MRAs and Children First: The Spearhead on the Costa Concordia disaster
From The Spearhead, where feminists dying is HILARIOUS.
Most of the coverage of the Costa Concordia disaster at the moment seems to be focusing on the Italian cruise ship’s captain and his douchey behavior, which involved not only running the ship aground but also abandoning ship prestissimo while passengers remained trapped on board.
MRAs, by contrast, are using the tragedy as an excuse to rail against the notion of “women and children first” and, of course, to make jokes about women drowning.
Now, the Titanic aside, “women and children first” isn’t now, and hasn’t ever really been, the standard way to evacuate those on a sinking ship, though many in the public — including some of those who were on board the Costa Concordia – seem to believe that it is. (See here for more details on how evacuations are typically handled these days; generally only those with mobility problems are given special treatment.)
In the case of this particular evacuation, some on board apparently tried to enforce an informal “women and children” policy, but many men weren’t willing to wait.
What’s got some MRAs in a snit is that some people, in the media and online, are calling these dudes cowards. In The Daily Mail, a right-wing British tabloid, A N Wilson wrote:
[I]n our day, with the advent of feminism and the professional woman, chivalry and manners are considered stuffy and old-fashioned.
As the father of three daughters, I do not, with a single fibre of my being, wish to go back to a time when women could not have the vote or get a university degree. Nor do I, surrounded by extremely strong-charactered and intelligent women in my family and among my friends, feel tempted to regard women as the frail sex.
But the fact remains that there is a longing among most men to protect women and children, and chivalry is simply a manifestation of that longing.
And whatever transpires about the reason for the Costa Concordia disaster, the disappearance of a chivalric code is a sorry reflection on society today.
This is not what you’d call a feminist argument; it’s a traditionalist argument, published in a tabloid rag that’s generally quite hostile to feminism.
Nonetheless, some MRAs are using the Costa Concordia disaster as an opportunity to deliver a big “told you so!” to the … imaginary feminists who live in their head.
Over on The Spearhead, where one familiar commenter actually described Wilson’s Daily Mail article as “feminist,” guest poster Lyn87 wrote:
The MRM is getting more vocal, and a lot of guys are now saying, “You wanted equality. This is what it looks like.” And they are saying it aloud and in public. Even a few women chimed in, saying that men have no obligation to die for women if women want equality. (Somehow I suspect there wasn’t much, “I am woman, hear me roar, watch me drown” on the Costa Concordia itself, but hey, it’s a start.)
MRAs: Always up-to-the-minute with their pop culture references!
This post was helpfully illustrated with a stock photo of a woman drowning.
Commenters got in their digs as well.
Keyster riffed on Lyn87’s incredibly au courant Helen Reddy reference:
I am woman hear me…blurp….rah…gurgle…raha…ffftt…orr…roar…gurgle…help me…somebody…fffft…please…blurp…help…help me please!
Aharon told both ladies and fish what’s what:
I eat fish. Fish don’t eat me. My life is too precious to sacrifice it so some spoiled bitch can have a pussy pass into the life boats.
Anti Idiocy got all hypothetical-cruise-ship tough guy on us:
Anyone who attempts to keep me on a sinking ship because of the genitals with which I was born is attempting to murder me. I have the right to respond accordingly.
And Thomas Tell-truth kicked chivalry – not to mention basic human decency — to the ocean floor:
Equality means that when the ship is going down and you are a woman, you had better get out of my way or you are going to drown with my footprints on your back.
Apparently Thomas Tell-truth is actually George Costanza:
Jeb, meanwhile, offered a more scientific rationalization for being a complete douchenozzle:
As far as I’ve heard, the one and only sport in which women naturally out-do men is endurance swimming. Women are also more bouyant, and as survivalists will explain, women float easiest on their backs (making it easy to breathe while expending minimal energy) whereas men float easiest in “the dead man’s float” (ie. face down, head in the water) and must expend more energy to stay alive. Furthermore, women have more body-fat than men which insulates them better against aquatic dangers such as hypothermia.
