Men’s Rights activists — or a good portion of them, anyway — seem to suffer from what we might call “Male Responsibility Bypass Syndrome.” Whatever terrible things a man (or a group of men) has been shown to have done, MRAs have a remarkable ability to find a woman to blame for it.
Nowhere is this clearer than when it comes to excusing violence. If a man is violent, MRAs tend to argue, it’s because he was provoked by a woman unaware that “equal rights mean equal lefts.” Or it’s the fault of his mother for not raising him right. Or the fault of his female ancestors for “choosing” violent men to “mate” with.
And if a stepfather abuses a child, it’s the fault of the mother for inviting him into the home. Take this generously upvoted comment from DavidByron2 in the Men’s Rights subreddit, who attempts to give a “scientific” — that is, an Evo Psych — excuse for the abuse:
In a later comment, Byron explains that he wasn’t really “blaming” the “females” in question, just saying that “the female is causal. She/it makes the decision to get a new mate or not.”
Oh, yeah, that’s much better.
But it’s that last bit, borrowed from Evo Psych, that’s even more remarkable, based as it is on the notion that male violence isn’t really violence if someone somewhere has come up with a genetic explanation for it.
Really? Animals need to survive in order to propagate their genes and “maximize genetic transfer to the next generation,” and they need to eat to survive. But I’m pretty sure that if I went to the middle-eastern restaurant on the corner, punched a customer in the head, and ran off with their Lamb Kabob entrée the cops wouldn’t be very sympathetic to my evolutionary argument. Biology doesn’t excuse bad behavior.
In the part of Byron’s comment I left out of the screencap, he links to summaries of the research of evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, who’ve written a good deal about what’s come to be called the “Cinderella effect,” that is, the fact that child abuse seems to be many times more prevalent in homes with stepparents than in those without.
While empirically this is true — though often overstated, and more complicated than “evil stepfather” theories would have it, given that studies often include other men, including uncles and grandfathers, in the same category as stepfathers — we still don’t actually know why this is. Are human males really just wired like male lions, who kill cubs fathered by other lions when they link up with new mates? Or is it that, say, men inclined to abuse children target vulnerable single mothers in order to get access to their kids?
Or could it be that child abuse and neglect — which takes many different forms, from emotional abuse to sexual abuse to physical violence — is a complicated and messy subject that can’t be reduced to a single explanation?
I’m guessing the latter, but leave it to the MRAs to jump on an explanation that gives them an excuse to absolve men of responsibility for their actions BECAUSE GENES.
h/t to LieBaron on Reddit.
These guys are always using pop-ethology and genetics (and psychology, to boot) to make their hateful “points”.
They love using hyperbole and the naturalistic fallacy to spew misogynistic hate against women(primarily) and men, even going as far as to abide and justify abusers… A completely vile enterprise.
They even pat themselves on the back for their oh so scientific arguments, when the naturalistic fallacy is one of the easiest to break! While in some harem-organized mammals, like lions or common mice, new males will kill the progeny of the defeated male, in other species of rodents(Degu), even other mice (e. g. Peromyscus californicus), new male partners will adopt other males’ pups without hesitation.
Even weirder, in birds like Jacanas, where females fight for male access (oh the misandry!), female birds commit infanticide towards other females’ chicks in care of the male birds.
All these behaviors are “natural”, “genetic” and the product of evolution. So which one should we cherrypick as our “animal nature” according to the MRAs?
@J.J., All the (wanted) hugs. This was a terrible post–popular with the misters, but terrible.
O_o
@JJ I accidentally skipped your post, I will send as many Jedi hugs as you want if you need them 🙂
@jj–everyone got to the hugs part before I did, but I’ve got some left if you want them.
What pisses me off more than anything is that my father has everything working against him in terms of him being an abuser. My granddad was abusive–mostly to my grandmother, in front of my dad. However, I’m not naïve enough to think my dad didn’t get some of it too, before my grandmother left my granddad when my dad was 7. Plus there is a shit ton of mental illness in my dad’s family ( which is part of what made my grandad abusive. I’m not excusing it, but learning about the family history made it easier to forgive him and forge a tenuous relationship with him). But my father has never ever laid a hand on us, nor has he been emotionally abusive. He’s not perfect, but I would never say I was abused. I love my daddy so much. And for these assholes to try and use evolutionary bullshit to excuse abuse, when there are people like my dad…it makes me want to punch someone.
I went to the doctor today. He is really leaning towards bipolar disorder (bipolar II). He put me on meds and I will take the first one tonight. I’m still confused and a little scared–i’m afraid the meds won’t work, but I’m also afraid they will work, but I don’t understand why. Here’s hoping.
TW: Violence, murder
Well, if we’re going with evo-psych, then fratricide is completely justified. After all, coot nestlings murder their weakest sibling, working through the whole brood until the strongest finally kills the 2nd strongest. They look so sweet but underneath? Violence from the moment of hatching ensues only the most vicious survives to adulthood. And the parent coots do nothing to prevent it.
