Anti-harassment policies

It seems that quite a few conferences are now adopting some really draconian anti-harassment policies in an effort to appease the pretty, pretty princesses who say they won't show up if there is even the slightest chance that the proletariat males might even glance in their direction, much less dare to even say "hello".

This is such bullshit, I'm seriously considering boycotting the conferences that adopt this sort of policy.  Or maybe I should start a counter-movement requiring the women attendees to dress in such a way as to not sexually harass me.  That bright red lipstick is signalling sexual availability and that low cut top is being worn to show off the merchandise, right?

I'm really sick and tired of the hared and loathing that so may women show towards average guys like me.  I get that you want me dead, but you would be in a world of hurt without all the guys like me who are still propping up this society.  Get it, cupcake?  Probably not, women live in their own psychodrama that has only partial correspondence with the real world.

Death and Destruction

I came across an interesting post (the usual link to a link sort of thing) talking about white males and our lack of consciousness about being members of the group labelled "white males".  He makes some very good points and I want to follow up on what he said.  Historically, white males as a group have shown a terrifying ability to deliver death and destruction in wholesale quantities.  I'm not talking just about violence or killing, I'm talking about the scale that white males have been able to achieve.  Lots of examples in the post I linked to and lots more throughout history.  I had never thought of it that way until I read the post. 

It's really quite terrifying.  One of the next steps could be to glass over significant parts of the globe.  I really don't want to see that happen, I grew up during the Cold War.

What can people do?  Simple, quit beating up on white males for being white males, that's already starting to make us conscious of belonging to that group.  If we give up our egalitarian beliefs and start deliberately favoring others of our group, bad things could happen again.  And I'm talking about truly horrendous things that I don't want to ever see happen again.

I suppose this does sound racist, except that modern beliefs say people can't be racist against whites.  As a culture we've managed to create a bunch of victims based solely on various group memberships, please don't get whites thinking that they are victims, the backlash could be very bad.

Personally, I work very hard at being a pacifist, so I'm not one of the folks to worry about.  It's the others who are willing to use violence and wanting to use violence I worry about.  I would like to figure out a way to reduce the tensions I see building, but as long as folks, particularly liberals, keep poking white males with metaphorical sharp sticks, I don't think it's going to get any better.

Predictions

I just finished watching "Armitage III" on Hulu. The original release was in 1995, but quite a bit of it is quite topical even today.  Without getting into spoilers, it takes place on Mars, has robots as sexbots (but not explicitly graphical) and has a strong anti-feminist tone.  There's a lot more including the evolution of Artificial Intelligence.

Artistically, the style is not my favorite, but the quality of the animation is very high considering when it was done.  I was very surprised when I went back to see when it was created and found out it was that old.  The subtitles take quite a bit of liberty with the dialog, I don't speak Japanese and even I caught a number of places where "that's not quite what was said".

If you like science fiction and don't have a dislike of anime, I recommend this 4 episode series.

GLBT thoughts

As should be evident from my writings, I'm not exactly a political liberal.  In fact, I find liberals are usually too narrow minded, which is an accusation thrown at a lot of conservatives.  Instead, I try to look at the facts and make up my own mind.  Still, a lot of liberal thoughts and events do pass through the information streams I tend to follow.  Even though I often disagree with the conclusions drawn, I think it is important to not only know what is going on, but to understand how people came to those conclusions.

Currently the media and a large number of liberals find it chic to beat on people like me, straight white males.  I hear it on the radio, I see it in the papers, I hear it from the pulpit and I get it in person with some of the social groups I participate in.  It has gotten to be more than tedious.  But, I also have to realize that I live in a town that really doesn't make a big deal out of people's gender preferences or orientations.  My favorite realtor is a lesbian, one of the instructors I take classes from is gay, so what?  I've been over to their houses for various social events and felt quite welcome.  I've shared a hotel room with a transgendered woman.  I know a number of other transgendered folks, it's not a big deal to me.  I treat people as people, sexual interests are only a small part of interpersonal relationships to me.

