bills barely scratched the surface. Not this baby. Sure, it’s still a comparative drop in the bucket in terms of decades of transportation infrastructure neglect but better late than never. This means more ability to toot the proverbial horn and point to shit across the board from a big-assed bridge like that one to a new bike trail.
Mousebumples
I am not a vet (or a farmer), but I always kinda figured they would select for adult cow gender by selling off young bulls for meat?
Also would a mama cow still produce milk if she didn’t deliver a baby calf? 🤷♀️
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Did you see the quote at the end of that piece?
Never is there a single directive to men to become worth marrying.
Mousebumples
No lies told.
I know you (and Kay, and others) have talked about this before, but a lot of the anti-woman/anti-abortion talk is geared at keeping women barefoot and pregnant, stuck in relationships with men who can’t be bothered to be equal partners.
When I was younger, it was mostly girls who would try to get pregnant to “trap” a man. (eg lie about being on birth control, self sabotage birth condom, etc. And yes, I knew/worked with some women who would talk about how this.) In part because if she didn’t want to be pregnant, she had options. Now, in some red states, she doesn’t have options.
(Wisconsin PP is performing abortions again. I believe in Madison and Milwaukee, at minimum.)
Suzanne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The infrastructure bill is fantastic. I just wish there was a lot more swagger about it!
Last summer, my neighborhood streets got torn up and lead pipes replaced. Weeks of work. The company contracted to do the work left a note on my door (and a free Brita pitcher) saying that my supply line from the street to my house was lead and that they could replace it at no cost to me. So I, of course, took them up on that. When I spoke with the foreman about it, I asked if this was all being funded by the infrastructure bill. He said, “I think so?”
The communication about the work was fine…. Flyers on the door, signs on the street, will start on blah blah day, don’t park on this block, etc. But nothing about how it was funded! Nothing I could find in local press! Not even a sign on a light pole reading THIS PROJECT BROUGHT TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD BY THE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL! Come on! Tell people about the good work!
NotMax
Flash from the past, just because.
“When you’re rich they think you really know.”
Moving right along, the lost airplane.
;)
Eyeroller
@satby: Most veterinarians I have encountered have no qualms about aborting pregnant animals if the owner or rescuer wants it done to save the mother, not even necessarily for health, just for adoption. Years ago a stray cat I found had a swollen belly and I thought she was pregnant and at the time I couldn’t deal with kittens; the vet didn’t hesitate to agree so she soon had surgery. (As it turned out, she had a uterine infection, no kittens.) Most of the mammal species we keep as pets have litters, so the only practical method is hysterectomy, but that’s a twofer since it also spays her. So this guy isn’t even a good veterinarian.
Suzanne
@Mousebumples:
Yes. It is about providing sexual access, household services, and heirs for mediocre men to keep them contented.
Kay
@Mousebumples:
Republicans (and media, really) still don’t get what this is about. People don’t want lawmakers and judges making medical decisions for pregnant women. It’s moved well beyond “abortion” – strictly siloed- for the very good and practical reason that one cant ban abortion without intruding into medical care.
catclub
So they are okay with Trump winning, who would be far, far worse on gaza.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Suzanne: I’m just baffled by women who would vote for politicians who think this way. Do they really want these people in charge of potentially life and death decisions?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Kay
Every single woman who joined the court case in Texas would have been denied medical care with either a 6 week ban or a 14 week ban.
Channging the number of weeks doesn’t open the box anti abortion activists have put themselves in. Their bans will kill women. Always.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: Ding, ding, ding. Absolutely right. They also talk about only allowing the head of household vote. Of course that would be a man. They are not just stopping at abortion. They want to de-person women so they not individual people with rights but are merely adjuncts and support vehicles for men.
Narya
@Suzanne: keep them contented AND voting R so the R grift for the wealthy can continue.
rikyrah
@Suzanne: never ever ask the men to improve 😡😡
Mousebumples
@Suzanne:
@Kay:
Absolutely agree with you both. I’m in Rep Gallagher’s district. It sounds like a local ob/gyn is exploring a challenge against him. Not sure that we’ll get new maps for US House seats by November, but I’d love to see her challenge him in a debate.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That 19 article has some good information about the Montana Senate race. One variable: Rep. Matt Rosendale has not yet said of he will run in the Republican primary. Republican Senate Campaign Chair Steve Daines was hoping to head off a Rosendale campaign by throwing his support behind Sheehy a couple of months ago, but it may not work.
I think Sheehy’s definitely the stronger candidate. He’s like Glenn Youngkin: a businessman with no political record, a blank canvas that Daines hopes can be painted in to advantage through TV and radio ads.
Matt Rosendale is similar to another Virginia politician, 5th CD Representative Bob Good. Except that Rosendale mught be meaner than his Freedom Caucus Chair. So I’m like, “Run, Matt, run!”
Mousebumples
I make more annually vs my husband. Does that make me head of household?
(probably not, but this isn’t the 1930s, though some would obviously like to go back to a “simpler” time)
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
On my way to work now, but got an entire thought on this 😞
Baud
@catclub:
Never underestimate the power of destructive empathy.
Manipulating that has been a key tool in the right wing tool box for years.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: Because the projects ate so widely spread and so numerous, my hope is that campaigns across the country will use them as props. Flyers, TV ads, rallies onsite, testimonials from workers hired… loads of opportunities. And sone races can be swayed by local stuff – particularly state seats.
Eyeroller
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Kay has discussed this a lot (and my comment is probably going to be redundant)–the bottom line is that a lot of women, especially conservative, “religious” women, dislike other women and assume we are lying sluts, while of course they are virtuous. Of course these are the kind of women who get abortions if they need them, but those are acceptable because they were “really necessary.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Suzanne:
Denver has been doing the same thing and we went thru the same thing with our 1905 City Cottage in 2021. The contractors even worked well with the water line that came straight thru an interior, non-load-bearing brick wall that I’d finished relaying (or wtf bricklayers call it) in early 2020.
The City did, in all it’s outreach, indicate this work was funded by the Big-Assed Infrastructure Bill. They didn’t shout it from the rooftops b/c it’s simply not, at least in my experience here and to a much lesser extent back in Central Misery, the way city gubmints think. Plus, regardless of who might be running a said city gubmint, they tent to want to keep the obvious partisanship to a minimum so they don’t alienate a different party down the line when they go begging for something.
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I don’t understand it, either…. but I do think a lot of women are in serious denial about the end goal.
My reality is such that there are definitely periods in my life in which I wish that I could stop working for pay. My job is fine, but it does use up a lot of my bandwidth, and I wish I could give that time and energy to my kids and my home. It requires constant “optimization”…. I am always thinking about what tasks I have to do and in what order to keep things moving. Basically “pull planning” my life. It is mentally exhausting.
But I was also raised by a single mother, after my deadbeat father left, and I will not leave myself vulnerable to anyone else’s bullshit. Financially, romantically, etc.
Yarrow
@Kay: Colin Allred, who is running for Senate in Texas, has an ad out. It puts abortion and healthcare together. “The freedom to get an abortion and the medical care that you need.” Glad to see he’s equating abortion with healthcare. It also leans heavily into “freedom,” which I think it a smart move for Dems. I think it’s a good ad. Take back that word from the Republicans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfm7ujBEbM
RevRick
@Eyeroller: The whole question of whether or not a human fetus is alive is a red herring. Of course it is alive, in a parasitic sort of way. And it’s even a form of human life. But we all celebrate our birthdays, not the day dad fooked mom day.
And there’s both a simple and deeply moral reason for that. Before I was born I was a human who might be. And because I was still a human who might be, my status has to take a backseat to the life of the human who is— my pregnant mom.
Or — to put it another way— if a fetus is a person, then the woman is not. And the claim that a fetus is a person is a moral outrage.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Mousebumples:
I’ve mentioned this before but waaaay back, Amanda Marcotte, in her Pandagon blogging days, wrote one of the earliest (and most cogent) pieces on the real intent behind the forced birthers. I wish I’d clipped it b/c I’ve never been able to find it since.
But, it’s what everybody’s been saying in that the forced birthers were all about keeping women barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the bed with just enough slack to get to the kitchen.
In effect, they were gunning for abortion first, then they’d start on getting rid of birth control, all part of the longer-term plan outlined in the previous paragraph.
satby
@Eyeroller: I agree, but late term spaybortions can be difficult for some animal loving vets, even though they more than most understand the need to limit litters. As a result, a few of the vets we work with will not perform very late pregnancy spaybortions*, we have to wait until the kittens (it’s almost always kittens) are born and weaned, then everyone goes in to get fixed.
* Unless medically indicated for the health of the mother.
rikyrah
@Princess:
Time to stop coddling these children.
Especially, if they are daughters.
Have your friend Google Jessica Valenti.
Make sure this whining, indulgent young woman to prepare for the complete loss of body autonomy. Including birth control.
Time for these young women to grasp their fight IN AMERICA.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: Of course not, we’re already perfect.
(and yes, s//)
Geminid
@Trivia Man: There are already some factories spawned by the IRA bill coming on line, with many more to come. These events get reported in state and local media as well as industry news sites. As with the Infrastructure bill projects, it’s up to Democrats to propagate the news as widely as possible. People often do that here.
One way I keep up with this news is to check out stories about particular Democratic Representatives. I might not hear about Sharice Davids in “national” news for months, but if I look up “Sharice Davids news,” there are plenty of stories on state and local sites about her appearing at some ground-breaking or ribbon-cutting ceremony involving Biden administration investments or initiatives.
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@Geminid: And he did it. It just didn’t provide the rotten outcome that they were hoping for. Instead, we’re getting this huge surge in investment spurred by the government that is rebuilding both our infrastructure and our manufacturing base.
In fact, in the 4th of 2023, nonresidential private construction added O.4% to our GDP, the highest it’s ever been since they started keeping track in 1959! That’s what the CHIPS Act and the climate change IRA are causing to happen.
Yarrow
@satby: OT, you asked about my package a day or so ago. It FINALLY got scanned in by the post office late yesterday. I dropped it off (pre-paid label, so you just drop it in the blue collection bin) on Monday. It got scanned in on Thursday evening. Crazy slow. At least it’s not lost.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@RevRick: Sperm is alive. Do we see politicians banning jerking off? No, we do not.
Suzanne
They’re trying to end no-fault divorce, too, because women leave shitty men.
