Just as Cathy’s famous cry of “Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aack!” was a sublimated cry for love, apparently it’s not really his dead-end job that’s making Dilbert’s life a living hell. It’s women. Dilbert creator Scott Adams has gotten himself into hot water with feminists before, but he’s whipping up a whole new mess of cooking metaphors with a recent, widely reported, intentionally (according to Adams) rabble-rousing blog post that literally says that if he couldn’t get laid, “I can say with confidence I would sign up for suicide bomb duty.”
Further cooking Adams’ goose/stuffing his turkey/mashing his thought potatoes is the assumption underlying the article, which is that what feminists perceive as a patriarchal society is actually a matriarchal one because sometimes women deny men sex, even though they turned up the thermostat when requested:
When I go to dinner, I expect the server to take my date’s order first. I expect the server to deliver her meal first. I expect to pay the check. I expect to be the designated driver, or at least manage the transportation for the evening. And on the way out, I will hold the door for her, then open the door to the car.
When we get home, access to sex is strictly controlled by the woman. If the woman has additional preferences in terms of temperature, beverages, and whatnot, the man generally complies. If I fall in love and want to propose, I am expected to do so on my knees, to set the tone for the rest of the marriage.
(As long as we’re playing the gender-stereotypes game: Would it kill you to keep something besides Dr. Pepper Ten in the fridge? You know women can’t drink that stuff.)
Anyway, the post goes from friend zone to war zone when it compares Western society, where men are in thrall before the whims of their female masters, to areas controlled by DAESH (the Arabic acronym for what the U.S. commonly calls ISIS), where a small group of powerful men keeps the most desirable women for itself, forcing the rest of the male population to either “have sex with captured slaves” or go without. This is even worse than the alternative, according to Adams:
While I’m being politically incorrect, let me describe to you the mind of a teenage boy. Our frontal lobes aren’t complete. We don’t imagine the future. Our bodies want sex more than we want to stay alive. Literally. Lonely boys tend to be suicidal when the odds of future female companionship are low.
So if you are wondering how men become cold-blooded killers, it isn’t religion that is doing it. If you put me in that situation, I can say with confidence I would sign up for suicide bomb duty. And I’m not even a believer. Men like hugging better than they like killing. But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something. I’m designed that way. I’m a normal boy. And I make no apology for it.
Adams has updated his blog several times since that post, first mocking everyone who wrote about it as “Outragists,” then proposing that the post and its aftermath be used as the basis for a “Hoax Kill Shot” on ISIS, and, most recently, a post promising to explain his true views in a “Rationality Engine process to explore whether the United States is still a patriarchy or whether it has morphed into a matriarchy that pretends to be a patriarchy.” How that last one differs from his original statement remains to be seen; in the meantime, we look forward to hearing your even-handed, rational, impersonally motivated opinions on the matter on Twitter and in the comments.