Isn’t that kind of the point, though? There’s a difference between being disappointed and embarassed and being angry, and feeling anger would seem to be coming more from a place of entitlement. “How DARE that [whatever] not want me! She is evil, evil!” To Brad’s credit, he acknowledged that what he was feeling was wrong. But, as a guy, I don’t think it can be pointed out enough that nobody owes anyone anything except common courtesy in that context, because it’s actually pretty common to never grow out of that phase. Just take a quick look around at what personality types are running the country.

Thank you Davis! That is exactly what needed to be said. It’s what I think every time one of these disgusting murderers makes his mark on the news by killing.

Actually, it’s a lot like what I thought after 9/11 too. Everyone was saying, “This is the day that changed everything!”, and I was thinking, “This was a monumental fuckup. It is far too easy easy, in this overcrowded, highly technical world, to do what the 9/11 murderers did. It doesn’t mean what every one thinks it means. And it will happen again.”

The right wing punditry seems to have a case of ninjavitis. (Persistent, and contrary to evidence belief in one’s ability to perform in combat as a ninja.)

Sorry. Bad.

And Neil Boortz asked why 25 students were lined up against a wall and shot, one by one, all awaiting their executing passively. Then it comes out the pretty much did the full range of things in reaction to the rapidly-moving shooter, including running, getting shot, hiding, helping each other, dying, jumping out second-story windows, etc.

Boortz refs:
http://boortz.com/nuze/200704/04172007.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20radio.html
http://boortz.com/nuze/200704/04182007.html

VA tech students’ actual experience:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3049678&page=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/22norris.html

Malkin, Boortz, Steyn, Limbaugh, Coulter… all blaming feminism for Cho’s rampage, and the Westboro Baptist Church threatened to disrupt VA Tech students’ funerals and blame the murders on homosexuality. They went as far as to claim Cho was an instrument of god.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/18/national/main2699800.shtml

Yes, the teenaged feeling that you are the center of the universe. I remember it well.

That must have been an interesting feeling. All during my highschool daze (and for some time thereafter, ca. the ’80s), I was afraid that people would find out that I was kweer and kill me.
Good times, good times.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. The damn incident has been nothing but a really scary Rorschach test, and it’s absolutely ridiculous.

I miss MzMolly somethin’ fierce.

Me, too. She was one of the few things to love about Texas.

Molly’s grocery lists were better written than anything the wingnut welfare brigade ever spewed forth.

Boys have always been told “You can be anything”. Girls were told “You can be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary, but you really, really should be a stay-at-home wife and mother”–that was the whole source of the gender role inequality in the first place.

The only “necessary difference” in what boys are told is to tell them it’s OK for them to choose those few roles that were previously female-specific. And this has happened: male nurses and male teachers are common, and stay-at-home dads are not ostracized. (I can’t speak to secretaries of either gender from my current occupation.)

This also raises the question: Exactly who has failed to tell boys whatever “different thing” you expected them to be told? What do you propose we tell them? I mean, what doesn’t “Respect people as individuals instead of as mindless collections of genitalia” cover, in your mind?

The true impediment towards equal rights is the negative effect it has on the dominant group,

Really? Wow, no wonder racism and sexism are so hard to get rid of.
[ /sarcasm ]

and no attempt has been made on a societal scale to mitigate the inevitable stress and confusion caused by a rapid shift in perceived gender roles.

I think there has been an attempt on a societal scale: that’s kind what the whole women’s rights movement is all about, isn’t it? Unfortunately, there has also been resistance on a societal scale as well. Columns like Paglia’s are helping prop up that resistance: as long as it’s all the women’s fault, there’s no reason for men to alter their behavior. And we’ll then there’s the “men expect sex without commitment” stereotype that only reinforces the perceived gender roles in the first place and is grossly unfair to those men who are not commitment-phobic assholes.

But even if there hasn’t been a valid attempt, who other than the dominant group can make that attempt, anyway? Are you saying that women must be a whole lot nicer to men in exchange for being treated as, you know, people? And if women start being nicer to men before men accept the societal shift, won’t that just discourage a large portion of men from ever accepting that shift? I remember hearing a saying about buying cows to get free milk, or something.

[deep shuddery sigh] I miss MzMolly somethin’ fierce.

And this from Ivins on Paglia (thanks for the link, MzNicky) is just perfect: What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a clear sign of decandence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness.

Finally: “fun. And yeah, at the time I probably had some nasty feelings about the women-folk who turned me down, which is common for 18-year-old guy�

Ask yourself why that is common for an 18 year old guy. Could it have anything to do with your expectations, or a sense of entitlement? Why would it be common to have “nasty feelings� toward someone who turned you down?

Bu-whu? As someone who has been in similar shoes, I can say it probably had everything to do with his expectations, and quite possibly with a sense of entitlement. And…?

Everybody has expectations in many situations, and (here’s a shocker) some people may feel a completely unwarranted sense of entitlement about some things. And when those expectations don’t come to fruition, when that sense of entitlement is shown to be not-so-much truly entitling, those people might feel a bit disappointed. Disappointment — whatever the reason — can make people have “nasty feelings” and think bad thoughts. (I’ll bet it’s even happened to you on occasion, thebewilderness.)

Of course most people, at least those who are not psychotic, learn to live with their disappointments; many of them even come to realize that maybe their expectations were not realistic, that they are not necessarily entitled to whatever it was they thought they were entitled to. That’s called “growing up,” and people usually still have a lot of that left to do when they are 18.

And now I see Dorothy beat me to that particular comment, so I’d better post that before my entire post becomes (more) obsolete.

From “Fear of a Black Hat”
What’s the difference between a bitch and a ho?
Well, you see, a ho fucks everybody
A bitch fucks everybody, but you.

But our society has not prepared in any way to deal with that concept. For 30 years girls have been repeatedly told “you can be anything”, and boys just are what they always have been, boys. The true impediment towards equal rights is the negative effect it has on the dominant group, and no attempt has been made on a societal scale to mitigate the inevitable stress and confusion caused by a rapid shift in perceived gender roles.

By not preparing for a soft landing for shifts in societal you doom the best of changes to failure, or unneccessary suffering. An example, in some ways american schools are more de facto segregated after Brown vs Board of Ed, than they were before.

Women’s equality will not thrive without preparing men to be able to deal with it, recognizing that american men are troubled isn’t about feminizing anyone, but the consequences of a social vision that only speaks about the 1950’s on both sides, ignores the issue of adapting our social concepts of gender roles to todays socio-economic reality.

I was thinking that 18-year-olds of both genders often have a tendency to be a) self-centered, b) immature, and c) overly dramatic. And honestly, the more important line in Brad’s post is the next one:

But as I got older, I actually came to the realization that:
a.) No one is obligated to sleep with anyone else.
b.) No one should feel that they deserve sex just for existing.

Most of us call that “growing up”.

Guns don’t kill people, rappers do.

excuse me, but I think it has been made PERFECTLY clear that guns don’t kill people, Feminists do.