WTF are you talking about?

I don't denigrate gay rights. I NEVER have. Show the thread I rec'd that says that. Go on. Provide links.

Schism? Fear no more

The Flying Spaghetti Monster has reveled the means through which his followers, divided between the Marinara and Alfredo sauces, can come together in holy communion.

White progressives’ racial myopia: Why their colorblindness fails minorities — and the left

The Face of Evil

Watch out, no mourning for the dead allowed

Caring about death is merely a ruse to use against the precious rights of the Almighty Guns.
Say you care about the loss of life? You're lying. You only want to make poor, persecuted gun owners feel bad.

You might say, hey, I know gun owners who think the current situation is every bit as crazy as the "gun grabbers" do, who support increased gun control through background checks and bans on certain high capacity weapons. No, they aren't real gun owners. The only true gun owners insist that deaths like these are mere pretext, because what really matters is the Sacred and Inviolate right to accumulate weapons of death, and to ensure the corporate merchants of death reap unfettered profits. (Yes, gun companies are corporations too, even though they merely profit from murder as opposed to usury.)

God Bless the United States of Guns, where the right to kill trumps all others. In Guns we Trust.

I would like to form a sisterhood

of Our Blessed lady of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.



Would it be correct to understand that FSM and IPU constitute a binity, much like the Holy Trinity of the Catholic faith?

(On reflection, girlfriend needs a facial waxing).

Question about the noodly appendage of the one true faith

I'm interested in knowing more about your faith, in worship of the great Ramen.
I have a concern. I see several references online to the noodly appendage. This strikes me as a phallic sort of reference.
Is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster patriarchal like other monotheistic religions? Or am I misunderstanding the noodly appendage?

As a ball busting feminist, I wonder if this can be the light and the path for me, or do I first need to bust some meatballs?

Liberalism is a political ideology that accepts the legitimacy of capitalism

Classical liberalism emerged in the late Enlightenment, in the writings of people like Adam Smith and John Locke. It championed the individual as the true repository of rights and promoted free markets. It is the political corollary of capitalism. Liberalism has long been associated with opening up markets and embracing values of individualism over the common good. It's meaning has changed somewhat in the US to refer to the left of a very narrow political spectrum. The left in this country was imprisoned, deported, purged, and blacklisted from the 1910s through the 1950s. It was destroyed. Leftism has traditionally been oriented toward Marxism, toward a critique of capitalism. Liberalism does not challenge capitalism; it seeks to maintain and perpetuate it by--now in US context--taming its excesses. FDR is lauded here as a great liberal president, and indeed he was. His greatest accomplishment lay in shoring up capitalism by co-opting the frustration of people's movements (led by the Communist Party, among others). The focus on FDR as a benevolent benefactor is particularly pernicious because it creates a false expectation that government works for the benefit of the people. The New Deal was made by people's movements; FDR's noblesse oblige enabled him to co=opt their goals and assuage the ravages of capitalism.

We live in a capitalist state. The nature of our government is to serve the interests of capital. No president--even if he wanted to, and none have wanted to--can undo that because the constitution places the values of individualism, which are central to justifications of capital, at its core. The endless fixation on political saviors like FDR, Obama, or Bernie Sanders works against understanding the problem and collective action. It rests hope in a single individual to transform society. The counterpoint to that is projecting all frustrations with that society onto other individuals, like Hillary Clinton or again Barack Obama. Such a focus on particular politicians blinds people to the overall structures that work against their interests and in support of capital.

The problem with liberals imagining they represent the left is that they ignore a whole world of leftist movements throughout the world and in their own nation's history. I have even had people here tell me Che Guevarra was a populist, when in fact he was a revolutionary socialist. Such comments reveal an inability to distinguish movements that challenge capitalism from ones that accommodate it. Populists rev up the population in pursuit of personal power and the ongoing stability of the capitalist state. Socialists seek to overturn capitalism and replace it with collectivism, as in Cuba. Liberals accommodate capitalism, accept structural inequality, and simply seek to lessen it or regain their own position atop the capitalist world order.

I want to thank the defenders of misogyny

for crystallizing in my mind what the true political struggle we face today consists of. For some time, I have experienced hostility for talking about my concerns about violence against women, rape, and human trafficking. I have not once posted a thread about women's issues without having it called flamebait, divisive, or trivial.
I have learned that no issue I care about has consequence to many here: misogynistic language, trivial; rape, exaggeration; inequality under the law as codified in the Hobby Lobby case, "hair on fire," human trafficking, "already illegal" and not worth bothering about.

Now I see that considerable numbers of people find it impossible to relinquish what they see as their right to verbally abuse women like me (no I am not speaking for all women and certainly not for the ones who prefer abuse to respect). There should be nothing controversial about the idea that human beings deserve to be treated with respect. All human beings, full stop. Yet somehow when those human beings are women, we are told respect doesn't matter.

This comes in the context of political discussions about which issues and segments of the population the party should represent. I have for some time witnessed a politics of exclusion, where a few seek to make the party smaller and smaller so that it represents only people who think and live exactly like them. The banning of a member, one whom I also liked and will miss, has become yet another opportunity to target feminists and women, even though it was a male administrator who PPR'd him. Feminists are again scapegoated by those who lack the courage to confront the people actually responsible for the banning. The fault must be uppity women who refuse to keep quiet and accept their verbal degradation by a privileged minority.

