Therobishow - The Robi Show

If y'all look around hard enough on tumblr (or just happen to come across it with no effort whatsoever) you will find my old blogs.

If you do find these blogs, I want to say, loud and clear: I AM NOT THAT PERSON ANYMORE!!!!

I know that I said some awful, stupid shit. I fell for some dumbshit propaganda and came dangerously close to being radicalized. The anti-sjw stuff sucked me in hard.

And I am fucking ashamed of it. I wish I could hide it away and pretend it never happened. But it's better to own up to who I was. I like to think that I was better than a lot of the people in the anti-sjw crowd, and I was very willing to call out the worst ones. But that doesn't make my old views any better. It doesn't excuse them.

I sucked.

And I'm sorry.

I think I'm done with podcasts made by men

I love listening to podcasts while I work. Especially ones related to history, film, and literature.

And damn near every time I try listening to ones that are made by men, I end up hitting a point where I have to stop listening and switch to something else. There's always a point where they say something that is so ignorant, blatantly sexist, etc., that I just can't take it.

Often times it's the host buying into a very male-centered lens of interpreting whatever it is they're discussing. And, you know, that's kind of expected. They're men. They're viewing things as men. I get that and I'm usually willing to just roll my eyes and move on. But then it keeps happening, or gets much worse than what can be excused by simple ignorance. And then I can't just roll my eyes anymore. I just want to start yelling. And that's not a good energy to have while I'm trying to do my job. So I switch over to something else.

A good example of this happened today. I was listening to a podcast called History by Hollywood. I found it because I'm a huge fan of History Buffs on Youtube. Comparing historical fiction to the actual history is fascinating to me. I love learning about the real event and how it's translated into fiction. But...it got bad. Real fucking bad.

Now, I can't place all the blame on the creators of HbH. They had guests who do a podcast that I think is called Green Screen, which discusses films through an environmental lens. And I definitely will not be listening to that podcast after hearing them today.

The episode was about Gorillas in the Mist, which is biopic about Dr. Dian Fossey. If you don't know who Dian Fossey is, look her up. She was one of the group known as the Trimates, sometimes called Leakey's Angels. The group consisted of three women who were expert primatologists: Birute Galdikas, who studied orangutans; Jane Goodall, possibly the most well known of the three, who studied chimpanzees; and Fossey herself, who studied gorillas. I would love to write hundreds of pages about how awesome and unbelievably badass these women are/were. Seriously, learn about these women if you haven't already. They are amazing.

Anyway, the episode was about Dr. Fossey. My first issue is that, despite her PhD, they never once referred to her with her proper title. This is upsettingly common with women who have earned doctorates. Men never want to call them Doctor. It frustrates me to no end. But that's not nearly the worst of it. They went on to discuss how she became pregnant twice during her time in Rwanda. She chose to abort both pregnancies because she did not want pregnancy or motherhood to interfere with her work with the gorillas. One of the GS guys commented on this saying "I suppose her reasons could be considered valid." Um, excuse me? First of all, why do you think that you get to decide whether or not she had valid reasons? You don't. Second, of course her reasons are valid. Whatever a woman's reasons are for having an abortion are valid. She's the only one who gets to make that decision. So fuck right off with that. Sorry for getting a bit heated here, but that really pissed me off. There was no need for a comment like that. Especially since it makes it sound like he doesn't actually think her reasons are valid, but is scared of catching heat so tried to sugarcoat it.

Moving on, TW: rape, they also got into the fact that Dr. Fossey stated that she was repeatedly raped by soldiers in 1966 over the course of two weeks. People freaking love to claim that this is "disputed" or "exaggerated" and some go as far as to claim that it was an outright lie. Why? Because she originally claimed that she was treated well and then escorted to the border. Later on, she admitted that she was actually beaten and raped. I'm not going to delve too far into this because a) this post is already way longer than I intended, and b) I will get SO MAD. For the sake of brevity, I'm just going to say that I believe that she was raped, and that she initially lied because she was not ready for this information to become public. The hosts however...well, they'd like to claim that they didn't come down on either side of this "debate" and simply presented facts. But they totally don't think she was raped. They went on and on about all the reasons that she would have lied about being raped, such as political clout, publicity, propaganda, and other dumb reasons. But just couldn't seem to think of any reason that she would have lied about not being raped. Gotta love how men are always able to come up with fifty million reasons why women would make false accusations. It's absolutely not in any way revealing how they think of women.

They also got into the admittedly shitty things that Dr. Fossey did during her time in Rwanda. She wasn't perfect, and she did do some rather bad things. Her approach to conservation work was very much steeped in a colonialist mindset. I'm not about to deny that. And they did do a good job of explaining some of the more overlooked facts of poaching--most African poachers aren't cartoon villains who want to destroy nature. Many are farmers who are killing animals that threaten their crops and/or livestock. And then they get offered lots of money to do it. It's not a simple issue, and doesn't have a simple solution. I don't have a problem with them addressing this, and I'm glad that they did. However, and this is a pretty big HOWEVER, they also didn't discuss any of the great things she did. She saved a huge number of gorillas. She helped improve the Rwandan economy. She fought against multiple colonialist organizations trying to exploit Rwanda and it's wildlife. She helped to revolutionize the field of primatology. There's so much that we know now that we only know because of her. They also decided that the fact that she's a heavily revered and respected figure in Rwanda was worth a few sentences and that was it.

They referred to her as cold and unfeeling multiple times, largely due to her relationship with Bob Campbell, who was married when they met. Apparently the fact that she didn't stick with him for her whole life means that she's cold and uncaring. Ugh. I just fucking can't with this.

