Monthly Archives: August 2011
Dudes’ Republic of China
The inhabitants of Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit seem to have developed a sudden crush on the authoritarian Chinese government. Why? Well, it seems that the lovable tyrants have decided to crack down on evil golddigger bitches. According to an article in The Telegraph, linked to in the subreddit,
In a bid to temper the rising expectations of Chinese women, China’s Supreme Court has now ruled that from now on, the person who buys the family home, or the parents who advance them the money, will get to keep it after divorce.
“Hopefully this will help educate younger people, especially younger women, to be more independent, and to think of marriage in the right way rather than worshipping money so much,” said Hu Jiachu, a lawyer in Hunan province.
The ruling should also help relieve some of the burden on young Chinese men, many of whom fret about the difficulty of buying even a small apartment.
Never mind that the lopsided demographics in China today — where young men greatly outnumber young women, making it harder for young men to find wives — are not the result of excess feminism, but the result of a toxic mixture of cultural misogyny and the authoritarian regime’s “one child” program. As William Saletan explains the logic in Slate:
Girls are culturally and economically devalued; the government uses powerful financial levers to prevent you from having another child; therefore, to make sure you can have a boy, you abort the girl you’re carrying.
The result? 16 million “missing girls” in China. Ironically, the skewed ratio of men to women gives young women considerable leverage in chosing whom to marry – and that’s what the Men’s Rightser’s seem to see as the real injustice here.
As Evil Pundit wrote, evidently speaking for many (given the numerous upvotes he got):
Wow. I’ve always disliked the authoritarian Chinese government, but for once, it’s done something good.
I may need to reconsider my attitude.
IncrediblyFatMan added:
China wants to become the next superpower and world leader. They aren’t going to do it by allowing the kinds of social decay that rot away at the competing nations.
Revorob joked:
If they brought that in over here, most women in Australia would be living on the street.
“Or,” Fondueguy quipped in response, “they could learn to work.”
At the moment, all the comments in the thread praising the Chinese government for this move (and there are many more) have net upvotes; the only comment in the negative? One suggesting that the Telegraph isn’t exactly a reliable source.
Speaking of which, here’s a more balanced look at the issue on China.org.cn that examines some of the consequences of the new ruling for Chinese women.
Let’s look at some of those. According to one Beijing lawyer quoted in the piece:
“[H]ousewives, especially those in the rural areas who have no job and are responsible for taking care of their families, will be affected most by this new change,” she said. “If their husbands want a divorce, they are likely to be kicked out of the house with nothing.”
Luo Huilan, a professor of women’s studies at China Women’s University in Beijing, agreed.
In rural areas, she said, men have the final say in family matters. All essential family assets, such as home, car and bank deposits, are registered in the men’s names, and women fill the roles of only wife, mother and farmworker.
“Their labor, though substantial, hardly gets recognition. Without a good education, they have to rely heavily on their husbands,” Luo said. “In case of divorce, a woman is driven out of her husband’s life, home and family, and finds herself an alien even in her parents’ home. No wonder the new interpretation of the Marriage Law has aroused concern among women.”
And no wonder it’s drawn cheers on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
The MRAhorns
Reading “Anthony Zarat’s” recent comments here fantasizing about a future in which men and women consort with virtual reality lovers rather than one another and “drift into separate and rarely interracting species, each of which will prosper more by the absence of the other,” I began to wonder if there was anyone out there with a more jaundiced view of heterosexual relationships than the typical MRA?
And then it occurred to me: the non-married male-female cartoonist duo behind The Lockhorns.
You’ve seen The Lockhorns, haven’t you? It’s a daily single panel cartoon that runs in about 500 newspapers – who even knew there were 500 newspapers left? – and that, according to the strip’s website “gently spoofs the state of marital bliss, poking fun at the foibles of both partners.”
