It's going to be shit.
1. The Weeping Angels immediately became one of the most popular monsters in Doctor Who's history due to their clever and unique powers. They're portrayed by people in grey paint, and sometimes by bits of polystyrine. The production team still think fleets of CGI spaceships are a good idea, for some reason.
2. The name "Weeping Angels" was coined by the ancient Time Lords, as "The statues that can't move and don't kill you" wasn't pretentious enough for the people who brought us "The Medusa Cascade" (a big splodgey thing), "The Untempered Schism" (a hole with some blue bits) and "The Great Key of Rassilon" (a gun with enough power to kill a single Sontaran before disassembling itself and erasing the user's memory, which at least explains why it really is Gallifrey's last line of defense).
3. If they really believe in themselves, however, the Angels can move in plain sight and go around nonchalantly snapping people's necks, raising the question of why they were even in that story to begin with.
4. The sight of Matt Smith surrounded by Angels, narrowing his eyes and declaring 'There's one thing you should never, ever put in a trap... me!' makes the 'Make the foundation of this society a man who never would' scene from The Doctor's Daughter" seem a lot better in retrospect.
5. Similarly, the sheer desperation with which Steven Moffat gives the Angels new, often contradictory powers on a whim makes "The Vashta Nerada live in trees, and books are made of paper which comes from trees, so this library is a forest OF DEATH" look aesthetically and logically coherent.
6. And they're still more consistently written than Amy.
7. The letter J is forbidden in the Weeping Angel alphabet.
8. If the Angels are "Quantum Locked", then perceiving them through any sense should freeze them, not just sight, making them one of the few galactic menaces that would be rendered utterly helpless after a bad curry.
9. They're not as shit as the Toclafane.
10. My last girlfriend probably still likes them.
11. If you're ever cornered by a Weeping Angel, you can instantly escape by travelling back in time and helping yourself escape in order to travel back in time and help yourself escape. This will "finally" result in "a story with genuine intellectual complexity", according to Gallifrey Base and absolutely nobody else.
12. An image of an angel is capable of transforming itself into an actual angel by manipulating the way in which a conscious observer affects matter, which sounds like an interesting and creepy idea for a story until you actually watch it.
April said
Stossel is an interesting case. I don’t know how much of him you’re exposed to down there in Australia (not more than 200 ppm, I hope; he gets toxic at higher concentrations), but he is frustratingly common here in the states. I hadn’t known he was on board with the MRA crowd, but I’m not super surprised. I don’t think he’s a straight up misogynist like some of these guys are; instead he’s that particular brand of libertarian who feels it necessary to vociferously attack any notion that we’re not all equal individuals, free of any social baggage. It’s important to their ideology that they maintain this fiction, because if different kinds of people (gender, race, etc) have different advantages or disadvantages in society, then they cannot justify their every man for himself attitude as being a principled defense of freedom. Women can’t be allowed to be recognized to be struggling under a regime of systemic disadvantages, or else we would be compelled by common decency and morality to attempt to resolve that problem, which might require (gasp!) coercive government social policy. And as we all know, nothing is worse than the government deciding to fight for the underrepresented in defense of the common good. Why, if it did that, then taxes might go up, and that would be an infringement upon liberty.
The fact the polices that spring from an attitude are ones that hugely favor straight white men of financial means is probably why most libertarians tend to be rich white guys who can’t wait to tell you about how hard they had it growing up. Or young teenagers who’ve never had a real job that they used to pay real bills.
Richie said
I actually only know about Stossel because he’s in bed with the men’s movement (there’s a mental image for you), but yeah, the rest of that stuff doesn’t surprise me.
attack_laurel said
Lulz at society trying to escape partiarchy. And why is feminism being equated with the “yellow peril” racist scare of the 1950s? No, wait, let me guess – numpty here didn’t even notice the racism. “would you look at that!” indeed.
And John Stossel – oh, John Stossel. Who has a nice wife at home taking care of everything so he can be a high-paid “investigative journalist” and still have a nice house, while whimpering about how he never gets to enjoy it, except that’s all he does when he goes home at night. Why does so much of this boil down to “My penis! Wahhh!” ?
emma said
God, I love your blog. Keep doing this! I was going to say “more often” but I don’t know if I could handle MRA bullshit coming at me “more often.”
