The Bedlamite's Greatest Hits: The Pearls Are Swine (No, That's An Insult To Swine)

A lot of people go around, saying things like "humorless PC SJWs can't take a joke" whenever those of us who care about things like racism point out that it isn't funny.

Now, I could write an extensive post detailing exactly why racism isn't funny, going into How Humor Works and the specifics of "punching up" and "punching down" and explaining why one makes you a comedian and the other makes you a bully (at this point the Bedlamite makes a note on a five-foot-long To Do list), but as an empiricist it would be better to provide a counterexample.

And so, I present one of my own jokes from elsewhere, tested in an SJW space and demonstrably SJW-approved!

A bit of context, first.

Michael and Debi Pearl are a pair of Christian conservatives (bordering on reactionaries), associated with a number of fundamentalist and evangelical movements including Quiverfull (known to the American public through the show 19 Kids And Counting). I know them through Libby Anne's blog, where she live-read several of their books: To Train Up A Child, Created to be His Helpmeet, and Created to Need a Helpmeet. In these books, which another commenter compared (unfavorably) to excrement, Michael and Debi describe their preferred way to raise children and Tame Shrews resolve marital disputes: devise rules, the more arbitrary the better; wait for the victim person to break a rule; hit the person with a stick; repeat as necessary.

Those of you who are reading this are probably thinking to yourselves: Bedlamite, that sounds like child and spousal abuse!

Yes. Yes it is. In fact, children have died as a result of the Pearls' teachings.

Now you are probably thinking: But you PC SJWs are supposed to be easily offended! How can you go making jokes about serious topics like that?

Wait for the joke; it's behind a bit more necessary context. Then, if you still don't understand how us "PC" SJWs can make jokes about serious and traumatic subjects, wait for the post about How Humor Works and I'll tell you how to make Holocaust jokes funny.

Back to the necessary context, before I was so rudely interrupted.

The Aristocrats is a common joke that comedians tell one another. The form is simple:

1. A guy walks into a talent agency, and he says "Have I got an act for you!"
2. He then demonstrates or describes the act, usually calling in his family to help.
3. The agent asks what he calls the act, and he responds, usually in a dramatic way, "The Aristocrats!"
4. In some tellings of the joke, the agent asks a question, such as "How much for season tickets?" or "Can you really get [famous performer]?"

Part 2 is almost always the longest part of the joke. It consists of the most vile thing the comedian can imagine. Murder, necrophilia, bodily waste, bestiality, blasphemy, and mocking of famous tragedies such as the Holocaust or 9/11 are common. As you might expect, this kind of joke is one of the reasons why some comedy clubs don't admit kids.

Since you can probably see where this is going, I now present the joke:

