Lack of privilege as method of domination

one of the methods of domination is the Hierarchy Method – SILENCING and INVALIDATING – below is an excellent example of this – executed by a woman i encountered a few days ago. i should have seen it coming when she introduced herself to me by saying “Are you implying that…” but i didn’t and the result is below.

(hint: when people start their comment with “are you implying…?” it is never a sincere question. it is a passive aggressive way of masking that they have already decided what you are saying, and that they are not really interested in your answer.)

Me:
“Trans women were socialized male, same as I as [a trans man] was socialized female – unless they had extremely progressive parents who picked up on their status as transgender at pre-school age or before, they cannot have avoided being socialized male to an extent that does influence some basic stuff.”

this sparked a nice little illustration of how ‘lack of privilege is used to silence and invalidate’ those one disagrees with. it is repeatedly used by activists in various settings and groups. i have been guilty of doing this on occasion myself.

Her:
“Are you aware that you are talking to a trans woman? As a trans man you have privilege over me when it comes to issues like this, so can i please ask that you acknowledge that before you continue to spread the rhetoric that harms women like me.”

on issues of gender and gender socialization i have no privilege over other trans people, nor they over me – on the matter of gender socialization we are absolutely equal. pulling out ‘the privilege card’ here is just a way to suggest that i am violating this ‘poor trans woman by expressing an opinion she disagrees with’. also note how she uses the word ‘rhetoric’ – one definition of ‘rhetoric’ is “language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect, but which is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.“ just another way of saying that what i say is meaningless prattle.

Me:
“i am not spreading any rhetoric other than that which is based in my own experience – which i have every right to share anywhere i like.”

claiming the right to express my opinion about the issue, which is based on personal experience, should have concluded the discussion. it didn’t. (hint: arguing against someone else’s personal experience is another way to silence and invalidate them).

Her:
“Not if it involves ideas that uplift yourself and your cis wife but marginalize others.

there goes my rights to express my personal experience. i am being accused of using my wife and myself to marginalize her and others, exactly how she doesn’t say, which is another part of the ‘silencing and invalidating’.

mentioning my wife’s cis-status is done to convey the contempt she feels for cis-people and for me who married a cis-person, which is often seen as a traitorous assimilation by some trans people.  my opinion on the issue of gender socialization is invalid because i am married to a cis-woman.

she has to mention my wife, because my wife is the only one present in the discussion that has any privilege and since her argument is shaky she needs every little piece of leverage she can get her hands on.

i do not have any privilege over her in the discussion and i think she is aware of that on some level, however being married to a cis-person is also often seen as the ultimate success and confirmation of one’s gender transition and identity. my status as married to a cis-woman is thus seen as a “privilege”. though this privilege would only exist within the trans community and only if talking to a person with this specific view, not in society as a whole. which thus negates the whole idea that me being married to a cis-person grants me any privilege.

Her:
“The rhetoric you are spreading is that trans women are not women because of their “socialization”.

no. not true. i have never said that, thought that or meant that, but i can see how she is reading what i actually say that way – because of these abominable people: TERFs. i include both trans women and trans men in my initial statement in the discussion. i include both trans women and trans men initially because not to do so would be illogical.

if my ‘rhetoric’ harms trans women it must also logically harm trans men – why would i say things that harm myself? that makes no sense, and it makes no sense because the truth is that saying that “Trans women were socialized male, same as I as [a trans man] was socialized female.” doesn’t harm either of us.

not admitting that we are socialized the way we are is harming us, because it means that we have not truly accepted all of who we are and that opens up a window of insecurity through which people like TERF can reach our inner beings. that is extremely harmful.

not admitting that we have been socialized according to our birth-assigned gender is also harmful because it implies this doesn’t need to be changed – it’s not happening, so gender specific treatment of children is OK.

Her:
“I think it is for the best that you stay in your lane when topics like this one are being brought up.”

ah. yes. gender politics is not my lane, because i am a trans man.

