Thunderf00t and feminism

[bigfield]

Turns out cats are already working on the problem.

All hail the rise of cat men, an antidote to toxic masculinity

 

[couch_sloth]

Turns out cats are already working on the problem.

All hail the rise of cat men, an antidote to toxic masculinity

Never underestimate cats!

 

[DrZoidberg]

Based on your description, it appears that the special-purpose secretary has been replaced by high-level languages, compilers and interpreters, and the program designer is now the modern programmer.

It's the other way around. The further back you go the harder it was. Debugging was a nightmare. So you'd better not fuck up on the first attempt. The computer secretaries were highly skilled. That's why they did that job. You had to be great at maths. Early programmers also had to be great at maths. Initially it was all maths. When you allocated memory out of bounds there was nothing to catch that error until it was being run. And when it crashed there was nothing to tell you why it crashed. There were no tools other than a slide rule and a keen eye. These early programmers were hard as nails. I've had the privilege to work with two old timer programmers from way back. They put everybody today to shame. Absolutely brilliant. Of the simple reason that if you weren't brilliant there was no way you could do the job. Programming today still is an intelligence test. No way can a stupid person survive as a programmer. But we're rapidly heading that way.

High level languages are popular because they're comparatively easy to anything the old timey ladies had to work with.

But points for proving my point. Even after I explained it you still walked into it with your sexist world view on. It's no shame in that. We all do. Because we've all been trained to gender stuff.

There is a greater degree of sexual dimorphism in humans than in other apes. In order for this to happen, hominids must have preferred mates who had more pronounced sexual traits. There is nothing to suggest that humans lost that preference, and similarly, there is no reason to think that humans ever reached a point where greater sexual dimorphism ceased to be preferable; sexual selection never "sorted itself out".

Then why hasn't the body adapted to those sexual preferential demands? That would be the logic of this? Why the fakery? Nobody wins by presenting ourselves as something we're not.

Humans are also competitive. Why let a more feminine woman, or a more masculine man, claim the most desirable mates when one can enhance one's own desirability through artificial means? You claim that 'nobody had to make an effort' but I suspect that Homo sapiens simply hadn't yet invented the means to cheat the mating system.

That's a valid point.

Even hunter gatherer tribes employed sex-specific clothing, makeup and ornament, which undermines your claim that hunter-gatherers had no need to exaggerate gender.

That's from studying hunter gathers from today. I'm talking about way back when we were still transitioning from ape to homo sapiens. There had to be a point when all this gendering fakery nonsense started. Chimpanzees don't do it.

By that same reasoning, Isaac Newton wasn't a physicist because he was just doing natural philosophy, and therefore the line between physics and philosophy is blurred.

Well... back then he was. We put these guys in boxes after the fact. But it's a big difference between physics, ie hard science. And stuff like psychology and sociology. It's still so new that we've yet to find a box for them. All the psychology blunders of the 40'ies, 50'ies and 60'ies I think should lead us to stop viewing it as a science. It's still in the realm of philosophy IMHO. The stuff in psychology that isn't we call neurology.

 

[bigfield]

Based on your description, it appears that the special-purpose secretary has been replaced by high-level languages, compilers and interpreters, and the program designer is now the modern programmer.

It's the other way around. The further back you go the harder it was.

I never said it was easier.

You described the following workflow:

A most a man would design the program, (on paper). That's the maths. But the computer programmer would take the calculations and turn them into code.

1. The mathematician writes a series of calculations that the computer needs to do.
2. The programmer turns that into code.

Nowadays both of these roles are usually filled by the same person. The mathematician no longer needs to hand off their program to someone else; they can just write it themselves.

The clear implication is that programming has gotten easier than it used to be.

There is a greater degree of sexual dimorphism in humans than in other apes. In order for this to happen, hominids must have preferred mates who had more pronounced sexual traits. There is nothing to suggest that humans lost that preference, and similarly, there is no reason to think that humans ever reached a point where greater sexual dimorphism ceased to be preferable; sexual selection never "sorted itself out".

Then why hasn't the body adapted to those sexual preferential demands? That would be the logic of this? Why the fakery? Nobody wins by presenting ourselves as something we're not.

