Recent surveys have shown that 4 out of 10 American households are headed by a woman. Wanna watch four pampered men lose their shit over this fact? Here you go.
Juan Williams is angry — having women as the primary breadwinner heralds the disintegration of the family and something is terribly wrong with the country!
Professional Racist Lou Dobbs chimes in with some non-sequitur about abortions. Women are working and not having babies! Alert the police! Catastrophe and disaster! The social order is being undermined!
Oh, but smug jerk Erick Erickson takes the cake.
I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science, but this is liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology, when you look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complimentary role.
We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complimentary relationships in nuclear families, and it is tearing us apart.
WTF?
I’m used to conservatives mangling science and telling us that their lies are true, and Erickson does not disappoint. Listening to that I turned purple and tried to blurt out four sentences simultaneously, and then my larynx exploded and my brains geysered out my ears.
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It’s not true! Many species exhibit different patterns of dominance, and some have no system of dominance at all. It’s quite common for females to be larger than males, for instance. Erickson is claiming that something common in primates is a universal.
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NATURALISTIC FALLACY, ASSHOLE!
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You don’t get to spend your pundit career blithering about human (and American) exceptionalism and then turn around when it’s convenient to your argument to point to some monkey over there and say, “See? That’s the natural order!”
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Erick Erickson is one hella confused dingleberry. Why does anyone listen to a biblical literalist pontificating about science?
Here’s the deal, Fox News. The world is changing. It’s not getting worse, it’s getting different, and I know that’s the kind of thing that makes bitter, cranky old conservatives weep into their scotch and water, but deal with it. Besides, you’ll be dead soon and won’t care any more.
And it’s not just getting different, it’s getting better — those women in the workforce are more independent, more free, and living more fulfilling lives that matter. Welcome it. And hey, how about getting off your privileged butts and making sure that they get paid the same as men, so those families and children you’re so fucking concerned about can get by?
I’ll just leave another link to this fun picture book:
http://www.gwennseemel.com/index.php/pages/from/category/nature_book/
“the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role”
I prefer one of the most advanced animal societies: ants. A society composed of 99.99% females, and a powerful empress. Hmm… yes, lets look towards nature. They may have a point.
Heh. I’m entertained by the fact that he not seems to believe that gender roles are universal throughout the animal kingdom, but he thinks that the nuclear family is universal too. For fuck’s sake, neither of those are universal for humans. An incredible case of head up own ass.
Strange thing is that I was talking with my younger brother earlier this week. He’s getting married later this year to a woman who will make more money than he will and he has no problems with it. He said he would like to work part time so he can work on his other projects and take care of the house. I don’t really have problems either. I am a little concerned about what happens if they decide not to have children because she doesn’t want to quit her job, but that’s only because our mother will return to pestering me to get married and become a father. I’d like to be part of their lives because they’re family, but ultimately it’s their choice and I will support them regardless of what they are.
Well maybe he understands that there are various types of sexual dimorphism across the great breadth of the animal kingdom, and really is referring only to our closest relatives. Perhaps he just means “apes”. Let’s see, shall we limit ourselves to the family structures of other apes? Gorillas: primarily a single male with multiple females, though apparently sometimes there are multiple males. Is that what he’s recommending? Or does he prefer the matriarchal “everyone fucks everyone!” society of the bonobos? Cause if we have to choose I’m gonna vote for the latter.
Is PZ filling in for Colbert while he’s on holiday? (hint: he doesn’t see race)
That said, I enjoy their tears of unfathomable sadness.
“And hey, how about getting off your privileged butts and making sure that they get paid the same as men, so those families and children you’re so fucking concerned about can get by?”
P.S. Fuck you, you arrogant shitheads!
Just wanted to add my $.02.
Wow. I wrote this before on another thread, but I’ll repeat it: The Slymepit really is the Faux Newz of atheism. And vice versa. And I think I know where the vice is worser.
Fox News commentators are all white men. Even the women.
Yesssss, cry little white man fascists. Your tears are so….. delicious.
