[0603] Puff
└ posted on Thursday, 31 July 2014, by Novil
- Husband: What’s up, honey? You’re looking worried.
- Dorothy Cambridge: Oh, it’s nothing. I just had a talk with the mother of one of my male students.
- Dorothy Cambridge: She made some bizarre threats, but that’s about it.
- Husband: Don’t let the haters get you down!
- Dorothy Cambridge: Now I’m in the right mood to finish my blog post about how gender equality can only be achieved by castrating all boys and drilling a hole into them.
- Husband: Go ahead!
- Dorothy Cambridge: Hmm, where’s my laptop?
- Husband: Honey, shall I make you a sandwich?
![[0603] Puff](/comics/2014-07-31-0603-puff.png "[0603] Puff")
Duck slippers.@ Fred:
Anyone else think that the “puff” needs to be in the transcription?
@ GenericGuestName:
what you do in that situation is take the paper to the head of the english department.
@ Rakeesh:
Maybe it would be better to measure actual results than numeric representation by sex. And where I live, I would consider an advocacy group that managed to install thousands of mandatory jobs that can only be elected actively and passively by women, managed to establish quota regulations that led to women being represented in nearly every political party to a significantly higher percentage than the percentage of members in the respective parties, managed to delay shared child custody after a divorce for more than a decade, despite reprimands from the European Court of Justice and managed to get billions of € in funds that benefit exclusively women, scarily effective.
As for the media: Just look at the positive and negative reporting about the mentioned womenagainstfeminism, and tell me again how terribly unfair massmedia is to feminists.
Rakeesh wrote:
We started off talking about the relative prevalence of extremists among two groups; now all the sudden you’re talking about the relative political power wielded by those two groups. I’m not up on my logical fallacies, but I’m fairly certain that’s what’s called a “Moving Goalpost” (though I could be wrong). Political authority is seldom proportional to the population along any demographic line and it has absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. Well, unless you were trying to turn it into some BS “punching up / punching down” argument, which I already addressed on page 2.
As to my ‘anecdotal experience’… First of all; media and the internet both run the gamut from facts to pure fabrication, so I think real life experience interacting with actual people carries some weight. But even if we go with the assumption that the internet provides a clear window into the world, I’m still seeing just as many “all men should be castrated” feminists as I’m seeing “God hates ***s” Christians.
And now that I think about it, I’m not even sure why I’m arguing about commonality. What has that got to do with anything? The world’s largest ethnic group is Han Chinese; does that make it automatically acceptable to mock Han Chinese? You’ve still presented no solid argument as to why it is acceptable to mock the hate-filled crazies from one group and not the hate-filled crazies from another group.
@ preadatordetector:
Aaaaawwww chill dude. We all get stressed. This is what I looked at once when I was pissed, after that I felt like a new Master! A Switch Master that is.
AVGN meditation video. Sorry I don’t wanna hotlink or anything so no link. Just type that in youtube.
Your Welcome. 🙂
Also I’m not trying to advertise anything just though I could share it.
@ Otaking:
I’m sorry, but can you point to a single MRA (someone that’s actually a part of the Men’s Rights Movement) that argues, overtly or covertly, that men should have more rights than women? Please, direct me to one.
@ NotASpy:
That exist??????? WTF??????
@ NotASpy:
I thought MRA stranded for… Oh wait that’s NRA my bad. Still who would have thought that existed? It’s kinda like dirt spesifically made for dogs to dig in. Kinda worthless.
I consider myself a feminist, but like any other idea, feminism’s ideas can be taken to an idiotic extreme. This storyline shows one way to do it. Unfortunately there are probably an infinite number of idiotic extremes. :/
Anon wrote:
They don’t get that that would end reproduction and be the last generation of the human race. And the just go on saying ‘viva la extinction’.
I think one of the big problems with Feminism is that it has a bit of an identity crisis. There are just so many wildly different “types” of Feminism (first wave vs. second wave vs. third wave, sex-positive vs. sex-negative, difference vs. equality, equity vs. gender, etc., etc.), all of which claim the term “Feminism” for themselves, and at least most of which seem to treat criticism of any form of Feminism as criticism of their branch specifically (and, consequently, using a whole lot of “No True Scotsman/Feminist” fallacies whenever its pointed out that the object of criticism really does exist).
