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I've been on this forum off and on for 8 years now, and one thing that I've never understood about the General Forum community is why they feel this incessant need to bitch about feminists and how hypocritical they all supposedly are. It comes off as juvenile and ignorant of the fact that statistically speaking, women have it harder in almost every metric that you can think of: sexual harassment, discrimination, rape, crime in general, and so on. And yet, the mostly White males on this forum complain about the double standards that supposedly make life for them oh so difficult.

I'm not going to deny that these double standards exist and should be discouraged because they are morally indefensible. Rather, I'm expressing my inability to understand why you guys refuse to acknowledge that feminists are a very diverse group of people whose concerns are legitimate and cannot be generalized as a bunch of man-hating, bra-burning lesbians. Those kinds of people comprise a small subset of the feminist movement and it would be foolish to to buy into the stereotype of the butch feminist who thinks all men are rapists. I'll grant that a few feminists are like that, but not that they are a majority. Even if they were, this doesn't delegitimize the central belief that unites all feminists: that women deserve to be treated the same way men are in the legal, moral, and social sense of the word.

This isn't to say that some elements of mainstream feminism are beyond reproach. @RacistBassist, for example, highlights in this thread and other threads genuine criticisms of feminist thought that aren't sexist whatsoever and don't deny that women should be treated equally. Rather, they challenge some of the assumptions that the majority of feminists may believe, that there is an overarching patriarchal power structure that subjugates women in all corners of society. Personally, I'm sympathetic to this view, but I realize that it is far from indisputable. However, many of you guys don't really seem to care about engaging with a variety of feminists on a philosophical level about their beliefs and communicating your views about the proper roles of men and women in society. Nor, does it seem, that many of you guys seem to care about studying the literature on the subject, which is rich and isn't all about bashing men as evil, sex-crazed pigs. It appears that many of you try to infer from your negative experiences with some feminists that all or most feminists are batshit-crazy man-haters, and that's just sloppy, lazy thinking.

At 5/31/14 07:20 AM, Korriken wrote:

I don't think you're quite understand what I mean. I'll give you an example. This picture was apparently taken as Obama placed his hand on his heart, before anyone else did. It was taken out of context, and this is the result.

Welp, Michelle Obama obviously hates America now.

....Oh, dear.

The misogyny in this thread is astounding.

@RacistBassist, you make some good points.

Gay marriage is awesome and most people who disapprove of it are knuckle-dragging apes.

However, those who genuinely harbor no animosity towards gays but oppose gay marriage for religious reasons are the exception. All others who oppose it for homophobic reasons can fuck off.

At 5/21/14 08:07 PM, Korriken wrote:

Still, I would like to see petty criminals given sentences other than prison time. I figure giving them the ass beatings their parents wouldn't should suffice, especially when they realize they'll receive this beating every time they do it.

Considering the overwhelming evidence that corporal punishment is extremely harmful, I would say that this kind of response to criminal behavior is not very just.

At 5/19/14 04:39 PM, Feoric wrote: 2012 was just a plain bizarre election cycle -- Cain, Paul, Gingrich (!!!), Perry....I dunno, I literally cannot comprehend a more ridiculous primary.

You say that now...

I'm very much used to the Republicans outdoing themselves and beating my expectations about how crazy they can get. I really do think 2016 will be more ridiculous than 2012 by a long shot.

Welp, just more evidence that "traditional values" is no longer a winning platform. The Evangelical base will still probably double down on it, though.

What I wonder is how the GOP and social conservatives will handle this issue in the 2016 and 2020 Republican primaries. Gay marriage support is growing at a rapid rate and so I can't imagine the GOP emphasizing its opposition to gay marriage when it'll be a losing issue in 2016 and downright politically toxic by 2020 and beyond.

I suppose you'll still have those Rick Santorum types who won't give a shit and will boast of their bigotry anyway, but the more establishment-type Republicans will probably want to minimize attention to their opposition of gay marriage.

This article is a month old, but it's still relevant.

Saturday's Freedom Summit, billed as an early audition for potential 2016 candidates, provided a rare opportunity for right-wing activists to directly compare the Texan and the Kentuckian. The senators spoke practically back to back, and the crowd clearly loved them both. But Cruz's theatrical delivery wowed them more than Paul's comparatively cerebral appeal, and his rhetorical focus on conservative red meat found more favor than Paul's detours into libertarian concerns.

