Male circumcision is genital mutilation: the sharp unconcerned gender disparity as written by news media language

Frogtown, USA–I never really thought about the topic of circumcision much, especially in relation to change or making change within–I think my fate is sealed, was sealed before my brain could function enough to say perhaps “no, sounds painful”.

Maybe once in high school though I thought about it being a private matter.  The idea of male circumcision and what it meant.  I still don’t understand much about it, however many males in America are circumcised.  I think the act could be because of religion or because of hygiene, it could be.

You see, I won’t research that.  I don’t care if it is because of “religion” or “hygiene”, they why doesn’t matter.

The matter at hand is that male “genital mutilations” or “circumcisions” happen and there are limited media reports of them in comparison to female “genital mutilation” stories.  I find it odd that a prevalent practice performed on one gender (male) is considered normal while a similar practice performed on another gender (female) is considered a news worthy, and possible criminal charge.  And, as a self-identified male, I find this a bit unfair.  (But that doesn’t fit into the Narrative.) 

I do not believe female “genital mutilation” or “circumcisions” should make the news if, at the same time, a majority of male “genital mutilations” or “circumcisions” do not make the news in an equal capacity.

And yet, why is there little concern that “most adult men are circumcised“.  Does this not concern the media or the activists that wish to protect human rights.  Also, why is male “circumcision” not considered ubiquitously as male “genital mutilation”?

Recent news stories focused on female “genital mutilation” prompted me to delve back into the topic of “circumcision” in males, that, and the experience of having a baby boy.

As a parent I have to decided the fate of my child’s physical dimensions.  There is no cry from protesters or the pundits when it comes to this private and personal decision at the hospital, not view as damage or irreversible harm but rather as an “option” to think about before birth.

So, think about this, as from above most American males are “circumcised”, or have experience “genital mutilation”.  In recent years, however, male circumcisions in America are on the decline.  Why is this?  Perhaps because male circumcision is actually male “genital mutilation”, period, and the mainstream media doesn’t care.

They play with terminology when it works with their ideology, but cutting flesh from one person is the same as cutting from another, no matter race, creed, or gender.  

In conclusion, the decision to “circumcise” or to “mutilate” not is a highly personal decision, and a final one.  Accordingly, I believe that not only do we need to reconsider how we change our bodies but how we change the bodies of the future.

Moreover, I believe we need to understand and keep meanings and definitions in relation to words and genders equal, especially within news media language and context; we observe male “circumcisions” or  “mutilations” as somehow not as equally alarming as female genital mutilation.  Perhaps the lack of concern shown to one gender over another by mainstream news is the actual shocking news story that everyone wants but no one wants to hear.

As a self-identified male, I haven’t heard of any bills being made to save our (fore)skins, pun intended, in relation to “circumcisions” or actual male “genital mutilation”.  Alike, I think all “genital mutilation”, in relation to all genders, is mutilation, destruction, and potentially a crime which disfigures the human body.  Reconsider this when the idea arises in local reports or national breaking news.  

Language is the key to this matter.  You call something “circumcision” and then you call something “genital mutilation”, on the grounds of gender, and you assume a bias in the language you use to describe an action.  Which is which?

That is the crux of this biscuit, the matter at hand.  If we use the somewhat necessary innocuous and accepted language to describe an horrendous act, is that act then acceptable, and should that act be called something different depending on who it is done to?  Because that happens now, today, on the topic put forth above.

***

I am no advocate, activist, or professional on the topic “genital mutilation”.  I am merely stating concern over the potential bias within the media coverage of one agenda over another, one gender over another, through language and terminology.

These are my views.  I am open to free discussion and open dialogue on the topic of circumcision/genital mutilation, please comment as necessary.  Thank you for reading.  No hate please, I try to stay positive.

 

 

Turn off, tune out: how the media creates the problems their pharmaceutical commercials claim they can cure, just ask your doctor

I had’t thought about it much until my phone broke. Bullshit black-screen of death… I had no phone, I had nothing… Or so I thought, well, most would think this. I might have been wrong. It was great. And getting my phone back a week or so ago makes me want that no-phone situation back again.

