Podcast #45: R.I.P. Dad Bods

69 May 25, 2015 by

45_finalIn this episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors, after Christian brings our attention to a recent sex scandal involving a middle school teacher’s storage closet and Jason weighs in on how little Israel matters to the issue of biblical prophecy, the DXPs put the matter of the “dad bod” to rest for good (not because it’s not an interesting topic, but because it apparently can’t be addressed without anger, hurt feelings, nearly destroyed iPads, and the majority of the discussion left on the cutting room floor). After the mid-show break (and after Jason issues his hat-in-hand mea culpa) we take a few listeners’ questions, addressing such fundamental questions as “What does God look like?” and “If Jason is so smart, why the hell can’t he find a job?” Christian is biebered by something technological (now there’s a role reversal), while Jason’s bieber involves the food-ordering practices of adventurous eaters.

Also, we’ll take The Rapist for $200, Alex. . . .

69 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  1. Jason, you should have mentioned Brit Pop re: singing with accents! The whole Brit Pop movement was celebrating their Englishness, so they intentionally sang with their accents. Suede “you’re taking me ova!”, Blur singing about “Parklife” and Elastica singing about a car “gare-idge” .

  2. Something I touched on elsewhere in a thread in response to a comment regarding the assumption of a patriarchal society and men being better off. The same views were expressed in the pod cast and I think much of it’s based on some very limited analysis which leaves out a lot. I mentioned a bunch of areas where men clearly fare worse.

    Following comments on the podcast I’m back with some more. BTW I’m looking at a number of indicators where men fare worse than women, for most of these (not suicide) it’s generally the case that negro men fare considerably worse than whites men
    Income disparity was mentioned however higher earned income for men may be an indicator of less choice in how men get access to money than women have rather than an indicator of the access to that money we have. I’ve not found the research to back up this view but my impression is that women are far more likely to marry up income wise than men. Just as cultural norms mean that women feel pressured to put more effort into their appearance men feel pressured to put more effort into earning incomes.

    Some research material on other issues impacting men more than women
    – In the USA “For many years, the suicide rate has been about 4 times higher among men than among women” https://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures
    – The male life expectancy as on 2010 was 76.2, for women 81 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus13.pdf#015
    – Men account for 92% of all occupational fatalities http://www.ask.com/wiki/Occupational_fatality?o=2802&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
    – Figures are hard to nail down but homelessness is typically far higher for men than women http://homeless.samhsa.gov/ResourceFiles/hrc_factsheet.pdf, there is a different view at http://www.ask.com/wiki/Homeless_women_in_the_United_States?o=2802&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com however the editorial comments are worth noting
    – I’m not familiar with this one but it appears males in the USA are still required to register with the Selective Service System http://www.ask.com/wiki/Selective_Service_System?qsrc=3044 . If a government decides to reintroduce the draft men are already on the list.
    – Men are significantly less likely to get custody of children in contested cases and tend to receive less child support when that occurs (gender income diff is a factor in the later). Its difficult to find independent material on child custody/child support material that covers the range of the topic. This one has an agenda but his material appears to be consistent with what I could find elsewhere https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/updated-u-s-custody-and-child-support-data-2009/ I think the source data material is this one http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-240.pdf

    Both genders have had advantages and disadvantages associated with gender through history. It’s well time the claims of ongoing female oppression and disadvantage were addressed a lot more honestly and more done to improve the opportunities and lives of all. Far to often claims of oppression are based on trivialities or roles that are available to very few and the far greater and more common issues tell a quite different story.

    Bob

  3. For those worried about a ‘curse’ for ‘cursing Israel’:

    The Roman Empire smashed the Jewish state into oblivion, killing hundreds of thousands of Jews through starvation, crucifixion, and the sword. They destroyed Jerusalem and burned down the Temple of God. The surviving Jews they deported as slaves to various parts of the Empire to be sold and work as slaves until they died.

    The Roman Empire survived another 400 years after this act, and the Eastern Roman Empire survived another 1400 years before it fell.

    And yet God is somehow uber-pissed off at America and is going to curse and destroy us because the President says some mildly critical things about the current Israeli government and its despicable policies towards Palestinians (whose numbers include your brothers in Christ)?

    Seriously…?

  4. … the President says some mildly critical things about the current Israeli government…

    Umm, I think you mean the black Muslim President. From Kenya.

  5. Well, I guess that’s different then, isn’t it?

    It’s difficult to ponder that were it not for the supreme incompetence and general destructiveness of George W. Bush, I would probably still be in that camp thinking that God was going to judge America for the heinous crimes of letting two people who want to marry, marry and helping people who didn’t have health care get some.

