There was supposed to be a debate on abortion last Tuesday at Christ Church, Oxford. Brendan O’Neill and Timothy Stanley were the scheduled debaters.
That fact by itself fills me with a great cloud of weary irritation. If you want to stage a debate on abortion, why the fuck ask two men to do it? What is the point? Why is it of more interest or significance to hear what two men have to say on the subject than it is to hear what two women have to say? Why just always ignore and jump over women as if they weren’t there, even when talking about things that affect women directly in a way they don’t affect men? Why do that? It’s not as if Brendan O’Neill is such a brilliant thinker or so original or reflective that no one else will do. On the contrary, he’s shallow and highly predictable.
People protested, the debate was canceled, O’Neill is now preening himself on being a martyr for free speech. (What I said – predictable.)
Have you met the Stepford students? They’re everywhere. On campuses across the land. Sitting stony-eyed in lecture halls or surreptitiously policing beer-fuelled banter in the uni bar.
Oh look, a dog whistle. “Banter” is code for sexist shit-talking and harassment.
I was attacked by a swarm of Stepford students this week. On Tuesday, I was supposed to take part in a debate about abortion at Christ Church, Oxford. I was invited by the Oxford Students for Life to put the pro-choice argument against the journalist Timothy Stanley, who is pro-life. But apparently it is forbidden for men to talk about abortion. A mob of furious feministic Oxford students, all robotically uttering the same stuff about feeling offended, set up a Facebook page littered with expletives and demands for the debate to be called off. They said it was outrageous that two human beings ‘who do not have uteruses’ should get to hold forth on abortion — identity politics at its most basely biological…
Oh shut up. That objection shouldn’t be brushed off as “identity politics.” It is objectionable for men to talk over the heads of women about whether women should have particular rights or not. I think once the debate was scheduled it shouldn’t have been canceled, but I also think it shouldn’t have been scheduled in that form in the first place.
Last month he encountered other “Stepford students” who thought he was wrong about lad culture and rape.
One — a bloke — said that the compulsory sexual consent classes recently introduced for freshers at Cambridge, to teach what is and what isn’t rape, were a great idea because they might weed out ‘pre-rapists’: men who haven’t raped anyone but might. The others nodded. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Pre-rapists! Had any of them read Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novella about a wicked world that hunts down and punishes pre-criminals, I asked? None had.
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and I can hardly believe what I’m reading. Seriously? If his objection had any merit there should be no driving education, no health education, no disease prevention education, no safety training, no anticipatory instruction of any kind. Yes, students should be taught that consent is required for sex even if they haven’t raped anyone yet, because not everyone understands that consent is required. That’s not some dystopian horror. But then, again, O’Neill isn’t a young female student, so he doesn’t have to worry about young male students who like to drink beer and engage in “banter” and don’t grasp the point that sex without consent is rape. It’s no threat to him, so he’s free to have a cavalier attitude about it, and sneer at people for whom it is a threat.
Heaven help any student who doesn’t bow before the Stepford mentality. The students’ union at Edinburgh recently passed a motion to ‘End lad banter’ on campus. Laddish students are being forced to recant their bantering ways. Last month, the rugby club at the London School of Economics was disbanded for a year after its members handed out leaflets advising rugby lads to avoid ‘mingers’ (ugly girls) and ‘homosexual debauchery’.
Horrors. What a terrible world it will be without leaflets advising lads to avoid ‘mingers’ (ugly girls) and ‘homosexual debauchery’. (“Minger” is a pretty harsh word for “ugly girl,” by the way, given that “minge”=female genitalia. Google says the source is unknown, but it seems impossible that the two can be strictly separated.)
I’m deeply tired of people like O’Neill, people who are relentlessly callous and indifferent about threats to the free participation of people who are not like them.
Honest debate on abortion between two males:
Pro-choice: I do not have the right nor should I have the privilege to tell a woman what to do with her body.
Pro-life: No man should have an abortion.
/debate
I don’t understand the The Stepford Wives reference.
Maybe Mr. O’Neill hasn’t read the book.
I agree entirely with the meat of what you’ve written, so I only have a comment on a minor point, and I apologise for the triviality of it.
Minger is a very new word – I think it was the eighties or nineties when it entered general usage. It was preceded (in my memory, and all of the references I can see) by “minging, which is a Scots word meaning smelly (or lately – distasteful, but also drunk).