I’m the breadwinner for my family, as well as being female. Doing my part, entirely coincidentally, to make them assholes cry. :D
Rarely has such raw and unadulterated stupid been captured in one place and in only three minutes to boot!
The density of ignorance is so powerful it may qualify as a new found element.
I can’t tell which pisses them off more: a woman making more than her partner or a woman as the head of a household.(they don’t address men who may have abandoned their families or that even though the mother has primary custody of the children, the father may still have an active and constant presence in the raising of said children)
The fact that lou and his stooges are so upset does make my heart that much warmer.
@PZ
I hope you didn’t mean that as a transphobic joke. That’s pretty common for some of the women who contribute to Fox News.
Probably goes without saying that I have a major problem with this sentiment.
Oh Fox News, how blatantly can you pander to old people who are terrified that the world isn’t what they imagine it having been when they were young? Surely there can’t be enough people still horrified at women being breadwinners still alive to sustain a cable network?
But my theory is that Fox News hasn’t actually made money in years, Murdoch just pumps money from his other ventures, like Fox television, into it to prop up his little propaganda machine, so it’s people watching the Simpsons and Futurama and whatever else is on Fox these days who power the right wing hate machine.
Sorry, no, I wasn’t making a transphobic joke. I meant their brains all seem to be of a sameness, same attitudes, same dishonesty — but obviously it came out wrong.
Hahaha. That’s a good one. Conservatives pretend to be concerned about families and children only when doing so entrenches their unearned privilege and/or scores them political points with other delusional conservatives (that’s redundant, I know).
Always fascinating to me is the conservative propensity for defining everything — everything — in terms of hierarchy and dominance. With themselves conveniently at the top, of course.
#4
The wife doesn’t have to quit her job to have children. Using family leave to have a child and returning to work is commonplace.
#9,#15
I picked up what you were laying down.
yes, they sure do work off of the same script.
or the script they are required to read from, the limited slant and spin they are allowed to put into their editorializing, are all written by old conservative and religious white men?
Wow. Following the links, there are some really galling exhibitions of sexism at Fox News.
A minor ridiculous one first: A Battle of the Sexes parking competition which was described as “stereotypes played out to perfection”.
Far more seriously: A List of Victim Blaming
And, of course: A massive list of obsessions with women’s appearance or sex appeal .
I’m sorry, but the group of mad white men who don’t believe in evolution, and who consequently reject any common ancestry with apes, are now claiming apes as cousins for social comparisons?
Consistency, guys, look it up.
Dobbs says the Pew study shows “women have become the breadwinners in this country.”
If 4 out of 10 families are headed by women, that means 6 out of 10 are…not.
Poor Lou needs remedial math.
#17
True dat. But she’s a lawyer just getting started and they’re going to live in the DC area. So not only will they have the Old Boys’ Network to deal with in that kind of environment being gone 3 months (or whatever) can kill your career there just because you’re behind on all the networking and deal making that goes on. Plus my brother, an economist teacher, once wrote a blog piece years ago justifing paying women less because they CAN take maternity leave. (Remember on the internet, everything is forever.)
On a side note, I got my current job because my predessor took maternity leave then decided to be a stay-at-home-mom. So returning to work may be common, it’s not universial.
Yeah, kind of not cool. I get what you mean — “pampered white men” is a stand-in for those whose interests are privileged by the power structures of race, sex, class, etc. in our society. But saying that Juan Williams in this instance, or Fox’s women commentators in other instances, are functioning as white men is denying the real complexity of the problem. Fox’s non-white-male commentators clearly find something in the system they’re endorsing that they feel works for them. We can point out how wrong they are without trying to erase their identities. (And speaking as a pampered white man, I’ve made jokes like this about conservative minorities in the past. Let this be my mea culpa, and I hope you can join me in it, PZ.)
Anyway, these four pampered white men are ridiculous, and it’s pretty fun watching them squirm as they realize their cherished “way of life” is facing its demise.
