Scott Adam's Controversial Deleted Post on Men's Rights

http://tinysprout.tumblr.com/post/3713649989/scott-adams-dilbert-deleted-post

by araneae • 15 years ago

28 34 15 years ago

tinysprout.tumblr.com

Bud• 15 years ago

Should edit the title; apostrophe goes after the s.

"Scott Adams' Controversial..."

amccollum• 15 years ago

Actually, it should be "Scott Adams's Controversial..." (http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp)

impendia• 15 years ago

Scott Adams chose to delete his post. For the blogger to repost it, IMHO, shows a lack of respect.

cosgroveb3• 15 years ago

I'd say showing a lack of respect was intended judging by the blogger's comment at the end.

matthew-wegner• 15 years ago

Does the Wayback Machine show a lack of respect?

nkohari• 15 years ago

Bullshit. If you write something and publish it to the world, you can't just take it back. You can edit it, publish corrections, or clarify your position, but you can't un-publish something unless you get lucky and no one noticed before you deleted it.

Adams has been on the internet long enough to know better. And honestly, he's made a habit of putting his foot in his mouth in the past few years. It was just a matter of time before he said something really stupid, like this.

Honestly, what shocks me the most is that he doesn't have some sort of editorial review process. The man undoubtedly has a publicist of some sort... for someone that well known to have no one between him and the publish button is completely insane.

cosgroveb3• 15 years ago

Arguably reproducing his entire blog post verbatim violates his copyright...

jat850• 15 years ago

Utterly 100% disagree. Scott Adams posted it, and part of publishing anything comes with the responsibility and acknowledgement that it is subject to judgement.

If it had been snapshotted by the Wayback machine, who is being disrespectful?

ams6110• 15 years ago

His explanation:

http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/post_deleted

sambeau2• 15 years ago

It looks to me like he may have deleted all of his blog, now.

eqdw3• 15 years ago

Once it's on the internet, it's there forever. Someone of Adams' level of technical expertise should know that.

teyc• 15 years ago

Sometimes we take a line of argument and simply write on and see where it goes. Scott has obviously decided to trash it. Why would anyone choose to retrieve it?

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

Its interesting. This wasn't a slip of a phrase or "outburst" like error. This was a sustained train of thought gone seriously awry. I wonder how long it took Scott to say to himself "wait.. no.." and wander back to his computer to delete this.

It just goes to show that everyone makes mistakes, even when it is ostensibly their profession. Adams always rode the line between astute observation of reality's offensiveness and being offensive himself. I'm surprised this hasn't happened to him more often.

tzs• 15 years ago

What do you think is awry about the content of his essay? The only problem I see with it is that it is written at too adult a reading level, making it likely to be misunderstood by the average reader.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

That's it exactly. Its more than just a slipped phrase that may get misinterpreted. Its a PR trainwreck, a veritable goldmine of things to misquote, take out of context, and just plain spin the wheels of PC busybodies everywhere.

Admas is a professional at managing exactly this type of situation. A flurry of overexcited, hysterical comments and some extra publicity are usually considered the win scenario for a blogger like him. I think he let this one get way out of hand without (I guess immediately) considering the effect it would have on his extended audience. Upon reflection he realized he'd overdone it. He's not Zed Shaw, after all.

TheAmazingIdiot• 15 years ago

Adams has a few good points about this. I'm not saying that it's completely right, but some ideas are.

1. In Family Court, the man is seen as the bad one. Unless the woman is a baby-eater or something disgusting, she will get custody, with the man getting every other weekend or some such. He will also be charged to pay up to half his income for the "child",. And there is usually little or no checks to make sure it goes to the child.

2. In terms of parental and mother rights: A woman has a multitude of techniques in which to evade or eliminate pregnancy. These techniques can include up to abortion (this is NOT an abortion debate). After the child is born, the woman can also leave the child(ren) at a multitude of safe "drop points" in which the child is considered abandoned without criminal charge. The man, has very little recourse over children, even up to the woman having birth. There is no way for a man to give up parental rights and also not pay child support. The woman can do this at any time.

3. Women's pay is not in parity with men's pay of an equal job with equal skills. This is correct. The "solution" to this is to lower men's pay to that of women. And in cases which the woman sues, (SCOTUS case http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/05/29/340479/-SCOTUS:-Wom...) the woman is still screwed. Not surprising from SCOTUS.

But the comments comparing women with mentally handicapped and children... Well... That (ahem) stands for itself. That shit is just indefensible.

Mz2• 15 years ago

There is no way for a man to give up parental rights and also not pay child support.

My understanding is a man can, in fact, give up parental rights and not pay child support. I know a man who did so (though I don't know all the details). As I understand it, he had a brief fling with a woman who was separated from her husband. The marriage was falling apart in part due to the fact that it had not resulted in a child. The couple got back together and she found out she was pregnant. But the baby didn't belong to hubby. It belonged to the man she had a fling with while separated. She and hubby opted to stay together and wanted to raise the child as their own. They wanted to get rid of Mr. Fling. As I understand it, he was happy to sign away his parental rights as a means to avoid ever having to pay child support.

waqf• 15 years ago

TheAmazingIdiot meant that there is no way for a man to unilaterally give up parental rights and also not pay child support. Assume, for instance, that there's no husband in the picture, and that the woman wishes to keep the child and would be happy to receive child support payments.

