For over twenty years, newspaper comic strip Dilbert has told readers why office life is dull and pointless, often while embodying those attributes itself. Earlier this month, Scott Adams, the creator of the strip, posted a blog where he had some other things to tell readers.
What did he have to say? Let’s take a look at some highlights:
According to my readers, examples of unfair treatment of men include many elements of the legal system, the military draft in some cases, the lower life expectancies of men, the higher suicide rates for men, circumcision, and the growing number of government agencies that are primarily for women.
Yep. Lower life expectancy sure is an example of the “unfair treatment of men”.
Men will argue that if you ask a sample group of young men and young women if they would be willing to take the personal sacrifices needed to someday achieve such power, men are far more likely to say yes. In my personal non-scientific polling, men are about ten times more likely than women to trade family time for the highest level of career success.
Also, women drive like, but men drive like this.
How many times do we men suppress our natural instincts for sex and aggression just to get something better in the long run? It’s called a strategy. Sometimes you sacrifice a pawn to nail the queen.
Uhm…
Well, maybe the paragraph I’ve seen quoted the most will pull all this together:
The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.
Nope. Even worse.
Read the full thing here, reposted by someone else since Adams at least had the good sense to take this beast down from his own blog.
This reminds me of most every article any university paper has ever published with some jackass calling for a men’s centre. And I’ve never seen one who wasn’t a jackass. Every ill-conceived opinion piece I’ve seen never wants to men to feel comfortable with their masculinity and to better understand what that means; it’s always a way of undermining the importance of a women’s centre.
Laura Hudson at ComicsAlliance nails the big problems, including the fact that Adams is comparing things that have “have virtually no relationship to each other.” The more important point that she touches on is that Adams debases the men and women everywhere, because “dealing with men and women through the lens of tired, insulting stereotypes diminishes us all.” Read her full response.
Scott Adams – what a dolt.
In an afterword to Chimichanga, writer and artist Eric Powell says that the idea started when a T.V. producer asked him to pitch a kids show.