So I'm beginning to get what some people mean when they talk about straight white males being privileged, it's true that there are very few groups that have a deep and abiding hatred of people like me, it's more of an ongoing dislike that pervades society, but very few people actively want to see me dead.  On the other hand, there are no organizations who are interested in my continued well being or lending any sort of support when I'm going through a rough spot.  This is a huge contrast to the large number of organizations who are dedicated to helping the GLBT and other groups.  There really are folks out there who want to see GLBT folks dead and others who want to help them live.  This is in contrast to folks like me, where there aren't many folks who want to see me dead, there also isn't anyone who cares if I continue to live, even my church was only interested in my money, not me as a person.  My world is one that not only doesn't care whether I live or die, it's one where no one would notice if I died for many months.

So, while it's easy to feel pity for "those folks over there" or to believe the ongoing narrative that you are being discriminated against because you belong to some group or another, don't let it blind you to those around you who, as individuals, sometimes need help and support.

Ummm, What???

 There's a new video going around that I'm told is supposed to be feminist.

http://youtu.be/4v9gXTkf_tY


I'm guessing the producer of this is deeply convinced that everyone who watches this video will find it intuitively obvious that the claims are false instead of actually doing research and seeing how many are true.

Or maybe I'm taking this at face value and there is something much deeper going on, I'm not very Machiavellian.

Visit to a local church

This past Sunday I visited a local Unitarian-Universalist church that I haven't been to for a couple of years.  Back then they were between permanent ministers, now they have had a new minister since August.  She's seems nice enough, but I suspect she is a raving feminist.  There was a guest in the pulpit this last Sunday, so I didn't get a feel for her sermons.  However, the service had some of the usual feminist touches, including substituting "She" for "He" when referring to God.

I think the one thing that annoyed me the most was the children's storytime (a common feature in UU churches).  The protagonist was a little girl (no surprise there) who repeatedly followed her urges in spite of being warned about the dangers who then gets off by being cute.  This is a really bad lesson to be promoting.  Choices have consequences, and the education in moral and ethical behaviour is one of the reason many parents take their children to church.  Telling little girls that they can get away with their misbehaviour is doing them (and the rest of society) a great disservice.

I find the Unitarian-Universalists churches to be interesting.  While they to be open and accepting of diversity, most of the time it's only a very narrow kind of diversity.  Not being politically liberal seems to be one of the kinds of diversity that they won't accept, even though the Universalists tended to be of a rather conservative bent.

I'm glad I went and I will drop back in from time to time, but it's obvious they don't want someone like me, except maybe for the money.

Those poor deluded fools

One of the professional organizations I'm a member of is currently having a rather drawn out discussion about coming up with a harassment policy for conferences and shows.  And, while they may try to sound egalitarian about how it applies to everyone, it's really about those "poor oppressed women" in who are being driven away from computing and other IT related careers by the hordes of obnoxious sexist males they encounter.  There is also a strong undertone that sexism, harassment and oppression have gotten a lot worse over the past few years.  Yeah, right.  The reality is that women are trapped into continuing to play the victim card by the liberal narrative that many geeks and nerds follow, since women aren't allowed to actually stand up for themselves.

So, how did this come about?  Well, geeks and nerds are typically not very socially adept, I know because I am one, so they tend to believe the stated rules of behaviour in our modern society.  Which, of course, are total bullshit.  Add to that the removal of social restrictions on female hypergamy even over the past decade or so, and fewer women than ever are willing to spend time around those sorts of "losers", when there's some hot bad boys they can be chasing after.  This leads to women making more and more excuses for their behaviour, and the geek brigade takes their words at face value, instead of seeing the truth.  And, as the demands from the women get shriller and shriller, the foolish nerds become even more obsequious.

It took me decades to get rid of the misconceptions I was raised with about gender relations, mostly because things weren't all that bad thirty years ago.  With the way things are going today, I wonder how long it will take for the younger generation to wise up.  I know that I am trying to move the process along, with a few small successes, but that by trying to understand both sides of the issues I have placed myself in no-man's-land and folks at either extreme are going to be taking shots at me.