"Poisonous tone and attitude." POISONOUS TONE AND ATTITUDE???!!!???

So, would you like to expand on that phrase, @vil? And perhaps read crushbug's comment above?

Because here is what I hear -- not that you are saying this, but it is what I hear:

Angry women are off-putting. Women with sarcastic voices are off-putting. Women who dare to be anything but sweet and compliant are off-putting.

Men are not "policed" this way. They are allowed a wide range of attitudes in the way they present information. Of course, they CAN be "poisonous" -- but I guarantee you no man's delivery this mild would be labelled "poisonous."

There is a "thing" called "vocal fry" that some women (and gay men) have that pitches their voices high (to be simplistic in its description.) There has been reams written about it. I assumed that most of the comments here were related to vocal fry.

Your comment here is not about vocal fry. Or if it is, wow. What words to use to describe it. Ouch.

So can you use different words to explain what you mean? If I am not understanding you?

As for "word counts not mattering" -- that is categorically not true.

I have been talking about this for forty years and have thought about it deeply, in a logical manner, trying to find the vocabulary to discuss it. I think I have succeeded, and it applies to black people, especially black men, as well as women, both black and white. Here it comes.

Words have values. Words with similar values are interchangeable with gender usage. Words that don't have similar values are sexist and racist. (Even if women do it to themselves, they are indeed engaging in internalized sexism.) If you can take a sentence with the word "girl" being used, and change the gender to male, would you ever -- in that specific situation -- use the word "boy"? If you would, go for it.

And here is where the "word count" matters. Because there are more women than there are men, and yet the word count proves that in the same situation, the word girl is used a lot more. Even if you take out the gymnasts, who are indeed less than 19.

I never say "never use the word girl." Because sometimes, in the same situation, you would indeed use the word "boy."

Let me give you an example.

Old Boys Network. Very powerful men, on the same social and power level, call themselves "boys." Leads to Boys Night Out -- same social and power level.

So can you say Girls Night Out without it being an infantilzation? Absolutely.

Can black people call themselves the n-word? Sure. Same social and power levels. A white person calling a black person the n-word? Nope, nope, nope, nope. Different social and power levels.

This will only make sense to older people, since it doesn't happen as much as it used to. Calling a black man "boy." A grown man. With a job and a family and dignity. Can a white person employing a black man call him "boy"? No. No they cannot.

When is a man over the age of 20 or so called a boy? Very very rarely. Young man, sure. But rarely "boy."

Yet when it comes to women, they are called girls until they die. And they do it to themselves, to make themselves smaller and less threatening.

So. Poisonous. Tell me what you meant, please? Keeping in mind the idea that "threatening" women need to stay in their place?

My sincere apologies. It didn't read as helpful to me. Leading with "no it's not" set me up for missing that you were adding information, not slapping down an observation of the vid in front of me.

That is the problem with the internet. An offhand phrase carries meaning it isn't meant to. Tone of voice isn't included. Put those two things together, it can sow confusion.

Thank for the additional information. Sincerely.

There are some differing, conflicting theories on the origins and correct usage of the phrase "bust a cap". The only time, however, that it's ok to "put a cap in" someone, is if it's their Make America Great Again cap and you're showing it up their asses.

The best thing is their firm and lasting commitment to the phrase "go absconding for a while".

For what it's worth, as an Irish whiskey drinker (in both senses of the phrase) I can tell you that the nicest whiskeys I've tasted from outside Ireland and Scotland are Japanese, including a Santori whose name eludes me.

In case you're interested, next comes Indian (a lovely tipple called Amrut Fusion), followed by a few nice American samples... I'm not a big fan of bourbon, hence the placing.

As for the spelling thing, yes, usually Whisky is Scotch and Whiskey is Irish, but that's not 100% true, and if that's your worst spelling mistake after a few then you're doing well.

To be honest, these could have been any two speeches coming out of any two politicians' faces in the last 30 years. Not sure I see it. There's not a single distinctive turn of phrase or sentiment in that section of Michelle's speech that could only have been taken from her...

ETA: but okay, I guess I gotta defer to the statistical analysis. https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/07/19/we-ran-melania-trumps-speech-through-a-plagiarism-checker/

1. I *AM* an LGBTQ person, I don't speak for them, but I am one voice.
I tend to avoid harassing people.

2. No.

3. a) Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. I want women to be equal and I want legal protections in place to maintain this. This is not secret information.
b) They do.

4. Question 3b) suggests women should be responsible for their safety. Question 4 seems to criticize the notion of being responsible for your own safety. Glad to see unified thought in this. The answer is I expected random bouts of mockery, judgement, and violence. You know, the other 95% of my life.

5. Because shitting on a group that seeks to change culture to react similarly to loss of black life as it does for white lives, while pointing out where society fails to meet this standard is pretty charactersticly racist.
Also I don't say that "Kill all white people" is not racist.