  7. Bob,

    Without getting into a point by point rebuttal of your comment, I wanted to clarify if what you’re saying is: women have it rough but hey, being a man ain’t all champagne and strawberries. If so, I agree with you, being born with a dick doesn’t automatically mean that I’m going to live a wonderful life full nothing but upside. However, it relative to a woman, being a man is still in many ways more preferable, your list of woes notwithstanding.

    I guess the question really boils down to, despite the litany of items that you’ve listed where men have it much worse than women, given the choice, would you rather be a man or a woman?

    Ultimately though, as with so many of these conversations/debates/arguments, we are not addressing what we really ought to, namely, the continue rise of inequality. Because the rich play in a very different league than the rest of us, be they man or woman.

  9. And since Pope Francis recognized the state of Palestine in a treaty that benefits Palestinian Christians, we are now in the end times…….for realz this time.

  10. Greg, “Without getting into a point by point rebuttal of your comment” – I’d love to see a point by point rebuttal as long as the same logic is applied to the arguments for female disadvantage.

    “what you’re saying is: women have it rough but hey, being a man ain’t all champagne and strawberries” – close but not quite. I’m of the view that having it rough is mostly about factors other than gender and that overall the balance of advantage/disadvantage for men and women born and raised into similar circumstances is not clear cut either way.

    There are ways we can increase opportunity for both genders and reduce societal expectations to conform to norms from the past that have passed any credible use by date but again that cuts both ways. Having it rough can be predicted far more reliably by the family you were born into than by gender, not hard wired but statistically by far the best indicator.

    I don’t know your culture the way you do but have done enough reading on issues around gender from US sources to have a strong impression that most of the realities and arguments that apply in Australia apply for most people in the USA as well.

    As for gender swaps, not on the basis of any clear advantage to either gender. There are some advantages women enjoy as parents that I would have liked to have had, some reduced pressure around the need to be the provider and other factors but none sufficient to overcome the “devil I know” aspect. So many of my interests are ones few women pursue (and even more rarely the mix of interests) that it’s hard to picture life as a female (and I’d definitely need to be lesbian). On the other hand it’s quite easy to say I’d not want to have been born in a third world country (from either gender) or to a lesser extent as an indigenous Australian.

    Kenneth, taking your comment a little seriously. Just where to women need to ask permission to participate in society in a way that men don’t need to ask (leaving aside extremist fringe groups which as I understand it can be legally left behind even if the practical issues are not always so easy)?

    Bob

  11. Ok, here’s my vote for a tshirt quote:

    Front- Eat more balls, back- listen to DXP. 🙂

    Am I mistaken or did I detect an anti-dispy rant early on in this one that got edited out? Enjoyed it either way guys, thanks.

  12. If I had to re-up every few years or so, I’d definitely continue to sign up to be a straight, white male.

    I have a better chance of being in power in a corporation or political system. I get paid more on average. Police don’t stop me or shoot at me. I don’t get sexually harassed or patronized. Video games, TV, movies and popular culture almost always have a protagonist of my gender/race as the star. I have a European origin name so statistically I get more callbacks on resumes.

    Heck, even Jesus looks like me according to all the artwork.

    Seriously, guys, I’d highly recommend being a straight white guy to everyone.

  13. Greg, “Without getting into a point by point rebuttal of your comment” – I’d love to see a point by point rebuttal as long as the same logic is applied to the arguments for female disadvantage.

    Why not? Because honestly it’s tedious and unlike most days, I actually have a lot of crap I need to get done today. The default position on this sort of discussion goes back to something that Christian said a few pods ago, I may not know/be able to articulate it but something just doesn’t feel right.

    Here’s something else to chew on:

    I’ve been thinking of a way to explain to straight white men how life works for them, without invoking the dreaded word “privilege,” to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon. It’s not that the word “privilege” is incorrect, it’s that it’s not their word. When confronted with “privilege,” they fiddle with the word itself, and haul out the dictionaries and find every possible way to talk about the word but not any of the things the word signifies. […]

    Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it? […]

    Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.

    You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.

    http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

    The whole point of all of this is to say to men, have a little empathy.

  14. Bob,

    Women only enjoy as much freedom as the men in said society allow them to enjoy. In the west men decided it’s cool for women to work and dress however they like, but all that could change quite quickly and there is nothing women could do about it. For example, let’s say that Sunni Islam sweeps the west. Let’s say for the sake of argument that 100% of the men convert and 0% of the women. Is there honestly any doubt what would happen next?

