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[EricKei]

That controversy is exactly why I stopped reading his blog. I was hoping it had calmed down since then. Still read the comics themselves, tho.

[Canarr]

Well, his article on wage gap strikes me as both intelligently done and fairly balanced. Not to mention his decades-old work on a comic such as Dilbert.

Considering that, I would say that dismissing him as a "creepy sexist scumbag" based on a few sentences in a somewhat hyperbolic article seems... premature. Not to mention rude.

[Lindsay B.]

When it comes to humorists, like Scott Adams, it can sometimes be difficult to tell how much of what they say is meant seriously. With that said, this portion of his blog kind of jumped out at me :

Let me describe to you the mind of a teenage boy. Our frontal lobes aren't complete. We don't imagine the future. Our bodies want sex more than we want to stay alive. Literally. Lonely boys tend to be suicidal when the odds of future female companionship are low.

... Don't get me started on this.

This is probably the one gender stereotype that I hate the most. (If you'd like to know why, I described my experiences in this essay last year. I should warn you, it's a long read.)

I have seen so many men who insist that all men, especially teenaged boys, care only about sex. They don't even seem to understand, or care, how demeaning they are being toward their own gender. Not that women are any better. When it comes to perpetuating the stereotype that men care only about sex - if anything, we're probably worse. And I have seen far too many people, of both genders, cruelly mocking and belittling men and boys who are victims of harassment and abuse from women.

It always drives me up the wall when a man insists that sex is the primary or sole motivation of all males, or takes the attitude that because he wouldn't mind being harassed or abused by an attractive woman, that no man should.

Scott Adams, however, takes it to a different level when he claims that male ISIS terrorists become cold-blooded killers, not because of religion, but because they are being deprived of women. Ugh.

[EricKei]

Canarr --Fair enough. While I don't recall any one specific article being the issue, it was some time back. It was more of a trend in his articles that I had noticed, rather than one standout line or three. I ended up being just one less thing to kill time with, and I didn't really miss it all that much.

[s_stabeler]

Strictly speaking, he is wrong only in the sense of the degree to which teenage boys think of sex. I can guarantee yo that there isn't a teenage boy who doesn't think of sex to a degree. There's a reason why it's a stereotype that teenage boys do dumb things to impress girls.

however, a) it is teenage brains in general that are still developing (and that IS a scientific fact- the brain hasn't finished developing until 25, IIRC)
b) I think there IS a link between being unlikely to attract a girlfriend and becoming a terrorist, but it's closer to a correlation than a causation link. (just about anyone who cant' find a girlfriend tends to be somewhat lonely- this applies regardless of why they can't find a girlfriend- and so would be easier targets for radicalisation due to wanting to feel like they belong somewhere. That, and suicide bombing would seem more attractive to someone who doesn't have many other prospects)

[Canarr]

Canarr --Fair enough. While I don't recall any one specific article being the issue, it was some time back. It was more of a trend in his articles that I had noticed, rather than one standout line or three. I ended up being just one less thing to kill time with, and I didn't really miss it all that much.

EricKei - I wasn't addressing you, since it wasn't you who popped up with some kind of drive-by condemnation of Adams on the alleged crime of sexism. Seriously: if you're doing something for entertainment, the only reason to stop doing it you really need is for it to not be entertaining anymore. And you certainly don't need to justify that to some random schmuck on the internet

It always drives me up the wall when a man insists that sex is the primary or sole motivation of all males, or takes the attitude that because he wouldn't mind being harassed or abused by an attractive woman, that no man should.

Scott Adams, however, takes it to a different level when he claims that male ISIS terrorists become cold-blooded killers, not because of religion, but because they are being deprived of women. Ugh.

I absolutely agree with you; did so on your essay last year, as well. What I don't agree with is your interpretation of Adams' article: that he was entirely serious. Recruitment into extremist groups is a lot more complicated than just "we's be gettin' wimmins for it!". It also entirely ignores the fact that there were and are millions of men living peacefully in the Middle East with women and children, without ever killing anyone. I'm fairly certain that Adams is too smart not to realize that.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

To be fair to his critics, Adams is making some points that are traditionally associated with MRAs.

To be fair to Adams, he's got a lot of nuance here and he's scattershooting a lot of topics at once so pulling a few random topics out of context and plastering them all over Tumblr would create an artificial impression of him pretty quickly.

To be fair to everyone else, this is pretty much part and parcel why choosing to argue long form on the internet is simultaneously great for the extremely small audience that likes the creativity and form, but ultimately terrible on the internet because the only thing that comes away from it is people reblogging the small mistakes in it until all that's left is a false impression. Especially any "moderate" position which enjoys no safe space from either the left or right tends to be doomed.

[Canarr]

Thanks for the attempt at being the voice of reason; but:

To be fair to his critics, Adams is making some points that are traditionally associated with MRAs.

Honestly, that would only be a valid defense of his critics if you accepted that any points made by MRAs are by definition invalid - because MRAs are either irredeemably horrible people, or abysmally stupid, or both.

Am I wrong here, or is this just another issue where everything is black&white, with no room for middle ground? Is "MRAs vs. Feminists" just like Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, NRA vs. Gun Control, Democrats vs. Republicans, Evolutionsts vs. Creationsts? And anyone who ever holds an opinion from Camp A is forever and irrevocably tainted by that and must be condemned by all decent people (i.e., Camp B)?