6. Yes. Did you know that the permanence of objects, the transmission of ideas and culture and systems of law are based on events in the past? That by studying history we can understand how humans work in a unique way, that knowing that say, there was a WWI may help us understand the conditions under which WWII occurred and that this knowledge may help us decide what to do in the aftermath of WWII to avoid a recurrence?
That if a group has historically had problems, many of those problems have probably been inherited along with consequences of the problems (such as poverty, strongly inherited social trait). Yes. Linear time,human affairs, culture. They are all things that exist.

7. Yes, I have many examples of people doing this. Mostly this is due to short lifespan. But there are many manchildren in our culture, who seem to think that other people asserting boundaries is immature.

8. There are programs designed to help boost male education dropout rate. If you 'fight' for 'improvements in the fairness of social order ' to help achieve this, you are a Social Justice Warrior, and so you could just have asked yourself.
Also, American bias? Pretty sure this is not a global stat...

9. Because one focusses on correcting the inequalities between the sexes and was born at a time when women didn't have proper property rights, voting rights etc etc, and so it was primarily focussed on uplifting women and so the name 'feminism'. Egalitarianism on the other hand, is the general pursuit. Many feminists are egalitarian, but not all. Hence different words. English, motherfucker....

10. Nothing, as I am not.

11. No, my grandparents were being enslaved in eastern Europe by the far left and right (but more the right, let's be honest).

Seriously though, I don't remember the liberal protests of "Not all ISIS".

12. Ingroup outgroup hatred and distrust is a universal human trait. Race seems to provoke instinctive group psychology in humans, presumably from evolving in racially separate groups.

13. The phrase is intended to deflate 'Black Lives Matter' whose point is that society seems to disagree, in practice, with this. There's only one realistic motivation to undermining the attempts to equalize how the lives of different races are treated socially.
It's also designed to be perfectly innocuous outside of this context so that white people can totally believe they aren't being dicks by saying it.

14. My social justice fighting is almost always done in secret. I hate the limelight, and I hate endlessly seeking credit for doing the right thing. So I try to keep it to a minimum while also raising consciousness about issues where I can.
Hey wait, did you fall for the bias that the big public figures are representative in all ways of the group? HAHAHAHA! Noob.
Wait, did a man voicing a cartoon kangaroo wearing an Islamic headdress, superimposed on video footage of a woman in a gym grinding her hips tell me to stop trying show off how awesome I am and and to get real?

15. No, they are both not capable of giving consent. Sounds like you have had a bitter experience. Sorry to hear that.

16. I spent two decades trying to change myself. I tortured myself into a deep suicidal insanity. When I stopped that, and when society had changed in response to my and others plights being publicised sympathetically I felt happy and comfortable with myself.
You would prefer millions in silent minorities living through personal hells if the alternative means you have to learn better manners? What a dick.

17. Sure. It's also OK if you say 'nigga' in the context of asking this question. But I'm white and English. You should ask some black Americans if your usage causes unintended messages to be sent. I'd certainly avoid placing joyful emphasis, especially through increased volume, on the word.

18. Ah, you've confused a mixture of ideas and notions within a group as a contradiction of group idealogy. Whoops. I don't understand gender identity. I get gender, but I never felt membership in any group. That's how I feel, and have since the 1990s. The internet has allowed disparate and rare individuals to form groups, and some of these groups are people with different opinions about how they feel about gender and they are very excited to meet people other people with idiosyncratic views as they had previously been alone with their eccentric perspective.

19. If white men are too privileged then the society is not my notion of equal.

20. After rejecting the premise as nonsensical. In as much as I want rules to govern social interactions that take into consideration the diversity of humanity as best as possible, I recognize those same rules will govern my behaviour.

21. Women can choose how to present themselves. Video Game creators choose how to present women in their art. I can suggest that the art routinely portrays women as helpless sex devices, while supporting women who wish to do so for themselves.

22. You DO that? I've never even had the notion. I just sort of listen and digest and try to see if gaps can reasonably be filled with pre-existent knowledge or logical inferrences and then I compare and contrast that with my own differring opinion and I consider why someone might have come to their ideas. Assuming they aren't stupid I try to understand as best I can and present to them my perspective from their perspective. I don't sing, or plug in headphones or have an imaginary rock concert.

23. I have done no such thing. Look, here I am listening to you. You have all been asking questions that have easy answers to if you looked outside your bubble of fighting a handful of twitter and youtube users thinking these people represent the entirety of things and seeking only to destroy them with your arguments rather than understanding the ideas themselves.

24. Reverse Racism is where white guys are systematically (and often deliberately) disadvantaged - such as the complaints against Affirmative Action. I'm sure your buddies can fill you in on the details. The liberal SJWs you hate tend to roll their eyes when they hear it too. Strange you should ask.

