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Double Standard: Men are pricks and women follow their hearts

I was reading advice columnist Dear Amy today when I came across this gem.

There’s a double standard between men and women who break up with their significant others. When a man breaks up with an otherwise fine woman because she’s not smoking hot, he’s a shallow prick. But when a woman dumps a hardworking devoted guy because there’s no Hollywood created magical “spark,” that’s perfectly acceptable because she’s following her heart. Heck, some people would consider her brave for not settling.

I’ve changed the brave woman’s letter to be from a guy’s perspective on this issue to illustrate my point:

Dear Amy: I am responding to the letter from “Worried Fiance,” who is planning to marry someone he does not love as much as he loves his smoking hot ex-girlfriend.

I had the same situation and it turned out badly.

I was hesitant about marrying my fiancee because she didn’t have a great rack or perfect ass.

I was given lots of advice. I was told that lust could be a fleeting thing and that real, mature love will be more lasting.

Well, I married my fiancee and was always disappointed that the lust wasn’t there.

She was a good girl, but without the perfect rack and ass our marriage became a battlefield, as she realized I didn’t love her like she loved me. She felt frustrated.

It was many years and four children later when I finally had to leave the marriage.

We were both terribly unhappy and it was affecting the children.

I later met my current wife of 19 years and there were instant erections that have never stopped.

I hate that I allowed myself to be talked into a marriage that should not have happened.

I’m sorry I ignored my own instincts.

— Dude

Dear Dude: Thanks for your feedback. People may be divided about the role of lust in a marriage, but doubt on the way to the altar is the great equalizer.

Can you imagine anyone feeling sympathy for this male version of the story? I sure can’t.

He wouldn’t be praised for his bravery. He’d be criticized for breaking up a family and leaving a devoted wife to chase his base subjective desires.

However, read the woman’s version here. In both situations the dumper wants some subjective feeling from the dumpee. There’s no rational reason for a woman to demand ethereal “passion” from her husband any more than there is for a guy to demand “lust.”

And a guy can no more become magically romantic or passionate anymore than a woman can become magically hot. The goofball nice guy only becomes a romantic “catch” in Hollywood movies (or in the real world after he wins the lotto).

In a nutshell, I’m not saying either way is right or wrong. I’m not criticizing women who avoid “nice” guys. I’m not condoning Shallow Hal types who constantly chase hot chicks.

What I’m saying is that such guys are not shallow. They’re just chasing their own personal and utterly subjective desires, just like women do. But with a different underlying basis. Women want their perfect Cosmo lives. Men want their perfect Playboy lives. (And quite strangely, the covers for each magazine are nearly interchangeable.)

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We have a right to our opinions, but not necessarily to act on them

You might have heard about the bride to be who was denied a wedding dress. When the dress shop owner found out that the bride was marrying another bride instead of a groom, she refused to sell the first bride a dress.

Bloggers got a hold of the story and eventually it hit the fan at the Consumerist. Then people started rating down the dress shop at Yelp.

Some people argued in the comments that the dress shop owner should be left alone because she has a right to her opinions, e.g., you may believe in the right for gays/lesbians to marry, but the dress shop owner has a right to believe the opposite.

The dress shop owner does have a right to hold any number of irrational, racist, homophobic, and contradictory opinions. That’s an absolute right and no one can take it from her.

However, people who argue that the dress shop owner has a right to her own opinions are missing the point. The issue is not that the lady has a mere opinion against gay/lesbian marriage. It’s that she’d denying equal access to customer based upon illegal discrimination.

There’s a huge difference between having an opinion and committing an act. Having an opinion does not affect anyone else in anyway. Acting upon that opinion does.

Let’s look at some analogies of acting on an opinion. If acting on an opinion is acceptable, then a rapist should never be charged with rape, because his opinion that his victim should have violent and degrading sex with him is perfectly valid. The murderer should never be charged with murder because his opinion that the decedent should be dead is perfectly valid.

See how that works? Clearly, acting on an opinion can be harmful. And discriminating against a customer based upon her sexual orientation is illegal.

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Criminal incarceration is not slavery

I recently made fun of a guy who complained about his life sentence. Someone instantly responded with a comment as follows:

Yes, slavery is funny!

At first I thought it was spam, because on first glance it was not related to the subject matter of my post and, well, no one reads my blog. So it had to be a spambot, right?

Nope, after investigating it a bit I determined it was not spam, it was written and sent by a real guy with his own blog.

