Suzanne Franks gets something right

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Michael

For those who weren’t here for Femi-crazy Invasion 2010 here at FTSOS, Suzanne Franks is one of those caricatures of feminists that really has no place in rational discussion. Hell, she demands people refer to her as “Zuska”, and should one refuse to delve into her weird Internet fantasy game, she’s liable to start throwing down some bans (or call you sexist: whatever works at the moment to get her whiny way).

She’s a forgettable character in the blogosphere, but I am still getting hits from her post all about me; I admit I clicked around a little recently. And one of the things I clicked was this post. It’s all about this image.

For Franks, there is no distinction between this image and the one in her post about CNN. She believes that virtually all images of the female body are sexist. The basis seems to be that since men tend to dominate and run things, pictures of women are only meant for the sake of objectification (except maybe face shots). In reality, this is just a ridiculous tool Franks and her friends use so they can whine that everything is sexist. And there’s no practical way that sexism can ever go away under this mis-definition. In essence, Franks should be pointing out nearly every picture of a woman under her caricature philosophy. The fact that she focuses on particular images belies what she probably actually recognizes – not all images are sexist.

In the image in question here, yes, it is actually sexist. Lindsey Vonn’s body is specifically being viewed at the expense of her other talents. One sports writer disagrees and it’s here that Franks takes out her frustrations and anger.

Silly ladeez! Chris Chase mansplains why you are WRONG!!!! (Though I note, alas, poor Chris is unable to actually directly link to the womentalksports.com post he is mansplaining.)

Because the ladybranes are tiny, I am here to help. I am going to translate Chris’s mansplaining post into a more direct communication that really gets the message across, so that even the teeniest tiniest ladybraned ladeez out there will understand what is meant. Chase’s original text is in boldface. Here we go!

She goes on and on from there, inserting some imaginary conversation she’s having in her head. This is where Franks is generally wrong. All she’s showing anyone (except her faithful in-group commenters) is that there are certain things that might please her if any reasonable man actually said them. She seems to have this sort of desire to hear a man say “but Vonn’s cover is awesome because, while she is posed in a classic come-hither-and-fuck-me-hard-you-know-you-wanna stance…” just so she can validate her philosophy in her head. If a man actually says it, then I’m right! Until then, I’ll just pretend really, really hard that men actually think this way.

One final, bit of a non-sequitur point on the term “mansplaining”. In the past Franks has tried to define the term, claiming that it isn’t just the act of explaining while male. Instead, it’s giving a condescending explanation to someone who does not need one. This is a lie because within that definition is the qualifier that it’s really a man explaining something to a woman, but that can be ignored for a moment because Franks and friends also point out that women can be guilty of “mansplaining”. Of course, they’d never be able to give any examples, but I can take this at face value. Let’s say, sure, anyone can mansplain. But then wherein lies the intrinsic masculinity? If anyone can do it, then there are two options. Either there is nothing inherently masculine about condescending explanation or Franks and friends are grouping the majority of men together as if there is something inherently wrong with how men behave. This is itself sexist since it is discriminating against one sex based upon an unfounded stereotype. (And here I use “sexist” correctly, i.e., discrimination based upon sex, not the doltish ‘it’s just discrimination of women’ definition caricature feminists have to offer.)

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Letter to ‘Dr.’ Christopher Maloney

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Michael

You know, I was pretty much done attacking Christopher Maloney a couple of months ago. I really didn’t care much about the guy. Hell, a Google search of “Christopher Maloney Maine” without the quotation marks yields For the Sake of Science as the 7th result. A Yahoo! search of “Chris Maloney Maine” without the quotation marks yields a link to a letter to the editor about him by yours truly as the number 1 result. And then there’s this awful YouTube video where Maloney thought setting his webcam to pedo-view was a good idea. (I mean, c’mon. He’s not a pedophile so why use that creepy-as-all-fuck pedo-setting?) So, I think the issue is pretty well settled for me. I post about quacks (like like Andreas Moritz) and since few people pay attention to or otherwise talk about them (what with all the quackery), my website finds its way toward the top of search engines. But it wasn’t good enough for Maloney to leave things as they were. He had to whine to WordPress that I said he wasn’t a real doctor. In reality, I pointed out that Maine considers him a real doctor but I don’t. Last time I checked libel laws did not protect people from the opinions of others – especially when those opinions are built upon facts laid out before everyone. (This is more than one can say for Maloney – he told several lies about an easily accessible study.)

