NSLeftBoard

There's a few new and exciting updates coming our role play in the next couple of months! Much of these have been in the works for some time now, some are finalizations of systems that have already been developed and tested, and some are completely new.

- The Focus system will have its full and final release after a very, very long beta period. But that beta period has been invaluable in developing the system further and refining it for fun, balanced, and sensible gameplay and world building. The final release will also include art and visuals to give quick cues on what each skill and their Focuses are about.

- A total overhaul of the current rules for warfare. They're being designed to be quick and easy to understand and use, intuitive, context aware, and rely more on one's world building, chosen skills, new Divisions and Doctrines, and the type of battle being fought to provide quantified context during dice rolls. The Divisions and Doctrines will be new additions to warring which will have the players develop, as the name implies, military divisions and doctrines that their nation utilizes. Like everything else that has been developed and introduced, these are meant to be great world building tools to give the player a framework with which to develop their idea of what their nation's military is like. Players will have a framework with which to develop the idea of what sort of forces their military employs and how they utilize them. Included in this overhaul will be official rules for annexation, creating puppets and vassals, liberation, the use of weapons of mass destruction, and of course official godmodding and fluffing rules.

- Individual skills for character based role play events will be introduced. In addition to selecting expertise based on your nation's skills, characters can now be assigned their own personal skills for such events. And of course, these are meant to be character development tools as well. They'll most likely be akin to how skills work in RPGs and include much of your usual RPG fare.
A fully fleshed out lore and framework for the magic of our world. Part framework for developing how your nation uses magic and part lore for what the magic is and how it works, this will also include a framework to gauge how adept your nation is in a particular magic.

- A technological leveling system based on NationStates' scientific advancement stat. Keeping up with the theme or providing tools for the player to develop their own stories and world, this system will be divided into 10 categories based on the decades of the 21st century and the first half of the 22nd that our technology can reach. This system will include a wealth of information of just what sort of technologies are projected to be developed in each decade, information from scientists and experts in their respective fields so that it's well researched and not just some wishy-washy r/futurology YouTube video about how the Singularity is coming in 2040. Being primarily a world building tool, the idea is to provide the player the tools they need to develop another, often confounding component of their nation. Which means that if a player already has a solid idea of what that aspect of their world building is like, they don't have to use this, unless they'd like to.

- Two other frameworks currently in the idea stages are a foreign policy and economic policy framework, which will primarily serve to help new players with another, often asked question: how do I start role playing?

- A possible revamp and reintroduction of Space RP and introduction of interplanetary elements in Main RP within the Ikani system.

This much and more will be introduced and added all with the intention to make developing a nation as fun and intuitive as possible and actually starting to role play as seamless as possible.

Dankass communes

Could you please introduce yourself to the readers of solidarity and what you have already done in the DSA?

Hello! I’m Sol. I do roleplay stuff sometimes. I served a term as MoRP last autumn though that was cut short by personal health issues. During my term, I began integrating a new system of GM-Based RP, created events, and helped develop and integrate the Specialization System.

Why did you want to become Minister of Roleplay?

I find the community interesting and I want to encourage the DSA’s already excellent RP community. I have relatively little interest in governance roles but I’m very much interested in the creative elements of the community which makes the MoRP position appeal to me.

What will be your primary focus in your term as MoRP?

My primary focus will be on event and system creation. Events can be great to stimulate RP, and I want to create systems to encourage roleplayers to make events and other content of their own more easily.

Do you believe that there should be more MoRP-MoDA cooperation, if so how would you like to achieve this?

I strongly believe there should be more cooperation. One of my focuses is trying to develop a few potential joint MoRP-MoDA events. In addition, I’ve been working on adapting a tabletop RPG system that would work for the DSA. I would be very interested in working with the community and the MoDA to have tabletop RPG game nights featuring tabletop games taking place within the DSA RP universe. Moreover, I’d love to work to create a few contests with the MoDA centering around the RP universe.

Do you have any plans to change the structure of the Ministry itself, or do you think that the current system works for your plans?