Given all these factors it is quite rational for men to pick women up by the seat of their pants and toss them overboard to make way for men and children to safely be rowed ashore on the lifeboats.
It’s all about doing the right thing and saving lives, after all.
MRA humor is very sophisticated indeed.
EDITED TO ADD: The Spearhead has put up a followup post, once again taking aim at imaginary “lifeboat feminists,” though the only person the post cites lamenting the end of “women and children” is Rich Lowry from the National Review (not a feminist publication).
Posted on January 18, 2012, in antifeminism, douchebaggery, evil women, gloating, MGTOW, misogyny, MRA, that's not funny!, the fucking titanic, the spearhead. Bookmark the permalink. 1,082 Comments.
Because he’s garbage.
@Ami: We can use the picture of me lassoing my cat.
THE LASSO OF FEMINISM
Men’s Rights Activist Lieutenant | January 18, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Of course I’m emotionally hurt by my interactions here (waiting for people to twist that into me “manipulating” the commentariat). I disagree with the majority, and everyone makes it a point to sit around calling me the worst names they can possibly think of. Then after being called a shitstain, a twisted vile woman hater, and a disposable whiny piece of shit, I get even a LITTLE bit angry and people start psychoanalyzing my so-called “abusive” personality.
So these names actually hurt you? What if they only said them in anger, or in haste?
How do you do a difference of means test, Geese? Since you’re a freaking math genius that shouldn’t be too hard. Can you demonstrate Godel’s incompleteness Theorem to the class? What’s a manifold? Can you explain Bayes’ Theorem? More importantly, can you explain what are its implications vis-a-vis the scientific notion of ’cause’ versus correlation, and therefore why frequentists really don’t like Bayesian statistics? (You know, just so we can have a reason to think you understand math rather than simply regurgitate the contents of your class work.)
As for my English, I do tend to sneak in some technically bad English on purpose because I consider certain features of other languages (here, programming languages) to be more efficient and desirable. For instance, the capability of doing
a = b = c
in C++, ported over to English as “feminists are women are bad at math”.
And yes, I’m a huge nerd. Duh. Tell me something I don’t know.
Blackbloc and anybody else here, I know we got the linguistic geeks in the house – Do you have any experience with lojban?
I think MRAL stays here b/c of his insecurity about his status in society -_- It’s sort of a “I CAN BE WHEREVER I WANT AND I WANT TO BE HERE BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT ME TO I AM NOT BEING PUSHED AROUND LIKE IRL” so he stays even though apparently he’s emotionally hurt by just being here o_O (which comes out of nowhere and isn’t ppl getting angry at him for being an asshole deliberately to ppl, but it’s always okay cuz he’s either angry or in a rush xD )
Yo Geese… wrong gender for your “harem”.
Yo mama’s food so repulsive it hovers.
Ami – I think that’s part of it too. Regardless, being in the place where his many manifold issues bleed out, even if you get different flavors in different eras is just not fun.
I was thinking of learning lojban and trying to translate logical mra talk into predicate logic based speech….
Lauralot | January 18, 2012 at 4:39 pm
@Ami: We can use the picture of me lassoing my cat.
THE LASSO OF FEMINISM
My cat is female so she isn’t disposable like your cat xD
Bostonian | January 18, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Yo Geese… wrong gender for your “harem”.
We shouldn’t assume what genders are in his harem. :3
I GOT ON THE LIFEBOAT BEFORE MY CAT
Or he’s just full of shit and still thinks the sympathy gig will work. My money’s on that one, again.
ME AND MY CAT SABOTAGE LIFEBOATS JUST SO THERE AREN’T ENOUGH FOR EVERYBODY AND SOME MEN WILL HAVE TO DIE
WE ALSO CREATE ICEBERGS FOR FUN
Simple MRAbot programming. You know how you can change the animals’ catchphrases in Animal Crossing? Yeah, it’s like that. That’s why he ends every other sentence with “BIGOTS” nonsensically. :D
Mral here is a good song you should listen to ‘Not the doctor’ by Alanis Morissette.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/alanismorissette/notthedoctor.html
My fave part is: “I don’t want to be your idol, see this pedestal is high and I’m afraid of heights.” Aren’t I subtle?
