Screw Sharks, Think Of The Dolphins!

So I was going through the junk folder on my oldest email account, just to see if I was missing anything, and I found this petition: "The Cost of Shark Bait Soup: Dolphins Chopped Up And Skinned Alive."  The hysterical summary cries out about the sadful sadness that is the dead dolphins, butchered by those horrible fishermen.  They just don't appreciate these amazing creatures!  Also something about havoc on the ecosystem.  The dolphins, though!  The dolphins!

Seriously.  The first paragraph of the petition's description reads, "Shark fin soup comes with a price. And we're not talking the thousands people pay to eat it — we're talking the mass killing of sharks, the disruption of our oceans' ecosystem, and the brutal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of dolphins used by fishermen as shark bait."  The other two paragraphs, however, focus exclusively on the fate of the dolphins, and the petition itself is asking the Peruvian government to better enforce the ban on dolphin meat.

I didn't sign the petition.  Normally, I'm a sucker for petitions.  I know they don't actually have any real effect, most of the time, and they are an easy way for someone to pretend to be an "activist" without actually doing any real, meaningful activism.  But sadly, I'm guilted into signing them pretty easily.  A corporation has done something mean!  I must take a stand, or else I am supporting them!  An animal is being abused?  I must sign this, or else I will be as bad as the people abusing it in the first place!  Et cetera, et cetera.  But I didn't sign this one.  In fact, I was kind of offended by it.

For one thing, they don't ever mention which kind of dolphin is usually being slaughtered.  It makes me a little suspicious.  After all, while there certainly are endangered breeds out there, the bottlenose dolphin, for example, isn't endangered in the slightest.  Neither the petition nor the article it links even throws in a sentence like, all dolphins are killed, regardless of endangered status!  Also, dolphins are kind of dicks.  I admit, I've got a bit of my own personal bias going on too: dolphins are just so universally adored, but I just don't see how they are any cuter or more endearing than another type of animal, and after a lifetime of hearing about how they're so sweet and friendly and spiritual and they have such a connection to us and "My spirit animal is a dolphin because I just love dolphins" I just got kind of annoyed by them.  I don't actively dislike dolphins or anything, they just don't register as special to me the way they seem to for everyone else.  

Which leads me to what is probably the main reason I didn't sign the petition: it was just obsessed with the freaking dolphins, and it completely ignored the worse industry: shark fishing.  Even though the petition's page starts out by directly mentioning shark fin soup, which kills a huge amount of sharks annually, it's the freaking dolphins that matter.  They're as bad as dolphins, taking an industry that's explicitly about killing sharks in horrible ways and only being concerned with the way it affects the one animal that's popular and cute enough for them to stir up emotions over.  It's killing the dolphins that will ruin the ecosystem, folks! The shark killing is just a little side drama to add to this horrible dolphin tragedy!

You could probably say that sharks are my dolphins: everyone else seems to think they're just awful, but I love them to pieces, and the shark fishing industry just breaks my heart.  The dolphins are getting off easy here.  The article the petition links to even says, "the dolphin is hauled on board and almost immediately dies on the deck of the vessel."  Bleeding profusely, sure, but at least it dies right away.  Compare the poor sharks; a lot of the time, the fishermen don't even kill them before cutting off their fins, and they just toss them back into the water to sink down and die, eaten by predators or drowning without their fins propelling water through their gills.  And I can't think of any non-endangered shark breed subjected to finning off the top of my head.*  Great whites, endangered.  Hammerheads, endangered.  Mako sharks, probably endangered, I can't remember.  Whale sharks and basking sharks, both endangered and greatly sought after.  If the petition really cared about the plight of amazing creatures, it would be objecting to the entire practice of shark finning, not just the way shark finning also includes the death of "cute" animals like dolphins.
*Not to say that there aren't any; I can pretty much guarantee that there are plenty I'm not thinking of.  Just not off the top of my head, like I could with the dolphin thing.

But nope!  Hey Peru, get to work on saving those dolphins!  Those cutie-patooties are the real victims of the shark finning industry!  Assuming this is that magical unicorn petition that actually does have an effect on the real world, what would happen if it worked?  Peru would stop people from hunting dolphins, sure.  But it wouldn't stop anyone from hunting sharks, or from using a different animal as bait.  This petition isn't about animal rights, it's just about dolphins specifically, because people have decided that dolphins alone are worth protecting, but sharks aren't cute enough and "the ecosystem" is too broad and vague to have an emotional impact.  Look at Flipper!  He's always smiling!  Quick, pass a law!

Disclaimer: I'd just like to say, for the record, that I'm not an animal rights activist.  I strongly disapprove of animal abuse, and I love just about any critter that isn't a bug.  I absolutely think there should be laws in place to protect animals, especially endangered ones like the various sharks and dolphins mentioned in this post.  But I also approve of keeping animals as pets, and of using them when it's convenient, I approve of animal testing (look, it's sad that animals get hurt over it but I want to know that my makeup and medicine is safe for living things before it starts getting tested on humans!), and I approve of hunting.  In fact, I think hunting is more humane than animal farming.  At least my moose had the space and freedom to run around and live, and it's not stuffed to the moosey gills with steroids and hormones.  Basically, just because I disagree with how limited this petition is, don't lump me in with those Peta freaks.  

