No End to the Shit that Pisses Me Off

By Peg Tittle

War rape, profit, baby androids, tax exemptions for churches, make-up, having kids, assisted suicide, abortion, grades inflation, littering, business ethics...

Philosophy with an attitude. Because the unexamined life is dangerous.

"... smart, witty essays that challenge the intellect ... her razor sharp words will slice and dice the cerebral jugular." Laura Salkin, thinkspin

"... It's all thought-provoking, and whether or not you'll end up agreeing with her conclusions, her essays make for fascinating reading." Erin O'Riordan

"Tittle’s pieces are atypical of philosophical writing in the best ways: of interest to non-specialists, yet instructive and profound, yet entertaining." Ron Cooper, Professor of Philosophy

"... a passionate, stylistically-engaging writer ..." George


Note: All of the pieces in the Shit that Pisses Me Off series (4 volumes) have been anthologized in either Sexist Shit that Pisses Me Off (2nd edn) or Just ... Think about It! (2nd edn), along with almost a hundred additional pieces (in each case), and both are available in eformat and paperback.

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: Jan 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781926891330

Peg Tittle

Peg Tittle is the author of several novels: Fighting Words: notes for a future we won't have (Magenta, 2022), Jess (Magenta, 2022), Gender Fraud: a fiction (Magenta, 2020), Impact (Magenta, 2020), It Wasn't Enough (Magenta, 2020), What Happened to Tom (Inanna, 2016), and Exile (Rock's Mills Press, 2018). Both Gender Fraud: a fiction and It Wasn't Enough were Category Finalists in the Eric Hoffer Book Award competition; What Happened to Tom is on goodreads' list of Fiction Books That Opened Your Eyes To A Social Or Political Issue.Her screenplays (including What Happened to Tom and Exile) have placed in several competitions, including Moondance, Fade-In, GimmeCredit, WriteMovies, Scriptapalooza, and American Gem. Aiding the Enemy has been produced as a short by David McDonald.She has also written several nonfiction books: Just Think About It (Magenta); Sexist Shit that Pisses Me Off (Magenta); Critical Thinking: An Appeal to Reason (Routledge); Should Parents Be Licensed? Debating the Issues (Prometheus); What If? Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy (Longman); Ethical Issues in Business: Inquiries, Cases, and Readings (Broadview).She was a columnist for the Ethics and Emerging Technologies website for a year (her "TransGendered Courage” received 35,000 hits, making it #3 of the year, and her “Ethics without Philosophers” received 34,000 hits, making it #5 of the year), The Philosopher Magazine's online philosophy café for eight years, and Philosophy Now for two years. In addition, her short commentary pieces have also been published in Humanist in Canada, Links, Academic Exchange Quarterly, Inroads, Elenchus, South Australian Humanist Post, Forum, and The Humanist. Her longer pieces have appeared in Free Inquiry, The International Journal of Applied Philosophy, New Humanist, The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist, Philosophy in the Contemporary World, Sexuality & Culture: an interdisciplinary journal. And she's had a list published at McSweeney's (“Why Feminist Manuscripts Aren’t Getting Published Today”). She now blogs (sporadically) at pegtittle.com and hellyeahimafeminist.com.She has an M.A. in Philosophy, a B.Ed., and a B.A. in Literature, and has received over twenty Arts Council grants.

Book preview

NO END TO THE SHIT THAT PISSES ME OFF

by

Peg Tittle

* * * * *

Published by:

Magenta

No End to the Shit that Pisses Me Off

Copyright 2013 by Peg Tittle

www.pegtittle.com

Cover design by Donna Casey based on a concept by Peg Tittle

Thanks to Ben for the series title

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

E-Book Distribution: XinXii

 www.xinxii.com

logo_xinxii

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Acknowledgements

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Also by Peg Tittle

Still More Shit that Pisses Me Off

More Shit that Pisses Me Off

Shit that Pisses Me Off

Critical Thinking: An Appeal to Reason

What If…Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy

Should Parents be Licensed? Debating the Issues

Ethical Issues in Business—Inquiries, Cases, and Readings

* * * * *

Contents

1. A Man Shaken by a Bomb

2. I can do whatever I want on my own property!

3. Gay Bashing

4. The Condom Recall

5. What’s Wrong with Profit?

6. War Rape

7. The Freedom to Fail, the Right to Succeed

8. Baby Androids

9. Tax Exemptions for Charitable Institutions

10. Sports are Too Dangerous

11. To the Morons who wear Make-up

12. Impoverished Scientists

13. Having Kids and Having Religion

14. Men who need Mom to clean up after them

15. The Illegality of Assisted Suicide

16. The Pill for Men

17. The Political is Personal

18. Fight Breaks Out in the House of Commons

19. Quarantining HIV/AIDS

20. Almost Psychopathic

21. Property Tax—Justified?

22. Making Taxes Gender-Fair

23. Permitting Abortion and Prohibiting Prenatal Harm

24. Olympians

25. The Futility of Teaching Business Ethics or Why Our World Will End

* * * * *

A Man Shaken by a Bomb

I picked up a sci-fi novel the other day at a used bookstore. The jacket said it was set after a nuclear war and written by someone who’d rubbed shoulders with a lot of military people. Well, I figured it’d be interesting to see what they imagined life’d be like after a nuclear war. (The pages weren’t blank.)

What can I say, it was slow reading. For example, the author said, A man who’s been shaken by a bomb knows what it feels like. So I had to stop and wonder why a woman wouldn’t know. Is he saying women never get shaken by bombs because they’re never in bombed areas? Or they are, but for some reason, they don’t get shaken by them? Or they do, but they nevertheless don’t know what it feels like?

And that was just the preface. Chapter One introduced Florence. Who gossiped. She didn’t design state of the art mp3 players. And she certainly wasn’t looking for the cure to cancer. She gossiped. However, If your sister was in trouble and wired for money, the secret was safe with Florence. But if your sister bore a legitimate baby, its sex and weight would be known all over town.

Only if my sister was in trouble? What about me? I realized then that this guy hadn’t even imagined the possibility that women might read his book. And, well, we might. After all, we can read.

And apparently it didn’t occur to him that someone’s sister, a woman, might have money of her own. Or that she might ask another woman— not a man, not her brother—for a loan.

Then of course we have the phrase in trouble. Being pregnant, having a life begin to