Letters to the Editor
leftychris
Published Letters: 354 Editor's Choice: 4
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fetboy: Clueless twit
[Read the article: Bill Maher: "Don't show me your tits!" ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You really are bordering on the pathetic. I wondered when I started posting on Broadsheet why I saw so many dismissive comments about your posts, on the order of "don't even bother debating him, he's just a sock puppet" but now I get it.
What was there to contribute to this thread? One's position on public breastfeeding (I made that quite clear in my posts), and I guess one's position on the baring of female breasts in public (which I also made quite clear in my posts), along with elaborate descriptions of why one feels a certain way about these issues. I didn't really do the latter, because I didn't see the point. I support a woman's right to breastfeed in public, as long as she's not truly being disruptive (as in the woman in the museum example that the dude from New Mexico gave earlier). I think those rare cases of women putting on a show for the public while breastfeeding can be rather distasteful, but they can be dealt with gently and appropriately at the time, and again, they are RARE. I support a woman's right to go bare-breasted in public too, in all the same contexts as a man would be allowed to. Obviously, private businesses can make their own rules (as in "No Shoes. No Shirt. No Service.") Why was there a need to go on ad nauseam about my feelings on these issues as some posters did?
Oh, I guess I could have weighed in on Bill Maher, too. Forgot that. He's an irreverent comedian who goes after everyone and pushes buttons. Ergo, get over it. Stop obsessing over trivia, and magnifying perceived slights into some manufactured crisis. There. Happy now?
I saw no need to psychologize about the motivations of those people, men AND women, who have a problem with public breastfeeding. Many of them were posting on this thread and thus gave us glimpses into their psyches. I tossed out that I'm quite confident the religious heritage of the country, our tradition of deep sexual neurosis (and I guess I should add to that neurosis regarding bodily functions), and our current religiosity had way more to do with it than some tedious gender political theory. Other than that, I saw no need to delve deeper. I'm no psychologist or sociologist (and clearly, neither are you), nor social philosopher. We could sit here all week debating the public breastfeeding equivalent of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" which is apparently what you'd have us do. Thanks, but no thanks. If I wanted to sit through insubstantial, unprovable theorizing and wild speculation (i.e. intellectual masturbation) I'd enroll in a Philosophy 101 class at my local college. At least there, the arguments, unpersuasive though they may be, would have some logical coherence, unlike yours. Plus, your intellectual masturbation exists for one purpose and one purpose only--to make men, and only men, look bad. Your arguments are bad enough--they're riddled with holes--but the barely-concealed ideological agenda motivating them makes them even more irritating.
You claim that I offered nothing but criticism and ridicule. Not true. I think I contributed something positive (public breastfeeding = Good; women going bare-breasted in public = Good and should be legal; critics of public breastfeeding in MANY cases = religious neurotics with serious body issues). Since I haven't conducted or read sociological research on this issue, still less psychoanalyzed millions of my fellow Americans of either gender, I didn't think it proper to weigh in with meaningless and idle speculation about their innermost thoughts and subconscious impulses. You, however, DID see that as proper, and thus you treated us all to a "theory" that was unsupported and unsupportable, and silly on its face. Plus, as I pointed out, it can't even pass the basic test of internal consistency--a fatal flaw that should have shut you right up, and yet here you are still yammering away about it. Do you need more? Your "theory" is non-falsifiable, and it's also non-predictive (meaning, if it were true then harassment of breastfeeding women would be a global phenomenon, but even you insist that it's peculiar to America, thus offering evidence that undermines your very own theory. DUH)
So yes, my posts tended to be heavy with criticism and some ridicule. That tends to happen when I encounter self-righteous blowhards who get off on spouting their nonsensical, ideologically-driven "theories" to anyone who will listen, and who brush off valid criticisms and questions as of no consequence. Bad, sloppy thinking will always attract my attention and scorn.
So, go ahead and spank your rhetorical monkey. No one is stopping you. But don't get defensive if someone more clearheaded decides to call you on your ridiculous twaddle.
As for irrelevance--you seem to think that no one here cares about my thoughts or opinions, as if somehow that will hurt my feelings. I'm not that fragile, bozo. The same could be said of every single person posting here, including YOU. We're all single voices crying out in the wilderness, among a cacophony of others. You, however, seem to think that your voice, your opinion, carries some special magic weight that others do not. Heehee. Enjoy your delusion.
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@Anonymous
[Read the article: Bill Maher: "Don't show me your tits!" ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]leftychris is the new blowhard here at broadsheet. He pushes propaganda and BS with no legitimate argument to backup his pontifications.
Aww, I'm hurt, Anonymous. I take seriously criticisms from people who can't even bother to think up an individually identifiable handle! Or are you a covert second voice for my silly buddy fetboy?
Examples, please, from this thread. Propaganda? What exactly did I write that was propaganda? Do you even know what the word means? And since when is it bullshit to criticize the deeply-flawed, male-bashing "theory" proposed by another poster? Gee, lemme guess--you're an ideological bedfellow of fetboy, so anything critical of his stance automatically becomes propaganda bullshit. I get it!