There is much evidence of a “sex deficit”. People are marrying later, if they marry at all, and those that do marry are increasingly college-educated. Teenagers are waiting longer (on average). Teen pregnancy has absolutely collapsed. There’s research that indicates even married and cohabitating couples are having sex less frequently than they did in the past. So this frustration has been building for a while.
In some very small way, I am sympathetic. It used to be fairly easy for at least white people to be successfully middle-class and broadly speaking have the lives they aspired to. It didn’t require a college degree or rich parents or being great at a sport in middle school or incredible business savvy. Young people today all strike me as just all incredibly anxious. There is a highly competitive ethos that I think is not great for our society’s flourishing. And now men have to compete with women and for women in a way that they didn’t have to 30, 40, 50 years ago, and it is destabilizing. Lots of them will never marry or even get laid with any regularity.
topclimber
ICYMI, the RNC has backed off on making TFG the presumptive nominee…for now.
satby
@Yarrow: Glad to hear it. Yes, that is slow but I figured it wasn’t lost or stolen. It’s usually backlog problems. Not that stuff doesn’t get lost or stolen, but if it is it’s usually at the delivery end.
Mousebumples
I think she’s active on bsky. I’ll skeet and try to ask about it.
Mousebumples
Not going to YouTube right now, but this needs a Monty Python clip.
🎵 Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate. 🎵
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: But but but every sperm is sacred.
@Mousebumples: Damn it, you beat me to it. You can thank me later for the clip.
OzarkHillbilly
The horror!
satby
@Mousebumples: She’s returned to that theme over and over. The ultimate conservative goal of undoing the Griswold decision has been openly talked about for decades.
Geminid
@Yarrow: It’s not like Democrats need to take the “freedom” issue from the Republicans. They have essentially abandoned that value, and left it there for the taking.
I think Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola understood this when she devised her campaign slogan for the Alaska special election:
I think Peltola hit a home run with that one. I told it to a friend who lived in Alaska for some years, and her response was, “Perfect.”
Mousebumples
@OzarkHillbilly: haha, great minds think alike. Thanks. 😅
@satby: Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar. Not that I can say I’ve read that exact piece mentioned above, of course.
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I mean, no one is entitled to sex — of course! — but it does suck to struggle at a pretty basic part of relationship. And we are not really well-prepared to deal with what happens when a whole bunch of people fail at life.
I muse on George Sodini every once in a while. He was the guy that, some years back, went to a gym in a Pittsburgh suburb and shot up a yoga class and killed a bunch of women. He apparently hadn’t been laid in 20 years. Women are afraid that men will kill them, indeed.
Yarrow
@Suzanne:
It is destabilizing. At some level I understand their desperation to force society backwards. They don’t know how to deal with this new world.
It’s not great. Sure, there should be some competition but competing all the time on everything seems not great. It’s not surprising we’re seeing a lot of people dealing with anxiety.
OzarkHillbilly
Hmmmm… You may be in trouble. Mine is at best mediocre.
Yarrow
@Geminid:
They have. But it’s also part of their brand. In that way Dems need to “take it back.” Show how Republicans are no longer the party of “freedom” and Dems are.
Freedom is a big word in the US with lots of resonance. The party that owns that word will do well.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Eyeroller: the other bottom line is that women, until the last few decades, were in competition with each other to get financial security for them and their families through marriage. People laugh at Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice and her eagerness to attract unmarried, well off men for her daughters, but if she didn’t, all five of them and herself (the character is probably in her early 40s), would be thrown out of their home and dependent on the kindness of Mr. Collins to survive. No wonder she’s frantic. And these lack of alternatives and competition can curdle relationships with other women.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Mediocre people are always at their best.
Brit in Chicago
@Suzanne: “Guys, go out and put a ring on it.” I especially like the “it”, and the implication that the woman (presumably the it) has no agency. Going to win him a lot of friends among the ladies, I’m sure.
Yarrow
@Brit in Chicago: Well, that line is a very popular Beyonce song, so I’m not sure women will react like that about the phrase.
Eyeroller
@satby: That’s not that different from human physicians. Or the Roe-era laws. Viable human fetuses are delivered, even if they must be delivered prematurely for the sake of the mother.
Geminid
@Yarrow: Yeah, a lot of politics is branding now. Rachel Bitecofer is really into this, and we’ll hear plenty about both branding and Bitecofer when her new book “Hit ’em Where it Hurts” comes out next week.
Brit in Chicago
Since it’s an open thread: following yesterday’s strong growth numbers, this morning we have good inflation numbers. Nothing dramatic, but a continuing decline in the rate of inflation, slightly better than the consensus forecast.
I’m not an economist (though I do read and think about economics) and I’m certainly not a big investor. But I care a lot about this because the performance of the economy is surely a big factor on whether an incumbent President is re-elected. So far the Biden economy is amazingly good, and I’m optimistic that this will be increasingly recognized over the next ten months.
Suzanne
@Yarrow:
Agreed. This is also why I get so pissed when some old person makes some bullshit comment such as, “Back in my day, they didn’t give you a participation trophy”, wah wah wah. Like, it was broadly easier. We have made more hurdles and challenges and barriers to success, again, at least for white people.
OzarkHillbilly
Case in point, Charlie Kirk.
Same as it ever was, there have always been people who failed at life. Some never had a chance but a fair number of them deserve to lose at life.
I remember that asshole. I have to say it wasn’t his lack of a sex life that got those women killed. It was his sense of entitlement to a sex life. That is something one has to earn. A thing that too many men just don’t get.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: Thank you, thank you. I bow down in gracious acceptance of these accolades.
Eyeroller
@Eyeroller: Replying to myself since I lost my edit window. The fact-free assertion by many Republicans that Democrats support abortion “to the moment of birth” is particularly enraging to me. It’s intentional calumny and the press never seems to question them about this.
Another Scott
@Princess: Kids are idealistic and want the world to work the way that our ideals say it should. They don’t like hypocrisy.
Fortunately, unlike those of us poisoned by lead [/Kevin-Drum] who thought that the way forward was to vote third party, they understand that there really are only 2 choices (third party spoilers aren’t going anywhere this year).
I think the vast majority will be on our side and provide their votes in November.
I posted a Wikipedia link downstairs that showed that new voters were +10 for Biden in Georgia in 2020. They’re on the good side. We still have to work to turn them, and every other gettable vote, out, of course.
Cheers,
Scott.
Scout211
That was fast. All the noise from yesterday’s RNC coronation of the King is now over. The King did nor accept.
Republican National Committee pulls resolution declaring Trump as the ‘presumptive 2024 nominee’
satby
@Suzanne: it wasn’t really easier*. We just expected and often settled for less.
* Comment applicable to white people (mostly men) only. Women were still limited to needing a male co-signer for bank accounts and credit cards and still lost jobs (or weren’t considered for them) when they got pregnant. Gays still got arrested and imprisoned for being gay. POC had hurdles I couldn’t possibly enumerate in a single comment. Different does not equate to easier.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I agree with you somewhat but I think “we” – people who are older than them – contribute to young peoples anxiety with what I think is excessive negativity about their future prospects.
If you’re a young white man who can take and pass basic algebra with a C I really can point you to a middle class job with no college degree. They have to put in about 5 years at lower wages but they’d have 4 non earning years in college anyway.
I think we have to stop telling them it’s hopeless – not because we’re “nice” but because it isn’t really true. I think a certain portion of young white men are using this to make excuses for not trying. They really have to try. If they get some decent financial advice and stick with it for 5 years they’ll be middle class.
Yarrow
@Another Scott: And get them to understand why voting downballot is essential. So they don’t just vote for Biden but also for all the other Dems on the ballot.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Cue John Houseman* voiceover.
“They make whoopee the old-fashioned way. They earn it.”
:)
*the olds will remember the original brokerage ads.
Another Scott
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Is this it?
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@satby: There is plenty of evidence that it is now economically harder, at least for white people, relative to the past. A white dude really could have a middle-class life on a single income. In much of the country, it takes two incomes to have the buying power that one used to have.
But agreed…. this only applied to white men. Who are, not coincidentally, the ones most in thrall to MAGA shit.
satby
Timothy Snyder is still fundraising for Ukrainian defense:
Kay
@Suzanne:
They have to resist stupid stuff – like buying an 80k truck, or thinking they can not work and make money in bitcoin, or not using birth control and ending up with child suppport at 19.
Rural white boys arent being parented or something so they have to find sensible people to advise them.
Girls just seem to be better at raising themselves.
Suzanne
@Kay:
And the culture of extreme parenting that this has spawned is fucken exhausting.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: They believe every white man is automatically worth marrying regardless of anything else. You’re right, they’re never told to shape up except maybe to get a better job.
Brit in Chicago
@Yarrow: The stuff I learn here!
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Well, I would never say you were mediocre because I don’t believe you are.
But I wanted to repeat that slogan. I saw it on a bumper sticker 30 years ago and it stuck with me.
Ken
Sounds like they’re arguing for polygamy? It does have Biblical support, and also neatly solves the problem of modern lifestyles requiring two incomes.
WaterGirl
@gene108: That is a most excellent question.
Baud
@Suzanne:
The problem is many of these white men aren’t just the victims but the cause of this situation, because of the nature of their politics (which, of course, affects everyone else’s politics).
I’m not sure how you break that loop.
NotMax
@Geminid
Product of Roman Hruska Inc.?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s a tough issue though and not a simple one. I mean, I’m OK as a happily married guy with high educational attainment and a healthy respect for women. In this era assortive mating, where women are going to college and getting advanced degrees at much higher rates than men, and also basically sorting themselves out of a willingness to date or marry non-college educated men, it’s a problem for guys who decide not to go to college.
To date or marry any of those women you have to be college educated, minimum, and depending on whether the woman has a post-bachelor degree maybe have one of those. So to date an increasing number of women you have to have a college or advanced degree, and have a healthy respect for women. I can see how a lot of men with #2 still feel left out because they don’t have #1. You can’t just tell every guy to suck it up and go to college so they can expand their dating pool. IDK what the solution is other than some women with advanced degrees being willing to date and marry “below their station” and the guys also being willing to let that happen. It does happen sometimes…my pest control guy is married to a doctor or advanced practice nurse, I can’t remember which. But the fact that she gave the guy a shot is actually somewhat unusual, much less decided to marry a guy who graduated HS and then went into the trades. I’m not saying women shouldn’t be free to decide who to marry, or free to decide not to marry at all. But, if I’d gone into the trades out of HS and was a nice guy and gainfully employed but half the women around me just wouldn’t give me the time of day because they went to college and I didn’t I could see how the world as it is right now could seem less than ideal.