I grew up in a family where my mother (an O.R. nurse) made more than my father (a letter carrier). I don’t recall any problems with the situation.
My ex,is a civil engineer(structural) while I am an Operating engineer(stationary)
for most of our marriage she made more than I did. It was never a problem.
I don’t get the outrage.
Except for ants. And bees.
Wasps
Black widow spiders
Praying mantises
Seahorses
Horses (herds are polygynous, but lead mare is in charge)
Hyenas
Elephants
Anglerfish
Wolves
Suricates
etc.
And how many other primates are monogamous? Gibbons, and (sometimes) tarsiers? In fact only about 3% of mammals are considered monogamous. Does Erickson think we ought to emulate nature in that regard?
Erickson meant “complementary,” not “complimentary.” Also, he’s an idiot.
#23
yes very good point.
It must be tough to be in a career that demanding.
PZ@15
Let it be known that, yes, PZ DOES occaisionally say some REALLY fucking stupid shit sometimes. But what’s this? He owns the statement and apologizes? WHAT?! HERESEY! THE #BRAVECHICKENSHITS KNOW THAT YOU NEVER APOLOGIZE AND EVERYONE FELLATES YOUR ENORMOUS EGO!
Seriously though. I got the meaning, and I was still going “yeah that’s not good.” I do agree with it though. Noone at Fox is allowed to go off script. And that script is written by the same 6 assholes in the back, all of whom are middle-age white dudebromanchildren.
#26
Mormons and old testament types are trying to.
One term I’ve been tempted to use for men who whine about progress toward equality is “man-child.” But I don’t want to insult children.
I tend to re-imagine their speech as full of insincere, manipulative attempts at sobbing and moaning to make it match the content of their words. (Sometimes I don’t have to. Hams.) Whining in a “strong” tone of voice is still whining. Call the Whaaaambulance. Dial Whine-1-1.
#29
Fox should have its commentary in chorus fashion
#28
Let’s just say I cleaned up the spare bedroom for him in case the worst happens. If it’s not necessary, at least it’s clean for other guests.
Damn it, there were supposed to be strike tags, as in “four pampered
whitemen.”Regarding PZ’s bad-and-apologized-for joke, yeah, I got the intended meaning and the unintended unfortunate implications. The women on Fox News, like most wingnut women I hear, are generally anti-feminist.
I’m reminded of some headdesking I did way back while reading the comments about Ann Coulter’s Godless: all the bad trans jokes about Coulter’s appearance. I also remember people complaining about those jokes, thankfully.
Thanks for that link; I hadn’t seen the book before. It nicely makes your point in this context.
OT:
That said, my feelings about the book’s content are…mixed…but largely because my tolerance for anthropomophism is lower than most people’s.
(Still, there’s no excuse for painting fledgling crows as half the size of adults.)
I think their heads would explode if they realized the truth that in many species the male, while important for breeding, is almost irrelevant in everything else.
I once heard a radio show host whose whole schtick was that he was an alpha super misogynist talk about ants and bees and how the female stayed home and sat on a pedestal while the males did all the work, he had at least 15 calls agreeing with him before someone called in to tell him the actual male role in ant and bee hives, at which point he hung up on him and called him a stupid loser.
There is one arena in which these pathetic power-mongering ingrates may be said to be “expert”: ignorance and the hatred it engenders. They are world-class champions in that department.
Indeed, so why does anyone “listen” to false crap?
Something in the crap obviously resonates with too many people. But I do not think that “listening” is what they are actually doing or do at all well. Its rather more akin to Pavlov’s response, a reflex cued to a signaled stimulus. There is no necessary higher-order intelligence involved in drooling.
#38
People like to have their bias reinforced(on both sides of the aisle)
True some folks relish the challenge of facing arguments they disagree with, for most it is an unpleasant experience.
Murdoch saw a wide open opportunity to provide lullaby music for conservatives and it’s made him even wealthier.