Humans don't their evolution based on what is logical. Humans engage in fakery because it works.

Even hunter gatherer tribes employed sex-specific clothing, makeup and ornament, which undermines your claim that hunter-gatherers had no need to exaggerate gender.

That's from studying hunter gathers from today. I'm talking about way back when we were still transitioning from ape to homo sapiens. There had to be a point when all this gendering fakery nonsense started. Chimpanzees don't do it.

I suspect that Chimpanzees would do it if they had the brains to devise fakery. Any behaviour that increases an individual's likelihood of reproductive success is likely to survive and propagate.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It's the other way around. The further back you go the harder it was.

I never said it was easier.

You described the following workflow:

A most a man would design the program, (on paper). That's the maths. But the computer programmer would take the calculations and turn them into code.

1. The mathematician writes a series of calculations that the computer needs to do.
2. The programmer turns that into code.

Nowadays both of these roles are usually filled by the same person. The mathematician no longer needs to hand off their program to someone else; they can just write it themselves.

The clear implication is that programming has gotten easier than it used to be.

A "t" fell away. Loads of the constructors (which is what the program designers were called) were also women. I think most of them were. They certainly crowded out the guys when it comes to doing famous stuff. Those are almost all ladies. Even though the people getting their awards often were there (non-programmer) male bosses. Not only were they good, they were pioneers. In computer programming ladies were often first in everything. First programmer ever was a woman. She did it on a hypothetical computer that wouldn't be invented for another 100 years. And she nailed it.

The teams of programmers in the Apollo space program were staffed and led by women. I'm not sure any of those were men. The guys did the physics.

Men tend to gravitate towards any job with high status. A jobs status has very little to do with if it's easy or not to do. Lots of very hard jobs have low status (and are therefore paid more). Women often fill up low status positions. This was especially true in the 50'ies, 60'ies and 70'ies when not being a housewife was considered shameful for a woman.

People in general just didn't know how difficult it was to be a programmer, or what went into doing it. The media image was that building the computer (the physical box) was hard. Therefore all men. The media image of the programming was that it was easy. It wasn't. Therefore all brilliant women.

There's also no evidence that women are any worse at mathematics than men. The last great mathematician was a woman, Emmy Noether. Without her Einstein wouldn't have cracked theory of relativity, we wouldn't have quantum mechanics or modern computers. And the amount of bullshit she had to put up with just to get to study maths is bizarre, and wrong. There was a conspiracy of men to keep her out of universities because she was so brilliant. She could blow any mathematician in the world out of the water. She was the world's greatest mathematician and greater than humanity had produced for centuries most likely. We haven't seen anybody at that level since. The men in her generation just wouldn't have it.

Humans don't their evolution based on what is logical. Humans engage in fakery because it works.

But why does it work? Fakery and exposing of fakery is in a constant arms race. That's true for all species. What's going on? Why don't we adapt? Why are we so easily fooled and cool with it? That needs some explanation.

I suspect that Chimpanzees would do it if they had the brains to devise fakery. Any behaviour that increases an individual's likelihood of reproductive success is likely to survive and propagate.

I think this is closer to the truth. The ability to lie and fake might be selected for. After all we are a social species. There are theories that our intelligence evolved as a fakery and trickery arms race. But it can't be the whole story. Or we wouldn't see such a great dimorphism as we do. There's a lot of mystery here.

 

[bigfield]

I never said it was easier.

You described the following workflow:

A most a man would design the program, (on paper). That's the maths. But the computer programmer would take the calculations and turn them into code.

1. The mathematician writes a series of calculations that the computer needs to do.
2. The programmer turns that into code.

Nowadays both of these roles are usually filled by the same person. The mathematician no longer needs to hand off their program to someone else; they can just write it themselves.

The clear implication is that programming has gotten easier than it used to be.

A "t" fell away. Loads of the constructors (which is what the program designers were called) were also women. I think most of them were. They certainly crowded out the guys when it comes to doing famous stuff. Those are almost all ladies. Even though the people getting their awards often were there (non-programmer) male bosses. Not only were they good, they were pioneers. In computer programming ladies were often first in everything. First programmer ever was a woman. She did it on a hypothetical computer that wouldn't be invented for another 100 years. And she nailed it.