RevRick
@Dorothy A. Winsor: As I said, the whole is-it-alive? claim is a red herring meant to distract from the moral question of personhood.
Chris
@Eyeroller:
As (I think?) Kay also pointed out here once, there also is an entire niche for women who are willing to be the cool girl who makes sexists feel comfortable and cheerfully throws other women under the bus as prudes and buzzkills. Less than there used to be, but a thing nonetheless, especially in politics where there’s an entire party dedicated to making sexists feel comfortable.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: ;-) ;-) I make jokes at my own expense because I don’t believe in making them at the expense of others. Not that there aren’t exceptions to that general rule. Josh Hawley for example.
Ken
This could be from hormone-impostor chemicals leached from plastics, but my money is on having streaming video services and other options as alternatives.
Kay
@Chris:
It was huge. If you were a working woman in the 80s and 90s there were lots of women who insisted all sexism was a joke – they allied with men to discredit women.
Women used to brag about not having women friends “I just prefer men” – oh, you maverick you!
Suck ups, basically 🙂
Soprano2
@Geminid: Is he the guy who assaulted a reporter?
Baud
@Kay:
Man, women suck.
satby
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?: A LOT of trades pay well above what office workers make after equivalent years on the job. The sorting isn’t just around educational levels achieved but around compatible political views and whether women feel respected by a potential mate. College educated is only one indicator of that, and not always a reliable one.
Manyakitty
@rikyrah: every word of this. EVERY WORD.
Ken
@Scout211:
CASCA. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ’twas not a crown neither; ’twas one of these coronets), and, as I told you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it.
Kay
@Chris:
Theres lots of surveys on anti abortion views where they align with anti women views.
Thats true for both men and women.Its why women have not been a reliable voting group – there are lots and lots of anti women women 🙂
A better indicator of pro choice views is education. Educated women are pro choice but so are educated men.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: That describes my life now, too. Sometimes I don’t get to sit down at night until 9:00 because I have to do everything. I’m at the urologists office with hubby right now, and I’m major pissed because I thought his appointment was at 8:15, but no it’s at 9:00, the 8:15 time was to do labs. We got here at 7:45 because I thought the appointment was at 8:15! I could have slept another hour.
Kay
@Chris:
When I started as a manager in the PO women workers often told me they preferred male managers or attributed something they liked about me – always directness or bluntness- with being “like a man”
Theyre sexists. They have a deep belief that women are inferior.
satby
Absolutely. Especially since the Civil Rights – Viet Nam era, the tumult of which propelled Reagan into office and started the decline Biden has been reversing today. Angry people being forced to play a little fairer decided to flip over the table and scatter the cards instead.
Betty
@Ken: Polygamy for men on!y.
Suzanne
@satby: The assortative mating preference around college isn’t simply about income. Honestly, I don’t even think it’s primarily around money. I think it’s more about lifestyle and cultural preferences. Increasingly, college-educated people live in cities and meet other college-educated people there.
I will also note that, IME, it seems more typical for men in the trades to want their partners to be more focused on the home and children, that traditional model of marriage. College-educated men seem to be more supportive of their college-educated wives being high-achieving, with all of the extra hours, relocations, social functions, etc that that requires.
Yarrow
@Kay: I have the impression that kind of thing is changing with younger generations. I don’t know if that’s right, though.
Chris
@Suzanne:
Less about the sex part of life than the work part of life, but this is also why I’m pretty big on extremely robust welfare nets and loathe the usual whine of “I don’t want people just living on the dole!”
… Because look, there are people who just fail at life. Or at least that part of it. If this was the most supportive and opportunity-laden society it possibly could be, there would still be people who just fail at life. Some people are just shit in the workplace (any workplace). Other people, probably a lot more, might not be shit in the workplace if they had a job better suited to them, but for whatever reason these jobs weren’t available. And so forth.
I don’t believe that these people deserve multimillion dollar bonuses, their own private yachts, and a lifetime career of failing upwards, because I’m not the Chamber of Commerce. But I don’t want them starving or homeless, either. If there are a few people who end up on the dole for most of their lives, frankly, fine. We’ve certainly wasted far more money than that would cost for far shittier goals.
Kay
@Suzanne:
Im helping my daughter and son in law with childcare for 2 weeks (new baby)
I forgot how much work it is. I am doing the thing I always did when swamped raising kids – I’m getting up earlier and earlier – by next Saturday I’ll be up at 5 🙂
I’m glad I came – they needed help. They all need more help, young people
JML
As a former Duluth kid, I’m thrilled to see the replacement of the Blatnik Bridge (BTW, John Blatnik was a fine congressman for the area and deserved the honor of having a bridge named after him) That bridge has been in terrible shape and driving on it (when it’s been open) has been pretty scary for years. But it’s an important connection for Duluth-Superior as the access points are close and easy entries into downtown for both cities. Glad to see Biden do a drop by with the governors and AmyK (who is still the most popular politician in the state by a lot). And really happy to see them take a poke at Pete Stauber, who runs as a “common sense” republican and pretend to not hate Labor, but then votes against everything in lockstep with his lunatic caucus. Sucks that being from a big hockey family still covers up for screwing people over and lying…
Suzanne
@Ken:
There’s also, in some cohorts, a dramatic increase in hours worked. I think there’s probably an array of things that factor into this.
gvg
I don’t know if it is national, but I attribute some of young people’s anxiety to excessive test pressure starting in kindergarten. The state of Florida has for decades been increasing the pressure on schools to prove they deserve to still be funded and mandated multiple yearly tests of students. the result has been pressure on the kids because the teacher’s wages depend on the students test scores. This results in schools recruiting the brightest kids (school choice) and in various ways getting struggling students to leave. The brightest in school can reflect parents’ economic status and tend to indirectly hurt minorities from what I can see. The schools are gaming the system with various ways such as magnet school programs that completely run separate on the grounds of a poor performing school, so that the average seems OK, and the poor school keeps funding. It completely undoes the benefits of integration and I suspect teaches the bright mostly white students to look down on and maybe even fear the poor minorities whose parents work many jobs or are absent and can’t help with homework. And help for anything else like dyslexia or any learning disability doesn’t seem to happen. It did 30 years ago. Anyway, the kids are tested and taught to fear tests from early childhood. There are no fun extracurriculars like art or music anymore. The homework burden is so much heavier starting in kindergarten. Its a wonder they don’t all hate school.
Layer8Problem
@Scout211:
Where was the logic of even doing that? Was it as simple as the RNC saying “always make the boss happy, and this will make him happy”? Was it more about fear that his ongoing decompensation in an active campaign might develop not necessarily to their advantage, so prematurely end it and beg him to restrict himself to heavily edited presentations in friendly venues (Call Mark Burnett: “We’re getting the band back together!”)? Was it merely practical fascism by ending the annoying farce of doing the politics thing, just anointing the putz, and proceeding to their preordained triumph of the will? Somebody I forget said last night that ultimately this just looks weak, and I agree. Their little hothouse flower needed delicate treatment without having to compete against someone who’s actually putting up a fight.
Soprano2
@satby: They really don’t like that women can be the masters of their own fate now. They want us all to be dependent on a man.
Baud
@Chris:
Agree. We waste a ton of mental and financial resources overprotecting against the possibility that someone might get something from the government that they don’t deserve.
Kay
@gvg:
Definitely true about homework. I laugh when people my age say they worked harder in school than the young’s – no, they didn’t.
i saw homework increase just between my oldest and youngest child
the standardized tests got much harder too. If you ACED the Iowa tests in 1989 you really shouldn’t brag. Kids now take much more difficult assessments
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I wonder if the easy availability of lots of porn online factors into this. Do young men have unrealistic ideas about relationships and sex, and thus become disappointed at the real thing?
Baud
One thing that usually doesn’t get mentioned is the increase in consumerism. There’s simply a lot more stuff people want to buy today than in the past.
Kay
@gvg:
I reviewed the Common Core type tests when my youngest had to take them.
Much higher standard than the old standardized tests. The whole county dropped 20 points and it’s not a mystery why – they raised the bar.
Geminid
@Soprano2: That would be the other Republican Rep. from Montana, Ryan Zinke. Matt Rosendale was one of the holdouts last January when McCarthy was struggling to be elected Speaker.
Soprano2
@Cheryl from Maryland: Oh yeah, we were taught that other women were the competition.
RevRick
@Suzanne: Buried in your argument is an implication I find troubling, and that is when it comes to emotional health, women are healthier than men. But family systems theory would sat that’s absolutely not true. The world is made up of equal supplies of emotionally healthy and screwed up people for both sexes. Emotional wellbeing is distributed on a Bell Curve, because the emotional wellbeing of our parents is distributed on a Bell Curve, who got it from their parents.
In the past, emotionally screwed men and women found each other and married, because women were economically dependent on men. Now women have options and especially for working class women the cost/benefits of marriage have shifted dramatically to the cost side. A screwed up single woman has to ask herself, “Do I really want to take on the burden of dealing with my own shit, plus his shit (because caretaking expectations fall mostly on women), and not have an economically dependable man?” Add in children and the load can become unbearable.
Now incels, who are nominally educated and screwed up, in the past would have willingly taken a screwed working class woman as a partner, but now have convinced themselves that that’s beneath them. So they choose bitter loneliness instead.
Citizen Alan
@Yarrow: Every republican woman hates herself. And they are consumed with jealousy and hatred towards other women who do not hate themselves and who actually want lives of their own.
sab
@Kay: This is so true. There are good jobs out there.
Suzanne
@gvg:
Definitely national. Definitely a movement to higher academic attainment and less joy. More STEM, less humanities. Reading by kindergarten.
Yarrow
I love seeing this:
Keep it up, Uncle Joe! LOL.
Chris
@Kay:
I think that’s true, but it seems reasonable to say that there are still not nearly as many such jobs as there were in the mid-twentieth-century.
One of the reasons why the resurgence in unions and the most pro-union president in at least half a century makes me hopeful. It’s also worth noting that a lot of the union organization is a lot less male and a lot less white (with some asterisks on that last one since the definition is somewhat variable) than it was in the 1950s and 1960s, which hopefully will help reduce the shitter aspects of the mid-century union movement.