I’d like to expand and decentralize aide roles. In my mind, there shouldn’t be a set roster of specific MoRP aides that have to be filled but rather a set of more nebulous roles that can pop up and fade as people interested in the topic take the reins. Essentially, things in the vein of the Regional Cryptozoologist. RP won’t fall apart without it, but it allows an interested community member to create content.

What is your opinion on the new solidarity pact of NSLeft, how would you like this to influence DSA RP if at all?

I don’t have a strong opinion on it; I’m not super informed on interregional stuff at the moment but it seems good. I’m open to interregional RP and the like, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about it to be confident making it a focus of my term. I would love for someone more interested to act as an aide though!

Would you like to add anything else you feel is relevant?

trans rights

Now, summarize all your plans in a couple of short sentences?

I plan on integrating new, streamlined systems to open up new means of roleplay and enhance existing ones, revamp several old rulesets, and integrate more folks into the DSA RP Community.

Dekks

Could you please introduce yourself to the readers of solidarity and what you have already done in the DSA?

I am La Pays de Soleil. I’ve been here in the DSA since before the Great Schism (when the original region split in two). I wasn’t all that active before about three years ago. One of the things I am most proud of is the creation of the Iskarian Intracontinental Union. Being one of seven founding members, we modelled the IIU after the real-life EU, but with much less bureaucracy. It was founded on the principles of prosperity, peace and cooperation. One of my biggest regrets is not being more active in the region sooner and not getting to know the original founders better. This is something that I have tried to remedy.

Why did you want to become Minister of Domestic Affairs?

I wanted to take on a bigger role in the community. A proper role. While my previous position as Minister of Justice is a large and respected role, I personally feel that the position is sort of limited and outdated, especially because of the new Admin roles. I did want to reform and ‘reimagine’ the Minister of Justice, but I was unable to. Real-life work and sickness got in the way. So largely I was vacant from my duties. I hope to work with Mauvemarke closely and give him my suggestions.

What will be your primary focus in your term as MoDA?

My primary focus will be on engaging the community in new activities, like writing contests and such. I think with a little encouragement we can really build a thriving community.
My second focus will be closer coordination with the Ministry of Domestic Affairs and the Ministry of Roleplay. While this is something that occurs already, I want to make it more a priority. For example: I want to have a writing contest. I’m sure I can work with United Syndicates of Sol to come up with a tie-in RP event.

Do you believe that there should be more MoRP-MoDA coöperation, if so how would you like to achieve this?

I’m not sure if more cooperation is needed, but I do believe that closer cooperation is needed. From what I remember (and I could be wrong), we rarely hear from the MoDA. I’d like to institute more community wide events that tie directly into our RP community, such as our local artists designing scenes from the newest RP event.

Do you have any plans to change the structure of the Ministry itself, or do you think that the current system works for your plans?

From what I have seen of the structure there is little that I would change. But as I am new to the role, we will have to see what happens. I am a very organized person. Some would say that I have OCD; so if I see something that doesn’t look organized or that I feel doesn’t work I will change it.

What is your opinion on the new solidarity pact of NSLeft, how would you like this to influence DSA Domestic Affairs if at all?

I read the new Solidarity Pact in its entirety. I agree with it in principle, but I am always weary of changes. I don’t really think that it will affect my role as MoDA at all. Implementation of these sorts of things are usually slow. So during my term, I look for very little impact. However, I do suspect that there will be more intercommunity activities coming in the future.

Would you like to add anything else you feel is relevant?

While I may be new to the role, I am a quick learner. I also like lots of constructive criticism. If you don’t like something that I have planned, message me about it. If you think one of the activities, I have planned did great, tell me about it. That being said, I’m not going to please everyone, and I don’t expect to. In my role, the majority rules.

Now, summarize all your plans in a couple of short sentences.

I know I want to have a writing contest, and a drawing/ painting contest, much like the flag redesign contest. I know I want to somehow incorporate these into an RP event. I know I want our new magazine, Solidarity to be more in depth and reach a wider audience. How am I going achieve these, I don’t know, but I am open to ideas. I want the Ministry of Domestic Affairs to have an open-door policy when it comes to events, Solidarity, everything. I will try my hardest to listen to the people and try my best to give them what they want.

