Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 6/21
There are Almost Literally No Movies Featuring Women any More
The article I link to points out that 90 percent of the films showing last weekend we all about guys or groups of guys. That’s pretty pathetic.
Now I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy watching movies about guys. I’m a big fan of Iron Man 3 and I don’t think it’d be better if it was about a woman. You can’t really make a movie about Superman without making a movie about SuperMAN.
I’m just curious as to why those are the only movies being made. The movie industry will probably tell you that it is because movies about women don’t make as much.
That may or may to be true but there sure isn’t a lot of data one way or the other, is there? Catwoman didn’t make any money because it sucked, not because it featured a woman as a protagonist.
Why isn’t there a Black Widow movie in development? You can’t tell me the legions of Marvel fans wouldn’t like to watch it. Wonder Woman is also languishing in development hell.
A Black Widow film would probably be all about Hawkeye anyway.
I don’t honestly think filmmakers have any idea how to make movies featuring women as protagonists. I understand it is difficult but I don’t think anyone actually gives a fuck as long as Man of Steel has a 100MM opening.
And that kind of sucks for anyone who has a daughter, doesn’t it?
Florida Governor Signs a Bill Designed to Prevent his Citizens from Making up their own Minds
The bill in question blocks local municipalities from instituting laws that would require businesses to provide workers with paid sick time.
I get that the Republican Party is fairly anti-workers’ rights these days and I admit, unions are not perfect. I still think they are beneficial but they could be a lot better than they are.
Yet it seems pretty underhanded and shitty when you pass a law specifically designed to torpedo a voter initiative. When it comes to an issue of human rights, like – say – same-sex marriage, the cry is “let the voters decide!”
But when the voters want to make a decision about fair business practice, they are shut out of the conversation through backroom deals. By the same party that felt the voters should have the right to decide the issue of same-sex marriage.
When you use a court case to block the vote long enough to pass legislation outlawing the vote, that’s pretty shady, don’t you think? Can you genuinely respect yourself when you pull bullshit like that?
What is most frustrating is the fact there is some evidence showing that the voter initiative they shot down would actually be beneficial to the coporations fighting against it. Who cares, though? Change is scary.
CNN Publishes an Opinion Piece Criticizing Alternative Medicine
As a “hopeful” skeptic, I spent a lot of time clinging to the idea that there could be something to alternative medicine because hey, it would be nice if you could use herbs to treat cancer.
Can’t cure cancer – but a delicious part of a healthy salad!
Except you can’t.
That sucks. I wish it were some other way. It isn’t.
The problem here is that while there is a mountain of scientific data to show that alternative medicine doesn’t work, the perspective that it doesn’t work is still presented as “opinion.”
You can’t just say “this stuff doesn’t work” without getting told “well that’s your opinion.” If you respond asking for data to support the opposing opinion, you won’t get any.
Because there isn’t any to present.
This is the same argument as anti-vaccination or creationism. One side has evidence and the other side says “well that is your opinion.” The difference between those “opinions” is that one opinion is based in fact and the other is – well – just an opinion.
Texas Representative Says Abortion Should be Illegal Because Fetal Boys “Masturbate”
Basically, the guy thinks that because male fetuses stick their hands between their legs, they can feel pleasure.
I don’t know what his source is for this assertion as a quick web search for “fetal masturbation” yeilded a whole bunch of articles about this yahoo. I confess my research technique was hardly scientific.
Clearly this dude thinks the only reason a boy of any age would stick his hands between his legs is because he wants to masturbate. Having been a teenager, I can remember a time when that was a high priority. I don’t think there was ever a time, though, where that was the only reason I’d put my hands there.
Not that any of this matters because there is no evidence that 15 week old fetuses are masturbating except in this guy’s mind. Which is pretty sick shit and he needs some therapy.
And what about the inherent sexism in suggesting that boys masturbate in the womb but women don’t? Boys like sex but girls don’t? Or is it just fetal girls who don’t masturbate?
The Human Race has Successfully Killed off Another Animal
Well, this week the Western Black Rhino has officially been declared extinct. Thank goodness we won’t have to worry about preserving their habitat any longer, eh?
Now, why are they extinct?
Lots of reasons. However, one of the most important ones is that people want their horns for ornamentation and supposed healing properties that numerous tests indicate that they don’t possess. Another win for alternative medicine!
There may not be any real rhinos left but we still have pictures! That will help us argue with the rhino deniers later.
Because there are so few rhinos in the wild, the value of their horns has understandably skyrocketed. Because there is so much poverty in Africa, folks are more than happy to poach the animals for the money they can make.
And so another species gets human beinged out of existence. Go us!
