Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: time-preferences and civilization

JC is is wondering at the intrinsically anti-scientific bent of the SFWA:

I’m a white, Christian, American male of slightly above average
intelligence – but far from a super intelligence.  I’ve been ejoying
your writings since the WND days.  Since you left them, and I was forced
to discover and follow your Vox Popoli blog – my mind has been quite
blown away by the content.  I eagerly digest (or attempt to follow) the
economic posts, and love the cultural posts.  The science fiction
generally doesn’t interest me, but this latest uproar re: SWFA makes me
sick.  I just wanted to drop a note of thanks and support.  Between you
and Ann Barnhardt, I truly feel blessed to be able to see the examples
you set in steadfastly standing for Truth.
Thank you.
Now for a question.  I may have missed it, but your “h8ers” seem to
imply you’ve conferred a superior/inferior distinction to the various
human sub-species.  I don’t recall seeing anything of the sort, I
thought you just noted that they are provably different.   I
would personally assume that different groups should have nothing
approaching “equality” for quite a number of characteristics, in general
from a statistical perspective.  An overall ranking of
“superior/inferior” doesn’t seem like it would make any sense at all
unless we are discussing specific characteristics.  For instance, a
Jimmy the Greek foul in discussing fast twitch muscle fiber and athletic
performance, or perhaps predisposition to certain hereditary medical
conditions.  Or demonstrated contributions to advanced science.  
There’s nothing in my mind that would necessarily judge one of
God’s children as better/worse from an overall intrinsic value sense
simply by noting a particular subspecies (or intermingling thereof, such
as with my mixed heritage children), but it’s absurd to say we can’t
talk about relative comparisons of discrete characteristics.  I’ve
wandered a bit here, but I assure you I’m no rabbit or troll.  I guess
my question was about the conclusions drawn from the variations in
subspecies:  you never made any claims that the homo sapiens sapiens are
just dirty pieces of shit with no worth, as your critics seem to be
claiming, right?  I don’t know how you put up with these clowns without
having their insanity rub off on you just a little bit.

I have repeatedly stated that it is absolutely meaningless to claim general superiority or inferiority for any of the various human subspecies, (or, if you prefer, genetically distinct population groups), because it completely depends upon the specific metric involved.  Is a Great Dane superior to a Siberian Husky?  Is a bluebird superior to an eagle?  It all depends upon what the basis for comparison is.

Now, the reason that the SFWA pinkshirts are upset is because if one chooses the metric of “civilized”, by which I mean “the ability to participate in, maintain, and build a complex, technologically advanced civilization”, one can both observe and explain which subspecies are more and less capable of it than others, and therefore it is possible to claim that Group X is superior to Group Y on that particular basis.  As it happens, that particular ability is largely predicated on time-preferences, as longer time-preferences are required in order to a) practice self-discipline, and, b) build wealth, which are two of the primary prerequisites for maintaining and building civilizations.

One can even go so far as to say that the civilizational process, which I observe appears to take around 1,000 years on average, is largely the result of artificially selecting for individuals with longer time-preferences.  If a society regularly gets rid of its short-preferenced, hot-tempered predators and its non-savers, it will eventually find that it has built up considerable wealth as well as a population capable of cooperating and living together in relative peace.  And with cooperation and wealth, a society has the wherewithal to begin advancing technologically so long as it has entrepreneurs and elects to foster them rather than crush them in the interest of established parties.

Having shorter time preferences doesn’t make anyone “dirty pieces of shit with no worth”, any more than being physically shorter does, it simply makes them human beings with the same intrinsic human value as everyone else who happen to be less able to participate in, maintain, or build an advanced civilization.  The pure savage lives entirely in the moment and does not control his impulses. The entirely civilized individual is self-disciplined and is always capable of putting off for tomorrow, or next year, options that are available today.  This may explain why Christianity tends to be a civilizing force, as it reinforces longer time preferences by extending them beyond one’s lifetime, and why atheism, despite the higher-than-average intelligence of atheists, tends to be a barbarising force. Intelligence, while not entirely irrelevant, is somewhat of a red herring in this discussion.

The idea that there are meaningfully different time-preferences between genetically distinct population groups is a testable scientific hypothesis, although aside from some very small-scale studies on children, “the Stanford marshmallow experiment”, I am not aware of any studies that have been done in this regard.  In order for it to be useful, I would recommend a study with randomly selected adults, (corrected for income and debt), who would be offered a choice between receiving $200 in cash immediately and a check for a randomly selected amount between $250 and $1,000 in a randomly determined period of time ranging from three months to one year.  A second study would then test the ranges of the time preferences of the various population groups based on the information from the first study, and a third would test children to see if the range of their time preferences were consistent with the adult ranges.

