Blackmoor Vituperative

[sīəns fikSHən]
noun

“Science fiction” is that subset of fantasy that uses the vocabulary of science to lend verisimilitude to the story.

First known use: 1925

I’ve seen a lot of good arguments against oppressing women — and a lot of hypocritical and/or morally bankrupt arguments for it.

I’d not seen this take on it before. The place I found it had it as an image, so I have transcribed it here.

If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully-grown person, it would be illegal to force me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this… cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon.

Like, we can’t even take life saving organs from corpses unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy.

To tell people that they must sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what you view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the vast majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died.

You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies.

(copied from a user called fandomsandfeminism)

Naturally, when I was looking for the original source for this (which I didn’t find), I found some hypocritical and/or morally bankrupt responses to it.

But here’s the thing: if your first reaction, on reading this, is to try and find some ethical loophole that will allow you to continue to oppress and enslave women while the tattered scraps of your conscience maintain plausible deniability, you are a terrible person. Take a long look in the mirror, and ask yourself how you became this shallow mockery of a human being.

I made some notes during “Avengers Endgame” (2019). Sadly, the condensation from my icewater rendered my nearly incomprehensible handwriting completely incomprehensible.

But I’ll try to decipher it. There are, as you might reasonably expect, “spoilers” below. (If you care about that. Personally, I think the movie is entirely predictable and that “spoilers” don’t apply. But you do you.)

• 20 minutes – Get on with it
• 40 minutes – Finally, some action… briefly
• 75 minutes – Thor is … The Dude
• 80 minutes – Is the movie going to start, finally?
• 105 minutes – Nebula is hard core
• 115 minutes – I know what this reminds me of: the extended edition of “Lord Of The Rings”, where they included all of the extra scenes which were interesting in a “DVD extras” kind of way, but which weren’t included in the theatrical release because they would have slowed it down and had people checking the time. All of these “Ant Man irons his pants” type scenes would be great in an extended director’s cut, to watch after one has seen the two-hour theatrical release. On the other hand, one of these scenes made me tear up a little bit. (I do not remember which one.)
• 150 minutes – Blah blah blah. Thanos loves to hear himself talk. Why does every wanna-be mass-murdering fanatic want to bore people to death listening to his manifesto?
• 170 – Can’t make it to the funeral on the day your dear friend is being interred? No problem! It’s a green screen funeral!

Final thoughts…

I thought it was an okay movie. It was entirely what I expected, which is what it is. It was a little more predictable than most of the movies that led up to it, but that’s a given, really. I mean, did anyone not say to themselves, “This is where Captain Marvel shows up,” about thirty seconds before everyone looks up and notices the big space ship isn’t shooting at them anymore? But you can’t really blame the movie for that. They set up the story arc and the characters in the previous few movies, and at this point it’s just dominos falling. But aside from all that, I enjoyed it, once it got going (which was a little over an hour after it started).

However, I do have some problems with the plot. As I have mentioned before, Thanos’ plan to cut the universe’s population would put us back to 1971 population levels. Not even 50 years. Whoop-de-doo (in the big scheme of things). On the other hand, what do you suppose would happen if the Earth’s population were to double suddenly? Like say, five years after everyone has adapted to those people being gone? All of the jobs have been filled or eliminated. Food supplies have been reduced to what’s needed. People who lost loved ones have mourned and moved on, and in many cases have remarried.

Imagine the chaos, the misery, the starvation and death that would follow when the population doubles in an instant. This is not a happy ending.