Of Forklifts and Potty Trips

It's story time, again. From the ages of 14 to 17, I worked at a lumber yard and hardware store. This was a well-connected mom & pop type shop. It was a hard, minimum-wage job - and the only reason I kept it was a sense of duty. In my small town, jobs for non-country-club kids who weren't 18 yet were hard to come by. It was either this, or have no spending money.

There was a problem with this job, though. I wasn't allowed to use the fork-lift. Every time someone needed items that were either up on shelving, like a pallet of shingles, or 8x8 lumber (which is too heavy to lift) I had to run around the lumber yard trying to find someone who wasn't busy to bring the forklift over, get the items, then return to whatever they were doing.

Meanwhile, the customer just sat there.  Eventually, a few of the regular contractors there refused to let me serve them.

I'll never, ever forget how that made me feel. I felt like less than whole - like a failure.

And all because of stupid paperwork that said I couldn't operate a forklift until I'd been on this planet for 18 years. I had my license - I could drive my Nissan across the country if I wished. But I couldn't use a forklift to move a pile of bricks four lousy feet.

Funny story (not really), I got in the habit of moving things with my hands that were too heavy - that I should've used a forklift to move - and because of that, I injured my back permanently.

OK, end of story.

Now read this:
http://www.chicagonow.com/high-gloss-and-sauce/2011/09/dads-wiping-butts-bad-touches-were-growing-up
(Edit: After some flak from Paul Elam and many people from A Voice for Men, it appears Jenna has taken down all of her offending articles. Register-her has saved a PDF of her original post with the first 100 or so comments. It can be found here: http://www.avoiceformen.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Keep-dads-out-of-preschool-potty-duty1.pdf)

I keep having to take deep breaths while writing this. This one article has made me angrier than I've ever been since I started blogging.

As someone who notices the way that men are the victims of sexism, I'm used to seeing this - but never so unabashedly.

Unabashed sexism is exactly what this is - and if you read the comments (which I don't recommend) she has plenty of supporters.

Jenna Myers Karvunidis has displayed the holy trinity of bigotry: bad statistics, bad faith and bad logic.

First off, she blithely states "99% of sexual predators are men, only 1% are women and girls are over twice as likely as boys to be sexually abused" with absolutely no citing of her statistics.

That's because she pulled them out of her ass. People from Reddit have flooded her comments with correct statistics - and yes, there is a skew towards male perpetrators but it's certainly not 99%! The ironly is that skew towards men could very well be due to a society that sees women as incapable of harming a child sexually - a society perpetuated by people like Mrs. Karvunidis.

Secondly, she belligerently attacks the commenters who call her out on her sexism by claiming that they're only angry because they're pedophiles who want the opportunity to molest.

Wow, so I guess all those middle-eastern people who are angry over being profiled as terrorists by the TSA are ACTUALLY terrorists who want to sneak by security?

Lastly, she openly admits that she isn't concerned with logic.

She says it best in her very own words:
"Again, why are you guys trying to change my mind? IT WON'T CHANGE. You may use perfectly sound logic, you may use unsound logic, you may bully me, you may scare me, you may send hate mail to my house but I will never, ever change my mind on this."

And best of all, she calls herself a "Feminist." Holy shit! At least she admits that she "pick and choose when I'm a feminist because I'm not down with man-bashing."

Actually, Jenna, you look quited down with man-bashing to me.

(takes a deep breath)

Frankly - I have no idea how to deal with this type of issue or person. There's no way to change her mind (as she has made painfully obvious).

I'm a little afraid at what some of my friends in the Men's Rights community might do about this. As of this post, she's just been added to register-her.com, a site designed to highlight sexist, sexually abusive or false-rape accusers.

Her unabashed sexism makes it really hard not to take off the gloves - but I fear someone may go too far and take OUT the knives. I really, really hope that no one threatens her or her family with any type of violence or other inappropriate actions. Boycott her site, write letters to the editor, make blog posts like this one - but please, don't make it so she or her family can't sleep at night - no amount of bigotry deserves violence.