Dekks

My friends in the Democratic Socialist Assembly, when this article comes out in Solidarity on the 1st of February, the 34th cabinet will assume office. Dekks will our President and World Assembly Delegate, Wileyshire will be our Secretary-General, Chromatica will be our Minister of Foreign Affairs, La pays de soliel will be our Minister of Domestic Affairs, Mauvemarke will be our Minister of Justice, and last but not least United syndicates of sol will be our Minister of Role Play. I very much look forward to be able to serve the DSA with this talented group of people for the next three months.

To ensure that the 34th cabinet will work effectively to bring prosperity to the region I have compiled an executive plan of action considering the general functioning of the cabinet, the individual functioning of the ministries and our stance on important developments relevant to our region during the next term:

The Presidency / Delegacy

During the past few months, the DSA as a whole has been moving away from being a region centered around politics and the presidency to being a region centered around our community, support, and our regional principles. During my first term I have focused on supporting this development whilst also making sure that future Presidents will still be able to play active and beneficial roles in the Region.

Both in the executive and legislative branch I have worked towards decentralizing the presidency. I have held cabinet votes and asked residents their opinions on many subjects as not to have to act unilaterally in situations where I don’t feel it is appropriate to do so. Legislatively speaking I have authored the ‘Forum Administration Act’, which aims to make sure that the administrator of the Discord server, the owner of the forum and the World Assembly Delegate will be 3 separate individuals so that it will be nearly impossible for any individual to consolidate power in the future.

My hope is that the president will no longer be mainly be seen as a political leader who is looked up to and whose ‘power’ is desired by ambitious individuals. Rather, they should be someone who is a respected equal and community member in the region and their activity, character and accomplishments can be a part of what makes the DSA great.

As the World Assembly Delegate I have mainly focused on increasing the voting power of our region and our position on the inter-regional stage. Over the past three months the endorsement count of the WAD has gone up from the 80s range to around 120 endorsements, and the average amount of endorsements our WA nations have has gone from 3 to an all time high since the census started at above 7. The measures taken to achieve this are a manual telegram I send to every new resident nation asking to join the WA and endorse me, and the ongoing endorsement contest. We have seen great results and I expect to see similar progress if we stick to what works.

I do however want the 34th cabinet term to be the beginning of the DSA taking a more active stance in the World Assembly through taking an active role on the forum discussions considering WA proposal drafts, and making sure that our region will be able to write it’s own WA resolutions in the future. A major help in this will be the Gameplay council of the NSLeft, in which comrades on the council will discuss the role of NSLeft (and also the DSA) in the WA, this is a concrete way in which the DSA can make its mark on the authorship of resolutions.

The Cabinet

I’d like to develop a plan for every minister this cabinet term, we will look together in what they want to do with with the ministry and think is achievable for the next month and by the end of their term. This way every minister has a good idea of what they need to work towards, and can be kept accountable to themselves and the residents on their promises. To make sure that people will have more interest in running for cabinet positions and will know better where to start once they’re elected in the future, I will also work together with every minister to make a guide to their ministry, and do the same for the presidency + WAD by the end of the 34th term.

For the MInistry of Domestic Affairs I would like to brainstorm together with the residents of the region to find new ways to use the ministry. The MoDA is in charge of providing activity to the community so how it functions should come from the community itself. This can be on anything from what kind of games the region would like to see, to changing the structure of the ministry through the minister or through a charter amendment. I also support the plans of the new MoDA for the ministry and more coöperation between the MoDA and the MoRP.

I believe that this term will be the ideal time for internal ch-ch-changes in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ambassadors will from now on ideally be assigned 2 regions instead of 1, this will decrease the amount of ambassadors from 9 to 4 or 5, allowing the Ministry to spend less time searching for enough ambassadors and more time searching for good ambassadors and making sure they connect with their regions well.