NotMax
@Betty
By strict definition, yes.
The other way round is polyandry.
/pedant
What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?
@satby: College is definitely not a perfect indicator of whether a guy will respect women, at least based on some of the guys I knew in college. I don’t think it’s necessarily a particularly reliable marker for political affiliation either. It’s probably more reliable as a marker for I don’t know what to call it…it’s not exactly socioeconomic and given that some guys with mere high school degrees are very intelligent I don’t want to say it’s a marker for intellectual compatibility either…but if you’re interested in discussing books, music, world history and culture, science, etc. with your mate then sorting based on educational attainment is undoubtedly useful, though still not perfect.
OzarkHillbilly
Again, same as it ever was. Beyond that, what you are saying is basically, “The world has changed.” Of course it has, it’s always changing. Adapt or die.
“Women have higher standards now.” Good, they deserve it.
And to the extent* that that is true, it is up to men to meet those standards. If they choose not to meet those standards, or if they can’t meet those standards, life is rough all over. Let me get out the world’s tiniest violin.
Oh, I most certainly can, I can tell them anything I want, but I don’t. I do say they need to suck it up and grow up. “Quit yer damn whining.” Life is unfair. Guess what? It’s always been unfair.
*for whatever it’s worth, and it ain’t much, I have had a very different experience with that dynamic. I know many working stiffs who married educated women and have had long and happy marriages. I’m one, although I helped her get her degree, so not sure that counts quite the same. Both of my sons are working stiffs, the eldest married a woman with a Masters in Pharmacology, and my youngest is helping put his wife thru college. Anecdotal, not data.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: Every young person I know who is in college is majoring in some STEM field. That’s great and all but not everyone can or should be an engineer or scientist. There are other parts of the world too. I feel like at some point this is going to backfire.
Kay
@sab:
I tell the juveniles. I’ve turned into a career counselor
But we shouldn’t romanticize trades either – there’s room for tradespeople and French majors. We need everyone working 🙂
Not to judge but I think we all must reckon with the fact that in my part of Ohio all of these lost and underparented young men are the children of Trump supporters
they need to look at their own parenting work – not getting it done.
Baud
@Yarrow:
👍
Suzanne
@RevRick:
I don’t think this is true at all. I think more people of both sexes are less emotionally healthy, more anxious. I do think women, broadly speaking, develop conscientiousness earlier than men do (there’s research about this), and those traits are strongly predictive of success at school, and the current workforce environment selects for those traits.
stinger
@Yarrow:
It seems to me that conservatives, especially, see life as a win/lose proposition. Whereas in reality the world and its opportunities are expanding. Part of the problem is a very narrow definition of “success”.
OzarkHillbilly
Because that’s what they’ve been taught.
Geminid
@Kay: You could have a good post-retirement career as a career counselor and truck broker.
Yarrow
@RevRick:
In the past the woman would not have had much say about getting married. Especially if she was pregnant. It would have been pushed on her by all sides. Some of those pregnancies would not have been from consensual sex, but it’s not like the woman would have been believed nor could she get the guy arrested. It’s hard enough now to do that, let along decades ago. So she married the guy. And yay, everyone congratulated her for getting such a good “prize catch.”
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne:
Which is why God blessed all men with hands and opposable thumbs to take care of that ourselves. Hell, if a man is too lazy to do it himself, for $100, there are machines that will get you laid hands free!
oldgold
Just now in Carroll v. Trump
@RpsAgainstTrump
·
12m
OMG. Judge Kaplan just now to Trump’s attorney Alina Habba: “You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Sit down.”
HumboldtBlue
Trump is not having a good morning in court, Habba has been threatened with a contempt charge and the fat fucking traitor stormed from the courtroom when the closing arguments began.
Happy Friday.
Omnes Omnibus
To tie this thread together a bit, I think it’s great that people in the trades will be rebuilding this bridge so that everyone will be able to get safely across the bay for therapy sessions and violin lessons.
hueyplong
@Yarrow: If Joe strokes out Trump with mere taunting, he will immediately tie Lincoln for first among American presidents in my extra subjective rankings.
It would also kill the narrative about Joe’s alleged feebleness.
But most importantly, it will have stroked out Trump.
Keep doing it. The effect may be marginal, but as of today the margins are important.
Chris
@Kay:
One of the things you hear often from political commenters is about how abortion used to be a “Catholic issue,” not that there weren’t still lots of anti-abortion Protestants, but it wasn’t some make-or-break issue for them in general until the late seventies.
… And it’s true, but they never finish that thought. Yes, abortion specifically was a “Catholic issue” that probably still felt a little weird to a lot of Protestants in the seventies. But the real issue underlying abortion – “women need to be controlled” – was perfectly recognizable and relatable to right-wing Protestants, which is why they were ultimately able to overcome the unfamiliarity pretty easily and adopt the Catholics’ way of expressing sexism.
(The mirror image of this is capitalism. Historically associated with Protestantism, while Catholicism’s mindset was more medieval and rooted in the kind of monarchist/feudal mentality that dismissed the pursuit of money as crass and plebeian. So the specific language of ultra-free-market capitalists might be weird in the Catholic tradition. But the underlying principle – “the rich and powerful should be able to do anything they want” – is perfectly recognizable. Which is why so many right-wing Catholics had no trouble making the transition, and now they all sound like Ayn Rand).
rikyrah
@Kay:
I told you that I follow Jessica Valenti. It’s very important that people be informed..
THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.
You can find people who fall into the categories of the so-called exceptions.
BUT, somehow, THEY ARE ALWAYS DENIED AN ABORTION.
So, the ‘exceptions’ are a LIE.
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
My lips are so pursed.
rikyrah
@satby:
Thank you, satby.
Soprano2
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?: In my experience the reason women won’t give those men a chance is because the men have a huge fucking complex about it. I have a degree but my husband doesn’t. He’s the exception because he was never bothered by it. One reason I was attracted to him was because he didn’t feel it was necessary to constantly “prove” he was a man. I lived with a guy who was highly insecure about the fact that I had a degree and he didn’t, he would poke at me about it all the time as if I were a snob because of it.
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Please note that I am in no way saying that the male grievance I am describing is reasonable and that we need to restore the world to the way it was. Some people always had an easier path to success and that was historically provided to white dudes, and that shouldn’t be the case.
I do think that the gap between expectations and reality is a political problem. I do think that there should be fewer barriers to success or at least a secure and dignified existence for everybody.
RevRick
@Suzanne: The number one factor in marriage? Propinquity! It’s a question of with whom will I cross paths? And we are increasingly siloed by education and income.
Kay
@Geminid:
Im good at auctions. I love them.
i thought I was so efficient with that truck, transferring title and delivering but it turns out he has to bring it back to Ohio to register it – purchased in MI , won’t plate it in OH without eyes on.
I won’t even be there to visit with him – I’m in NY
Omnes Omnibus
Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Citizen Alan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m honestly surprised they didn’t call them working girls.
rikyrah
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I think people really need to grasp this.
The one part of the Obama Economic Recovery that was always missing was the infrastructure part, because the Republicans would never vote for it, because it would help the economy.
I am happy that President Biden got this through, because this is the part of the economy where the Wall Street overlords can’t mess with it, or its effect on the economy.
Make no mistake. Certain elements of our society have been hoping and wishing for a recession going on two + years now. I am naturally suspicious of, during a time, where these companies are doing record profits, suddenly, we’re hearing about layoffs. It’s like they want a recession. Color me suspicious.
Layer8Problem
@hueyplong:
“If Joe strokes out Trump with mere taunting . . . ”
Oooo, how I’d like that. The gobsmacked reactions alone: “How could a doddering, senile, helpless weaking [Ed.: He isn’t.] best our strong manly businessman-leader, the Greatest Dealmaker Who Ever Dealt?”
Yarrow
@rikyrah: The companies are big mad because they can’t control the employees like they can when there’s higher unemployment.
Speaking of the infrastructure and all the good things Biden was able to get done early on, he could do that because the Democrats had the House and Senate. It highlights the importance of voting downballot. If you’re talking to a young person who may not understand this concept and blah blahs on about “can’t vote for Biden” because he hasn’t done whatever their issue is, remind them that he could do more if Dems had the House now. They have to vote for Democrats all the way down the ballot. Every time.
Citizen Alan
@Chris: I remember fred clark at slacktivist talking about beverly LaHaye, wife of left behind author tim LaHaye. Beverly believed very strongly that women scould stay home and take care of their men rather than going out and seeking high paying jobs. She believed this so strongly that she moved 2000 miles away from her husband and there to become the president of Concerned Women of America (or as Fred called it, Ladies Against Women), an anti feminist lobbying group in D.C., for which she received a six figure salary.
Scout211
IANAL, but Roberta Kaplan is making me smile.
ETA: fixed formatting
Nelle
@RevRick: Am I off in thinking that every egg, every sperm is a person who might be? Why am I mentally singing, “Every sperm is sacred”!?!
Suzanne
@RevRick: My ex-husband never finished his degree. He and I were not aligned in terms of our expectations around work. He thought that if the office closed at five, I was “clocking out” at five. I have seen so many women I work with whose husbands get pissed if they work “late”. It’s a huge cultural difference, and I easily believe that the women who go to college and want to succeed in a professional environment want to find a partner with similar goals so they are culturally aligned.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: I dated a guy who was an airman. He didn’t finish his degree, and he made comments about how I would have to quit my job and follow him if we got married.
I went to a formal work function with him once. Those dudes were the most toxic patriarchal assholes I have seen in a long time. When my cousin was in the Air Force, I hung out with him and some of his friends a few times. Definitely a lot of backward attitudes toward women.
JML
@Kay: agreed, as important as the trades are and they should be treated as a viable option for people to have a good life, they’re also not for everyone. For a long time, we pushed college as the best way and maybe the only way to get ahead in society, but the pendulum has swung back hard the other way and now college is being denigrated at every turn. It’s still a good idea for a lot of people, and there are a lot of important jobs and great career fields that you need that college degree. And frankly, college can and should be a transformative experience, not just a “go get a piece of paper to have a career” place.
