So Scott Adams — the Dilbert guy — has a blog. Recently he made the mistake of asking his readers to give him a topic to write about. Well, some Men’s Rights Activists heard about this, and, being the herd animals that they are, quickly flooded his site with comments urging him to write about Men’s Rights. And so he did.
What he wrote ended up revealing a lot more about Scott Adams than it did about any issues involving men. And what it revealed wasn’t pretty; after explicitly insulting Men’s Rights Activists, Adams insulted women much more profoundly, without, it seems, even recognizing that what he wrote was, well, a load of misogynistic drivel. Evidently unhappy with the response he got from his readers, Adams decided to take his post down, saying that it had gotten “a bit too much attention from outside my normal reading circle.”
The post has not only vanished from Adams’ blog; it’s vanished from Google Cache as well, but fortunately you can still find it here (on a feminist site), as well as on an assortment of MRA blogs I won’t bother to link to.
It’s a strange beast indeed. Adams started out, depressingly enough, by more-or-less agreeing with MRAs on a wide assortment of their pet issues big and small — from men paying more for car insurance to the alleged anti-male bias of the legal system. Much of what he wrote made as little sense as many real MRA rants; even his little jokey asides fell completely flat.
We take for granted that men should hold doors for women, and women should be served first in restaurants. Can you even imagine that situation in reverse?
Generally speaking, society discourages male behavior whereas female behavior is celebrated. Exceptions are the fields of sports, humor, and war. Men are allowed to do what they want in those areas.
Add to our list of inequities the fact that women have overtaken men in college attendance. If the situation were reversed it would be considered a national emergency.
After more or less agreeing that men are getting a raw deal, Adams dismissed the complaints of women upset that women earn less than men; to Adams, this is because they are naturally timid souls who don’t know how to ask for raises.
So far, so not-so-good. But then Adams pulled the old switcheroo on his MRA readers, who up until this point were presumably giddy with excitement.
Now I would like to speak directly to my male readers who feel unjustly treated by the widespread suppression of men’s rights:
Get over it, you bunch of pussies.
Uh oh! This is what MRAs love to dismiss (and not without reason) as a “shaming tactic.” As it turns out, MRAs love directing vagina-based insults at others – they use the “c-word” constantly, and I couldn’t even begin to estimate how many times I’ve been called a “mangina” — but they hate hate hate it when anyone directs a vagina-based insult at them. To be fair to them, though, calling someone a pussy is not much of an argument.
But here’s where Adams pulled a sort of double switcheroo. After insulting Men’s Rights activists, he did them one better with a bizarre, brazenly misogynistic argument that seemed to have been cribbed from some of the more idiotic comments on MRA and “Men Going Their Own Way” message boards. It turned out that the reason Adams thinks men should “get over it” is that … well, you’d best just read it for yourself.
The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.
As Kyle’s mom would say: “what what what??” This is the sort of shit you expect from some low-grade loser on a misogynist Mecca like The Spearhead. But no, this is Scott Adams, internationally famous cartoonist and bestselling author. Instead of trying to explain just what the fuck he means by all this, Adams continued on with a very strange, and strangely sexual, chess metaphor:
How many times do we men suppress our natural instincts for sex and aggression just to get something better in the long run? It’s called a strategy. Sometimes you sacrifice a pawn to nail the queen. If you’re still crying about your pawn when you’re having your way with the queen, there’s something wrong with you and it isn’t men’s rights.
After a few more paragraphs that, frankly, don’t make any more sense than what I’ve quoted so far, Adams seemed to realize that maybe he shouldn’t have really suggested that women were a bunch of retarded children. [NOTE: My use of the phrase "retarded children" has caused some concern in the comments; here is my explanation of why I used the term, in retrospect unwisely.] But instead of going back and removing that from his post, he dug himself further in with a weird and completely unconvincing denial that he really meant what he had just explicitly said:
I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar. If he’s smart, he takes the path of least resistance most of the time, which involves considering the emotional realities of other people.
As far as I can figure out his weird and convoluted argument, it is this: The world really is unfair to men. But, fellas, you’ll never win this argument with a woman — you know how they are. So keep quiet and maybe … you’ll get to fuck the queen?
No wonder he deleted the post.
Note: Scott Adams has responded to this post in the comments below. You can find his comment here.
What he wrote ended up revealing a lot more about Scott Adams than it did about any issues involving men. And what it revealed wasn’t pretty; after explicitly insulting Men’s Rights Activists, Adams insulted women much more profoundly, without, it seems, even recognizing that what he wrote was, well, a load of misogynistic drivel. Evidently unhappy with the response he got from his readers, Adams decided to take his post down, saying that it had gotten “a bit too much attention from outside my normal reading circle.”