While I don’t have a specific plan for every ministry I trust that the Ministry of Role Play and the Ministry of Justice will be administered well, and that I will have a good working relationship with Secretary-General Wileyshire just like I had with Alvero.

NSLeft

Recently, our inter-regional alliance NSLeft has unilaterally approved the new Solidarity Pact, passing sweeping reforms such as 4 councils that will manage the alliance. During the 34th cabinet I plan to make sure that NSLeft will be able to work together with our MoDA and MoFA, and the equivalent ministries of all member regions to improve the playing experience of our members. I also want to let the DSA and our residents play an important role in the reformed alliance. page=dispatch/id=744991

Dekks

untitled, Slotheria, digital photograph, 2020

untitled, Slotheria, digital photograph, 2020

No One Wants to See You, Dankass communes, digital image, 2019

We all know the classic, conservative family ideal: the husband goes out to work while the wife stays home and cares for the children, cleans the house and cooks for her husband so he has food when he comes home from the work that earns the money to bring said food on the table. This family model is based on centuries old role models and assumptions about the sexes and frankly, it sucks. In this article I want to point out some of the mechanisms and assumptions about the sexes that lead to this strict role distribution and why they are harmful to society.

Most people trying to defend this model do so by claiming that it is natural and existed in our earliest ancestors already. However, there is no real evidence at all to support this assessment, thanks to time destroying most of the evidence. Also, it doesn’t make sense today to force people into something they are not inclined to simply based on their sex, and it didn’t make sense in the past, either, when environmental stressors were much greater and survival dependant on how well the group and each individual in it functioned. If a woman was a proficient hunter, why not send her out to hunt instead of wasting her talent by making her a gatherer? And indeed, some of the rare cases when evidence does survive includes the grave of a woman buried with the highest honors of an accomplished hunter - unthinkable had she not actually been an accomplished hunter. On the other hand, a man bad at or even unable to hunt would have been a detriment to the group, better set to other tasks.

To go on a tangent here. No, our ancestors did not leave disabled members of the group to die, as ‘survival of the fittest’ apostles would want you to believe. Paleopathology shows that even during the ice ages, severely disabled and disfigured individuals were able to live way past the event that disabled them or way past the point you would expect the group to have abandoned them. They were instead cared for, surviving to ages not possible otherwise, disproving the theory that our ancestors acted on ‘survival of the fittest’, an idea that only applies between species or in solitary species - and sometimes not even then.

During most of European and Middle Eastern history, this rigid role model continued to exist, over time leading to a patriarchal society that completely suppressed women, often, as in ancient Greece, not even considering them truly human. Most consider the onset of true Patriarchy to be the transgression from hunter-gatherer nomadic to sedentary farming societies, and more importantly, hierarchies. A common theory is that early societies were matriarchal, which are without any exceptions horizontal. If we compare modern matriarchal societies as they can be found in the Andes as well as Africa, we find that they are not only more horizontal, but also apply the principle I described make sense for our earlier ancestors above - tasks are given according to inclination and ability, not the individual’s sex.

Then why did hierarchy and Patriarchy evolve, and how? As for the latter, they most likely evolved in tandem. If we look at the earliest forms of states, we have one individual at the top, and from there, ranks are cascading downwards. In Patriarchy, we have one man at the top, and everyone else below him, with other men usually holding higher positions than women, whose only function gets reduced to household chores and childrearing, which are purely serving and subordinate positions. Furthermore, women are usually also bereft of choice of their husbands, which are most of the times decided for them by their fathers.

This holds true even for the woman (or women) married to the Patriarch, who has very little influence still despite her apparently high position. Inheritance is also usually done through the male line (which in ancient times wasn’t provable, compared to the female line - it is harder to conceal or fake a pregnancy than it is to conceal the husband not being the father of the child), often completely excluding female children from inheriting.