There is room for both. Neither is intrinsically better, it’s what’s best for the individual. But we need to do better in helping people find the best path for them. Students who could and should go to college still don’t see it as viable for them. Students that aren’t ready, interested, or suited for it still go to college because they think they’re supposed to. People who might be truly happy and great in a trade have no idea how to get started there. People who don’t want to be in the trades get shoved in there because they think it’s the only choice.
Ugh!
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2: I think so. I also think that a lot of men who spend their time watching porn develop deep-seated insecurities about their own manliness because they mentally compare themselves to male sex workers who were selected for the job because of both general attractiveness and specifically dick size.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
No. I remember you doing some digging for that link. It was another piece. After your posting, I did more digging via the Internet Archive and still couldn’t find it.
Thanks for the follow up.
NotMax
@RevRick
Did someone say propinquity? (6:37 – 8:37 in the video.)
;)
satby
@Suzanne: which is why I wrote this:
I will grant you that a lot of people like that populate cities vs. rural areas, but sweeping generalizations usually sweep with too broad a brush.
OzarkHillbilly
@Yarrow: It’s a better world. Mind you, we still have a long ways to go.
UncleEbeneezer
@Soprano2: There are lots of men who are artists, musicians etc., who don’t have college degrees or, like me, have a degree, but it has nothing to do with their job and they don’t make tons of money. And yet they have no trouble finding women because they are liberal, Feminist (in spirit if not study), empathetic, and intellectually curious about the world. Most of the women I know are highly educated and end up with similar men because that’s who they are around but none of them are opposed to dating or marrying a working class man if he’s cool and have some combination of the aforementioned attributes that they care about. I know several women who are very well educated and work in the museum world. They married art installation managers, production workers in Hollywood, film location scouts, a UPS delivery manager etc. Their husbands are just cool guys who have shared values and don’t act like their relationships should revolve around the men.
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly: Also Marc Lepine – concordia? U in Montreal.
rikyrah
@Suzanne: and Mousebumples:
No lies told.
I know you (and Kay, and others) have talked about this before, but a lot of the anti-woman/anti-abortion talk is geared at keeping women barefoot and pregnant, stuck in relationships with men who can’t be bothered to be equal partners.
Ok, back with my thought.
You both are absolutely correct.
Abortion
Birth control
Attack on Affirmative Action (the largest beneficiary group of Affirmative Action are White Women)
Attack on no-fault divorce
All connected. All connected to , as Suzanne has pointed out, removing women from the public sphere and back into the home, under some man’s control.
The endless questioning now, of the worthiness of a college degree, now that women and non-Whites are proliferating in college.
The bullshyt about whether college degrees should even be listed as a requirement for a job. These were only put in, because they saw it as a barrier to be places when Blacks began applying for jobs. But, now that non-Whites are meeting these objective basic requirements for jobs, they want to switch back to the old subjective ways. Back to the days of all you had to be was White and male to get the job. Note, I didn’t say White and Educated. Just White.
As for men, never in all these articles whining about the loneliness of men, do I see the suggestion that men go about the process of self-improvement so that they make themselves a more appealing partner prospect.
There’s a TikTok where a man says:
Most men believe that they are competing with the top 10% of Male Earners for women.
They are actually competing with THE PEACE that a single woman has in their home. And, she’s evaluating if it’s worth being with you, if it interrupts THEIR PEACE.
Truer words were never spoken.
Women can get their own educations. Careers. Homes. Businesses.
They can craft their lives. Pay for their lives.
These men who ‘wax nostalgic’ for the marriages that their grandparents had.
Never once do they acknowledge that Grandma was there BECAUSE SHE HAD NO CHOICE. There were limits to her getting an education. Let alone a career. That Grandma couldn’t get a credit card, loan for a house or car by herself, let alone for a business – UNTIL THE 1970’S. Birth control didn’t come until the 1960’s. Women literally needed men to actually exist.
Now a woman can provide for herself. She can function, economically, on her own. When she’s looking for a man, she’s looking for something deeper than a man who can pay a bill. She’s looking for that emotional support. She doesn’t want to be married single parent. She doesn’t want the responsibility for a house, if she’s supposed to have a partner. Why do all the domestic labor inside of a house, if you have a partner.
Yes, men are coming up against the life that a woman has shaped for herself. And, whether she’s interested in having it disrupted.
There’s been a video on TikTok going around of this man, he is 70, talking about he’s ‘ ready to settle down’. The roasting that this man is getting is glorious. Women are like, ‘ no, I’m not signing up to be a hospice wife’. He wants a nurse, not a partner. There’s nothing that he could bring to the table. The near universal pursing of the lips from women has been glorious to see.
I go back and forth with Peanut all the time, about her shaping her life. I told her straight up that I want her to focus on building herself. I want her to see the world. I want her to get an education, and get out there and find what interests her. Marriage and children will always be there. The more you invest in yourself, the higher the standard will be for the partner you’ll accept in your life. I want that for all of these young women.
Young men are going to have to step up. Nobody wants to tell them that. They are NOT going to have the setup that their grandfathers had. And, the sooner they come to realize and accept it, we can move to a new phase for them. And stop these bullshyt articles about young men and their ‘loneliness.’
Kay
@JML:
Theres some hypocrisy with the anti college conservative fad too
Im in a book club with GOP women and they denigrate college yet every single one of their kids attended one
Theyre talking about other people’s kids not needing college, which I say to them.
From an employers view, college (or any credential) is a kind of shortcut. We know some things about you because you got the credential. It saves time. We can’t actually get to know all of you prior to hiring – we need a proxy for what you are supposed to know.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: “To someone with privilege, equality looks a lot like oppression “
it WAS easy and now the playing field is slowly leveling.
NotMax
@NotMax
Make that 6:37 – 8:17. Older eyes betray again.
RevRick
@OzarkHillbilly: Do women have higher standards now? I see little evidence of that. What I do see is that political affiliation has soared as a sorting factor, with Democrats (mostly women) refusing to date Republicans (mostly men). In the past, that was far less of an issue.
rikyrah
@oldgold:
BWA HA HA AH AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA
OzarkHillbilly
@Suzanne:
We are largely in agreement here. I grew up with a strong mother and 3 strong sisters so my views have a pro women lean. I’m just tired of the WATB men who are constantly whining about how unfair it all is.
catclub
Oh really? I suspect there are many HR offices that have not heard that and expect a college degree for all their applicants. Finance, insurance, engineering, advertising, consulting, accounting, healthcare above entry level….
Trivia Man
@Scout211: If they hand it to him now – his rallies lose their URGENCY and hes forced to engage with dark brandon 1:1.
He LIKES shooting fish in a barrel and he wants to keep playing against the Washington Generals as long as he can.
satby
Kind of my point about expectations being different. Not only “want to buy” but redefined as necessities that you can’t live without.
jonas
@Princess: Ugh. A lot of younger voters apparently view things like this:
Um, no. It’s Biden or Trump and Trump will simply let Palestine be eradicated. But as I’ve observed before, I really think some people believe it’s more fun to be a “resistance fighter” living under Trump than a citizen living with a flawed Democratic administration.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Yeah, the only sad thing about the economic recovery of the Biden years is that the government is only now getting to a point that it should been at as soon as the 2008 recession hit.
RevRick
@NotMax: I loved Zelda.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: When Ron D got a participation trophy in Iowa i was greatly amused
Kay
@JML:
I know exactly what was covered in law school. I don’t know what you learned in your (theoretical) bespoke legal apprenticeship and I don’t really have a year to pay you and figure it out.
the credential tells me something I need to know. Passing the bar exam tells me something I need to know.
I think the anti credential crowd will figure this out – employers can’t evaluate your life experiences in any rational or consistent or efficient way. We need shortcuts.
OzarkHillbilly
Some do, some don’t. To the extent that they do, I say good on them.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Privileged people don’t want to share their privilege that’s the bottom line. When it was the 100th year when women got the right to vote. I had to do an invocation for the Woman’s Club that I am member of. I thought of reading a poem by a suffragist to mark the occasion and guess what? I couldn’t find anyone in the short time I had to prepare (an afternoon) who aslo had not written racists screeds. These ww of over 100 years ago were mad that savage black men (their words not mine) had gotten the right to vote before their genteel selves.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: My brother never finished his degree despite two runs at it. His wife has a degree in social work and works for a nonprofit women’s shelter and advocacy organization. She frequently works long and irregular hours. As a result, my brother cooked a lot of meals, did a lot of laundry, and shuttled his kids to dance and music lessons, sports practices and games, and everything else. He didn’t regard any of this as an imposition. It was family stuff that needed to be done and he was available to do it. He is very proud of the statewide professional reputation that wife has and is inordinately proud of his kids. I figured that, as long we are doing anecdotal stuff, I would jump in.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl from Maryland: I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was 14, and I *totally* identified with Elizabeth Bennett, because I saw in her parents’ marriage an eerie, if hilarious, parallel to the dynamic in my parents’ marriage – as well as their relationship to Yours Truly (Daddy’s Pet, Mom’s Despair).
The older I get, tho, the more sympathy I find in myself for Mrs Bennett – and for Jane, whose insistence on kindness and trying to find the best in everyone is so *unlike* my own personality!
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: some of it is just reorientation towards AI, also some of it is just regular business without context. Eg, they just announced about 1000 layoffs At Amazon… Sounds bad, Rt- but Amazon employs over 1 million ppl so it’s just a divisional reorg, not even 1 percent. And the layoffed professionals at Intel will find jobs at other Chip companies. The media provides one stat but not the other to make everything look worse….
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Agreed, it is a myth that education confers some cloak of magnanimity to the recepient. I have met many credentialed cretins with PhDs
ETA: Weren’t most of the 9/11 bombers educated and credentialed? Modi’s superfans have degrees from IITs and IIMs(both are notoriously hard to get into).
Mousebumples
@Suzanne: I dated a guy who did maybe 1 year of college and was insecure that I made more than him. (lol, I have a Doctorate/am a pharmacist) We ended up breaking up because he wanted to “take care of me” and couldn’t wrap him brain around how he could do that if I made 3-4x what he did. (hint – there are non monetary ways to take care of someone)
Mr. Mouse has a college degree, raised by a single mom (kinda, 2 ex husbands, and 1 great current husband), and while he makes less than I do, he’s a great partner in parenthood, marriage, and life.
I can’t speak for other women, but that’s all I ever wanted. But the patriarchy is hard for men to get past, sometimes.
Miss Bianca
@Ken: You quoted Julius Caesar! Love that play!