The reason for that is the news, the constant reaching in my pocket to find my screen. Inevitably, now, I will be on my phone, pull something up, google search something and see hatred disguised as necessary, as justice. I will scan a newspaper website and I will find something like hate-ads that ask me to find these people and hate them too, ironically for hating.

The concept of turn off, tune out–or whatever catchphrase it was is nothing new. (I am sure I want to get away like everyone else. They could actually fake me in videos now.) In fact, it’s probably very old. It doesn’t matter. But try it. Shut the phone off. Just the phone. Watch a movie and take a walk. Maybe shut the television off too.

We could scroll Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram for hours but we still find ourselves in the same place: sitting between up and down, looking for what’s next, constantly moving towards the end–if that is even possible. I don’t know. I think of how stupid it must feel to craft a post that would appease everyone that is in my friend group and those who are in my friend group who I don’t give a shit about… I wonder… Does this jive with my ideology? Or is it fake?

And the conclusion hit me today. I walked into a dark office in the afternoon and ran into someone who couldn’t believe the world news and how everything was internal struggle and meltdown, go figure. It was too much. The whole world was ending certainly.

Ah… but not here I thought. The world in this quiet dark office was very pleasant, nothing to bother anyone. Even the lights weren’t offensive and people weren’t playing music outside. It was fine. I told my friend I laughed at the nightly news; every new day was a new catastrophic drama-fest meltdown stoked by advertisements and distractionism. Something unreal.

And I calmed. Maybe I should add turn off the local news to the list. They are sponsored by something as well. There are hosts that will never get fired because of what they say they are, honest. There are stories that will never get covered because of what others say they are, different. And we can agree. Still, there is that button you can touch. Turn it off and take a much needed breath of air and just think for once.

Protesters shut down Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges’ press conference, demanding new leadership now, continued unrest

In an odd turn of events, the protesters attempted to oust Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges calling for her and her entire staff to resign.

This action come in lieu of the recent tragic shooting of Justine Damond, chief of police Harteau was asked to resign yesterday in relation to this event.

At the press conference, a group of protesters from a Justine rally appear to take over the meeting and demand that Hodges also resign.

Hodges made no remarks to signify if she were or were not to resign, simply leaving the conference abruptly.

Wreckage of Doomed Nantucket Whaling Ship Pequod Discovered in Pacific Ocean, Likely Destroyed by Moby Dick–Russian hackers to blame

Actual photo of the infamous Nantucket Whaler, The Pequod in her final resting place. -Google

The infamous long-lost Nantucket whaler, The Pequod, has been found in less than pristine condition at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Papua New Guinea,  just below the equator, researchers have said, in a discovery that challenges the accepted history behind one of whaling’s deepest and most revered mysteries.

 

The Pequod was destroyed in heavy seas in an epic historical battle with the tenacious and malevolent white whale, Moby Dick, in the 1850s, during Captain Ahab’s much storied doomed attempt to pay vengeance on the while for taking his leg.

 

All men on Ahab’s fateful expedition, except for Ishmael–by way of, ironically, a coffin, perished, in the worst disaster to hit Nantucket in its long history of whaling. Search parties continued to look for the ship for 11 years after it disappeared, but found no trace, except for Ishmael, and the fate of the missing men remained an enigma that tantalised generations of historians, archaeologists and adventurers for years to come.

 

Now that enigma appears to have been solved by a combination of intrepid exploration, literary sleuths – and an improbable tip from Team Zissou.  

Team Zissou -Photo from Google

 

On Sunday, a team from the charitable Hennessey Research Foundation manoeuvred a small, remotely operated submarine from a dinghy through an open hatch and into the ship’s lumber to capture stunning images that give insight into life aboard the vessel close to 170 years ago.  “We found the food storage room with plates and one can on the shelves stove in.”

