(I was planning to totally ignore the guy, but Kalinara showed me this post and it was so funny I had to play with it.)
Fifteen Absolutely Absurd Things Dave Sim Seems to Believe Wholeheartedly
1. A father who works a full-time job and delegates to a woman the raising of his children twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week does just as good a job as a father who hand-rears his children full time.
2. It makes great sense for a full-time waitress to have to pay 10 to 15,000 dollars a year to fund a daycare space for a child so its divorced father - who pays no child support and spends no time at home - can be free of any responsibility.
3. A man or a doctor has more of a valid claim on the contents of a uterus than does the woman to whom that uterus is a part of her body.
4. So long as a father makes a decision in favor of the potential life, he is incapable of making an unethical choice.
5. Two people work in exactly the same manner as a single automobile so there is no reason for marriage to be an equal partnership.
6. There is no reason for women to be allowed to join or participate fully in any gathering place for men, just as it is absolutely necessary that men never be excluded from a female-only environment.
7. Because it requires that women be actually considered for a job that could otherwise go to a less qualified man, affirmative action is a terrible injustice.
8. Women are incapable of using a gun or driving a firetruck because none of them can even bench press the bar.
9. Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be destroyed because now that more women than men are being enrolled, there is absolutely no chance that the majority white male academic boards will start favoring white male applicants ever again.
10. Because a woman told me I was a asshole for saying any of the above, there is a feminist conspiracy to eliminate my constituional right to be an asshole without being called on it.
11. Paying a few hundred dollars a month is far more of a hardship than carrying a child to term, squeezing it out your vagina, and offering it love, attention, and support for eighteen years on your own.
12. An untrained woman who married a man and let her education and career lapse in order to supoport his dreams deserves to starve and live on the street once he strikes it rich and decides to find a younger wife.
13. A man who takes no personal involvement in raising a child aside from throwing money at it knows more about what that child needs than a woman who dedicates the majority of her life to that child.
14. Despite the fact that every man is a unique individual, and each man relates to women differently, saying that one man is being an asshole to a woman automatically means you think all men are assholes all the time.
15. Disagreeing with any of these statements makes you a hairy-legged man-hating lesbian separatist.
(Yeah, I know, this was too easy. But I was trying to relax this weekend.)
Ah, Dave Sim.. That man really needed more hugs as a child. My theory is Dave Sim HAS to exist in this world if only to provice kharmic balance and allow us to have his totally awesome nemesis Jeff Smith.
ReplyDeleteAnd with Jeff Smith, this world is a better place. Y'know. Even if it has Dave Sim in it.
I'd known about his being the misogynist asshole's misogynist asshole. But seeing one of his recent proxy blog posts about how sickness and injury are caused by demonic possession caused my jaw to drop...
ReplyDeleteThere is crazy, mean crazy and just plain Bugfuck. Sim is in that last category...
Then again I read Finder so I'm probably part of the conspiracy out to keep him down...
We should buy copies of Finder and mail them to him.
ReplyDeleteI got to #4 or #5 on his list (the one about steering wheels?) before assuming he was totally crazy. The first posts aren't things I agree with, but are certainly opinions that are widely held and fairly reasonably articulated. But that Marriage Is A Car That Should Have One Drivier metaphor went from Socially Conservative to Totally Crazy And/Or From The Time Of Conan.
ReplyDeleteIs Dave Sim married?
I don't know a whole lot about Dave Sim, but I can only assume that if he was married, he must have had a horrific divorce. The bitterness is just pooling up on the floor.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I feel pity for Dave Sim. The man is obviously mentally ill, and I am inclined to give him a bit of leeway because of that. These things are obviously the product of a diseased mind.
ReplyDeleteBut then I go back and read some of the things he's written and I decide there's no excuse for it. He deserves the condemnation.
(Plus, I heard that it was his former wife Deni who accidentally came up with the name 'Cerebus'. That must really have burned.)
Dave Campbell and Chris Sims's lovechild said all this?
ReplyDelete(Who the hell is Dave Sim?)