[SCENE: Room interior. A PUBLISHER sits at a desk. MICHAEL and DEBI enter.]
PUBLISHER: So, I hear the two of you want to write Christian advice books?
MICHAEL: Yeah. Underserved market and all that.
DEBI: Got to strike a blow for God in this fallen world.
PUBLISHER: Anything in particular?
MICHAEL: Well, I was thinking I'd start with a child-rearing book.
DEBI: And if that's a success, I'd write a marriage advice book.
PUBLISHER: Okay, that sounds good.
MICHAEL: So many unhappy children. They need to be beaten until they're happy!
PUBLISHER: (jaw drops, stunned silence)
DEBI: And so many couples just don't get along. You know the answer? Wifely obedience!
MICHAEL: Right. She's so much happier since she stopped having any will of her own.
DEBI: And our kids are much happier since we started hitting them with plumbing line.
MICHAEL: Yeah, that's going to be a big thing in my book. Hit your kids for disobedience.
DEBI: Hit them for being unhappy.
MICHAEL: Hit them for speaking when not spoken to.
DEBI: Hit them for not crying when hit.
MICHAEL: Hit them for crying too much when hit.
DEBI: Hit them for breaking rules.
MICHAEL: Oh, but the rules don't have to make sense. Or be ones that the kids have had a chance to learn. In fact, it's better if they're complete nonsense you made up five seconds ago.
DEBI: Yeah. Kids need to respect rules, and they can't learn respect for the rules if the rules aren't completely arbitrary.
MICHAEL: And of course, no one will ever take this too far.
DEBI: Not that we'll define what "too far" is. It's enough to not use the rod in anger.
MICHAEL: Of course, all of this is because all children are born full of sin, and rebel against rightful authority.
DEBI: Which is why their wills need to broken.
MICHAEL: Like I did with yours, honey?
DEBI: Yes, and that's what my book's about.
MICHAEL: She's been so much happier after I beat the shit out of her. Wasn't over anything important either. Just whose turn it was to take out the garbage.
DEBI: My book's about how God wants women to be quiet and submit themselves completely to their husbands.
MICHAEL: Even if it's about sex, and she doesn't want it. Especially then!
DEBI: Right. It's the wife's duty to do absolutely anything the husband wants.
MICHAEL: Aside from treating him like a woman.
DEBI: Right. No gay stuff. Anyway, the wife needs to keep all of her problems bottled up. Otherwise she'll drive him away.
MICHAEL: I was thinking I might write a companion book, where the husband's told that if his wife doesn't say anything, he should assume that everything's fine. Muahaha.
DEBI: Even if the husband's doing illegal things, she should just smile and help him bury the bodies. Unless he's pimping out their minor son.
MICHAEL: Right. No gay stuff.
DEBI: Even if he beats her, and breaks her bones, it's probably because she did something to deserve it. Like asking him to do something, or not being a perfect servant all the time.
MICHAEL: Or frowning. Or not being beautiful enough.
DEBI: Right, and if she really needs something from him, like enough money to buy food fit for human consumption, what she needs to do is submit harder and let God take care of it.
MICHAEL: Or else he'll leave her for a hot young girl, and leave her alone in a duplex.
DEBI: Where she gets tempted into the worst sin possible: gay stuff!
MICHAEL: Oh, and you forgot, it needs to be more focused on the man.
DEBI: Right, right. All women are meant to mold themselves into the shape that fits their man, but there's three types of men. There's the boring kind. There's the flighty kind. And there's the kind who loves you and shows you that he does.
MICHAEL: By beating the shit out of you.
DEBI: And if you're lucky enough to have that kind --
PUBLISHER: Who the hell are you two?!
MICHAEL & DEBI: The Aristocrats!

Blasphemy!

The Kim family are humans, and bad ones at that. A flag is just a symbol of an arbitrary division within humanity, and rallying behind a flag a way to keep the sheeple masses from rising against their masters. The invisible hand of the market is fully capable of punching people in the face, but $ECONOMIC_SYSTEM doesn't work any better. $POLITICIAN is the same as any other jerk out to fleece you, xe just repeats the words that you like; ditto $PUNDIT. $SELF_HELP_GURU doesn't have any more answers than you do, and is flogging something xe made up in xir basement. $ALTERNATIVE_MEDICAL_TREATMENT has no hard evidence supporting it and its proposed mechanism of action is, scientifically speaking, pure nonsense; this goes double for things like "Law of Attraction".

Oh, and no religion invented by mankind has contained a deity or a deity's adversary who was even a decent being, let alone a moral example worth following or obeying. And despite what your "Word of Faith" preacher or that one exiled Nigerian royal might tell you, no god will reward you for giving someone money.

One day, we will all be able to speak loudly the truth that "the fool hath said [only] in his heart". One day, the offense caused by a statement will be proportional to its harm. Until then, happy Blasphemy Rights Day.

An Open Letter To People Who Think "Man Coulter" is a Funny Joke

Dear [insert form of address],

It has come to my attention that, when discussing a certain conservative pundit, you think it is a valid criticism, or funny, or in any way appropriate, to make "jokes" to the effect of "she has an Adam's apple" or "she's a man" or the like. I would like to disabuse you of this notion.

To begin, I believe you identify as liberal, correct? You believe in equality, and standing with he oppressed against their oppressors, and the rights of the downtrodden, correct? You believe that membership in a class, even or especially an unprivileged class, is not cause for shame?