 

Alistair Hennessey Pacific Research Foundation

“We have successfully entered the captain’s quarters, we presume, worked our way into a few cabins, potentially, and found the spermaceti storage room with barrels and harpoons asunder,” Adrian S’moreschnapps, the foundation’s operations director, told the reporters by email from the research vessel Martin Bergmann.

 

“We spotted harpoons, a gold doubloon nailed to one of the ship’s masts, mixed with tables and empty shelving. We found a deck with curious peg holes and instruments for the purpose of whaling.”

Not a picture of the Titanic, but a picture of The Pequod resting at the bottom of the ocean. -Photo from Google

 

The destroyed wreckage matches that of The Pequod in several key aspects, however it lies 60 miles (96km) south of where experts have long believed the ship was catastrophically done in by the hatefully-maligned white whale, and this discovery may force historians to rewrite a chapter in the history of whaling.

 

The 20-member Mountain Man crew found the absolutely obliterated shipwreck, with her three masts broken but still standing, one with a gold doubloon nailed to it, almost all hatches destroyed and everything stowed, in the middle of a vast underwater crag in the Pacific on 3 September.

 

After discovering little in an early morning search, the research vessel was leaving the bay when a grainy digital silhouette emerged from the depths on the sounder display on the bridge of the Bergmann.

 

“Most on board were up in the wheelhouse by that point in disbelief, obviously,” said Michael James Bond, 27, who was at the helm when the research vessel steamed straight over the sunken wreck.

 

Since, then, the discovery team has spent more than 5 weeks quietly gathering images of the vessel, re-reading Moby-Dick, and comparing the facts with the Pequod’s 17th century builders’ plans, descriptions, and peculiarities which match key elements of the sunken vessel.

 

At first, The Pequod seemed to be listing at about 45 degrees to starboard on the seabed. But on the third dive with a remotely operated submarine from a dinghy, “we noticed the wreck is sitting exploded to splinters on the ocean floor listed in a pile – which means the boat sank by being eviscerated by a spiteful white whale with a vendetta,” S’moreschnapps said Monday.

 

Approximately 200 metres (656.168ft) down, the wreck is in a horribly dismal condition, with American wood lumber that reinforced the hull against ocean currents clearly annihilated, visible amid swaying kelp, sharks, and giant squid.  

 

A long, heavy hemp rope line running through a hole in the ship’s deck suggests an anchor line definitely had not been deployed before the Pequod violently went down.  Which makes this event believable.

 

If fact, that sets up the tantalising possibility that Nantucket whalers sank with the vessel in an all-out impossible final battle with the notorious white whale, leaving only Ishmael to float to safety in a coffin on the vast Pacific.  

 

One crucial detail in the identification of the ship is it’s smashed in hull, damage sustained only by being smited in by a white sperm whale.  

 

“This is in the precise location where barrels stored oil in the Pequod’s belly to finance the ship’s whaling voyage, to fuel candlelight, and to squeeze coagulated spermaceti, through whaling perils and successes,” said S’moreschnapps in a phone interview.

 

The ship’s wood lies on the ocean floor, close to where the whaler on watch would have swung the clapper to mark time, and yell “There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”

 

“The wreck is clearly in disrepair, the glass panes are blown out in three of four tall windows in the stern cabin where the ship’s commander, Captain Ahab, schemed and plotted his redeeming final battle,” S’moreschnapps added.

 

“She [The Pequod] looks like it was buttoned down tight for winter’s night and sank, after falling off mount Everest and then being hit by twenty trains,”– he then quickly added. “Everything was shut and decimated. Even the windows defenestrated by wood shards. If you could lift this boat out of the water, and pump the water out, it would definitely not float.”

 

Adrian S’moreschnapps, Pacific Research Foundation

The Pacific Research Foundation was set up by Jim Belushi and Alistair Hennessey, a naval tech tycoon and socialite philanthropist, who co-founded Research in the Ocean, creator of the loveable Furbies.

 

Belushi, who also played a key role in planning the expedition, proposed a theory to explain why it seems The Pequod sank far south of where they believed.