The teams of programmers in the Apollo space program were staffed and led by women. I'm not sure any of those were men. The guys did the physics.

Men tend to gravitate towards any job with high status. A jobs status has very little to do with if it's easy or not to do. Lots of very hard jobs have low status (and are therefore paid more). Women often fill up low status positions. This was especially true in the 50'ies, 60'ies and 70'ies when not being a housewife was considered shameful for a woman.

People in general just didn't know how difficult it was to be a programmer, or what went into doing it. The media image was that building the computer (the physical box) was hard. Therefore all men. The media image of the programming was that it was easy. It wasn't. Therefore all brilliant women.

There's also no evidence that women are any worse at mathematics than men. The last great mathematician was a woman, Emmy Noether. Without her Einstein wouldn't have cracked theory of relativity, we wouldn't have quantum mechanics or modern computers. And the amount of bullshit she had to put up with just to get to study maths is bizarre, and wrong. There was a conspiracy of men to keep her out of universities because she was so brilliant. She could blow any mathematician in the world out of the water. She was the world's greatest mathematician and greater than humanity had produced for centuries most likely. We haven't seen anybody at that level since. The men in her generation just wouldn't have it.

So what? That skill set has still been made obsolete by modern technology.

Humans don't their evolution based on what is logical. Humans engage in fakery because it works.

But why does it work? Fakery and exposing of fakery is in a constant arms race. That's true for all species. What's going on? Why don't we adapt? Why are we so easily fooled and cool with it? That needs some explanation.

Why would we adapt? Humans don't direct their evolution based on what is logical. Humans may be intelligent but we lack the means to make those kinds of calculated alterations to the gene pool.

I suspect that Chimpanzees would do it if they had the brains to devise fakery. Any behaviour that increases an individual's likelihood of reproductive success is likely to survive and propagate.

I think this is closer to the truth. The ability to lie and fake might be selected for. After all we are a social species. There are theories that our intelligence evolved as a fakery and trickery arms race. But it can't be the whole story. Or we wouldn't see such a great dimorphism as we do. There's a lot of mystery here.

Perhaps sexual dimorphism was selected for in earlier Homo species while the cognitive ability for sexual artifice was selected for in later, smarter species.

 

[DrZoidberg]

So what? That skill set has still been made obsolete by modern technology.

It's an example of arbitrary and absurd gendering.

It made no sense when it was a ladies only job, and I posit that the world wasn't made a better place. It makes just as little sense keeping it a mostly men job (as it is now).

We've had a perpetual shortage of programmers since the early 90'ies. This shortage is only getting greater and greater. There is zero benefit for gendering the programming industry one bit. We're all better off if it's kept gender neutral, so we get as many programmers as possible.

All this is beyond question IMHO. The next step is answer the question why we still do it? Why does it matter that programming has male or female connotations? It's a job so far removed from our hunter gathering past that it makes no sense. There's just no rational path of argument that can make anybody say "well, maths is only for boys".

Pointless limits are pointless. They only create harm. Especially for women. Since anything not geared around being cute and playing with dolls is not encouraged. I think any and all girls count give witness on this. In spite of them liking boys toys as well. Yes, girls and boys are different. But I fail to see the point of forcing them to be more different than they already are. Why not just let girls and boys get on with it?

Perhaps sexual dimorphism was selected for in earlier Homo species while the cognitive ability for sexual artifice was selected for in later, smarter species.

Or more stupid. Because we keep falling for it.

But I get you. We're on an evolutionary trajectory towards a new ideal. And in the meantime while our bodies haven't adapted to our sexual selection pressure we're just going to keep faking it. Makes sense. Also explains why we're so anxious about coming off as adequately male or female. If our ideals are always out of reach for any human I can see how that would make us an insecure species.

But if we're so damn smart, can't we come up with a way to solve the insecurity issue?

 

[bigfield]

It's an example of arbitrary and absurd gendering.

It made no sense when it was a ladies only job, and I posit that the world wasn't made a better place. It makes just as little sense keeping it a mostly men job (as it is now).