Nymeria said
These are amazing. Thank you for making them.
venatus said
another great set of episodes, but if you don’t mind could you link to those studies, I haven’t gotten into an argument about the wage gap yet, but I find myself in these debates more and more often so it would be helpful to be able to point to outside sources when it inevitably does come up.
Richie said
Women less likely to get jobs than men, despite qualifications:
http://www.tamu.edu/classes/psyc/payne/ID/ID%20articles/Heilman%202001.pdf
Favourable responses to male employees vs. female employees doing the exact same job:
http://khufu.openlib.org/~tchecndg/archive/2007/att-0755/DiscriminationHekman.pdf
Bias against working mothers:
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/511799
venatus said
thanks for the links, while i’ve been lucky enough to avoid being directly involved in a wage gap debate I’ve heard a few of their arguments before, nice to have some concrete proof that there pulling it out of no were.
wiggles said
What really disturbs me is how mainstream this crap is. 20/20 is a weekly network prime time news magazine show. And afaik, it’s not considered a right-wing bubble like Fox News.
It’s kind of like if a professional denier of antisemitism was given a platform on 60 Minutes and taken seriously.
Janelle said
TWO AT ONCE!
Is it Christmas?
franzferdinand2 said
Wait, the strong arm of the US government is aiding feminists against society? That is news to me. Is that why, out of over 500 congressional seats, less than 20% are held by women?
Cellycel said
“Wait, the strong arm of the US government is aiding feminists against society? That is news to me. Is that why, out of over 500 congressional seats, less than 20% are held by women?”
Its all part of the plan dontcha know? If women look like they’re in power than people will think they’re in power. Worse, people will think they’re powerful. Then how do you justify all the oppressive privileges they get?
Duh.
April said
@Franzferdinand2
What you have to understand is that all those male members of congress and their male staffers are totally pussywhipped by their wives, who are the real power in Washington. All those prostitutes, bribes, and drugs are merely a cunning camouflage. Who would suspect a corrupt cesspit of debauchery could hide a cold, soulless feminist stronghold? It’s brilliant in its simplicity except not at all.
meerkat said
Facts are so liberal and elitist.
I already knew Stossel was evil because he sides with puppy mills (and implies that the rescued dogs are being sold by the dog shelter for a profit).
I disagree that office buildings are safe environments. If you watch a few action movies you will see how they are frequently collided with by large airborne objects.
wiggles said
@Meerkat – Was it not Bruce Willis’ EX-WIFE who lured him to the Nakatomi building?
Janelle said
@Meerkat regarding the puppy mill/rescue thing-
…what.
…WHAT?!
As a passionate animal rights advocate and a loving owner of two rescue dogs, that is just… ARGGHHHH. Words fail me.
Johnny_B said
Ah, another antimisandry hater. Typical mangina with a white-knight complex from the looks of it, though more articulate (and long-winded) than usual. Good luck on completing the transformation, seeing as how you probably feel you’re a woman (or is it womyn?) trapped in a filthy man’s body and all…
Richie said
I’m only letting this through as an example of why I don’t usually let MRA comments through. So, when they inevitably start whining about me “censoring” them… this is the kind of challenging, productive discourse we’re missing out on.
April said
So if someone who has a penis doesn’t like to see people who don’t have penises getting a raw deal, that means the person in question wishes to divest themselves of their genitals?
This explains SO MUCH! Whew. For a moment there (2 and a half years) I thought I was trapped in the wrong body, but now that Johnny has explained this all to me, I can see that if I can only become a bigger dick, I won’t mind keeping it!
Where do I start?
Um…women are stupid heads!
Drat. This is going to take some work…
Richie said
I’ve literally had more productive discussions with creationists.
franzferdinand2 said
Well, obviously if you aren’t on the side of antimisandry, it means you’re not a real man. And if you’re not a real man, you’re obviously a woman.