Minger is a rather nasty term, but is applied to men and women. I don’t believe there is any connotation of genitalia.
Obviously, the rugby lads are using the term in a sexist manner, and even pretty language wouldn’t make the printed advice to avoid ugly girls ( in conjunction with homophobia) any less debasing and in need of correction. The reaction of the LSE was suitably harsh.
The anti drink drive adverts we have in the UK are usually pretty graphic and intended to shock. That’s not because people think it’s OK to drink and drive but because they don’t connect their actions at the time with the devastation that could occur afterwards. So they show things like someone having a pint with a friend, refusing a second one and being gently goaded into it on the grounds that “one pint won’t hurt” and then we see a terrible accident, lives lost, others ruined. It’s presumably supposed to make that connection between what might seem at the time to be harmless behaviour and the hardest way to realise that it’s not.
We occasionally have anti domestic violence adverts and anti bully adverts that do the same thing. I vaguely remember one from years ago – I think this one was in print – where some kids engaged in some cruel but (what the viewer was supposed to see as) relatively mild teasing and in the next scene the kid had hanged herself. Then it showed all the other bullying that she’d had to deal with and her parents and teachers dismissing individual incidents as mild. The point, of course, is that individual events might seem inconsequential to the bullies, but when you add them up… Again, linking the perception of a seemingly (to the bully) fairly trivial bit of behaviour and the life ending and ruining consequences.
It’s much rarer that we see this message about rape. As we know, anti rape campaigns are usually about what women shouldn’t say or do if they don’t want to get raped.
What Cambridge is doing is of the former kind and seems so obviously to be congratulated that it’s very difficult to imagine how people could object to it. And yet… people seem to find a way.
I think Bernard is right about the more trivial matter of the word “minger”. I think it comes from the Scottish colloquialism “ming”, which means excrement and – by extension – minging means smelly or generally unpleasant. It’s also applied to bad weather or traffic. It is universally considered a seriously offensive word when applied to people, but I don’t think it’s connected to “minge”. Having said that, nobody seems to know what the origins of “minge” are, so I’m sure someone will come along to connect me.
At the risk of becoming the resident Andrew Sullivan gadfly here at B&W, I noticed that he has a post up about this with the title “Illiberal Feminism Strikes Again”.
Yes, it’s just as bad as you might expect, from the title. Sullivan has dived into the Dawkins-style camp of “feminism” with gusto. And this little gem from him at the end of his post is really just wonderful:
But only HIS idea of what feminism is, of course! Actual women themselves, telling him what their real concerns are, and how they view the role of and need for feminism in society–not so much.
Bernard & latsot – Ok, I’m wrong about minge and minger. It does seem odd though – if in the US we had a word “cunter” for “ugly person” it would seem pretty odd to think it had nothing to do with “cunt”…But you’re both there and I’m not, so ok.
Sure. Taking a class is just like being hunted down and punished as a criminal.
It’s another witch hunt terrorist lynching because someone said “Guys, don’t do that”.
…and they call us fragile and hysterical.
Rapists. Heaven help the rapists. >.<
Meanwhile we have another man telling us that saying rape is bad and women's basic bodily autonomy is a right the state should not be able to deny is "hijacking" feminism.
http://38.media.tumblr.com/d0111c17a24a33d2346679ddea1998d3/tumblr_n17ita1Rh71ra8x1ao4_250.gif
Off to read that Andrew Sullivan item…
And Mr F feel free to be the resident Andrew Sullivan gadfly here at B&W. Somebody has to!
I think any any remotely decent human being, if there’s any danger they might, you know, RAPE someone, ought to be mightily glad to have all the help they can get finding out how not to do that. It really IS “Guys, don’t do that” – and that’s friendly, reasonable advice that, among the sane, is well-taken and gratefully received.
If someone’s got a problem with college freshmen being introduced to techniques they may have reached college without having down-pat when it comes to NOT RAPING PEOPLE… they have got no business commenting on college life or practices. At least.
Reading the excerpts from BO’s piece here, I had to wonder whether he had at least achieved the rare feat of concocting an anti-feminist rant without resorting to the “political correctness” denunciation cliché. So I clicked the relevant link.