But as I said, I was good with forgetting about the guy. People who search for him will find my blog and get a better perspective on why naturopaths are dangerous non-doctor doctors. But since that isn’t cool with Maloney, he has received this letter from me.

It was super cute of you or one of your friends to report that I pointed out that you aren’t a real doctor on my blog, but I’m curious. Why can’t you read? I noted that Maine allows quacks like you some of the same rights as real doctors. My qualm is that by the standards of the actual medical community, you aren’t a doctor. The states where your practice has been deemed too dangerous have things right, not Maine.

I’ll be real careful in the future to not hurt your feelings by pointing out how much of a charlatan you are without noting Maine’s BS laws. Of course, you’ve only gone and made things worse for yourself by whining to WordPress. I run a publication which gets distributed all over UMA and you just landed yourself on the front page. (With a note that Maine endorses your dangerous ideas, of course, Chrissy!)

The publication I’m referencing is, of course, Without Apology. I was actually already considering addressing naturopaths in the next edition, but now Maloney has just put himself on the front page for sure. I doubt I’ll mention any of this fiasco, even though it shows the sort of lengths naturopaths will go to demand respect (which reminds me of creationists, frankly), because it would be unwieldy in print, but I will be sure to note all the incorrect things he has said about science. Hopefully I can potentially save a life.

The moral of the story? I do not just quit because someone is under the false assumption that he can bully his way into being right.

Update: The search results will vary slightly. Sometimes my writing shows up higher than I said, and I presume sometimes it will be lower. At any rate, it is always near the top.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

WordPress, naturopaths, and whining

Posted on February 6, 2010 by Michael

Some of my more regular readers will have noticed a recent lack of posting here. The reason isn’t that I’ve been crazy busy, had computer troubles, or anything of that nature. It’s actually that WordPress decided to block me from posting at all. I couldn’t even save drafts. It took nearly two days until anyone managed to tell me a damn thing about this message:

Warning: We have a concern about some of the content on your blog.

It then goes on to give a link for contacting them to resolve the issue but then inanely tells me to send a report. No, WordPress. The onus isn’t on me to tell you why you’re fucking up.

Before I say what the response was, I want to point out the sort of irresponsible crap WordPress does. It’s similar to what YouTube does: someone makes a complaint about content and a video gets taken down. The user must then wait to have someone review his material before it gets put back up. WordPress does the same thing with its bloggers. Unless one is an utter idiot, it isn’t difficult to see how this opens the system up to abuse. In fact, WordPress knows about the abuse.

TOS reports are currently overwhelmed by a politically motivated flood of complaints. Sorry.

Any jamoke can make a complaint and get someone shut down for no good reason. And sometimes it gets worse – somewhere buried in those forums was an instance where a user uploaded illegal music, was told to take it down, took it down, and then was blocked from posting 4 hours later. WordPress has an irresponsible system that needs as much fixing as YouTube.

But my case is slightly different. Here’s the response I finally got from “Mark”.

Hi,

You wrote:
“I cannot overstate this fact: Naturopaths are not doctors and they are not
qualified. They cherry-pick evidence, often lie and misrepresent facts.
Recently, a local naturopathic “doctor,” Christopher Maloney, wrote a letter
in which he committed himself to that third possibility”

“Maloney is NOT a doctor! He has NO qualifications which earn him that title.”

We were sent:
Dr Maloney is a licensed Maine State Doctor, license number ND240. He is
recognized under Maine state law: Title 32: PROFESSIONS AND OCCUPATIONS
Chapter 113-B: COMPLEMENTARY HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS HEADING: PL 1995, C. 671,
§13 (NEW) Subchapter 3: NATUROPATHIC MEDICINE LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND
SCOPE OF PRACTICE HEADING: PL 1995, C. 671, §13.

Please edit your statements to include his qualifications or delete your statements.

Thank you.
–
Mark

Ah, so there it is. Naturopaths know they practice quackery. They know reasonable people do not trust them. They know the medical community rejects their bullshit. All they have is attacking a two month old post based upon a technicality.

I have since edited the post to read as follows:

Maloney is NOT a doctor by any reasonable measures – and Maine’s measures are not reasonable! He has NO qualifications which earn him that title beyond the state’s bogus measurements!**

…

**Maloney whined to WordPress to make me change this. I originally said he was not a doctor at all. Under the technicality of Maine law, he is a doctor. But he’s a dangerous one because he lies about the efficacy of treatments to suit his purposes. And, again, he is not allowed to practice naturopathy in two states.