 

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Neurotypical Trolls

My wife joined the discussion about neurotypicals and parenting autistic children (you can read my blog on that discussion here:

“Neurotypical PhD, how is that (have many ppl have here kids) in any way related?
I don’t have any pets, but I will not shut up about people abusing their pets.
I have never been pregnant, but I will not shut up about abortion rights.
I haven’t been shot at, I don’t own guns, I have never gone on gun violence rampage, but I will not shut up about gun violence.
People don’t need to have children to say child abuse is child abuse.
People don’t need to have autistic children to say child abuse is child abuse.

And I will not call a child abuser a lady, however justified she and you and all the other NNs think she is in her abuse.

None of us is in her shoes. Doesn’t make it OK for her to treat her son like that.

I wish you had more compassion for the child than to the mother. I assume you identify yourself with her. We identify ourselves with the child.
You might be totally OK with being dragged on a leash on streets, I am not. So I refuse to be OK with anyone else being dragged on a leash.
I also care more about the child’s opinion than the mother’s opinion. I think the possible victim’s opinion on whether he is a victim or not is more important than the perpetrator’s.
And I’m pretty sure we all read the article. We aren’t reacting on the photo. We are reacting on what the mother said.

You say it’s hard to be a parent. It’s even harder to be a child.
You say it’s harder to parent an autistic child. I say it’s even harder to be an autistic child.
Adults have other adults to talk with. The child has no-one. Severely autistic children might never have anyone to talk to, they might not even be able to talk.
Have you ever tried to imagine what it is like to not be able to express yourself? I don’t think so.

The best way to understand a non-verbal autistic person is to listen to a verbal autistic person, not some non-autistic “expert”, who keeps repeating idiotic dogma like “autistic people have no compassion or feelings”, “autistic people cannot put themselves in other people’s shoes” or other such crap.
We all know those people exist. Temple Grandin’s mother knew they exist. She chose to listen to her sense and raise the girl as any child. Tell your friends this:

Being a parent of an autistic child is like being a parent to ANY child.

You get your children as babies so that you learn to parent them.
You listen to them. You observe them. You learn to read their body language. You learn what makes them tick. You learn what calms them down. You learn what they like and what they don’t like. You learn how sensitive they are.

Babies aren’t verbal either. Do you drag them, too, if they scream when you pick them up? Probably you would.
I mean, it is common sense that you don’t drag children anywhere! Getting upset about it is sane and normal. Not “judging”.

Also, if you really cared about kids and getting help, you wouldn’t mind the way the help is offered. But, apparently, it’s more important to be right than to be happy. After all, this mother whines about being judged, not asking for solutions.

My solution is to let the boy stay away from situations he obviously finds stressful. Come on. It’s not rocket science.

This mother got herself pregnant and she chose not to abort the pregnancy. She is voluntarily in the situation she is in. Let her “man up” and stop whining and finding excuses and “defending” herself against deserved critique.

And you, too. Yes, you are whining. “I’m being attacked” “you need to express yourself less aggressive”, whine whine whine.

Why should we sugarcoat our advice to make it easier for you to swallow? It’s your NN privilege you need to swallow.

to which this neurotypical troll responded with the following video – no i cannot show it here i am on a free plan for WordPress – then she followed up with this little gif and finally she posted this Mike Myers gif.

so just your garden variety neurotypical troll. it is a my wife said – whether any of us have kids or not is totally irrelevant – we can still consider child abuse abominable and abhorrent. it is these kinds of people who not only condone abuse of autistic children and adults, but perpetuate it and celebrate it.

i am sure this piece of garbage is sitting somewhere feeling really smug and satisfied with herself for having ‘told a bunch of retarded mental cases off’- one of them her own cousin.

 

how NTs dominate the ND narrative

Just shouting out for Autism Awareness Week

My 'Morning' Coffee

the text below was adapted from this article. i have switched out ‘cis’ for ‘neurotypical’ and ‘trans’ for ‘neurodifferent’. the original article was written by Cristan Williams.

there are, by orders of magnitude, more neurotypical people than neurodifferent people in the world. when one considers the amount of discourse happening around the neurodifferent experience, due to sheer numbers, a neurotypical understanding of “neurodifferent issues” is dominant in our society today. this dynamic ensures that the dominant “neurodifferent” narrative is also a false narrative that is repeated, analyzed, and criticized ad nauseum by a largely neurotypical audience, reinforcing the validity of this dominant (and factually inaccurate) “neurodifferent” narrative. when neurodifferent people protest the propagation of the dominant (and factually inaccurate) “neurodifferent” narrative about the neurodifferent experience, neurodifferent people are told that we are stifling free speech, that we are snowflakes, or that we just need to learn to…