 

“This discovery changes history,” he told the Guardian. “Given the location of the find [in James Bond Bay] and the state of the wreck, it’s almost certain that The Pequod was not operationally closed down by the remaining crew who then did not re-boarded another vessel and sail south to safety where they would not have met their ultimate tragic fate.”

 

The 21st-century search for Ahab’s expedition was launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of a broader plan to assert Russian sovereignty in the Pacific and promote development of its non-renewable resources – including vast reserves of sperm whale oil, ambergris harvests, and coral reef mines, which will be easier to exploit as the Pacific warms and sea ice disappears, naturally, this is attributed factually to global warming.  

 

Putin’s underwater archeologists have led the mission since it began in 2008. Now they must confirm the wreck is The Pequod, either by examining the foundation’s images or visiting the site themselves. With the first winter snow already falling in the South Pacific, James Bond Bay will soon be encased in thick sea ice.

 

***

 

The Dramatic Sinking of The Pequod:  

Artists accurate depiction of the sinking of The Pequod

“Only Ishmael [was] unable to return to the boat. He [was] left behind in the sea, and so [was] the only crewman of The Pequod to survive [its] final encounter. The whale [then] fatally attack[ed] the Pequod. Ahab [realizing] that the destroyed ship [was] the hearse made of American wood in Fedallah’s prophesy.

 

The whale (Moby Dick) return[ed] to Ahab, who stab[bed] at him again. The line loop[ed] around Ahab’s neck, and as the stricken whale sw[am] away, the captain [was] drawn with him out of sight.

Queequeg’s coffin c[a]me to the surface, the only thing to escape the vortex when Pequod sank. For an entire day, Ishmael float[ed] on it, and then the Rachel, still looking for its lost seamen, rescue[d] him.” -Wikipedia’s actual account of the last known sighting of the Pequod.

 

The latest discovery was made two years and a day after Canadian marine archeologists found the wreck of Erebus in the same area of eastern of the South Pacific where Inuit oral history had long said a large wooden ship sank.

 

The same stories described startled Inuit stumbling upon a large dead man in a dark room on a different vessel, with a big smile. Experts have suggested that may have been a rictus smile, or evidence that the man had suffered from scurvy.

 

Putin’s Russian archeologists found The Pequod standing in just 11 meters of ocean. Sea ice had taken a large bite out her stern, and more than a century of storm-driven waves had not scattered a trove of artifacts around the site.

 

So far, archaeologists have brought up nothing from Ahab’s flagship.

 

Inuit knowledge was also central to finding the James Bond Bay wreck, but in a more mysterious way. Crewman David Lee Roth, 49, of Gjoa Haven, had been on the Bergmann for only a day when, chatting with fon the bridge, he told a bizarre story.

 

About six years ago, Roth said, he and a hunting buddy were headed on snowmobiles to fish in a lake when they spotted a large piece of wood, near scrimshaw, which looked like a mast, sticking out of the sea ice covering James Bond Bay.

 

In a phone interview, Roth said he stopped that day to get a few snapshots of himself hugging the wooden object, only to discover when he got home that the camera had fallen out his pocket along with his selfie stick.

 

Roth resolved to keep the encounter secret, fearing the missing camera was an omen of bad spirits, which generations of Inuit have believed began to wander James Bond Bay after Ahab and his men perished.

 

When S’moreschnapps heard Roth’s story, he didn’t dismiss it, as Inuit testimony has been so often during the long search for Ahab’s ship.

 

Instead, the Team Zissou crew agreed to make a detour for James Bond Bay on their way to join the main search group aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Royal Canadian Navy’s HMCS Shawinigan, at the north end of Victoria Strait.

That is where the only known record of The Pequod’s journey coordinates pointed for what experts now call the point of abandonment.

 

An indecipherable scrawled note dated sometime around that time, and concealed in a stone cairn at a secret point on northern James Bond Bay, said The Pequod had been obliterated three days earlier, smited by a hateful white whale.

