Rodney Writes: 77 Cents On The Dollar

A reminder to our readers: I’m not Rodney, I’m his former co-worker and current friend. This stuff is HIS opinion just like the stuff Bark or Mental or Brendan write is THEIR opinion. Got it? — jb

“Enough is enough is enough.” It’s a line from the song No More Tears by Donna Summer & Barbra Streisand that talks about the shovel loads of shit that they put up with when it comes to the men in and around their lives. Whether it was the husband that wouldn’t stop beating his wife, the boyfriend that couldn’t or wouldn’t keep his dick in his pants, or the boss that couldn’t find a way to keep his hands to himself, let alone take his female employees ideas seriously.

Well almost forty years later women are still dealing with the same issues. One would probably ask themselves how could that be? Well I gotta tell ya, last week I received a revelation as to why this remains an issue decades later.


jenner

As everyone knows, Bruce Jenner told the world that he was indeed a woman and that from this day forward he was going to live his life as one, so you may call her Caitlyn. Well I have to tell you I fell of my chair laughing my ass off. Here was this 65yr old man, limp dick swinging and all, in a dress with fake D-cup tits.

I’m looking at this nonsense, Annie Leibovitz taking pictures and everybody on my television screen doing their jobs with a straight face. People were actually taking this old fool seriously. For days following this coming-out party (if you will) women were falling all over themselves to welcome this old fool to the sisterhood of womanhood. Like the guy that refuses to extend the courtesy of putting the toilet seat down, Bruce with dick in hand says “Hey girls, I’m here!” He didn’t have the decency to have it removed before coming out.

Yet all across the country I keep hearing the equivalent of “You go girl!” That’s when I realized a few things about women.

One: they’ll go for anything if you can wrap it in enough sentiment.

Two: I have a better understanding why after forty years they’re still fighting the same fight and they’re earning $.77 on the dollar.

I asked my sixty-eight-year-old mother what she thought of Bruce Jenner and she immediately corrected me by saying, “You mean Caitlyn, don’t you?” So I asked her to do me a favor and go to Google on her iPhone 6 and look up “chicks with dicks”. Yes, I know this is my mom we’re talking about but I had to shock her into to seeing what I saw.

I must admit that when the Google page came up and she exclaimed “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! I had no idea that there was page after page of this stuff!” So I asked her: “With Google page after Google page, after Google page, why are women losing their minds over Bruce Jenner in particular?” I reminded her that, like the song, she had her share of “Enough is Enough” throughout both my life and hers — so why was she so willing to let this guy in without doing any work? Doesn’t she feel the least bit slighted?

“Yes,” was her reply, after a few moments’ thought. Look, like I said, I don’t have a problem with a guy who feels that he’s a woman and wants to be one, but If that’s the case then he should go ahead and have everything cut off. You know, go all the way. If you want to be a full woman, you shouldn’t be half steppin’.

30 Replies to “Rodney Writes: 77 Cents On The Dollar”

  1. kvndoom

    He missed out on childbirth, PMS, menopause and all that other fun stuff too.

    At 65 he’s probably not sucking many a dick either, but I could be wrong…! So really this is probably more for attention than anything else. Anything and everything related to the Kardashian family has to be taken as a publicity stunt.

    Reply
    • Disinterested-Observer

      Up to you, but I would be curious as to why this particular entry was the reason you left. Assuming you actually do. I called JB a “miserable piece of shit” for the love article but I didn’t say I was leaving.

      Reply
    • VolandoBajo

      So jz77817 you seem to prefer reading only blogs that mirror your point of view. On the other hand, I, and probably many more here, are willing to encounter opinions we don’t agree with, both to try to understand the rationale of those who hold differing opinions, and as a way to enable ourselves to engage in debate about controversial subjects.

      However strongly you feel about your opposition to the view expressed by Rodney, is it safe to assume that you just randomly happened by here, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or was it more that there are other ideas and opinions expressed here which you agreed with, but because you are opposed to one opinion, you are now willing to dismiss all other opinions and all other writers on this blog as being totally worthless, by virtue of their co-existence with Rodney’s stated position?

      For myself, if I only read things on sites that only wrote things that I didn’t find offensive, ever, I would have kept the same opinions I started out with years ago, instead of hearing an occasional convincing argument that caused me to either change my mind on a subject, or to become more supportive of something I may have been indifferent to previously.

      So for me, it is better to encounter something I don’t agree with, than it is to try to maintain some kind of intellectual purity by rejecting not only what I find offensive, but also anything discussed by anyone who associates with them.