Perhaps the hypothesis that pure homo sapiens sapiens have shorter time preferences than the various homo sapiens-homo neanderthalensis blends would hold up, or perhaps not.  But that is the primary purpose of science, to formulate and test hypotheses.  It is, I think, more than a little ironic that so many self-professed “science fiction” writers are not only horrified by a scientific perspective, but are openly and avowedly anti-science whenever science threatens to upend their cherished ideological beliefs.

Anyhow, it is because the entire concept of a racial supremacist is intrinsically nonsensical that I occasionally describe myself as an “Esquimaux supremacist”.  Having grown up in Minnesota, and having lived through more than a few bitterly cold Minnesota winters, I have a particular appreciation for the obvious and undeniable superiority of that noble people of the north.

Mailvox: the lessons of history

JD demonstrates that one of the benefits of aging is that one has the ability to look back and determine who was, and who was not, correct:

At college in 1980, my Government Studies prof also served as Secretary
of the Socialist Workers Party of Minnesota (the real one, not the DFL).
We clashed over Robert Mugabe, just coming to power in Zimbabwe, he
asserting it spelled salvation and I, that it spelled ruin.

I
e-mailed him a year or two ago, asking if I could get a retroactive
grade increase since my predictions had proven more accurate than his.
His explanation was that he truly believed Mugabe was an agrarian
reformer whose program of taking land from Whites to give to Blacks
would benefit the country; but things just hadn’t worked out as hoped.

I
didn’t bother to send him the famous Heinlein quote about Bad Luck. And
I didn’t really expect the grade change. But it certainly was
satisfying to say “I told you so” 30 years later.

I doubt it will take until 2043 for “anti-racists” and those who are blinded by rage at the suggestion that not all human populations are equally civilized to ruefully explain that they truly believed that Africans were every bit as capable of maintaining and sustaining advanced technological civilizations as Europeans.

The question is: how many human beings will have to die by starvation and mass slaughter in America, Africa, and Europe before they consider the possibility that they might be wrong?  Based on how long it took the same sort of people to begin considering that perhaps communism was not, in fact, capable of economically outperforming capitalism, my estimate would be around 250 million.

It is an interesting question to direct towards my critics, though.  Is there any number of deaths caused by starvation and mass slaughter in a five-year period as a result of the structural breakdown of society in one or more countries that would convince you to at least consider my time-to-civilization hypothesis?  If so, how many?

Mailvox: a sincere apology

It seems I have inadvertently caused offense, for which I am indeed deeply sorry.  Remo hopped onto the keyboard and took me to task:

As a Sonoran desert toad, I find the labeling of Ms. Hayden as a
“grotesque toad” offensive. I quote the good Sir Thomas Browne: “I
cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly;
they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best
express the actions of their inward frames; and having passed that
general visitation of God, who saw that all that he had made was good.”
-Sir Thomas Browne, 1642.

I would point out that
licking *me*
brings on a state of euphoria and a series of pleasant
hallucinations, while licking Ms. Nielson would cause spastic
uncontrolled vomiting and give you herpes. Please be more sensitive in
your use of the word “toad” in the future. As you can see here our
couplings are *FAR* less offensive looking than Ms. Nielson’s.

*Ribbit*

I sincerely apologize to Remo, all Sonoran desert
toads, and indeed, the families Bufonidae, Bombinatoridae,
Discoglossidae, Pelobatidae, Rhinophrynidae, Scaphiopodidae, and
Microhylidae for any offense I have caused.  I deeply regret my
thoughtless, hurtful remarks, and in the future, will be sure to avoid
any further invidious and unflattering comparisons.

Mailvox: Clive Staples award

I was under the impression that I was more likely to be nominated for
both the Nebula and the Hugo than for any Christian fiction award, but
apparently I was wrong.  I received the following email concerning the
Clive Staples award for Christian Speculative Fiction:

Greetings,

As
you may know, the Clive Staples Award for Christian Speculative Fiction
has been revived, with Speculative Faith hosting it, and one or more of
your books has been nominated by a reader. We’re also happy to announce
that the new Realm Makers writers’ conference is partnering with us to
announce the award winner at the Friday dinner (August 2) and to provide
a modest cash prize.