Alas, O’Neill’s originality has failed him on that count – also. And his commenters – alas, alas, alas!
Not everyone understand that consent is required for sex? Honestly that sounds a lot like the defenses made for elevator guy. He was supposedly just a poor clueless guy who didn’t understand that a cold approach in an elevator wasn’t the right thing to do.
The “Stepford students” thing strikes me as another lame attempt by antifeminists to come up with a phrase that will catch on and go viral, or to be used later as a dogwhistle. O’Neill fails in this attempt. It doesn’t resonate. It doesn’t have the ring of truth. I haven’t read the book, but based on the ’70’s movie, it seems obvious to me that “Stepford” would better apply to antifeminist women who think all women should be compliant, conventionally feminine housewives who wear frilly blouses.
The use of terms like “policing” or “thought police” to describe legitimate, rational criticism is really starting to annoy me. Not only is it ridiculous hyperbole, it is offensive to those who are actual victims of police brutality and other unjust or inhumane treatment by police or paramilitary groups.
Notice how when feminists object to a speaker or speaking event, they protest. When anti-feminists object to speaker or speaking event, they engage in domestic terrorism, using threats of violence to drive speakers into the shadows.
Notice also how faux-feminists will quickly jump on the peaceful protests of feminists and lament the supposed “bullying, silencing tactics” while making nary a peep about the campaigns of terror against feminists.
Out of curiosity, did Andrew “they’re hijacking feminism” Sullivan make any mention about the terrorist threats that caused Anita Sarkeesian’s speech to be canceled?
Ophelia@9:
It’s probably inevitable at this point. Sullivan infuriates me.
themadtapper@14:
The only mention he’s made of her has been to approvingly quote someone involved in the anti-Sarkeesian dvd project. AFAIK he’s said nothing about the death threats against her. But he’s taken time out to approve of another commenter complaining about how Mykeru’s twitter account was suspended.
Ophelia @ 6,
It’s less like that in speech: <minge>: /mɪndʒ/, <minger>: /mɪŋə/. So more like cunt vs. canter.
Still not a nice word, no, and since women are more often judged on their attractiveness implicitly sexist, but not explicitly.
The idea that classes about consent are punishment is very odd.
The idea that people may not understand why and how to obtain clear consent is not even close to being tantamount to prosecuting precrime.
Incidentally, I’m not sure that The Minority Report is quite such a straightforward condemnation of thought policing, being more primarily a commentary on free will. Perhaps he only watched the movie?
Sigh.
Man: “I want to speak in defense of women’s right to autonomy.”
Women: “We don’t want you to do that in this particular way. This way has an ugly history with lots of problems, don’t do it.”
Debate hosts: “Yeah, that seems reasonable. Okay, let’s not do that.”
Man: ‘OH MY GOD THE HORRIBLE ROBOT STEPFORD FEMINISTS SILENCING ME! THEY USED EXPLETIVES AND EVERYTHING! BAD FEMINISTS! BAD!”
Supporting women’s rights: You’re doing it wrong.
If you care about pro choice and women’s right to autonomy, a really good way to support it is to listen to women about how they do and don’t want to be supported. A really bad way to support it is to ignore what lots of women are telling you about how they do and don’t want to be supported, and to decide that you know what’s best for us. Going ahead with a debate on abortion, when lots of women are specifically asking you not to, does not demonstrate a respect for the basic principles underlying the issue of choice.
Is it just me or has rampant LGBT support turned any text using “homosexual debauchery” into an invitation to delight in the idea of people doing “naughty things” despite one’s own heterosexual orientation? I mean they might have well used raucous, decadent or flamboyant! Or fabulous!
The paramount importance of consent – and what consent really means (i.e. not wearing somebody down/intimidating them until they give up and unwillingly acquiesce, which a lot of people are only too happy to regard as “consent”) should be (in appropriate terms in each case, obviously) in bloody primary school, let alone secondary school and uni and the workplace and training for the legal profession, the police and and and …
And this straw-addict is complaining about a class at uni – and calling it a “punishment”. What an arse.
For that matter, it’s one of those basic parts of living among other people that the schools ought to be able to count on parents to instill in kids at home. But if they can’t – and it does look as though that’s not reliably happening, what with journalists and debate professionals regarding it as some sort of blasphemy – then it’s on the schools to fill in the gap. Before the violations actually happen and it’s time for police and the law to make the point.