25. No. I've never seen the list. I just use whatever pronouns people feel comfortable with. Typically I only need to know three to get by in life, same as most other English speakers.

26. I'm the audience motherfucker, and so are you. That's how it works.

27. I don't do those things, but yes, I have considered the notion of concept saturation in discourse. Have you considered the idea that people vary in their identification of problems, based on a number of factors. Some people are trigger happy and this may be a legitimate problem. Since you are aware of this, you also have a duty to try to overcome the saturation biases.
Similarly, if you keep using the word 'fucking', motherfucker, you'll find it loses its impact quite quickly. See this post motherfucker. Probably why you needed to add the crash zoom for impact. You could have achieved more impact with less sarcasm and and a more surprising fuck.

Exactly. Oswalt calls it "kicking upwards."

Comedians are at their best when they expose something true about the world, and they lay bare the lies of the entitled and the vicious.

Lindy West discusses this in her new book Shrill. Great book. I think she even uses the phrase "kicking upwards." It is lazy joke writing to trade in stereotypes. It is lazy joke writing to kick people who are "down."

Louis CK tells a funny rape joke. Oddly enough, on the page it probably reads terrible, just as Jim Jeffries says about this particular bit of his. The difference is, for me, that Louis lays bare in no uncertain terms EXACTLY what a rapist does and so exposes the brutality and utter selfishness of their entitlement. It's brilliant.

Mr Jeffries doesn't do that. He isn't "kicking upwards" enough for me. Not in this rape culture world. (And good on him for weaving the criticism into his bit, in an attempt to do what Louis CK does.)

*Warning I've only gone and done yet another wall of text again! This may or may not get read by anyone on here (good god I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping it), but at the very least it's formed the backbone to a video script so it's not a complete waste of my time! (he tells himself)*

This is as much @bareboards2 as yourself, but he already made it clear he wasn't willing to engage on the issue, so you're getting it instead MWAHAHAHHAHA! *coughs*

I don't wish this to come across as over condescending (though I'm sure it will none the less as I'm in one of those moods). But pretty much every (successful) comedy premise operates on the same underlying principle of irony. i.e. there is an expectation or understanding, which is deliberately subverted, and what results is comedy.

In this case, amongst other things we have the understood premises that:
A. rape is a bad, often horrific thing.
B. that there is an established social taboo about praising such behaviour.
C. that there is a section of society inherently opposed to making light of things of which they do not approve (or in a way in which they do not approve)
D. most words and phrases have an expected association and meaning.

What Jim Jefferies (an accomplished and well respected comedies amongst his peers) has done here, is take these commonly understood premises and subverted the audiences normal expectations in order to evoke a sense of irony, from which the audience derives humour and amusement.

A simple joke might take a single such premise and perform a single inversion of our expectation. e.g. my dog has no nose, how does he smell?....terrible!

By subverting our assumed meaning (that the missing nose refers to the dogs implied lack of olfactory senses), the joke creates basic irony by substituting this expected meaning for that of the odour of the dog itself.

This is of course a terrible joke, because it is as simple as a joke could be. It has only one layer of irony and lacks any sense of novelty which, might tip such a terrible joke into working for any other than the very young or simple minded.

We could of course attempt to boost this joke by adding more levels of irony contextually. e.g. a very serious or complex comedian Like say Stuart Lee, could perhaps deliver this joke in a routine and get a laugh by being completely incongruous with his style and past material.

And herein we see the building blocks from which any sophisticated professional comedy routine is built. By layering several different strands or ironic subversion, a good comedian can begin to make a routine more complex and often more than just the sum of its parts to boot.

In this case, Jim is taking the four main premises listed above, layering them and trying to find the sweetest spot of subverted expectation for each. (something which usually takes a great deal of skill and experience at this level)

He mentions the fact that his jokes incite outrage in a certain section of society because this helps to strengthen one of the strands of irony with which he is playing. The fact that he also does so in a boastful tone is itself a subversion, it is understood by the audience that he does not/should not be proud of being merely offensive and as such we have yet another strand of irony thrown into the mix.

You know how better music tends to have more and/or more complex musical things happening at once? It is the same with comedy. The more ironic threads a comedian can juggle around coherently, the more sophisticated and adept their routines could be considered to be.

Naturally as with music there's no accounting for taste as you say. Some people simply can't get past a style or associations of a given musician or song (or painting or whatever).

But dammit Jim is really one of the greats right now. Like him or lump him, the dude is pretty (deceptively) masterful at his craft.

