At this point, it's become customary for me to have a whinge about ANZAC day, around about this time of year. Well, this time, I've decided to mix things up a bit, by not only having a whinge about ANZAC day, but also having a whinge about a bunch of other things as well. Two birds with one stone and all that. So anyway, here's a run down of all the things that are getting on my tits at the moment:
ANZAC DAY
(I thought I'd get the formalities out of the way early.)
When I was a wee lass, ANZAC day was a day of solemn remembrance when we were supposed to reflect on the horror and absurdity of war. The ANZAC tale was the story of a bunch of young men who sailed half way around the world on some grand adventure, only to find themselves being ordered, by an incompetent and uncaring foreign command, to pointlessly charge up a hill, into a fucking meat-grinder. The lesson you were supposed to take away was "The sacrifices of war are immense. So don't fucking get into it lightly, okay?"
As I got older, I noticed more and more of this shit started creeping in about the ANZAC spirit, mate-ship, bravery, and the heroic exploits of our forebears. Watching the ANZAC day coverage yesterday, I lost count of the amount of references I heard to the ANZACs fighting for "freedom, democracy, and the rule of law". At one point, I turned to my dad, and asked him:
The icing on the cake was this dopey looking woman who came on to talk about how we spend too much time celebrating the stories of white men at war, and need to spend more time celebrating the stories of women and coloured people at war. Jesus Christ, if we're actually at the point of debating which stories we need to celebrate more or celebrate less, on our big "war story celebration day", I think we need to have a good hard fuckin' look at what ANZAC day has become.
Of course, there's always the possibility that we take a good hard look and then decide that we like what it's become. Anyway, if you want to hear this exact same rant again, come back next year. In the meantime, on to my other gripes-of-the-week.
The InCel Movement
MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) is a movement. MGTOW is an online community of blokes, most of whom have been made bitter by bad relationship experiences; experiences often involving expensive divorce settlements and messy child-custody battles. However, this alone does NOT make them a movement. What makes them a movement is that members aspire to a lifestyle in which they have as little to do with women as humanly possible. It's this unifying philosophy/aspiration/course-of-action which is crucial to defining them as a movement. Otherwise every fucking Facebook page and forum on the internet would constitute its own "movement".
In contrast, InCels (Involuntarily Celibate) are an online community of blokes, who get together to whinge about the fact that they can't get a root. InCels have no guiding philosophy or course of action they are trying to adhere to. Yes, they're all united by a goal that they're trying to achieve, but none of them have any idea how to achieve it. If they did, they wouldn't be part of the community.
In short, InCel is not a fucking movement.
Also, a bloke who drives a van into a crowd of people because he's frustrated by the fact that he can't get a root is not a fuckin' terrorist. A terrorist is someone who spreads terror in order to further a political agenda. All this bloke is is a wretched cunt.
The Whipsaw
The term "whipsaw" was coined by a bloke on one of the American political podcasts I listen to, but it's something I've been noticing more and more on local news. See, there's this common formula in TV and radio news, where the newsreader will make an assertion, and then play a short clip that backs up that assertion. As an example:
A "whipsaw" occurs when a newsreader makes an assertion and follows it up with a clip that does nothing to support said assertion, or actually undermines it. Another example:
If you weren't paying attention, you might not notice anything wrong with this report, and you'd probably come away with the impression that the leader of the opposition had condemned the prime minister, because, after all, that's what you've been told happened. However, if you were paying attention, you'd have noticed that no evidence was provided of any such condemnation having taken place. The clip you heard did not actually support the claim. This is a whipsaw.
The worst example I've seen of this recently was during the Russian election:
Acne
I've complained before about the fact that recently, I'm suffering the worst acne I've had since I was a teenager. And it's not even so much that I've been getting a lot of pimples, it's that they've been coming up in really weird and uncomfortable places. I've had them up my nose, in my ears, on my elbows, knees, shoulders, and arse, under my armpits and in my thigh/abdomenal crease. I've even had a couple inside my mouth. Yesterday I had a pimple come up inside my left nipple. Not on my areola, but actually inside my fuckin' nipple. Hormonal changes or not, this is getting beyond a fuckin' joke.