So how did his comment relate to my post? My guess is that his comment was meant to be ironic. I made fun of someone who was sentenced to life in prison. The guy analogized a life sentence to slavery. And then mocked me for making fun of someone subjected to slavery.

Superficially and empirically, slavery and imprisonment are similar. They both involve locking people up against their will. But superficial observations aside, slavery and imprisonment have opposite underpinnings.

Slavery is the physical objectification of ainnocent humans. (Or aguilty, for the half empty crowd.) In other words, slavery turns people into objects. Slaves are not humans, do not have rights of humans, and are used as mere tools. On farms, for example, slaves are used like any other tool or beast of burden. The purpose of the enslavement is not to produce any change in the enslaved or to deter others to change.

Incarceration, on the other hand, is a form of punishment used to discourage criminal activity. It’s a social contract epitomized by the expression, “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

People act in various ways. Societies determine that some actions are “wrong” and should be discouraged. Some societies use caning, some use banishment, some use incarceration, and some use death.

So let’s move on. If both enslavement and imprisonment involve the locking up of people, how are they different?

Criminal incarceration assumes humanity, and that’s because in our western based culture, only moral beings can be punished for their actions. People who lack the mental capacity to recognize the moral implications of their actions are generally not punished. If they are adults, they are found guilty by reason of insanity and are placed in mental health treatment facilities. If they are children, they are given rehabilitation.

However, slavery is the opposite of criminal incarceration. While criminal incarceration presupposes a human being to be punished, slavery presupposes the lack of human being to be enslaved. The reason white Europeans could morally justify enslaving non-whites is that non-whites were not considered to be truly human.

Of course some people will point out that completely innocent people are occasionally sent to prison. But that does not mean that criminal incarceration is slavery. That only means that a person was wrongly imprisoned.

Some other people will argue that we send too many people to prison. However, others will argue that we don’t send enough. Those are empirical issues that have nothing to do with the definitional aspects of slavery or criminal incarceration.

And of course some people will argue empirically that prisons don’t work. They’ll cite to studies which show that the threat of locking up people does not stop people from committing crimes. Of course some others will interpret that data to mean that if incarceration is not working, then we need even harsher punishments.

To put my response to these red herring arguments in a different way, merely because you subjectively don’t like prisons, does not mean that prisons are objectively slavery. We’re fortunate that logic does not give way to mere subjective feelings.

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A Life Sentence Is But An Illusion

A prisoner wrote the judge asking for sympathy and to be released early from prison. He complained that,

I have served a life sentence of 22 years. I have lost everything I have ever known or loved.

Later he wrote,

I’ve served a life sentence sir. What more debt do I owe in your opinion?

Mmmmm… where to begin…

First, why do prisoners such as yourself seriously think that judges can release you from prison based upon mere letters? Judge have a lot of power, but they still have to act within the law.

Second, obviously the debt you owe is the completion of your sentence.

Which leads us to third, if you are still alive you have not completed your fucking life sentence. Write us back when you’re dead, and the judge will gladly consider releasing you.

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Green people should not make calculators

Kiplinger has released an online calculator to determine how much you’ll save by riding your bike to work rather than driving a car. This calculator is asinine for a variety of reasons as I’ll explain below.

My round trip to and from work is 40 miles. It says I’ll save $16 dollars per day. Exactly where does the savings come from?! The calculator only assumes I’ll stop driving to work. Where is the assumption that I’ll stop owning a car, thus stop paying car insurance, making car repairs, etc?! Accordingly the estimate is completely inaccurate. There is simply no way I could save $16 per day merely by riding to work on a bicycle.

And furthermore, it does not even ask which sort of car I drive. I could be driving a 2 ton Ford F350 4×4 truck or I could be driving a Prius. The fact that the calculator assumes no difference between these two vehicles makes it pretty clear that it’s completely fricken worthless.

Additionally, it does not factor in the simple and quite obvious fact that my time has value!!!! It takes me about 40 minutes to drive to work and back home each day. It’s nearly all expressway traveling. For me to bike the same distance, using all back-roads, would take several hours. I make about $20 per hour. So I’d be wasting well over a $100 per day in my time to save a mere $16. Which as I explained above, I would not be saving in the first place.

Someone will argue that this calculator is not for everyone. That’s it’s designed for the people who could save money by biking to work. That’s BS too. First, even if you live only a mile from work, the calculator says you’ll save only 80 cents per day. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d gladly pay 80 cents per day for the privilege of not spending the day covered in sweat or drenched in rain.