I think what really works in favor of his rhetorical strategy is the fact that at no point does he address any of your arguments, he just questions your manhood. Now he doesn’t have to argue you point-by-point, because if you have female qualities, it automatically discredits anything you say.
Richie said
He also showed up again and called me fat. We’re really pluming the Mariana Trench of arguments, here.
Dire Sloth said
I’m calling Poe’s Law on Johnny there. His comment reads like MRA Mad Libs.
decodevo said
spilling the water of indoctrination from the flowerpot of injustice on the piano of truth
Delurking to say thanks for the LOLs. Love your work.
Richie said
Thanks!
April said
@ Dire Sloth
I wish you were correct, but I fear that you aren’t. I’ve skimmed a few of their forums (not as much as Richie has; that man has a stomach of titanium), and a lot of them really are that stupid. If it sounds like Mad Libs, then that’s because the kind of MRA who is going to go flame a feminist blog is exactly the kind of guy who needs a stencil to fill in when “creating” an argument.
Richie said
There’s another Antimisandry douche on Facebook who I’m “arguing” with; we’ve now reached the point where he’s been so consistently shot down in flames on a public page that everyone can see that he’s trying to criticise me for being “predictable”. As in, I’m predictably right and he’s predictably wrong, and I should, I dunno, be fairer on him by intentionally making mistakes. He’s thirty five years old.
franzferdinand2 said
Oh, Facebook arguments are the best! I recently got into an argument with a friend’s uncle about the death penalty. Eventually I found out he wasn’t in favor of capital punishment so much as he was against due process of law. (He also seemed to be arguing under the assumption that the US justice system had never wrongly incarcerated an innocent person).
But yeah, he was also a fan of the ad hominem. Being portly myself, I always just like to tell them how they could have done better with their insults that don’t address any of my arguments.
“Dude, don’t just say I’m fat, that’s way too easy. Say something like, ‘You’re so fat, when you haul ass, you have to make two trips.’ Something with a little bite to it.”
Richie said
I’m only bothering with this guy on Facebook because it’s on the official Antimisandry page, right up the top where everyone can see it. He’s doing a better job of publicly discrediting the site than I ever could.
chocolatepie said
Shorter John Stossel: Some things in this life are mildly inconvenient. Give me a break!
I’m so ready to watch these as soon as I get home from work.
Richie said
I actually left out the last half (because he just repeated the same arguments over different footage), but it seriously ends with him saying that anti-discrimination laws are complicated so it’s less hassle to just not have them.
Also, his example is a factory where a bunch of women are on their feet operating machinery all day for minimum wage. Because clearly that’s less stressful and gives them more time to raise a— ohhhhhh snap.
April said
Somehow I’m not surprised that Stossel thinks “because it’s hard” is a good reason to avoid combating systemic discrimination against people who aren’t like himself.
garvan said
You do realise that said white collar office jobs represent a small fraction of jobs which are extremely high paying.
The average construction worker in North America makes more than the average secretary in North America.
Actually the average person with a skilled trades background makes more than most people working in white collar jobs outside of the medium to top level positions.
Richie said
There are PLENTY of physically demanding jobs that pay more than entry-level office work (seriously, secretarial work is notoriously low paid; of course most other jobs are going to outrank it), but there’s no actual CORRELATION between physical demands and income. You’re focusing on very specific examples, which misses the forest for the trees, probably deliberately.
For the record, here are the highest paying jobs in America (non-executive positions), according to salary.com