We've had a perpetual shortage of programmers since the early 90'ies. This shortage is only getting greater and greater. There is zero benefit for gendering the programming industry one bit. We're all better off if it's kept gender neutral, so we get as many programmers as possible.

All this is beyond question IMHO. The next step is answer the question why we still do it? Why does it matter that programming has male or female connotations? It's a job so far removed from our hunter gathering past that it makes no sense. There's just no rational path of argument that can make anybody say "well, maths is only for boys".

Pointless limits are pointless. They only create harm. Especially for women. Since anything not geared around being cute and playing with dolls is not encouraged. I think any and all girls count give witness on this. In spite of them liking boys toys as well. Yes, girls and boys are different. But I fail to see the point of forcing them to be more different than they already are. Why not just let girls and boys get on with it?

I don't feel like discussing normative politics--that belongs in PD.

When you introduced the example of programmers, you made some dubious claims:

So the university courses for computer programmers, from the 50'ies right up into the 80'ies, were completely dominated by women. Then just within a couple of years it switched around to being completely dominated by men. The computer nerd trope was born in a time when 99% of all programmers were women.

According to data from the US National Science Foundation, women have never been more than 40% of CS students. Based on that, it's also extremely unlikely that programmers were 99% women before the 80's.

Therefore the dramatic switch you describe never actually happened, despite your insistence that it is 'history, and fact'.

Your characterisation of the role of programmers, as the successor to a kind of special-purpose secretary, is also dubious:

These were typically women, calculating sums in banks. It's a kind of specialized secretary. And anything secreterial was completely dominated by women. So when the computer industry started all the programmers were women. A[t] most a man would design the program, (on paper). That's the maths. But the computer programmer would take the calculations and turn them into code.

This might have been true of the early programmers referred to as 'operators', such as the ENIAC programmers, but this doesn't make sense in the context of the NSF data linked above, which shows that computer science has been male-dominated since 1965.

Based on your description, it appears that the special-purpose secretary has been replaced by high-level languages, compilers and interpreters, and the program designer is now the modern programmer.

...

But points for proving my point. Even after I explained it you still walked into it with your sexist world view on. It's no shame in that. We all do. Because we've all been trained to gender stuff.

What exactly did I gender with my "sexist world view"?

Perhaps sexual dimorphism was selected for in earlier Homo species while the cognitive ability for sexual artifice was selected for in later, smarter species.

Or more stupid. Because we keep falling for it.

That doesn't make sense. The fact that we can invent a variety of sexual artifices, including clothing, makeup and gendered language, means that we are smarter than our hominid ancestors who couldn't.

But I get you. We're on an evolutionary trajectory towards a new ideal. And in the meantime while our bodies haven't adapted to our sexual selection pressure we're just going to keep faking it. Makes sense. Also explains why we're so anxious about coming off as adequately male or female. If our ideals are always out of reach for any human I can see how that would make us an insecure species.

What makes you think there is some ideal to be reached? The sexual arms race could keep going on indefinitely.

But if we're so damn smart, can't we come up with a way to solve the insecurity issue?

Maybe we're not smart enough to do that.

 

[DrZoidberg]

When you introduced the example of programmers, you made some dubious claims:

The computer industry has lots of different jobs. Programmer is just one of them. The numbers are for the computer industry in general. Most managers have always been men. The sales agents of the computer industry will also be covered by that number. I didn't say there weren't any men coding. It's just that they tended to do other stuff in the computer industry.

Here's a podcast episode on just this topic. They use the same chart you did.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

That doesn't make sense. The fact that we can invent a variety of sexual artifices, including clothing, makeup and gendered language, means that we are smarter than our hominid ancestors who couldn't.

Solving non problems is not a sign of intelligence. We were tree living apes and the trees vanished. So we had to deal with it. We became the cockroach of the primate world. The chimpanzees lived somewhere else so they didn't have to develop all the fancy stuff you mentioned.

What makes you think there is some ideal to be reached? The sexual arms race could keep going on indefinitely.

As long as we're using illusion and fakery to come across as something we're not we know that there's a selection pressure in that direction. Obviously it'll go on indefinitely. It'll only stop when any further adaption will kill us. For example the peacock feathers.

