AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I feel like you're missing the part where it says 'The pattern is connected to ideas of toxic masculinity in our culture' rather than 'The pattern is completely explained by of toxic masculinity in our culture'

Well she also said "Not a coincidence it's always men and boys committing mass shootings."

And it's wrong to to come up with reasons why that might be?

The one reason she gave was simplistic. It's not wrong but it's too general to assume that everything will be better if we were to go and shout 'hey! stop being such boy-y people!'

It's like saying this phone is charged by the electricity company and I don't want it charged. Then suggesting the way to fix it is shutting down the supplier. None of this is wrong. The electricity company does indeed provide the electricity which charges the phone, the phone would stop being charged if it wasn't there.
But it's not really a practical solution.

Now, mass shootings and gun crimes are a much more complicated issue. Yes, they are 'connected to ideas of toxic masculinity in our culture'. But that culture isn't gonna go away just because she's shone a torch on it. The country is gonna have examine every law/every sentiment/every opinion trickling down from those toxic attitudes to find an answer.

Even stricter gun control wouldn't be enough because gun culture is a thing in the States. There are Americans who feel like their identity is being attacked when gun control is threatened. How do you deal with that? Is gun culture purely masculine? Will feminism change gun culture? Would the average citizen view the correlation as valid?

Anita's opinion is valid enough, but too simplistic to be of value.

I don't disagree with anything you've said there, but I would also say that it was just a single tweet. You're not exactly going to be able to get a dissertation on how to solve society's woes in 140 characters.

Then maybe instead of tweeting at all (only hours after the incident no less), she should have taken time and written an article. It comes over as very tasteless and like Dire said, agenda pushing, looking for every opportunity to talk about sexism.

How about we just ignore tweets from people who have no authority or credibility, and stop giving them the attention they so desperately crave.

Actually I didn't use the term agenda pushing. But I suppose my argument backs up that sentiment. I've very little interest in what she says because she's a blowhard.

Oh, sorry it was Marcato over there in the other thread.

I know this was touched on in the threads creation but I'd like to bring up religion/spirituality again if that's fine with everyone, because it's something that eats at me still. I'm sort of an agnostic by definition since I am very scientifically minded, and also because I believe that if something does exist along the more spiritual/persistence-of-self line of thinking (for lack of better terms) we as a human race haven't really gotten to a point to understand that context; and if it does exist, there will likely be nothing mythical or fantastical about it, but it will likely tie into a (probably undiscovered) law of how the universe works.

Unfortunately I also have some rather unconventional feelings about the topic. Nothing I feel comfortable sharing outside of a select few people who feel the same way (and hence I won't mention it here), but it's really alienating and I don't like the feeling of isolation that comes with identifying with an idea that isn't tied to a mainstream religion. Maybe that just makes me a weak or insecure person, but there is a certain sense of un-ease that comes from knowing I have a preference towards a belief that would likely be mocked or ridiculed by most people I talked to about it, especially since I really need proof to feel confident in anything and, well, this is the sort of topic that is particularly bad at providing that in a context that isn't just strong emotion.

The thing that helps me with it is the idea behind known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Before we had the technology to observe everything at an atomic level, just to even have a science of chemistry, the people had absolutely no reason to assume matter worked the way we know it to work today. They had no concept of "protons" "electrons" "intermolecular forces" "valence clouds" etc.

Yet all of that shit has always been the way we know it to be today. Matter wasn't suddenly composed of atoms the second atoms became a concept, it had always been composed of atoms. Furthermore, if you were to go back and start teaching basic chemistry, they'd crucify you under the pretenses that you had no proof for what you were saying. They'd be right to, but they'd also be wrong in their representation of the universe.

The lack of proof for spirituality and religion doesn't automatically mean it's all false, it just means it's still at 0 for how much confidence you can put in its truth. It can still go either way. It's why I don't understand why people hear that I'm agnostic and automatically go for the idea that I'm either a closet believer, or in-confident atheist.

On the topic of religion/spirituality:

I think that my wiccan friend said it about as simply as it gets when it said do what you will, but harm no one. Granted, he was saying that was part of what wiccans believe, but it can hold weight if you let it. Personally, as long as whatever you believe doesn't demand harming others or subjugating someone based on all the usual stuff, it's fine by me.

On all the sexism stuff: I'm tired of being villified for having a penis, and for so much of the entertainment world putting tits in front of me to make me like the rest of the movie/game/whatever. I own a firearm, but why should I automatically be the person who shoots up a school because of a screwed up past? There's nothing masculine about violence, and it sure as shit isn't fun. For most of us, committing a cruel act may make you feel powerful when you do it, but it eats at you and tears at your soul.

Next time someone says that men are always looking to kill someone, ask if they ever heard of Aileen Wournos (probably didn't spell that right).

To answer your last post, mister popo, I thought at least child porn, drawn or not, is illegal in the US?

I can see your point, but that kind of thing makes me angry and sick to my stomach. Maybe it affects my judgment on the issue, I don't know.

Drawn porno is protected under the first amendment in the USA. As long as it doesn't involve real victims of real abuse it's perfectly legal. I don't care much for it myself, but hey.

Drawn pornography depicting acts that are normally illegal in real life is not banned in the United States. Adult stores probably won't sell it, though.

Creation and distribution of real-life photography of such acts, however, is illegal.