Womanspace, Nature Journal, and the huge blowout.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

On another note, I just told off a butthurt male in a facebook thread who was harrassing a female scientist friend of mine expressing her displeasure at this shitty story. I basically told him to shut up and listen, let her talk about what's bothering her instead of treating her offense as, well, "hysterical" in the classical sense that word was used to refer to women getting upset about their mistreatment.

I am sick and tired of "but look, men are treated badly too!" As far as I can tell, men weren't treated as a whole as second class citizens barely higher than slaves for most of human history.

Yeah, that's a line I have no patience for. It's also a sort of strawman variation on the Dawkins Fallacy... I'm sure there's already a term for it; the implicit argument that being AGAINST the oppression of one sex or race means you are FOR the oppression of another. "Why are women complaining when men have it bad too?" is a variation, and also my (un)favorite variation, which goes something like "That joke wasn't just making fun of blacks and Jews, it made fun of the white guy too" or in this case "but the author was poking fun at himself too because the male characters were also portrayed as being boring, bumbling, and incompetent".

Except they weren't. They were still portrayed as being the "smart" ones, in a world where women were unwittingly conferred their only advantage through an unexplained fluke of nature which they weren't even capable of recognizing. It's actually incredibly analogous to the argument that women are conferred a natural advantage simply due to having vaginas and being desired by men, so therefore men HAVE to keep them down in order to retain any bargaining power. It doesn't actually make any rational sense, in any way, but it's appalling how many men I have heard argue that men oppress and control women because they feel powerless against the face of their natural sexual desirability.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Yeah- its the sort of shit when people are like "what about white peoples rights"

chill out bubba were already more equal than others. Making everyone equal equal doesnt make us less equal.

The privileged-whoever they may be in  a particular situation- always have to find a way to bitch about their alleged problems. It would be funny if so many people didnt buy into that. If theyre in a fucking trailer its not because some black people have houses. And anyway its their own fault for having that trailer right? Arent they always saying that occupiers should get jobs? Until its time for them to get jobs in then its all about the mexicans and affirmative action again.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah- its the sort of shit when people are like "what about white peoples rights"

chill out bubba were already more equal than others. Making everyone equal equal doesnt make us less equal.

The privileged-whoever they may be in  a particular situation- always have to find a way to bitch about their alleged problems. It would be funny if so many people didnt buy into that. If theyre in a fucking trailer its not because some black people have houses. And anyway its their own fault for having that trailer right? Arent they always saying that occupiers should get jobs? Until its time for them to get jobs in then its all about the mexicans and affirmative action again.

DRIVES ME FUCKING CRAZY.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Its your fault youre not rich nigel.

Its also somehow your fault that im not rich.

Yep. Bakes a lot of sense.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Its your fault youre not rich nigel.

Its also somehow your fault that im not rich.

Yep. Bakes a lot of sense.

Damn women minorities, dragging everyone down.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Its because of taxes benefits and maternity leave. And needing to breastfeed wherever you go. If it wasnt for that glass ceiling youd all take over and then youd make us all slaves.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Its because of taxes benefits and maternity leave. And needing to breastfeed wherever you go. If it wasnt for that glass ceiling youd all take over and then youd make us all slaves.

[Kai]

Its because of taxes benefits and maternity leave. And needing to breastfeed wherever you go. If it wasnt for that glass ceiling youd all take over and then youd make us all slaves.

If you recall, that was the warning at the end of the story. "and now they're out for better versions of us"

Which is basically, watch out, if you don't keep them down they'll take over.

[Kai]

On another note, I just told off a butthurt male in a facebook thread who was harrassing a female scientist friend of mine expressing her displeasure at this shitty story. I basically told him to shut up and listen, let her talk about what's bothering her instead of treating her offense as, well, "hysterical" in the classical sense that word was used to refer to women getting upset about their mistreatment.

I am sick and tired of "but look, men are treated badly too!" As far as I can tell, men weren't treated as a whole as second class citizens barely higher than slaves for most of human history.

Yeah, that's a line I have no patience for. It's also a sort of strawman variation on the Dawkins Fallacy... I'm sure there's already a term for it; the implicit argument that being AGAINST the oppression of one sex or race means you are FOR the oppression of another. "Why are women complaining when men have it bad too?" is a variation, and also my (un)favorite variation, which goes something like "That joke wasn't just making fun of blacks and Jews, it made fun of the white guy too" or in this case "but the author was poking fun at himself too because the male characters were also portrayed as being boring, bumbling, and incompetent".

Except they weren't. They were still portrayed as being the "smart" ones, in a world where women were unwittingly conferred their only advantage through an unexplained fluke of nature which they weren't even capable of recognizing. It's actually incredibly analogous to the argument that women are conferred a natural advantage simply due to having vaginas and being desired by men, so therefore men HAVE to keep them down in order to retain any bargaining power. It doesn't actually make any rational sense, in any way, but it's appalling how many men I have heard argue that men oppress and control women because they feel powerless against the face of their natural sexual desirability.

