Gender Roles: why our society is all kinds of depressing.

So the other day I was discussing a wonderful topic with Murphy Moore. We chatted for a brief couple minutes about gender roles. This topic must have come up when he made an inquiry about my Sociology class, (which by the way is a complete waste of time and how anyone can make a career out of that is well over my head), and as I always do I begin to explain all the negative views one could have for such a topic.

Unfortunately, we didn’t spawn a debate because we share the same views about both men and women. But rethinking back on the subject, I have come to the clear conclusion that our society is so depressing because of women.

Now before you make any judgments and try to call me out for some idiotic reason, other than you’re upset that my penis is larger than your own (yet i don’t actually have one), I’m all for equality and whatnot for women. Seeing as I am one. Yes, the equal pay, not having to do dishes every night, and being able to hold my own would be and are nice. But I also believe that the majority of these women who fight for these rights or misuse/abuse these rights should be revoked of which.

We touched upon the differences in men and women. As much as you ladies out there love to proclaim that you have found this new sense of self and identity through being independent, more intelligent, and less emotional you are forgetting one small thing.

You’re wrong.

Wait, so even though I am a woman, I am making the statement that all women are not independent and more rational? No, I am simply generalizing the majority of women in our country.

And in this Sociology class, which pertains mainly to woman’s rights and what have you, there is far too much estrogen in the classroom to be throwing around terms such as; feminists, stereotypical, and sex. I look back at my female classmates and watch them shockingly say how the women in today’s world has changed dramatically with no other help but their own from the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Now all said and done, yes the average women in today’s standards are slightly different from the ones that were raised to do house keeping and popping buns from their ovens. But I feel that social surroundings play a larger role than the women themselves. Women in the 40’s had to work in the factories when men went off to the war. And all of a sudden, because women are screwing a couple bolts and sewing a few more fabrics, they need to get on everyone’s cases about being “free”.

I have a few co-workers, who I choose not to get along with because they are the typical mentally retarded whores, who have complained to me about how unfair women are treated. These are the Sociology majors. They have tried to explain to me that “we being an opposite sex of the male” – yes one of them had actually said this, in that fashion. Wow, so you do know that there isn’t a penis down there, good job. – are being put down, embarrassed, and treated unequally.

Treated unequally? To me women are treated very equally. We wear what we want, as much or as little clothing one should desire. We can vote, come and go as we please, choose not to have children, get a divorce, and openly say whatever we want about men. Yet, men cannot do a few of these things.

If you saw a man walking down the street wearing a dress, he would be considered a transsexual. If a woman walks down the street in slacks, she is considered as a women still. If men are even in the slightest bit irrational, or even a little emotional, they are known as a fagot. Women complain and sob at any chance they get. I have seen it far to many times.

And these few co-workers of mine have told me that they don’t want to be a working woman when they graduate. They want to drive a pink Range Rover, be a soccer mom, and clean after children all the time. Isn’t  it a little hypocritical to say that women have less freedoms then men do, yet you are playing into the exact stereotype you loath. So I have concluded that not only are Sociology and unreal science majors completely illogical, they are also the ones who go to college for the sole purpose of finding a husband who might become rich and who still have a youthful look.

The event in Sociology class that I enjoyed the most was the “Are you Considered Masculine or Feminine?” survey. To be feminine you needed to score a 4.9 or above out of ten. I scored a 1.17, and I think that it actually scored me correctly.

So all I’m saying is that women need to sit down and stop taking for granted what they have been given so far. You are what we call cunts.

bangkok boredom

I hadn’t intended to review Cage’s latest travesty. I still don’t, but I found a compelling excerpt from a local paper’s review:

[the movie is ok] but mostly it has the inert acting of Nicolas Cage weighing it down

well said Palladino, I could do no better

political recursion

an even better Obama pin:

Florida, Retributivism, and Old Ass Intarwebs

Ah, the Sunshine State

So far I’m a little angry at the South for not conforming to my stereotypes.  Granted, there are a great deal of people cruising around in confederate flag shirts and I have seen more than one sign for Ronald Reagan (!?) around town, but all this could just as easily be found in Bakersfield, California.  So far, the biggest difference is the humidity.  The air is so thick you can drink it.  That and the high temperature guarantee that if I spend more than 5 minutes outside I will come down with what is known here in the South as the vapuhs.  So I spend the majority of the day cloistered inside an air conditioned house reading or watching TV.  As it happens, I buckled down to the omnipresent ads on TNT and finally watched “The Closer.”

