Monday, September 29, 2014

Thoughts on the movies Brave, Tangled and Frozen

I was at a dinner party the other day when a woman I know who has a son commented on how her best friend's daughter wouldn't let her son to her 5th birthday party because she thought boys were stupid.

Later in the conversation she mentioned that the girl's three favourite movies that she watches again and again are Brave, Tangled and Frozen.

I wonder if either of them has stopped and taken a good hard look at the underlying tones of all three of those movies where male characters are either evil or stupid and incompetent.

I challenged anyone to identify at least one positive male character in all three of those movies.

Granted I've never seen Frozen (nor do I want to), but Brave left me thinking that girls watching that must think all men are loud obnoxious buffoons and tangled left me thinking that girls watching it must this that domestic violence against men is ok, but the number of times that the main female character beats up the main male character.

I wonder what kind of reception I would receive if I were to point the above out?  Probably not a very nice one as the impression I get is that woman's friend probably wants her daughter to grow up to be a strong independent woman, and who wouldn't?  My main concern is that if they get those ideas stuck in their head early enough, they'll carry through into adulthood.

Then again, maybe she'll discover boys and the whole 'boys are icky' phase will be over.

Woman assaults another woman in apparent racist attack

I just saw this today and had a few thoughts on an article titled 'Woman bashed, thrown from train in racist attack'.  Here's some things that most people may not notice upon first reading:
  • The attacker was female.  A fact not mentioned until the 4th paragraph
  • The attack was 'racially motivated'
Whilst I completely disagree with all violence, one can't help but notice how, when the perpetrator is a woman, the details are left until the end of the report and there are rarely sketches of what she looked like.  Had the attacker been a man, the headline would have been 'Racist man throws woman from train in attack'.

The second thing I notice is how suddenly being a Muslim is being a race.  I believe that it's all part of some great plan to label anyone who doesn't agree with mass migration from Middle Eastern countries as 'racist'.  Maybe they're just too lazy to know that the correct term would be 'creedist' (if that is even a word).

Compare the above story to this story about a 'Good Samaritan brutally after NRL semi-final'.  Throughout the article the victim, a man named Paul, is referred to as a Good Samaritan or by name and the words man or men are only used to describe his attackers.

The messages to take away from both articles is that women deserve to be recognized in the titles as victims, but not as perpetrators, and with the second article, a man has risen up above the title of 'man' and will not be referred to as one, as that word is used to describe his attackers who ganged up on a 'Good Samaritan'.

I guess I know why I don't bother reading the papers...

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Masters of Sex not worth the trouble

I'm not normally one to review any movie or TV show, but I felt so strongly about this that I had to post something.

A friend of mine raved about Master of Sex as being a fantastic show, the critics love it, etc, so when it finally found its way to Australian free-to-air I checked it out.

I honestly couldn't understand what the whole fuss was about.  Once you remove the sex from the show you're left was a show that's so blatantly anti-male it stops short of having its female actors simply kicking the crap out of its male ones.

All of the male characters are either career or sex focused with very few other redeeming qualities.  All of the women are portrayed as smarter or more moral than the male doctors.

  • One MALE doctor is racist to a black man, the FEMALE nurse believes this is wrong.
  • One MALE doctor is cheating on his wife with his assistant, the FEMALE assistant is doing it to keep a roof over her head and/or for the science.
  • One MALE doctor can't get it up unless he's able to treat the women as anonymous sex objects, the FEMALES he leaves behind just want love.

And the list goes on.

I gave this show what I think is a fair run, which is I watched about four episodes before I gave up.  There's only so much anti-male portrayal that a person can watch before one realizes that it's not going to get any better.

I know it's set in ye olde day when stuff like that happened, but there were racist bigots around the time of the Korean war, but the TV series M*A*S*H didn't resort to showing its main characters as racists, sexists and bigots for it's whole series run.  If they did, it was usually so that particular character could realize the error of their ways by the end of the episode.

Masters of Sex just seems to rub our faces in these character flaws episode after episode with little or no character growth for the men, but the women are shown as compassionate, smart and improving.

I'd rather go back and watch MacGyver again.  At least that's got some positive male role models in it!

Poor Julia the victim, even when she's backstabbing people

I'm really amazed that this feminist icon trying to show a front that women can do anything a man can do, only better, would even dare to claim to be a victim when it came to stabbing her leader in the back to take his job.

In other interviews she went on to talk about how she didn't really want to do it, she was egged on by her colleagues.

What's amazing is how this most influential woman of 2013 who was held up to be a modern feminist icon, yet when something she does that benefits her also casts her in a negative light, she was pushed into it.

Australia, as not everyone knows, has compulsory voting, so there was no way she could have stayed in power had all her feminist supporters voted and all the evil sexist males had stayed home wouldn't have played out.  On threat of a fine, every registered voter must cast their vote.

What was forgotten was one of her follow up speeches referred to as her 'Men in blue ties' speech in which, to a room full of only women, referred to all men as interchangeable men in blue ties.  So, all women are wonderful individuals, but men are all the same and, therefore, expendable?

The media only focused on the fact that her own male party members also wear blue ties. not that she had, once again, painted all men with the same brush.  It was this speech that she was trying to ride the wave of international recognition, but at home just drove a nail into the coffin of her political career as both men and women were getting fed up with her.

This is a woman who will retire on an indexed pension of about $200,000 a year or, to put it another way, the equivalent of $8 million in Superannuation (or 401k for those in the US) after serving in the position for only three years and three days!  That is on top of the pay rise she gave herself and fellow politicians that saw her overtake Barack Obama in salary.

FYI - at the time, the GDP of Australia was only US$1.38 trillion vs US$14.99 trillion for the United States.

Basically, at the same time as she was running up a massive national debt, she was also looking after her friends.  If only we could all have friends like her!

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Who needs a defense lawyer when the media makes it for you

I couldn't believe that I read this:

Woman who lost son, 5, on murder charge over death of man

The reasons I'm surprised:
  • her son died six years ago
  • the man who died after being allegedly stabbed apparently had nothing to do with the death of her son
  • no other person gets this sort of defense in the media
How is the fact that she lost her son relevant in any way to her arrest???

Sunday, September 14, 2014

The dawn of a new era... maybe...

I saw this in the news the other day:

Male birth control could be available to humans by 2017

Of course, it's been 'on the horizon' and 'only a few years away' for a very long time now.  Here's to hoping that it comes sooner rather than later.

The million dollar question is: will teenage boys be allowed to get it done?  Since teenage girls have access to the pill, it only makes sense to provide teenage boys with an alternative contraception too.

I foresee that, assuming it does come out, we'll see a massive drop in 'unplanned pregnancies', a 'must have' for all teenage boys and a sharp decline in the number of staff needed for Family courts.

Longer term, I believe we'll see a significant drop in the fertility rate, since almost half of pregnancies are unplanned.  I actually believe that the government may block the introduction to the procedure in Australia citing dubious reasons, with the real reason being that we're already in a population decline that is threatening our long-term future.

I had previously discussed with my wife about getting a vasectomy after we were done having children, but given the potential side effects, I'd much rather the Vasalgel option!