Update: I was on Wikipedia and remembered this article, so I looked up shark finning!  Turns out that of the dozen or so species listed on the page as being commonly fished, only about three of them are non-threatened: blacktips, blues, and tigers.  Well.  They're "near-threatened," so still not great that they are being hunted, but they're still classified as "least concern."  

Ugh

Ok so there are actually loads (and loads and loads and loads) of things about the "straight ally safe place" tumblr, Straight Voices, that piss me off.  Like seriously, pretty much every other post has something awful in it somewhere, from concern trolling via the tone argument (if you were just CALM and REASONABLE and NEVER EVER GET UPSET about all the awful bullshit that any sane person would get rightly furious over, everything will be magically better!  This is why cis straight people are better at gay rights than gay people!) to appropriating LGBT shit (why can't I have straight pride?  You get to be proud of being gay!  It's the same thing, isn't it?) to....well, to shit like this.  But one of the simpler, stupider things that annoys me is that slogan they have, Straight But Not Narrow, specifically when they are on t-shirts.

There are a few people who posted photos of this shirt, but I chose this person's photo

because I didn't want to steal someone's face-visible photo without permission to use in a critical post.

I think I hotlinked it, so if they choose to take down the photo on their end

it'll disappear here too rather than being up despite what they want.

What is even the point of this shirt?  It's not in support of anything.  It's not saying, "Hey, I think it's unfair that gay people aren't allowed to get married!" or "The government has no business in someone's bedroom!" or "Maybe transfolk should not get beat up and murdered all the time!"  It is not raising awareness or supporting a specific cause (to my knowledge).  It's just self-centred and braggy.  "Hey, look at me!  I don't hate gay people!  Me!  This straight person!  Right here!  Isn't it amazing how fantastic I am for not hating gay people, even though I'm straight!?  I'm so straight, you guys!"  Congratulations, you are not a blatantly hateful homophobe, you have reached the minimum requirements for being a decent human being.  Now maybe you should stop making everything about you and what an awesome ally you are even though those darn lgbt's are just so cishetphobic omfg.

ACTUAL ADVICE MALLARD IS BAD AT ADVICE

This is the slut-shaming Actual Advice Mallard I mentioned in my last post:

Translated: if you are at all sexual, like by wearing low-cut tops because you like how they make you feel or by having casual sex because you find sex enjoyable and don't let other people judge you for it, you are less than human and nobody can ever respect you!  By finding empowerment in something I don't, you are just showing everybody how worthless and trashy you are because REAL empowerment is in doing what I approve of, not in doing what makes you feel empowered!  Doing anything that society can label as sexual, whether it's what you wear, say, or do, means you lose the right to equality and respect.  Slut!

This duck really pissed me off because I abhor slut-shaming, as I may have mentioned in an older post, especially slut-shaming passed off as concerned pseudo-advice.  Also, ignoring that specific example, while some of its advice was good, the duck meme had a lot of total bullshit as well.  So I'm going to run with the joke I made in my last post, and actually follow up on making fun of all the terrible advice mallards I found.  Let's go!

Women are a completely different species and it is a hopeless dream to try and understand anything about them!  But there's no point in trying because all women understand each other (presumably via the female hive mind, because women are all pretty much identical personality-wise) and we all hate each other, no exceptions!  Sorry, all my female friends.  I thought I loved you all because you are such rad individuals, but nope!  Women all hate each other.  That's disappointing.  Now I feel lonely.

The only reason you could possibly get mugged is because you live in a bad area, and the only reason you live in a bad area is because you're too dumb to think of moving to a better one!  There is no reason whatsoever that anyone would choose to live in a bad neighbourhood.  Rent is exactly the same price in every area of town and moving from one home to another is completely free!  Nobody has to worry about being close to work or schools, and nobody has any emotional investment in their home or neighbourhood that could make them want to stay.

Women are mostly interchangeable and the only thing you should expect from one is physical attractiveness and mental stability.  What her personality is like and whether you love her are not important.  Settle for what you already have rather than trying to find a loving, emotionally fulfilling relationship.

People always try to match their bra and underwear whether or not they expect anyone to see them, and presumably they do it to impress other people rather than because they personally like having matching sets!  Also they have cats, because they are lonely!

Again, women always choose clothes because they want to impress other people rather than because they personally like wearing them!

Having children is an event that is always planned ahead and never ever happens by accident, and poor people shouldn't get to make that decision for themselves!

A woman who is not physically attractive is completely worthless and if you spend any time at all talking to someone who isn't conventionally beautiful, you are wasting your life!  The only thing a woman is good for is being pretty!

I am not a doctor, but if you are really depressed it is easy to make large lifestyle changes, and you should do them before you go to a real doctor to see if you can get medicine to help you with your disorder.  Depression is not really a big deal and you probably don't need any help in dealing with it.