Furthermore, you believe, as I do, that Ms. Coulter is a throughly vile human being, correct? You agree that she is a hateful, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, poverty-bashing, genocide-advocating, torture-apologist, victim-blaming, idiotic, willfully ignorant, talentless, unfunny, Christian-supremacist, jingoistic, warmongering, self-loathing, self-absorbed, arrogant, narrow-minded, dichotomously thinking, hypocritical, violent mouthpiece for some of the most disgusting ideologies in mainstream political discourse?

Why then is it, that the best insult for her you can manage amounts to "ha ha ugly t****y"? There is much to criticize: her idea that Christianity should be brought to the Middle East with a sword, her defenses of people who are actively trying to bring about the End of Days, her inability to distinguish between nuance and treason, and all of the things listed in the previous paragraph; so why are you going with something fundamentally irrelevant to her opinions?

For that matter, why are you using "ha ha ugly t****y" as an insult? Why are you choosing to criticize a woman pundit with "ugly", implying that her looks are at all relevant to the validity of her opinions? Why are you criticizing anyone with "t****y", implying that being trans* is fundamentally a bad thing; much less criticizing a pundit with it, and implying that trans* people's opinions are fundamentally invalid?

In conclusion, you should engage with ideas you don't like, instead of dismissing them by claiming that the person who has them is a member of an unprivileged class.

Signed,
A Liberal Who's Tired Of You Undermining The Cause

(Note: This letter is also addressed to people who think "I wouldn't sleep with [name]" is a valid criticism of a conservative politician.)

Speaking Out About Problems: Brave Heroes and Problem Solvers

Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? Time to make some people angry!

The following material is flagged Red Level. It deals with the blogger's original ideas, personal beliefs, and delusions; and might not be believed by any expert in any field anywhere.

Disclaimer: I am not claiming that anyone does this intentionally or consciously. This is primarily a sarcastic response to the "children starving in Africa" argument, and partly an attempted explanation of why it's always children starving in Africa instead of someone starving nearby.

Suppose you are asked to speak about one problem somewhere in the world. What criteria should you use to choose the problem?

Well, that depends on whether you want to be a Brave Hero or a Problem Solver.

A Brave Hero is someone who is speaking about a problem mostly to be seen caring about it. You might be a Brave Hero because your PR agent told you that a show of compassion would help your image, or because you recently said something insensitive and intend to make up for it with a display of sensitivity, or because you want a talking point to bring up to get someone else to be quiet or otherwise do what you want.

If you are a Brave Hero, you want to pick your problem based on these criteria:

1. It Has To Be Bad. You should go with the worst problem you can find. Pick the thing you know about that causes the most suffering, and plays on empathy the most. You should find something that has Good Victims: civilians, children, innocents, and so on. You're giving the speech to show how compassionate you are; the worse the problem, the better for you.
2. It Has To Be Uncontroversial. You're giving the speech to make yourself popular, not to make yourself unpopular. This ties in with the point above; the worse your problem, the fewer people there are who will risk being seen calling it "not bad". As much of your audience as possible should agree that the problem is one that needs to be solved.
3. It Has To Be Difficult. You want a problem with no obvious solution, or at least no obvious solution on your part. If you must mention a solution, go with something you are already doing. If there is an obvious solution, come up with a reason, no matter how poorly-thought-out it is, why it won't work. This is to minimize the chance that you might be asked to actually do something.
4. It Should Be Well-Known. This isn't quite as important as the other criteria. You can spend some time explaining the problem, for those who don't know about it, but your goal is to show yourself as one of your audience. Mentioning problems that they aren't likely to know about both introduces a distinction between you and your audience, and requires you to spend time explaining both what the problem is and why it is a problem.

On the other hand, a Problem Solver is speaking about a problem in an attempt to solve it. If you are a Problem Solver, you care about the problem or your chosen cause. The problem you pick might not be the worst one you want to solve, or the most severe manifestation of what your cause opposes, but it is one you care about and want to fix.