It seems to me that it results in a lot of feminists developing an almost tribal disposition, where they just automatically defend anyone who is labeled a feminist, whether they are deserving of it or not, with the result being that, in comparison to extremists of other groups, feminist extremists are much less likely to be criticized by non-extremists and are more likely to be defended by moderates.
Another consequence is the type of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” mindsets that are so frequently observed: for example, “If you’re not a feminist, you must be one of those fedora-wearing neck-beard MRAs,” among other examples that have been getting bandied about in these very comments.
@ NotASpy:
The much more common MRA argument is that women already do have equal rights-both in practice and in the law-to men.
When one considers this is provably ridiculous, one could say it is an indirect argument that men ought to have more rights than women.
@ Jabberwock:
In fact we started talking not about the proportions within the groups, but how common they are at all. You were the one who brought up your own experience with regards to that, so if you don’t wish to talk about it perhaps you shouldn’t have brought it up.
You have suggested and outright stated that militant radical feminists are some significant proportion of feminists in general. Others have suggested that they wield significant power in this country, to the point where Cambridge’s portrayal was not an absurd caricature but a much more literal portrayal as of the Zero Tolerance Principal. I was using the reality of actual power in this country to demonstrate how absurd that is. I stand by that claim, by the way-conservative Christians such as Landon’s mother are *much* more powerful in this country than militant radical feminists such as Cambridge, and more common as well.
As for acceptable mockery, as I’ve already pointed out Landon’s mother was not mocked nearly to the extent that Cambridge is, nor was her portrayal nearly as hostile. This in spite of the fact that conservative Christians are quite a lot more common and quite a lot more powerful than militant radical feminists. Yes, the burn the witch stuff with her was absurdly over the top. That was…once. It can be argued that that was making light of her hysteria and paranoia. Had the stuff with Cambridge been reduced to a single point of absurdity like that, I would be perfectly willing to credit ‘it’s humor guys!’ responses as well.
It’s not. Even if we accept that that particular line was an offensively unfair mockery, it was the most extreme she got. I need two hands to count the number of absurdly over the top things Cambridge has done. This in spite of the fact of how rare militant radical feminists are, versus conservative reactionary Christians.
Woden wrote:
And this is exactly why these extremists cause such harm to the movement.
Rakeesh wrote:
This is not a challenge, but a legitimate question; because I’m willing to admit that you might be aware of something that I’m not: what laws and/or official government policies, on the books and enforced right now, discriminate against women? I’m not arguing about the ‘in practice’ portion of your statement; I want to know about the ‘in the law’ portion.
Rakeesh wrote:
My apologies. You actually have a more reasonable tack on this than most of the naysayers who’ve been posting here. The lines got blurred and I kinda lumped you in with them, which I shouldn’t have done. My bad.
@ Woden:
If you can point to a single example of ‘if you’re not a feminist, you’re an MRA’ in these comments, I would be impressed and embarrassed. Impressed because it serves as a small but useful support to your argument, and embarrassed because I missed it.
The phenomenon of extremists being defended by moderates, or much more commonly just not attacked or addressed-is simply put a fact of organized politics in almost any group that exists or has existed. Yes, it happens in feminism, of course. It also happens much more (I mean this in terms of numbers, not proportions) in Christianity and religion in general. Hell, it even happens on a personal level when you’re friends with someone who does something stupid, and you don’t chime in as much as you otherwise would because they’re your friend. A pretty fair across the board indicator as to whether or not one has a bias against someone is if they point the finger at how much someone else does or doesn’t criticize their own extremists.
This isn’t about whether militant radical feminists go without sufficient criticism from moderate feminists. Obviously they don’t. One could also argue that African-Americans don’t spend sufficient time criticizing ‘thug culture’. Which is why I think next we need to have the colt drinking thug lust after Sandy in the next arc, and then be kidnapped or assassinated or something because hey, this is a problem that actually happens, fair game!
@ Jabberwock:
My point was not that there is explicit discrimination against women in the law-quite the contrary. It was that the common MRA argument is that because there isn’t explicit discrimination in the law against women, problem solved.
Rakeesh wrote:
More common? I won’t deny that the argument exists (I’m sure there’s at least SOME fools who would argue such), but the ones I usually see are that there are misandric biases in some aspects of the law — and there demonstrably are, such as in divorce proceedings and domestic violence laws, as with the way the government turns a blind eye towards most male prison rapes.