The CSA is entirely a readers’
choice award, from nominations to final selection (which means that
authors associated with Spec Faith or Realm Makers ARE eligible).
However, we are opposed to popularity-contest awards, which makes the
request I’m about to make a little tricky.

We need
readers to know about the award and their opportunity to vote, but we
also need to communicate the need to honor good writing, not just
popular authors. To achieve this, we’ve put a minimal requirement on
voters: they must have read at least two of the nominations. I’ve also
written several posts at Speculative Faith (see links below) explaining
the standards we want readers to use when voting.

My
request is that you would help your readers know about CSA and our
goals, their opportunity to vote, and the requirements to do so. Without
voters, a readers’ choice award is not possible. But to appeal to you
to bring in readers, risks the possibility of the award devolving to a
popularity contest. In reality, whether this award works depends on how
widely we can spread the word and how determined the readers are to vote
for quality stories. Whatever you can do to help achieve this would be
greatly appreciated!

Below is a list of the books that
have been nominated and the links to the Spec Faith articles about the
award. Congratulations on your book(s) being included! And thank you for
any help you can give in notifying readers about the award.

I
believe I have been abundantly clear about my skepticism concerning
literary awards, but since I was asked to notify readers about the
award, I am doing so.  I’m not asking you to vote for A Throne of Bones, and I would request that anyone who is interested in voting for any of the nominated books on the list
to please be sure to follow the voting guidelines.  I’m a little
surprised, to be honest, given that I’ve actually been expressly banned
from being nominated for at least one Christian fiction award, but
apparently that was a different one.

Mailvox: in defense of sad engineer girl

Rebecca hasn’t figured out that all humans are not completely interchangeable:

AHHHHHHH! are you NUTS! It is estimated that the planet will reach 9
BILLION people in about 2050. The last thing we need is an increasing
population. 

Increasing population of what?  How will further inhibiting the already limited breeding potential of high-IQ European women solve the problem of the quadrupling of a Nigerian population that can’t feed itself or maintain its societal infrastructure in just 60 years?  What percentage of those estimated 9 BILLION PEOPLE does she believe will be attending elite European universities and studying engineering?  Even if the problem truly exists, encouraging AA to make herself an evolutionary dead end won’t even begin to solve it.

No takes the simplest of rhetorical approaches to rational discourse:

Fuck you, Vox Day. I am sorry to have had the misfortune of discovering your existence.

Benhke, on the other hand, hopes I will open up my heart and use my “intelligens” in a constructive way.

Wow 🙁 You guys makes me sick to my stomach and brakes my heart. Maybe
you are right in some of your points, but you are really cuel (sometimes
in a direct, sometimes in a subtile way) in your way of expressing your
truth- whatever the truth may be. This woman is fighting for her
feeling of freedom – which is a very exsistential need. And both age and
gender, does not (just like culturel background does not) make a
difference – her statement comes from her point of view, and that point
of view is valid, because her value as a human being is valid.
Furthermore – I can assure you that many people care for her feelings –
cause more than 200 people in this world has the ability to feel empathy
with even strangers. I am very sorry for you guys, that you do not
believe this – it really tells more about you than anything else…
Please open up your heart, and use your intelligens in a constructive
way, which in my point of view can be defines as bringing peace, and not
fear, anger and resentment…What good do you men, the stronger gender,
do for the world/society, if not that?

But what can be more constructive than laughter?  By making it possible for people laugh at the likes of Behnke and others, I am making the world a better and happier place.

Unknown goes right for the conventional feminist riposte, but derails into a morass of blather:

u guys are real losers…women are doing well in engineering and making a
great success of ur lives…the hatred u have for them is
appalling…which makes me wonder about ur own success…

Women doing well in engineering are making a great success of our lives? Translation, anyone?

Mailvox: A Boomer defends his generation

Mr. Pea sounds pretty pleased that the cookie jar is empty:

After reading some of the garbage here, it finally dawned on me… you
are mad because you can not and will not have what mommy and daddy had!
Never mind that it all had nothing to do with liberty and freedom! Never
mind it had nothing to do with virtue and righteousness! You’re pissed
off because that same cookie jar that you put your hand in… is empty!

You
would be perfectly happy to transplant what mommy and daddy had into
your generation… just as long as the cookie jar was just as full for
you as it was for them.

But that will never happen. Because all
this time you are lamenting the empty cookie jar… you thump your
chests in self-righteousness and claim virtue above and beyond mommy and
daddy.

