They may not be “floral”, but there’s nothing wrong with “monumental” as a fashion statement, is there? Mr Deity needs to learn to appreciate other styles.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
They may not be “floral”, but there’s nothing wrong with “monumental” as a fashion statement, is there? Mr Deity needs to learn to appreciate other styles.
I nearly pmsl when I watched this episode.
I love Lucy.
Subliminal advertising campaign… genius
Very funny, but I would beg to differ. Men’s naughty bits are cute and sexy, especially if attached to an intelligent and attractive guy
“We’ve got Noonian down in R&D working on that.”
I guffawed. Well, quietly.
The video stereotypes the sexes. Not one of mr. diety’s best.
I think that was the point.
Cathy, Mr. D stereotypes EVERYTHING. That is part of th joke.
And, yeah, the Noonian part gave my panti liners a real test.
Oh, and I agree that male naughty bits are cute.
…you know, I would be more comfortable if you weren’t using as your metaphor a class of objects which people are prone to carving symbols into with chisels. O.O
Also, that reminds me of one of the random quotes at Oglaf (NSFW):
“The penis. If it’s not evil, why did they get H. R. Giger to design it?”
I am a bit annoyed that this feels the need to perpetuate the heteronormative myth that womens’ sexual organs are somehow inherently beautiful, while mens’ are gross and funny.
Not only is it intensely male-gazy, it demeans the sexuality of women (and gay men), and attempts to justify why it’s okay to sexually objectify women, but not men.
Hey, I’m a guy and I think vaginas are gross and dicks are nice. And I’ll never understand what the deal is with those two bags of adipose tissue that heterosexual men seem to get so inordinately excited about. It’s completely a matter of hormones. Aesthetics have nothing to do with it, as much as men would like to rationalise their boners into something profound.
Maybe if Lucy had disagreed and found the mens’ bits sexy, I could have seen it as a spoof of that whole sordid attitude. As it is, it just comes across as puerile.
Shame, really.
I absolutely agree, as a gay person I find this video very insulting..
Also vagina is far far from inherently beautiful, I believe you are familiar with the term “hatchet wound”…
And, predictably, the humorless PC-bots come out of the woodwork.
Jay
@jt512
…that’s the best you could come up with to dismiss my concerns out of hand? Political Correctness Gone Mad?
I usually find Mr. Deity quite funny. Unfortunately I can’t enjoy this episode because it reeks of unexamined privilege.
My concern isn’t that it says naughty things, it’s that it reinforces unhelpful stereotypes. If it were making fun of them I’d be fine with it, but as far as I can tell it’s presenting them as It’s Funny Because It’s True.
Which is problematic because it ISN’T TRUE.
Oh come on. If this video was laughing at the stereotypes that’d be fine, but it isn’t. It’s enforcing them. People get the video with this stupid male-gaze idea but Imagine if they’d flipped the video so that everyone loved the penis and vice-versa. I’m pretty sure the viewer would be left a little baffled and it wouldn’t be that funny. That in itself shows there’s something sexist going on with the content.
Damn you, P Zed! You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?
Jay
I’m waiting until after work to watch it.
I loved how the banana reference was slipped in. I watch for bannanas to appear like the quick cameo of Alfred Hitchcock’s.
syggyx, fuck off.
Zepplin made actual good points (I also disagree with a lot of the lazy sexist jokes Mr. Deity often goes to), and expressed his own opinion without insulting women. You, however, are an ass.
I expected Mr. Deity to say something like, “Can we trim the end of it a little?”
WHAT!!! I’m hardly gay at all and I love the penis. Stupid name though.
@jem
Personally, I would have found the opposite funny too.
Clever. And whether “floral” or scary or whatever, genitals are all a little strange and mysterious. Why should we be attracted at all to them in the first place? But most of us are, at one time or another.
I didn’t pick up on this as a hit piece intent upon constructing a dangerous and damaging heteronormative perspective that (a) equates stereotypes of male sexual aggressiveness with intrusive and frightening protuberances, and (b) equates female sexual passivity and objectification with floral imagery.
The video is a joke. Nothing more.
Syggyx, that bit about “hatchet wound” is seriously disturbing. If you react to a bit of light humor by comparing women’s genitals to a hatchet wound… dude, that’s kind of advertising to everyone here that you’ve got some issues to deal with in terms of women.