In the time of the Roman Republic, a man established the significance of his family's lineage through the male line. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc. In order to prove this, what was done was that very detailed marble busts of the men were made, usually when they were older. So you would have all of these busts of old men around which were used to prove that, yes, these were my forefathers and my family has significance. This played a role in the rise of an art movement at the time called verism, in which you would create a sculpture that was as true to life of the person as possible. Other things led to verism, such as emulating the ancient Greek and then Helenistic focus on realism in sculpture. Yet the idea of presenting your forefathers as realistically as possible was major because it played into the idea that they were always with you, ensuring success for the male line. Yet there were deviations.

If you ever look at veristic busts, you'll notice that certain features and expressions are exaggerated. All the men look grumpy or stoic, they look hardened and grizzled from old age. This was on purpose, it was done to make the men appear slightly older than they were and, to the Romans, wiser as those expressions were linked to perceptions of wisdom. Women were not given this treatment and couldn't be seen as having that wisdom. Like the ancient Greeks, the Roman Republic didn't view women as intelligent and thus undeserving of dignity in society. They didn't have political power for most of the Republic's history (though some insurrections like the cesio plebius changed that, even if only for a little while) and at times not even considered citizens.

In these societies, women also have very little choice in occupation, if they are allowed to work at all. They are more often illiterate, possess fewer rights and are often victims of violence received from their spouses and male relatives. Honor killings especially come to mind.

For the why hierarchy and Patriarchy evolved, the most likely explanation lies in one theory of how many matriarchal societies dealt with troublemakers. In a close-knit community, a troublemaker is a danger to the entire group. If they cannot be brought to their senses, it stands to reason that they were either expelled from the community (usual) or outright killed (not common but not uncommon either). It is not hard to imagine that those individuals could have rallied other, like-minded men (and we are practically exclusively speaking about men here) to their cause, installing a system of violence and oppression.

The reason why women are the primary victims of such systems is easy to explain - they can give birth, and their reproductive cycle is far longer than that of men. While a man can theoretically sire dozens of children each year, a woman can conceive only about every 10 months at the absolute maximum and usually less, and she invests far more energy into the child, making her reproductive cycle a lot longer. Therefore, control of the woman, especially sexually, is important to make sure every man has a chance at reproduction even if he would normally not be chosen, and to ensure the greatest possible success.

Or to put it in modern layman's terms. No woman with even a shred of self-respect would have sex an incel, so they needed to use force to get what they want and what they think the only worth of a woman is. Research and common sense suggest that kindness, intelligence, and willingness to cooperate and help with childcare are the primary metrics women choose their partners after, and men like that just don’t possess those characteristics. Therefore, they needed force for reproductive and social success, leading to what we have today.

And even today, we still have many instances of sexual suppression of women. If a guy "gets around a lot,'' he is respected, even admired. If a gal does the same, she is a slut. If a woman gets raped, she will have to face a lot of psychological pressure on top of her horrible experience, even being not believed, told she's "having it had coming", or outright getting getting blamed for it. The case of an Italian woman comes to mind, who saw her rapist set free by the judge on the basis that "her pants were too tight to have gotten removed without help", outright accusing her of having it all made up and blaming an innocent man.

The entire #metoo movement also is a great example of the social backlash that women face when reporting their rape. As a result, many rapes go unreported, a fact that is then further used by the right against women, calling them weak for not reporting something that damages their lives so deeply. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Even when it comes to choosing a job, women get a lot of opposition if they try to enter a male-dominated field like the sciences, going as far as being told to do something else. When she is then chased away from pursuing her dream, people marvel about how mathematics and other natural sciences have "so few women", and go on tangents about how men are just smarter and better suited for those fields. James Damore comes to mind here.

In 2017, Damore, then-employee at Google, released an internal memo against gender quotas, in which he called women neurotic and employed some of the other old gender stereotypes employed to keep them out of certain jobs, like "being people-oriented" and being more social. However, due to the nature of programming, this line of argumentation, even if it were true, wouldn't make any sense; neither being people-oriented nor social prevents you from being a programmer, and I hope we can all agree that women being prone to neuroticism is pure misogyny.

On the contrary, if women were actually so much more proficient in languages than men, you would find more of them in that occupation due to the great similarity between programming and language, at which women are supposedly superior at; this similarity is even in the name, programming language. However, you find far more male programmers than the more even split one would suspect, and the reason is simple - sexism.