      Of course you are free to do otherwise, but the price of your avoidance of being offended is to cede an entire intellectual space to that which you disagree with, in order to avoid having to deal with one or two offensive viewpoints.

      I’ll take the lively debates, myself, and am willing to stand the risk that someone might get me to change my position on certain topics.

      Even though you and I have disagreed on a couple of different points, I hope you will reconsider your position to completely disengage based on encountering something you dislike. After all, reading it and debating it are not the same as signing up for the local KKK chapter and sending money in for your magazine subscription and annual dues. So what is the perceived benefit of withdrawing from discourse, based solely on the existence of a viewpoint you disagree with?

      Reply
  2. Bill Malcolm

    Have an old university acquaintance who spent decades as a well-regarded engineer, then decided in his fifties to change to being a woman. His wife, mother to his three children, was to put it mildly, OUTRAGED. Betrayal was what she felt. Not happy from misplaced sentiment. A life he could no longer tolerate was his justification, and it overrode all else.

    That is the incredible mess and confusion such decisions make, with no easy answer or logical way out, and trying to tie it in to women’s continuing undercompensation, blah, blah, blah ignores the uniqueness of each situation.

    He recently got remarried to a man, and his ex-family did not attend the ceremony.

    I find the article’s premise specious in the extreme, and “their” is not a substitute for “they’re”. Jenner and all the other attention whores infesting our society does not a general case from a particular make.

    Reply
    • Jack Baruth

      That’s my fault on the they’re/their — Rodney does these on his cell phone and sends them to me via text. I try to regularize some of the syntax for “print”.

      Reply
  3. rambo furum

    Of course Bruce Jenner is an attention-whoring kook, and women are gullible fools. I generally would not encourage the mentally ill to permanently disfigure themselves via castration, but this case may be an exception.
    For best understanding of “transexuality” read http://pastebin.com/35ze3Agf

    Reply
  4. Duong Nguyen

    Why did Bruce Jenner compete in track and field? Because he was never a fan of “stick and ball” sports!

    Reply
  5. ItsMeMartin

    Rodney, you said: “I don’t have a problem with a guy who feels that he’s a woman and wants to be one”. I, on the other hand, have a problem with that. It is a problem if we are forced to disregard biological facts and logic to accomodate the wishes of a few misguided individuals who think that they have the power to determine their sex. Being a woman (because, even if we differentiate between sex and gender, transsexuals are unlikely to self-identify as “a male and a woman” or vice versa, I presume) is about something else than own preference; it’s about biological facts: females have a different set of chromosomes, a different bone structure etc. but their most important, defining feature from the biological perspective is their ability to bear children (bugs in the genetic code notwithstanding) – something no amount of sexual reassignment surgery and wishful thinking is able to overcome. For me, the whole transsexual thing is very simple: if scientists can determine the sex of a fossilized mammoth, they sure as hell can run some tests on a living human and determine his sex on a cellular level – and what they find I will consider binding, not the wishes of the person in question.
    We don’t have nearly enough medical skills to perform sexual reassignment that is more than skin deep; when we do, I will gladly concede my point and marvel at how far we’ve become.
    Jack, you have long criticized on these pages basing one’s beliefs on feelings rather than logic and reason. I think this transsexualism thing is the epitome of feelsville – a belief under which we are all to disregard basic scientific facts of human anatomy and accept that a person’s sex is determined only by the way he/she *feels* about it; a belief that posits that it is medically possible for humans to nullify and reverse the most profound difference that divides us into two groups, separate but equal; a belief that our characteristics, no matter how hard-wired into our bodies, can be shaped to our will only because it *feels* as if they should.
    By this post, I do not mean to vilify the transsexuals or disparage them. I simply completely disagree with them on one of the integral aspects of their self-identification. What I am trying to say is that their stance on what constitutes a male or a female should hold much less weight than it does now, as such things should be determined by science and not self-identification.
    In other words: live your life however you want to, Bruce, but I’m gonna call you “mister”.

    Reply
    • mgoblue

      There is a psychological and a physiological component to gender, sometimes they don’t match up…

      It has to be pretty stressful to feel like you are a woman but be stuck in a man’s body or vice versa.

      Reply
  6. don curton

    I liked it! Keep them coming from Rodney.

    For those that didn’t, go back and check his point #1 and then Google the video “it’s not about the nail”. I recently had one of those “it’s not about the nail” conversations and it fully explained to me why some people only make 0.77 cents for every dollar I make (although that statistic has been refuted many times). It’s definitely not politically correct but sometimes that’s life.

    Reply
  7. VolandoBajo

    Rodney, telling it like it is…

    If Bruce/Caitlyn is entitled to his/her opinion of his/her gender/sexuality, so is Rodney. He is not bound by law, convention, decency or anything else, to have to go along with the show.

    And for the most part, especially since Jenner is playing it for all the publicity, he/she should either do the whole deal, or stop pretending to be “a total woman” when in fact it is a case of, as Rodney notes “a chick with a dick”.

    And as to the 77 cents thing, that is true if and only if you ignore women taking time out of their careers, etc. When you compare people who worked for the same intervals, the earnings differential almost entirely disappears.

    Guess I had better start looking for those studies, as I am sure I will get blowback on this one. But those are the facts, most of the women who earn less for supposed comparable careers are actually women who took long stretches out of their careers, where the men they are compared to did not.

    Reply
  8. Rwb

    Biology is a messy thing, and I don’t know much of it, but so as far as I can tell there are at least a few legitimate physically very tangible intersex conditions. I went to Wikipedia for a reminder and there were more than I thought (my favorite is “ambiguous genitalia” which I’m very thankful not to have.) Sometimes it seems shit really does just go wrong in the sexual differentiation period, and I imagine it would make life a little harder than if you were born with a club hand, but a big hog and a good attitude. It’s not as though everyone is born with either a dick or a pussy, and Them’s the Facts. Shit gets weird sometimes.

    I would like to assume that the people who want to start living their lives as the opposite sex are actually in the boat of having some congenital problem which actually physically complicates their gender, to the point where there simply isn’t a clear answer to “Are you a boy or a girl?” But, I’m not sure what to think when there isn’t any apparent underlying physical problem. I guess it’s possible that there were some odd hormone levels which expressed themselves in the brain during differentiation with no external clues, but I know nothing.

    What I’m more confused by than anything else is why this exploded like it has. Yes, everyone should be treated fairly unless they’re an asshole, even if they have ambiguous genitalia, but if there are actually more physically intersex people being born today, isn’t that a problem? And if that’s not the case, does anyone really think you can teach people who reduce this to “guys cutting off their dicks” the idea of nuance?

    Reply
    • Jack Baruth

      Various hormonal issues in the water aside, I don’t think more intersex children are being born now. Most of this media push is fundamentally about undermining traditional gender roles. What good is supposed to come from that — well, I’m a bit hazy on that part. But I’m also old and cranky.

      Reply
      • rwb

        But is it a conspiracy?

        Pretty much every media outlet has now seen how irresistible the identity-politicking human-interest stories are, so I guess it figures there’ll be more and more of it until people stop clicking. But why? Is it shock value? Is it common enough that it stays relevant because people relate to it? Both?

        (Reading that back it sounds like I might be complaining, so I should say I’m not knocking this article or Rodney. Getting one’s mother to Google chicks with dicks when they get sentimental about Jenner is an advanced move.)

        I feel like not long ago, subverting traditional gender roles meant encouraging girls to get into engineering and science fields &c. That was great. Now “gender-fluid” is a real term people use and I’m totally lost. I wonder about acceptance vs. normalization and have to assume there’s some line somewhere where people will find some things too far from tradition to become normal. I don’t believe in the slippery slope, where bestiality, pedophilia, and whatever else are next on the docket now that we’re cool with gay people, but long term, I think popular opinion will refine itself to find new moral demarcations as demographics change, particularly if popular media stays focused where it is. Luckily, identity politics will eat itself as long as it convinces people they should identify themselves primarily by their differences, which is exhausting.

        Reply
      • mgoblue

        Or is our society fundamentally becoming more and more open, and more accepting of people as they are — and people are more comfortable expressing themselves as they feel they are. IMO if that is what comes from some vast media conspiracy to undermine traditional gender roles…its a good thing…isn’t that what we’re supposed to learn in junior high civics class — that America is a place where personal expression is sacred, and the liberty to do so is a fundamental right — and that we should be open, and if not accepting at least tolerant?

        Reply
        • rwb

          Acceptance and personal expression are indeed important parts of a free society. No one will dispute that. Neither of those preclude the discussion of moral boundaries regarding base instincts and human compulsion.

          Reply
        • Jack Baruth

          Definitely a chicken-and-egg situation there. The same is true for kids “coming out” in grade school. How much of that is real and how much of it is a reaction to new social pressures?

          Reply
          • VolandoBajo

            One of the more egregious examples of social pressure and indoctrination is the following, found online as one of the questionnaires put to HS age children.

            “Have you ever considered that heterosexuality might just be a phase you are passing throught?”

            And the follow-up was something like “How will you know? What could you do to find out?”.

            The only thing missing was the URL for the FB page for NAMBLA, in my opinion.

            That is nothing short of trying to convince young people that they might be gay and they don’t know it, so why not come on over and check it out.

            If people want to propagandize adults like that, well, it is supposed to be a free country. But when you are subtly trying to talk people who are under age into doing things that you could go to prison for if you applied those same pressures in person, it has gone too far.

            Though I suppose that is the reason that there are those who are pushing to lower the age of consent for having sex with adults down to sixteen, or even fourteen or twelve.

            Get them while they are vulnerable, and maybe you can convince them that they aren’t what they think they are, or want to be.

            Fortunately, most of the things that are that blatant tend to be isolated incidents at this time, but nevertheless, they are done and they are done with impunity.

            Though I did find out recently that one case I heard of first hand, of young children being told that they all, boys as well as girls, should dress as women to celebrate women, was not as universal as I had thought.

            Turns out that one was a case of a Jr. HS teacher showing too much initiative, and the idea was dropped after parental backlash. Still, I can feel for young boys of around twelve to fourteen being told that they needed to wear a dress to school for a class assignment.

            At that age, it was almost guaranteed to cause emotional stress and anguish. I was relieved to find out that it was an isolated incident, but still, on the other hand, it occurred in a township within ten miles or so of where our son was raised.

            My attitude is that when you are an adult, you can do whatever you want with another adult, and you don’t need my approval or anyone else’s. But when you start trying to indoctrinate children and young people (in case you think the former excludes some of the latter), trying to convince them that they not only have to be tolerant of people who choose less popular sexual orientation, but that they also have to carefully consider whether or not they want to “change teams” and come over to the minority position, you are just trying to take advantage of the insecurities and uncertainties of youth, in order to push your agenda.

            Push it all you want on adults, but don’t go around trying to push such ideas on young people whose ideas and personalities are not yet fully formed. Yet this belief seems to put me in the position of being opposed to “social progress”, according to much of modern so-called wisdom. But I still say that it is right that children should not be pressed into accepting anything other than the right of adults to live as they see fit, as long as it doesn’t oppress anyone else. Anything else is nothing more than the kind of propaganda advocated by totalitarian governments, that seek to shape the minds and beliefs of young people to their own agendas. Yet we are told that doing so is what is right in order to train our young people to not only accept, but embrace, different attitudes.

            This hasn’t become the law of the land yet, but in Canada, while it is ok to advocate homosexuality to children, it is an offense punishable by a jail term for a preacher to point out what the Bible says about homosexuality. In other words, open acceptance of diversity is fine, as long as you are willing to go along with other people’s viewpoints. When you oppose them, even out of conscience, then you are supposedly violating the rights of others, just by acknowledging that you don’t agree with their actions.

            It may not be that far from becoming the law of this land, either, when one social agenda is exalted above others, and others are told to get in line or shut up.

            But yes, indoctrination of our children, while not totally ensconced in our schools nation-wide, is creeping in here and there, like a camel’s nose under the tent. And once the nose is under the tent, it never remains content to remain at the edge of the tent…it seeks to upend it completely. This is where our country is headed, if we continue to grant privileged status to certain viewpoints and agendas. Call it extremism, but look at what is being done in schools today that would have been unheard of twenty years ago, and then try to tell me I am being alarmist.

            But, of course, I am being prejudiced because I do not accept such an agenda being advanced in places where our children are supposed to go to learn, not go to be told how to think.

  9. VolandoBajo

    I personally whole heartedly support Cameron, who is a sincere and talented person. I have no problem accepting her as a person who offers ideas and information that is both informative and entertaining.

    As a single example, I don’t spend hardly any time at all viewing comic book type creations, yet I found her explanation of the origin of her avatar to be a source of real, and new to me, entertainment.

    On the other hand, I find Bruce/Caitlyn to be an attention-whoring pathetic old man trying to recapture whatever attractiveness he may have once had for others, by switching over to the other team, where apparently he presumed that she would be more fetching.

    So not everyone who is put off by, or attacks the motives and/or actions, of Caitlyn Jenner (née Bruce Jenner) does so out of hatred for those who choose to switch. Rather, in the case of the great media hype of Caitlyn 2015, it is the packaging and the shameless promotion of the event that I find offensive.

    I can’t speak for others, and I cannot imagine myself ever signing up two switch leagues, but if I were to be one of those who had relatively quietly and unobtrusively made a switch I felt was right for me, but did so without a media circus being built up around me, I would be offended by the way Caitlyn, out of all the people who have done something similar, was singled out for publicity, and praised for courage, as if she had singlehandedly blown up an ISIS stronghold, or something similar.

    As a general rule, and not just in the case of transgender decisions, I tend to treat people with whatever respect or disrespect that I find that they are treating me, and others. And Ms. Jenner is just playing us all as fools to be herded into a mass of worshippers of her allegedly bold move. Sorry, Caitlyn, many others have been there and done that before you, and didn’t need a Vanity Fair cover to be who they felt that they were.

    Although in my experience what is often called the gay lifestyle is much more often a sad lifestyle, I have only respect for those who walk that path with the real courage of knowing that the world will not rush to accept them.

    I find all media circuses offensive, especially when they are brought to town in an effort to teach the masses how they are supposed to think.

    Cameron, I hope I haven’t offended you by using you as a counter-example to Caitlyn. But I did so after carefully considering that you have not hidden your reality from the B&B here and on TTAC, and because you are the best example I can think of, of the difference between the current social issue of transgender, and the media circus that is everything Kardashian, up to and including Bruce.

    Just the fact that someone like Jack, whose opinions and experience I greatly respect, spoke so highly of you, is sufficient reason for me to feel secure in stating that you are a good example of how to take that journey as a way of personal truth, rather than as a way to try to carve out more than one’s fifteen minutes of fame.

    And if you are reading this, please let us know where I can find more of your writing. I saw that you re-appeared briefly on TTAC and then seemed to go to ground again. I am sure I am not the only one here who would like to see more of your work, more often.

    In fact, if I knew enough to write an open source browser addon that would substitute a piece of your work in place of every mention of you-know-who, sort of like an ad-blocker, I would probably get my fifteen minutes of fame out of that. Oh, if I could only find a way to do that, so as to never again have to watch the circus parade across my screen.

    And for those of you who still think Caitlyn is all that, and some french fries too, well, you can have my portion. I have already had too much of that dish.

    And Cameron, please show us how we can make you reappear some more, as what you are, a talented and witty person, truly deserving of respect.

    And all of you who think any anti-Bruce diatribe is a homophobic, anti-transgender rant, as we used to say when I was a kid “put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

    Reply
  10. Paul Alexander

    I’d be pissed if I was a woman! Wait, I mean I think I’d be pissed if I was a woman. Because how does a physical being with a penis have any clue what it means to be a woman? Wearing make up, a dress and conforming to other female societal norms makes you a woman as much as a spoiler on a minivan makes it a race car. It doesn’t matter how sincere they think they feel like a woman, they feel something, but it isn’t like a woman. Because they aren’t a woman. So they can’t feel like a woman. How are feminists not upset by this? Do these newly minted ‘women’ get a say on feminist issues? These dudes that dabble in the fun part but get to avoid what it means to actually be a woman? (Caitlyn, by the way, should probably be a bit more demure in her dress considering she’s a post-menopausal woman.)

    I always thought the difference between a man and a woman were pretty black and white, save for the few born undetermined: women have the parts to make babies, men don’t. Are we going to start bending ‘science’ to fit our new social norms? The more secular we seem to get, the more religious we are becoming in practice.

    Please leave the kids alone! How the hell would a 12 year old have any idea if they’re attracted to the same sex? They’re not even fully sexually developed.

    At the same time, I hope there’s a course correction to something less drastic than this seeming social engineering because I do believe no one should ever be physically or verbally abused, no one should have to through life with fear and people should be able to live however they want and there has been major progress on that front that is wonderful over the last 30 years. I personally feel more free to be the eccentric weirdo I am all because of the brave men and women that endured violence and verbal abuse merely for living according to their feelings!

    That doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to allow some people to define a cat as a dog or a stop sign as green light because it makes them feel more comfortable.

    Reply
  11. -Nate

    *MUCH* later :

    Since this article was published two of my friends children have changed their sexual identity .

    One was a young lady who I’m pretty sure decided this on her own, he’s still a nice kid so I support him .

    The other seems like his parents more or less pushed them into it and that child is unhappier than they were before the change .

    Failure to be open to different ideas is where tyranny gets it’s initial foothold .

    -Nate

    Reply

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