I usually like my humor a little funnier.
Oh, and on a personal (female, heterosexual) note: penises are like chocolate: they’re not made to look at them ;)
On another note… is it just me, or are the season 2 episodes unavailable? iTunes keeps telling me ‘the network connection was lost’ :( New to Mr. D and wanted to play catchup.
FWIW, nah, I don’t think there’s anything “wrong with ‘monumental’ as a fashion statement”. Or at least, it’s just as valid as ‘floral’ ;)
Copying my comment over from the one I made at Friendly Atheist yesterday:
I guess I wasn’t the only one. Yes, some of the throwaway lines were also amusing in this one, but I can’t quite get funny out of the overall message. And while I’m showing how humourless I am, I’m not sure I’m at all comfortable with the whole “we’re homeless so give us money” shtick.
Both are actually pretty gross if you think about it, especially vaginas (so much mucus). I’m assuming Mr. Deity has never seen the inside of one, so he wouldn’t know.
Which stereotypes, though? The ‘hatchet wound’ vs ‘mighty hammer’ dichotomy I would have said was more common, unfortunately, so I saw the vid as subverting that, but perhaps it’s a national or generational thing?
The part where Mr. D and company slowly tilt their head to one side simutaneouly? HILARIOUS!
Not to speak of. I’ve heard the word “axe wound” to describe vulvas.
A hatchet is a small axe.
Why are you thinking about small vulvas?
(Hey, taking idiotically uncharitable interpretations of things is kinda fun.)
I am truly baffled by the commentary here.
The female reproductive system isn’t simply a vagina. That’s why they spent longer looking at it and trying to figure out how it worked. There’s a uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries as well. It’s an interesting set up. The bit about interior cooling systems was funny considering that sperm does die if it gets too hot.
They loaded pretty much every sexist trope they could come up with into that vid…up to and including the bit about women being able to multitask. Whether they were mocking sexist tropes about men and women or not, they did a good job of exactly that.
As a side note, the main point of the clip was about how the units would reproduce. That seems to have been missed as well.
I find it very hard to tell with mr. D. Poe’s law and all that…
I understand that some might find this unfunny because it comes from a male heteronormative perspective, but doesn’t all humor come from one perspective or another? It can’t be all things to all people. Mr. Deity also comes from an atheist-normative perspective, but we just accept that as one of the premises. In terms of gender/sexual stereotypes, the schtick of Mr. Deity is that he’s a sexist buffoon bent on setting up a universe in which inequality and patriarchy prevail (i.e., pretty much the God of the Bible). By playing those sterotypes to the hilt, Mr. Deity shows how absurd they are. In many episodes, his own minions show him up for the clown he is.
In this episode, they played to an old (admittedly, heteronormative) trope that women’s naughty bits are attractive and guys’ are silly looking. It’s really no deeper than a dick joke, and it’s pretty damn funny when taken as such.
Oh Please !!! C’mon you guys… It’s comedy ! It’s supposed to make you laugh or giggle… It’s not supposed to do anything else. It’s supposed to be shallow and insulting, that’s what makes it funny. Geez ! Some people just have to analyze everything down to the last molecule. I also get a kick out of the homeless schtick !
Well, it failed on that level too. I didn’t feel the urge to laugh once.
I can see where people would get offended. I can see how it would be attacked even more if it had been the other way around. But as the (apparently only) gay female around here, I have to admit…
Etcetera @ 38;
You are far fom the only lesbian or bisexual woman among the pharyngulite horde so far as I know.
Re: the whole attractivenes of genitalia thing, as a straight man I have a preference for vaginas, but I do not think that the penis is inherently ugly or repulsive. It seems evolved to do its job*, that’s all, and in a non-hermaphroditic species with internal fertilisation some kind of tube like mechanism on the male would seem to be pretty useful in most cases. As for aesthetics – well, as Giliell, connaiseuse des choses bonnes says @ 25, neither organ evolved as a work of art.
* Though, as is often the case with evolution, neither urino-genital organ is optimal. I mean, sexual functions and the disposal of a form of bodily waste all in one package? That just strikes me as begging for trouble…
I like my penis’ looks well enough when it’s erect, but I have to say flacid penises really do look like a left-over bit of fleshy knitting, just like in the old joke.