Sweet, Sweet Retributivism

The episode of “The Closer” I watched was mildly interesting and revolved around a spunky Kyra Sedgwick bouncing from one preposterous clue to the next trying to solve the murder of two corrupt Tijuana cops found in pickup truck bed in Los Angeles.  By far, the most fascinating part about the show, though, was the ending.  Not because of what happened – there was, as in all procedural dramas, a stupid twist – but because of what it suggests about people’s intuitions about morality and punishment.  Sedgwick figures out that a liason officer from Mexico that had ostensibly been aiding her investigation is actually crooked and had placed a bounty on the (innocent) suspect’s head so that as soon as he was booked he would have been murdered by other inmates in L.A. county jail.  Instead of booking the corrupt cop on another (and, it should be noted, the only provable) charge that he could easily slip out of, Sedgwick arrests him as the suspect – thus ensuring he will be murdered by inmates the moments he is put in prison.  That is exactly what happens.  So the bad guy gets murdered, the innocent suspect gets away, and the audience is expected to pump their fists and boo-yah.

There are, of course, other shows that embrace a simplistic, stick it to the bad guys morality.  24 comes to mind in particular; the audience roots for Jack Bauer and his Geneva-Convention-be-damned attitude because he’s taking out terrorists, drug lords, and other baddies.  Dexter, a much more ambiguous show in terms of morality, still asks the audience to root for the eponymous serial killer/police investigator who takes out the trash that the justice system can’t successfully prosecute.  But in each of these shows it’s implicit that what the character is doing is wrong – we either feel it’s justified anyway or it’s just fun to root for an anti-hero.  What disturbed me about The Closer was that it portrayed Sedgwick as a squeaky clean, if somewhat irritating, hero whose actions were not only morally justified, but morally right.  For a TV show to get away with this, it’s reasonable to assume that they expected the end to be consistent with prevailing intuitions about punishment in the viewership.  I think the following two are the most likely candidates:

-That the prevailing intuition for viewers is some kind of retributivism; that we punish crimes because it is ethically correct to do so and any other benefits accrued are purely bonuses.  Proportionality often figures into this conception of punishment, too – most people don’t want to punish speeding tickets with death – so the murder of the corrupt Mexican cop would be perfectly justified, since he was also guilty of murder.  In essence, the old “eye for an eye” formulation.  Wrong deeds deserve punishment. 

-That there are several goals or justifications packed into punishment along with retribution, perhaps utility and deterrence, but these all get suspended in favor of retributivism when it’s expedient.  Everyone can approve of trying to reform a serial rapist, but if that rapist openly boasts they will attempt to rape anyone who approaches them and will never stop raping, a lot of people would probably look the other way if they were quietly disposed of.   

A third way of looking at this, I suppose, could be that our legal system is broken so whatever way one can punish criminals roughly in proportion to their crime, be it legal or extralegal, is justified.  That seems unlikely to me, since the show centers around law enforcement.  Hell, even Dirty Harry, for all his badassery and devil may care brattitude, was at core a believer in the legal system and spent the whole movie Magnum Force sticking it to vigilantes on the SFPD.  It’s because Sedgwick is a cop that her punishment has an air of legitimacy.  All three of the outlined intuitions strike me as distasteful, but especially the one that I think is most likely: the second.  It’s the same kind of thinking that has delivered humanity unjust kangaroo courts in the past and today is probably one of the main reasons why those involved with the Guantanamo Bay prison can rest easy at night.  I certainly hope it isn’t an intuition shared by a substantial sector of the population, but I guess I’ll never know since no one fucking watches The Closer.

Nostalgia, 1996 Style

Also, check out this post of what some popular websites looked like 12 years ago.  I can almost hear my 28.8 squealing. (from reddit)

Tyrone’s Top Ten: Worst Songs Ever.

Exactly one year ago today, an immense burden was set upon me by the cruel spindly hands of destiny. I was given the task by the forces that be to unleash upon this planet a mixtape of utterly biblical proportions. A mixtape so terrible as to cause the earth to tremble beneath, the oceans to instantly boil, and the skies to open up and call the faithful up to their salvation. The list is as follows. Godspeed sailor.

10. Good Vibrations – Marky Mark.

I know nowadays Mark Wahlberg is supposed to be Mr. Badass I’m from the streets movie star and shit, but in the early 90’s when boy bands roamed the earth, Marky was cultivating a very different image. This song is filled with an interesting combination of vague sexual innuendos and a staunch drug free take on life. Mark feels the need to let you know that his body is healthy, and his rhymes make him wealthy. Also apparently the Funky Bunch helps (he). In the very same song he proclaims how he is Pure Hip Hop®, no sell out. He still saw himself as a Bad Ass from the streets kinda guy, but I guess they were very different streets those days. This must be why this song hit number 1on the Billboard top 100.

That and his mad hip hop skills.

9. Bug a Boo – Destiny’s Child.

Forget the fact that no one has ever in the history of mankind used the term bug a boo before or after this song was released. And forget the fact that Beyonce is really fucking hot, it will only serve to cloud your judgment. This song is about a girl(or ho if you will) being ‘bugged’ by some guy via various electronic methods; Pager(she gon throw it out the window), wired telephone(she gon have the now defunct MCI cut the phone poles and put him on the call block) and email(she gon make AOL have those things stop). To top it off, she don’ even care if the Pope likes the guy. This is why I imagine the antagonist as an Aryan Nazi Superman.