Nobody shares the videos they take with other people who couldn't be there for the actual event, and it's impossible to enjoy the moment and plan ahead at the same time so don't even bother to try!

Sports are the single most important thing that could ever exist, and you must stay for the whole game every time no matter the game, no matter what else you have to do that day!

Because dogs and children are pretty much the same, right?  Just put out a bowl of dry food and take it out for a walk or two every day, and if it misbehaves while you're gone you can just keep it locked in the basement or something until you get back.  And if you find that you get tired of the responsibility after a few years just send it off to a shelter or something.  You can do that with kids, right?

When Is Sex Not Like Pizza? The Default Male

I'm sure most people have heard this dumbass quote before:

Haha so funny!  And so true!  Right?  Well, I hate this quote.  Not because I hate pizza (I don't!) or sex (I don't!) or funny quotes (I don't!).  I hate it because it's a really blatant example of the "default male" position.  Unless something is specifically about a woman, it's probably about a guy instead.  It's really obvious that it's a dude who came up with that line, and the woman in the picture is probably laughing at him for it.  For guys, sex is always good!  Even if it's bad!  Because hey, it might not be fantastic, but you still come in the end, right?  This quote is completely accurate, for a guy.  Ignore how "bad sex" for a woman ranges from feeling unsatisfied in the end or feeling nothing at all the whole time, to feeling a lot of pain and discomfort.  Female experiences get ignored because male is the default, so even bad sex is good because guys somehow forget that women also have sex and hey it's totally different for us over here.  This next piece of advice from the Actual Advice Mallard meme gives a solid, presumably gender-neutral in practice relationship tip...but uses a female pronoun because it assumes you are a Default Male* dating a woman.
*Yes, it could also assume you are a lesbian, but if you argue that then you're just appropriating actual LGBT issues in order to pretend that you're open minded when we all know you were thinking of  a heterosexual relationship.  LGBT people have serious issues to deal with, and you aren't helping them by hiding behind their language while reinforcing cis-hetero defaults.

Individual examples like the ones I've provided might not seem like very much, and anybody reading this probably thinks I'm making a big deal over nothing.  Two little pictures, who cares!  But it's not just two pictures.  Everywhere you look, men are assumed to be the default.  Movies with female protagonists stand out, because almost every film has a male protagonist.  It's assumed that a story will be about a man, so it's notable when it isn't.  Many women who have heart attacks don't realize that's what they're having, because men and women show different symptoms, because it's the male symptoms that everyone is taught about.  Crash test dummies are designed after the average male body, which leads to women being injured or killed more often in accidents because the safety designs are not made with the average female body in mind.  Finding out Samus or anybody else is a woman in games or stories is a Huge Twist, because when you didn't have any prior evidence that they were female, you assumed they were male.  If a job has different titles for men and women who are doing it, the man's job will be the actual job title (actor, councilman, waiter, etc).

For the most part, these are individual little things that, one-on-one, don't amount to much at all.  Like how getting one litte mosquito bite isn't a  big deal in the grand scheme of things.  But when you face an endless barrage of little bites like that, not only is it disheartening, it can be dangerous (see heart attacks, crash test dummies).  It really sucks to look everywhere and find that in most places you are the other, the stranger, that whenever something addresses its audience it makes it clear that you, woman, you are not part of this audience.  You are not who we are talking to, you are not welcome, you can stick around if you like but we will always remind you that we will ignore your perspective.  Also, seriously, the heart attack and crash test things are for realsies dangerous.  I started this blog post just to complain about that first pizza quote and the general existance of the "default male" but the more I thought about it and what it included, the shittier I felt.  Now I'm afraid to do any sort of research on this topic because I really don't want to find out any other ways that society is basically saying health and safety for women is way too much work if it means we have to try new, less male-exclusive testing methods.  I'd rather just live in blissful ignorance, thanks.  Maybe if I plug my ears and hum 24/7 I can convince myself that sexism is over.  Hmmm hmmm, la la la la, oh look the Advice Mallard is pretending that slut-shaming is advice.  Maybe my next post should just be a series of terrible Advice Mallards that I make fun of.

Wherefore

Okay, this is a stupid rant coming up.  I know it's dumb.  It's petty, it's nitpicky, it's meaningless in the grand scheme of things.  It does not matter to anybody.  But I have to get it out -- the word wherefore.

It means why.  It does!  It does not mean where.  I can get why people just looking at the word might think it means where since, you know, where is right there in the word.  It does not mean where though.  It means why.  This was made very clear way back in high school, when everybody had to study Romeo and Juliet -- some unlucky people more than once!  And most uses of it seem to pretty obviously mean "why" instead of "where."  Why would Juliet be asking where Romeo is?  That speech is really obviously about why he is who he is, not where he is at that particular moment.  So why does everybody get it wrong?  It annoys me so much!  And I can't do anything about it, because it's just such a stupid thing to be annoyed by.  Nobody even uses wherefore any more, so why should it matter that people don't know what it means?  Even though they should?  Because it's really not that complicated at all and if you don't get it then I can never respect you as a person?