View original post 220 more words

TERFs are no better than MRAs

Ha! Yes. This is so spot on that I, a trans-man, could have written it myself – good job Dale 🙂

Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants

Recently I have discovered a particularly insidious group of seemingly progressive women who have turned out to be using the same selfish, arrogant, and offensive impulses as anti-feminists or Men’s Right Activists (MRAs). These women are known as TERFs, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, and they are very dangerous!

Until tonight, I did not know all the bogus and hateful claims of the TERFs, but a blog entry seems to have finally assembled them together for all to see.

View original post 630 more words

Mass-shootings are a white male privilege

My previous post on the matter of white male privilege and mass-shootings/school-shootings can be found here
———

“You’re confusing the people fearful of having their guns taken away (the fearful white people to whom I was referring) with the unbalanced overwhelmingly white males that are murdering people en masse.”

Of course ‘white people’ with guns (they shouldn’t have imo) are fearful that they might lose their privilege (and their guns). However “angry white men” is exactly what this is about – not ‘white people’. Talking about ‘white people’ in the context is a deflective measure that, imo, only serves one purpose – remove the focus from the white male privilege that is the very core of why we have”unbalanced overwhelmingly white males that are murdering people en masse.”

That those opposed to being shot by these “angry white men”, is not talking about taking away all guns (though they should, imo) doesn’t seem to register with ‘white people who are also gun-owners’. That is just another hallmark of ‘white privilege’ – because the ‘white people who are also gun-owners’ cannot comprehend why anyone would be afraid to be shot by them, because ‘they would never shoot anyone, they are nice people’. (if they would never shoot anyone – why have a gun in the first place?)

This guy just doesn’t get it:

“On my Facebook feed, I see many more pro-gun posts by women than I do by men”

No – removing the ‘color-signifier’ does not help.

How is this relevant to the discussion, other than as a deflection from your own white male privilege – it isn’t. And you simply don’t get why.

Why do I keep pointing back to “angry white men” and the white male privilege that drives them to believe they have the right to go Rambo or Wick on their schoolmates? Because the issue with white males who go Rambo or Wick on their schoolmates isn’t about pro or anti-guns or which gender is which.

It is about a very specific kind of privilege – white male privilege – and a very specific kind of gun – the AR-15 and AR-15 style rifles – i.e a military style guns that has the capacity to kill a lot of people in a very short amount of time. In the most recent school-shooting in Parkland it took one man 6.20 minutes to kill 17 and wound 17 – that’s 34 people in 6.20 minutes…

“When a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, he was carrying an AR-15-style rifle that allowed him to fire upon people in much the same way that many American soldiers and Marines would fire their M16 and M4 rifles in combat. Since 2007, at least 173 people have been killed in mass shootings in the United States involving AR-15s, according to a New York Times analysis. The grim list includes crimes in Newtown, Conn.; Las Vegas; San Bernardino, Calif.; and now Parkland, Fla.” (New York Times).

Unless the white (privileged) people who are afraid that they will lose their guns are hiding AR-15s and AR-15 style rifles – i.e a military style guns that has the capacity to kill a lot of people in a very short amount of time in their closets and under their beds and plan to use them against innocent people, they have nothing to fear.

 

White Male Privilege, the gun-lobby and the survivors of Parkland/MSD

“The NRA and it’s supporters have viciously attack the teen survivors of the Parkland/MSD School shootings,
Those brave souls have been labeled, “skinhead lesbian”, “immature”, “paid actors”, “coached and scripted”….all in a frantic attempt to detract from their legitimate concern about not being gunned down in their classrooms…
They have been mocked, degraded and attacked, because apparently having assault style weapons in the hands of angry white men is infinitely more important than preventing school massacres, infinitely more important than preventing abusive boyfriends and husbands from shooting their estranged spouses/girlfriends…
I cannot understand the perverse logic that insists that gun ownership supersedes the well being of these people, and the right of us all to be free from the threat of gun violence…” (Ronald Eugene Grossman)

Neither can I – until I actually think about it. The answer is quite simple. White male privilege. Not all agree of course – especially not white males:

“I would take issue with only two words of the OP. Instead of “angry white men,” I would suggest “fearful white people.”