I have learned than when it comes to issues of gender, I cannot count on many of you to champion my rights. I have learned my rights are not merely inconsequential to many here, they are seen as something to target, to eliminate.

Many here have defined the electoral choices as between "Third Way" and "real Democrats' or Wall Street and Main Street. I reject that definition, and I might be more sympathetic to those concerns if my own were not treated with such hostility and contempt. For me the political struggle is about entitled privilege of the few vs. the rights of the many. I will not sit back while my rights are belittled and undermined. When I can't even count on people to treat me as a human being, I certainly can't trust them to make my rights a priority. I now know that I MUST focus on my rights because there are too many who claim to be on the left that seek to erode them. There is indeed an us vs. them, but for me the them is white male entitlement, a desire to take the Democratic Party back to serve the interests of the privileged few over the many. I will not be complicit in that. I will instead stand up for my rights as a woman because clearly they are under assault from all quarters.

I like Sanders. I agree with his policies on most issues, but I loathe the exclusionary politics I see emerging in support of him, likely through no fault of his own. Thanks to the defenders of misogyny, I have learned that gender does matter in a political candidate, as does a history of fighting for women's rights as I understand them. For that reason I will be caucusing for Hillary Clinton, and I may well campaign for her. The discussion over the past few days here and the refusal to concede that women deserve to be treated with respect has shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the vitriol toward Clinton is the expression of an entitled few desperate to hang on to their own privilege. Clinton threatens male privilege, and that is ultimately a pernicious and deep-seeded form of power. If you all were challenging capital itself, I might set aside my concerns about gender inequality, but there is no such critique here. Instead, there is merely an effort to regain your own position atop the capitalist world order. You all put your own rights first, which is understandable. Now I will put mine first. I will cast my vote in opposition to white male rule.

The term is meant to insult

That is its only purpose. If one did not mean to offend, they would choose a different word. It has a clear meaning, not one some people later determine because they want to excuse bad behavior. I'm sorry that you don't find bigotry an outrage. Clearly you do not share the commitment to human equality that the OP and some others do and you instead choose to promote the privilege of a select, entitled minority. That is precisely how power and inequality are perpetuated. Language signals how people see the world. NYCSkp made a mistake. What is more offensive to me is that so many who pretend to be liberals defend bigoted slurs, thus promoting a system of inequality that benefits the few at the expense of the many. It shows that the concerns some have raised about a politics that excludes the voice and concerns of the majority is alive and well. The language, and most importantly the unyielding defense of language, shows a clear intent to exclude. I find inequality in all its manifestations outrageous. I believe human beings are all equal and worthy of respect. I used to think that was a core believe to anyone who claimed to be a liberal. I have learned that is sadly not the case, which is precisely why many do not feel they can count on a self entitled minority to see to their rights, when they have made clear repeatedly that they see them as less. I find it outrageous that people claiming to be liberals show an ideology identical to the right when it comes to gender (and often race). I find this exclusionary politics for the few and by the few offensive.

NYCSkp was PPR'd by the administrators, but we once again see that feminists and women are scapegoated. His banning is a mere pretext for the performance of power and privilege that is at the heart of restorationist, reactionary politics. I also find it unfortunate, but not at all surprising, that those targeting feminists lack the courage to confront the administrators responsible for the banning. That the go to position is to scapegoat women speaks to the very mentality that leads one to use and defend such words. Scapegoating is often what those lacking the courage to confront power do.

You are indeed outraged, only it is not by bigotry. You instead are outraged that women are demanding to be treated with respect. Your outrage is that we do not stay in our place, the same outrage that leads people to insult a presidential candidate with the foulest word in the English langauge one can use toward women. To pretend the intent it to do anything but degrade and offend doesn't pass the smell test.

The sisters of perpetual outrage are also outraged by the system of inequality that leads 20 percent of women to be raped in their lifetimes and more subject to domestic violence. We are also outraged by the fact that only 4 percent of rapists are convicted. We are also outraged by SCOTUS decisions allowing private companies to treat us as less under the law. We are told all of those issues are less important than the white male bourgeoisie cares about, just as bigotry against us is ridiculed. We are told that equal pay for equal work and EEOC regulations are unimportant. The clear message is that those issues are less because we as human beings are less, which is precisely what that bigoted term conveys.

You go ahead and ridicule bigotry against half the population. Treat is as a joke, just as the right does. But don't for a second think we are going to sit back and do your political bidding, affirm your privilege and promote your interests while you ridicule ours. You and your like-minded friends have demonstrated that you are not our allies, and you do not seek to create a better society based on inequality. So you go ahead and try to carry out your political reform for the few and by the few. You will not succeed, and statements like this and the patronizing attitude shown toward other subaltern groups demonstrate why. Don't expect me to give a flying fuck about your job when you take my equal rights as a joke. I will not be supporting the white male middle-class and upper-middle class' efforts to take the country back. In fact, I will do everything in my power to dislodge the gender, race, and class privilege the self-entitled believe is their birthright. I am making the erosion of white male supremacy my mission.

Thank you for convincing me that I cannot count on men, or women similarly oriented in ideology, to uphold my rights, that even when they claim to be on the left they are fully capable of being every bit as dismissive of my rights and my humanity as any right winger. You have convinced me that gender does in fact matter in a political candidate. The ongoing effort to exclude more and more Americans from the body politic has been going on for sometime, but his scapegoating is the last straw. I will look after my own rights because it's pretty clear the rest of you have no intention of doing so.

Now I shall change my sig line.
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