I miss hating people. Now all I have is contempt. Contempt is boring.
Category Archives: Thoughts
Motivations
There are a lot of people in this world, and yet sadly they are mostly the same. It’s difficult to be different in such a world. It doesn’t matter what you do but rather what makes you do it; you don’t choose your motivations, and if you try to change them something motivates you to do so, and this ambition is not one you picked. There are very few people who are truly unique – they are not extraordinarily smart or pretty, but simply more interesting. They didn’t do anything to become what they are, they did not choose to be so. They were led to it, by things out of their control; and yet, they are different and I am not.
Person A cannot become person B, he can only become a person who wants to be person B, and rarely does this mean actually being that. In my case, it doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong; it would be nice to be smart or pretty, but that’s just not my main concern.
Oh, and I’m still alive.
Feminism
I know there are a lot of guys who take the ‘women are equal but feminists are crazy/stupid/annoying’ P.O.V. on this one, so I’ll try to emphasise the fact that this is not my own.
First, I don’t hate feminists… in particular. I mean, I can hardly imagine liking someone who identifies as a feminist, because it seems so serious and none-existentialist, but if someone simply believes women are equal to men, it obviously won’t make me dislike them or make it more difficult for me to like them. It’s just that calling yourself a ‘feminist’ sounds annoying. It’s not a label I’d bother wearing.
So, that’s why I disagree with the second part of what I call The Guy Perspective: ‘…but feminist are crazy/stupid/annoying.’
The thing is, I disagree with the first part too.
I’m not saying men are better. I’m not saying women are, either. I just don’t see any reason to believe women and men are equal.
Having said that, I do believe we should treat them equally (with a few exceptions, I guess, with stuff like pregnancy – but not with maternity leave).
Now, maybe you wonder how I define equal… Well, I’m the one saying the two are not necessarily equal, so the ones defining it should be those who say otherwise, but I guess the issue is mainly intelligence. Or any other element of personality, perhaps. It doesn’t really matter – because these things are (most (most) probably) in the brain, and men’s and women’s brains are quite different.
Again, there isn’t a reason to believe one’s better than the other, and yet… I wouldn’t go as far as saying they are equal.
If you’re thinking ‘well, if there is no reason to think one’s better than the other, we can pretty much assume they are equal’ – and I partly agree. This post is not about not-saying men and women are equal because there’s a chance it’s incorrect.
This post is about realising it doesn’t matter whether the two are equal or not.
~
Imagine this: a brain research shows, almost beyond doubt – the same ‘almost beyond doubt’ as that of the existence of gravity – that men are significantly smarter than women, statistically.
Come one, imagine – it doesn’t make you a chauvinist.
How would chauvinists react? An expected, annoying ‘Ha! I told you so.’ They’d use this research to justify treating women like objects. Would you agree with this notion? Probably not. Statistically more stupid or not, women are humans, after all.
How would liberals react? Casual ignorance, I suppose.
How would feminists react? They would probably accuse the researchers of chauvinism. But let’s say the researchers are a bunch of feminist women who wanted to prove the exact opposite, and had no interest to get these results – but decided to publish them anyway, because they are honest or some shit like that.
How would the feminists react? I wonder. I don’t think they’d take it well.
Now, imagine the opposite; it’s discovered that women are smarter.
How would chauvinists react? Mainly stuff like casual ignorance, or ‘Damn faggots.’
Liberals? There will probably be some men who’d say how much they think women are better than man, and blah blah blah. There are guys like that… somewhy.
Feminists? Well, I seriously doubt I won’t hear ‘Women are better than men!’ quite often, along with rarer but not that rare still ‘This shows we should give women priorities over men!’
~
I can tell you how I’d react. I’d laugh. I’d laugh because I could immediately hear all the bullshit that’ll be said about this research. I’d get ready for hearing ‘Women are better than men’ all the time, as if it means anything.
Of course, I wouldn’t laugh half as hard as I would if the first scenario occurs. It would just be so funny if the world turns up politically incorrect.
I guess this post is politically incorrect too, somewhy. Fuck that. I don’t even know why. I just know someone would find this as such, or insulting, or both.
I’ll make this clear: I’m not saying there won’t be men who won’t take the second research well. There will be. And I’m not the only one who’d laugh, either. Other men would laugh, and other women. Any individual with a good sense of humour, who sees him/herself as more than a subject of a group. Whether there are more women or men like that, I do not know. I just know that anyone who’d take these hypothetical researches solemnly should take a new look at their lives. They should think about their own personality and intelligence, not the statistical ones of a group they belong to.
∅
Have you ever seen this symbol, or the likes of it? 0, Ø, ø, ∅, ⌀, Ф, Φ, θ? Each time looking exactly the same but meaning something else? Have you ever cracked your head over what the fuck is going on here?
Well… I guess you probably haven’t. But Hell, this is my blog, so I’m gonna explain this crap.
Ø – a letter that appears in Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Southern Sami languages. Also used in German-speaking countries as an average value.
ø – close-mid front rounded vowel, whatever the fuck that means. (Bear in mind that Wikipedia, for some reason, directs you from ø to Ø).