An easy way to tell if any joke is sexist is to replace "women" with "jews". If it's not funny with jews, it's not funny with women either. One of those letters mentions how Nature wouldn't have published a story about jews or blacks, because apparently while it's no longer socially acceptable to treat those groups like shit, it's completely acceptable to treat women that way.

If Nature did (which they never will, since Henry Gee is Jewish) publish a story like the above except about jews, there would have been a public outcry and the credibility of the journal would have been forever destroyed. It would have been literally finished. Rightly so, of course. The same should have happened with this, would have happened if complaints by women were not ignored, demeaned, disregarded, pushed aside, laughed at, and played a variation of the Dawkins Fallacy.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Its because of taxes benefits and maternity leave. And needing to breastfeed wherever you go. If it wasnt for that glass ceiling youd all take over and then youd make us all slaves.

If you recall, that was the warning at the end of the story. "and now they're out for better versions of us"

Which is basically, watch out, if you don't keep them down they'll take over.

Not just better... better-looking. Because of course, lacking depth, it's not like women actually form profound emotional connections with the men we love that go far beyond appearance.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I dont know if i were married to him i might be inclined to trade him in for a better model

[Cain]

Hahaha, it was all a sociological experiment, and you're doing exactly what the editor wanted!

[Triple Zero]

On another note, I just told off a butthurt male in a facebook thread who was harrassing a female scientist friend of mine expressing her displeasure at this shitty story. I basically told him to shut up and listen, let her talk about what's bothering her instead of treating her offense as, well, "hysterical" in the classical sense that word was used to refer to women getting upset about their mistreatment.

I am sick and tired of "but look, men are treated badly too!" As far as I can tell, men weren't treated as a whole as second class citizens barely higher than slaves for most of human history.

I do believe that even without the historic angle, the story is offensive wrong and misogynistic.

Because IMO technically an individual cannot really be held responsible for history they weren't part of, so from that perspective alone the story would be at most ignorant and insensitive, and make the man who wrote it an asshole for defending it.

I think it's important in order to get through to such people--where possible, which is among the younger population that may just be starting to form their opinions and ideas on matters like these--the argument is best made in terms of why this sort of thing is wrong right here and now, on its own (lack of) merits. And from there, if needed, it can be likened to "this is just like it's always been in history (etc)", which is true, but if you start out with that, the immediate screeching knee-jerk response is going to be "well yeah but I'm not like those guys in history, it's not my intention to repress anyone, it's just a funny story see?" (and if you don't consider it funny it's just a matter of taste)

I'm just saying because I remember from long long ago that a younger me wasn't entirely able to "see" what is wrong with this reasoning. (Not that I made it myself btw)

Its because of taxes benefits and maternity leave. And needing to breastfeed wherever you go. If it wasnt for that glass ceiling youd all take over and then youd make us all slaves.

If you recall, that was the warning at the end of the story. "and now they're out for better versions of us"

Which is basically, watch out, if you don't keep them down they'll take over.

And still, if done right, the idea could have made a pretty awesome story.

Except you'd need to wrap it up somehow. The fact is, in reality, women are not able to reach into extradimensional spaces. But in the story this is the case, and the only reason for this being so is "the author is male and really doesn't know any better, hey it *could* be right?" which is about as stupid and offensive as white people writing scary stories about Native American curses and possibly horror stories about Eastern European hostels :-P

Anyway, women having access to extra-dimensional spaces, is a concept not happening in our universe. So either you formulate a sort of alternate universe, which you can indicate by hinting at a few other things that might be *ever* so slightly different than in ours, because even women were unaware, some things would have been different. In fact, as soon as the men in the story discovered what was going on, I really was expecting them to be kidnapped by the Illuminatrix or whatever.

Another possibility is that this all is happening in the dreams of a really misogynistic man. Which is sort of the case, except the man is the author. Which can be resolved either in a "ghost of christmas" style waking up and realizing the errors of his ways, or in a creepy horror Lovecraft style where he never wakes up from his nightmare, or in a cold and brutal and bleak, he wakes up and continues to treat women like shit the dream having strengthened his phobia for women to paranoid levels.

Finally, and this just shows the author's complete lack of imagination, how can you write about women having access to pull objects from extra-dimensional spaces and NOT draw some sort of parallel with the womb?? I mean come on, symbolism!

[Kai]

Hahaha, it was all a sociological experiment, and you're doing exactly what the editor wanted!

Which makes it even more important that Nature receives shit for this. Henry Gee apparently has a history of screeching at women.

[BabylonHoruv]

Another neat idea would be women from another dimension reaching into ours.  Even if they were just doing it to shop it could lead to all sorts of interesting results.