MRAL, I have never, not once called you a name much less the other ones that you have been called.
Not only that but you have called me and all the women here names. So once again, GO AWAY.
But he only says those things in anger… or haste. So it’s okay xD
MRAL, has it not occurred to you that the reason you being called abusive is that a lot of people here are, in fact, intimately familiar with what abusive patterns of behavior look like, and you are fucking displaying them? Or course it hasn’t.
My fave part is: “I don’t want to be your idol, see this pedestal is high and I’m afraid of heights.” Aren’t I subtle?
Entitled fucking women. You’re afraid of heights and of course we have to accommodate you too? You don’t just want a pedestal, but one low to the ground to keep you safe too? WAH WAH WAH Even our pedestals aren’t good enough for you princesses.
All right, I’m leaving.
I HAVE MADE AN IMAGE
ACTUALLY I MADE MY CAT TYPE IT FOR ME
So… srsly…
what IS with the MRAs and the Titanic?
Like what do they want us to do about it? o_O Time travel?
Has anybody ever thought of the poor iceberg by the way? I want to go back in time and motor by the iceberg and hold out my hand. “Come with me if you want to live.”
AWWWWW
HAHAHAHA That’s awesome Lauralot! :D
Is that actually you and your cat? o:
Stay away this time. For your sake as well as ours.
Think of it like breaking an addiction and going cold turkey.
I wanna play in the insult game! Hey, Geese, your brain on the edge of a razor blade would look like a bee bee rolling down a four lane highway.
@Ami: Indeed it is!
I wanted to ‘shop it to have a starburst background, but my cat doesn’t know how to manipulate photos…
I would post things about my guinea pigs but they are both girls so I put them on tiny pedestals.
Also, if the house starts sinking, I have tiny lifeboats for them.
Fair enough Ami.
@Lauralot that’s an awesome Wonder Woman costume! :D I’m jealous! :D
I just dress up as me (with wings and cat hats!)… or Miss Martian xD
They spend their time on the small parts of history not good for dudes. They don’t have a whole lot options for that.
Geese, your emunctory achievements are an object lesson for us all.
Nope, most men are in fact bigger and stronger than most women and children. There’s always exceptions. If men weren’t expected to let women and children go first, they wouldn’t play fair, they would cut in line, trample and tackle women and children, they wouldn’t give women and children a fair fight due to their bigger size and strength. Anyway, it is better to have more men die than women and children if you want the world to keep going.
They spend their time on the small parts of history not good for dudes.
But I thought ALL of history was bad for dudes.
I’m a day behind on threads, and I really feel like reading through hundreds of comments right now. What’d MRAL do this time?
The usual.
Can I get the credz for slaying MRAL? I brought him out of the woodwork for his final scorging by the SHRIKE FORCE. :D
Claimed he’s being emotionally abused on here and eventually said he’s leaving. Though I don’t know if he means forever xD
Can I get credit for being me? :(
Can I get the credz for slaying MRAL?
Only if he doesn’t show up again tomorrow.
Geese, you’re an acerebral, bathybius who’s battology isn’t worth getting angry about.
Do we really think MRAL is leaving these boards forever? His record is what, 2 days on a flounce? HE always does this. He’ll be back to annoy later.
MRAL, why do you assume that the men on the Titanic believed themselves to be disposable? I am not saying that they did not believe this about themselves (though I do not personally believe that they did) I just want to know what led you to view this as likely.
Do you view yourself as disposable?
I think this is the first time I’ve felt someone should be banned from here for the sake of their own mental health.
Of course MRAL doesn’t mean forever. Isn’t his record twenty-five hours at this point?
Yes Ami, I extend to you one credit just for being you.