Once more with feeling.
Maybe I read this wrong. Are you saying that clearly everyone knows what rape is and that it is wrong? Are you suggesting that saying otherwise is providing cover for rapists?
Because that would be fucked up.
If that is what you meant, please go read Meet the Predators. Please go read about the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign and that it works. Go read all of the remarks we see here and all over the internet and the news that tell men when it is OK to rape a woman, that it is a woman’s job to prevent men raping her and when women are allowed to even say they were raped. Clearly, not everyone knows what rape is or that it is always wrong.
If that isn’t what you meant, sorry.
@Steven (and Jackie)
Clearly there are a lot of people out there who would be rapists simply because they have been inculcated into cultures where partners are entitled to be sexually serviced, where drunken sex is normal, where consent to kissing or sexual touching is seen as consent to sex, where “resistance” is something to be worn down by talk, by drink, by drugs.
These may be the easiest types of sexual assault and rape to prevent, because education will stop “nice guys” from accepting that there is any such thing as blurred lines. Moreover, education can emphasize the extra fun to be had as a result of gaining enthusiastic consent and the open atmosphere of being able to discuss sex and sexual expectations.
Predatory rapists may be harder to disrupt, even in their formative years, but clearly a cultural shift will also serve to diffuse some of the violent/aggressive/repressive attitudes which enable rapists to commit crimes, and to escape justice.
And while there’s this gray area where reasonably nice guys commit rape because they’re somehow physically adult and left hazy on the role and nature of consent, it leaves cover for the straight-out predatory ones who, if they understand consent at all, are simply interested in evading or faking it rather than getting it to be mistaken for the nice guys who are clueless rapists and get whatever benefit accrues to someone in that kind of gray area.
If no nice guy is going to commit rape cluelessly, no bad guy is going to be able to emulate one that way.
I agree with the spirit of your points. But if you take the statement “…why the fuck ask two men to do it?”, could that verbage send the signal that not only cannot men debate about women’s subjects but also vice versa. It would be a major step backwards in social progress if it were stated “why should two women urologists debate about which is the best chemotherapy for prostate cancer?”
I know this is not what your intending but at face value couldn’t that corollary be made?
@Jeff Engel,
It sets out ground rules for anyone initiating intimacy, so that it is a mutual dialogue, rather than the onus being on guys one way or another. It changes the dynamic completely, and in a case where cultural norms place most of the power in the hands of men – where currently they do all of the asking and women have to refuse or not to submit.
@ragdish
Experts in their field, then?
Brendan O’Neill is not an expert on the ethics or provision of abortion services. Nor is Timothy Stanley. They don’t even qualify by virtue of being potential recipients of abortion services.
ragdish: Of course it could. And since that argument would mark the speaker as having all the intellectual integrity of a preacher running a bordello, it serves as a useful mark of who should just not be engaged. (The key difference being the area of expertise. In a discussion of scientific fact, the key qualification of the speakers is their technical expertise. In a discussion of rights, the key qualification is the personal relationship to having those rights denied. It might be reasonable for two men to have a debate about, for instance, the specific health risks of abortion; there, being a researcher would be paramount. But arguing about women’s bodily autonomy while not being a woman is insanely presumptuous.)
I know what ragdish is getting at though, or at least I’m aware of a related issue which may not be exactly what ragdish has in mind. There is a value in discussing political aka contested issues from all angles, so as to grasp the reasons for being for or against or neutral. Doing that as a public entertainment called “debate” is a little different, but not radically different. Certainly, I think free discussion of contested issues from all angles should happen, and by “free” I mean including anyone freely taking any side. But for public debates of specific rights of specific sets of people? It’s a sweeping rule, and probably too sweeping, but…all the same, in general, I don’t like this business of people-who-are-immune doing the debating.
I’d say someone ought to bring to a debate either an exceptional personal perspective, or well-developed, readily articulated exceptional background knowledge – if not both. Women have the first of those over men pretty much as a matter of course, and women with the latter should not be a struggle for debate planners to find.
Also, someone to represent a pro-choice point of view who’s at least a borderline rape apologist does not seem to represent a very good choice.