  15. Jason,

    I saw Frightened Rabbit a few years ago at a nice small venue. They are fantastic live. If you dig their stuff as well as We Were Promised Jetpacks, you might like The Maccabees.

  16. I think the Maccabees are OK, as are Maximo Park and other UK bands of that ilk. There’s something great about the Scottishness of WWPJ and FR though.

  17. Kenneth having the capacity in a thought experiment to oppress is quite a different thing to actually oppressing.

    Bob

  18. Greg repeating the same assumptions in a different way without actually attempting to prove your point does not make much of a case.

    Bob

  19. comradedread so just how often do your cops shoot females compared to males? I agree with the race part and moistly with the sexual orientation part. Sexual harrasment is an ugly thing. I’m assuming that if you don’t think males get patronised you have not had a lot of dealings as a single dad with female childcare workers, child support agency employees etc (maybe that agency is different in the USA) and other areas typically dominated by women. The behaviours are for the most part human rather than characteristics of one gender, race or sexual orientation.

    Bob

  21. Speaking as a straight while male, I’ve never been patronized by anyone. Therefore my personal experiences can be extrapolated to the world in general.

    So I don’t know what these other people are complaining about. Everyone should stop whining and just be a straight white guy. It’s pretty awesome.

  22. Bob,

    Well, take 500 of the most capable, intelligent, physically fit, women in the world and drop them in Mecca in bikinis and let me know how that goes lol!

  24. Kenneth, I think we are discussing quite different things. My point is that claims of oppression and disadvantage of women within modern western nations are generally overstated and ignore much that impacts on men to portray a disparity that’s often not really there.

    At no point have I suggested that all cultures are equal in that regard. Differences based on race and or economic circumstances are far greater than the balance of differences based on gender.

    Bob

  26. I’ll bite Kenneth. As a former Christian, that comic made me cringe. While it may be true some have stopped going to church because they were always indifferent (“meh’s”), it is not fair to make that assumption about everybody who no longer believes. To say to me, now that I no longer believe in the Christian god, that I never truly believed and was only claiming to be a christian for social benefits is complete bullshit and kind of offensive.

    As the great Charlie Kelly once said (changed to fit my current state): “Here’s a confession: I [was] in love with a man. What? I [was] in love with a man…a man named God. [Did] that make me gay? [Was] I gay for God? You betcha.”

    But really, I really believed man and for someone to say I didn’t because I don’t now is ridiculous.

  27. So, Kenneth, am I to understand then that you finally admit that the church is shrinking? A couple of months ago you adamantly refused to admit that.

  28. Kenneth,
    Nice comic, seems pretty accurate.
    Christian,
    Christianity isn’t in decline on a global scale. People ARE becoming less religious – IF you consider western white males as the only people that matter.

  29. The conversation that Kenneth and I were having a couple of months ago centered around a comment I made in a podcast that I think that religion will decline the more than knowledge spreads, and that the internet has a large role to play in that, and that countries where the internet is a major resource will see a greater decline in religion. Kenneth balked at that idea, but this comic seems to be admitting that there is a decline, but that those people were never really truly religious to begin with.

  31. Dude! This 12 step process to comment is a headache. Verification emails, no way to post without some account, seems like overkill

  33. Christian,

    That cartoon wasnt an admission of anything I just thought it was interesting! Remember, I wasn’t denying that the numbers were dropping, only that “information access” wasn’t the reason. Don’t you think there is truth in the comic?

  38. If it’s not information access or the “not truly believers” nonsense, what do you think it is?

  40. Don’t you think there is truth in the comic?

    Only to those who were never that serious about their faith to begin with.

    You are talking to, among others, folks who were true believers. Who thought God spoke to them at one point. Who believed they felt the presence of God. Who read their bibles and were in church two-four times a week. Who followed the call of God on their lives into various ministries. And who have later, upon exposure to new information and consequent reassessing of their views, realized that their former faith is no longer compatible with the evidence as they currently understand it and reason.

    I realize that is threatening to some folks in the church and it’s easier to say, “Well, they were never one of us” or “They just wanted an excuse to go out and sin” than it is to face the facts that some of their close friends and associates now think something so crucial to their self-identity is simply wrong, incomplete, or distorted.

  43. I think the root of the problem starts with western civilization abolishing christendom. The entire world view of the west is now oriented towards worshipping lady liberty rather than Christ. Because of this, western civilization (in my opinion) has already begun to rot at its very core.

  45. Why the change to Disqus? The comments section seemed, at least to my eyes, to work well without it. I have to agree with Kenneth on this– threaded comments *are* harder to follow! I probably won’t be reading and commenting as much here after this change. (Some people may be happy about that, hehe!)