That’s the nice way of putting it. More accurately, the cartoon depicts a sort of existentialist hell on earth. Locked in a loveless marriage, Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn stare at each other with heavy-lidded eyes and almost perpetual frowns; they pick endlessly at each other’s numerous flaws.
Leroy is a bald, overworked schlub who seems to resent every minute of his pathetic existence; only rarely does a smile grace his face, generally when he’s either ogling a pretty girl or contemplating drowning his sorrows in booze. Loretta is a drab, shrewish housefrau whose only real pleasure seems to be trying on new dresses. They unite only in their shared hatred of all that is new and confusing, like the underwear-baring clothing styles of the youth of today.
Happily, they have no cartoon children.
In any case, after reading through a bunch of recent Lockhorns cartoons I had a little brainstorm. While neither The Lockhorns nor MRA misogyny tastes good in itself, the combination of the two could very well be magically delicious.
So I’d like to introduce to you the latest in interactive cartooning: The MRAhorns. I’ve posted a batch of recent Lockhorns cartoons below, sans captions. Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to write up some appropriately MRAish captions for them. Bonus points if you’re able to use the exact words of a prominent MRAer, or even one of this blog’s dedicated trolls. Whoever comes up with the best caption wins one internet.
Have at it!
MRAhorns #1
MRAhorns #2
MRAhorns #3
MRAhorns #4
Won’t someone think of the poor rape-joke tellers?
This text-as-image comment, posted to Reddit, has 468 net upvotes the last I checked. (Here’s the original post it’s responding to.)
Truly, the most heart-wrenching thing about rape is that those courageous souls who make jokes about it are sometimes made to feel a little bad about it on the internet.
Demotivated
Um, what?
I found this illustrating a typically incoherent rant about “The Aphrodisiac of the False Rape Claim” on What Men Are Saying About Women, the blog of the infamous MRA double period. Whoever made it needs to stop making Demotivational posters because he doesn’t understand how these posters are supposed to work. Or how to communicate a coherent message to other human beings using language.
Are Nice Guys sociopaths?
Cats: The world's most adorable sociopaths
A reader alerted me to this post on a very interesting blog I haven’t written about before. Regular readers of Man Boobz may find some of these, er, arguments to be a bit familiar:
Our culture is absolutely fucked up. Girls and women hold all control of sex. … [F]rom the first interest in girls, we’re expected to pursue them, and they’re expected to reject us. …
I’m a perfectly healthy man. I’m stronger than a lot of other men, more intelligent, more competent, I think I’m reasonably good looking, and I’m very well endowed. None of that matters though. Somehow, women go for men that fail on a comparison on multiple accounts. …
There are things like rejecting a woman, or pretending to be uninterested that make her even more interested. … Women subconsciously measure a man’s performance in bed by his dancing and posturing. If only they knew how fucking stupid and wrong they are.
I don’t know what happened with me. I’ve always had a strong sex drive, but I got fucked over socially. I wasn’t even “in” in the reject crowd. All girls rejected me, and most rejects rejected me. People made fun of me, laughed at me, picked on me, and all the girls that I lusted after were either repulsed by me, or didn’t know who I was. Even the girls that were “friends” with me, wouldn’t have sex with me. Meanwhile, they went around whoring themselves out to whatever man played this fucking dumb-ass social flirting game. They [crude sexual remarks redacted ---DF] like the dirty little whores they are. I’ve been available my whole life, but the only person that ever chose me as a mate were paid prostitutes, and my wife, who is emotionally and mentally fucked up beyond comprehension.
On the surface, this reads like almost every “nice guy” lament I’ve ever seen on the internet. Oh, it’s a bit more bitter than most, but this “nice guy” hits all the right notes: like the Holocuast-trivializing “nice guy” we looked at last Sunday, he complains that women get to actually choose whom to have sex with; like the “nice guy” Redditor we looked at Monday, he still holds a grudge against former crushes who chose to go out with (and have sex with) guys who weren’t him.