Mousebumples
@rikyrah: I love hearing you talk about your conservations with Peanut. My daughter is 4,and I’m navigating when to start those discussions, on deeper levels. Lots of girl power books to read, too.
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s awesome. Sounds like a great partnership.
Speaking of anecdotal accounts, my (MD) sister works, and her husband (previously a teacher) is a SAHD with their 2 kids (both under 5). It works for them. That’s what matters.
catclub
@Layer8Problem: I now have little idea of what actually happened.
One version says that Trump wanted it, there was big pushback – with even people like us calling him a coward who had to be protected from a girl, and THEN Trump said never mind.
the other version would be some Trump sycophant proposed it without Trump asking for it.
who knows? now.
NotMax
@RevRick
Yuppers. Zelda was a legend.
;)
schrodingers_cat
I had to mute Chris Murphy when he started going on and on about it.
Miss Bianca
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?: I would call that It Factor you are talking about, “cultural capital”.
Ken
In non-Trump news about assholes in court, D’Ambrosio vs. Meta Platforms Inc. has been dismissed. That was the bogus class-action lawsuit by the guy who was angry because he got bad reviews on a Facebook group where women share stories about men they’ve dated.
Mike E
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I found this piece that addresses the topic
satby
And plaintiff are asking $24 million in the E.Jean Carroll trial. Good for them.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Seriously? Those spoiled women who were imprisoned and force fed when they went on hunger strikes? Those women?
are you familiar with force feeding? They jam a tube down your throat and into your stomach. “Genteel” Christ.
catclub
CNN:
And I say, Well of course they do.
This seems like a non-news happening. It never mentions the Five Eyes cooperative, in which the US does not gather data on US persons… instead they get it from UK or Australia, and similarly the UK gets it info on UK persons from the NSA.
I was actually surprised that they say the Biden admin will be issuing orders to limit the NSA on this.
But maybe those orders are coming, … any day now.
Trivia Man
@Soprano2: My high school ex married a welder. When he was working – MY WIFE MUST NOT WORK, THAT IS A MAN’S ROLE. Snd made her quit her job.
Ehen he got laid off, frequently in that profession in 1980s michigan, she immediately git her waitress hob back. Over and over.
Alison Rose
@Dorothy A. Winsor: wtffffffff
Chris
@catclub:
I mean, you’re both right. College is absolutely being denigrated in society as a whole, as the view that it’s worthless because it’s a den of Woke Marxist Indoctrination takes hold with more and more people, and that has real consequences for colleges, especially in red states where governments are actively hostile to them. At the same time, college is absolutely still treated as an ironclad necessity for any number of career paths, especially in white collar work, perhaps not all of which actually require a university education.
This would hardly be the first time that society left people stuck between contradictory and irreconcilable attitudes.
Miss Bianca
@UncleEbeneezer: Yep. A number of women of my acquaintance (including me!) who have advanced degrees are/were perfectly happy with their working-class, non-college-degree’d, artist/musician/boho boyfriends and husbands. As a theater person and musician myself, I saw this as normal.
But yes – the It Factor (that’s the second time I’ve used that phrase today!) was the creativity and intellectual curiosity that these guys brought to the table – as well as appreciation for their female partners’ smarts and ambition.
ETA: Oh, and sense of humor. Never forget that part of the equation! All these guys could make you laugh.
oldgold
@eorden
Robbie Kaplan tells the jury it will take “an unusual high punitive damages award to have any hope of stopping Donald Trump.”
Trump just walked back into the courtroom. Proceedings haven’t started. Habba’s closing is up next.
Ken
Interesting interview with Penn Jillette, who among other things has renounced libertarianism, intends to vote Democratic, and has some observations of Donald Trump.
Though for the last, he’s careful to note the “Goldwater Rule” which says that even professional psychiatrists should not evaluate people without face-to-face interviews — however…
(And the interview is on cracked.com, of all places — lately it’s degenerated into 90% reposts of reddit and twitter threads.)
Kay
I didn’t anticipate the “suffragettes were spoiled and privileged” on a liberal blog but maybe I should have.
Were they “Karen’s”? They had their children taken away.
thats enough BJ for me today
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@jonas: From what I’ve heard, the folks you’re talking about want a one-state solution: Palestine.
Don’t get me started on the conversations that I’ve had…
topclimber
@Omnes Omnibus: A guy doesn’t have to attend college to figure out that many women will accept a less-educated partner if ONLY he would pick up his share of the housework. Those with educational peers as husbands could agree.
Also, one can be intellectually curious about his own interests and actually read up on things without entering a college classroom. Maybe even fill in the wife on stuff she missed on her way to the (hopefully) profitable work-oriented degree. Do I have to tell you how many lawyers, for instance, don’t know squat about anything else.
Oh, and if blue collar hubby just happens to be the live-in carpenter, plumber and/or general DIY guy, maybe many women don’t care if he is not so hot on literary analysis.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@jonas:
More like more “morally upright”.
Fun is immoral. You must sacrifice for the cause.
Old School
I hear the Duluth side of the Blatnik Bridge is OK, but when you cross the bridge, it’s Superior.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@NotMax: Missing link?
TBone
@Miss Bianca: Ava Duvernay’s new film gets at this in a round about way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(film)
I’d say that a lot of the misogyny discussion in this thread points to the rise of neofascism, but I am peculiar in my focus.
NotMax
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
See what you did there, you rascal.
:)
TBone
@Ken: my parents took us to see the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society show in a small Philly venue before they were famous. Loved those guys ever since!
http://www.geniimagazine.com/wiki/index.php/Asparagus_Valley_Cultural_Society
NotMax
@TBone
Peculiar is the berries,
rikyrah
There are SO many books for girls now that didn’t exist when I was little or when Peanut was small. The universe of those types of books has grown a great deal in just the last decade.
TBone
@NotMax: is that the Peculiar Purple Pie Man? Or Alice in Wonderland? Dobie? No coffee, am sluggish, maybe it’s a compliment in your own words. I’m going with compliment 😜
rikyrah
@catclub:
They are buying the data. So, why do they need warrants?
By purchasing it, that’s the way to get around the warrants, right?
TBone
@rikyrah: cha-ching. I thought this was an open secret for a long while now.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: “Grace for President” is a fantastic book for little girls.
Jeffro
NOTE: (and apologies if any other Virginia-based BJers have already noted this)
Virginia’s early voting period for the presidential primary HAS BEGUN!
Since Virginia doesn’t register voters by party, you can select either party’s ballot (but only one)
So…choose carefully! I did! =)
moonbat
I think the solution to all the frustrated men out there who cannot make themselves agreeable enough to find and keep a life partner is to legalize sex work in this country.
Problem solved!
But of course that would bring the morality police out of the woodwork. The horror! Why pay a woman (or man) for sex when it’s so much easier to rape her, get her pregnant, and then force her to marry you/have your children?
TBone
@Kay: God damnit I will miss you.
AM in NC
@Soprano2: My good friend who is a psychologist whose practice focuses on young women, says this is a HUGE problem. The ubiquity of extreme porn has young men (and a lot of young women) thinking “choking someone out” and anal sex are just regular sex akin to the missionary position. The mothers of college-aged daughters I talk with tell me the same thing.
I was telling my sister this at our beach trip last summer ,and she said, “no way” and turned to ask her daughter (who is in college) about this. My niece said, “oh yeah mom. None of my friends expect to climax during sex because our pleasure is not what sex is about anymore”. The hook-up culture on campus is real and is all about male desire and dominance, not female pleasure/desire. Sex has been redefined (once again) as male pleasure acting out on female bodies. We have definitely gone backwards in this area since the 1980s when I was in college. It’s horrible out there for young women, apparently.
Ken
Tease.
I see your strategic point, though. We definitely don’t want to see Dean Phillips* winning a state because too many Democrats crossed over to vote for Haley, unless of course Haley winning gives Trump an aneurysm.
* Assuming Phillips is on the Virginia ballot — I understand his campaign missed filing deadlines in several states.
TBone
@AM in NC: anecdotally, the frat parties I attended (and promptly exited) were WAY worse than any biker parties where I stayed all night unmolested.
Harrison Wesley
I probably shouldn’t have clicked on The Guardian website, and was rewarded with the news that House Speaker Johnson is telling his fellows that the Senate’s Ukraine-border bill is likely DOA (quelle surprise!)….but not to worry! They’re not do-nothings! They’re revving up the engine to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary! Take that, libtards!
Chris
@moonbat:
The problem with legalizing sex work is that it isn’t going to solve any of the self-image issues the incels have. If they have sex with prostitutes, they’re still going to be ridiculed, most of all in their own mind, as inadequate and not real men because they can only get sex by paying for it. On the darker side of things, since legalized (or any kind of remotely decent) sex work is going to come with protections for the workers, it also isn’t going to satisfy the people who really want to abuse women and for whom it’s all about the power dynamic.
This isn’t to say that sex work shouldn’t be legalized. It totally should. It just isn’t going to solve the incel problem.
rikyrah
@TBone:
Those were literal nightmares. Though, we didn’t have to worry about roofies when I was in college. But, I was usually the Sober Sister in the group. If someone was ridiculous, I fought with them to get them out of there and home.
rikyrah
I vote in every election. Don’t always do research on judicial candidates. We have a Supreme Court opening for this election. So, gotta do some research. No doubt about who I’ll choose in the General : The Democrat.
Kay
@TBone:
Oh, I’ll be back. I vut out when we start discussing how feminists are responsible for all inequity in America. Excuse me – “radical” or “white” feminists. Append that on and you can bash women all day long.
Feminists suck! Am I right? Karens. Spoiled bitches wanted the VOTE.
Matt Gaetz now uses the “Karen” insult for all liberal women. The Right fucking figured it out. We’ll see if the centrist Left ever figures it out. I have my doubts.
rikyrah
No lie told
Kenny BooYah!![]()
(@KwikWarren) posted at 6:47 AM on Fri, Jan 26, 2024:
Every time black ppl made or threatened big advancement toward equality Amerikkka pushed back hard. Answered slavery’s end w/lynchings&Jim Crow; Civil Rights Era w/Southern Strategy&white flight; Obama w/Tea Party, voter suppression&MAGA. And prospect of Prez Kamala Harris w/this
(https://x.com/KwikWarren/status/1750863119159636433?t=qMX4Rhw-6X1L7rkdv37f1Q&s=03)
moonbat
@Chris: True. A certain percentage of incels have deeper psychological issues that legal, available sex will not solve, but it might be enough of social pressure valve release (for want of a better term) to keep their sexual frustrations from turning into government policy.