Well, yes, to a certain extent.  We would very much like for Mommy and Daddy to not burn down the house with us and everyone else in it.  We’d very much like to have some seed corn to plant, but we don’t, because Greedy Mommy and Drunk Old Daddy ate it.

And we most certainly do claim virtue beyond the Boomers.  Not only are we aware that we’re starting with nothing and can’t count on any help from them, but we’re working hard to make sure that unlike them, we leave something for our children behind.  Of course, saying that a generation is more virtuous than the Boomers is the faintest of faint praise; every single generation in recorded history has been more virtuous.

But it isn’t true to say we’d be perfectly happy to be like mommy and daddy.  In fact, that is Generation X’s one true satisfaction.  Say what you will about we cynical, narrow-eyed Xers, but you can’t say we’re anything like you.  We don’t want to change the world, we’re just hoping to survive and perhaps build some sort of rude shelter from the rubble.

Mailvox: she’s not the biggest fan

Sunny reflects on the various responses to AA, the engineering student:

Just about everyone here disgusts me. Vox, and just about all the people commenting, with the exception of a few. I happened to stumble on this blog yesterday and I have to say its one of the worst things I have ever discovered. I’ve found only one post by Vox that isn’t completely infuriating. Which was his opinion on Abortion.

Everyone is telling AA that she has to see reason. To marry and further the evolutionary cycle by having children. The world is over populated. For proof of this, please go check up on China’s policy on bearing children. Honestly, who are any of you to presume to tell anyone what to do or how to live? You’re all nothing more than a bunch of cult members flocking to Vox who has an insane world view.

No one is telling AA she has to see reason.  She doesn’t.  She can do whatever she likes.  I don’t care what she does, in fact, I expressly pointed out that neither I nor anyone else cares what she does, says, thinks, or feels.  The point about marriage and children is that a) she will probably want them sooner or later, regardless of how she feels now, and, b) there is nothing else she can do that will be as important to species and society as bearing and raising children.

The world is not overpopulated with people like AA.  Moreover, if there is overpopulation, AA replacing herself and her eventual husband cannot possibly contribute to it.  If overpopulation is a genuine concern, then the West should stop sending food to Africa, stop intervening in Third World wars, and permit the African and Asian populations to fall back to the levels they were prior to World War II.  But China’s policy for how to deal with one billion Chinese has nothing to do with how the English should deal with 50 million English.

Overpopulation is a Third World phenomenon, not a First World one.  The entire population of Europe, the USA, and Canada is only one-seventh of the global population, therefore, if it is a problem, it is one for which the West is neither responsible nor capable of resolving without actively reducing non-Western populations.

Sunny appears to have forgotten that AA emailed me and asked me to explain myself.  I merely did as she requested and she is certainly free to ignore my advice if she chooses.

Sunny doubles down:

As I’m sure the comments are about to be spammed with his cult members
agreeing with him. I’m 100% it would take me far too long to reply to
everyone.

I am not, in any way, telling you that you were wrong
in explaining yourself. However explaining yourself does not equate to
to the harsh judgement you rendered. Knowing full well that your
followers would leap to agree with anything you said.  Absolutely no one deserves that.

As
you’ll also find, I also commented on the fact that I do not agree with
your beliefs. I was not just simply leaping in to defend AA. Although
as I said, your treatment of her was extremely harsh.

I hope that
one day, the words you speak and your disregard for other people will
have consequences and you will truly see how you have erred.

Also, my point of China was not me agreeing on the methods they use. Simply pointing out that there IS overpopulation. 

Oh Sweet Sade.  My dear Sunny, perhaps you do not realize it, but my response to AA was far from harsh.  It was a delicate shower of rose petals compared to the way in which I normally respond to anklebiters and midwitted critics.  You see, I am an Award Winning Cruelty Artist.  My gentle admonishments once inspired a strong, independent, well-educated woman, in the middle of a debate with me, to run off to Nevada to become a stripper and prostitute.

The amusing thing is that you probably think I’m joking….

I do find it strange, however, that you seem to think no one deserves for me to render judgment upon them, for fear that my followers will agree with me.  Would it be truly more kind to simply smile, pat AA on her little head, and leave her to a barren life of petty material accomplishments and a lonely death?  Why do you think it is disregard to warn others they are on a self-destructive path that leads to misery?