A Horrible Horrible Project Got Funded on Kickstarter*
Note: KS has taken down the project so I can’t link to it.
What pisses me off is not just that the project exists (even though it is awful). People get pissed off about Kickstarter projects all the time. There are tons of awful things funded through Kickstarter.
What pisses me off is how conflicted I am about the whole thing.
On the one hand, freedom of speech is important. While this jackass will basically write a book filled with the worst possible dating advice ever, he has the right to do that, doesn’t he?
And if 732 people want to contribute over $16,000 to help him publish an awful, narcississtic, misongynistic piece of trash, they have they right to spend their money that way, right?
But he’s also advocating sexual assault and offering up opinions about what women want as if he has the slightest fucking clue what he’s talking about. It creeps me out a lot and it bothers me that there’s an audience. He reminds me of Frank T.J. Mackey.
That is not a complement.
So I’m pissed off because I hate that this horrible thing exists but I kind of feel that it has to be allowed to exist. And that makes me crazy.
P.S: Keep in mind, if the dude had been honest when he created the Kickstarter (by including some of the text of his book), I imagine it never would have been approved. So he’s not just a misogynist and (probably) an abusive boyfriend/husband, he’s also a liar.
P.P.S: I’m also pissed because this asshole got funded with ease and my friend Joseph Scrimshaw had to fight to the last second to make his goal. Some of that may be a result of people deciding to boycott Kickstarter in the wake of the decision to fund this douchebag’s book.
P.P.P.S: Kickstarter wrote a great apology this morning.
P.P.P.P.S: Don’t read the comments on the apology. I mean, you should never read the comments on anything but after KS basically said “we screwed up and we’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen again and we’re also going to donate far more than was pledged for this project to an appropriate charity,” people are still saying “you didn’t apologize enough.” Holy fuck, people.
*I wrote a more in-depth post about this yesterday
Let’s be clear here – the lady is a cheat. She’s not a psychic because there is no such thing. No matter how much we may want to believe people like her can communicate with our dead relatives, they can’t.
She was, however, accused of cheating in a specific way and those claims could not be supported. The result: she’s a lot richer than she was last week.
Maybe she can use the money to start a faith healing business.
She’s still a cheat, though. And it ticks me off just a little bit that a charlatan got a big pile of cash simply because someone made an incorrect assumption regarding how she was cheating.
Worse: one could infer from the ruling that she’s not a charlatan and that means a whole lot more people will be swindled by her.
The coach prayed on this one to make sure he was making the right decision and he feels that those 12-year old boys would just be too tempted if there was a girl in football pads and a helmet on the sidelines.
Never mind that at that age, boys are starting to have lustful thoughts about just about everything. Some of them are probably having lustful thoughts about other boys in pads and helmets.
Don’t you love the way this kind of thinking shames kids of both genders? The boys are shamed for the fact that their hormones are running wile and rather than being taught what those changes mean and how to treat and respect young women, they are taught that those changes are all the fault of young women.
Way to go, crazy right wing religious bullshit! Warp those little minds and make sure they spend the rest of their lives in shame!
2 responses to “Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 6/21”
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Grail Diary 
And here I expected the article on Huffington Post and CNN about the woman trying to become a US Citizen who was told she has to join a church. She’s an athiest.
I’ve never been a 12 year old boy, but I have it from a few sources (who WERE 12 year old boys at some point) that ANYTHING can incite lustful thoughts at tha age.
I can’t really think of any movie that featured women in a huge role while I was growing up. Except for the really bad Disney made for TV movies (minus Halloweentown, that shit was awesome). I’m the youngest, I have one older sister and two older brothers. The brothers usually picked what we watched when the parents were out. Stuff like Aliens or Predator.
Yeah, Aliens has Ripley and I wanted to be her, but that worried my parents (partially because I was young and watching Aliens). I recently started watching Xena again, and remembered that I wanted to be liker her, too. The weapon master who kicked ass. That translates into games, but I always make a male character.
I also remember that any movies that I did watch that featured a women as anything but badass I hated. I couldn’t stand Beauty and the Beast, for example, because Belle was too nice. I liked the Beast instead. It was movies like that that made me believe that women in film could only be two things: quiet and obedient, or, on the complete opposite end, ‘gurl power is cool guyz!’. The latter option was even worse.
I mean, I was convinced from age 5 to 8 that I was a boy, simply because a boy on the playground said that they have more fun than girls. So that lead to watching Indiana Jones, or Ghostbusters, and emulating the male characters. I don’t see that as a problem, but I can definitely see it being a problem for a parent, their daughter not having a role model in media.
Sorry this is so long. Guess I felt like writing.