But if we're so damn smart, can't we come up with a way to solve the insecurity issue?

Maybe we're not smart enough to do that.

I like the Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote when he says that maybe aliens have already visited us but didn't think we were intelligent enough to bother talking to so they just left without saying "hi".

I still have hope though. I need that to maintain my sanity.

 

[bigfield]

I've made additions to my previous post.

The computer industry has lots of different jobs. Programmer is just one of them. The numbers are for the computer industry in general. Most managers have always been men. The sales agents of the computer industry will also be covered by that number. I didn't say there weren't any men coding. It's just that they tended to do other stuff in the computer industry.

Here's a podcast episode on just this topic. They use the same chart you did.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/07/22/487069271/episode-576-when-women-stopped-coding

Provide some sources to support your claims.

That doesn't make sense. The fact that we can invent a variety of sexual artifices, including clothing, makeup and gendered language, means that we are smarter than our hominid ancestors who couldn't.

Solving non problems is not a sign of intelligence. We were tree living apes and the trees vanished. So we had to deal with it. We became the cockroach of the primate world. The chimpanzees lived somewhere else so they didn't have to develop all the fancy stuff you mentioned.

Characterising human cognitive ability as 'solving non problems' is disingenuous.

But if we're so damn smart, can't we come up with a way to solve the insecurity issue?

Maybe we're not smart enough to do that.

I like the Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote when he says that maybe aliens have already visited us but didn't think we were intelligent enough to bother talking to so they just left without saying "hi".

I still have hope though. I need that to maintain my sanity.

You misunderstand me; I'm not bemoaning a shortcoming in human intelligence; I'm simply providing a plausible answer to your question. What we want is irrelevant, or rather, belongs in PD.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Provide some sources to support your claims.

My claims is that programming is now gendered for men when it once upon a time was gendered female. Are you disputing this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing

Characterising human cognitive ability as 'solving non problems' is disingenuous.

What are you talking about? Humanity has a collection of traits that allows us to build upon knowledge from other humans. And this effect is cumulative. We have traits that allows us to use tools. None of these are unique to humans. Every aspect of human intelligence can be found in other creatures. What we have that is unique is this specific combination of traits. But that's true for any species. Every species is specialized for it's niche. Our niche is no niche. Without our brains we'd be helpless. That's why the brain is so important to our species.

 

[lpetrich]

Responding to Dr. Zoidberg,

Based on your description, it appears that the special-purpose secretary has been replaced by high-level languages, compilers and interpreters, and the program designer is now the modern programmer.

There have been several generations of programmin

The first one was machine language, composing instructions in ones and zeros for the CPU to execute. This may be compressed into octal or hexadecimal for convenience. This is hardly ever done nowadays, maybe tiny bits of it in extremely specialized circumstances.

The second one was assembly language, a thin layer of abstraction on top of machine language. Assembly-language instructions look like
(label) (opcode) (operands)
The label is for giving the name of a place to transfer control to, or a place where some data is present
The opcode is the operation code, either a CPU instruction or a declaration of data
The operands are what the CPU will work with or the initial value of the data

Seems like a lot of women were programmers back when machine-language and assembly-language programming was common.

The third was was high-level language, even farther removed. The first notable one was Fortran ("Formula Translator"). It had an algebraic sort of appearance, an appearance that most of the more successful high-level languages have had since then.

There was one woman who made her mark on programming-language design back then: Grace Hopper. She was involed in the design of COBOL ("Common Business-Oriented Language"). She wanted it to be easy for non-progrmmers to understand, so one writes in it in natural-language sort of fashion. Thus, to add A and B to make C, one does
ADD A TO B, GIVING C

Fortran and and most other ones have instead
C = A + B
with variations like Pascal's
C := A + B

Someone introduced into later versions of COBOL the "COMPUTE" command:
COMPUTE C = A + B
I've yet to find out what Grace Hopper thought about that, because it seems like a concession of defeat.

As to further generations, structured programming and object-oriented programming have been hyped as such generations.

Durkheim didn't invent sociology. That all happened after the fact, by his disciples. He was just doing philosophy.

By that same reasoning, Isaac Newton wasn't a physicist because he was just doing natural philosophy, and therefore the line between physics and philosophy is blurred.