Rakeesh wrote:
While he hasn’t quite done so yet in the comments on this strip (despite making a comment that could easily be construed as saying that there are only extremist feminists, moderate feminists, and “fedora-wearing MRAs”), Thor has made several comments to that effect over the course of this arc. Hell, most of the comments I can recall having seen from him have involved him insulting people by calling them fedora-wearers and implying that they are MRAs. This is not to say that he’s the only person who has been engaging in such ad-hominems or false dichotomies, just the one that springs to mind first.
“AND with the way”, not “AS with the way”. My bad.
She’s married to a male?!? What a hypocrite!
@ Woden:
Note the ‘much more common’, as in ‘this is more common than that’, not necessarily ‘this is common period’.
As for biases in laws, yes, there is. That’s that’s actually an authentic, legitimate thing that needs to be addressed. Not, though, with a simple elimination of these laws and case closed! But rather with a systemic reform of family law and the way we handle sexual assault period, yknow? These laws aren’t in place because of a cabal of gyn-ocrats who are keeping men down, they’re the result of a history of violence and discrimination that has been addressed in starts and stops and a hodgepodge.
As for Thor, bear in mind I was asking for an actual example-not a reference-and that it was for a specific thing, not ‘sounds like’ and ‘in the neighborhood of’ stuff. Because if we’re going to play *that* game, the game of being offended by what stuff sounds like but doesn’t quite say, I’m afraid I’m simply going to win hands down. Not really because your side of this particular aisle is so much nastier, only in this place more numerous.
@ Woden:
I’m trying to stay well out of this argument, since it’s more parallel to the content of the strip itself than directly related. Couple points bear mentioning, though, since they’re personal pet peeves of mine. One is the distinction between ‘de facto’ and ‘de jure’ discrimination. The decisions in divorce/domestic violence proceedings are a statistical fact, but not a legally enforced one. There are no laws mandating this or that verdict in those cases.
it falls out the way it does because they reflect a society’s preexisting biases, i.e., women as ‘the weaker sex.’ And there is no quick, legal solution to that. Only the long, slow process of altering gender norms through education and culture. Outside the lunatic fringe, that IS one of the end goals of feminism. A patriarchy is harmful to men, too!
Prison rape, by contrast, has nothing to do with feminism, pro or con. It’s a symptom of a deep sickness in the American justice system; a confluence of many factors including mandatory sentencing, the War on Drugs, and for-profit correctional facilities. And that’s just scratching the surface. I agree, prison rape is on the rise and it is horrible. Thing is, 99.9 % of feminists probably agree on that.
It’s become a disturbingly common punchline in popular culture large part because the populace lacks empathy towards prison inmates. “Even if they’re innocent of *that* crime, they probably did something else to deserve it;” “It’s *supposed* to be a punishment;” etc. We had prisons in the oh-so-tranquil 1960s too, and it wasn’t nearly as common then. And again, you see males as the target of that ‘humor’ more often because of societal bias: no endangerment of ‘female purity’ = it’s less serious, therefore comedic fodder.
Discussion of ‘rape culture’ and the like takes as a given that women are more *commonly* a target of sexual violence, NOT that they’re more *important.*
@ Rangpur:
Well put, Rangpur. Prison rape is…well, an extremely shameful reflection on American society as a whole is, truly, understating things. If this were a proverb, a foreign visitor to us would likely view us with frank contempt that we allow-even encourage-such things to go on, what with the whole ‘judge someone by how they treat the powerless’.
All of that said, though, it’s not a sign of a systematic lack of caring for men. It’s a sign of caring about easily won votes (tough on crime vs. soft on crime), and an apathy towards the welfare of those we have written off. Women are incarcerated too.
@ Rakeesh:
Yes, and I’ve mentioned that there were other ways to introduce Larisa’s Diabetes, without using the zero tolerance fail. And unless we see the previous biology teacher alive, well and ready to finish that sentence where I believe he was about to say “there are more incredibly stupid people who are male than female.” Please, do tell me how Dorothy’s kidnapping is in any way more justified than Ye Thuza’s.
Rangpur wrote:
Yeah, they’re guilty of being arrested.
Rangpur wrote:
Some feminists and not actually feminists who claim to be feminists like a certain model/”fashion” designer/reality TV “star”/”singer”/whiny annoying thing, do cling to the belief that “all rapists should be punished by the crime they committed, they should be bent over and raped.” Unfortunately, in practice, this would either be a reward to some rapists, who get to commit the crime they’re supposedly being punished for, or the person raping the rapists is a non rapist, who immediately becomes a rapist and must be punished, just like every other rapist, leading to every single human being with both an X Chromosome and a Y Chromosome, being both a rapist and rape victim. There are people who actually think this would be a good thing?