∅ – the sign for an empty set in Set Theory. Also used as zero in linguistics (an interesting article, I recommend it).
⌀ – the sign for diameter.
0 – Slashed Zero, used to distinguish it from the letter O. (I can see a minor flaw in this idea, can’t you?)
Ф, Φ, θ – similar looking yet different letters.
- Ф / ф, the Cyrillic letter corresponding to “f” or “ph”
- Φ / φ, the Greek letter phi, corresponding to “f” or “ph”
- Θ / θ, the Greek letter theta, corresponding to “th”
Info taken from here & here. For some reason, Wikipedia points out the difference between ø and Ø in the disambiguation page, but not in anywhere else.
Hope I helped.
03/Feb/2012:
I just found out that the empty set symbol is also used as a symbol for neutrois people.
I like this sign.
An Intriguing Title: ‘What the Fuck Is Wrong With Incest?!’
Why, when you ask someone if they want to go out, does it always sound like ‘asking them out’?
Just wondering what you think. Anyway,
By ‘incest’ I don’t mean that image in your head of a mum sexually harassing her four year old boy – hmm, I guess you’re actually imagining a fat cruel cigar-smoking dad molesting his daughter, if anything, but never mind that. Molesting is a bad thing, and it only gets worse when incestuous, blah blah blah. There’s no point in explaining why the incestuous nature makes rape/anything like that so much worse, because it’s not in any way a good thing. I’m interested in the incest alone, between two (or more) consenting people – but I guess you’d say that children are naïve and innocent and blah blah blah, and I guess you’re partly right, so let’s say two consenting adults – an adult being, say, someone who’s above sixteen. Of course, even then a parent might (and probably will) have some sort of authority the son/daughter could find difficult to defy, but that’s not only true about parents (and certainly not only biological parents) – so let’s just assume, for that matter, that none of the participants, whatever the blood relation of those is, is being used by any of the others – and that, again, they’re all above sixteen – because, as everyone knows, sixteen year olds can’t think for themselves and must not have sexual relations with anyone/anyone who’s older than them. To be honest, I’m not really sure what I think of the whole ‘kids who are not sixteen/eighteen/twenty one/forty three yet must not have sex’ – because it’s not entirely false (and obviously not entirely right) – and I’m not sure what laws there should be in that area. So, all the ages I’m mentioning in this post should really just be ignored, and be replaced with the age of consent or something like that (I’m not sure how the ‘age of consent’ exactly work – it’s quite complicated in Israel).
Some time ago, I found out that incest was illegal in many countries – not only on paper, but truly illegal – and that some guy in Germany went to jail for having sex with his sister (the evidence for that being the child they had). To his sister, on the other hand, nothing has been done.
OK, German laws are stupid – I can handle that. The fact that these laws are actually being enforced is a bit more bothersome, but it’s not that shocking. Something a bit more shocking happened to me just after finding this out, when I brought the subject up in some website forum and asked people for their opinion.
There were a few sane people who said that they don’t care who’s having sex with whom (though many of them said they think inbreeding should be illegal) – but there were also quite a few loud ones who said incest should not be allowed because it’s… a taboo, and not normal, and disgusting, or something like that.
OK, fine, a few people on the internet don’t think incest/inbreeding should be allowed – big fucking deal. People on the internet are stupid.
The true shock came when I talked about incest with people I know.
For some reason, I expected people not only to be OK with incest, but to take the fact that it’s stupid to be against it as obvious – not only stupid, but odd too.
This expectation… did not match with the reactions I got.
‘What, you’re not against incest?’ ‘Well, I certainly don’t think someone should go to jail for having sex with his sister.’ ‘No, not jail, but they should go through some sort of treatment…’
‘Yeah, I heard of that German couple… and when they were asked, they said ‘But we love each other!’ *laughter*.
‘What?! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! God, you’re not serious, are you? REALLY? People do that? And if they’re dating, they sure have sex too… Ew.’
Well, I think that kind of makes my point. Other people said stuff like, ‘Well, I don’t really know what I think about incest. On the one hand, it really disgusts me – but I also think people should be free to love whomever they want,’ which is relatively fine – and yet, I cannot help but wonder why people continue to express their repulsion of incest – and why some of them think it’s in any way relevant to whether it should be legal or not. I think sex is disgusting, but I don’t think it should matter to anyone else – but, of course, maybe it’s because I know it doesn’t, while it does matter to people that they think incest is repulsive.
You know what? That doesn’t really shock me – so yes, people are against incest because they’re repulsed by it, and not because of any logical reason. People aren’t logical – I’m not surprised by that. My real confusion came from something else – I just don’t understand what about incest is so repulsive.
Yes, we are repulsed by the idea of being sexually close to people we grew up with because of a psychological mechanism, and we are repulsed by the idea of being sexually close to people we are related to because of a social taboo, but I just can’t see what about the idea itself of incest is disgusting. I mean, people see two humans who are romantically/sexually close and think it’s cute – but then, if they are informed of a genetic closeness between the two which is resulted by some blood relation, they think it’s repulsive? I don’t get it. It’s not even that people think it’s disgusting of two people who grew up together to be ‘together’ – they think it’s disgusting of two people who are blood related, no matter at what age those met, to be ‘together’. So, if two kids who are not related, but grew up together, get married – it’s ‘normal’, but if two siblings meet at the age of twenty/later, and get married, it’s horrible. I. Just. Don’t. Get it.