If you are a Problem Solver, you should use these criteria:

1. It Has To Be Solvable Or Reducible. If it doesn't have a solution, you're just wasting time. If the solution is one that your audience can't act on, you're wasting time. Pick something that your audience could, if they chose to, contribute to fixing. If possible, present alternatives or solutions.
2. It Should Be Controversial. If your audience already considers your problem a problem, all you can do is suggest solutions. If your audience already knows about your solution, you're wasting time.
3. It Should Be Obscure. The only thing a speech can do toward solving a problem (other than "I can use my speaking fees for something" or "the problem is that we don't have a speaker") is raise awareness of the problem or a solution. If all information about the problem and its solutions is publicly known, speaking about it is a waste of time.

(Alternate titles for this post include "Why Games? In Defense of Sarkesian" and "We Get It, Harris. You Don't Like Islamic Misogyny".)

A Game Designer's Reflections on Scarlet Blade

No doubt, if you spend time on the internet, you have seen ads for games that openly use sex to sell games. You've seen the banner ads that have scantily-clad ladies and sexually-charged captions to get you to click on the ad, which takes you to a game that only rarely has anything to do with sex.

Well, I'm going to be discussing something a bit different here. I'm going to be discussing one of the games that does that, and actually delivers, and all of the things that are wrong with it.

The following material is flagged Red Level. It deals with the blogger's original ideas, personal beliefs, and delusions; and might not be believed by any expert in any field anywhere.

Now, let me start with a bit of a disclaimer. I have nothing against sex in general, nor against sex in games specifically. It is my belief that a game containing sex, or even about sex, can be good; in the same way as non-game entertainment containing sex, or even outright porn, can be funny or dramatic or sweet or otherwise well-written (no I am not going to put any links here; what I get off to is one of those things that I do not wish to share with the Internet, and I am sure that you do not wish to know either)

What I do object to is trying to replace good writing with sex appeal.

Now, on to a discussion of the game in question.

Scarlet Blade is one of the games that uses the advertising gimmicks I mentioned in the introduction. The banner ads it puts up are a woman, or more accurately a 3D model of a porcelain doll resembling a woman (either nude or in what appears to be bondage gear) with a sexualized caption. The game itself is a fairly bog-standard MMORPG with several bugs (largely related to pathfinding) and some severe balance issues (most adversaries are trivially easy to defeat; the only way to really lose outside of a boss fight is to run a streak without resting; and doing this does not grant any benefits). It is obvious from this that SB does not intend to sell itself on unique or challenging gameplay.

No, SB runs mostly on sex appeal. The login page depicts a character similar to the ones in the ads who appears to be making use of some kind of mecha in a rather unconventional way. About 85% of the dialogue (a rough guess) is either explicitly sexual or an obvious double entendre. Your avatar's dialogue with you (see later in this post for an explanation of this part) is, for the most part, intended to get you to think of your avatar as a sexual being, and is based on the assumption that you find your avatar sexually attractive; the continuous propositions from other characters do not work against this. Your avatar is portrayed wearing very little; in the beginning the avatar is wearing little more than what appears to be a metal bikini; and even in full armor your avatar is wearing much less than even is usual for heroines in most graphic media. For those players who did not find this level of sexualization overwhelming, there is an option, advertised in loading screens, to remove even what little your avatar was wearing.

Which is a real shame, because there's a few bits of good story that could have been developed into games (with some rather unusual gameplay!) of their own. Occasionally, a bit of dialogue or flavor text will show up involving transhumanist philosophy (your avatar has been biologically modified to the point of being no longer human; and every now and then there's discussion about whether or not a creation has a duty to its creators or the reverse or at what point a modified human stops being human); the framing narrative is interestingly metafictional (essentially, you are, well, you: the person sitting in the chair playing the game. Your avatar is a separate person to whom you give orders, which seems to deliberately parallel the idea of a video game character); the narrative at least in theory focuses on a war, and occasional mentions are made of the cost of war to the people fighting it, the civilian population, the idea of morals, and the land itself; and part of the plot centers around the (at least) three different relationships between you and your avatar.