I am entirely aware that actions have consequences.  Just last week, I lost a book contract because the publisher does not believe they have the ability to defend my inclination to speak the truth about the world as I see it.  Many people, perhaps most, prefer to dwell amidst their pretty little lies.  That is their prerogative.  But they have no right to ask me to confirm their lies and expect me to lie to them.

As for China, you are still missing the point, which is that no government policy of any government is sufficient to prove that the Earth is overpopulated.  And you also failed to understand that further suppressing white upper-middle class births will not help solve the purported overpopulation problem, for the very obvious reason that white, upper-middle class people are a very small percentage of the total global population.

Mailvox: writing back to a young female engineer

AA inquires concerning some inexplicable views that she finds both contradictory and insulting:

Dear Sir,

I don’t think you’ll answer me, or read my message… But this is worth a try. I will try very hard to keep polite about all this. It will be difficult, but I’ll try.

See, I’m a young woman. I’m currently 20 years old and a student in environmental engineering in one of the best engineering schools in the world. I got in fair and square. I didn’t get a special grant for being female or any favors. I have to work my butt off to get good grades in fluid mechanics, calculus, environmental chemistry…

I have had the opportunity to read some of the posts you’ve written in your blog and I feel very insulted by them. What happened to you that made your brain go this wrong? How can you claim that women’s rights are wrong? You defend forbidding abortion by claiming unborn children of rape merit all “the legal protections and rights afforded all other human beings”, yet claim that women shouldn’t have those same rights because we “ruin everything”?

I am working hard to be an engineer. My goal in life isn’t to get married or to stay at home and take care of the children. I am not here on this planet to serve a man and raise his children. I have my own goals and my own motivations.

I would continue, but I have finals to prepare and I’ve lost enough of my time on you already.

I would wish you a nice day, but it would be a lie.

Dear AA,

First of all, as a young woman studying engineering, you have very
likely been granted special favors whether you know it or not.  All
those programs designed to encourage young women like you to pursue a
career in engineering exist for a reason.  And the reason is that most
women just don’t enjoy engineering the way men do.  You’re obviously
smart, you can do the schoolwork, but it is unlikely that you will want
to do the real thing for very long.  Assuming you don’t drop out in
favor of an easier discipline before you graduate, the probabilities indicate that you won’t spend much time actually working as an engineer; you’ll
soon be moved into some sort of management or marketing position. 
Whether you have been told as much or not, that is the conventional path
for smart, educated women like you in the corporate world.

There is no shame in that.  I started out in engineering myself.  I had
the ability, but not the aptitude, and quickly switched to a field I
vastly preferred.  If you’re smart enough, you’ll likely figure that out
before long. Whatever you do, don’t waste your life doing something you
don’t really enjoy simply because you are capable of doing it. 
Remember that actual engineering is very, very different than studying
engineering, and being very good at the latter is not necessarily
indicative of real interest in the former.

Now I’m going to teach you a hard, but very important lesson.  You see, I
don’t care you how feel.  I really don’t.  More importantly, neither
does anyone else.  Only about 200 people on a planet of 7 billion
actually care about your feelings, and that’s if you’re lucky.  The
sooner you grasp this lesson, the better off you will be.  And since
almost no one gives a damn what you do, say, think, or feel, appealing
to your feelings when you encounter differences of opinion is not only
illogical, but useless.

What happened to me to make my brain go this wrong?  The short answer is: living life with my eyes open.  Keep in mind
that I’m more intelligent than you are.  The fact that you can’t
understand the way I think doesn’t make my brain wrong, it merely means
you aren’t keeping up.  But more important is the fact that I’m
considerably more experienced than you are.  I’ve had three decades to
observe the differences between all those school lessons about valuing
equality, diversity, and vibrancy and the way human beings actually
behave.  Equality is a myth; it doesn’t exist anymore than fairies and
unicorns do.  As for women’s rights, well, a young woman as intelligent
as you should be able to handle the math that dictates what happens to a
society when an insufficient number of young women marry and have
children.  Since women’s rights are very strongly correlated with
demographic decline, they are not sustainable and are, in fact,
societally deleterious.  They are not so much wrong as fatal when viewed
from the macro perspective.

I do believe women should have the same legal rights and protections
afforded to unborn children.  There is no contradiction there.  You see,
I don’t believe that unborn children should be given the right to vote
or permitted to murder other unborn children either.