Rangpur wrote:
Sadly, I often laugh when I think or hear about men being raped, whereas a woman being raped is something I’d be horrified by. I hope I can learn not to care about the women, because I am just being sexist.
Well, either stop caring about the women who are attacked by horrible monsters, or stop laughing at the weak incapable men who can’t even stop themselves from being raped.
Oh my, I’m going to get thumbed down for suggesting that there’s a bias in favour of women.
@ Threadnaught:
Your response is only somewhat coherent. Put another way, I don’t quite follow a lot of what you’re saying.
Obviously the initial kidnapping isn’t justified. Which is sort of the point. Who on Earth said or suggested it was OK?
As for prison rape, the main reason it’s the subject of mockery isn’t because ‘ha ha no female purity is involved!’ It’s because it involves the emasculation of men, and we regard men who are emasculated (in this case, hint hint, subjected to an attack usually reserved for a woman) as pathetic, and human beings often take pleasure in mocking the pathetic.
Threadnaught
I… What? Did you somehow miss that I was framing all of that as a BAD thing? I read your post three times and it sounds like you agree with everything I was trying to say.
@ Greenwood Goat:
For all you know she could have just been writing about Candle Jack. I so dislike it when people jump to conclu
@ Lume:
No it’s Yuri in there.
She had her chance. She didn’t take it. May as well deal with the husband as well.
Akemi wrote:
Tenure is an interesting concept that like fire, can be used for good or ill. I don’t know if it exists in this particular school system IRL but we seem to have ‘comedic tenure’ anyway.
@ Rakeesh:
Since you clearly understood what I said, I don’t actually need to relpy to you, but I will clarify what you have just said anyway.
1: Larisa’s Diabetes. There wasn’t an essential need to introduce Larissa’s Diabetes using the zero tolerance fail. It is possible to introduce such a thing without going all political controversy. This isn’t a criticism of the way Larisa’s condition was introduced, or that particular arc, which I personally think was well done regardless of “what ifs”.
2: It’s more of a criticism to anyone who argues about how unreasonable Ye Thuza is being, without giving a thought to the other biology teacher.
3: And yet when the victim is female, I consider her attacker to be pathetic, yet find nothing funny about the attack. You’ll find the same story if you just ask around for about a minute.
@ Rangpur:
Yeah, of course it’s a bad thing.
In order to be found guilty of a crime, you merely need to be arrested and put on trial, then be found guilty by 12 people. Whether you’re responsible for the crime or not, as long as his happens, you’re guilty.
Being involved in a crime is also a crime, even if that involvement is being arrested, but being proven not guilty, you’re still involved with the crime. It’s a downward slope from there where the stricter the laws are enforced, the higher the percentage of the population should be arrested based on the law.
It effectively turns the whole “Even if they’re innocent of *that* crime, they probably did something else to deserve it;” point into a declaration of “yeah so what!? They’re innocent, but as long as it’s not me, it’s okay.”
The idea that all found guilty of rape (whether responsible for an attack or not), should be raped in return is not only on the same level of depravity to most rapists, it’s also completely unworkable and impossible to enforce. It’s ridiculous for anyone to suggest in a serious discussion.
You appear to dislike how sexual abuse seems to be acceptable and even entertaining as long as the victims are post puberty males.
I agree, it’s bad, but I’m also one of those sexists you mentioned.
We now know that ye thus a is a psychic and probably a magician…and this will be the last of Dorothy Cambridge…hopefully….
Rakeesh wrote:
While I am fairly certain that I have seen at least a few such comments while reading through this arc, I’m unable to find them by searching for keywords and don’t intend to re-read what is now well over a thousand comments. Therefore, I’ll retract the bit about “in these very comments”.
I don’t feel that it detracts much from the point I had been making though, as it is a very common practice that many people, myself included, have first-hand experience at the receiving end of. I’m a very liberal person, and a secular humanist who believes that everyone deserves equal rights, and I have personally received the “you must be an MRA” / “you’re just pretending to be an ally, you misogynist” / etc. lines on multiple occasions and at multiple websites for daring to raise valid points about methodology of studies (not even commenting on what should be done, mind you, just questioning specific points of methodology).