The difference? For one thing, this new guy is a bit more self-aware than most “nice guys,” in that he doesn’t actually describe himself as “nice.” For another, he is (or at least claims to be) a sociopath. As might have been immediately apparent had I quoted these comments, which immediately follow what I quoted from him above:
This is the reason I don’t care about people. Why the fuck should I? Everybody [wears] a mask. I want to rape and murder people, and I pretend I’m “normal.” Normal people wear a mask where they pretend they’re friendly and honest; whereas, they’re really deceptive, insecure, and emotionally hostile.
This posting comes from Sociopathworld, a fascinating blog written by a sociopath who is basically trying to explain to non-sociopaths how people like him or her think, to clear up misconceptions about them, and to help sociopaths themselves deal better with their disorder. (The author of the blog didn’t write the comments above; they were sent in by a reader.)
For those not intimately familiar with abnormal psych, “sociopathy” (often used synonymously with the term “psychopathy”) is a term commonly used to describe what is known clinically as Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The blogger at SociopathWorld quotes a journal article that gives this useful capsule description of psychopaths as people
characterised by an absence of empathy and poor impulse control, with a total lack of conscience. … They tend to be egocentric, callous, manipulative, deceptive, superficial, irresponsible and parasitic, even predatory.
So are “nice guys” a bunch of sociopaths? Well, no. They may be egocentric – like the “nice guy” on Tumblr who compared his lack of dates to the Holocaust. They may lack empathy – like the “nice guy” Redditor who couldn’t feel sympathy for a female “friend” who had been raped. They may be manipulative – hoping that by being excessively “nice” and doing favors for women they will earn themselves some sex.
But they lack, among other things, the impulsiveness and routine deceitfulness that tend to characterize real sociopaths. Sociopaths can be deceptively charming, but very few people would ever describe them as nice. (Indeed, if anything, it’s pickup artists that act the most like real sociopaths; indeed, I’ve heard “game” described before, I think accurately, as an attempt to get guys to think and act more like charming, conscienceless sociopaths.)
So why do “nice guy” laments make them sound so much like sociopaths? I think their egocentricity and their almost total lack of empathy are key. “Nice guys” get crushes on a lot of girls and women, but these crushes often seem to have nothing to do with the objects of these intense feelings: the “nice guys” have whipped up a romantic and sexual drama in their own head, and simply projected it onto some convenient romantic object . The “nice guy” Redditor was once obsessed with his female “friend” – but when she was raped he did not react as a true friend would, with sympathy and sadness. He responded with a callous “she had it coming.”
Combine this lack of empathy with a sense of wounded entitlement – I DESERVE a cute girlfriend! – and you have a recipe for a pretty noxious stew.
“Nice guys” may not literally be sociopaths. But sometimes they think and act in some pretty sociopathic ways.
Riding the Alpha Female Hen Carousel
I think most of those are hens, anyway. I'm not an expert at sexing chickens.
For the love of God, ladies, take off those pants!
It's sinful when dogs wear them, too.
We’re taking a brief trip outside the manosphere today to take a look at a little posting I found on Jesus-is-savior.com – which, as far as I can tell, is not a joke site — on the evils of women wearing pants.
No need to dilly dally around with jokes; let’s just get right into it:
One of the most controversial subjects in America’s churches today is pants on women; but there is NO controversy if you believe the Bible. 1st Timothy 2:9 clearly instructs women to dress MODESTLY, i.e., of good behavior. A woman’s clothing says MUCH about her character. I guarantee you that women who approve of abortion (i.e., murder) also see no problem with women wearing pants.
Except, one presumes, while they are getting these abortions.
At this point the author, one David J. Stewart, quotes disapprovingly from a song by rapper Chingy, also on the subject of pants, specifically jeans. I won’t bother to quote all of the lyrics; you can get the gist of Chingy’s thesis from this brief excerpt:
Damn Girl
How’d you get all that in
Dem Jeans
Dem Jeans
Here’s the video, if you wish to double-check this transcription.