I have a smidgen of sympathy for Juan Williams here IF he’s saying what I think he’s saying, that young males, especially in the African-American community, are not being encouraged enough to participate in stable family situations, especially when they father children.
Part of the change is improved gender equality, but a lot of the change is actually caused by worsening economic inequality. Those households that women are supporting tend to be very poor, and there are increasing numbers of them.
@41
If that was the point of this talk, then that’s what they should have addressed. Instead, that little bit of trivia apparently escaped this brain trust.
I can feel myself turning into an anglerfish!!
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-BbpaNXbxg
The second part happens to me a lot.
Full of win.
Wow. Every time I hear about the US school system, it’s worse than I thought!
anchor #38:
Cordelia Chase #1×11:
Maybe he should look at raptors for his dominance models. Here is a hint, peregrines don’t do it face to face, and when she is mantling at 2:30 (roughly) she is trying quite hard to kill him. That’s his ledge by the way, she is moving in.
Errrrrrr. Forgot. http://youtu.be/NRW161RLfEU
#39: Yep. Its the very thing which propagandists the world over have exploited since homo politicolossus first emerged, especially the virulent hi-octane form that arose with patriarchal religion in lock-step with wealthy agricultural city-states.
#45: Excellent ;)
*facepalm* I learned about the general social structure of ant, bee, and termite colonies in grade school and had countless refreshers in the grades that followed, plus Discovery Channel (when it was good), kids’ shows like Bill Nye: The Science Guy, and the instruction booklet to SimAnt.
I may have a nerd upbringing, but I have a hard time imagining how anyone with a high school education could have missed out on that knowledge. But I suppose that’s some of my privileged life experience making unwarranted assumptions: Somehow I doubt those 15 callers got that far, and if they did, it was probably because coach pulled strings.
#9: except for Juan Williams, who ranted about how women being the breadwinners is hurting minorities while someone else said it’s a war on women.
Yep, and those males were so pussy whipped that the queen calls them her daughters and if you look really, really close you’ll notice that the workers have no balls!!!
It’s because the feminatzi queen cut them off.
I’m sure to get that job at Fox now.
Psst. Want to know something Even Worse? Not all of those households that women head are free of men. I was “head of household” for tax purposes last year. Despite having a man with a financially profitable career in the household. I happened to have made more that year so got the designation that time. Gasp! Cue the fainting couch!
Right. Because naturally these men just assume that if a woman is the head of the household, it must, must, MUST mean there is no man there. Because if there was a man in picture, why he’d be the head of the household automatically, right, right?
Natural order of things as god intended and all that, no?
[OT]
myeck waters
Hm, another fan of Jenny Trout, or just a coincidence? :)
Because if there was a man in picture, why he’d be the head of the household automatically, right, right?
That’s the assumption. But it turns out to be wrong. Perhaps next year we’ll settle the issue of who is “head of household” in a nude mud wrestling match. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE! (Sorry. My current mental age is 12.)
How long do we all have to be subjected to the recently invented myth of the nuclear family? Until everyone believes that is was ever the case?
There’s ignorance and bigotry but, then, there’s ideological propaganda; a complete fabrication made true in an nearly Orwellian manner.
It’s not worse, but it’s insidious.
dianne
You’ll put it on yutube, right?
Fox news is making your country crazy.
Please keep it south of our borders.
Thanks, eh?
The Canadians
Wait, do we watch other people naked mud wrestle to determine who the head of household is in every household or do we do we each do it for our own households? Because I’m totally up for naked mud wrestling my wife, but not so much knowing some Faux News contributor is doing it for me.
You know what will really blow their minds? My wife makes more than me, so we’re one of those 4 in 10s but on top of that, if we ever have children, we’ve decided I should be a stay at home dad if we can afford it.
Won’t that blow their tiny little minds?
OMG – When my father retired, my mother worked for several years. She must have been the head of the household. I am sure that ruined our family which is why I became GAY!!! Ha, ha, ha.