"I like Rand Paul, I agree with a lot of what he says, but as far as charismatic leadership, I've got to go with Ted Cruz," Robin Parkhurst, a state-government worker from Newbury, New Hampshire, said after hearing both men speak at the event. "Ted Cruz has the ability to deliver a message that resonates with people."

Ted Cruz seems to be outmaneuvering Rand Paul in getting the support he needs prior to officially declaring his presidential candidacy, if he will do that. Paul is trying to appeal to the more libertarian elements of the GOP, but the efficacy of this strategy seems limited, as marijuana legalization and limiting drone warfare aren't strongly supported in the Republican Party. Ted Cruz, ever the demagogue, is doing an excellent job appealing to the lowest common denominator in the Republican Party.

The dynamics that would be at play if these two men officially run for president would be fascinating—and hilarious—to watch. Ted Cruz has said some outlandish things and is an outlandish person, while Rand Paul foolishly expressed his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on some BS libertarian grounds—a position he changed on after realizing how politically toxic that would be to a prospective presidential candidate. I eagerly look forward to watching the 2016 Republican presidential debates. It'll make the circus that was the 2012 debates look tame by comparison.

Congrats, old friend. I hope you flourish in the U.S. Air Force.

At 5/17/14 04:15 PM, Korriken wrote: Well declaring war on Islam, killing every Muslim on earth, torching their literature, and bulldozing all of their mosques would be the only way to bring about an end to this.

Problem is, then you'll have to turn your attention to anyone else who does the same or similar. What's next taking on India because of arranged child marriages?

Do you actually believe this?

Islam isn't the culprit. Sociopolitical factors and backwards culture are more to blame. And please, tell me, you don't actually believe it would be a good idea to wage a war against an entire religion.

At 5/17/14 01:14 AM, TheKlown wrote: Millions of people are dying, children and women because of our selfishness. We think because we were fortunate to be born in a Country where we actually have some type of Freedom that we should forget about the people that aren't fortunate to have been born in USA.

Please go away.

At 5/16/14 03:03 PM, TheKlown wrote: Lovely that we're now comparing Mental Illnesses to Skin color now. Oh my god the discrimination against ones Mental Health.

At 5/17/14 07:22 AM, Light wrote: lol, so TheKlown sent me a PM in response to my comparison of homophobia to racism....he thinks homosexuality is a mental illness. Here's what it said:

"Don't compare a Mental Illness to Skin color. That just makes you look like a fucking moron."

Hmm, I wonder why he didn't share that brilliant insight with the rest of the political forum. Maybe he's trying to troll me?

Well, I stand corrected. He did share this genius thought that homosexuality is a mental illness with the rest of us.

Now, Klown, tell me why no respected psychiatric organization considers homosexuality a mental illness. And don't say some stupid conservative shit like "science is controlled by libruls man!!!11."

lol, so TheKlown sent me a PM in response to my comparison of homophobia to racism....he thinks homosexuality is a mental illness. Here's what it said:

"Don't compare a Mental Illness to Skin color. That just makes you look like a fucking moron."

Hmm, I wonder why he didn't share that brilliant insight with the rest of the political forum. Maybe he's trying to troll me?

You know, seeing that video of the ignorant blonde lady leaving the set because she couldn't bear to see two gay people expressing affection for each other was pretty amusing. I hope she sees the errors of her ways.

If not, I hope she and others like her will be shamed by her friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers for expressing such disgustingly bigoted opinions, as people shame those who express racist sentiments. To be truthful, homophobia is just as bad as racism.

At 5/15/14 05:33 AM, NGPulp wrote:

At 5/14/14 11:14 PM, MontosBonos wrote: If you saw a 25 year old man kissing a 11 year old girl?

I wouldn't give a damn.

I wouldn't even care if those two ended up in the news and the girl in a bloodied garbage bag.

you're soooo hardcore

At 5/8/14 09:49 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 5/8/14 09:06 PM, Light wrote: I look forward to that time.

I look forward to the time when we all start calling 'gay marriage' just 'marriage'...because, y'know, that's all it is.

Amen to that.

Soon there'll be a day when merely expressing doubt about whether gay marriage should be legal or not will be met with moral repugnance from 80~95% of all Americans. I'd say that in about 15-30 years, they'll be in the overwhelming majority. I look forward to that time.