1. Financial Associate (Corporate) III
2. Group/Region Manager III (Commercial Loans)
3. Surgeon
4. Financial Associate (Public) III
5. Consumer Loan Area Manager
6. Managing Attorney
7. Divisional Merchandise Manager
8. Underwriting Manager
9. Commercial Real Estate Manager
10. Tax Attorney IV
11. Aviation Manager
12. Group/Region Manager II (Commercial Loans)
13. Group Branch Manager IV
14. Psychiatrist
15. Mergers and Acquisitions Manager
16. Lending Officer III
17. Employment Law Attorney IV
18. Research Fellow
19. Attorney III
20. Patent Attorney IV
21. Fuels Trader, Sr.
22. Physician
23. Tax Attorney III
24. Commercial Loan Team Leader
25. Regional Administrative Manager
26. SB Financial Services Manager
27. Executive Producer – Web
28. SBA Regional Sales Manager
29. Patent Attorney II – Biotech
30. Business Banking Manager II
31. Operations Research Analysis Manager
32. Biostatistician IV
33. Patent Attorney III
34. IT Account Manager
35. Funding Manager II
36. Applications Engineer V
37. E-Commerce Manager II
38. Treasurer Assistant
39. Regional Retail Sales Manager
40. Risk Modeling Manager
41. E-Commerce Strategy Manager
42. Applications Engineering Manager II
43. Professor – Law – Higher Ed.
44. Electric and Gas Operations Manager
45. Web Product Manager III
46. Cross-Platform Security Manager
47. Group/Region Manager I (Commercial Loans)
48. CRM Application Architect
49. Strategic Planning Manager
50. Web Security Manager
51. Group Branch Manager III
52. Nurse Anesthetist
53. Tax Research Manager
54. Managing Editor – Web
55. Program Manager
56. Sales Manager II
57. Operations Research Analyst V
58. Tax Attorney II
59. Env., Health, and Safety Engineering Manager
60. Business Development Manager, Sr.
61. Six Sigma Master Black Belt
62. Business Systems Manager (Banking)
63. Software Engineering Manager
64. ERP Project Manager
65. Dentist
66. Radiation Physicist
67. Community Development Manager II
68. Business Application Delivery Manager
69. Quality Assurance Engineering Manager II
70. Content Engineer III – Web
71. Expatriate Administration Manager
72. Production Engineering Manager
73. Data Warehouse Information Security Manager
74. Data Architect V
75. Interior Aircraft Assembly Manager
76. Plant Manager
77. Actuary V
78. Orthodontist
79. Change Management Specialist
80. Sales Representative IV
81. CRM Targeted Marketing Campaign Manager
82. Facilities Maintenance Manager II
83. Aircraft Maintenance Manager II
84. Test Engineering Manager II
85. Planner/Scheduler V – Construction
86. Attorney II
87. Cost Engineer V – Construction
88. Head of Ancillary Services
89. Product Marketing Analyst V
90. Expatriate Administrator IV
91. Health and Safety Manager
92. Physicist V
93. Configuration Analysis Manager
94. Operations Research Analyst IV
95. Production Scheduler Manager II
96. Spares Coordination Manager
97. Wafer Process Development Manager
98. Professor – Chem. Engineering – Higher Ed.
99. Strategic Planning Analyst V
100. Engineering Manager
Not all office jobs, but NONE of them are physically demanding or dangerous in the way that (to use your example) construction work is. The closest any of them get to physical labour is… being the person who tells physical labourers what to do.
Linda Radfem said
“The average construction worker in North America makes more than the average secretary in North America.”
This is because construction is classified as “men’s work” and so automatically has a higher value placed upon it than secretarial work which is classified as “women’s work”. Guess who gets to decide whose work is of higher value?
Richie, as per usual, thankyou for this.
Garvan said
You do realise that those are mid-level to high-level positions.
For every white collar manager, you’re going to have a ton of white collar workers below them.
Unless you’re going to tell me that management positions like Consumer Loan Area Manager and CRM Targeted Marketing Campaign Manager are typical job that can be hired out easily.
If I’ve missed the forest for the trees, I believe you’ve just missed the ecosphere for a forest.
“Guess who gets to decide whose work is of higher value?”
The person paying for the work. In your case, you value well sorted documents more than having a roof over your head. I’m sure you’ll pay more for it since you’ll get more value out of it.
Richie said
I’ll be blunt and say I have absolutely no idea what point you’re actually trying to make here. Yes, those are mid to high level positions; they’re the top 100 paying jobs in America, it’s sort of self-evident that they won’t be entry level positions. ALL entry level positions are paid shitty salaries. The EXISTENCE of workers who are paid shitty salaries for jobs that aren’t physically demanding doesn’t alter the fact that the big salaries are still biased IN FAVOUR OF people who don’t work physically demanding jobs AS A GROUP.