Anyhow, they seem to fetish the family too. Oh, the family which to them means a breadwinning husband, a woman in the kitchen and/or bedroom, and two children studying their bible. All biologically connected which supposedly prevents that gay thing. (It didn’t in my case.)
There was a big stink in Minnesota when the legislature passed a bill allowing caregivers and daycare workers (most of whom are women) to decide if they wanted to vote for a union. The Republicans and the privileged were up in arms. We might have to pay a decent wage to these people.
That, and the gay marriage thing really bothered them.
Is this true? Not trying to create a kerfluffle where one does not exist, but I have heard this, repeatedly, from right-wing whiners and have not (keep in mind, I do not even qualify for a white belt in Google-fu) been able to find any peer-reviewed literature to back up this idea that young minority men are not encouraged to stay active in the upbringing of children, or are discouraged of the same.
I cannot take credit for that one. It is taken (and mangled) from a song from Paint Your Wagon:
Erm…. Even among primates the “men are the dominant and women take care of the babies” schtick is not universal. Many (perhaps all) species of marmoset males do the child care. The mom shows up every now and then to nurse the baby, then goes off and baby stays attached to dad.
The naturalistic argument clearly leads into us being just animals, and sharing qualities with them (evolved or otherwise decided by God eh?). Yet I’m pretty sure one of the key arguments of the Bible followers is that we are not animals.
I distinctly recall Ted Haggard losing his shit at Dawkins for something like that.
If we want to be scientific about it; there’s nothing naturalistic about monogamy with any gender. Most of the animal kingdom is pretty flexible to the extent that we actively marvel at monogamous animals for doing something that we don’t necessarily succeed in.
My wife makes significantly more than me. I’m happy that she does, since I barely make diddleysquat.
Following another train of thought, Naturalistic Fallacy Asshole sounds like it should be somebody’s title. “Meet Jim, everybody… he’s our Naturalistic Fallacy Asshole.”
My wife is the only bread-winner for us currently. And that is doing exactly the opposite of “causing the disintegration of marriage.”
I thought PZ’s Fox News joke was pretty obviously referring to attitude not gender. IE- People concerned with any perspective outside of the “white (American) male” need not apply. But it probably could’ve been worded better.
Janice @59;
We elected Stephen Harper to be our PM. Several times. In a row.
We really don’t have much ground for gloating here, eh?
Eric Erickson’s beliefs summarized:
I believe in white male/subordinate female tribalism.
Believe like I do and you can go to heaven, else you are evil and you will be going you know where.
Not only do I make all of the income in the household,
Not only does my husband stay at home,
Not only does he do most of the childcare and most of the cooking and most of the laundry and most of the grocery shopping,
he’s also proud of me and my accomplishments.
That last bit, I assume, would twist the brains of many conservatives far more than the rest.
And also to twist their brains, I am equally proud of him and what he does.
He even fails at the naturalistic fallacy. In African lions, the adult females do most of the work, but the males get to eat first. If he followed that example he would support having women as breadwinners as long as the men still had privileges at home.
Unfortunately that is all too common – when the husband loses his job or is in a significantly lower-status job, that he takes his frustration out on his wife and family in the form of excessive acts of dominance.
This multi-sexist rant also totally misses the point that thanks to Reaganomics, that unless you want to live in a trailer, with the destruction of the middle class and hyper inequality, it is virtually impossible for a family to survive economically with only one person working, even if they wanted to.
Hello, this is not even realistic, if all the women suddenly decided to go home and bake cookies, our economy not to mention individual families would collapse overnight.
#67: No need to make excuses for my bad attempt at a joke. It was just bad. I retract it unreservedly.
You know, I think I make just a little bit more money at my job than my wife does at hers — but hers is more demanding of her time while mine is more flexible. But we are full partners and all of our accounts are joint and we don’t talk about “her” money or “my” money. All this talk on Fox News about who is “dominant” in the relationship makes no sense at all to us — why do they feel the need to impose a hierarchy on a relationship? Are they even capable of an equal relationship with another human being?
