Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/1

Japanese Whalers Killed 200 Pregnant Whales

So the Japanese are still whaling in the name of “legitimate research.”  They headed off for their yearly kill of Minke whales and, among the 333 whales they were permitted to kill, they managed to bag 200 pregnant females.

To be fair – when you are killing a whale, you can’t tell if it is a pregnant female.  I’m sure if they had known that almost 2/3 of the whales they were killing were pregnant, they would have killed them anyway.

Is this whale pregnant? Who cares????

The excuse they give is that they are researching the breeding habits of whales or some other bullshit that basically comes down to “fuck you, rest of the world, we just want to kill whales.”

I don’t get it.  I really don’t.  All this bullshit to keep the members of four whaling vessels employed.

If they can’t find any other jobs for these guys, Trump could probably use some help building a wall.  I don’t think he has any problems with the Japanese.

Oh.  Um….never mind….

Dude Who Sponsored Anti-Transgender Bill Claims He is Being Bullied

Senator Scott Newman (whom you can contact here) claims that his bill trying to prevent transgendered children from using bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity is not bullying.  Nope – it is the transgendered community that are the bullies.

I guess that’s why so many transgendered kids commit suicide.  They can’t live with the guilt.

So Newman (whom, I will remind you, can be contacted here), says that communications from the transgender community have by a 10 to 1 margin been “coarse…threatening [and] crude.”

So hey everyone!  Let’s shut this fine upstanding transphobic citizen down with operation phony friendly!  Do me a favor and send him a message telling him in the most respectful way possible why what he is doing is hurtful and wrong.

Don’t use words like “doucebag” or “asshole” or “judgmental prick.”  I mean seriously, don’t use them.

They are accurate, but all he sees are the coarse words and they offend his delicate sensibilities to the extent that he simply can’t understand your larger point.  You all have to understand that it is hard to be a cis white male.  The rest of us simply can’t understand that.

I mean, actually, I can.  And being a cis white male is pretty fucking awesome!

But Newman who, I must reiterate, can be contacted here, doesn’t enjoy the same kind of privilege as me.

I mean yes.  He does.  But he doesn’t realize it.  So be gentle.  Because he needs to know the real harm he is causing without being forced to read the word “shitbag.”

He needs to understand that trans men and women experience the same kind of bullying he is claiming to experience all the time.  Further, many of them don’t have a family to support them when they come out because their family actually doesn’t support them.

And apparently if you use language that is nowhere near as bad as the language trans people experience, he just can’t handle the criticism.

PS:  I’m super serious.  If you contact the Senator, make sure you are extremely polite.  Don’t give him any excuse to dismiss what you have to say because he doesn’t actually give a fuck what you are saying.  He only cares how you say it.

This Article Tells me That No Self Respecting Adult Should Watch Super Hero Movies or Read Comics

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking “that sounds like a real asshole thing to say – I’ll bet whoever wrote that article is a jackass.”

I can’t say that you’re right because I don’t know Rhymer Rigby (probably not his real name).  I’ll tell you what, though, he sure does hate Super-Hero movies.  And when he says it, he sounds like a jackass.

It’s like people who sit around and tell other people what they have a right to like are just smug assholes.

What he hates even more is the fact other people seem to watch and enjoy them because he is so done with the entire genre.  He seems pretty enamored with Sicaro which, I’ve heard, is a really good film.

And that’s cool for him.  But he shouldn’t shit on other people because they like super hero movies.  And he certainly shouldn’t lecture adults on what they should enjoy as if he has a corner on the adulting market.

Utah Requires Pregnant Women to be Anesthetized if They Have an Abortion After 20 Weeks

OK men.  Let’s do a thought experiment.  Sorry, ladies, you can’t play along on this one.  My apologies.

You are going to get a vasectomy.  I’m picking that surgery because it is specifically a surgery that only dudes can get.

So you’re getting a vasectomy.  Which is outpatient surgery and usually uses local anesthetic.  You go in to the office and the doctor says “hey – I’m going to have to put you under sedation because the state legislature has mandated that I do so.”

You say “do you think I need sedation?”

He says “No.  We recommend local anesthetic.”

You say “Then do that, please.”

He says “I can’t or I could face a fine or jail time.”

You say “What the fuck?”

Now imagine instead of being a guy getting a vasectomy, you are a woman getting an abortion.

Fuck you, Utah.