There are at least 4-5 major threads of irony built into this bit and countless other smaller ones besides. He dances around and weaves between them like some sort of comedy ballerina. Every beat has been finely tuned over months of gig's (and years of previous material) to strike the strongest harmonies between these strands and probe for the strongest sense of dissonance in the audience. Not to mention, tone of voice, stance, timing etc.

I think Ahmed is basically terrible too, but it is because the jokes lack much semblance of complexity or nuance. Jeff Dunham's material in general feels extremely simple and seems like it uses shock as a mere crutch, rather than something deeper and more intelligent.

Taste is taste, but I feel one can to a reasonable extent criticise things like the films of Michael Bay, or the music of Justin Beiber for being objectively shallow by breaking down their material into its constituent parts (or lack thereof).

Likewise one could take the music of Wagner and while not enjoying the sound of it, still examine the complexity of it's composition and the clear superiority of skill Wagner had over most of this peers.

I guess what all this boils down to is, Jim seems to me to be clearly very very good at what he does (as he ought after all these years). Reducing his act to mere controversy feels a lot like accusing Black Sabbath of just making noise and using satanic imagery to get attention (or insert other less out of date example here).

The jokes were never at the expense of victims, they are at the expense of our expectations. He makes his own true feelings on the matter abundantly clear towards the end of the section.

As as he says himself his job is to say funny things, not to be a social activist.

I take no issue with you not liking it, but I do take issue with the suggestion that it is somehow two dimensional, or for that matter using controversy cheaply.

Offensive initial premises are some of the most ironically rich in comedy. It's like deliberately choosing the brightest paints when trying to create a striking painting. Why would you avoid the strongest materials because some people (not in your audience) find the contrast too striking?

Eh, much love anyway. This was more an exercise in intellectual masturbation than anything else. Not that I didn't mean all of it sincerely.

*promote

Soooo many wonderful phrases.

Rear Admiral. Yes.

I agree with this. It's very important that people come together to fight for equality or whatever else they believe is right, but a movement has got to be self aware and self critical otherwise it will end up undermining itself.

Movements that become huge can have little groups forming within them and the outside world sees the actions of what might be an extreme faction for the actions of the whole. And things can become insular, where the members mostly talk to each other and reconfirm each other's worries and problems and things that weren't acceptable to you in a vacuum are ok because it seems like those problems are dominating yours and your friends' entire lives.

But that works regardless of the politics of the movement - from the left or right. So on the one hand you get die-hard gender rights campaigners using inherently sexist terms when arguing with the opposite sex, but you also get kind, considerate people rallying behind a right wing group or message because it starts with phrases like "we've got to look after our own first," but end up with racism and bigotry.

My interpretation was wrong, and your right about pointing out truths or untruths. It is something I will have to remind myself. I apologize for not understanding, and thank you for your response.

I asked about your posting because I was interested in, well, lack of a better way to say it, tickles your fancy. I've learned some interesting new things from your comments, even looking up a word or two, so I imagine your posts would be the same.

I agree with your last paragraph as well. Discussion is positive, something I enjoy. I like to see and understand a persons point of view, it's how I learn so much. I think I can't quite read the tone of some comments, and it is something I am working on, to ask more questions than jump to conclusions. I couldn't agree with your last sentance more.

In my mind I imagine you to be a writer, journalist, or maybe even a college professor. It is silly, I know, but I like how you turn a phrase. I also know I need to ask more questions to gain understanding, instead of doing it all wrong by assuming. Thanks for answering me Harlequinn, and I hope to run into you again on a comment thread soon! Have a great rest of the day.:)

EDIT: According to 'separation of powers...and the roles defined for each branch, the Judicial has full power to interpret the laws as they interpret them. Period.

Exactly....but now it's been re-interpreted to give a right to a single individual...300000000 times.
Yes, you could, but that militia must be well regulated (which doesn't mean it never wets the bed or cries about it's parents being mean) before it meets the criteria to be protected...technically.

Your contention that "regulated" as a legal term actually means/meant "adjusted", as if a "well adjusted militia" was a phrase that makes any sense, or did back then, makes no sense. You may continue to claim it, I will continue to contradict it. Unless you have some written description by a founding father saying exactly that, it's just, like, your opinion...man. Try reading "Miracle at Philadelphia" for context.

If Y and Z didn't exist, but are incredibly similar to X, then it's reasonable to interpret laws to include Y and Z....if they existed and were not EXCLUDED, it's up to the judicial to interpret meaning...the less clear they are in meaning, the more power they give the judicial. Today, congress is as unclear as possible, and complain constantly that they are interpreted 'wrong'.

It's not a simple matter to make any law today....no matter how clear the need is for a law or how reasonable and universally the concept is accepted. Sadly. It SHOULD be a simple matter. It's not.

The court never "jumps the gun". They only interpret/re-interpret laws that are challenged, and a reasonable challenge means the law is in some way open to interpretation.