What we now call science was called natural philosophy before the late 19th cy.

 

[lpetrich]

I'd like to see what Thunderf00t considers good about feminism.

This whole issue reminds me of several years ago, when a certain Nikolai Bezroukov slammed "bad open source", referring to making one's programming source code readily available. It seemed to me that he may have had a point about how some people treat open-source development as a sort of ideology, but it wasn't clear in what he was saying.

 

[bigfield]

My claims is that programming is now gendered for men when it once upon a time was gendered female. Are you disputing this?

If you want to know what I'm disputing, you just need to look at my previous post:

When you introduced the example of programmers, you made some dubious claims:

So the university courses for computer programmers, from the 50'ies right up into the 80'ies, were completely dominated by women. Then just within a couple of years it switched around to being completely dominated by men. The computer nerd trope was born in a time when 99% of all programmers were women.

According to data from the US National Science Foundation, women have never been more than 40% of CS students. Based on that, it's also extremely unlikely that programmers were 99% women before the 80's.

Therefore the dramatic switch you describe never actually happened, despite your insistence that it is 'history, and fact'.

Your characterisation of the role of programmers, as the successor to a kind of special-purpose secretary, is also dubious:

These were typically women, calculating sums in banks. It's a kind of specialized secretary. And anything secreterial was completely dominated by women. So when the computer industry started all the programmers were women. A[t] most a man would design the program, (on paper). That's the maths. But the computer programmer would take the calculations and turn them into code.

This might have been true of the early programmers referred to as 'operators', such as the ENIAC programmers, but this doesn't make sense in the context of the NSF data linked above, which shows that computer science has been male-dominated since 1965.

Based on your description, it appears that the special-purpose secretary has been replaced by high-level languages, compilers and interpreters, and the program designer is now the modern programmer.

...

But points for proving my point. Even after I explained it you still walked into it with your sexist world view on. It's no shame in that. We all do. Because we've all been trained to gender stuff.

What exactly did I gender with my "sexist world view"?

Characterising human cognitive ability as 'solving non problems' is disingenuous.

What are you talking about? Humanity has a collection of traits that allows us to build upon knowledge from other humans. And this effect is cumulative. We have traits that allows us to use tools. None of these are unique to humans. Every aspect of human intelligence can be found in other creatures. What we have that is unique is this specific combination of traits. But that's true for any species. Every species is specialized for it's niche. Our niche is no niche. Without our brains we'd be helpless. That's why the brain is so important to our species.

Even if I accept your claim that none of our cognitive abilities, including abstract reasoning and complex language, are unique to humans, it is still irrelevant because the end result is that humans are more intelligent than other species, including our hominid ancestors and extant relatives.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Even if I accept your claim that none of our cognitive abilities, including abstract reasoning and complex language, are unique to humans, it is still irrelevant because the end result is that humans are more intelligent than other species, including our hominid ancestors and extant relatives.

 

[thebeave]

If you don't know about him, Thunderf00t is a nuclear scientist who makes videos bashing pseudoscience. I strongly recommend his videos. Some of them are comedy gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuxEwjBXlZE

But he also spends an inordinate amount of time bashing feminism. Don't get me wrong, I like Thunderf00t and I agree with all his points. He's not attacking feminism broadly. He's just attacking dumb-ass feminism. Which becomes apparent when you listen to him a bit. He's also epically socially dysfunctional which is hilariously apparent in interviews. My hat off to him for doing it though. The world needs more awkward nerds daring to take the world stage.

My question is this: is populist feminist demagogues such a huge problem really? I do live in Sweden, where these people have more of an impact that probably anywhere else. But it's not a huge problem. Most people laugh at them here as well. Even liberals.

There is an unfortunate perception by some that if you say you are not a feminist, then that means you are anti-woman, or a misogynist or you don't think men and women should have equal rights. It's simply not true. People who identify as feminists in the UK (where Thunderfoot is from) are actually in the rather distinct minority:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/only-7-per-cent-of-britons-consider-themselves-feminists/

More than two thirds of Britons support gender equality – but just seven per cent would call themselves feminists.