And second, exactly where does it say the calculator is not for everyone?! It doesn’t. And that’s the real problem with it, why didn’t they program the calculator to determine that for some people a car is more cost effective than a bicycle?! Because that’s clearly the case for the vast majority of people.

I used to have a neighbor who’d drive 300 miles round trip to work every day. He worked construction and his employer made him work in the next state. According to the calculator he’d save $120 per day in riding his bike. However, it ignores the impossibility of someone driving 300 miles on a bike each and every day. In other words, the calculator is wrong, he could not save $120 riding a bike to work each day because it’d be impossible for him to drive a bike to work each day. (Not to mention the fact that he was using his employer’s truck and his employer was paying for his gasoline.)

Completely fricken asinine. It’s this sort of completely irrational and illogical BS which makes the green movement look like idiots.

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I think I touched a nerve…

Some guy was selling a used amp on Craig’s List for hundreds more than you can buy new. Some other guy pointed it out. The first guy got mad and made fun of the “CL Cop.” He called him pathetic, claimed he still lived at home, never got laid, etc.

I had to respond:

“Think how pathetic a person has to be to police peoples ads everyday”

I agree. Guys that police CL are pretty pathetic. But you know who’s worse? Guys who try to sell used equipment for hundreds more than you can buy it new.

The CL cop may be pathetic. But the other guy is a crook, in my humble and subjective opinion.

If you’re tired of CL cops flagging your stuff, stop trying to rip people off. Problem solved. No more CL cop, and no more crook.

He didn’t like that one bit, here’s his response:

CRAIGLIST CAN DO WITHOUT ANY OF U BONEHEADS. LET PPL MAKE THEIR OWN CHOICE. BUNCH OF BITCHY DEMOCRATS.
WE DONT NEED ANY OF U TO HELP US MAKE CHOICES. THIS IS AMERICA. ANYONE CAN SELL ANYTHING AT ANYTIME. IF U DONT LIKE IT….BRACE YOURSELF…
DONT BUY IT. WOW THERES SOME REVOLATION FOR ALL U FOOLS.

Here’s my response back:

“BUNCH OF BITCHY DEMOCRATS”

So you’re a Republican? Gee, I thought Republicans were in favor of law and order, high moral standards, believing in God, the Golden Rule, and all that stuff they taught us in sunday school? But yet you want the right to rip people off? Apparently, Republicans only get upset about crime when they’re the victims .

“THIS IS AMERICA. ANYONE CAN SELL ANYTHING AT ANYTIME. IF U DONT LIKE IT….BRACE YOURSELF…DONT BUY IT”

I also thought that we had a right to free speech in America? You know, that little document called the US Constitution? But yet you want people to shut up. So do you support our Constitution or do you want to burn it like a commie?

Anyway, what’s with all the anger? Maybe you should go and take a nap.

I don’t think he’s gonna like that one bit. Stay tuned…

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Poly-oly-bigamy

A Michigander (yes, that’s what we call ourselves) is in trouble because his first wife found out that he remarried, despite still being married to her.

How did she find out? Well, he defriended her on Facebook and then posted the new wedding pictures there. Unfortunately for him, he had other “friends” in common with his wife and she ended up seeing the pictures anyway. (FYI, defriending your wife is not a legal equivalent to obtaining a divorce.)

A legal blogger noted that Michigan does not have a specific statute outlawing bigamy. He’s right, we actually have a statute outlawing polygamy, but we apply it to bigamists. As pointed out by the blogger,

Michigan’s anti-multiple-spouse law makes it “polygamy” to have two or more spouses, which is grammatically wrong but avoids the need to have separate statutes for bigamy and polygamy, I suppose.

Anyway, Michigan’s polygamy statute is also interesting because it contains two odd exceptions.

Of course there are the normal exceptions. Such as if you divorced your previous spouse. And there’s an exception if your spouse has left you for a period of five or more years.

However, they don’t all make sense. The first odd exception is this one:

The provisions of this section shall not extend to any person whose husband or wife shall have voluntarily remained beyond the sea.

There is no waiting period for this exception. If your spouse merely voluntarily remained beyond the sea, even for a second, apparently you’re free to marry someone else. And “remained” is in the past tense too, so you could remarry even after she came back. “She voluntarily remained beyond the Labrador Sea in Greenland for a whole week, your honor!”