No, I don’t think so. And they’d probably say that such relationships don’t exist in nature, therefore… blah blah blah. Same story. Equality just isn’t their bag. They don’t know how to do it.
I will not listen to nor read any of them if it can be avoided. They do not care what they say if it is accurate or not it is all just “rhetoric” if it stimulates resentment in the listeners it works.
going on about how nature has ordained what the natural order we decided to enforce and adopt reminds me of a comment conversation I got into once. One person was “praising god” for the beauty of bird song as a reason for god I asked them if they had ever had the privilege to hear a large flock of parrots having a convocation in the trees above their heads. They got mad at me?
I think that form of argument and thinking comes from basing all their knowledge on a book that uses metaphor and even allegory as well as other indirect ways of telling it’s stories.
It seems to scramble the resulting thought processes rather severely.
uncle frogy
#62; Not to go completely off topic, but I love that movie.
Lee Marvin sings! Or should that be, Lee Marvin sings?
#75; The answer is obviously, no. An equal relationship is not possible if your a misogynistic religious nutbag. Top-down authority is pretty much the definition of religion and that’s how they’re taught to live. Be like god, oppressive and abusive.
Personally I don’t get it. If my wife and I weren’t equals, what the hell would we do together or even talk about?
Aren’t fishes the most numerous group of vertebrates? And aren’t female fishes generally bigger?
— — — — — — —
Erick Erickson is obviously a descendant of Swedish immigrants (as was probably Strom Thurmond). It looks like Sweden used America as “Ark B”.
BTW, here in Umeå the mayor in the late seventies, early eighties was a guy named Erik Eriksson. I met him several times, very nice guy.
— — — — — — — — — — — —
When naturalistic fallacies became commonplace after the spread of Darwinism (and the spread of Spencer’s fallacy misnamed “social darwinism”) Peter Kropotkin pointed out that mutual aid between members of the same species was as important as competition (for reasons that became obvious once it was understood that genes rather than individuas are the star performers).
404’d! Disappointing. I wanted to bask in the schadenfreude.
You would opine on whatever you want, whilst your wife soaks up your pearls of wisdom as she gazes adoringly at you and thinks to herself what a lucky, lucky woman she is to have gained the favor of such a man as you. Obviously.
Carlie beat me to it. In an unequal relationship, you, the man, get to do whatever the hell you want. If your wife doesn’t agree with your choices then it’s evidence of her inferiority, which is why you’re in charge in the first place.
Off Topic:
Lee Marvin has a pretty good voice. Clint Eastwood, however . . . .
81; Um, actually I think the last time she gazed adoringly at me she was thinking “You boob, the checking account is empty because you paid the mortgage two weeks early.”
That perch that women commentators from FOX are able to express themselves from… that was fashioned by “equal rights for women” i.e. feminism… oh the fucking irony.
I’m sorry if I missed someone else putting this out there, but:
Has Erick Erickson looked at what is “okay” in nature? That is, does he know what strategies are successful in certain species that would be absolutely abhorrent in our society?
Murder is only a bad strategy if you are in a species that depends on a social structure (ie Homo sapiens sapiens). Theft can actually be a very good survival strategy. Infanticide is the only option left to many animals when food is scarce. It’s also what a male lion does when taking over a pride.
There are plenty more terrible things we see in nature, but I won’t go on, or else I’ll need a trigger warning.
Seriously, science is more of a practical concern than it is an ethical one. If someone says “biology backs up my opinion”, what you should be hearing is “I’m full of shit.”
So it’s more like “everyone on Fox News presents a white male perspective. Even if they’re getting it out of a can.”
“And it’s not just getting different, it’s getting better — those women in the workforce are more independent, more free, and living more fulfilling lives that matter. Welcome it. And hey, how about getting off your privileged butts and making sure that they get paid the same as men, so those families and children you’re so fucking concerned about can get by?”
Really?! Better?!
Let’s see, 7 billion humans projected to be 9 billion… deep ecological overshoot!