That's sad.

[s_stabeler]

It's more that extremists on any particular issue tend to be louder than moderates anyway- and when it is trivial to take bits and pieces from what someone says, it becomes easier to make someone out to be what they are not- especially when soundbites tend to influence people more than actual reasoned arguments.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

@Canarr - I think you're throwing judgement into my comments where it's not really intended. Nothing is black and white but for the people who are going to see it that way, yes Adams has made points that would group him with a specific ideology in the minds of some people.

I'm not condoning it (I'm a hardcore moderate with a liberal bent) but... you know, don't hate the player, hate the game.

@stabler - exacatly. I don't have the time or the patience to fight about everything but a lot of your more wingish types do. They get emotionally rewarded for that behavior by their ilk. And I don't mean that in terms of all wingish types are shouty, rather their arguments tend to be non-reconciliatory so they don't need to assimilate dissonant information so there is a tendency to move farther in a direction which often creates a rather large audience for the most strident, most black-and-white interpretations.

[s_stabeler]

there's also the fact that a lot of the more...extreme...opinions have something of a persecution complex. Therefore, they claim to their supporters that criticism is evidence that they are right.

that, and I know a phrase that describes quite a lot of the ore hardcore extremists."Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up"- and this applies to extremists of all stripes. (for instance, the GamerGate row erupted initially because an ex-boyfriend complained about the target of the row, hoping to get revenge for being dumped IIRC, and the claims were at best exaggerated).

[Canarr]

@Canarr - I think you're throwing judgement into my comments where it's not really intended. Nothing is black and white but for the people who are going to see it that way, yes Adams has made points that would group him with a specific ideology in the minds of some people.

I'm not condoning it (I'm a hardcore moderate with a liberal bent) but... you know, don't hate the player, hate the game.

Yeti - may I call you Yeti? - I didn't see your comments as judgemental; my apologies if I came across that way. I understand that you were merely trying to point out the reasoning behind the claims, not defend them.

For what it's worth, I agree with you - I've seen this happen in a lot of blogs here in Germany as well. The louder a debate, the more extremist the viewpoints tend to get, and the more aggressive people have to be in order to gain some kind of prominence in their chosen scene. To compete with the others, so to speak.

There is a minor character in Dilbert - Topper, I think he's called, because he always has to "Top" everything anyone else says. In one strip he's in a meeting with a potential customer, who is proudly telling a story of how he finished second in a dogsled race. Whereupon Topper exclaims, "That's nothing! I finished the same race - as one of your sleigh dogs!" The client, angrily, says: "Well, now I don't want to buy anything from your company anymore!" And Topper, not to be outdone, replies: "That's nothing! *I* want to set my company on fire!"

I think it's a lot like that. Say, if you want to be active in the Left scene, it's not a distinguishing characteristic to hate Nazis. That's practically the minimum requirement to be even considered part of the scene (yes, this is a very simplified picture). So, if someone wants to stand out from the crowd, he'll need to start hating a little farther to the left from Nazis - say, rightwing Republicans. Then moderate Republicans, then maybe Libertarians, and so on. At some point, the next step will invariably be to hate someone who actually considers themselves Left - but not Left enough! They still have some opinions that could be considered "problematic" or whatever - maybe they happened to once utter an opinion that is normally associated with Conservatives?

And that's the way, I think, that people like Adams get attacked. They're not really "the enemy" in that they hold opposing viewpoints. Their viewpoints and sympathies may actually lie with their attackers, but not close enough. Not pure enough. Because the more someone needs to prove their commitment to the cause, the closer to home they need to find their enemies, or risk that someone else seems more committed than they do.

Okay, that got a bit longer - and more rambling - than intended. Sorry for that; it's late...

[EricKei]

This does remind me of one time -- long before the modern day -- when Adams stirred up some shit for reasons like this (possibly pre-WWW):

He once had a...somewhat neurotic character (he does NON-neurotic characters???) in a strip called "Tina," which drew accusations of being a "stereotypical female" (she looked and acted like most other females in his strip, save for Alice -- who is, btw, canonically the highest-paid engineer in Dilbert's workplace) --- Adams, apparently deciding that subtlety was not the way to handle this, introduced "Antina," The Anti-Tina. Basically, a character designed to be a "non-stereotypical female," at least, as compared to his existing cast (visibly muscular, buzzcut...and that's all I really remember; it was a one-joke character). Naturally, this drew accusations of prejudice against lesbians...despite the fact that neither character's sexual orientation was never even hinted at.

edit: Found it (this strip and the one after) http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-01-01

[HYHYBT]

Antina wasn't funny, whatever other problems she may have had.

I thought Tina was still around, though, just not used often. Then again, I can't actually remember when she, or any female other than Alice and whoever Dilbert's trying to get a date with, last appeared either.

[mjr]

Antina wasn't funny, whatever other problems she may have had.

I thought Tina was still around, though, just not used often. Then again, I can't actually remember when she, or any female other than Alice and whoever Dilbert's trying to get a date with, last appeared either.

Tina has appeared off and on. She's one of their Tech Writers, apparently, and has higher aspirations than that.

I think she was in a recent strip with Wally.