Getting a little tired of this new “British Invasion!” It’s not P-Zed, it’s PZ (P-Zee, how you’re supposed to say it) I’m sick of the stuck up British stereotype who insist on their version of “English” being correct, when they still say even things like “Aluminum” wrong. (It was printed correctly first as ‘Aluminum” but the Brits LOVE to add and delete letters from words to act like they are the ones who say a word correctly when they are actually the butchers of the language just to keep stuck up superior attitudes!
(But they are wrong, since American English is more English than their sanctimonious asses speak.)
[OT]
James Ellis, it rather pleases me that you’re vexed by this triviality.
(I’m not British)
Fuck off and get a life.
Really, I spell and pronounce stuff the way my local variant dictates, as do you. We’re both right. No one’s insisting you conform to Brit spelling. As for ‘PZed’; it’s called ‘humour’, or ‘humor’ if you prefer. If you don’t have it, please learn to fake it.
James Ellis @ 41;
What ‘British invasion’? There are a few UK pharyngulites about, I am one myself, but I do not think that there are sufficient of us to term it an ‘invasion’. In any case, I was unaware that Pharyngula was a specifically American site. I was under the impression that PZ was posting in relation to the general atheist community, rather than any national subset.
You do know that Brits pronounce ‘zee’ as ‘zed’, aren’t you? It’s not because we are being difficult or patronising – we just pronounce certain letters and words differently. It’s a cultural thing. We may be called the ’51st state’ in jest from time to time, but our culture is actually quite divergent from your own.
Would you care to support that claim with some evidence? Even anecdotes are better than simply a bald assertion. I do not seem to remember legions of Brits on Pharyngula telling American pharyngulites that their pronunciation or spelling was in error on a regular basis, a few may have engaged in some gentle ribbing in jest, but it is hardly the same thing. Perhaps you are the one propogating an unfair stereotype of the British, had that occurred to you?
Spelling conventions are not set in stone. They are informed by culture and evolve over time. Old English had radically different spellings and pronunciations to its modern equivilant, as is the case with many languages with long histories, especially those that have adopted as many words from other tongues as English has. The Brits pronounce and spell ‘aluminium’ the way they do because that is correct usage over here. It is not intended as a sleight to Americans or anyone else. We are not ‘butchering’ the language in pursuit of any desire to appear ‘superior’. US and UK usage of the langauge are simply developing slightly differently. There is now a credible argument that there are two different national dialects* – US English and UK English. Neither is ‘wrong’. Each is simply a reflection of the culture it has developed in. Why should this be a problem?
By what metric is the American usage of English ‘more English’ than the accepted UK usage? What measure of eternal ‘absolute Englishness’ are you employing? On what basis do you assume that the differences in language usage between the two societies is the ‘fault’ of the UK based on a ‘sanctimonious’ attitude, as opposed to a simple difference in linguistic culture?
This difference seems to provoke anger in you. If one or more of my fellow country men or women have genuinely insulted you based upon your use of language (rather than simply playing up a longstanding transatlantic ‘in joke’), then that is unfortunate, and it was wrong of them to try to delegitimize the American usage, but it doesn’t justify trying to invent an imaginary, universal and globally applicable standard of ‘correct’ English – that is simply not how culture and language intersect.
* Far more than two if you include other English speaking societies.
James Ellis:
Do us a favour, Cupcake – fuck off.
Oh, and it’s ‘arses’.
*ducks and runs*
So he’s suffering from a bad case of donkey-envy…
Totally OT:
Funny enough, I only ever encountered it the other way round. Not that I were a Brit, but I met many Americans who felt it necessary to correct my spelling of colour, centre or travelled…
James Ellis,
I do hope you are still upset.
That or just being mulish.
I’ll get me coat…
The video would have been funny if it punctured sexist stereotypes. Instead, it reinforced them, and that’s why it’s not funny.
Too bad, really; they could have had a good skit, but they wasted it on stale retreads.
I liked the Noonian bit, though.
Baaahahaha Noonien! I love that!
Usually I don’t read post on blogs, however I would like to say that this write-up very compelled me to try and do it! Your writing taste has been amazed me. Thanks, quite nice article.