 

Starbuck was in command of “the officers and crews, consisting of 105 souls”, because Ahab had gone to chase Moby Dick the note continued, “and now our captain has lead us to our demise, ignoring all foreshadowing and ominous tell… ”.

 

Stubb and First Mate Starbuck signed the note, which had what seemed a hurried postscript, scrawled upside down in the top right corner: “Listen here, ye men, we are going to die, maties!!!  The very end is nigh, in three horrible parts, Old Thunder has done us in, old boys, stove us with the mighty DICK… we drown now and go, no, no, no…  AHHHHH!!!!”.

 

Survivors apparently hoped to float to the river – now known as Henry David river – south to safety at a Jack Sparrow Bay Company fur trading outpost.

 

All perished, except the narrator, and for generations, the accepted historical narrative has described a brutal death march as the Nantucket whalers  tried to walk out of the South Pacific, dying along the way.

 

Now Moby Dick experts will have to debate whether at least some of the dying sailors instead mustered incredible strength, fighting off hunger, disease, frostbite, and a giant loathsome white whale, in a desperate attempt to sail home.

***

Mimic article from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wreck-found-arctic-nearly-170-years-northwest-passage-attempt

An opinion of the 2017 housing market from a millennial who has gone through the home buying process (to a point)

“Realtor Nene Matey-Keke of RNR Realty leaves a home after a showing in St. Paul on June 7, 2017. Tom Baker for MPR News” – Image from MPR

Disclaimer: This may seem as a lot of fluffy prose and metaphorical goo-goo, but I have no other way of free-playing this into reader’s minds as I wish to. This is not objective science but subjective thought from my experience. Please read this for what it is, an opinion about something I have limited understanding of.

***

Frogtown, USA–The housing market to me is paper thin, ask any realtor what they think about the market and they will say it’s great, it’s a seller’s market. But look beyond that.

MPR and other media cover obvious: the market is booming, it is also hard for Millennials to buy, and to no end. What they forget to mention is the other side. One-sided arguments: this is hard, nothing is changing.

Though, think of that change. The other side of the coin is the market crashing. Ask an honest person, my neighbor, who is a realtor, and she will tell you to save no wand in 5-7 years the market will crash.

As a novice of day-trading and stock market and any financial market in America, in relation to the housing market, I understand there is a pattern: things change.

The housing market is hot now, you can sell anything for far more than it is worth. Many people are flipping and buying flipped homes. Great for them, but this is a fad as everything else. It will eventually fade.

Instead of getting sucked in by low interest rates and ease of attaining a mortgage and buying because everyone else is, think. Because everyone else is and it is trendy now, should you do it?

I use the jump off of a bridge analogy. No, I wouldn’t. Though I almost bought a house with my wife. We realized it’s hard work. I do not envy the fixer-uppers.

Take a walk down the street, everyone is selling. But why? Because people will buy anything they think they need. Now you think you need a home. Something way more expensive than you thought it would be–and it is.

And for why? Yeah, you own it. It may appreciate. It may gain value. But at that price if it doesn’t work out and you lose your job it maybe get bad. That is why. I say wait it out, and others have said this too.

Watch the market collapse. Listen as everyone tells you it won’t. Or they cringe at the thought. Like the stock market, or any capitalistic market it is fragile, fragile yet resilient. It comes and goes.

It will come and go, don’t miss it. But don’t get caught up in the hype, the media juicing it because of sponsors. Listen to the radio. “We buy any house and sell it”, why? Because that is there job.

Realtors and lenders describe the market is ways that keeps them in business. That is why I say the market is paper thin, because it is as thin as the money you don’t have to buy it. I have heard get on the train before it leaves the station in reference to buying a home.

But what if that train is going somewhere I don’t want to be. What if it is a doomed train. I want to read more articles on how the market actually is not what people think of the market, ironically.

I want both sides of the story. I won’t read half of a book if the book isn’t finished, nor will I watch half of a movie. Pundits and those whose skin is at risk tell how it is, but where is the science. Every mountain has a peak and a base.