A Bill in Tennessee Will Allow Therapists To Refuse Treatment to Someone on Religious Grounds

If you really don’t want to provide therapy to a homosexual person because you have a religious objection to who they are, I don’t think you should provide them with therapy.

I also don’t think you should be a therapist because fuck you if you see someone in pain and you don’t want to help them.  If your excuse for telling someone to find another provider is “I can’t help you because you don’t believe in god” then you aren’t very good at your job.

She isn’t very good at her job either. But at least she isn’t making excuses.

You shouldn’t need some sort of legal protection that allows you to judge others.  You should just do something else.

Look, I’m not a counsellor.  But if I was, I wouldn’t turn away a Christian because I’m an atheist.  Because when someone needs help and you have the skills to help them, you fucking help them.

Donald Trump Doesn’t Really Know What He Wants to do with Women Who Get Abortions

Appearing on MSNBC with Chris Matthews, Trump was asked about his stance on abortion and he fumbled around with his response.

Being a “Republican,” Trump known he has to be against abortion. Being an opportunist, he’s probably never given more than six seconds of thought to abortion in his entire life and, most, likely, doesn’t give a shit.

So he came out and said that when abortions are made illegal, the women who get them should be punished in some way.

Well everyone jumped on that.  Bernie and Hillary were obviously going to have a field day with that statement but his Republican opponents also pointed out that you can’t punish the mother because the mother is the victim.

So here is what I, as someone who is staunchly pro-choice, have to say:

Why the fuck is a woman who wants an abortion a victim?  Are women so frail and weak that they are incapable of making an informed decision about their own pregnancy?  Is it the position of the Republican party that pregnant women should not be held responsible for any other illegal act they perform while under the influence of baby hormones?

I’m pregnant so I have no idea what the word “abortion” means!

If abortion is illegal, then choosing to have one should be illegal and the mother should be punished.  That should be the stance of any logical pro-life advocate.

But you can’t say that because you realize how much of an asshole you sound like when you tell a young woman who just made the difficult decision to terminate an unwanted pregnancy that she has to go to jail.  You realize that sending a bunch of women to prison because they made a choice about their body would be a major dick move.

So you take that option off the table by calling the woman a victim and removing her agency.

Donald Trump, having never given a moment’s thought to the consequences of making abortion illegal, is the only person to have recognized the problem.  And he got hammered for it.  But you should all be hammered for it.  Because this entire debate is about bodily autonomy and by arguing a woman isn’t legally responsible for consenting to a procedure performed on her body, you still don’t get it.

Minneapolis Officers Won’t be Charged in Jamar Clark Shooting

I’ve read a lot about this situation.  Too much.  And I’m angry about a few things.

First, I’m angry because it would appear that the prosecutor got it exactly right.  There is not enough evidence to charge the officers with anything.  They had reason to believe their lives were in danger.  There was no way one could have expected a conviction given the evidence that I’ve seen.  I find the vitriol directed at the prosecutor for doing his job a bit disheartening.

But – and it’s a big “but” – we have a really big problem with the system when a cop feels the only option in that situation is to shoot a guy in the back of the head. And certainly we have a problem with a system in which no cop has been charged in a police shooting for over fifteen years.

Self defense is a fair thing.  If you feel you are at risk, you absolutely have the right to defend yourself.  Is it really self defense, though, when you can make a kill shot like that? It sounds like Jamar Clark was an abuser and that means I haven’t a lot of sympathy for him.  He should be behind bars.

But I don’t think he should be dead.  We can argue all we want about responsibility but he was shot in the back of the head.  If the person who did that wasn’t a cop, we’d be having a different conversation right now.  Even if every other part of this situation was exactly the same.

I don’t know.  This issue is more complicated than people on either side would like to admit. And I’m sorry my thoughts on this are such a downer.  But this whole situation is completely screwed.

The police need the latitude to do their jobs and they must be allowed to defend themselves when a perpetrator gets violent.

But I’m a little concerned when they become an executioner.  And a kill shot to the back of the head feels a little bit more like an execution than a defense of one’s life.

And the question still lingers – would Jamar Clark still be alive if he was white?  I don’t know the answer to that.  But it concerns me that I’m compelled to ask the question.

My final word, as it frequently has been, is to point you to this week’s short story.  I must have been thinking about the Presidential election season because I wrote a story about a President I know I’d like to see running our country.  It is much funnier than anything I just said about Jamar Clark.