Climate change, super storms, sea level rise, ocean acidification, habitat destruction, ecological devastation, species extinction, finite planet resource limits and all in conflict with an infinite growth paradigm…
How is that going to be any better for women, men or anyone’s children? Workforce? Go to Spain, Portugal, Greece, India, Bangladesh, Mexico or even the good ole USA with 40 million Americans on food stamps.
Yeah, a whole lot fucking better! Maybe a lot more people will be getting off their privileged butts than you think. Though one thing is for sure, the world is certainly different than it was even a few hundred years ago, better? That’s debatable. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/
“The surplus has led us to believe in the possibility of universal peace and universal comfort, for a global population of 6 billion, or 9 or 10. If kindness and comfort are, as I suspect, the results of an energy surplus, then, as the supply contracts, we could be expected to start fighting once again like cats in a sack.
George Monbiot”
All lemurs live in female dominated societies, BTW.
What makes you think anything in that quote, or even in the context around it, implies that what’s “better” is unsustainable population growth?
Fred: What the bloody fuck does any of that have to do with women being primary breadwinners and having more opportunities?
Fred Magyar:
Hello! You seem to be new to these parts. Welcome! Please allow me to provide you with a small tip that might be of use. Although thread drift happens fairly routinely around here, it is usually organically formed from the conversation rather than inserted wholesale. There are two threads for such random topics as yours, conveniently linked to in the left-hand sidebar right above the photo displaying the handsome visage of the blog owner. The Lounge is for topics of fun; the Thunderdome is for topics to yell about. Yours appears to be the latter. Your topic will be better off mentioned there, and people might discuss it with you on that thread.
However, if you so choose to try to continue it here, it will probably not be taken well. This is partly because of the inorganic insertion of said topic as mentioned earlier, but is also because this thread is specifically about the way women are treated and discussed, and a depressingly common tactic by people who hate having to talk sympathetically about women is to try to throw in another topic we Ought To Be More Concerned About Than Whatever Woman Thing Is Currently Being Talked About Instead. We also do not wish to debate whether or not this is indeed what you are consciously doing; it will be assumed that you did this out of oversight rather than malice unless you provide evidence otherwise. So thank you for the information, and please take it to the Thunderdome. Should you continue this topic herein, management will not be held responsible for any damage that may result, nor will clean up the slippery blood on the floor until it is quite certain that no more will be forthcoming from your remains. Thank you, and have a nice day.
@89 Logged in to say just that. There are ~103 species (depending on who you ask) of lemurs, and they all exhibit female dominance to some degree or another – that’s between a quarter and a third of all primate species right there.
It’s Getting Better
/thread DJ
I, for one, don’t give a shit about how lemurs behave.
This would be the same Fox News that fanboys Sarah Palin, right? It’s pretty obvious that she’s the primary breadwinner in her family. And does anyone really think Todd is the boss in that family, that she does whatever he tells her to without question?
Shouldn’t the stats for hetero households be roughly 50-50? 50% of households the man earns more, 50% the woman earns more.
Also. Juan William’s inadequacies as a thinker were evident as soon as he took over for Ray Suarez on Talk of the Nation in 2000.
Thom Hartmann had a nice takedown of this shit on his show today (Bryan Fischer, American Family Assn., was the guest). I had a nice cackle at stupidity smackdown. :)
birgerjohansson #79–Now now, not all Ericsons (of any spelling) are bad. I’m an Ericson (descendent), myself. :P
Wheeee!!!! Wife and I are contributing to the disintegration of the American Nuclear Family™. Yay!
Apparently I am one of the 60%. Wife works far harder than I do (working her street corner, hooking, working at a nice restaurant (part time), laundry (I tried doing laundry but, after two wool sweaters that now fit a teddy bear . . . .), dishes (I cook, she cleans up), cutting the grass, weeding the garden, about half of the general house maintenance, etc. Me? I give one or two talks a day, deal with visitors (some of whom are annoying, most are not), and argue with a computer (and supervisors) all day.