The post has not only vanished from Adams’ blog; it’s vanished from Google Cache as well, but fortunately you can still find it here (on a feminist site), as well as on an assortment of MRA blogs I won’t bother to link to.
It’s a strange beast indeed. Adams started out, depressingly enough, by more-or-less agreeing with MRAs on a wide assortment of their pet issues big and small — from men paying more for car insurance to the alleged anti-male bias of the legal system. Much of what he wrote made as little sense as many real MRA rants; even his little jokey asides fell completely flat.
We take for granted that men should hold doors for women, and women should be served first in restaurants. Can you even imagine that situation in reverse?
Generally speaking, society discourages male behavior whereas female behavior is celebrated. Exceptions are the fields of sports, humor, and war. Men are allowed to do what they want in those areas.
Add to our list of inequities the fact that women have overtaken men in college attendance. If the situation were reversed it would be considered a national emergency.
After more or less agreeing that men are getting a raw deal, Adams dismissed the complaints of women upset that women earn less than men; to Adams, this is because they are naturally timid souls who don’t know how to ask for raises.
So far, so not-so-good. But then Adams pulled the old switcheroo on his MRA readers, who up until this point were presumably giddy with excitement.
Now I would like to speak directly to my male readers who feel unjustly treated by the widespread suppression of men’s rights:
Get over it, you bunch of pussies.
Uh oh! This is what MRAs love to dismiss (and not without reason) as a “shaming tactic.” As it turns out, MRAs love directing vagina-based insults at others – they use the “c-word” constantly, and I couldn’t even begin to estimate how many times I’ve been called a “mangina” — but they hate hate hate it when anyone directs a vagina-based insult at them. To be fair to them, though, calling someone a pussy is not much of an argument.
But here’s where Adams pulled a sort of double switcheroo. After insulting Men’s Rights activists, he did them one better with a bizarre, brazenly misogynistic argument that seemed to have been cribbed from some of the more idiotic comments on MRA and “Men Going Their Own Way” message boards. It turned out that the reason Adams thinks men should “get over it” is that … well, you’d best just read it for yourself.
The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.
As Kyle’s mom would say: “what what what??” This is the sort of shit you expect from some low-grade loser on a misogynist Mecca like The Spearhead. But no, this is Scott Adams, internationally famous cartoonist and bestselling author. Instead of trying to explain just what the fuck he means by all this, Adams continued on with a very strange, and strangely sexual, chess metaphor:
How many times do we men suppress our natural instincts for sex and aggression just to get something better in the long run? It’s called a strategy. Sometimes you sacrifice a pawn to nail the queen. If you’re still crying about your pawn when you’re having your way with the queen, there’s something wrong with you and it isn’t men’s rights.
After a few more paragraphs that, frankly, don’t make any more sense than what I’ve quoted so far, Adams seemed to realize that maybe he shouldn’t have really suggested that women were a bunch of retarded children. [NOTE: My use of the phrase "retarded children" has caused some concern in the comments; here is my explanation of why I used the term, in retrospect unwisely.] But instead of going back and removing that from his post, he dug himself further in with a weird and completely unconvincing denial that he really meant what he had just explicitly said:
I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar. If he’s smart, he takes the path of least resistance most of the time, which involves considering the emotional realities of other people.
As far as I can figure out his weird and convoluted argument, it is this: The world really is unfair to men. But, fellas, you’ll never win this argument with a woman — you know how they are. So keep quiet and maybe … you’ll get to fuck the queen?
No wonder he deleted the post.
Note: Scott Adams has responded to this post in the comments below. You can find his comment here.
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/sc ... ter_b27969
MetaFilter users exposed Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams as an anonymous poster on the popular discussion board on Friday. Using the screen name Plannedchaos, the cartoonist had defended his work against critics on the site.
UPDATE: Adams has responded in a blog post that actually quotes our headline. An excerpt: “Did you see the reports of my scandalous behavior on the Internet? The headlines say ‘Scott Adams Caught Defending Himself Anonymously on Metafilter!’ … There’s no sheriff on the Internet. It’s like the Wild West. So for the past ten years or so I’ve handled things in the masked vigilante-style whenever the economic stakes are high and there’s a rumor that needs managing.”
On Friday morning he wrote: “I am Scott Adams” on MetaFilter and Gawker confirmed the story with MetaFilter’s founder. Later Adams followed up with this comment: “I’m sorry I peed in your cesspool. For what it’s worth, the smart people were on to me after the first post. That made it funnier.”