And the cherry on top, they made jokes about her murder. Yep. Dr. Fossey was horribly and brutally murdered with a machete in December of 1985. And they apparently think that's funny. Now, I know that some of the people who were close to Dr. Fossey have also made jokes regarding her death. However, there are several Grand Canyon-sized differences between someone using humor to cope with the death of someone they loved, and some assholes with a podcast making jokes about the brutal murder of a woman they never met. They also said that it doesn't matter who killed her or if they're ever caught. Which...no? It very much matters who snuck into this woman's home in the middle of the night and used a machete to brutally murder her. It very much matters if this person is caught. I can't even imagine trying to say that it doesn't matter if an actual murderer is ever caught.

All of this goes into a huge problem when it comes to studying history, especially the history of science. Women are always scrutinized more heavily, always criticized with more vitriol, and always have their enormous accomplishments either left out entirely or pushed to side. I almost never see male scientists given this treatment. Edison comes close, but he always gets quite a bit of "Yeah, he was awful, but let's not forget all the awesome things he did!" Women however get "Yeah, she did a few cool things for science, but let's not forget that she had an abortion!"

I just can't handle this shit anymore. If you managed to get all the way to the end of this wall of text (yay) please recommend me some good history/literature podcasts created by women. I will love you so much.

I am very sick. I'm going to get tested for the new covid variant tomorrow. Sorry I won't be on again tonight. I doubt me shivering, rocking, and not being able to follow the simplest line of thought would be terribly entertaining.

Sorry guys

Come join me on twitch for some more Left Behind!

It's a terrible book and watching me suffer is fun!

i think it's called the unwinding? it's a dystopia where the premise is that there was a civil war between pro-choice and pro-life groups in america(?) and they made the compromise that all pregnancies must be carried to term and kids must be raised for a certain amt of years, but then at a certain age, 13 i think it was, if the parents dont like the kid they can have them "unwound," which is that they will be meticulously surgically taken apart but all of their organs and skin and everything will still be alive? somehow? and ig they'll still have some level of consciousness? and like, anyone who needs an organ transplant or skin grafts or like, amputees who want a new arm or whatever get that body part from an unwound kid. and the book follows a runaway who was gonna be unwound and then also a kid who was tithed, so like his parents had him w the express purpose of donating him to the church for unwinding?? the premise is absolutely bonkers and the narrative of the book shifts constantly, it touches on a whole bunch of real-world politics without ever actually committing to any stance, and the whole thing reads like a wattpad original work in a really bad way. but somehow there's like a whole series and it's legit popular!! i dont get it at all

This sounds like some fundie subterfuge nonsense.

They love to do this. The YA dystopia boom brought us so many books like this. Gentle Tyranny is another one, it's all about how feminism is evil.

They think that they can put a secular mask on and convert people without them realizing it. But they're really really bad at it. Like, who else other than fundies would even come up with this idea??

Was the writer a blonde white woman? I don't want this book in my search history, but I'm willing to bet I'm right

No stream tonight. Sorry. I have hit the "can barely move" stage of exhaustion

There's this book I read as a kid. I don't remember what it was called and I don't remember the author.

It was about this princess who had long, curly red hair. I don't remember her name. She had three older sisters, two of which were twins. She was being tutored by the eldest's love interest. I don't remember why, but her family got put under a curse, and her eldest sister turned into a weeping willow tree and the twins into swans. So she had to run away, and she cut her hair to pretend to be a boy. And there was a girl named Megan or Meghan with her (the only character whose name I remember), and Meg(h)an had blonde hair that was slowly turning black because she was infected with evil raven magic. I don't remember how it ends.

Anyway, it's not so much that I want to read it again but more that it bothers me immensely that I can't remember what book it was.

I tried to look up what book this could be. There are endless books about older brothers being turned into swans, but I couldn't find anything where it happens to older sisters. The tree one got me a lot of recommendations for parks and botanical gardens. And the hair search returned a bunch of articles about Megan Thee Stallion.

So I have no idea what book this could be.

But I did find a website that might be able to help you out

Ohhhhhhhhh i have some RAGE against Normal People by Sally Rooney. Can I understand, intellectually, that there are legitimate reasons to like this book? Yes. Do I emotionally agree with any of them? ABSOLUTELY NOT. First off this book was impossible to read easily because of the lack of punctuation, what was up with that!! Beyond that the relationship between the two main characters was just bad and really imbalanced, and also I was not interested at all. Also the weak ass Marxist commentary??? Girl didn't even commit 🤣 And to top it all off, I read this for a bookclub for a college that I did all the precollege stuff for, and they DIDN'T EVEN LET ME IN!!!!!! Anyways fuck this book so much, enjoy my rant :)

I accept and appreciate your offering.

It's bullshit that they didn't let you in. Book clubs are supposed to bring people together, but some of them get so snobby.

People either forget or don't care that defense lawyers are the foundation of our justice system. 'innocent until proven guilty' doesn't work without them

You know our society is fucked up when people seriously think being a criminal defense attorney is like. A moral evil. Like people seriously jump to “wow you defend murderers” as if the majority of “crime” that happens on a daily basis isn’t literally stuff like addicts being caught possessing drugs or homeless people being arrested for loitering or fucking poor women stealing food and clothes for their kids like… the average person is just one or two paychecks away from also being deemed a “criminal” by society but yeah sure you should definitely act like needing to be defended against the state makes you an automatically morally bad person

This is the dawn of my Chloe Gong Era