Looking back at the history of computing, we find that many of the people who lay the groundwork were indeed women. Ada Lovelace wrote what is essentially the first computer program in the mid-1800s for a mechanical analytical engine. Hedy Lamarr, an acclaimed actress turned radio enthusiast during WWII, developed the method of frequency hopping which directly laid the foundation for Wi-Fi, LTE, GPS, and Bluetooth. Grace Hopper in the second half of the 20th century is responsible for programming languages as they exist now, creating the first compiler which turned the human readable and writable COBOL (which she devised) into machine readable code the computer could execute, which is the basis of how programming with any language works today. Radia Perlman’s development of the Spanning Tree Protocol was instrumental of the internet, earning her the nickname “The Mother of the Internet”. And Lynn Conway, a transwoman, is responsible for many of the technologies which led to the slimming of cell phones. Women remained integral to information technology and the majority of computer programmers… right up to the point when it became clear how important and lucrative that field would get. That's when things changed very drastically and very quickly. Or in other words, the moment the field became more than a breadless curiosity and an actual, prestigious science with the potential to make lots of money, women were driven out rapidly.

Other famous and brilliant women throughout history had to suffer as well. Let's look at one of the most famous examples, Marie Curie, as an example. She was one of the first female students at the Sorbonne, and her husband Pierre Curie gave up his own studies to support her in hers. Together, they won the Nobel prize in Physics, though Marie was thought by most to have been carried by her husband's brilliance instead of the other way round. Her discovery, the radioactive element Radium, was originally attributed to her husband.

Shortly after, Pierre died in an accident with a carriage. While grief-stricken, she continued on with her research on radioactivity, ultimately leading to her second Nobel prize in Chemistry… and a huge controversy. At around the same time, she was considered for a seat in the French academy of sciences, but denied the seat based on her sex. She was also denied her husband's chair at the Sorbonne for a long time, until she ultimately got it - without pay.

And even in today's world, when most women in the Western world have better rights, inequality and sexism still exist. Why should a girl be unable to study and understand something, just because her male teacher wasn't able to? Why should she be asked inappropriate questions in job interviews her male counterparts would never hear? Why should she get lower pay for the same work as her male coworker one desk away? The answer is, she shouldn't.

Now, as the title implies, while so far I only mentioned the harm all this does to women, I want to show that this hurts men, too. First of all, we raise men to be "strong, independent providers who are rational and driven by logic, not by emotion like the weak women they have to protect". First, women are neither weak, nor overly emotional, and capable of rational thought on par with men. Second, this thinking perpetuates the social view of women as inferior by proclaiming them weak and stunted in their intelligence by their emotionality. However, it is perfectly possible and normal to be both emotional and intelligent.

Actually, the contrary is the case. Women are not more emotional than men by nature - we just raise men to be less emotional by instilling a sense of false masculinity into them. False masculinity that destroys their social lives and makes them unable to cope with stress in a healthy manner, at the worst leading to alcoholism, other substance abuse, or violent tendencies.

At the same time, studies showed that while parents googled "is my son gifted?" for their sons, they at the same time googled "is my daughter beautiful?" far more often for their daughters - illustrating the bias people place on their children from an early age, forcing expectations of success on their sons while simultaneously being more concerned with the outward appearance of their daughters instead of their intelligence. This then leads to far higher pressure for success on boys, and simultaneously hinders the mental development of girls by teaching them that only outward values matter instead of intelligence.

This actually explains some of the most toxic theories, especially the so-called "greater male variability"-theory, basing itself on the fact that there are both more highly successful as well as failed men than women. If pressure for success is only applied to one sex instead of both, of course you find more successful and more failed individuals in this sex compared to the other! At the same time, being a successful woman often means being harshly criticized instead of praised, while being a successful man will get you praise endlessly.

