Yes, the whole idea that when people are against sex worker’s rights, the whole thing is really just ugly older women trying to increase their market value. If we could, we would also ban giving them chocolate, or telling them you are in a band. You just wait. You just wait.

Also, I think this is also party a function of them not leaving the house much and experiencing reality through movies and television shows. They believe the twenties-to-thirty-ish actresses that play high schoolers and college age women are all not lying about their actual ages, not Dawson Casting, and what 20 year olds really look like. So real thirty year olds must look, like, fifty.

MRAs claim to be for human rights but have such dehumanizing worldviews. Women are genetic stock with sexual market values, attractive objects to deposit mens’ seed. Men are alpha, beta, and omega primates who can’t help but screw everything they see.

And they claim feminists are misandrists. Just look at them. They portray men as brutes incapable of restraining their sexual urges, and take biological determinism to a whole new low to attempt to justify this idea.

I say GOD IS DEAD.

@Crumbelievable

Yeah, funny how they aren’t really pro-man so much as they are “pro-man who agrees with everything I say”

I have yet to hear a large group of feminists call non-feminist women something that derogatory. The worst I can think of is when radical feminists call moderate or liberal feminists “fun-fems” and that doesn’t even really sound like an insult to me…

@Crumbelievable

for some reason I just read that in a douchey faux-german accent

“That’s a troll, right? No one could possibly pick the username IHaveALargePenis in a non-self-deprecating way. That’s just a parody. Right? Please, for god’s sake, someone tell me this person is not sincere.”

I still can’t get over the fact that AVFM once featured an article by a guy calling himself ‘Cooter Bee’.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2012-01-17b.618.0

‘I am not here to make a moral speech about prostitution. There is an important debate to be held on the rights and wrongs of prostitution and the laws that should have an impact on it, by my Bill does not deal with that. My Bill does one thing: it raises the threshold for the illegality of paying for sex. Of course there is a threshold, which is currently 16. Where someone is under 16, the huge consequences of the criminal law and imprisonment are involved because of the age of consent. But the moment the victim becomes older than 16 there are no punitive powers to deal with the person who is paying.

wish to see this Bill adopted by the Government at some stage solely and simply to raise that threshold, because by raising the threshold one raises the threshold. That may sound like a truism, but this approach will change the behaviour of those choosing to pay. The behavioural implication is there for those worried about breaching the criminal law and risking 14 years in prison because someone could be a minor of 15 and a half years old’

This bill has nothing to do with the morality of prostitution or the rights of sex workers, it will not be any more illegal for you to be a sex worker at the age of 20, but if you buy sex from a 20 year old then dam if you might be a pedophile. Once again it’s a bill targetting the real causes of prostituion, the johns… specifically those johns who buy sex from 16-20 year old prostitutes. As soliciting sex is already illegal in the UK alot of prostitution is done through a pre arrangement of exchanging gifts or cash as a gift with a friend or associate, however this law could also be used to criminalise those men who have 16-20 year old girlfriends who buy them gifts or indeed give them cash.

Oh also the reddit comments suck yeah…

I know all of my dating relationships could easily be mistaken for prostitution, because that doesn’t imply a power imbalance within the relationship at all. Nope. Not at all.

@Magpie

I think the sentence is meant to imply that the older men would give to the gifts to the 16-20yo girlfriends rather than vice versa, which could be implied to be paying the younger girlfriend in question for sex.

I don’t speak Troll Babble too well, though.

Dating will not be good for men in future……………..

Wait, EN is back, pin him down! we need a net or something to stop him escaping. EN’s statements practically beg for explanations that never seem to come.

EN, you might as well say:

‘Cheese is the worst enemy of civilisation………………………’

Because without explaining any of the reasoning behind it, it’s just gibberish of the highest order.

Two posts from Explore Nature in the same post, score!!!

Please talk to us some more Explore Nature.

@Caraz
Now that you mention it: http://jezebel.com/5877398/new-anti+cheese-ad-campaign-is-pure-evil

I still think EN is an MRA bot, possibly programmed by Meller.

I seem to have touched a nerve in some of these trolls.

Also, “eliminating competition from attractive younger prostitutes” is believe it or not one of the more sensible explanations I’ve read for the anti-trafficking movement in the UK.

You’re off to a bad start, I don’t believe that’s a sensible explanation at all. It seems to me that legislators are trying to protect people who are too young to drink alcohol legally (in the US) from engaging in a dangerous profession.

I don’t live in the UK, but they do seem to go overboard when it comes to sex laws. If what you’re saying is true about them trying to put a “full stop” to prostitution, then I totally disagree with that. I think prostitution should be legalized to protect sex workers. That’s what the feminists I’m friends with in the US believe as well. ;)

Besides, the rapist argument could plausibly be cover for an underlying fear of competition.