But I shouldn’t have to make that alteration. In that same post I said this.

…but let’s not pretend that these people are actually qualified to be doling out medical advice. As I note in my letter, people run the risk of taking contra-indicated drugs if we start treating naturopaths as real doctors.

As a naturopath, Chris Maloney is not qualified to tell anyone jackshit about anything to do with their health – because naturopaths are not actually qualified according to normal medical standards. God damn it. I hate throwing up all these qualifiers. Is WordPress as bad at reading as Maloney evidently is? I clearly made a distinction between naturopaths and traditional doctors. I don’t care what the state of Maine says. It’s all a bunch of legalese bull designed to force people to respect quacks.

I shouldn’t need to point out in every sentence that Maloney is a doctor, but not per my and the medical community’s standards. Hell, look at the original letter I had written to my local paper (which is also contained in that same aforementioned post).

But it hits closer to home than that. Maine is just one of several states that give these vastly underqualified “doctors” such [prescription] rights.

I noted that Maloney gets rights under Maine law. My beef is that he shouldn’t.

This is as if a state made voodoo doctors members of the medical community and WordPress made threats every time someone said these people weren’t actually doctors or qualified for anything.

Filed under: Pure bullshit | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

This is retarded

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Michael

Rahm Emanuel recently said this.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Emanuel, exasperated upon learning that liberal special-interest groups were planning to run ads against conservative Democrats not supportive of health care reform, blasted the plan as “f—— retarded” over the summer.

This prompted Sarah Palin, that beacon of hope for morons everywhere, to say this.

In a post titled “Are You Capable of Decency, Rahm Emanuel?,” Palin wrote, “Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the ‘N-word’ or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable,” adding, “it’s heartbreaking.”

I’m always amazed when I see people trying to make such tenuous connections. The reality is that the only thing that connects “retard” and racial slurs is that both are meant to be offensive. Why each one is offensive is another thing.

“Nigger” is meant to disparage a person based upon race as if there is something inherently negative about being a certain color. Since reasonable people tend to agree that skin color has no normative value, the word can be rejected because it is offensive in a wide array of contexts (though not when specifically defined). “Retard” and its derivatives, on the other hand, are meant to disparage a person for saying or doing something unintelligent, as if there is something inherently negative about not being smart. Reasonable people tend to agree that there is something negative about a lack of intelligence.*

There is, however, a narrow band of usage where “retard” might be considered legitimately offensive to people who are actually retarded. This would be when one uses the term to reference the goodness or general value of a person. Emanuel didn’t do this, instead referencing the quality of the idea of weakening the Democratic party with the goal of passing healthcare. (And he’s right – weaken the Democrats and who do these people think will take power?)

I hate political sensitivity at the expense of linguistics.

*Boy! I can’t wait for the first Clever Carl who disagrees with me to come by and turn this one around on me! Internet. Scoff.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Hiking in Maine

Posted on February 2, 2010 by Michael

Here’s a video-picture montage a friend of mine made. Yours truly is in some of the photos.

Filed under: Hiking | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

Hiking Jordan Cliffs Trail

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Michael

…is, frankly, frightening. At least there were parts that were just super-sketchy.

The trail, in Acadia National Park, looks right over Jordan Pond and the ocean once it gets up to the actual cliffs. From the pictures I was able to find, it looked like a pretty good trail: strenuous for the average day hiker, but probably relatively easy for myself and the people who went with me. Of course, winter hiking is entirely different from summer hiking.

Most of the trail could have been done more efficiently with snowshoes, but it wasn’t ridiculous until crampons were needed. Of course, only two of the three of us on this trip actually had crampons (another had some other shoe-things to help from slipping, but they weren’t designed for hiking – and they didn’t even fit over his boots, anyway). And, out of laziness and constant underestimation, I didn’t even bother putting mine on. I had some regrets once I reached the part of the trail with sharply angled rock and ice that dropped off directly down a couple hundred feet. Fortunately, I wasn’t blazing the trail (the other person without crampons took that initiative), so I had some places to put my feet after him. Regardless, it was one of the most dangerous trails I’ve crossed to date.

Since I was making sure I wouldn’t fall to a horrible death, I have no pictures of that part of the trail. But I think it’s possible to get a good idea of what it was like from these pictures.

Update: I didn’t get any pictures of that sketchy part of the trail, but my friend did.

Filed under: Hiking | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Rowsdower!

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Michael

Filed under: Humor | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

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