And this is exactly why strict gender roles are toxic. It forces women into servitude, demeans them, tells they are worthless and subjects of men. While at the same time, it also tells men they are worthless if they cannot get a good job which is only defined by how much money it makes, and teaches them to be mindless working drones, but at the same time, always better than any woman just because they have a dick dangling between their legs. I hope any sensible person reading this can understand how ridiculous this view is.

What can we do against this? Abolish the idea of nuclear families. They never existed, because they never worked out, and for a good reason. Abolish the idea that just because someone was born with male or female genitalia, they are inherently better or worse than the other. Stop using misogynist language. The more you use it, the more you help to enforce the idea that women are inferior. Don’t even use it jokingly; there are far too many people out there who will take you at face value, and honestly, this is no topic anyone should make fun on. And also, stop berating men for showing emotions; teach them how to be more open with them instead! Men are no less emotional than women, they are just stunted by society teaching them it’s unmanly to show them. And finally, respect a woman’s right of self-fulfillment and her intelligence.

Anonymous

Editor's Note: The following contains an adaption of material from the late comedian, George Carlin

If you’re ever in any left-leaning circles (which you obviously are if you’re reading this in the DSA), then you probably hear a lot about how it is that the gender roles we’re stuck with tend end up hurting the men like they do to women. Not as much as the women, no, the women get one of the rawest, crappiest deals on the planet. They’re served up a fresh, hot pot of crap soup day in and day out under patriarchy. Think of a cafeteria line in the great big feeding hall of humanity. At the end of it where they’re serving the slop that looks like crap, smells like crap, and probably is crap, the women are getting a extra heaping helping of crap. After the men take all the choice pickings from the rest of the cafeteria line. Of food that was made by a woman, who was pushed into the cafeteria kitchen by a man. And the cook herself gets extra helpings of that crap too. So the men are really one of the women’s biggest problems, good going fellas. However, if you explore what the men’s biggest problem is you won’t have to dig very long to find out that it’s other men, other men are men’s biggest problems.

A long time ago, men gave away all of their power… to other men. To kings, princes, priests, businessmen, generals and they did this because they believed what the other man told them. They bought the okie doke. Men always buy the okie doke. When it comes from other men. Once upon a time, a bunch of men were probably sitting around a fire and one them comes in and proclaims:

“Ok fellas, I own the forest that we’ve all shared and split the workload in where feed ourselves and have tons of free time. It is mine now, I don’t have to do anything and you’ll spend the whole day in there getting me my food and I’ll let you have a little. I am now also your king, the sun is my father, the moon is my mother and they tell me when we have to sacrifice the virgins and they also gave me the ability to make your heads explode if I concentrate really hard. So from now on, you are to bow deeply whenever I approach you and give me half of your things and I am now also allowed to bang your wife. And did I mention the head explosions? Gronk and Grognak have already agreed to this and will beat the living crap out of anyone who says anything when I’m not around and they get extra food for being good.”

And the other men nodded to each other and said, “Hey, that guy makes a lotta sense”. The women saw through the okie doke of course and some tried to speak out. But that’s what Gronk and Grognak were for. The other men cheered as the two meatheads beat the living crap out of the dissidents. The men had immediately accepted their new scammer without question, and that’s how we ended up with patriarchy. Men always buy the okie doke when it comes from other men. And sure, not all men we’ll concede. But just enough, just enough to screw things up. Why though? Besides the obvious, which is that they generally aren’t all that bright, no matter what the choir of sexist chuds on the internet will argue to you. Why is this such a common trope throughout history, that there’s some number of men who will fall for this stuff so easily?

Editor's Note: The adaptation of George Carlin's material ends here

It’s my sincere conclusion that if you observe at these ignorants for any extended period of time in some sort of scientific curiosity or maybe you even had first hand experience in an edgy teen phase, you’ll find that the reason for their irrational and hateful behavior is due to the fact that they lack any principles to speak of. You see these people, the conservatives, the far right, and on occasion some center liberals don’t necessarily support anything in the positive sense as much as they’re simply against things. Conservatives don’t support tough immigration policy, they’re just against having to look at anyone a different color than them. They don’t support the idea of “traditional marriage”, they just hate queer people. They don’t support capitalism, they’re just against the idea of people who aren’t them having dignity. They don’t support traditional gender roles, they just hate trans people. They don’t support Donald Trump, they’re just against whatever it is they don’t like which they project onto him. It’s coded language and it’s projection. The eternity of right wing politics, even the center liberals, can be summed up as a massive case of projection and contradiction.