8. Sussudio- Phil Collins.

Music Video

Hey!  I’m a no talent ass clown! I want to write a song! I think I am going to steal the synth from a Prince song! Next, I’m going to pick a nonsensical word my daughter calls her horse and repeat it throughout the entire inane song in the most obnoxious voice I can muster! And then you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to make one of the worst music videos of all time to this song AND as a special bonus I’m going to have Quentin Tarantino appear in it (0.58 in).  Did I mention that this is one of Patrick Batemen’s personal favorite songs?

7.  Who Let the Dogs Out – Baha Men.

This song holds a particularly aggravating spot in my heart. As a person who likes dogs I would just like to reiterate that on the unfortunate occasion that someone does accidentally let the dogs out it will never be productive or fucking funny to “spontaneously” yell out  “Who let the dogs out?” punctuated by an extra irritating  *woof* *woof*. Hey you fucking whore, while you were doing that ever so cute little routine your precious fucking dog just ran out into traffic and got smashed underneath a green Chevy Suburban. I’m glad they finally stopped playing this song at sporting events.

6. Achy Breaky Heart – Billy Ray Cyrus.

Am I the only one that to this day still wishes that someone would tell Billy Ray’s heart about the whole breakup situation so that his fucking heart would blow up and just kill this man already? When Weird Al has already mercilessly bashed a song, you know it is a pile of shit.

5. Ice, Ice Baby – Vanilla Ice.

I think the user TUPACCHAMP said it best with his well written dissection of this song on YouTube.

YO foreclov eat a dicc foo
FUCK YOU
AND THIS ICE CREAM FAGGOT
SUCH A WHITE NERDY VOICE WORST RAP RECORD EVER
FAGZ
DUMB ASS FOOs NOBODY WANTS TOO SEE A VANIILA FAGGOT LIKE HIM
ICE ICE?
MANE YOUZ A CRAZY ASS WHITE BOY
YOU THINK YOU DOPE NAH
THE POPE IS DOPER THAN YOU CUZZ
FUCK YOU.

4. Believe – Cher.

This is the shitty ass song that started it all. It gave the world what is now known as “The Cher Effect”.The Cher Effect is the now famous editing process of using Auto-Tune and setting the pitch correction to a speed that is much faster than the actual audio track. This can result in either an interesting Daft Punk song or a horrifically fucking terrible Kid Rock song. Rumor has it that after Cher had finished recording her album she insisted on using this retarded effect on her voice throughout the entire song because she thought it sounded cool.  I would like to take a moment to say Fuck You Cher for starting a trend almost as annoying as the shitty song you released.

3. The Taliban Song – Toby Keith.

Hmm, what could be wrong with this one. Could it be a mentally retarded redneck country singer singing a narrative about an Afgani who lives in a two-bedroom cave with his towel covered wife? Could it be his envisioning of them sitting together praying to mighty Allah that he will send U.S. jets to drop bombs all over the holy land and rid them of the Taliban so they can hop on their camels and ride off in the sunset together? Or maybe it’s the patriotic 9-11 references and the praising of President Bush’s skilled diplomacy between Iraq and Iran? Lets be both insulting to a culture and pretend like we are their saviors also! I could have potentially had at least 4 Toby Keith songs on this list but I will take the high road on this one. Besides, it’s not nice to pick on the mentally handicapped.

2. Cheeky Song(Touch My Bum) – Cheeky Girls
music video

These two girls are quite possibly the only thing to come out of Transylvania that aren’t fucking awesome. Also setting another unbelievable precedent, these girls are the only two twin sisters in the world that I am not likely to fantasize about having a threesome with. The Cheeky Girls are definitive proof that repeative annoyance in order to achieve name recognition is really not the way to go. This song narrowly avoids the number 1 spot on this list due to the fact they offer up some pretty wise lyrics in this song.

“Come and smile don’t be shy, Touch my bum, this is life.”

If that isn’t absurdist genius I really don’t know what is.

1. My Humps – The Black Eyed Peas.

This song seems to be a rather upbeat story about a young girl triumphing over her severe case of Kyphosis by finding a group of disability fetishists who are so enamored by her lovely lady lump that they will send her expensive purses in exchange for her deformity pictures. She finally meets with some of the fetishists at a disco club and grinds with them. In true internet fashion she at some point decides that if the creepy guys she has been tempting sexually for extended period of time try to touch her hump she will go ahead and start some drama. When you finally figure out that they are in fact not trying to pitch a Disney movie,you start to see why this is the worst song ever.

Know a song that deserves to be on this list?  Let Tyrone know about it.