And to any conservative reading this who's itching to declare me a bigoted hypocrite for eagerly anticipating a time when gay marriage opposition is too politically toxic for even the staunchest Republicans to support, just remember that American politicians these days don't dare question the morality of interracial marriage(In public, anyway) because it's support by the overwhelming majority of Americans. In my mind, and in the minds of other LGBT-rights supporters, gay marriage should be legal for the same reasons that interracial marriage should be, and more and more Americans are coming to agree.

At 4/23/14 10:22 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 4/23/14 06:18 AM, Light wrote: inb4 Camarohusky has another huge argument with me over the minutiae regarding this claim.

Let's agree to meet in the middle. Both of the arguments are right. Your argument is functionally right. My argument is right on technicality.

You are right, that in all functional purposes, evolution can be treated as truth. It has a mountain of positive evidence and a dearth of negative evidence. This is enough evidence both scientifically and logically for evolution to be widely considered as truth, up until it is either definitively proven (by that I mean somking gun. think watching an apple fall to prove there is gravity on earth) or until some new evidence comes and knocks the theory on its side.

The thing is, the "smoking gun" of the theory has been found already through years of meticulous experimentation.

Ranger2 and I are right in that by the technical definition of proven, evolution has not been proven. While there is a ton of evidence, the definitive proof does not exist. This goes for most scientific theories. We do not dispute that evolution is what we believe as right, we just disapprove of people saying you can't 'believe' it and calling it what it is not. The act of belief is the act of taking a logical or emotional jump toward a conclusion. Some jumps are large, some jumps are miniscule. They are still jumps regrdless of their size. The fact there is that last little jump in evolution requires us to believe it to be true. What throws people off is that the belief portion is so small they think it doesn't exist. Evolution is 99% evidence, 1% belief, whereas many other theories or ideas can range closer to 50/50.

I'm only claiming that the core of the theory of evolution is beyond dispute, not some of the applications of it or some of the very fine details of it.

Think of it like calling Korbel champagne. It looks like champagne. It tastes like champagne. In all aspects it is champagne. However, based on the definition of champagne (being grown in Champagne, France), it is not. You can functionally act and treat it as such, but in the end, because it doesn't fit the definition of champagne it is not champagne.

This analogy is inappropriate because it appears that you're treating evolution as if it isn't true, but only that it appears to be true.

So act like its true, and claim that those who do not believe in it are foolish to ignore such a strong amount of evidence, but do not call it what it is not.

I meticulously stated that the core aspects of the theory of evolution, that it works through natural selection and mutation and that these forces are real, are beyond dispute and nothing more.

As I said before, all good theories should be open to modification and adjustment, but in the case of the theory of evolution, it's an open-and-shut case as to whether or not species evolve over time

At 4/23/14 12:17 PM, Camarohusky wrote: Definition of belief per Merriam Webster:

"conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence"

You believe it. You may know it, but to get to the point of knowing it you must believe it.

I'll happily concede that this is true. My problem is that the word "belief" carries with it a connotation of not knowing something for certain.

While it's technically true that I believe 2 + 2 = 4, I don't like using that word because it implies that the answer to the question of what two and two equal is under dispute, when it's not. So I and everyone else prefer say "I know 2 +2 = 4" as opposed to "I believe 2 +2 = 4."

It's the same thing with evolution. I know it's true. I believe it's true. But I prefer to say I know it because to say that I believe it implies that the theory is actually still under dispute when it's really not.

That's really my gripe when I see people saying that evolution hasn't been proven yet when it has been. What is debated in the scientific community these days is how evolution influences speciation and the biological world and not whether it exists. I don't even want to go into the philosophy of science that is directly relevant to issues like this, but yeah, that's just where I stand

At 4/22/14 11:46 PM, Ranger2 wrote: One thing I would like to add, though; scientists have not proved evolution.

This is not true. We know for a fact that the mechanism of evolution exists.

inb4 Camarohusky has another huge argument with me over the minutiae regarding this claim.

Science really is not very good at indisputably proving things, and according to the scientific method, rarely tries to. Evolution is a theory, which means that while so far it has passed just about every test we've thrown at it, we cannot say "case closed." We never can. And don't take my word-any scientist who studies evolution would tell you that science is proof without certainty. In fact, scientists don't accept any hypotheses; they either reject or fail to reject one.

This is true. All good scientific theories are supposed to be open-ended and falsifiable. It doesn't mean that we can't say that they're true, however. They merely need to be falsifiable and well supported by repeated experimentation.

So, yes, evolution does require some belief. It has stood up to tests better than creationism, but ultimately, to accept the idea of evolution as we know it as complete and perfectly true takes belief.