I understand you have your own goals.  That’s fine. The problem is that
women are not only valuable to society, they are invaluable.  They are
necessary. The one and only thing both society and the human race
actually need from you is for you to marry and raise children.  If
you’re not going to do that, then it really doesn’t matter if you’re
going to become a human resources manager with an engineering degree or
drop out of school and become a stripper.  If you’re only  going to do
what any man of similar capabilities can do, then you are an
evolutionary dead end and as unimportant to society as the average man
is.

In the entire history of the human race, the actions of a few thousand men have actually made much of a difference one way or the other.  If that. But without women deciding to marry and have children, the species would die out.  Do you really want to limit yourself to the same sort of irrelevance as the average man?

Another thing you have no reason to know is that young women are
reliably bad at foreseeing what they will want to do in the near
future.  I graduated with a number of women like you.  None of them
thought they were interested in marriage and children until they were
about 27.  Then they suddenly changed their minds and some of them were
very upset that they had spent the previous ten years pursuing goals
that were now unimportant to them.  I even wrote a column about it
called Spiting Their Pretty Faces back in 2003, you can google it. 
Think about 2003.  You were ten.  Are your goals the same now as they
were then?  If not, then how can you be certain that your goals, and
your opinion about marriage and children, will be the same when you are
30?

In any event, I wish you good fortune regardless of what path you eventually choose.

Regards, etc.
Vox

Mailvox: Vox’s First Law redux

Rufusdog is the latest to discover that I really and truly don’t give a damn what he happens to think:

Vox could be a strong voice for gun rights, but when he says things this
stupid he just comes off like a crazy person and loses credibility. He
dishonors those children and their families and damages his own
reputation in one crack pot post.

Vox is what he is.  Take him seriously or dismiss him as a crazy person, it makes no difference to him.  Nor does he care in the slightest for honoring “those children and their families”.

As for my reputation, well, one of the dangers of dismissing someone as a crackpot means that the individual so dismissed no longer has any fear of it.  If you happen to believe in the economic recovery of 2009, global warming, and the heroic teachers of Sandy Hook elementary school, that’s fine with me.  It doesn’t bother me any more than your belief in unicorns, evolution by natural selection, or human equality.

Vox’s First Law: Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.

Mailvox: on the importance of doll faces

GV notes that IGN cares an awful lot more about Disney princesses than pretty much anyone who reads it:

I wasn’t going to send this until I saw this story up at IGN three times.  First they reported the new redesign of Merida then they reported two stories on how Disney would not cave in to pressure to go back to Merida’s orignal design.  Here is a link to the third article. 

Basically, Disney decided to change Merida’s goofy appearance into a prettier and more royal looking doll for her coronation as a Disney Princess doll.  It appears that IGN has posted this story a third time to try to bring attention to this issue.  Of course IGN is a video game website where most of their audience is male and it appears to have backfired since most of the comments are making fun of this or saying this is a non-issue.  Now in my opinion there is an obvious reason Disney won’t back down despite a petition of about 205,000, and it’s not because they are against feminism, but instead because most little girls would rather buy the prettier and royal-looking doll as oppose to her original goofy appearance in the movie despite the admittedly great but absurd feminist propaganda that is Brave.

Honestly they would most likely lose a lot of money since most little girls and their mothers would prefer to buy a prettier doll despite all the feminist complaint.  If they were to release a goofy-looking doll of Merida, most little girls and there mothers would most likely just buy a pretty doll from a competitor. 

I wonder if the feminist will get so angry at their failure at altering little girls preconceived notions and desires that they will demand that they play with cars just so they can get them to stop thinking of appearance despite the fact that most women’s natural and honest inclination is to try to look good and put on make-up to look pretty.  I guess in the end Merida’s mother has a happy ending since in the real world most little girls, (because of what they want to buy and play with), are forcing her to be pretty and royal as an actual princess.

Who knows maybe next they will come out with a doll that is her husband which will really make feminist head explode.  What to you bet that he won’t look goofy.

I think the feminists at IGN are in the process of discovering that they’re not going to find a lot of concern over what women think about the appearance of a doll on the part of either a) male gamers, or, b) a lavender corporation.  While Disney cheerfully pays lip service to the Female Imperative, all it really cares about is money and pushing whatever happens to be the lavender agenda at the moment.

And since both little girls and gays like pretty dolls, not goofy ones, we can expect that the pretty doll will prevail.  The primary thing to take away from this: IGN is officially irrelevant.

I’m trying to picture CGW publishing three articles about this issue of vital importance to hard core gamers….