Then the man has no option other than to pay child support. A woman cannot be forced into this situation, because she can abandon the child without penalty.

tejaswiy• 15 years ago

"I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar. If he’s smart, he takes the path of least resistance most of the time, which involves considering the emotional realities of other people. A man only digs in for a good fight on the few issues that matter to him, and for which he has some chance of winning. This is a strategy that men are uniquely suited for because, on average, we genuinely don’t care about 90% of what is happening around us".

Looking at it rationally, there's two counter arguments he makes that can be considered. Women's rights activists arguing women earn 80 cents to the dollar and fewer women in top management.

I personally think the second argument is valid while the first argument isn't unless I see some objective evidence.

He could've refrained from the comparison with Children / mentally handicapped as it can lead you to wrong conclusions even on a forum like HN, but the rest of the argument isn't something that you get upset about.

patricklynch• 15 years ago

Let me play Devil's Advocate here. Perhaps you're taking something with many shades of gray, and unjustly trying to flatten it into black and white.

...

>>>>"But the comments comparing women with mentally handicapped and children…"

He's not comparing women with children or the mentally handicapped. Or at least he isn't intending to. He's comparing strategies for relating to various groups of people. Many readers are misconstruing this.

Two pieces of context to keep in mind: 1. He writes in the same piece, "I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar." 2. He retracted this post and isn't standing by it. Probably because a large portion of his audience is pulling out a message he didn't intend to communicate, and doesn't really agree with.

>>>>"Well... That (ahem) stands for itself."

Maybe not to everyone. More than anything, I wonder what events in his life shaped this perspective.

Also, saying something "stands for itself" is a lame rhetorical device. You pass off the burden of making your argument to some other function. Instead of saying something's obvious, why not spell out your thoughts explicitly for those who don't jump to the same conclusions?

>>>>"That shit is just indefensible."

To say that any kind of speech is indefensible is a comment about yourself and your own morality, not about the speech itself. (I'm paraphrasing a quote by Steve Pavlina about whether a 45 lb dumbbell is 'heavy' or 'light'.)

Another idea, often raised by freedom of speech activists: Controversial speech is the only speech that needs to be defended. Nobody tries to suppress speech that everyone agrees with.

...

Again, that was Devil's Advocate. Just a few things to think about.

daimyoyo• 15 years ago

One aspect of the continuing war on men that hasn't been covered yet is the rampant, cancerous amounts of misandry that has infected the entertainment industry as a whole, but especially the ad industry. All you need to see proof of this is to watch the ads that aired during the Superbowl. With the exception of beer commercials, most ads that weren't gender neutral featured an idiot guy being educated by a smart woman. This trend has carried over to the shows the networks use to make their profits. Every sitcom today has the retard husband and the wise wife. Even ones like "king of queens" that were created for male stars. Why? I understand that most household products are purchased by women so the ads need to appeal to them but why is Kevin James acting like a buffoon on HIS SHOW?

planckscnst• 15 years ago

I'd like to see the author's specific complaints about the post rather than the simple statement that it's a "load of shit".

eqdw3• 15 years ago

I agree. It's easy enough to criticize when you don't actually have to come up with one

eqdw3• 15 years ago

Scott Adams' comments are consistent with my life experience.

That is all

nlz1• 15 years ago

jonezy• 15 years ago

and i think that's what most people are afraid to admit.

Pretty much everything he said hits the nail on the head, and well opinion IS opinion isn't it? I don't think he stated anywhere that the entire world was wrong and had to think the way he does did he?

jordo37• 15 years ago

I think the post is bull because by using the mentally handicapped and children as his comparison point he puts women on the same level . I understand that he's talking about strategies for dealing with the groups and not the groups themselves, but if he wanted to make his argument more nuanced and less chauvinistic I'm sure he could have found a different group to compare if his real point was "considering the emotional realities of other people" is the path of least resistance. Family for example, or perhaps foreign cultures. I still fundamentally disagree that men and women really see the world THAT differently, but at least its an argument where he isn't calling half of the planet mentally handicapped.

jamaicahest• 15 years ago

FYI: Scott Adams reposted it as part of a new entry http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/im_a_what/ along with an explanation as to why he deleted it in the first place.

DjDarkman• 15 years ago

Women and men are not equal and never will be, period, anyone disputing that is ignorant. There is no problem with treating two genders differently to a certain point. Scott Adam was right, but he was overwhelmed by the zealots and had no choice.

In my opinion: anything you write about this topic will offend an army of people, so just don't do it, there are too many zealots out there who can't stand people who have different opinions.

Scott Adam's Controversial Deleted Post on Men's Rights

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