Jeffro
@Ken: I have no idea who’s on the Virginia Democratic ballot ;)
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Scout211: Oh, now my confusion clears up. I hadn’t picked up that there were two people named Kaplan involved in the case, the judge and the plaintiff’s counsel. Got me highly confused when reading the tweets.
Wapiti
@rikyrah: If the companies are selling their data willingly, the government isn’t seizing it.
Now, there’s a question as to whether the companies should be selling the data about their customers, but selling data is in their business plan.
Ascap_scab
In Boebert debate, six of nine admit to being arrested!
https://apnews.com/article/lauren-boebert-republican-primary-debate-colorado-797e7cb38ed4b18af194ed7c2c4673b9
gvg
@Yarrow: They start by choosing STEM because they are told thats great, but if they don’t have the desire and ability, they change their major. At least at the big school I am at, they have over a 100 choices of major and plenty aren’t STEM.
A problem with choosing a major is most kids don’t know that much about any field except maybe their parents and teachers. The first couple of years are normally full of fumbling. Its normal. Do not assume what they tell you when they leave for college is really where they end up. Colleges are used to this. We are very experienced, and set up to handle it.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Ascap_scab: how many have been on the Group W bench?
Another Scott
@Chris: My mom, in the early 1980s as a professor’s secretary at the U of Chicago Business School, was newly organized by the Teamsters.
It’s been a long, long process. I’m glad to see the acceleration now.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
The womens rights movement grew out of the abolition movement. The split developed because the 14th and 15th amendments were limited to “men” excluding both white and black women from the vote.
The National Park Service does a really nice job with the complex history, somehow managing not to bash feminists while recounting that there was a counter movement to secure black male voting rights first, with women being put off indefinitely.
AM in NC
@TBone: Oh yeah, the frats have always been rape-y cesspools, with rare exceptions. A lot of sports teams too. The general sense of entitlement definitely extends to entitlement over female bodies.
But these days, young men and women are generally learning about sex from online porn, much of which (the majority of which) is super-degrading to women. Human spit-sinks.
Splitting Image
@Miss Bianca:
I wish I’d read Pride and Prejudice when I was 14, or at least younger than I was when I did read it.
Jane Austen’s books have aged very well over the last 200 years, but P&P is remarkable in terms of how many current issues are touched on inside it. The main villain is a groomer who goes after 15-year old girls and is aided by the family of each girl hushing up the situation to avoid a scandal rather than warning everybody and saving the next girl down the line.
Then there is the fact that two different guys in the book are left scratching their heads at the idea that a woman could or would say “No” to them. And the book contrasts how one guy tries to do better and the other gets sulky and resentful.
A lot of meat in there for a book many people think of as a fairly light-hearted romance.
Harrison Wesley
@rikyrah: Damn. Looks like one Civil War wasn’t enough.
wjca
Actually, if you read the article and think about it, this is good news. It means that one of the candidates in the Republican primary thinks he can damage his (Republican, note) opponent significantly by tying him to that view. The more Republican politicians who believe that that view is a loser, the better.
Mousebumples
I need to get some art for her room along the lines of… Though she may be little, she is fierce.
Though she’s super tall like mama, lol. August birthday, among the youngest in her 4K class, and I think the same height (ish) as the tallest kids. 😅
@Suzanne: thanks for the rec! Added to our library reading list.
topclimber
@moonbat: Perhaps some would redefine trophy wife to include trophy call girl. The could just ask for receipts they could show their buds so they would be impressed. “Wow, a $1,000 hooker. Good thing you are dealing drugs on the side!”
Is there a stigma to paying for it if you can pay a lot? Not when Trump pays a porn start $10K.
TBone
@rikyrah: *fist bump*🤛
zhena gogolia
@hueyplong: I love this comment and heartily agree with it.
Soprano2
@Kay: My mother was one of those women. She thought most women were stupid because they voted for Democrats.
Splitting Image
@hueyplong:
That is a cruel and absolutely horrible thing to day. Come sit by me.
TBone
@Kay: I had to ditch a bitch IRL recently over this bullshit. Glad you’re not leaving the chat. Pardon my French.
Scuffletuffle
@gene108: Someone needs to ask how many cats he’s spayed when they are in the early stages of pregnancy…it’s a thing…
Baud
@Jeffro:
“Virginia Dems flock to GOP, raising concerns about Biden’s chances in once-blue state” /NYT
Soprano2
@Suzanne: And yet we still constantly hear from conservatives how today’s kids are must less smart and accomplished than they were at that age. *rolleyes*….
TBone
@AM in NC: yes but porn proliferated long before the internet. It’s always been accessible (as a young’un, I found plenty discarded mags in the woods).
wjca
Just for reference, young people, at least young men, were incredibly anxious in the late 1960s, too. Part of the big anti-war movement was philosophical. But another big part was guys who just didn’t want to get shot at half way around the world.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: Haha, I was hoping it was that Zelda!
TBone
@Kay: as evidenced by the fact that we still don’t have the E.R.A.
topclimber
@Kay: Yet the history is that many white suffragists, some of whom supported black voting rights after the Civil War, later walked away from equality.
In an alternate reality where Jim Crow did not so quickly make a mockery of the 15th amendment, perhaps the early alliance between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass (as exemplars of such a partnership) would have persisted. In our time line, it did not. “You ain’t got the votes.”
Black disenfranchisement also killed the interracial alliance pushed by populists like Tom Watson.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I understand intellectually why some women dislike women – biased structures they come up in, etc. but I’m not very good at translating that into understanding them as people.
zhena gogolia
@Splitting Image: Good analysis!
Miss Bianca
@TBone: Oh, that sounds interesting – I will have to check that out!
Kay
@topclimber:
Feminists weren’t responsible for black male disenfranchisement – especially because they couldn’t vote.
I think it’s easier to blame women – less risky than actually pointing out who was in power at that time. They had no power – they eventually succeeded thru sheer tenacity.
Kay
@topclimber:
Feminists weren’t responsible for black male disenfranchisement – especially because they couldn’t vote.
I think it’s easier to blame women – less risky than actually pointing out who was in power at that time. They had no power – they eventually succeeded thru sheer tenacity.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Mike E:
That’s not it exactly but probably a more finished version of what she’d first posted on Pandagon.
Thanks for the link, I’ll save it for future reference.
tjmn
@Mr. Bemused Senior: An Alice’s Restaurant reference! Balloon Juice jackals are the best!
Miss Bianca
@Splitting Image: No lie told. Part of why it’s always been my Once and Future Favorite Novel. :)
Suzanne
@wjca: Diagnosed mental illnesses appear to be increasing. It is difficult to track, since our understanding of mental illness is cultural and diagnosis was poor (and is still not good). But there definitely appears to be a rise. Suicide became one of the top-ten causes of death in the US approximately a decade ago.
TBone
@topclimber: isn’t that part of her point?
Splitting Image
@wjca:
In the ’10s and the ’40s too, for the same reason.
It doesn’t get talked about enough, but one of the basic reasons the feminist movement developed when it did was that national governments realized during the two World Wars that an effective modern military depended on moving women into industrial jobs to replace the men who were conscripted into service. The U.S. military actively recruited women on the grounds that every woman who took on an administrative post in the military freed up a man for infantry.
After two rounds of this, there were two generations of women with experience working in factories and in business administration, many of whom wanted to continue doing so. You couldn’t simply say “Ha ha, no! A woman’s place is in the home” when everyone knew it was an utter lie and the government would be drafting men to fight overseas – and needing women to replace them – the next time it was convenient.
Women in the workplace are here to stay, and have been for decades. When the powers that be keep hemming and hawing about how this is supposed to work, young people are bound to get anxious.
topclimber
@Kay: Women only had indirect power. Once they convinced enough husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, etc. to embrace their cause, they got direct power (i.e. the vote).
But no power? Then why did Douglass want anything to do with feminists?
topclimber
@TBone: It might be. Please elucidate.
TBone
@topclimber: we had a lot in common. Chattel.
Now Ima butt out and watch Barbie.
Kay
@topclimber:
I assume he believed in equality.
topclimber
@Kay: Unlike a lot of white suffragists, sad to say.
wjca
I think that this is a case of educational priorities lagging the working world. When us Baby Boomers were in school, there was a much bigger demand than supply of STEM graduates. In part because STEM majors were distinctly lower status ones. As a result, there was a big push to encourage STEM. Which continues to this day.** And, like any long-running fad, it has gone too far.
EDT And up pops a rotating tag: “Why go just far enough, when too far is right there.” Timing is everything.
** Quite possibly because the folks now making education policy were raised on it.
dr. luba
@Suzanne: Margaret Atwood, via Courtney Barnett.
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them.
Women are afraid that men will kill them.
Another Scott
@Scout211: @satby:
Laffy is/was live tooting it.
Receipts are good and important. With cameras everywhere now he can’t pretend he didn’t say these things (and many, many others) any more.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@topclimber:
I just notice feminists are the most progressive in all these various scenarios yet they’re judged most harshly.
Not the most progressive ever or perfectly progressive but the most of the available choices.
interesting. huh? How that works?
The Right has noticed. They now mimic this.
prostratedragon
@Ken: Thanks🙂! Was Caesar a dickus headus who maybe overplayed his hand?
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Another Scott: So they’re using his hyper inflated self valuation of his assets to decide how much to award in damages? I need to lay in a larger supply of popcorn.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I thought participation was a good thing and worth recognizing. Only a sociopath thinks that you don’t matter unless you’re the top performer.
Kay
@topclimber:
well. A political alliance, right?
it was a trick anyway – shoving feminists into 2nd place didn’t benefit either black men (who got a false and unenforceable right) or feminists (who were told to wait)
The only group it benefited were white men and anti feminists.
AM in NC
@TBone: Oh, no, the magazines and even movies back then are NOTHING like the porn now on the internet. And kids are soaking in it. I mean it is really a different thing entirely.
Chris
@wjca:
“You should study STEM” is in the same place right now that “you should go to college” was in the nineties. Instead of saying that a properly functioning society needs some college/STEM graduates and that, yes, if you’re interested in that sort of thing, you should totally go for it, it’s sold as some sort of universal career plan and solution to poverty, The Thing that people do if they’re Smart.