The day any similar significant organisation calls for a public debate on men’s issues and manages to invite two prominent, non-expert women to conduct it, we can see what happens! I would happily preempt that by saying that I think there are plenty of analogous issues where women should allow men to take the lead in the discussion.
I read “…why the fuck ask two men to do it?” precisely as “…why the fuck ask two people who are immune to do it?” At best, the debate utterly lacks any authenticity, and at worst it is is deeply misleading and damaging.
I assumed that you were excluding that class of men who might have expertise in the area, and even then I would expect that the debate would need to be narrowly confined or very carefully explained in order to avoid trampling on women. One of the biggest problems is that there was no pressing need to conduct this particular debate with these two advocates – appropriate people could have been found for the subject, or an appropriate subject for the participants.
I think that the realistic answer to the question ragdish posed, …at face value couldn’t that corollary be made?, is that it would only be damagingly applied by someone acting on an agenda to exclude women.
@3 Bernard Bumner et. al. re: “minge”
South Park did an episode, “A Million Little Fibers”, in 2006, lampooning novelist James Frey’s largely fabricated novel, “A Million Little Pieces”, which Oprah praised until its whole-cloth elements were revealed. One of the characters is “Minge” (aka “Mingey”), who is Oprah’s “vagina” (which is unfortunately used for the external genitalia as well, which I think is the actual intent here, as Mingey’s best friend is Gary, Oprah’s anus) which has become sentient. AND outspoken. And, oddly, male O_O
So anyhow, there IS this understanding *out there*, at least in some circles, that “minge” refers to female genitalia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Fibers
@ Blanche,
Yes – no question about that.
Minging (and the apparent back formations Minger/Ming) are pronounced with a hard g . The Scots word is “mingin”, and seems, as I said, to have originated before either of the other two. That would seem to strengthen the case that there is no common origin with the other word.
Oh a hard g! I didn’t realize that – I’ve never heard it. (I have heard “minge” – on The Office.)
That does make the separateness of the two credible. I take it all back.
Sili explained it to me but I don’t know my phonetic alphabet so I didn’t get it.
If I were a student at the college, I’d be uncomfortable with the way the debate was cancelled. The college administration revoked the permission of a student group to host a public event based on the security issues from a large number of protesters. That’s different than the organizers reconsidering after public protest. My problem wouldn’t be the protesters but a college administration unwilling to accommodate its students’ (both Oxford Student’s for Life and its protesters) speech.
Yes, I’m not a fan of the cancellation.
So…Brendan O’Neill was the uhm…positive pro-choice side of this event? And he immediately devolved into a ‘truefeministTM’ victim of those idiotic women feminists who need FeminismTM wrenched away from their destructive hysterical little hands? Because women who weren’t happy about being actual student entities on campus and not considered participants in discussion of what should happen to THEIR bodies…saw fit to be uppity and protest his noble unconsulting efforts to present what civil rights they should have?
Did I comprehend that correctly?
This is what always baffled me about #elevatorgate. The phrase “Guys – don’t do that” is advice. Specifically, it is advice direct from a woman you might want to pick up on how to make it more likely you will get laid. As in, by not weirding them out in elevators at four in the morning, for starters. It’s always baffled me why I never saw a dudebro make this point. I guess they’d rather pay $3,000 dollars a time to people like Julien Blanc than take free advice from their targets… /shrug/
The comments section of this piece demonstrates the point that O’neill was making pretty clearly. Hysterical….you claim that O’neill doesn’t grasp the point that sex without consent is rape. How on earth did you come to that conclusion?
So you think that shutting down the debate is an appropriate response to ideas that you find offensive? That is the main problem which O’neill is arguing against.
I meant “correct” not “connect” way back up at the top of the thread, but I’m sure you all knew that. Serves me right for posting right before going to bed *checks to see what time it is and whether I’m doing that again right now, I think I’m safe*.
I’m not a fan of the cancellation either. There’s no reason two men shouldn’t pontificate in public about things that only affect them if they decide it does. But there’s sure as shit a bunch of excellent reasons for people to let them – and the organisers – know why it’s a bad idea after, during and especially before the event.