MetaFilter moderator Cortex responded to the revelation: “Scott, if you wanted to sign up for Metafilter to defend your writing, that would have been fine. If you wanted to sign up for Metafilter and be incognito as just another user, that’d be fine too. Doing both simultaneously isn’t; pretending to be a third party and high-fiving yourself by proxy is a pretty sketchy move and a serious violation of general community expectations about identity management around here.”
UPDATE: Adams has responded in a blog post that actually quotes our headline. An excerpt: “Did you see the reports of my scandalous behavior on the Internet? The headlines say ‘Scott Adams Caught Defending Himself Anonymously on Metafilter!’ … There’s no sheriff on the Internet. It’s like the Wild West. So for the past ten years or so I’ve handled things in the masked vigilante-style whenever the economic stakes are high and there’s a rumor that needs managing.”
On Friday morning he wrote: “I am Scott Adams” on MetaFilter and Gawker confirmed the story with MetaFilter’s founder. Later Adams followed up with this comment: “I’m sorry I peed in your cesspool. For what it’s worth, the smart people were on to me after the first post. That made it funnier.”
MetaFilter moderator Cortex responded to the revelation: “Scott, if you wanted to sign up for Metafilter to defend your writing, that would have been fine. If you wanted to sign up for Metafilter and be incognito as just another user, that’d be fine too. Doing both simultaneously isn’t; pretending to be a third party and high-fiving yourself by proxy is a pretty sketchy move and a serious violation of general community expectations about identity management around here.”
http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle.ac ... 4979254264
Dilbert creator Scott Adams defended Gwyneth Paltrow after a Huffington Post blogger's column criticized her. Just why did Adams say the woman had no right to criticize the actress turned singer?
Keli Goff posted her column bashing Gwyneth Paltrow for saying, "everything in my life that's good is because I worked my ass off to get it and to maintain it." Goff wrote Paltrow is "under the delusion that she earned everything that she has, and then has the audacity to gloat about it." She suggested that it was Paltrow's privileged upbringing as a woman who calls Steven Spielberg Uncle that helped her achieve her success.
In response to Goff's blog, Adams wrote on his own blog explaining why Goff was wrong and didn't have context. He wrote the following:
It's worth noting, in the interest of context, that Goff was born with a few advantages herself. She's beautiful, smart, and apparently had the resources she needed to make it through NYU and go on to get her Master's Degree at Columbia University. If you ask Goff what made her successful, would she credit her hard work and leave out her other obvious advantages? Or would she answer honestly and say, "I worked hard for what I've achieved, but it didn't hurt that I'm a brilliant, smoking-hot African-American woman in 2011." I'm just saying that people don't generally talk about their advantages. To do so would be... wait for it… gloating.
It is bizarre that Scott Adams has even injected himself into this discussion. Obviously, Paltrow has worked hard, but her parents' good friend Steven Spielberg gave her her first break putting her in a movie, so her station in life also played a part in her success as well. Ultimately, both Goff and Paltrow have good points here, but what on Earth is Adams doing? He's had a rough time of it lately on the Internet. Just a few weeks ago, he was caught using a pseudonym to defend himself in the comments of a post. Perhaps he should take a break from posting for a while.
Keli Goff posted her column bashing Gwyneth Paltrow for saying, "everything in my life that's good is because I worked my ass off to get it and to maintain it." Goff wrote Paltrow is "under the delusion that she earned everything that she has, and then has the audacity to gloat about it." She suggested that it was Paltrow's privileged upbringing as a woman who calls Steven Spielberg Uncle that helped her achieve her success.
In response to Goff's blog, Adams wrote on his own blog explaining why Goff was wrong and didn't have context. He wrote the following:
It's worth noting, in the interest of context, that Goff was born with a few advantages herself. She's beautiful, smart, and apparently had the resources she needed to make it through NYU and go on to get her Master's Degree at Columbia University. If you ask Goff what made her successful, would she credit her hard work and leave out her other obvious advantages? Or would she answer honestly and say, "I worked hard for what I've achieved, but it didn't hurt that I'm a brilliant, smoking-hot African-American woman in 2011." I'm just saying that people don't generally talk about their advantages. To do so would be... wait for it… gloating.
It is bizarre that Scott Adams has even injected himself into this discussion. Obviously, Paltrow has worked hard, but her parents' good friend Steven Spielberg gave her her first break putting her in a movie, so her station in life also played a part in her success as well. Ultimately, both Goff and Paltrow have good points here, but what on Earth is Adams doing? He's had a rough time of it lately on the Internet. Just a few weeks ago, he was caught using a pseudonym to defend himself in the comments of a post. Perhaps he should take a break from posting for a while.
Am I the only one who thinks this is one huge joke?
Please, please let this be a joke.