Stewart continues:
Only a rebellious woman, who deliberately disobeys the Word of God, would wear pants. … Pants on women are adulterous in nature, and cause men to lust and sin. Jesus made this clear in Matthew 5:28, “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Women who wear pants deliberately cause men to lust, and commit the sin of adultery. …
The average person today scoffs at the idea that Rock-n-Roll, Satanism, and immoral sex go hand-in-hand, but they certainly do. When Rock-n-Roll came to America, so did pants on women become mainstream. Naturally, feminism, witchcraft, abortion, and homosexuality came as well. Rock-n-Roll is straight from the pits of Hell. ALL rock-n-roll women wear pants.
Ah, but it turns out we haven’t really wandered too far from the manosphere after all – and not just because of the mention of feminism. No, what strikes me about Stewart’s argument – aside from the fact that it is completely batshit – is that it is not really very different than the arguments advanced by the critics of the Slutwalks: that the “immodest” dress of women causes men to “lust and sin.”
One of the most common complaints I’ve seen in the writings of the antifeminist slutwalk critics is that women want to “do what they want to, and dress how they want to, without facing any consequences,” as if women who dress in ways these men find arousing have in fact committed some sort of sin that requires punishment from, if not God himself, then from the rapists of the world.
The slutwalk critics invariably insist they’re simply passing along useful advice to women – don’t dress slutty or you’ll get raped – but the talk of “consequences” (and the choice of that word) shows pretty clearly that the real impetus behind the strangely vehement attacks on the slutwalks is the desire to punish women for dressing, and more importantly, doing “what they want.”
Say what you will about the folks behind Jesus-is-Savior.com, but at least their position on the evils of pants is consistent with their overall fundamentalist ideology. The slutwalk critics don’t really have an excuse.
EDITED TO ADD: And, conveniently enough, here’s some douchebag on Reddit making this exact slut-shaming “argument.” Pro-tip: I don’t think “responsibility” means quite what you think it means, dude.
Ah, Reddit, always reliable.
Thanls, ShitRedditSAys, for pointing me to this. And to MFingPterodactyl for the sensible response.
Maybe she’s just not that into you, because women are incapable of love
Maybe the MGTOWers just need a hug from this strange bald man with no pants. Or toes.
Sometimes the fellows on MGTOWforums.com get all philosophical on us. At the moment they are discussing a question of great import: Are women incapable of love to the degree men love?
I suspect you can guess their unanimous answer – women are incapable of love — which is pretty much what you’d expect men who hate women to say about women and love. Some highlights:
Fairi5fair thinks women are monsters; he just can’t figure out which kind:
Women are just incapable of love period. The thrill of being able to use her pussy to get free shit is what women mistake for “love”. …
They are cold, grasping, selfish, and heartless parasites. They have no souls. They are all vampires. Undead zombies lurching from meal to meal.
Wait, so are they vampires or are they zombies? I think I can handle either one by itself, but if they are both at the same time we’re doomed!
Goldenfetus seems to be smoking something powerful:
Yes, they are less capable of love than men, or totally incapable.
One possibility I’ve considered is that in a natural … environment male ‘love’ (platonic) would be reserved only for other men, while women would be viewed as property or objects of reproduction whose value was derived from fertility and subservience without any basis in ‘love’ reciprocation. If so, I would identify feminism as the factor that misled men into extending this love, disastrously, to females – tricking them into believing that females have souls and are like males.
Loving a woman is like trying to pet a toilet, water a sandwich, or plow a parking lot and then wondering why you aren’t getting results. The defect (of understanding) lies with the man loving an object incompatible with love, rather than in the female whose nature precludes reciprocity.
Arctic thinks it’s all about the Benjamins:
Love to a woman is a man who is their servant 24/7 365 a day. …
The idea of love involving sacrifice to a female is as foreign as periods are to men. Why should she care about a relationship involving sacrifice on her part, when she is taught all her life to exploit men for her own uses? Sacrifice herself for a mere man? WHY? Why, when beta males are selling their souls to sniff her crotch? …
[I]ts safe to say the idea of women being in love begins and ends at the ATM of her committed male asset.