Aww, Rutee beat me. XD
Instead of having a Book of MRAL, could we just have a list of all the times he’s flounced?
Ami always gets credit for being Ami. ‘Cause Ami is awesome.
The Spearhead has a followup post, once again battling imaginary “lifeboat feminists,” though the only person the post cites lamenting the end of “women and children” is a dude from the National Review (not a feminist publication).
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/288253/dude-where-s-my-lifeboat-rich-lowry
“Also, if the house starts sinking, I have tiny lifeboats for them.”
Oh my gosh! The idea of this is soooo cute!
I don’t understand why the MRAs have to either obsess over an event that they can’t change & was not indicative of a trend or a precedent that set one or make up enemies to fight o_O Why not just choose a topic that actually is an issue?
Oh you do NOT talk smack about my boyfriend Sayid.
I mean AVfM wants to have some sort of protest against the titanic in front of the White House? o_O What do they hope will be accomplished? The government reveals they had time travel all along? xD
@Lauralot
we should prolly caption this into some evil feminazi way too
I guess he’ll be back. Oh well, all we have to now is camp his spawn.
….Sorry, Geesu put me in a video game metaphor mood.:)
“No, this one’s female – we won’t have to shoot her.”
These are from a long time ago xD I forgot I had them in my pb…
>>Can I get the credz for slaying MRAL?
Killstealer. Everybody went in and softened him up and then you just swoop in and think you can ninja loot the body? ;)
I’m enjoying the lolbearcrotch photos.
Jacques Futrelle’s indoctrination as to his own inherent worthlessness is what killed him, if he had the option to board a boat.
Okay, seriously, MRAL. Between this and saying that you’re glad people died on the Costa Concordia because it proves some weird point in your head, you need to get the fuck off the computer. You’re talking about real people here, not video-game characters.
At this point, we here at Manboobz can officially help you no further with your personal problems, even if most of us weren’t heartily sick of trying. Your problems seem to boil down to two things:
1. You have a severe lack of empathy, and are particularly resistant to the idea that other people experience pain and unhappiness as you do.
2. On a fundamental level, you don’t see women as human.
When you interact with people online, it’s easy for you to indulge in these two weaknesses. Since you don’t know us personally, you can concoct fantasies about who we are and what you imagine our lives are like (i.e., awesome*) and ignore what we’re actually telling you. And the distance of online communication makes women even easier to dehumanize.
So the Internet is no longer useful to you. Time to go out and talk to real people. Join some clubs. Hang out in the library. Go to New England Comics and that fancy hot-chocolate place in Harvard Square. Walk to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and go to the room where they keep the Cezanne. (If you’ve been following all the good advice I’ve been giving you over the past year, you’ll get that reference.) We can’t help you anymore. From here, you walk alone.
If you need assistance with this, you can message me on Facebook. Same screen name. But really, get the fuck off the computer for a while.
*To be honest, as a convicted criminal living alone in an apartment with a bobcat and working 56 hours a week as a street performer, my life is pretty damn good.
Hey, I used TAUNT and it was super effective, I deserve lootz. I wonder what he dropped.
When you interact with people online, it’s easy for you to indulge in these two weaknesses. Since you don’t know us personally, you can concoct fantasies about who we are and what you imagine our lives are like (i.e., awesome*) and ignore what we’re actually telling you. And the distance of online communication makes women even easier to dehumanize.
This is exactly true. I once finally got him to answer me what my life was like, how people treat me when I’m at the cashier (vs how they’d treat him), when I’m waking around, etc etc etc… and he yelled at me that he can’t know what an individual women’s life was.
When he’s forced to think of a woman as a real person, his sudden blanket idea that every woman is living Lauren Conrad’s life vanishes, but he tends to not want to think of us as actual people. -_-
Lauralot – <3
My cat is actually being castrated on Saturday, 4rlz.
Ami's kill count is totally gonna end up the highest in the guild, I bet. Whatever happens.
@Zhinxy are you gonna make jokes on a talk show too?
Did NWO ever take my challenge by the way? o: