How to pick up girls

Yesterday I was sitting outside a coffee shop, eating a croissant and reading a book and minding my own business. Some guy with his friend walks by and says, “Hey! Will you be my new friend?”

“No, not today, sorry,” I respond, then immediately go back to my book.

“Aw, you’re mean,” he says. “I’m gonna go slit my wrists now.”

Fuck you, asshole, who thinks it’s okay to try to make women feel uncomfortable and guilty just because they don’t indulge your bullshit pick-up lines. I know this is fake suicide threat, but fuck you for thinking that’s in any way an appropriate thing to say (loudly) to a stranger just because you didn’t get what you want. I am sick of men thinking they are entitled to my attention simply because they plucked up the courage to speak words to me. I don’t owe you shit. Fuck off.

Apparently September is Hispanic History Month but every month will be Hispanic History Month in my classroom

So I've decided that fuck it, I don't care, we are going to skip science one day next week and learn about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

That's a lesson about México, Spanish poetry, AND feminism. BOOM BITCHES.

You can't always get what you want

So according to Dilbert author and bonafide asshole Scott Adams, men are a bunch of square pegs forced to hammer out a miserable and unhappy existence in a round hold society.* I was going to write a coherent rebuttal, but fuck that. Adams' piece of shit blog post makes absolutely no sense and barely follows its own line of argumentation, so why should I?

The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes.

According to Adams, the "natural instincts" of men are to shag anything that moves and tweet pictures of their junk. I personally think that's a bit insulting to men, as I know many guys who seem to be pretty happy with their lives without taking pictures of their penises and sending them to every woman they know. But maybe he's just referring to the idea of having an active sex drive in general. In which case, stop assuming that women don't have sex drives, you asshole. We do. Women also take pictures of their boobs and text them to people. Not that I'm saying that makes it a necessarily good decision, but it happens. Stop acting like men are the only people who want to have sex and that they're somehow oppressed because it's not socially acceptable to stick your dick in someone every time you get a boner.

All I’m saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness.

Oh yeah, not getting what you want instantly all the time = unhappiness. The reason you can't always get what you want is OH GOD WHY AM I EXPLAINING THIS GROW THE FUCK UP. Even Mick Jagger understands this. Jesus fucking Christ.

Consider Hugh Hefner. He had every benefit of being a single man, and yet he decided he needed to try marriage. Marriage didn’t work out, so he tried the single life again. That didn’t work out, so he planned to get married again, although reportedly the wedding just got called off. For Hef, being single didn’t work, and getting married didn’t work, at least not in the long run. Society didn’t offer him a round hole for his round peg. All it offered were unlimited square holes.

Wait, so if hiring a house full of women to be your harem (I'm not sure if that's actually how it works, but basically he is surrounded by beautiful women all day and I think he has the option to sleep with many of then? I don't know) doesn't count as fulfilling a man's natural instincts (as Scott Adams defines them), and neither does getting married and having one woman that you can constantly have sex with (not that this should be how marriage works, but I'm trying to understand Adams' logic here), then what the fuck? I don't see how this example makes any sort of sense according to the previous argument. What would another option be? If his argument is that society is constricting Hugh Hefner to choose between these two terribly oppressive** lifestyles, isn't his argument invalidated by the fact that Hefner's "single lifestyle" is outside the societal mainstream?

Maybe Adams doesn't get laid enough ever and therefore is completely miserable all the time, but I think it's acceptable to expect men (and women) to keep their sex drives under a certain amount of control, and also expect that mature adults can find happiness in things other than sex.

*Insert penis joke here
**Again, Adams' opinion, not mine

I wish my armpits weren't so ugly

Stephen Colbert is such a feminist ♥ And kudos to him for sticking it to Unilever even though Ben & Jerry's is one of his sponsors and named an ice cream flavor after him.

Hammers and nails and puppy dog tails

Having fairly tolerant and liberal-minded friends and going to school in Berkeley, I forget that I sometimes take things for granted. Like the fact that they world is full of assholes who use a J. Crew catalog featuring a five-year-old boy with pink toe nails as an excuse to write a diatribe on how the breaking down of gender roles is ruining our society.

Obviously, the whole article is bullshit, but there's one particular paragraph I wanted to pick apart:

The fallout is already being seen. Increasingly, girls show none of the reticence they once did to engage in early sexual relationships with boys.

Yeah, god forbid that girls who want to have sex go for it instead of acting like their virginity is the only thing that gives them value as a morally upstanding citizen.

That may be a good thing from the standpoint of gender equality, but it could be a bad thing since there is no longer the same typically “feminine” brake on such behavior.

So it has always been (and should always be) up to women to stop such "behavior"? Does that mean men are completely incapable of controlling their baser desires when necessary? How insulting to men. And people try to argue that feminists hate men.

Girls beat up other girls on YouTube.

But if it were boys beating up other boys, that would be TOTALLY FINE. Because violence is cool so long as it's to prove your masculinity.

Young men primp and preen until their abdomens are washboards and their hair is perfect.

But it's okay if girls primp and preen and have perfect hair, because all women are vapid and shallow.

And while that may seem like no big deal, it will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else, and neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives.

This just makes so much sense. Because only women can be nurturing enough raise children and only men have enough cojones to go into battle to defend their country. And if people who don't fulfill traditional gender roles will never, ever want to give up having great sex forever to have a family, then why are conservatives so afraid of gay marriage and adoption? (And why does having a family have to mean no more great sex? I mean, I understand that kids can be a bit of a disruption but still.* Also, I think Ablow just implied that people not conforming to gender roles have great sex. Yeeeeeah boi. Okay, I'll stop that.)

Who cares if a little boy decides his favourite color is hot pink? He has every right to do whatever the fuck he wants if his mom decides to let him. If he is straight, wanting to paint his toe nails won't change that. If he is gay, his mom not letting him paint his toe nails wouldn't change that. Your obedience or disobedience to various gender roles doesn't affect your sexuality, your abilities or your ambitions in life. For instance, here are some of the ways I don't conform to traditional gender roles:

-I am loud
-I am not afraid to interrupt people
-I hate talking about my feelings
-I don't fall in love with every guy I have sex with

Okay, so these are kinda shitty examples. But just because I don't follow these particular gender roles doesn't change my identity: female, cisgender, (mostly) heterosexual, loud, opinionated, ambitious, etc. I still am who I am. And this little kid will still be who he is, with or without hot pink toenails. God fucking forbid we let people be who they want to be, especially since it will literally affect nothing but their own happiness.

*Also, I think Keith Ablow just gave away more about his sex life than he intended.