I bet you would – because you are a white male and you are scared witless that these young adults from Parkland/MSD will succeed. That they will actually remove part of your privilege and create a society where you are just equal to everyone else. No power beyond what G-d gave you.

The problem is ‘white male privilege’ and the sense of ‘entitlement’ this leads to – they (the shooters) really believe they have the right to ‘go all Rambo or Wick’ on their schoolmates if they think they have the slightest little offense to avenge themselves for. Without guns these white males with entitlement issues would not have the means to act on their privilege.

Of course pointing to side-issues, that are irrelevant to the matter at hand, is a favored tactics – just use a straw-man to deflect the issue away from your white maleness – after all it is part of your white male privilege to do so:

“The most pro-NRA posts I see are posted by women”

(That was the fattest straw man I have seen in a while.) Now, back to the matter of the vast majority of school-shooters being white males with entitlement issues, thinking they can ‘go all Rambo or Wick’ on anyone, anywhere simply because they are white and male.

While NRA might not actively attempt to physically erase the Parkland/MSD survivors and protesters, NRA has enough sway with f.i white supremacists, tea party rednecks or survivalist militias to rile them up. Even to a point where any of these groups will consider physical violence against the Parkland/MSD survivors and protesters. Especially if they feel that they are ‘losing the battle’.

Luckily for the Parkland/MSD survivors and protesters, the gun-lobby cannot very well ‘go all Rambo or Wick’ on them, not without severe repercussions – though I do believe that they would happily do so, and some might even be seriously planning to do so.

In which case we will have to look for a skilled white male sniper with military background or the equivalent. Because that will not be a ‘lone gun-man snuck into the crowd’ – that will be a ‘lone-gun-man on a roof-top with highly organized back-up and financing’.

But that is just another part of White Male Privilege.

Accidents with guns do not just happen

“A 7-month-old baby is in hospital after being accidentally shot by a 4-year-old at a house in Temple, Texas.”[…]”I’m not there to judge them, but in my family, it happened once with my cousin,” Martinez told KXXV. “My cousin killed accidentally my other cousin. It happens. Accidents happen.” (Crooks and Liars)

Accidents with guns do not just happen. A 4-year old doesn’t just shoot a 7-month-old baby ‘by accident’. There is nothing accidental about it. A 4-year old shoots his 7-month-old baby sibling because he had access to a gun. A gun about which his parents had a sign on their porch saying:

“The average response time of a 911 call is 23 minutes. The response time of a .357 is 14 hundred feet per second.”

So they knew that what they let their 4-year old ‘find and play with’, there was no going back from. So, no there was no accident. The parents murdered their own child by not taking adequate safety precautions with their firearms. They should be arrested, tried and convicted of murder. I am not sure I do not consider this premeditated murder even.

If you cannot store a lethal weapon in such a manner that your child cannot get access to it, and that child shoots another person, you should go to jail for murder.

…getting carried away with being politically correct…

“Perhaps I am over simplifying things but what are we going to do about the entire French language. If I remember correctly, all nouns are either masculine or feminine. Personally, I think we’re getting carried away with being politically correct. I suppose I shouldn’t be identifying the sex of my puppies when they are born, I should let them decide once mature which sex they want to identify with. Unless you are very familiar with a person, it is a sign of respect to call them Mr or Mrs but then I’m old school. Never thought I would say this but I am actually glad I am nearing the end of my life because what this world will be like in 25 years scares the crap out of me.”

I responded: “I suppose I shouldn’t be identifying the sex of my puppies when they are born, I should let them decide once mature which sex they want to identify with.”

Are you aware that you just reduced every transgender person in the world to ‘an animal’? No, just because you see your dogs/puppies as personalities/family-members, they are not people. They do most likely not think or feel about their gender the way people do, and thus are not negatively affected by being misgendered by cisfolk addressing them on the phone.