“Women are too passive and can’t do anything like working in IT”, says the chud who spends all day sitting at a desk, copying and pasting the code and commands with the green checks next to them on StackExchange. Code and commands which compile into machine code when run thanks to the work of Grace Hopper, the woman who made modern programming possible.

“Women are too emotional and aren’t fit to be leaders”, says the sorry idiot who gets red in the face and foams at the mouth by just saying the words trans rights are human rights or even dares to suggest that people should be paid a little more.

“I like Donald Trump because that’s what I would do if I were president”, says the far right cretin being perfectly honest about their real intentions. That’s it right there, there’s your answer for the question above. Why do these men buy the okie doke so easily? Because these men have no principles of their own, are only against things that they don’t personally feel comfortable with, and their minds, which are more akin to the way a reptile brain works, are attracted to the loudest, meanest, and most brutal man who’s saying the most messed up things. Which is another fun contradiction and projection from the same people who say it’s gay and thus bad to look up to other men while simultaneously having a child-like attraction to male authority figures who like to push them around. “Because it’s what I would do. I may not be rich now but one day I might be and then poor people like me better watch their step.” It’s pure projection.
That projection is what makes them so malleable for these male authority figures. Someone with actual principles won’t give in and bend themselves so easily because they have things they may actually stand for. These other people, on the other hand, just hate and fear what they don’t understand. They’re scared of it, they think they need protection from it and they wish they had the guts to stand up and fight against it themselves, as they see it. But they don’t, they just have the anti-social, deluded fantasies playing on repeat in their heads, hoping that one day something will happen to “own the libs”. And then someone who thinks almost exactly like them comes along and actually does try to do something against the things they hate, they things they fear. And at times, the things they fear the most are themselves. Boo freaking hoo, right? That’s where gender roles hurting the men comes back into play, though.

Imagine spending your entire life thinking that you have to take charge and command in every single situation in your life. Imagine thinking that showing a single shred of emotion emasculates you and makes you less than what you actually are. Imagine forever thinking that you have to be the one that can fix everything and if you can’t fix it then you know someone who can and if you can’t find someone who can fix it then it’s bad, you didn’t need it, and you could find a better replacement for cheaper at this one store you know but they’re out of stock and they’re closed right now. Imagine thinking that you have to be the pinnacle of sexual engineering and have gotten laid by hundreds of women by the time you’re 25 and if you haven’t done that then you’re simultaneously a loser who can’t live correctly and it’s the women’s fault for not doing their duty and doing you the dirty. Then imagine being told this day in and day out, 24/7 for your whole life since you were born and you can begin to understand the crux of what George Carlin called the male disease, being full of crap.

Being full of crap really does hurt the men, ultimately. It hurts all the rest of us. It’s why men are women and men’s biggest problems. You end up with generations of men raised to be sociopaths with the emotional development of a ten year old and the mental acuity of a drunk ten year old. They end up emotionally stunted and unable to handle themselves with maturity and self-awareness. They’re selfish and narcissistic with a smidgen of self-loathing that they can’t even recognize. They feel so personally connected to authoritarians and oppression which despise them because they need that large figure feeding into their confirmation bias so that they feel like they’re doing something to the world. So then a criticism of, say, Trump, becomes a personal attack because they don’t see Trump the man, they just see Trump as a screen to project themselves onto. Everything is a black and white zero-sum game to them and when that’s your view of the world then your idea of how the world should be doesn’t need principles. After all, the only thing you need to care about is yourself, number one. When you think like that, you only need to be afraid of the things you don’t understand and you think the answers to your problems is simply to get rid of those things. And when you don’t understand yourself, you become afraid of everything.

Anonymous