The other exception is odd because it too lacks a waiting period along with any sort of objective proof.

The provisions of this section shall not extend… to any person who shall have good reason to believe such husband or wife to be dead.

Let me make this clear. All you need to be exempted from the polygamy statute is a “good reason” to think your spouse is dead. Not a great reason. Not a medically verified reason. Not a death certificate. Not a corpse. Nope, any mere “good reason” will do.

So if you’re at a hospital, and a nurse accidentally or negligently tells you your wife is dead, you’re free to get hitched to someone else. Because that sounds like a “good reason” to believe she’s dead to me.

Or what if your wife dies during surgery, but is immediately revived? It’s actually quite common. Because there is no waiting period, I think the husband is good to remarry anytime thereafter, because he had a “good reason” to believe she was dead. That’s because she was medically verified to be dead. Remember, the statute does not say how long she had to be dead, or even that she was dead at all, or that she didn’t come back to life. Only that you had a “good reason” to believe it.

Heck, why go through all of this divorce stuff? Simply give your wife a vacation across a sea or find a “good” reason to believe she’s dead. Then marry that other significant other in your life. You’ll be glad you did.

However, what I’m saying here is not legal advice. Always consult an attorney before and after committing a crime. And don’t try to tell me that you’ve relied on my post and got into trouble. Everything I’m saying in this post is completely and utterly wrong. And don’t try to tell me that you got in trouble because you did the opposite of everything I said, because even the opposite of everything I’m saying is completely and utterly wrong.

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(Alleged) Dumb Criminal of the Week

According to news reports a woman by the name of Paula R. Ferdkoff was being harrassed by a mother of a 14 year old girl. Because of the harassment, Miss Ferdkoff called the police.

Bad idea.

You see, the reason the mother was calling and harassing Miss Ferdkoff was because Miss Ferdkoff (allegedly) used the 14 year old daughter to produce child porn.

The police spoke to the mother, found out what happened, and then arrested Miss Ferdkoff on child pornography charges.

Sometimes (alleged) criminals make it so darned easy for the police.

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Missed Point of the Week…

CNN – February 9, 2011:

The U.S. Justice Department is reviewing a request from 13 states on how to acquire an execution drug no longer made in the United States and whether the federal government would share its supplies, a federal spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Additional controversy surfaced last week about the drug’s shortage when six death row inmates filed a federal lawsuit seeking to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from importing the drug, saying the imports may be unsafe.

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Michigan Court of Appeals Determines: If you complain to the gov., you’ve committed trespass

We have a lawsuit where the plaintiffs’ have a city drain on a portion of their property. The neighbors complained to the city that because water was accumulating on their property, additional drains were needed to divert the water into the plaintiffs’ drain.

The plaintiffs were not happy with the extra water being diverted to their property so they sued the city and the neighbors (in part) for trespass. The judge I work for dismissed the neighbors from the case because they never actually entered on the plaintiff’s property. All they did was complain to the city which took the action to install the drains.

The Court of Appeals recently reversed my judge’s ruling. The Court of Appeals determined that because they “specifically requested drainage relief” from the city, they committed trespass.

The circuit court observed that the Heckmans and Mahlers had not constructed the drain themselves and had not personally set foot on the Wiggins parcel. Instead, the circuit court noted, the Heckmans and Mahlers simply requested drainage relief from the City. The court ruled that “merely requesting relief from a city is not sufficient to rise to the level of trespass,” and therefore granted summary disposition in favor of the Heckmans and Mahlers with respect to the trespass claim. We conclude that this ruling was in error. The Heckmans’ and Mahlers’ request for drainage relief from the City, and subsequent authorization of the City or its agents to construct the drain in question, were sufficient acts to give rise to trespass liability.

It is beyond factual dispute that the Heckmans and Mahlers specifically requested drainage relief from the City and either authorized or subsequently ratified the installation of the drain and drainpipe by the City or its agents. This conduct by the Heckmans and Mahlers was sufficient to constitute the intentional tort of trespass.

The main issue underlying the case was whether the additional drainage was allowed under the existing drain easement between the city and the plaintiffs. Are neighbors with flooded yards supposed to know the intricacies of drainage easements before they complain? Apparently so.

As far as I’m concerned, we should have a right to voice our concerns to our government. As far as the Court of Appeals is concerned, if we complain, we’re liable for tort damages caused by the government. Troubling indeed.

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