Rakeesh wrote:
And, again, while it might be more in raw numbers, it is much less as a percentage. For example, if you ask nearly any Christian about the Westboro Baptist Church, they will almost universally distance themselves from them and call the WBC wrong; the majority of Muslims will be vocally opposed to the Muslim terrorist groups and suicide bombers if the topic is broached; etc. On the other hand, if you ask random feminists about some of the extremists among rad-fems, it is much more rare to see them distancing themselves or giving strong condemnations.
Rangpur wrote:
I don’t see how that is relevant… much of the societal ills that Feminism seeks to address are also de facto issues, not de jure injustices. Furthermore, some of the issues I mentioned (such as domestic violence) do frequently have sexist policies, and thus are de jure issues.
Rangpur wrote:
And…? That was a discussion about MRAs, not anti-feminists. While the two are often conflated, they are not the same.
Rangpur wrote:
As others have noted throughout the comments on this story arc, this “females are the majority victims of rape” conclusion is only true if definitions of rape that explicitly exclude most male victims or female perpetrators are used. For example, if you define rape as “forced penetration without consent” or similar (as a number of the oft-cited studies have done) — or even worse, “forced vaginal penetration without consent”, as some studies have done –, then of course you’re going to get primarily women as victims, since you are excluding every case of forced envelopment from consideration. Studies that define rape in a more gender-neutral way normally find nearly equal rape numbers by victim gender.
Rakeesh wrote:
And yet the rape of female inmates is normally taken seriously by the authorities.
@ Jarin:
This is true, far more so than Glinda, who reaped all the benefits of Dorothy’s and the Wizard’s hard work.
@ Luke:
Maybe that’s what she was, for him. He’s gay, and needed a cover wife. Which is pretty backward of him, but who knows?
@ OmegaB:
Dorothy Cambridge, duh!
Woden wrote:
Yeah, why don’t you go back and read what I wrote instead of your impression of what you think I wrote. Just because you have construed what I have written in one way or the other doesn’t mean that it was easy.
But I will clarify this matter: MRAs are ludicrous, both in their precepts and their defense of those precepts. Their contention that men’s rights are under attack is no less obscenely farcical than the people who complain that there isn’t a White History Month or the people who insist that there is a War on Christmas in America.
@ Luke:
true love
@ Thor:
Eh. I wouldn’t take things that far. There *is* a ‘War on Christmas’ going on. There is a culture war. Mens’ Rights are under attack.
Those statements, while all true, can be lies or silly falsehoods depending on how they’re expressed. Which is often ‘men are losing!’ ‘Christians are victims!’ and ‘America is under attack!’. These are absurd. Christians remain an extremely dominant majority in this country-how many Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Wiccans, Shinto, atheists are in public office? Some rights of men are either under attack or not given the regard they should be, such as the rights of men not to be raped in prison, the right to redress in the case of a wrong accusation of rape, etc.
What this DOESN’T mean is that womyn are taking over the country. That feminists run our schools. That men can’t criticize feminists out of fear of public censure (I mean Jesus, look at this comments thread. Almost overwhelming support. Where’s the outrage that supposedly happens when someone criticizes a feminist, that keeps men living in fear?). That Christians are persecuted. That we’re in danger of becoming a Sharia society.
DIS ES SOOOOOOOOOOO FANNY DOE
Can we get finished with this crazy MRA strawman argument storyline? I want to get back to raccoons and grade-age kids having fun.
Very Strange arc.
In the 80ties, some people though that Gerd Brantenbergs Daughters of Egalia described what she wanted the world to be like and never realized the book was satirical.
They then thought that feminism was more or less what Dorothy here is saying. I always wondered how someone could not notice the satire.
But I’m confused about who is lost up the garden path of satire here.
@ Arent:
“normal” as in a middle aged guy wearing duck slippers? Not to mention he married to her, the Male hating psycho that wants to castrate and drill a hole in ever man in earth.
I don’t not know what to make of this man, he’s wearing fabulous duck slippers and yet he’s married to her.
@ Fex:
Well to tell ya the truth we can’t really call him a male with them duckie slippers on. Which brings up the question. Who’s the real man here?
@ cant think of a name:
Mangina!!!!!!! That’s what she wants to do!
@ Switch Master:
Hey riddle me this Switchy and all you other SW fans. What does she think about Shemales??????
So it really is “Mrs.” Cambridge. That surprised me.
Her husband appears to be fully subject to her every whim, though, so that makes sense.
@ Syrup:
Maybe the duck slippers are comfy.