Not true. I'm not indulging in faith whatsoever when I say that evolution exists as a phenomenon in the world of biology. We observe the existence of natural selection's effect on animal species and of the effects that mutations have on them too. We know of the phenomenon of speciation and have reproduced it in laboratories. The emergence of antibiotic resistance is evolution in action.

Some of the very fine points of evolution may be up to debate(That's what the field of evolutionary biology studies, I imagine), but the core of the theory is pretty much beyond debate.

So yes, if you have no doubts about evolution, you believe in evolution.

No, that's just acknowledging scientific fact.

This is sort of like saying that if a person has no doubts that the Earth revolves around the Sun, they've formed a nonscientific belief about the way this planet interacts with the Sun, as opposed to acknowledging a scientific claim and fact that is beyond debate. How exactly the Sun's gravity works in keeping the Earth from flying off into space may be up to debate, but the fact that it happens is not.

At 4/17/14 01:23 AM, ExtraLife wrote:


For a new user, I can totally see how the site's name wouldn't make sense.

If only the slogan was "Charting newgrounds of creative entertainment" would it possibly make more sense for the first time user.

I see your point and I agree.

At 4/17/14 01:32 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 4/16/14 07:28 PM, InsectGadget wrote: and I still don't.

GAH!!!! Will you all stop doing that! If you're going to state your opinion, will you at least make the slightest effort to explain why you feel the way you do?

Frankly, I don't give much of a shit what your opinion is. The real meat is the basis of your opinion. I'd rather debate a terrible opinion that has a strong basis than debate any opinion with no basis given.

I support gay marriage.

I don't have much of a reason for supporting it, though.It's just my opinion.

He kept saying this is a comics site, lol.

He really didn't scratch the surface of what we here call Newgrounds, but it's all good.

At 4/15/14 06:52 PM, AxTekk wrote: For what it's worth, I was very into conspiracy theories at one point in my life too.

As was I. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories are almost never true. :(

This shit definitely happened though. Occam's razor goes a long way.

Yeah, you gotta love Occam's razor. It's the #1 enemy of conspiracy theorists everywhere.

People who are inclined to believe in conspiracy theories tend not to be very bright. Just saying.

At 4/14/14 12:08 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 4/13/14 11:00 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: If we go to war with China, we can forget about the debt that we owe them.

And the shit tons (shit being a replacement for "billions of") of goods and resources they send us as well.

Oh, and FYI, our debt to China is largely worthless. China knows that if they were to call on it they would destroy their biggest customer and not just shoot themself in the foot, but compeletely amputate their legs right below the hip. They are just as reliant upon us economically as we are on them.

It always bothered me that many peopel are under the mistaken impression that China completely owns us and that we need them more than they need us.

The truth is that it's in neither country's best interest to end the current relationship they have now.

At 3/26/14 01:15 AM, Camarohusky wrote:
Much of our bloated military is meant to fight an antiquated fight against other bloated militaries. The world of warfare and politics has changed so much since the first Gulf war when much of our current tech was at its height. As Q put it in Skyfall: we can do more damage on a computer in our PJs than many of our weapons could at all. The same power rests in a corporate executive.

Although I'm not too knowledgeable on the nature of military warfare, I must say that I completely agree. It's been a long time since we've fought a conventional military and a very long time since we've fought a major world power. We fight terrorists and guerilla groups now, so our military needs to change the way it fights to reflect the reality of 21st century modern warfare.

The army and the Marine Corps are being downsized while our air force and navy are modernizing and probably being strengthened; the navy and air force are key to maintaining a strong military. Land forces are somewhat less important now.

However, like I indicated before, Russia is a wild card and could change all of this quite quickly.

Hmm, this is true. Let's see how this affects military spending and development in the future.

Assuming I could have it domesticated(Some people already have), I'd have a Siberian Tiger. probably the most frightening animal anyone could have for a pet. It's the largest existing subspecies of tiger today.

Just look at this motherfucker.

lol, this is seriously bothering me now.

Maybe Feoric is right and Memorize is just an alt. I wish I were a mod so that I could see your IP addresses and confirm or disprove that claim.

I could never really understand why Memorize gets so emotionally invested in these debates that he starts insulting his opponents gratuitously and profusely.

It kind of defeats the purpose of engaging in a discussion over the issues if his purpose in doing so is to persuade others to adopt his point of view, which I assume it is. It's not exactly a sign of high intelligence.

Klingons are pretty deadly with lightsabers imo