The Accomplice agrees:
Women do not seek love or companionship. Their main objective is to find a man of the highest status possible (Richest men, the toughest guys, most popular guy etc) who will protect them, provide for them and satisfy their selfish desires. … [T]he majority of women are too weak physically and mentally to do these things on their own, hence why they always chase after men …
A women’s idea of love is all hypergamy, nothing more.
Superion goes all Evo-Psych on us:
Women are incapapble of love is the great, horrible secret that society has tried to hide from men since the dawn of time.
Women are physically and mentally weaker than men.
In order to survive and pass on their genes they need the resources of the strongest and best providing male available.
To do this, women rely on beauty and guile to trick a male into being her slave.
Women do not love.
For men, love is a self-delusion.
We trick ourselves into wasting our resources on one particular female.
This makes no sense so we tell ourselves we’re in love to justify it.
Such an unromantic bunch! Maybe this will cheer them up.
Actually, screw them. Maybe it will cheer me up:
And if that didn’t do the trick, how about this?
David K. Meller on women getting cancer: “HA HA HA HA HA…LOL!”
Not reallly the appropriate response to someone else getting cancer.
Those of you who aren’t regular readers of the comments here may not appreciate the true genius of David K. Meller, an excitable and exclamation-point-loving MRA I’ve mentioned once or twice in my posts, but who shows up in the comments here with some regularity – ending each comment with his trademark “PEACE AND FREEDOM!!”
Mr. Meller is a great lover (not physically) of men:
Men, by and large, are a wonderful sex! We are more intelligent than women, more creative, at least in the areas outside the home. We are, also, as a rule, physically stronger as well …
He claims to love women, too – though not feminists, whom he seems to consider something other than human:
Women ARE people, and often wonderful people at that! Feminists, on the other hand, AREN’T! …
Women are people, and properly raised, educated, and loved,, are beautiful, charming, and lovely!
Despite his alleged love of women – at least the non-feminist ones – he often says utterly horrible things about them. The examples are too numerous to catalogue. But let me draw your attention to one rather telling comment of his I found recently on The Spearhead.
In the midst of a discussion of Sharon Osbourne’s now notorious comments about a woman who cut off her husband’s penis, Meller offered the following musings on the subject of women and cancer. I am having trouble finding much love of women in them:
It is .. possible that the breast cancers (not to mention ovarian and vaginal cancers) have a psychosomatic aspect to their development. … The feelings of vicious sadism, brutality, and callous indifference to another’s pain in such harpies must inexorably work on the molecular, genetic, and cellular level to generate consequences! I hope that you girls find these consequences as hilarious as I do when you annoy me with your next women’s health campaign against cancer!
Maybe women don’t strictly speaking, DESERVE cancer, but it will be hard for me to stop laughing at them …
Isn’t the thought of cancer-ridden women going under the knife amusing? Isn’t thought of women losing part, or all, of a sexual organ that is precious to them FUNNY? The pain women experience when recovering from surgery (and radiation or chemo, which is almost as bad) is still less than the agony which that poor man underwent when he underwent castration at the hands of a deranged, sadistic, and vicious she-weasel (my apologies to weasels)!
[F]or every man who is abused and tortured by his woman, it almost warms my heart that the same hatred and spite characteristic of the female human(?) sets THEM up for a similar fate down the road, as that bitterness, vicious sadism, and bloodthirstiness so characteristic of those who would LAUGH AT the suffering caused by a “woman” committing such a vicious crime predisposes them toward cancer, and (I hope) a similar fate!
Karma is always there, girls, and it is a bitch!! HA HA HA HA HA…LOL!
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
David K. Meller
That “PEACE AND FREEDOM!!!” always gets me.