@38 it is a funny thing…. But I think I have an explanation. This kind of man is far more comfortable dealing with ‘women’ as a concept than with a specific woman. I realised, for example, that this kind of may may, say, brag that he wears Axe because ‘girls like it’, but if he ever admitted he wore something because a specific woman–his girlfriend (or even worse, a woman he wasn’t having sex with but wanted to) liked it, he’d be sneered at by his fellow men. So it seems as if they have to avoid at all costs not only listening to what women say, but even the appearance of doing something, or changing their ideas, in response to a woman.
sonofrojblake@38:
No, this is completely wrong. It was advice on how to avoid making women uncomfortable at conventions; it was absolutely not advice on how to increase the probability of her sexual availability.
Jimbo,
Read for comprehension or stop lying. Whichever.
@chrislawson, 42:
Read what I wrote again. Slowly, if you need to. Let me help.
Here’s what I said: “advice […] on how to make it more likely you will get laid”.
Here’s what I did not say: “advice on how to increase the probability of her sexual availability”. That’s something YOU said. Not sure why, and it would be odious to speculate.
I’d love to be able to assume you can see the difference between those two things without help.
The first – the thing I actually said – means it’s advice to men on how to change their own behaviour in a way that will, in the future, make them come across as less creepy and hence more likely to successfully attract a partner.
The second – the bit of bullshit you felt the need to make up and pretend that I said so that you could say I was completely wrong – means it’s advice about how to affect a woman’s behaviour right now. Which, duh, it isn’t. But as we’ve established, I never said it was. #strawman
D’you see?
@guest, 41:
QFT. The corollary to that is that they’ll only listen to men. The corollary to that is that they spend most of their time talking to and listening… to men. Which is a paradox.
In the original exposé of PUAs it’s interesting to see the author’s attitude go from initially impressed to disillusioned when he realises what’s actually going on. The impression is that the entire PUA cult(ure) is a way for straight men to justify spending lots of time talking to and hanging out with other straight men, while simultaneously reinforcing to others and themselves their credentials as firmly heterosexual. The ludicrous fees charged for “seminars” are I think a way of dealing with the cognitive dissonance you get when you self-define as someone who is “all about the laydeez” while spending your free time by choice mostly talking to other men in nametags. That choice totally makes sense if you’ve blown the cost of a skiing holiday on it. /sarcasm.
sonofrojblake –
No, you’re wrong. Chris isn’t wrong, you are. I just watched the video again to make sure, and it’s as I remembered it. It’s not at all advice to men on how to get laid. It’s about how to treat women and how not to make them uncomfortable. The overall subject is how women are treated in the atheist movement, and she talks about her experience as being not necessarily typical but nevertheless worth knowing about, and different from that of Paula Kirby. It has nothing to do with telling men how to get laid, it has everything to do with telling men how not to behave toward women. Just that. Not how to do that so that you will get laid, but just how to do that.
The elevator incident starts at 4:45.
Um… Chris’s actual words were: ” it was absolutely not advice on how to increase the probability of her sexual availability.”
And I never said it was, or anything like that. Already done the details in 44. Hard to see why you’re saying Chris isn’t wrong here, because they have demonstrably just made some bullshit up that I never said and then criticised me for having said it.
“It has nothing to do with telling men how to get laid, it has everything to do with telling men how not to behave toward women”.
Those two things are not unrelated, though, are they? Let’s say a man takes the advice and doesn’t “do that”. So he better understands boundaries, consent, and when it’s not appropriate to attempt to pick someone up, and he behaves at all future times based on that improved understanding. It’s not an act, it’s not “game”, he honestly considers more carefully how the other person feels and behaves accordingly. He’s a better person as a result, I’m sure we’d all agree.
So, does this make him
(a) more likely or
(b) less likely
to get laid?
I’m saying (a). And that’s all I’m saying.
I’m not at all saying RW intended it that way. Jeez, it’s a throwaway comment, there’s no way anyone could have foreseen the nonsense that followed, and I’m absolutely sure you’re right – her intention was purely about not making women feel uncomfortable.
I recast “Guys, don’t do that” as actual valid pickup advice mainly as a way to poke fun at the MRAs and PUAs responsible for the abuse that followed it. But hey, if you’re telling me that a man having more consideration and empathy for women *doesn’t* make him more attractive… I cannot argue with you.
No, if that’s all you’re saying I don’t disagree (although I find it a little annoying as a point, because it confuses behaving acceptably with being likely to get a reward). But your reaction to Chris was pretty heated; that wasn’t a throwaway comment.