Out of 8,000 people surveyed, only 560 used the ‘f-word’ to describe their views on equality.

The Fawcett Society, a leading feminist charity, found Britain to be a nation of ‘hidden feminists’.

When split out by gender, women were more likely to identify as feminist, with nine per cent using the label compared to four per cent of men.

But men were more supportive generally of equality between the sexes - 86 per cent wanted it for the women in their lives - compared to 74 per cent of women.

So, in reality, when Thunderfoot bashes on feminists in his videos, isn't he more in line with the mainstream attitude about feminism in the UK, rather than some rogue misogynist, like many seem to think he is? I've watched a fair number of his videos (not all), and he seems like a guy who just likes to call out bullshit, in whatever form it is, whether it comes from a particular feminist (especially Anita Sarkeesian, Laci Green or Jessica Valenti), Islam, Solar Roadways, EM Drive, etc.

By the way, speaking of feminism in Sweden, how's the new snow plowing rules in Stockholm working out for ya?

 

[DrZoidberg]

So, in reality, when Thunderfoot bashes on feminists in his videos, isn't he more in line with the mainstream attitude about feminism in the UK, rather than some rogue misogynist, like many seem to think he is? I've watched a fair number of his videos (not all), and he seems like a guy who just likes to call out bullshit, in whatever form it is, whether it comes from a particular feminist (especially Anita Sarkeesian, Laci Green or Jessica Valenti), Islam, Solar Roadways, EM Drive, etc.

That's my impression to. Shame he paints all feminism with the same brush though. Just saying that you're a feminist is not particularly informative.

By the way, speaking of feminism in Sweden, how's the new snow plowing rules in Stockholm working out for ya?

Yeah, that's such a joke. What can I say, some politicians are idiots.

I can tell you the background. Somebody noted that women walk more than men and use the buses and trains more than men. But we mainly focus on clearing our roads from snow, which is because the patriarchy. So it became this thing argued about on various articles. It was just this thing that was talked about. A bunch of feminists patted each other on the back and were outraged. Nobody else gave a shit. When this came up for a vote in a Stockholm suburb municipality it was decided that snow clearance would focus as much on foot paths as streets.

But the people actually in charge of clearing snow realized that ambulances, firetrucks and police cars use roads and not foot paths. So they just ignored the rules and did what they usually do. Nobody cared.

And the feminist snow ploughing spread to other municipalities. Each time it was passed it was immediately ignored by the people who clear the snow from the streets.

The feminists patted themselves on the back for bringing down the patriarchy, but in reality nothing happened. It's just a symbol for something.

Sweden is good at this shit. Passing symbolic feminist laws that are completely pointless. Last year we passed a law that said that you need to give consent before sex. A big hullabaloo was made about it, and it was seen as this great new tool to help combat rape. When lawyers pointed out that we already need consent for sex, it's implied in our sexual assault laws. It's a completely pointless law that adds nothing. It just makes it more complicated to apply the law. Because now we have overlapping laws that prevent the same activity. I have friends who went to demonstrations to support this new law. I tried to explain to them the idiocy of it. But it fell on completely deaf ears.

This really is feminist country. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But it does lead to a certain degree of silliness.

 

[thebeave]

Thanks for a first hand account of the snow plowing situation. Just be glad the feminists were unsuccessful in requiring men to pee sitting down. It would be rather uncomfortable to be stranded in the snow, and have to sit down in the snow to take a leak.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Thanks for a first hand account of the snow plowing situation. Just be glad the feminists were unsuccessful in requiring men to pee sitting down. It would be rather uncomfortable to be stranded in the snow, and have to sit down in the snow to take a leak.

I would not be surprised if such a law does get passed. It will of course be ignored by everybody.

One thing that I really have trouble with regarding this breed of feminists is that they want to regulate us to happiness. As if passing laws make people behave differently. No it won't. They'll just get more anxious when doing what they normally do. There's a thing among my friends that whenever anybody gets fined for public urination they post a picture of the fine on their Facebook. But they don't stop peeing outdoors. It's just a completely waste of time.

 

[DrZoidberg]

This one is great. But he's not the best ranter. He's a tad long winded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXz7LTItF4s