Maybe I need to start voting FOX.
but but but…
DISCO LEMURS!!
how can you not care about that?
There’s a reason that chair was empty at the GoP convention.
I’m late to chime in, but I’ve been in one of those %40 households. I think that one of the hardest things was people were almost cheering for you to fail. Not to mention all of the snide comments assuming that the male partner was a poor provider, and thus failing. Or that the female partner was a poorly preforming mother for working, that the child would grow up without a mother figure.
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Fact was, one job had excellent benefits, health insurance for the whole family. One job did not. Pregnancy ensues. Guess who decided to stay home. The partner who could. And it was so great! And the spawn is super awesome!
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We are both working now, but it was really hard to deal with all of the bullshit stereotype bullying at the time.
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So cheers to working moms! Cheers to stay at home dads! Cheers to working & not-in-the traditional-workplace parents! Let’s celebrate families making good choices for themselves!
Another of the 40% here. This one video did more to convince my husband that Fox was full of shit than the last 3 years of listening to me vs. his parents.
My husband is proud of me, and I’m proud of him. The fact that I am breadwinner allowed him to get his Ph.D. Oh and to piss the guys off at fox more, we have opted to not have kids for the foreseeable future.
Nah. I’ve seen his name several times before on Pharyngula, and not only very recently.
I have to admit (I haven’t read the comments by the way) that when my wife made more than me, I sorta felt a little useless. Now she’s stay-at-home and I try to make sure she knows I understand her job is at least as hard as mine. True, she’s not the “bread-winner”, whatever that means, but earning the money to have stuff and raise children only goes as far as you have the ability to use said stuff and raise said children. When the kids are grown and my wife will possibly make more than me again, I hope to be able to know that we are a team, and the antiquated notion that the man needs to bring home the lion’s share of the money shouldn’t affect me one bit.
For those in the 40%: Good for you. I honestly believe I could make it work as a stay-at-home worker, but I have no idea if I could do half as well as my wife. Those men that stay home, and don’t just lounge around like some men (and women) do have my utmost respect. If anything it should make me more proud to be a human being and realize that any gender can do anything.
Apologies to those who think my little rant to be off topic. I do understand why many here might think that. My point is that it makes no sense to talk about what is better for women, men, children or anyone else if the discussion happens without taking into consideration the context of the bigger picture. Beating up on a couple of stupid bigoted irrelevant old men who have outdated ideas and are scared to death of women doesn’t really help all that much. It just seems a rather useless distraction. I don’t expect most people here to agree with me. And yes I’ve been coming here for a very long time, in the old days it was mostly for the science. Nowadays I just lurk. Occasionally something pushes my buttons and I fire off a rant. Carry on.
You’re distracting me from the bigger picture that one day the Sun will destroy the planet and that eventually the universe will undergo heat death. It’s a shame that you don’t see how useless and nonsensical your wanking is. Sorry, that wasn’t quite weasely enough: how it seems to be.
So, Fred, apologizing for the rant being off-topic, but not for the condescending, self-aggrandizing, look-how-non-fucked-up-my-priorities-are-how-dare-you-partake-in-something-so-frivolous attitude… You’re like the person on the foot of a hill who points to the top of the mountain and says “Hey, we need to be up there, let’s go already! It’s much nicer up there, why are you spending time down here?” while the rest of us are in our gear and inserting cams into crevasses. I don’t think you’re as far ahead or as forward thinking as you claim to be.
Even if I granted you this, that doesn’t mean that the opposite is true. Show that it hurts. Show that those of us who take the time to point out the regressive mode of thinking and ridicule those who partake in it are hurting your ‘grand ideal’ of how-to-deal-with-whichever-shit-I-deem-important….
Here’s more classic commentary from Erickson:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42039_Former_CNN_Contributor_Erickson-_Christ_Could_Throw_a_Punch
Says the guy with a bipedal Chelonii for avatar ;).
There is also this reminder that the idea of the man being the “breadwinner” as a historical reality is limited to a very specific class and race.