Affirmative action at colleges and universities needs to be destroyed because now that more women than men are being enrolled, there is absolutely no chance that the majority white male academic boards will start favoring white male applicants ever again.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I benefited directly from affirmative action as an undergrad. Augustana receives more applications from women than from men, and really, really likes its 3:2 female:male ratio, so men who apply tend to get more financial support and incentives in order to keep the ratio constant from year to year.
So, yeah, totally needs to be abolished. God, Dave Sim is retarded.
I remember when Dave Sim was cool.
ReplyDeleteMAN, I feel old.
:(
Sandicomm -- Yeah, I felt bad about some, but I was parodying him. If his post assumes the worst case scenario about the woman and teh best case scenario about the man, I'll just flip that and write out the worst case scenario about the man and the best about the woman.
ReplyDeleteMy imagination is obviously much darker than that of Mr. Sim.
(Double post, sorry.)
ReplyDeleteI really don't understand his stance on affirmative action, as though jobs belong to white men by default.
I mean, I hate quotas -- hiring people regardless of ability just to meet a set number -- but giving a person of minority status of equal ability as his/her peers a little "bump" doesn't seem unfair to me at all, given they've probably had to work a bit harder to get there.
Affirmative Action is so often misunderstood! I think people get a false view on AA because at first glance it appears to be racism/sexism in reverse, when in fact the whole point is that it forces OUT the racist/sexist choices that would otherwise happen. Also, once people find out the truth, they usually ignore it :(
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, I want to see what Davey Sim posted. On the other, I am loathe to give him traffic. What to do.
ReplyDelete"I don't really understand how this one makes sense. And why shouldn't a marriage be equal? Because there's no such thing as a car with two steering wills and two brakes? Maybe the two people in the car, who both know how to drive, can take equal turns driving the car?"
ReplyDeleteI am just tired of things being compared to cars. The fact that he thinks marriage can be likened to a car kind of tells me why his did not turn out so well.
Been lurking for the past few weeks, but I'm a policy wonk and I just caught up on the archives, so I figured it's a good time to make my first comment.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this response, particularly the elegant destruction of his bizarre car analogy. Dave Sim is by any reasonable criteria a crazy misogynst. I've read the occassional scary interview with him and I've been scared off ever reading his stuff.
That said, as a policy wonk (admittedly a white male one), I'd argue that it is appropriate to let even preference (not quota) based AA expire when rough parity has been achived. At that point, I think the job is better done by existing rules against discrimination and the now balanced system working to maintain the status quo.
Now, there isn't rough parity in the physical sciences, math, comp sci, engineering, and the like. Not to mention the issue of staff (although a female Harvard president is a nice step). So, I'd say A.A. is still appropriate there.
So, I'd argue that the idea that A.A. should be phased out once it has achieved it's purpose is reasonable (unlike the rest of his list). That said, it hasn't achieved its purpose in many areas, so I'd support keeping it around for that.
Also, since the Ragnell's main article is a parody, I probably wouldn't have replied unless the issue was discussed some in comments. Expecting nuanced policy discussion from a parody would be silly.
lurkerwithout said:
ReplyDelete"the misogynist asshole's misogynist asshole."
There is no evidence Sim is a misogynist.
richard said:
"the man is obviously mentally ill"
There is no evidence Sim is mentally ill.
12. An airline stewardess who earned $20,000 a year at the time that she married a baseball player earning $6 million a year is entitled, in the event of a divorce, to $3 million for each year of the marriage and probably more.
ReplyDeleteIf I run a small business and it is worth $1 Million, and I merge with a larger business worth $49 Million, where I (by law and by contract) have 50% of the shares and my partner has 50% of the shares of the joint venture, and it closes down I should only be entitled to 2% of the joint assets, right? Uh, no.
But that is exactly what he is arguing. That would get you laughed out of court.
BTW, the most prominent recent example of what Sim cites is a case where the MAN was the poorer party- the Jessica Simpson divorce. The man in that case easily won a substantial share of joint marital assets, even though he was the richer party when the marriage started and the vastly poorer party when the marriage ended. There was no prenup because no one knew in advance that Jessica would be so successful beyond what Nick achieved. The case was decided fairly.
Sim should stick to the cartoon aardvarks.