Posted on April 7, 2008 by Max. Categories: Max's posts.
The other day I posted a rather long quote on the Tumble about so-called “Wounded Game Theory”. Having had a chance to discuss it with those friends of mine who happen to be of the male persuasion, I’ve discovered that she’s actually startlingly correct.
On some things anyways. It’s like this: far from being a kickback to our dark, primeval past, this phenomenon hints at something which is actually quite a recent phenomenon. With the rise of male image stereotyping in media, guys (especially college-aged guys) are becoming more and more self-conscious. Now days, many of the same self-confidence issues that people stereotype women with are becoming more and more prevalent among men. What does that mean to you? Y’all make yourselves too inaccessible. Especially when you’re all “prettied up”.
Tim appears to have been too lazy to post this gem, which is arguably the creepiest “children’s book” I’ve ever seen besides the one I posted earlier.
I’m particularly angry at this book because it appears to be a book that exists entirely to serve the “nurture” end of the “why are some people attracted to the same sex?” argument. Seriously - are they trying to indoctrinate young children now? Oh - that attraction you’re feeling? Yeah, you’re just not right in the head. Go see a therapist and get some drugs; they’ll fix you right up!
Seriously people, this is not the solution. Shouldn’t we be trying to teach our children to be more open-minded rather than closed-minded? Sometimes I feel like the government should just take all children at birth and raise them in a government-sponsored institute. I mean, sure - we’d never be able to create a government responsible enough to raise them without bias, but the idea of ridding the world of prejudice once and for all seems wonderfully tempting.
I don’t really know enough about the issue to be able to say that attraction to the same sex is definitively an issue of nature OR nurture, but I do know that what the friends I have who are gay feel is real enough and that those of us who aren’t gay have no right belittling their feelings because it doesn’t fit our narrow conception of correct gender roles. Teaching children that it’s “all nature” or “all nurture” is not the way to go - kids should be taught to examine the facts and view these things with an open mind (My how Post-Modern of me!)… Of course, I’m not really sure if that’s even possible. It seems natural to believe that you need to teach kids SOMETHING for sure so they have a frame of reference… If you must teach something, then, doesn’t the more open and accepting idea seem the better one to teach?
Just to end the night on the same note it started on, here’s an interesting pro-safe sex (really anti-AIDS) commercial I found on Stage6. Fair warning, this commercial is NSFW.
If anyone wants to see it full sized, the original can be found here.
Oddly, the ending makes this commercial seem to be promoting abstinence as the best option, but the commercial doesn’t really show any consequences of pre-marital sex (other than it being boring or just not the right “fit”), and the ending just really seems to flow as a natural consequences of having found the right fit at last… It’s kinda hard to tell what they’re trying to say, actually, except for the final frame’s blatant “fight aides” message.
Posted on August 16, 2007 by Max. Categories: Max's posts.
Wait a minute - wasn’t Cheney supposed to be the one secretly in charge? So why was he the one that did the about-face on Iraq policy? Maybe it WAS Rove after all… For those of you who’re not history buffs, Cheney is speaking in past tense because he’s talking about the Gulf War. In all fairness to him, it could be argued that this war is “different circumstances”; what I’m curious about is why Saddam Husein went from “not worth very many… dead Americans” then to suddenly being worth thousands now…
I’m not really pro or anti the Iraq War, but I’m no fan of Cheney, and I’d be curious to see his reaction to being confronted with this video…