FYI it is extremely painful and humiliating to be misgendered – it affects one’s entire being and sense of one’s place in the world.

Your comment about the French language is just stupid and uneducated – why would you want to change the gender of a general noun, like a car – une voiture – or a balloon – un ballon?

The person who posted the OP came in and said:
Henric – I can assure you that Carol would never “reduce any transgender person in the world to an animal”. I believe she was pointing out – quite correctly – that people judge a person’s gender by what they see. That’s not always the right decision, but it’s pretty standard across the board. I think she was saying that we shouldn’t assume….

I believe that you believe [name] would never “reduce any transgender person in the world to an animal” and I am not questioning your perception of her as she is your friend. However she did qualify “I think we’re getting carried away with being politically correct” right before she suggested that she not gender her puppies but let them do that themselves. With those two utterances she said: puppy=transgender person=puppy. She might not have intended to, but that is what she did, and I pointed this out to her, so she can do better in the future.

Comparing transgender people to puppies is not acceptable, and it does carry the implications I point out.

I agree that every now and then being politically correct is carried to some absurd places – but when it comes to matters of ableism, racism, sexism, genderidentity, and sexual orientation, there cannot be any middle ground or too much political correctness.

Trump is human

We have to acknowledge that Donald J Trump is human. He might a terrible human, and possibly a really nasty person, I agree. His political views might be abhorrent to some of us.  Nevertheless in all of what he does and do not do, he is human, and his actions can be analyzed from a human point of view.

When I look at how he is dealing with the Mueller investigation and with Mueller himself I am reminded of the old saying “If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that holla is the one ya’ hit.” – the question I am asking is: How was Trump hit?

Is he simply hypersensitive and feels that any negative attention, or the possibility of negative attention, is a threat to his existence?

Or is he actually guilty and naturally scared witless of getting caught?

Or is it, as my wife suggested when we discussed this, that he is so used to be obeyed, that when he said the first time the Russia connection shouldn’t be investigated, he expected everyone to drop it. That he simply cannot understand why people think it must be investigated?

Or does he have Aspergers? This was also suggested by my wife, because every now and then he seems confounded by the situation – he looks like he doesn’t have a clue as to what’s happening or how to deal with it. He doesn’t have a script to most of the situations he finds himself in.

When my wife brought up Aspergers I was reminded of a meme I saw on Facebook that claimed to depict Barack Obama’s and Donald Trump’s  very different reactions to the Sandy Hook and Parkland school-shootings respectively. What I remembered of the images was that Obama was crying and Trump was smiling.

I know from experience that Aspies use ‘scripts‘ to a higher degree than non-Aspies to handle social and semi-social situations, so for me the visual memory of Trump smiling in the aftermath of Parkland clicked with ‘Aspergers’. Smiling at the camera even under very somber circumstances would be a possibility for an Aspie if they do not have a script for ‘very somber circumstances’. They could plausibly default to what they ‘normally’ do in-front of a camera – smile – (another script). Not because they do not feel sad or somber or because they are callous or unfeeling, but because they do not have a script for the specific situation.

I wanted to check out that meme once more, so I searched with “obama at sandy hook v trump at parkland” and I found it:

What I found stunned me – yes, I was shocked, angry, sad and frustrated when I realized that this image is a hoax inasmuch as it is misleading – Presidential Responses to School Shootings. 

“Both of these images are real. The photograph of Obama was taken on 5 January 2016, while the President was speaking about the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting”[…]”The photograph of Trump is also real, but it is slightly misleading. The image included in the viral meme is a cropped version of a photograph that was posted to Trump’s official Instagram page after he visited victims of the Parkland school shooting at a hospital in Broward County. The original image shows that Trump is posing with the medical staff, many of whom are also smiling” (my emphasis)

I scrolled down and found two videos – one of Obama’s speech in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school-shooting and one of Trump’s speech in the aftermath of the Parkland school-shooting:

From a human perspective I would say that Trump’s speech was appropriately somber and sympathetic. It was also well delivered with the right amount of emotion and gravity – ‘The idiot Trump‘ could not have delivered that speech.

This caused me to start a process of re-evaluating Trump as a person.

