Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Pab Sungenis

Pab Sungenis's Journal
Pab Sungenis's Journal
January 18, 2013

Jury results: 0-0?

At Fri Jan 18, 2013, 11:54 AM you sent an alert on the following post:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/

The reason for the alert was:

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate. (See <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=aboutus#communitystandards" target="_blank">Community Standards</a>.)

You added the following comments:

"You have a small penis" - misandry. Think: would you let "you have small tits?" go through before you vote to leave.

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this post at Wed Dec 31, 1969, 07:00 PM, and voted 0-0 to it.

Thank you.


Interesting.
January 11, 2013

Why we keep having school shootings

Another week, another school shooting. And once again it's the same refrain that we're all too tone deaf to hear.

According to Daniel Politi in Slate:

Officials in the small Kern County community, around 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, are investigating reports that the boy had a hit list of students he felt had bullied him that he had compiled last year, reports the Bakersfield Californian. “He had intended targets. There's no question,” Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.

Same old story. A bullied kid finally reaches the breaking point and, feeling he has no recourse, seeks to take revenge upon his attackers.

And how do we as a country respond? We villainize the victim of the original crime and lionize the aggressors.

It doesn't start at the shooting phase, though. It starts a lot sooner. If a kid fights back against bullies with his fists then our "zero tolerance" policies guarantee that the victim will be the one who pays worse than the bullies who seek to destroy his life. Stand up for yourself with administrators and you're just making yourself a bigger target for the bullies. You dig yourself deeper into the lower castes of the school, which makes you an even more attractive target for abuse.

Pretty soon, a kid feels he has no way out. I touched on this when I wrote A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Columbine, as expressed by my narrator, Jake:

Let me get one thing clear: if you have never thought about shooting up your school, you have never been a teenager, and anyone who says they don’t know what would drive a kid to doing it is either incredibly dense or a horrible liar.

The teenage years are incredibly hard on kids, with pressure from within and pressure from outside, and when you add in the fact that the modern high school is the best science project anyone could have ever dreamed up to study social cannibalism, no one should really be surprised when kids’ minds burst like firecrackers tossed into a barbecue pit. Honestly, I consider the simple fact that more kids don’t take up arms against the seas of troubles that threaten to drown them a testament to self-restraint.

When you’re a kid, everything is the most important thing that has ever happened, and every insult is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Sure, you can get over it pretty quickly if you try, but in those minutes right after the incident, it can truly seem like your world is ending unless you do something drastic.
Now, imagine that these last straws are being dumped on your already loaded down with a book bag back, one each second, every second of every day. Social stratification pushing down upon your helpless body with tons of pressure. Pressure to conform, to belong, and to behave just like everybody else. Then factor in the incessant push to excel from the parental units, which they make sure is scratching away at you constantly like a rabid hamster stuffed under your baseball cap, and tell me you wouldn’t feel the need to go batshit from time to time.

It’s supposed to be the same for the jocks and the cheerleaders, and the other “popular” types, but unless you’re one of them, you’ll never understand how the hell it can be. When someone is dumping a truck full of manure on top of you, you don’t stop to contemplate whether he’s worried about how he’s going to make the mortgage payment next month, you concentrate on trying to get him to stop smothering you in shit.

And what compounds this problem is the way we as a culture react when a victim finally fights back. Again, from my narrator:

“For the record, guys, I’m with Mick part of the way on this. I have no problem seeing the assholes that got away with beating up Topher pay, and pay through the nose. I don’t think I’d mind seeing any and all of the other jocks get it, either. But there’s one important thing that we’re forgetting.” I paused for a second, cleared my throat, and fought the effort by my stomach to push some bile up into my mouth to shut me up. Like Mick and Topher, and probably Whitey, I was mad. Really mad, and I had to force the logical side of my brain to take control. “And that’s one simple fact: if there’s one problem with school shootings, other than the obvious carnage related difficulties, of course, it’s that people never seem to learn the lesson.”

I stopped again, and looked over the three of them. Topher was glaring even worse than he had been during Mick’s screed. Whitey looked intrigued, as if he guessed where I was going. Mick just crossed his arms and defiantly prodded me. “Go on.”

“By all rights, Columbine should have gotten the message across loud and clear to kids across the country: don’t fuck with the wrong people or you will end up dead. It didn’t, though, and neither did the killings that came later, because people love victims. Because a couple of kids who were sick of being kicked around killed their oppressors, they wound up making themselves into the bad guys, and made the bad guys into victims in everyone’s eyes. People were too overcome with grief over the senseless bloodshed to think about what had driven the two shooters to do what they did. And for those jocks, having their blood spilled wound up washing away their sins as far as everyone was concerned. Don’t think about what they were really like, turn them into perfect little angels in everyone’s eyes. And, personally, I am not really in favor of giving the world of jocks any new martyrs.”

If we started portraying these "victims" of shootings like the monsters they were, instead of pretending that they were harmless little lambs, then maybe some other bullies might start getting the message. Maybe administrators would start taking bullying seriously. Maybe we'd start attacking the problem with school violence at its root.

Zero tolerance for bullies, not for those that fight back. Expel the bullies. Protect the victims. Don't tolerate the Social Darwinism that goes on in the hallways.