In other words, the actual story reads as though the developers were trying to create a mature game, but did not know the difference between "mature" and "adult"; and so, they ruined several mature games by making a game that was mature only in rating.

Atheism+: A (Not) Brief Reflection on Pick Up Artistry

Normally, I wouldn't care about such things. But because I somehow got onto the spam list of a bunch of PUA sites (and keep seeing PUA ads on Pandora and such), I think I'll post a rant about PUA from an Atheist+ perspective.

The following material is flagged Red Level. It deals with the blogger's original ideas, personal beliefs, and delusions; and might not be believed by any expert in any field anywhere.

There will be two parts to this rant: one explaining what PUA is, one dealing with the problems with PUA from a Skeptical perspective, and one dealing with the problems from a Feminist perspective.

Three parts.  There are three parts to this rant: what PUA is, Skeptical problems, Feminist problems, and a conclusion.

I'll come in again.

The following material is flagged Red Level. It deals with the blogger's original ideas, personal beliefs, and delusions; and might not be believed by any expert in any field anywhere.

There are four parts to this post, yadda yadda. Cardinal! Read the charges!
Charges? I thought this was just a rant.
The rant is the charges, Cardinal. Never mind; I'll do it.

First off, what is PUA? PUA, or Pick Up Artistry, is a technique that a number of people teach. These people claim that, by using their techniques, any person (usually but not always male) can enjoy the intimate company of any person or persons (usually but not always female) xe desires. Usually, these techniques are claimed to be "perfect", "undetectable", "irresistible", and so forth. It is claimed that by buying the book or taking the class that the "trainer" offers, the subject will never lack for intimate company again.

The advertising used will be discussed here (because I don't feel like shelling out cash just to write a more thorough take-down). Often, the advertising is based on a testimonial, often personal, claiming that the person was completely unable to attract intimate company until having taken the class, after which people (almost always women) were desperate to give xim their company. Other methods are used in the advertising, such as social proof ("everyone's doing it!"), appeal to authority ("let me tell you what Einstein said!", as well as references to the author's questionable credentials ["I've read three books on this subject!"] in psychology or "female psychology"), time pressure ("limited time offer! Act now!"), low-balling ("this would normally be worth $700, but we're giving it away for a tenth of that!"), likeability ("I'm really on your side!"), mock anti-authoritarianism ("I'm on the run from THEM, because THEY want to suppress this!"), and so forth. Generally, any component of the advertising that is not posted in plain sight in a public place is overtly sexual (at least, for the version aimed at men).

First, I will start with a skeptical perspective on the subject. The claim made is that the person has discovered an easy, generally applicable, undetectable, and irresistible form of what is essentially mind control. At the very least, the claim is that the person has discovered a way to block impulse control while controlling emotion.

To which I respond, "Why then are you not the Evil Overlord yet?"

There are many better uses for mind control than obtaining intimate company. One could go with the old standby of RULING THE WORLD! MUAHAHAHA! One could sell the secret to military or intelligence organizations (heaven knows the CIA would be interested). One could easily go viral as an artist or a pop-culture phenomenon.

One could even, say, make irresistible and undetectable advertising to sell the secret.

And yet, the world remains unruled, the military does not field mind control battalions, intelligence agencies are restricted to conventional propaganda, artists and pop-culture phenomena have less-than-universal appeal, and the secret to mind control is sold using transparent and resistible manipulation.

Doubtless the defenders would claim that there are reasons for this: it only works on women, it can only be used for sexual purposes, and so on. To which I respond: this is classic special pleading. Nothing in the advertising suggests that this might be the case. Nothing in conventional (read: appearing in respectable peer-reviewed journals) psychological research indicates that there are inherent psychological differences across gender lines, or that there are neural pathways tied to sexuality that are unrelated to anything else (in fact, the common adage that "sex sells" is very much true).

(I might do another piece more fully examining the problems from a skeptical perspective, such as regression to the mean in the testimonials, placebo effect, committedness bias, and so on; but that's for another time. This is already starting to run a bit long.)

Next, the feminist perspective.

There are some truly serious problems in this.