How much of what we see is Trump trying desperately to deliver to those around him (Tea-Baggers), what he believes a President should (because he has no scripts for ‘being the President’) and how much is actually Donald Trump?

Are his fumbling, stumbling and quite often unintelligible stunts in-front of the TV-cameras a result of him not having the scripts for those situations in combination with the stress and confusion that would normally assault an Aspie in such situations? Are his crazy tweets and firings of people in situations he cannot handle simply Trump defaulting to doing what he knows how to do from being a businessman, i.e defaulting to the scripts he does know?

If I had been a CEO all my life and was suddenly made President, perhaps without wanting to be, and not really knowing what that means, I would resort to what I know how to do to relieve the stress of not knowing what to do.

Back to the initial questions in this blog post.

Is he simply hypersensitive and feels that any negative attention, or the possibility of negative attention, is a threat to his existence?

It is quite possible isn’t it? Given what little we know about his personal background, childhood and young adulthood, I’d say it is very possible.

Or is he actually guilty of something and naturally scared witless of getting caught?

What if he is not guilty of colluding with the Russians – but those who brought him to power are – and there is something he is guilty of that has nothing to do with the Russians, that would destroy him?

Or is it, as my wife suggested when we discussed this, that he is so used to be obeyed, that when he said the first time the Russia connection shouldn’t be investigated, he expected everyone to drop it. That he simply cannot understand why people think it must be investigated?

Trump is first and foremost a businessman, a CEO – a corporation of the size we are talking about is not run by the employees. There is no democratic process in place, except among the share-holders to some extent. There are no ‘branches of government’ executive, legislative and judicial, that has to have their say of ‘yea or nay’ before the CEO can make a decision and act on it. What the CEO says is final is final, and if you do not like it or object to that, you are fired. If the CEO says there was no collusion there was no collusion. End of story.

Could it be a combination of all this?

Yes, it could, and I think it is.

I think Trump is trying to ‘be President’ the same way he is ‘being a CEO’ – and it is not working because the US is not a corporation. I think Trump is hypersensitive and feels that any negative attention is a threat to his personal existence. I also think that he never wanted to be the President of the US – he wanted to run for president, but he did not expect or want to win. I think Trump is guilty of something and scared witless of getting caught and I also think he is so used to be the one making the final decisions that it is inconceivable to him why Mueller must investigate Russia’s possible interference in the 2016 presidential election without Trump’s interference.

NTs, their gimp-splaining and privilege

i came across this the other the other day – posted to my Neurodifferent Blog. then i posted a bit from it to Facebook, and tagged a few of my neurodifferent friends. the post took off and got a few shares, a few likes and everything seemed to be going very nicely.

until a neurotypical individual came in and decided to “share their point of view” with the rest of us. it went the usual way when neurotypicals weigh in on matters of neurodifference – to sheol in a hand-basket:

Neurotypical:
Well, there are some of us, “neurotypical” (even I’m not pretty sure of filling all the description for it) that want to care about and deal with autism. In the small school where I work, we have 3 students with Asperger and 2 with autism (that’s the reason I follow B’s page) and what we do is learning and teaching the other kids to handle meltdowns, to understand the reasons of their behavior and how to help them to feel part of the society. We work a lot with all the students with their emotional education and we have had good results because the five of them feel accepted and now are pretty much as B, able to do wonderful things for the others.

Ok, the way they used quote marks around neurotypical told my right away that they were being defensive about the label, i.e not acknowledging it as a valid designation for people who are not neurodifferent. then there is the little matter of being totally OT (remember the original post was about how autists are being portrayed on television and in movies). then they go pretty self-promotive on the lot of us, and as icing on the cake, they throw in some gratuitous praise for one of my friends (whom i feel is rather shallow, into camouflaging and has a an attitude of defending neurotypical people when they are being offensive or stupid in relation to neurodifference). all that pissed me off and i wanted to rip this piece of horse-manure a new asshole. my wife advised me to not do that. i complied:

