Post deleted: Woman are crazy

Jul 202009

Now what I said to Jonathan regarding my ideas about censorship stands. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t condone it: not ever, not for anything.
However, I also believe that satire only works if people recognize it as being satire.

Apparently my satire was lost on many people. I still think it’s significant that the only people to complain about the post were male, while all the women who responded loved it. Nonetheless, I had no desire to offend anybody – but instead to make people laugh, and perhaps think. More specifically – to make * certain men* think. Since apparently I completely failed at this – the post is pointless. So I have deleted it from the blog.

If anybody was offended – that was not my intent and I appologize. I believe most strongly that nobody has the right not to be offended (that’s what free speech means) but that doesn’t mean that being offensive is a goal I aspire to – it’s merely not something I make any effort to avoid. In this case however, I felt that the post was in fact for a significant number of readers achieving exactly the opposite of what I had intended, so I decided to rather just get rid of it.

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http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com Mackenzie

Er…no women commented dude. I was about to say this though:
The part about how women dress sounds ridiculous to me, and I’m a woman. Cleavage-y clothes are only for when accompanied by the S.O. Then he can look all he wants and at the same time ward off the arses who stare at girls.

When I was 14, I stopped wearing shorts and started wearing men’s t-shirts. Men’s t-shits are nice because they cover up my curves. I wore long-jeans year-round. I’ve moved farther south, so I switched to tea-length, ankle-length, and floor-length skirts in the summer. I wear women’s t-shirts now, on the condition that if there is any gap at the midriff, it is no larger than 1cm and no cleavage is visible. For tank-tops, conceivably cleavage would be possible…but only if your eyes were under my chin. People facing me cannot see it.

In general, the goal for dressing is to attract as *little* attention as possible.

Talking to other women I know, it sounds like they also only wore men’s clothes for years, until they entered into a relationship.
http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com Mackenzie

Wait, also… that wasn’t very good satire. Please go read “A Modest Proposal” for a lesson in satire.
Pingback: jonathan carter » Blog Archive » Women are not crazy
http://aligunduz.org Ali Gunduz

I was lucky enough to have opened the now deleted post in time, though I haven’t read till now.

I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I don’t have the exact same observations, I could see enough parallels to make it work as a satire.

And about deleting the post, I can see only two justified reasons to delete an already published post:
1) If kKeeping it public would cause an imminent (and real) threat to you or someone you’d rather not see get hurt
2) You are ashamed of the piece of writing

I don’t see the first option possible (unless there has been a significant problem with your mentioned girl friend) and also see no reason why you should be ashamed of it.

In conclusion, I think you’re a dumbass for deleting it.

Hmm, now I’ll have to consider if any of the two reasons apply for this comment…
ani

for the record, the girlfriend did not tell him to delete it.
this is much ado about nothing.
http://silentcoder.co.za silentcoder

Ali, well a lot of people told me it was a very bad piece of satire – I guess if I was ashamed it was at the obvious failure of my writing skill in this regard. At least some people got it though.
Anyway, the real truth is, the amount of unfair backlash just upset me and I was really tired and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it. So add those two up – and I just decided to get rid of it.
http://silentcoder.co.za/id A.J. Venter

Mackenzie

It was a parody, I was mocking a common chauvinist perception, and though no women commented on this site, there were plenty on other locations. I do not believe any of the stuff about outfits – it was parody, but the worst thing about your post is that you are guilty of exactly the same thing you accused me off and which I was making fun off in men who do it !
You were, unquestioningly applying your ideas about behavior to all women. I made a joke about men who assume all women who wear revealing outfits are trying to attract men, while you assumed the exact opposite to apply to all women ! That is as stereotypical as the men I criticized and as inaccurate !

It is interesting that most of the people who praised it are people who know me well, have read my other writings and frequently spoken with me at length. Anybody who has read my writings will be well aware what my true opinions are and would have instantly seen that this is an obvious parody – but it clearly failed at being so obvious to those who didn’t know me. That is why I felt it was not a successful parody.
Now do yourself a favor and read some of my other works and at least judge it in context. I have written on numerous occasions here and elsewhere that I believe the only valid grounds for judging a person is their choices. Anything they didn’t choose – gender, race etc. is not grounds for making any judgments or assumptions on.

I have long advocated the ideal that we should abolish all institutional grouping of people. No recognition of concepts like race or gender should be allowed. There is no reason your birth certificate or whatever form of ID your country uses or even your password should contain the word “male” or “female” – I want to live in a world where it says simple “human”.

I have on multiple previous occasions here written that I believe the tendency to date and marry within race to be extremely harmful to human health and potential. I would never dictate to somebody who to date but I measure the progressiveness of a society I find myself in (and traveling a lot, I’ve been in several) by the percentage of mixed race couples I see.
Not only does that indicate a society which has moved beyond grouping and simply encourages people to be with the person they love – it goes further than that, it creates a society that over time will see races disapear (they are barely more than an optical illusion anyway as genetically the differences are too small to care about) creating a single race with the best qualities of all the races the society once had. A unified and peaceful culture and a perfectly blended race that will have the best immune system imaginable, the greatest longevity ever attained and where discrimination is frankly – impossible.

That is what I believe in – I was mocking the ridiculousness of those who do not believe in the ideals of equality. During these discussions I have been pointed at Poe’s law, and I guess this proves it. No matter how ridiculous and over the top your parody of fundamentalism, if you don’t explicitely spell it out, people will mistake it for the real thing. Presumably the conclusion to draw from Poe’s law is that by definition fundamentalism is so ridiculous and over the top that I just don’t get how anybody can manage to believe it seriously… it is, quite literally, a joke.
yogurtu

@ A.J. venter:
I read the copy of your post in facebook, and the humorous tone of it is absolutely obvious. besides, the responses there are so… normal!!
they were precisely what I would expect from normal, non-geek people.
@ Jonathan Carter: given the bile you display towards AJ I would say that either a)you are trying to manipulate a geekish community (ubuntu) or b) you honestly believe in what you said and in that case you really need to go out more often and meet non-geek people.
either way, given that AJ makes no reference towards free software, or programming or anything of the sort in that post, and that he is not pretending to be a model of anything, or making any judgments, I find you reaction pretty disturbing. Specially considering that you do belong in a community that preaches humanity towards others.
I mean, I really like the sense of sharing that I see in the ubuntu community, but seeing this kind of behavior and the way some members in your community treat women (stallman, Matt Aimonetti, etc) I would rather stay away.
P.S. I’m posting this also in AJ’s blog