  46. Oh, come on, Christopher, seriously? Some people find conversations easier to follow when they’re threaded and some don’t. Other than the threading, there are quite a few advantages to Disqus. We switched because we have an online marketing strategist who offered to help us out a little, and this was one of the suggestions she made to us:

    “For building an engaged community, Disqus is second to none, and its easy to add to your site.
    People can sign in easily with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or an email login, bringing your social community to the most important place: your site.”

  48. Almost every major site uses “threaded” comments now. Maybe it’s time you adjusted. I’m not saying I’m sold on them (and I hate the way Facebook does it) but it seems to be where everything is headed.

  49. YES! I’ve long advocate begged for threaded commenting, specifically Disqus. Christopher, despite our agreements, I do enjoy your many lengthy comments, but I am curious, why do you think threaded comments are harder to follow? Especially since there seem to be more commenters now and there are at times multiple conversations to follow…. You can also do what I do, which is to subscribe to the RSS feed of the comments.

  50. Damn, so it wasn’t my begging that ultimately led you guys to switch to Disqus but a pro eh? 😉

  53. Disqus is fine, man. The alerts are much easier to know when someone has replied to you than scanning through blocks of text for my name.

  54. Christian, why so sensitive to my response? I don’t prefer threaded commenting. It’s honestly harder for me to keep up with the various conversations within this format. I already used Facebook to sign in in the past, and I found the previous commenting system much easier to follow. My response is not a comment on the show, and it’s not a comment on anything about you or Jason. Some people like Disqus; some don’t. I do comment on sites where Disqus is the format, and I’m sure I’ll comment here from time to time. Just not as much. I don’t see where I’m being unreasonable. People simply have different things that they find helpful or less helpful.

  55. Greg, thank you for your very kind words about my comments! I just honestly don’t find this format easier to follow. To me, it actually makes the multiple conversations harder to keep up with, but I guess that’s just me. I’m glad that others find it to be an improvement.

  58. Christian, I just don’t find this format nearly as easy to follow as the old one, so that makes me less likely to want to comment as much as I did previously. It’s not about sensitivity. It’s about personal preference. I didn’t write, “Oh, Christian, come on, seriously?” to you, as you did to me. That’s what I was taking about with being sensitive. In any event, it turns out that I *am* still commenting here anyway, lol!

  59. You ended your paragraph with “That’s not a crime.” That’s a bit sensitive if you ask me.

    Either way, I had this conversation with Jason yesterday. There are things that are a bit more difficult and things that are a bit easier. People who are used to threaded comments think un-threaded comments is more difficult and vice versa. Maybe try looking at what’s easier instead of what’s more difficult. I believe the positives outweigh the negatives.

  60. I don’t like change. First DXP goes Disqus, then Jason shuts down comments on CCC…

    I’m okay with Disqus, although new comments on existing treads are hard to track. I’ll get use to it.

  61. I don’t like change. First DXP goes Disqus, then Jason shuts down comments on CCC…

    I okay with Disqus, although new comments on existing treads are hard to track. I’ll get use to it.

  63. Christian, I edited that sentence out of my comment pretty quickly after I posted it (within less than 30 minutes, I think), because I realized that it was an over-reaction and not helpful. I’m sorry that I ever wrote it at all though. I understand that most people here find the new format much easier to follow than the old one. I’m glad that it’s more helpful for most people here. I know that my opinion is the minority one, and I’m cool with that. With all of this said, I honestly do find the Disqus format harder to follow, so I will probably comment less often here. It’s not personal at all. I definitely will still listen to the show– especially given that I’m helping to pay for it, even though my contribution is small! 🙂

  64. Probably, my current computer blocks those links, so I can’t test at the moment. I just wanted to whine briefly about change. I think the change to Disqus was probably a good move, especially for less invested commenters. I am much more biebered by the CCC site.

  66. Yeah, no one likes people rejecting their beliefs. However, Catholics aren’t as bad as Protestants in this regard. For example, according to Protestantism – especially Calvinism – Christian was masquerading as Christian his whole life, even while a pastor and missionary; he was never really a Christian. A Catholic has no problem affirming that Christian was indeed a Christian at one time; he just decided to fall away.

  67. Well, personally, I hope you adjust to the new format and continue to comment. I appreciate your contribution to the conversation, Christopher, even when you’re wrong. 😉

  69. Thanks for the kind words, Christian! I will still comment in the future but probably less than I have been recently. (To be honest, I need to spend less time on the internet in general.) I appreciate your contributions to the conversation here too, even when you’re wrong about my being wrong, lol! 🙂

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