And a terrible ending. Once again, you’re offending any self-respecting woman over 21 by assuming they’re jealous of prostitutes…. or something. If sex for money replaces committed relationships for you, chances are most women wouldn’t want to put up with you anyway, unless she’s one of those scary ‘golddiggers’ I’ve been hearing about.

I don’t understand this “jealous of prostitutes” thing at all.

Or rather, I do understand it, in the context where a relationship is just a very high-stakes sex work transaction, where the man puts in lots of money and in return the woman puts in lots of time and sex acts.

But not only am I not jealous of sex workers, I am extra not jealous of anyone whose relationship actually looks like that.

(Especially since in practice, those relationships are more often “the man puts in a piddling amount of money and in return the woman puts in lots of time and sex acts.” Paying for dinner is nice and all, but it wouldn’t get you a half hour with an actual escort. If you think a girlfriend is nothing but an informal sex worker, by god you should pay her like one.)

blitzgal: Also, this hand-wringing over guys buying gifts for their 16 year old girlfriends is utter bullshit. Young teens, male and female, many of whom have run away from abusive homes and are on the streets, are being forced into prostitution by criminals. And the johns barely get a slap on the wrist. Just look at the Marvell Scott case. He paid a pimp for a 14 year old girl on Times Square. The girl was so scared that another teen had to go up to his room with them to coax her into it. His punishment for this was 20 days community service.

I’m sure you made a typo. Antz assures us that the least lack of consent; on the part of an adult female, is a sure and certain ticket to 20 years in The Big House.

So it’s impossible (esp. in the Feminist Gynocracy of America, where boys are told [the horror] not to abuse women when they grow up, and parents are told [the infamy that their kids will follow the examples they set) that any one who assaulted any 14 year old who was the least unwilling got less than that. I am sure you meant to say they were sentenced to 20, consecutive, terms of twenty years.

/sarcasm

Rachel, be careful. That way likes madness. It’s like Kabballah, one needs to be adult, stable, and well studied in the ur-text.

Otherwise… Well EN thought he could handle it, and you can see what engaging with these mysteries has done to him.

I support decriminalization, not legalization, because as a long-time involved ally, that tends to be what most sex worker’s right’s activists ask their allies to work towards. “Legalization” tends to bring the force and attention of the state into sex worker’s private lives and livelihoods in ways that are not often positive for the women involved. I only mention this because the idea that “legalization” is obviously the more pro-sex-work stance is out there, but it’s a very murky area in terms of what sex worker’s rights activists really want.

ozymandias42: it’s one of those interesting things about the feminist movement actually. I’ve seen a lot of effort put into criticizing and drawing attention to MRAs who are pretty much nobodies, and hardly any put into dealing with feminists with the ear of Government getting bad laws passed that harm sex workers even from those that claim to be strongly against this. In fact, a while ago some of the big and theoretically pro-sex worker US feminist blogs were helping The F-Word – which is basically the internet face of UK anti-sex worker feminism, complete with a policy of ignoring pro-sex worker rights feminists – raise funds for a website revamp to help them spread their message more effectively, with not a single mention of their problematic views.

(Also, sorry, I’m used to commenting on rather less sex-worker-friendly blogs.)

Xardoz: it is a really daft argument and you’d have to have some truly bizarre beliefs about how men in general think in order to think that way. The thing is that – from what I’ve seen – feminist women are quite capable of holding truly bizarre MRA-esque beliefs about how men in general think, particularly anti-sex work activists. Besides, if you’ve spoken to sex workers I’m guessing you’ve probably heard that paying for sex is often about rather more than simply exchanging money for sex? For example, that to many of their customers it seems to be more about getting some approximation of intimacy and reassurance?

@Kendra:

Ain’t it the truth. In real life, I think I’ve only ever met one man who strikes me as the type to be okay with exploiting sex workers.

(Trigger Warning!: Next sentence is violent)

He was the one who told me about the fantasy of snapping a sex worker’s neck as he climaxed.

(TW: over)

Every other man I’ve met? Pretty decent dude. None of them perfect, some of them outright jackasses, but definitely not interested in actively hurting others or contributing to the suffering of others.

What really makes me shake my head is the assumption they have that every man is just like them. Not acknowledging the variety of attitudes, personalities, and such among men is really out of touch with reality. Assuming that it is all a pretty bad attitude and predilections towards violence is downright creepy.

(wait, am I being oppressive in using the ‘c’ word?)

It doesn’t really matter anyways, usually overweight women don’t make much money. It’s a waste or time competing with hot nubile females, none of you have nothing to worry about.

makomk: Care to explain to us what those unpleasant beliefs of “feminist men” are?

As to the issue of Creepy, and when some men complain about it… a whole lot got pissed about people referring to someone who ignored what someone had said about not liking it when men hit on her and then asked her to come to their hotel room at 3 in the morning; when they were alone in an elevator as creepy.

He was, “just a little shy and didn’t want to ask her in public,”, or, “He didn’t know she felt that way,”, and I forget what all was rationalised as the “real” reason. But calling him creepy was over the top.