This being The Spearhead, Meller’s comments garnered more than a few upvotes. Not as many as he usually gets, admittedly, but some.
At some point I will do a Best of David K. Meller post, highlighting some of his “best” comments here. He is one for the ages.
Nice Guy Redux: If you’d gone out with me, you wouldn’t have gotten raped.
The contest for the Most Ironic Use of the Term “Nice Guy,” When Applied to Yourself –otherwise known as the MIUTNGWAY Award – is heating up. The previous front runner – the Tumblr guy who compared his inability to get laid to the Holocaust – now faces a serious challenge from a Redditor calling himself DogmaDog.
The other day Mr. Dog wandered into a discussion of the SlutWalks in the Feminisms and offered his two cents: he declared them “stupid,” and suggested that they won’t really help victims.
And then he started in on his own tale of woe.
I know I’m going to be shit on for saying what I’m about to say, but please hear me out.
Not a promising start, Dog.
I’ve never raped a woman, and I’m the ‘nice guy’ who never took advantage of a woman.
Do you want an award for this?
But a girl I was infatuated with in high school blew me off and treated me disrespectfully. She ended up being raped one night, while intoxicated. I do not know how I am supposed to feel about it.
As Don Draper would say, “what?”
How do you think you’re “supposed” to feel? Did you accidentally dislodge the part of your brain responsible for basic human empathy?
Apparently, the answer to that is “yes.”
[H]ow do you suppose I am supposed to feel about this woman I knew who got raped? I mean, I’ve never taken advantage of a woman, but I don’t understand how my ‘friend’, this girl I went to high school with, could go out and party all the time, and in turn treat me, her classmate, as though I were an inferior person for not enjoying the atmosphere of drunkenness at high school parties.
As it turns out, you’re an inferior person for an entirely different reason.
That girl was a mean girl, no? And by being disrespectful toward men, and prejudiced toward men, wasn’t she asking men to behave badly toward her? The only men she gave attention and physical affection to were the ones who hurt her back.
So let me see if I get this: she didn’t go out with you, a “nice guy,” so she was therefore “asking” to be raped?
Naturally, this being the Feminisms subreddit, and not The Spearhead, some of the regular commenters took exception to Mr. Dog’s victim-blaming and his complete lack of empathy for the victim – especially strange, since Dog, who says he is suffering from an (unspecified) mental illness, considers himself “a victim, in my own way,” of prejudice towards those with mental health issues. This experience, alas, has not given him any sympathy towards other vicitms.
Indeed, it seems that DogmaDog didn’t misplace his sense of empathy after all; rather, he threw it out of the house and got a restraining order against it. Responding to someone who suggested he show a little empathy, Dog lashed out:
Your empathy can go suck a dick. Empathy does nothing to help my situation. I suppose that is just the excuse people give themselves so that they can feel like they are actually doing something.
You basically called me an inferior human being because I can’t or won’t empathize for my friend who was raped. Well, ask yourself this, smart-ass, have you ever really wondered what good your empathy does? It does nothing. …
In reality, you are doing nothing but attacking me, and I may or may not have a ‘complex’, even though I don’t know what that is, but I can guarantee you, I HAVE NEVER RAPED ANYONE!!!
The sound you hear is me banging my head, ever so softly, on my desk. Empathy is what connects human beings to one another, what allows them to understand one another on a deep level.
When people are suffering – as you are, Dog, in dealing with your mental illness – a little bit of empathy from someone else can make all the difference in the world.
If you can’t feel even a little bit of sympathy for this woman you were once “infatuated” with, you’re not a nice guy at all; you’re an even bigger asshole than those drunken high school partiers you disdain. You may never have raped anyone — as you’ve repeatedly insisted, as if this should win you a prize – but “in your own way” you’re thinking like an abuser. Your lack of empathy for the victim, your continued bitterness towards her for turning you down, your sense of wounded narcissism; none of this is healthy, for you or for anyone who comes into contact with you.
You need help, dude. Please, please get it.