What actually ended up happening was a massive oversaturation of college degrees to the point that they’re increasingly becoming the new high school degrees. Which is probably where we’re heading with STEM too, if we’re not there already. (I don’t know, I’m not in a STEM field).
rikyrah
Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) posted at 9:17 PM on Thu, Jan 25, 2024:
It’s a remarkable spectacle for people to see just how completely unhinged it’s making Trump to have Haley refusing to end her campaign.
(https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1750719700605014260?t=BMjvFiPsh1Bdt-Wa2F1csg&s=03)
TBone
@AM in NC: I’m glad I don’t have a reference for comparison. Your point is well taken. I had an argument about former FLOTITS with a woman about this once. Once.
Kay
@rikyrah:
There was almost a 30 point gap between Trump and Haley among single white men
I don’t think a Republican woman can win. I would have said “maybe” before Haley.
Soprano2
I think they’ve been pretty open about rooting for a recession, and why they’re doing that. They’re pretty upset that we didn’t have one last year. I’ve noticed I don’t see the “I did that” Biden stickers on the gas pumps anymore.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
I want Peanut to get paid. I want her to be able to have the skills where she can take herself pretty much anywhere, and get paid.
She , so far, has resisted the suggestions for anything in the medical field.
Soprano2
@Citizen Alan: Susan Faludi interviewed several women like this, I think LaHaye was one of them. She said that they all thought of themselves as “honorary men”, and that they could handle a high-powered career because they were different, but the average woman wasn’t able to handle it. Talk about rationalization….
Soprano2
@Suzanne: My husband didn’t finish his degree either, but he had been a captain in the Army and was a successful business owner before I met him. He told me he was happy to be supported by a higher-earning woman if it came about, and it wouldn’t bother him at all. Now I support us and he never cared about it. I think he’s probably a rarity among men of his age (76).
topclimber
@Kay: If you are telling me there was an equal chance that votes for women and those for blacks would pass in 1865, then you are right. But I don’t think so. There was far more sympathy for the latter following a war that evoked “all men are created equal”, particularly given that many black men served in the Union Army.
ETA: 15th passed in 1869, ratified in 1870.
TBone
@Kay: https://digbysblog.net/2024/01/26/trump-owns-the-gop-establishment/
RevRick
@Mousebumples: Patriarchy is hard for women to give up, too, though that’s often unacknowledged. I find the whole “men need to step up” equation problematic.
Again, I’d like to cite family systems theory, but also a psychologist who was big in the 50s, but has been mostly forgotten: Harry Stack Sullivan. Family systems tells us that our natural tendency is to replicate our family of origin with all of its dysfunction. It’s why children of alcoholics seem to find each other. They share a familiar system, which they know how to manage. It’s the “I want to marry a gal who married dear old dad” syndrome.
Sullivan developed what he called the Interpersonal Theory of Psychology, in which he said that adult intimate relationships are built on three pillars: 1) the lust dynamism; 2) intimacy, meaning the sharing of self; and 3). security operations. He noted that the size of each component varies greatly from one relationship to another, and the long term goal is to increase 2 while shrinking 3.
What are security operations? Expectations about the attractiveness, financial stability, sense of self, intelligence, behaviors of partners. Women who go for bad boys are broadcasting that a huge security operation for them is showing that they can either tame/fix him or they need to be punished.
So what is meant by men needing to step up? Take more responsibility for household duties? Get in therapy to deal with their issues ( since women do that a lot more)? We all want to do our parents’ marriage, only better. (Ha!)
Men often sense a huge double bind here, when they pick up the vibe from women “I want a man just like dad and so not like dad.” It’s often hidden and unconscious. Moreover, all men have to deal with the elephant of masculinity, which makes such things as going to therapy a shattering experience. The fact is that they only go when they’re shattered.
And what happens when men go to therapy? They get whiny, snappish and defensive ( or they will if the therapy is working). Aren’t those really attractive traits in a guy?
If we expect men to step up, then women have to too — especially about their participation in keeping men bound in masculinity.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: I wish I could like this comment a thousand times. Everything you say is the truth.
Another Scott
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I don’t know if there’s enough popcorn available??
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@wjca: I’ve heard it said that educational practice usually lags about 30 years behind educational theory – so what we’re seeing being taught in schools and accepted as common knowledge currently was cutting edge in…*checks notes*…the mid-90s.
Yeah, with regard to the STEM rage, I’d say that tracks.
Kay
@TBone:
We just have to beat him one more time and we can beat Trumpism
This “movement” won’t survive two national losses. Even our shitty political media won’t be able to deny we beat him twice
TBone
@Kay: I found this comment recently somewhere:
“Delegitimizing the guy who delegitimized the 2020 election would delegitimize the 2024 election!” But beat him WE SHALL.
satby
@Kay: That is not what that discussion was about. And you don’t have a © on the term feminist. I’m impressed you want to revisit a discussion where you showed your entire ass though.
wjca
I sometimes have trouble relating to these discussions because of my personal/family history.
My mom worked her way thru college — in the 1930s. By her mid-20s she was a middle manager at AT&T — in fact, she was on course to be their first ever female VP. And her parents had concluded that she wouldn’t ever marry. Then she met my dad.
Dad was also college educated. (Despite having, apparently spent his youth focused on baseball. Including several years in the Cubs farm system.) When they met he was a captain in the Army Air Force.
After the war, college education and management experience notwithstanding, Dad became a carpenter. Because thet was what he liked doing. Mom, once he had finished his apprenticeship, resigned to become a farm wife and mother because that was something she wanted to do. Both could have had one of those high flying careers, but they had other priorities.
Their’s was about as equal a partnership as I have ever seen. Their children’s marriages have been, too. Helps to have a positive pattern to follow. (But it does make it hard to relate to all the folks from seriously dysfunctional families.)
TBone
@satby: wtf
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s rough for some present-day liberals because it is true that a lot of the suffragettes were also flaming racists who were extremely resentful that black men got the vote way before they did. They went through horrific things to get the vote. I knew a woman who had Alice Paul’s desk, I always wondered what happened to it when she died. I personally wouldn’t allow them being racists to keep me from enjoying the other things they wrote, but I know others may feel differently.
TBone
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rG6b8gjMEkw
TBone
“If I was meant to be controlled I would have come with a remote.”
satby
@TBone: So much to choose from:
https://balloon-juice.com/2024/01/19/injustice-anywhere/#comments
Kay
@satby:
We disagree. I think you and the rest of the women who joined in to shit on feminists showed your asses.
I don’t change my views on equality depending on which group it’s currently fashionable to shit on. I don’t care what you think of me. I’ll happily remain uncool and myself, thanks. I don’t need a clique.
Kay
@satby:
you don’t have to call forth an imaginary army who also dislike and disagree with me. You can just speak for yourself, like I did.
I know you disagree with me. I’m fine with it.
RevRick
@wjca: Healthy people tend to be repelled by dysfunctional ones; healthy people scare the shit out of dysfunctional ones. Which why the healthy get into relationships with the healthy and the dysfunctional with the dysfunctional.
Brachiator
@oldgold:
Catching up with various morning threads.
This just about made my day.
Kay
@Soprano2:
shitting on one group to bring up another never works
labor unions call it “slice and dice” – it always benefits the opposition of both groups
Soprano2
@gvg: Almost everyone I knew in college, including me, made some kind of change to their major.
Soprano2
@TBone: True, but being on the internet in video form makes it a lot more intense. It’s not just looking at pictures, it’s actually watching sex acts. People used to have to go to dirty movie theaters to do that.
Soprano2
@Kay: It never made sense to me either, but that’s how she was. Not always, just later in life.
Gravenstone
@gene108: Not really a thing. If you don’t want a bull, you castrate the male calf and raise it for beef as a “steer”.
Paul in KY
@RevRick: Probably glad for women in general that these ‘incel’ types choose bitter loneliness.
cain
@Princess:
To engage with that young kid – ask them what the real goal is vs Gaza. Does punishing Biden by withholding their vote – what will that lead to – if the GOP does. The GOP in charge help the Gaza people? Ask them to apply some critical thinking – if they think it is more important to punish Dems for Gaza then they aren’t really thinking about helping Gaza’ians. They are more interested in flexing their generational power which they will absolutely lose if the GOP gets in charge. The nightmare that follows – it will not be pretty.
Paul in KY
@Kay: Completing college shows you can stick with a goal.
cain
@Kay: The two women managers I had were way more blunt – but they also pushed me harder than any of my male managers.
Paul in KY
@jonas: All those idiots you mentioned that yearn for the ‘noble resistance’ route all (I’m sure) have good solid jobs and are most probably lily white They just don’t care about all the other people who will be pogromed by TFG and his lackeys.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus: I can tell you are very proud of your brother. That’s a great attitude – not many have that.
Paul in KY
@Ken: Thank you for that link. Mr. Gillette is a real mensch (now that he’s post-Libertarian).
Paul in KY
@Kay: Alot of them (for women in 1895) were ‘privileged’ (compared to the poor female devils slaving in the shirtwaist sweatshops & other dirt poor women). No getting around that. Now, being ‘privileged’ gave them the time to do constructive and history changing stuff. Also, they were, in the main, women of their time and had alot of the same ignorant prejudices common among whites of the late 19th century.
Paul in KY
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: That ain’t gonna happen. If there’s only 1 state, it will be Israel.
Paul in KY
@AM in NC: Yegads! If true, that’s terrible for the young women. They need to demur when that shit gets started.
Paul in KY
@Chris: Those types of Incels you mentioned should jump off a bridge. That would solve their problems and ours too.
Paul in KY
@prostratedragon: He was certainly flippant about his personal security. Had even been warned (indirectly) about the plot.
Paul in KY
@wjca: Did either of them come from wealth?
Chris
@Paul in KY:
I mean, if incels did all of the things they “should” do, we’d all be better off, but what can you do.
H-Bob
@Suzanne: Actually, China has the same problem, with a huge surplus (~30 million) of marriageable age men. It would be useful to see what is happening there.
wenchacha
@Kay: I got to spend six weeks with my 8-9 month old grandson in 2021. Whoo! It was indeed, a lot of work. I loved almost every minute of it. Get lots of rest when you can! 🙂
Paul in KY
@Chris: Very true statement, Chris. I keep wishing…