Until you treat the disease, the symptoms will keep recurring. And far too many people are blind to what the real disease is.
January 1, 2013

What about unemployment benefits?

Not heard anything about them in this "deal."

December 25, 2012

Unable to upload an avatar.

"Failed to open stream: permission denied" error at line 233 of profile.php.

Wanted to make this my new avatar, thinking it appropriate:


December 24, 2012

"There is no misandry on DU"

Make jokes about the size of men's genitalia? Fine. Prison rape jokes? Celebrated.

Suggest that one of the biggest misandrists on DU has ulterior motives? Hide.

At Mon Dec 24, 2012, 11:44 AM, an alert was sent on the following post:

Are you sure you weren't really trying to hide the phrase "bitch session"

REASON FOR ALERT:

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate. (See <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=aboutus#communitystandards" target="_blank">Community Standards</a>.)

ALERTER'S COMMENTS:

Pab has two posts in this thread. In each one he is trying to support the OP's efforts to re-start sexism wars by attacking feminists.

Disruptive, rude, over the top.

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Mon Dec 24, 2012, 12:09 PM, and voted 4-2 to HIDE IT.

Juror #1 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: This is the nature of conversation and opinion. This is what will push women to get out and support the ERA, and stop the sexism. Don't censure, call it what it is! Sexism! One good turn deserves another. This is a political discussion board. What do you expect? It's the dirtiest game in the world. Not for the over sensitive types.
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT and said: I agree with the alerter. This post is rude and disruptive.
Juror #4 voted to HIDE IT and said: No explanation given
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE and said: No explanation given
Juror #6 voted to HIDE IT and said: Low. Clean up your act Pab.


The "sexism wars" never ended. A certain bloc on DU is allowed to attack men with impunity. Even legitimate criticism of any woman for any reason is seen as "misogyny" and attacked viciously.
December 17, 2012

Some completely honest and well intended questions.

Gun advocates, I am sincere when I ask you this.

What can we do to stop these killings?

I've been trained to shoot. I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. I believe in the right to self defense. I accept hunting as a source of food and as a sport. There are legitimate uses for guns, and I believe in the Second Amendment.

But dear God, something has to be done.

In one week we've seen three mass shootings - one of which killed over a dozen children - and at least two more thwarted that we know of.

This cannot become the new normal. This is not acceptable.

What are the answers? How can we respond? How do we prevent this sort of thing in the future?

If we can't find solutions to this, then the obvious and distasteful one is likely to be forced upon us.

December 6, 2012

Can we talk about the existence of misandry on DU for a change?

There are a few posters on here who, let's face it, are just anti-men. I'm not talking about anti-misogynist or anti-sexist, I mean they just honestly seem to be anti-men.

We know their names. The ones who take any criticism of any woman ever as misogyny. The ones who feel that men can do nothing right. The ones who assume that any joke must have a deep-seeded hatred of women at its core.

We saw it during the early S.E. Cupp threads. We see it now with the LOLCat massacre. We will see it again.

We've started to address the racist, antisemitic, anti-Islamic, misogynistic, and homophobic veins on this board. Can we now start to address the misandrist tendencies, too?

November 23, 2012

Oh? And we're the sexists?

When we say that S.E. Cupp only got her job as a commentator at Fox News because she was an attractive woman, we're the sexist ones?

http://samuel-warde.com/2012/11/fox-news-anchor-we-hire-from-victorias-secret-catalog/

Fox News Anchor: We hire from Victoria’s Secret Catalog

Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade said on air that Fox hires female hosts by looking at “the Victoria’s Secret catalog” and asking, “Can any of these people talk?”

This is not the first time the co-host of “Fox and Friends” has been the center of controversy surrounding sexist remarks. For instance, back in June his co-host Gretchen Carlson walked off the set when Kilmeade remarked that “women are everywhere. We’re letting them play golf and tennis now.”


When someone from Fox admits that they hire for looks, not ability, why is there stunned silence? Could the defenders of Feminist Martyr S.E. Cupp have been wrong all this time? Or are we sexists now for pointing out the sexism that she exploited?
November 16, 2012

The whole Hostess debacle made me think of this TV show:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Boys_(2011_TV_series)

I stumbled upon it by accident right after it started last year, and fell in love both with the show and the underlying concept.

The programme follows the workers of Valley Bara bakery which is the economic centre of Trefynydd, a small fictional village in South Wales. Generations of people had earned a living and formed a life at the bakery but this is thrown into jeopordy when recession bites and the bakery workers find themselves unemployed overnight. Writer Helen Raynor describes it as "a blue collar drama", explaining "we wanted to tell the story of a community, with a workplace at the centre of it, who suddenly fall on hard times".[1]


So what do the workers do when they find themselves out of work? They pool their redundancy (severance) pay and buy the bakery themselves, operating as a workers' co-op. The show ran for two seasons of three episodes each before being cancelled.

I would love to see the Hostess employees pool together and buy the Hostess brands and facilities during the vulture parent company's liquidation. Of course, in America this is impossible since a worker's co-op would never be able to get that kind of financing.

Profile Information

Member since: 2003 before July 6th
Number of posts: 9,612
Latest Discussions»Pab Sungenis's Journal