5 comments :
I noticed ANZAC Day suddenly went into patriotic overdrive during the Howard years
RE: what about the woman who first coined the term'involuntary celibacy'and built a website around it? She is SUPER annoying - “It feels like being the scientist who figured out nuclear fission and then discovers it’s being used as a weapon for war.”
Is 'whipsaw' being used in this way? I've never come across it
I don't remember the last time I had a pimple
Count your blessings Squib. Trust me, you don't want them.
Come to think of it, I do believe you're right about ANZAC changing dramatically under Howard.
I actually don't know that much about the woman who coined the phrase. But I have been looking into the "man-o-sphere" for more than a year now. Which reminds me, I should get around to publishing my findings. Soon~ish.
I've only heard the term "whipsaw" used by the bloke who coined it. And given that his podcast isn't super popular, I can't imagine that it's going to catch on. But it's the best way I know to describe this particular phenomenon; which seems to be becoming an epidemic.
I'm shat off by what ANZAC day has become. Actually what Howard did first was insist that we have the public holiday on the day, rather than the nearest monday/friday so we can have a long weekend. And then ramped up the rhetoric. I actually went to Gallipoli for ANZAC day in the mid-90s and felt good about myself for doing it. I would not go now for a million reasons (the main one actually is the political situation in Turkey - when I went it was a West-looking secular republic, these days, its govt is all Muslim hardliners who want women back in the stone age and staged a fake coup a year or so ago as an excuse to shore up its power structures).
I did not know until now what incel stood for. I mean fucking hell, you are single for whatever reason (probably that you are a fucking psycho by the sounds) so you join a movement that essentially blames women for that. Their belief that women should be sexually available and submit to them regardless of their own feelings is repugnant. I'd have divorced my husband by now if he thought that was okay. In contrast MGTOW reminds me of those militant femininsts who wanted to have a society without men; a bit pathetic, and short-sighted, but whatever. If they want to try, they can go ahead. As long as "as little as possible" doesn't require us to have sex with them involuntarily as well.
Also: re pimples. It's not scurvy is it? You eat enough citrus and green leafy things? And if it isn't that, still sounds somewhat odd. My mum got cycstic acne and don't remember her complaining about pimples anywhere worse than the bum. (mind you, I've had the odd one in my ear and nose too, but not one after the other and so on) Either way, sounds awful and I hope it passes soon.
Jesus Christ, I hope it's not scurvy. At any rate, I don't feel lethargic and my gums aren't bleeding. And even though I eat almost no fruit, I eat heaps of veg, including the green and leafy varieties.
I still wouldn't call InCels a movement. More like a bunch of frustrated cunts impotently raging into their keyboards. And from what I've seen of them, I don't think it's so much that they think women should be sexually available to them, more so that they really really wish that they were.
As for MGTOWs, the general line of thought there seems to be that the risk/reward dynamic in getting involved with women has skewed too much towards the "risk" end of the spectrum to be worth it. A lot of them try to avoid sex, and a lot of the ones that can't manage that solicit prostitutes instead. A few even try experimenting with homosexual relationships, but I haven't seen any evidence of this actually working for heterosexually inclined men.
Which reminds me, the least productive encounter I've had online in the last year or so was with a lesbian feminist; literally, a woman who turned to lesbianism as a way to fight the patriarchy. When I asked her to explain to me her world-view, she got indignant and informed me that she wasn't my teacher, and I should educate myself on the subject. When I replied that the only place I could get her world-view was from her own mouth, she responded with a torrent of abuse. I know this is cliched, but I couldn't help but wonder if she wasn't just sexually frustrated.
It also made me wonder, what if you were raised in a commune of these people and you'd lived your whole life never having seen a man? What would happen when you reached puberty? Would you suddenly develop a yearning for something that you didn't even know existed? What would that be like?
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