Henric C. Jensen Âû:
how is this even remotely related to the portrayal of autists on television and in movies?
i am sorry, but your post, comes across, to me, like “I know all about dealing with black people, I have black friends”, and i feel very much like i am being gimp-splained to. again. this post is about how autistic people are being portrayed by neurotypical people on neurotypical television and in neurotypical movies.
i realize that you are trying your very best to be an ally in sharing this with me and those i have tagged in the OP, however, your neuronormal/neurotypical privilege is showing. maybe you could review your post and see how that might be?

so far everything is still sort of good.
but then the neurotypical asshole comes in and says:

To fit your expectations? No. I’m expressing my point of view, if you feel it’s against the policies and objectives of the page, I ask B and administrators of the page to delete it. If you feel threatened I apologize.

what?? did they just demand that i accept their definition of the OP? did they actually claim it as their right to abuse me on my own wall? did this piece of excrement just claim that they have the right to be offensive in their treatment of me and my tagged friends, because one of the tagged people runs another page dealing with autism?

yup that was what they did.

at that point my wife released me from my restraints and i responded:

Henric C. Jensen Âû
this is is MY wall, not Bryan’s page – I am the administrator here – you are in my house and YOU ARE BEING RUDE.

my wife decided to respond to this and when she went to copy the comments they were gone. yes, the piece of shit decided to delete their comment, to which i had responded in a sub-thread. lucky for me i had copied and saved it to Edit-pad, and because the discussion was open in another tab, i also had a screen-shot.

i hate neurotypicals – yes, as a general rule i do. they are condescending, overbearing, ignorant, stupid, lack empathy, self-centered, selfish and crude. if i run in to someone who is not like this, i assume they are neurodifferent.

neurotypicals cannot deal with autistic people demanding our right to live our lives on our own terms, without neurotypical intervention or intrusion. they cannot wrap their minds around the idea that we are whole individuals, that we are not broken and that apart from them checking their privilege, we do not need them.

 

Jerome Maida – a male chauvinist asshole

“Vikander’s appearance is also markedly different than Jolie’s,” the writer, Jerome Maida, wrote. “She never comes across as having an ounce of sex appeal and, at times, looks like she could be 16.”

You did not just say that!? Yes, yes you did :D. Oh man… I wonder which rock you have been camping under, with your male chauvinist friends, for the last 17 years.
Here’s a little visual re-cap for you:

Lara Croft 1996 – how game devs imagined strong women

Lara Croft – Tomb Raider – 2001 Jerome Maida’s wet dream

 Lara Croft was introduced on October 25, 1996, at a time when the Gaming Industry and Gaming Community were still believed to be inhabited by horny, anti-social teen-age boys, who wanted huge hulky male characters they could identify with, and scantily clad, buxom women they could have wet dreams about.

 Lara Croft, as a female action-game hero (i.e the main character), has always had problems with her clothing and physical attributes. Hot pants, tank-top, huge boobs, no muscles/muscle-tone and basically nothing else, while fighting monsters and searching dungeons/ruins is not very credible. Those problems were easily transferred to the movie screen.

 Angelina Jolie did a good job in the 2001 movie. Except the physical appearance of the role – Croft’s are padded out to a 36D, a half-cup size smaller than those of the video character she is based on – does not have much to say to young women, apart from the idea that they exist only as male jerk-off objects.

 But it works for horny anti-social teenage boys with not much other to do in their free time than play video games/watch movies and jerk off.
It seems Jerome is still a horny, anti-social teenage boy.

 ”Toss in the lack of curves and Warner Brothers could have decided to gender bend and make a film titled “Luke Croft” — and it would have come across the same way. They would not have had to change the script at all.”

Oh you tosser, they already did – The name of the game is Uncharted and the character is Nathan Drake. Let’s have a look at him, shall we? Shall we compare the two?

Nathan Drake – Uncharted 4 – 2016

Lara Croft – Tomb Raider – 2018

Yup it works fine – those two could swap roles, jobs, and games with each other and we wouldn’t notice much.

That is the way it should work. That is what women and some non-chauvinist men have been saying for years. When gender-roles are no longer written into movie scripts – when the gender of the actor cast in a role no longer matters, then we are really getting somewhere in terms of gender equality. It works just fine. Except for Jerome Maida and his anti-social male chauvinist friends.

”Such interchangeability is not exactly empowering for women.”

Interesting opinion – except for the obvious that Jerome Maida, being a man, cannot empirically know what is empowering for women.

But it is.

Not having to translate what you see on the Screen; not having to filter out the sexualization of yourself; not having to be aware of how you are being objectified is very empowering to women.

 That is why this shift in the portrayal of Lara Croft is such a huge and important turning point and that is why the point can only be made by and through Lara Croft. No other game/movie character could have done it. Well done, Alicia Vikander, Roar Uthaug and Warner Bros.

Do Americans love their children?

Today I came across this post, by Dana Rae via Ethical Reporters against Faux News on Facebook

Today in school we practiced our active shooter lockdown. One of my first graders was scared and I had to hold him. Today is his birthday. He kept whispering “When will it be over?” into my ear. I kept responding “Soon” as I rocked him and tried to keep his birthday crown from stabbing me.

I had a mix of 1-5 graders in my classroom because we have a million tests that need to be taken. My fifth grader patted the back of the 2nd grader huddled next to him under a table. A 3rd grade girl cried silently and clutched the hand of her friend. The rest of the kids sat quietly (casket quiet) and stared aimlessly in the dark.

As the”intruder” tried to break into our room twice, several of them jumped, but remained silently. The 1st grader in my lap began to pant and his heart was beating out of his chest, but he didn’t make a peep. Eventually, the principal announced the lockdown was lifted.

I turned on the lights, removed the table from in front of the door, opened the blinds and announced “Let’s get back to work. ” I was greeted with blank faces… petrified faces…. tear stained faces… confused faces… elated faces…and one “bitch REALLY?” face.

This is teaching in 2018. And no… I don’t want a gun. #teacherlyfe

I showed it to my Wife. This prompted my Wife to go and dig out this gem on You Tube:

“In Europe and America there’s a growing feeling of hysteria.
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets.
MIster Krushchev said, “We will bury you.”
I don’t subscribe to this point of view.
It’d be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too.
How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?
There is no monopoly on common sense
On either side of the political fence.
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.
Believe me when I say to you,
I hope the Russians love their children too

There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the president?
There’s no such thing as a winnable war,
It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore.
Mister Reagan says, “We will protect you.”
I don’t subscribe to this point of view.
Believe me when I say to you,
I hope the Russians love their children too
We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.
But what might save us, me and you,
Is if the Russians love their children too”

Then Ethical Reporters Against Faux News followed up with this article:

East High active shooter drill simulates real gunfire

Yes, you read that right – in the US school children are ‘trained’ to know what “gunfire sounds like”!

“We don’t want to scare them. We want this to become as close to reality as possible,” Spinella said”.”

But as Dana Rae’s text at the top of this entry shows – many younger children do not know or understand the difference between ‘pretend’ and ‘reality’. So every time they are put through an ‘active shooter lockdown’ drill in school, they are emotionally, physically and mentally forced to go through the same trauma as if it had been an actual school shooting.

The only difference being that no-one was killed.

“Children suffer in more ways than PTSD and depression. For example, children that come face to face with armed conflict often feed off of the hostility around them and become violent and aggressive. Cairns says that exposure to violence at a young age makes such communication seem normal. “This is putting young people at risk for continuing cycles of violence,” he says. War-exposed children often imitate the violence they have seen while playing games and solve personal conflicts with aggression.”
Ed Cairns of the University of Ulster

So to be blunt – the US is not only NOT preventing new school-shootings/mass-shootings (by adopting sensible and civilized gun-laws) – they are actively TRAINING a new generation of mass- and school-shooters… by creating war-zone-scenarios in school.

My question in the head-line “Do Americans love their children?” is valid in the face of what they are doing to their children.

My American friends will of course say that they do – and yet, so much information coming from the US contradicts that.

From my POV Americans love their guns and their Constitutional 2nd Amendment (more about that in another blog-post) rights more than they love their children’s G-d-given rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

They love their guns and their Constitutional 2nd Amendment so much that they are willing to injure, maim and scar their children permanently  for life and even teach them, in school, how to be a violent mass-murderers.

And when their children grow up and act in accordance with what they have been taught – what have been imprinted on their minds and souls through active shooter drills – they will simply shake their heads and demand more guns so they can defend themselves…