Senate Misogyny, Entitlement, and Pop Culture

That's appreciated. It's strange to feel embarrassed about admitting you're a Christian, not because you're ashamed at all of what you believe, but because you're ashamed of what other people that use the same name happen to believe. It's all the caveats that kill you: "I'm a Christian. Oh, but, I believe in gay rights and climate change and I'm not a Republican and I don't support Israel by default and I don't think women should be oppressed and I accept evolution and I etc. etc."

EDIT: Mata2010 Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yeah, same here and I know what you mean. Maybe their hearts were in the right place with those massive praying hands, but that's just tacky, right?

 

Do you still live in Tulsa? I totally agree with you man. I feel the exact same way.

 

I do still live in the area. I've made my peace with Tulsa. It has the praying hands and all that. But it's also got Cain's Ballroom, the Philbrook and the Circle Cinema. you take the bad with the good. Though I am getting weary of all these garish casinos popping up all over. And I'm Native American.

 

I still live here. Yeah, it has its pros and cons. Every city does. I've found the places to avoid the religious creeps and know where the real people hang. I fell in love with the latin community here and that's why there's a latin man in my avatar. Love going salsa dancing at Hibiscus on Brookside. Good to meet a fellow Tulsan on JCC.

 

Rogue1-and-a-half -- I'm a Jew and I support Israel by default, but it doesn't mean you have to support everything Israel does by default, which is what a lot of American Jewry and the Israeli government seems to think.

However, when it goes too far in the other direction -- whereby people are then saying Israel is the worst state actor in the entire Middle East -- well, that's when we hit Looney Toons.

 

I went to a high school that was extremely conservative along with being extremely Catholic. God it was awful.

 

I understand that. I'm just talking about this stream of thought in a lot of modern Christianity that the secular nation of Israel is somehow the same as the spiritual nation of Israel talked about in the Bible and that somehow that means that all Christians are supposed to say that Israel is right no matter what they do. It's just weird to me; God's "chosen people," from the Christian perspective, are no longer the nation of Israel - God's "chosen people" is the church. It's a weird perspective some Christians/neocons have. I mean, clearly Israel has come in for more than its share of unfair licks over the years; it's also been responsible for a lot of unfair licks being handed out too. I think we probably agree that, as with any nation-state, nuance is required.

 

Bumping to ask you all to think about how we as a people should deal with how virginity is treated in the US. There's a definite problem and it's not just me *****ing about not getting laid. The pressure on somebody
to be pure and innocent when virginity itself is a social construct.

 

Re: the Roger Elliott thing. According to him, his step-mom (father's second wife) repeatedly threw his virginity AND social awkwardness into his face, comparing him to his younger brother.

 

I was under the impression that male virgin shaming was part of the whole patriarchy/masculism/rape culture that feminism criticizes?

 

It is.

 

I grew up in the purity culture. Did the whole purity ring bull**** when I was in my teens. It's psychologically traumatizing. You base your whole worth on whether you've had sex or not. And you know next nothing about sex including what rape is, when a guy is acting "rapey", how to recognize it, and say no/punch his face in/ etc. So it isn't uncommon for girls who grew up in that culture to be later sexually abused/raped/etc.
Yeah, it's a problem. But I don't know how it can be dealt with. I know it's going to take a lot of time, maybe 50-100 years before virginity is not given the pedestal it's historically been given. I know quite a few women like me that grew up under this type of pressure and many of us are very outspoken about it's atrocities. However, most of the religious right think we're the "fallen" ones and still worship the virgin woman. They don't care at all. They think any sexual abuse/rape is our fault because we shouldn't have left the fold...

 

^ Well, I think one important thing to remember when discussing this is that the importance of virginity for men and women is 100% cultural and socially based. I think it'd work wonders if we stopped making a big deal about being a virgin in general because it really should only be as significant as the individual wants it to be. That would mean lessening films portraying a woman's virginity as her virtue. It also means fewer depictions of male, older virgins as awkward losers all the time.

It's not perfect, I'll grant you, but the fewer reinforcements of those stereotypes and clichés would help some who are suffering to not feel as bombarded.

 

We got one damn great, hilarious movie out of it. And maybe a couple of funny bits in random other movies. But I think we've heard the last word on it as far as great art is concerned, so we should go ahead and just do away with the stereotype.

 

The Last American Virgin?

 

Follow up from the author of the "Your Princess is in Another Castle" article.

 

Noble sentiments, but he should've steered clear of the silly Mighty Whitey angle. I particularly love how he held up District 9 as supporting his point when it contains arguably a more repulsive example of the patriarchy he's proselytising against: Wikus's girlfriend is a full-grown woman who's still under her father's influence and control. Her basic role in the film is to be the improbably hot trophy wife the nerd has somehow managed to score, stand on the sidelines, do nothing while her father tries to kill her boyfriend, and find the protagonist repulsive as he succumbs to alien DNA. Hell, the final images of the movie -- the converted and grotesque Wikus shaping metal flowers to leave at his girlfriend's doorstep -- have really nasty implications along these lines if you accept the premise/theme that Wikus is now "one of the aliens".

And Daenerys? Well, particularly as the TV series is hinting at as time goes on, she's not really changing into anything different after going through the fire so much as becoming that which she always was. If anything the arc of her character is that she's becoming more like Viserys, more like a maniac Targaryen, every day.

 

http://midnightresistance.co.uk/articles/plight-grown-ass-gamer

 

I saw a post on reddit about the supposed conflict of interest. I read the title and thought "Game reviewers aren't ethical. What a surprise." But it turns out to be sexism? What a surprise.

 

I too was shocked. I mean, you hear the stories about it but not being special I don't play Call of Duty on XBox Live so I actually haven't seen it first hand. But I'd read literally thousands of examples of it and to find out it still happens?

Yeah. Um.

 

Sexism reinforced through a kind of hyper-paranoid lens, mind you. The commitment to the narrative of censorship and conspiracy is so strong in this latest outburst that they accused 4chan moderators of collaboration when threads got deleted.

 

This is my favourite documentary evidence as to why console shooters are like bright lights to the dumbest human beings ever.

http://www.notinthekitchenanymore.com/

 

I enjoy a good mustard rice shtick as much as the next guy, Ender, but you're kidding yourself if you think this grotesque behavior is a strictly "console gamer" thing.