Specific action. Personal reaction. Condemned.

So color me less than convinced by your assertion that it’s the, “sixth sense” implications that get people’s skivvies in a bunch.

ozy: I have dark secrets. :)

On a more serious note, I probably do have a less than flattering view of men; but that’s got nothing to do with being a feminist; I have some less than flattering views of women.

That’s because I’ve got some unkind thoughts about humanity.

Ever noticed how MRAs are exactly like the straw feminists they hate so much.

Naira: the difference between making a snap judgement and women’s intuition is the idea that the latter shines a light on some underlying truth. If a man says he doesn’t like someone, well that could be for any of a number of reasons many of which are quite daft, the problem is the idea that if a women knows that someone is intuitively “creepy” it means there must be something fundamental about him that means he should be perceived as creepy.

ozymandias42: intuition is a real thing. Prejudice is a real thing. Pretty much everyone is really awful about separating the two, and I haven’t seen any evidence that women are an exception to this rule. So sure it makes sense for everyone to protect themselves as best they can, but that doesn’t mean their gut feelings are less problematic.

As for male feminists… on the one end feminism has an annoying tendency to attract the kind of men that think all men are rapists because they are, and on the other it tends to pull in those that think there’s nothing wrong with certain parts of male gender roles and masculinity because they don’t have a problem with them. Usually for the latter it’s the culture of male-on-male violence that they seem to think is a non-problem; Feministing in particular seemed to attract a lot of military and ex-military men.

“Ever noticed how MRAs are exactly like the straw feminists they hate so much.”

Several times. And yet they don’t have to awareness to know it.

If we could go into their minds, a la Inception, we’d probably see a boxing match between them and Mary Daly, hosted by Don King.

(meant to post this as Red_locker. Sorry for doubleposting)

My Ass*, but eh.

makomk – One. Hello, I’m ex military, not a man, and against male on male violence.

Two. When feminist women defend our right to the gift of fear, or even the gift of calm caution, we are not talking about enshrining the mystical wooey magic that is women’s intuition, itself a patriarchal lie. Stop muddying the waters.

For that matter, all we are really asking for is the right not to automatically trust, or be warm and open, to strangers. Think about that. Think about what’s being expected of us. Think about whether it’s expected of you.

ozymandias42: it’s not really a question of supporting male-on-male violence, at least not in the “yay violence” sense. It’s more that they don’t seem to believe that anyone else should ever have cause to fear it or that it really matters.

red_locker: sadly there isn’t some group of academics out there analyzing the problems of the feminist community and writing nice summaries. Sorry. (It actually seems to be quite hard to pin down any negative information about feminism full stop – no-one much out there interested in recording or summarizing it. The best I generally find is passing references from those who were there and perhaps the odd contemporary news article. This is even true for big specific events like the feminist attack on the Chain Reaction lesbian nightclub that everyone seems to know about.)

zhinxy: well yes, not automatically trusting strangers is reasonable. It’s when it gets on to things like expecting others to ostracize people because they’re “creepy” that things get rather sour. (Which isn’t at all the same as ostracizing someone because they’ve done something specific that’s unacceptable, and calling them creepy because of that, of course.)

. “It’s when it gets on to things like expecting others to ostracize people because they’re “creepy” that things get rather sour. ”

Examples?

Secondly (hit “Post Comment” button too soon), you admit that you can’t find proof of what you assert are the problems with male feminists…I wasn’t even asking for academic papers (though that topic would make for an interesting one), so what is your deal?

If makomk wants a critique, I’d say that yeah, the 70s and 80s seem to have been a rather weird time to be a feminist (or anything else, really). They were more like Anonymous is now, and did a lot of protesting and throwing red paint on books and didn’t have a great tolerance or understanding of sex.

… now, if you want to argue about what feminism has been like in, say, the past ten years? You’ll actually need an up-to-date story.

I see the trollz are still busy implying over-21 “old hag” feminists are getting jelly of ‘tutes. Keep digging your own grave, MRAs. :D

The closest MRAs have found to the straw-feminists of their dreams is The Radfem Hub. I lurk there, and sometimes it seems like a genderswapped AVfM. The thing is, RadFems will never piss me off as much as MRAs, because they don’t act so goddamned sleazy. For instance, I don’t see the RadFems running a site like “register-him” or doxxing anyone, although IMO, I wouldn’t blame them if they did.

I know that’s why MarkyMark left the manosphere, and probably why Zeta Male left as well. They’re skurred they’ll get a taste of their own medicine. All thanks to the bwave efforts of Paul E-lame.

Ozy, thanks for the post explaining why some people are in favor of decriminalization instead of legalization. Good points. Sounds like the arguments I’ve heard for decriminalizing/not legalizing pot, but I still think both should be legalized so taxes can be collected. My philosophy is a combination of Ron Paul’s “LEGALIZE ALL THE THINGS” and Straw-Liberals’ “TAX ALL THE THINGS.” :D