Look and you may see the man behind the curtain, look at you may see it for what it is. A show that is a market that makes those is the “know” a lot of money. The benefit is to make is seem as though it is a certain way when it is not.

***
Again: This may seem as a lot of fluffy prose and metaphorical goo, but I have no other way of free-playing this into reader’s minds as I wish to. This is not objective science but subjective thought from experience. Please read this for what it is, an opinion I have a limited understanding of.

FACT CHECK: Trump-Putin handshake proves undeniable evidence of G-20 Summit meeting the media explains, and shocking leaked video of secret handshake reveals so much more, ERMERGERD!

“President Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit Friday in Hamburg, Germany. Evan Vucci | AP” – MPR

Frogtown, USA–In completely obvious proof of being best friends previous to their first-ever meeting, President Trump and true BFF, and closet RNC campaign manager, Vladimir Putin shook hands as the entire world of news media watched obsessively and told you what they thought about it through unbiased objective interpretation not related to their paid sponsors.

The G20 Summit, located in some other country in another part of the world, an important event which no one knows anything about at all, was entirely overshadowed Friday by the first-time in history meeting of long-time extremely close inseparable boyhood friends, Donald and Putin.

A brief handshake and the vivid and graphic secret leaked footage of that handshake leaked on an FBI memo pad by an unnamed high-level from some University lawyer source revealed a lot more, through our unique and special unadulterated interpretation, than most average citizens would gather from reading objective observations, if ever written.

In what is said to be the handshake that caused a redoubling rupture in the center of the earth and massive schism in the minds of intellectuals for democratic justice, the Trump-Putin handshake went down in modern history as the most covered handshake of all-time, maybe until next week. Leaked Video evidence of Russian Election Interference

This integral and intimate handshake was so important numerous news outlets covered it with their own special interpretation of its absolute and exact meaning so readers brains could understand better and handle its true meaning without question, here are just a few interpretations that might fit your ideology: MPR,  CNN, RT, Snopes, Washington Post, Wikipedia, etc.

Handshakes like these will forever change the way we view the world through photography of such events, specifically through handshakes, and how the media interprets this standard rite of general introductions, especially with those who win elections together and those who just meet for the first time during everyday life.

In a world where people have two hands and one very small brain, or even just one very small hand–you have to hand it to them–it is incredibly important to remember the importance and deep meaning and objective interpretation of a handshake, an act with roots and ties to anything and everything through media persuasion.

Manspreading caused by male organ placement science reveals, new study of anatomy exposes the goods

Full spread on a subway

Frogtown, USA–In an unbelievable turn of events, new revelations about the once thought to be loathsome male act of “manspreading” has been revealed, science has unsheathed the exact cause stemming from males having an external reproductive organ between their legs due to anatomy.

In recent years, the gaping phenomenon of the “manspread” has been spotted all over the world and called out and disparaged on transit lines and in metro buses ubiquitously, seen as an unforgivable negative offense of the male persuasion. Now what seems to be a completely obvious reason for spreading one’s legs has been put forth to the masses, suggesting the opposite.

Two days ago, in a secret laboratory at Area 51, which only creates scientific laws, hot air balloons, cowardly lions, and never-fails, the act of “manspreading” has been proven to be brought on by an excruciating condition linked to the male anatomy’s mass in relation to thighs proximity rather than by individual preference to take up an entire row of seats, unnamed official sources close to the secret undisclosed laboratory have said.

“We are one hundred percent certain that the reliable scientists at Area 51, researching this matter have said that one hundred percent of the males who manspread have genitals between their legs which cause an uncomfortable feeling while sitting in a constricted manner on transit, causing kinetic spreadage.” One anonymous dependable source expressed. 

After a day of rigorous studies and headscratching, this amazing conclusion was absolutely found to be conclusive–and now, soon to be made into scientific law in the United States.  This research is a prime example of the power of modern science, specifically related to human anatomy. And it shows how more studies could challenge the way societey views actions deemed as negative habits.