Really, there’s just… there’s no correlation. It doesn’t exist anywhere outside Warren Farrell’s head. There’s no evidence supporting it. It’s self-evidently false. I don’t know if you’re being sincere, or deliberately trying to drag things off-topic so now it’s about low-paid white collar vs. low-paid blue collar when the issue was specifically physical danger’s relationship to salaries, or… I have no idea.
Seriously, what is your point?
franzferdinand2 said
Most construction jobs are also ones that have had a strong union tradition. Mining, auto manufacturing, steelworking, all of these fields have much more developed and organized unions than other professions. That is also an aspect of why they have better pay.
Richie said
And secretarial work USED to pay a lot better until they realised they could get women to do it for less… And most sweat-shop workers with horrible conditions and inhumane shifts are women who make like $1 a day… But office temps make less than plumbers so… Something.
Linda Radfem said
“Guess who gets to decide whose work is of higher value?”
“The person paying for the work.”
Sorry Garvan but that’s absolute rubbish. Industrial relations commissions determine award rates, penalty rates etc. not individual employers. In the case of jobs in the for-profit sector, men are the ones who stand to profit from the labour of workers and so therefore place high relative value on that labour than they do on labour performed in the non-profit sector such as social services, education etc. which have higher levels of women workers.
Garvan said
I am desperately trying to drag this thread off-topic in order to argue against a point nobody is actually making, because I lack the ability to argue against the ones they actually are.
Richie said
The above has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Seriously, I gave you multiple chances to say whatever you were attempting to say, but I’m past the “benefit the doubt” stage with you and I’m not going to publish your fucking endless THERE ARE PLUMBERS AND SECRETARIES USE COMPUTERS AND RICH PEOPLE MAKE MORE MONEY THAN POOR PEOPLE THEREFORE YOU MUST BE WRONG BECAUSE I AM SAYING THESE THINGS AND THEY ARE TRUE ramble.
Again, this is why I moderate comments.
franzferdinand2 said
Behold! I bring good tidings of what an absolute shit Troy Duffy, writer and director of Boondock Saints, is.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-boondock-saints-ii-all-saints-day-2009,43714/
If any of you are at all like me, you have probably at some point been surrounded by people who loved the middle-school moralistic antics of Boondock Saints. This article is all about what Duffy’s commentary tracks (plural) on the sequal are like.
Just know that when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back.
franzferdinand2 said
Also, I realize that link is completely off topic, but the amount of failure in it made me giddy, and I had to share the…well, joy isn’t quite the right word. Misery? Something like that.
Cellycel said
This isn’t reeeaaally related, but feels like it. A friend who is studying paramedics facebook post:
“I have come to a sad realilzation. I am paid more working as the lowest paid member of my office than I can hope to earn as a paramedic once I qualify. I think my cushy office job just started looking more appealing *sigh*”
Her current job is data entry. :/
wiggles said
@Cellycel – Yeah I looked into being an EMT once. Starbucks paid better.
Secretarial work is pink collar. White collar jobs are for men and a gradually-increasing number of women.
A neat trick is if a man performs the same duties as a secretary or administrative assistant, you reword some of the duties on his job description; give him a more impressive title, like Operations Administrator or Administrative Operations Analyst; then you pay him 20-25% more. Voila!
Wolf-Alice said
If there’s anyone keen on internet arguments there are some dudes in the comments on the wage gap video in need of some schoolin’.
Richie said
Yeah, it’s why I make a point of moderating these threads. Maybe a third of the comments I get here are just abuse / threats / attempts at provoking an argument we’ve already had God knows how many times, and I’m not going to indulge them because it’s absolutely pointless. If I let them get a foothold, it’d be two thirds.
But yeah, they’re… really, really angry about this, because they’re a bunch of domineering control freaks who absolutely cannot cope with anyone criticising them, then go absolutely ballistic when their harassment and intimidation doesn’t work. Like, a few of the guys commenting here are MRA’s I’m aware of, who have a lot of stock in looking like they’re calm and rational in the face of feminist hysteria, and oh God, they’re having real trouble keeping it up in a situation where they can’t get their way by intimidating people.