First, there's the problematic takes on sex and sexuality and intimacy. The advertising plays into the gendered tropes surrounding intimate relationships: that men only think of sex, and that women only think of relationships.

And this sounds like an excellent time for another installment of Tropes Versus Men and Women Alike!
(Be warned: there are TVTropes links ahead.)

1.Men Are Horndogs
Versus Men: It's an old joke: men are always interested in physical intimacy. The running assumption is that men are incapable of thinking while female secondary sexual characteristics are visible, that a man who receives any sexual attention wanted it (even if he transparently did not), and that it is the Natural State of Men to always pursue physical intimacy. Naturally, this leads to a number of problems for men: men who are harassed or assaulted sexually are treated, at best, as the butt of a joke; at worst given a "why are you complaining?" treatment. It is believed that men "cannot be trusted" around anyone they might possibly be interested in. And men who do not fit this template, who do not pursue every woman around them or are capable of thinking clearly even while near conventionally-or-otherwise-attractive women, are "not Real Men".
Versus Women:  Naturally, if men cannot control themselves while seeing women they find attractive, this places a duty on women to, as some Evangelical Christians put it, "prevent their brothers from stumbling". Under this idea, there is an assumption that a woman who does not do this is "asking" for any unwanted attention or action she receives; and therefore that if a woman receives unwanted attention, she may have done something to "deserve" it or she may have been "asking for it".

2.Women Are Sensitive
Versus Women: The other side of that trope is that women care about emotional intimacy to the exclusion of physical intimacy. The idea is that while the Man enjoys himself, the woman "lies back and thinks of England" (or her country of choice). Of course, the main problem with this is that this presents a stunted and severely warped perspective on women's motivations in relationships: it's always about the emotional (or in some cases, financial) aspects, and never about the physical ones. This has the effect of causing women who feel physical attraction (which is most of them, at some point) to feel as though there is something "disgusting" or "wrong" about them for it, and to be shunned for their "impure" thoughts.
Versus Men: Of course, if caring about emotional attachments is an exclusively feminine trait, this means that men cannot be allowed to care about such "soft" things. Men are expected to only enter into relationships for the physical aspects, or sometimes for the cooking or cleaning; never because they "feel" something as wussy as an "emotional bond" with another person. This means that men are supposed to function without any emotional support network, or even a supportive emotional bond.

But how does this apply to PUA? Simple. Male!PUA and Female!PUA are advertised very differently. In Male!PUA advertising, the usual formula in video media involves a man who is depicted as vaguely pathetic and meant to be the audience: not a True Man because He Is Not Sexually Active. With the Help Of Our Product, he becomes a True Man who is depicted (sometimes in ways bordering on pornographic) enjoying the company of a number of Beautiful Women in Various States Of Undress. On the other hand, Female!PUA advertising focuses on a woman who is Interested In Pursuing A Relationship With A Man. Instead of showing her undressed and physically involved with the man, she is shown as getting him to The Marital Altar (both fully dressed, of course). This suggests completely different goals in the products sold: men getting some action, and women getting some commitment. The idea that men might want commitment, or women might want action, or either might want a relationship (even just for one night) based on mutual respect does not seem to occur to the producers.

And that segues nicely into the next point. A good sexual relationship (from what I understand anyway; I can't really speak from experience here) is based on communication, mutual respect, mutual desire, and very importantly consent. See, consent is the difference between sex and rape (regardless of what Todd Akin might have to say on the subject). And this leads to a very important problem in PUA: if it worked, how would any "consent" given be meaningful? If consent absolutely must be given, and not consenting is psychologically impossible, that consent is not consent. And so, using mind control to obtain intimacy, especially physical intimacy, is a Very Bad Thing.

And so, to conclude: PUA is a technique that cannot possibly work as advertised, because if it did the advertising would be a lot better (at least). It seems to be marketed in ways that play into and reinforce gender stereotypes that are fundamentally harmful to both men and women (the ways in which they harm genderqueer, agender, and genderfluid persons are left as an exercise to the reader; as are the harms to LGBTA persons). And it is a very good thing that it does not work, because if it did using it would be a horrific crime.