There’s one argument I avoided throughout the post, because it’s not entirely relevant. Some people are just against inbreeding – either because of the high chances of the baby having a genetic illness, or because the number of people in the world who has a genetic illness would rise if we allow inbreeding. Now, I avoided it because most people are repulsed by/against the incest itself, and the incest itself is illegal in many countries (like Germany). That being said, I still don’t think this argument really holds water, and I’d explain why.
The child of the two siblings, that will probably have some genetic illness, doesn’t have, as far as we know, any chance of not being born with that illness – except not being born at all. I don’t really think he or she can complain we let them be born. They might be sorry that they were, if the genetic illness is so horrible, but that’s not a reason to illegalise their birth.
As for the rise of the number of people with genetic illness – well, any additional person who’d have a genetic illness because we allowed incest is necessarily the offspring of two siblings who gave birth either to him or some ancestor of his – which means that if we didn’t allow incest, he or she wouldn’t have been born at all. They can’t really complain either.
If you don’t want your children to have a higher chance of being born with a genetic illness – well, just don’t procreate with the offspring of incestuous relationships.
Appreciation Of My English Teacher
My English teacher gave us a book report for the summer, about ‘The Adventures of Ulysses’.
Here follows one of the many, many ‘questions’ about the book – there are a few for each chapter, and some chapters are so short he had no idea what to ask about them, as can be seen below:
1. Draw a picture of the sirens, and colour it in. Choose a quotation from the story and write it under the picture.
(Bolding by your humble servant)
YES. Colour it in. That’s part of the task.
I feel appreciated, you know?
WWW Society
I wrote a WWW (What’s Wrong With-) a few days back – and I intend to write quite a few in the future. The last one (which was the first) was about society, too – which is the most general subject when it comes to a WWW. In it, I focused on relationships. I initially intended to write about sexuality and how it is treated, but throughout writing it I changed my mind. So, today I’d write about sexuality. More specifically, labels of sexuality in society and What’s Wrong With them.
Labels are obviously inaccurate, but they are necessary – the fact that people use them even though they’re generalising and sometimes misleading doesn’t really bother me. What does bother me is the fact that many times people forget or just don’t know that there are sexual orientations that don’t fit the labels in our society.
But I can handle that. What’s more annoying is the times when people find it hard to believe a certain sexual orientation exists because they are unfamiliar with it and weren’t exposed to it; like, for example, asexuality. (‘Asexuals’ is not even a word in Windows Live Writer. ‘Asexual’, although, is. But that’s just odd).
But I can handle that too. What’s even more annoying is when people choose to ignore things just because it’s hard for them to digest them. When people assume what others’ sexual orientations are, even though they can’t know for certain, just because only one option seems likely to them. This ‘one option’ is usually one of two: homosexuality and heterosexuality.
In other words, to many people, if someone’s not attracted to women – they’re attracted to men, and if someone’s not attracted to men, they’re attracted to women. And even though I’m quite sure most people are aware of bisexuality, and some of them of pansexuality (which is, also, not a word in Windows Live Writer) and even asexuality – they would regularly ignore the possibility that someone’s neither gay nor straight.
But while I got used to the fact that people just refuse to truly (mind the ‘truly’) recognise asexuality, and assume asexuals they meet are closeted gays, it still burns me inside when someone thinks that because someone’s attracted to men they’re not attracted to women or vice versa. But, of course, if you told someone you are attracted to both men and women they’d usually accept it; and that’s much more than what asexuals get.
Mind I don’t talk about hatred. So yes, there are some idiots who are homophobic/biphobic (also not a word in WLR, by the way) and they cause trouble. But they don’t bother me because they’re almost fully recognise as idiots. People who assume someone’s gay because they’re not straight, or do any of the other annoying things I described above, are not fully recognised as so. They should be.
I didn’t even begin to talk about people with non-binary gender who are not as familiar as ‘simple’ transgenders (even that’s not a word on WLR) who simply transitioned from female to male or vice versa, or people with sensual/platonic/romantic orientation (see: attraction) that doesn’t fit their sexual attraction. I should write about them too, but for now, you can just enter the links in this paragraph; they link to a wiki of asexuals, which is, for some reason, the only place that recognise all these things. At least the only one I found.
For now, I’ll just conclude that I hate monosexists (that’s obviously not a word on WLR) who find it so hard to recognise bi/asexuality, or at least believe people really are bi/asexuals, and don’t just experience a ‘phase’ before coming out as gays. Them, and people who think it’s so sad to be asexual… they’re just odd.
If some sexual orientations are unlikely, they are, if you ask me, absolute hetero/homosexuality. But that’s for another day, too.
P.S.
Just before I hit ‘publish’, I want to say that I’m aware I left out a few sexual orientations, and barely mentioned pansexuality. But there are so many, and I tried to be general here, so you’d have to forgive me.