I agree whole-heartedly with what other people have said. Because lions have a habit of killing the cubs of other lions (always assuming that the lionesses don’t manage to protect said cubs) does not mean that it’s OK for human step fathers to do it. Sheesh! Lions, being animals, have no moral responsibility for thier actions. Humans do. Are they saying that men don’t have moral responsibility, and thus, are animals? It should be really, really obvious that all adult human beings (except for some leeway given to some people who are mentally ill at particular times eg. Psychosis) are morally responsible for the things they do. Don’t they see how misandrist it is to try and handwave that away and say that it’s fine for them to murder their step kids(because lions and gorillas), and then, by some contorted reasoning, blame the children’s mother for it?
Do they blame the lionesses, I wonder…
I’m just glad these aresholes neglected to research horses. Mares are forced to mate with every stallion in the herd, because if a male horse comes across a foal they know for sure they didn’t father they kick it to death. It’s such a certain fate for baby horses that if their mother missed a potential father more often than not the pregnancy aborts itself. Nature is fucked up.
Not only am I sure this is an MRA’s model for an ideal society I’m pretty sure they’d call the mares baby killers.
Fame at last!
That was a great day, btw.
Big Kitty – your Aunt Teresina sounds cool. 🙂
I’m trying to figure out the evopsych explanation for my mother’s family. Her Daddy was abusive, and her Mother divorced him, and married another man, who brought his own children into the house, and from the reports I heard was not abusive.
Maybe he was abusive in private? I don’t know. But I do know about my mother’s birth-father’s abuse, so, hmmmm.
I guess that family was just a freak of nature, since the step-father was either not abusive, or not as abusive, as the original father. Surely, this must be the exception that proves the rule?
Or, maybe this guy is just a fool.
Yeah, and I’ll bet my stepfather’s sexual abuse of me was just him trying to propagate his genes, right? OH WAIT, I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. Fuck these guys. If they ever actually manage to all meet in one place, I would not be sad if a large sink hole just happened to occur right beneath them.
Hugs to you, J.J.
And if they do go live on an island, and starve until they resort to cannibalism, of course it would all be a woman’s fault. If she had just made the menz a sammich, they wouldn’t have to eat each other.
Hi kitteh! Hope you’ve had a nice visit.
They can’t even be logically consistent about whether animal nature is a good thing or a bad thing.
Animal nature in men = noble, natural, and should not be interfered with.
Animal nature in women (such as when they compare women to dogs) = terrible, evil, and must be changed, or at least tightly controlled through rigid training techniques.
MRAs have a bacteria nature. They swarm around things and putrefy them.
Oh, Alex, Jedi hugs to you, too. That is just awful.
I don’t think this is fair to poor bacteria. NABALT! :]
Jedi hugs accepted and given to everyone else who had an evil stepfather. Ditto with J.J. on the shin-kicking.
Also hugs to Alex. (This is what I get for only skimming the thread ^^;)
Nobody else read that as an excuse for stepfathers raping their stepdaughters? Because I assumed that’s what he meant.
I’m beginning to honestly think they hate men more than we do, if only by ‘virtue’ of hating everything.
*accepts more hugs, offers hug of solidarity to Alex*
I assumed that was included in there somewhere. Because their stepdaughters are more fertile than their mothers, right? Yay, now we’re tied into the earlier post of ‘OMG we want to have sex with inexperienced virgins we can groom and they won’t be able to tell how crap we are at everything.’
God, these men are disgusting.
Their logic seems to follow a twisted version of Occam’s Razor, where if you assume the most morally bankrupt motivation for what they’re trying to say you’re usually going to be correct.
Hi, Buttercup! Yes, I had a great visit, thanks!
Evo Psych is ridiculous crap. Some animals practice adoption. Crows do it. You know another animal does that? Humans. Part of what helped humans survive was being highly social animals that lived in extended families and tribes that supported one another. I don’t remember who said it, but it has been pointed out that for all our similarities with chimps, you cannot put a plane full of strange chimps together and expect them all to survive the journey. We’re somewhat alike, not the same.
There is a strong possibility that that’s exactly what he was getting at. May he fuck a cactus.
I am utterly disgusted and angry right now!! How dare people say things like that?
I was raised by my stepfather who has been a not only a father figure to me but one of the most loving caring people in my life. My birth father ignored me; my stepfather was the one who gave me love and care. He tells people he is my dad and everybody believes him because he raised me and we talk and smile very much alike. Not only that, but we have the father-daughter bound.
Once I was feeling sick he was the one that insisted I’d be taken to a hospital – which everyone, including myself, thought was an exaggeration. Result? I had a bad infection that had spread to my kidneys and if I had taken longer to search for help, I could have died.
Do these people know a feeling called “love”?? I almost feel sorry for then!
I hate when people cannot believe that stepfathers and stepmothers can be caring and loving and then start giving biology reasons crap. I understand some people do not have nice step families, but also some people don’t have nice blood related families either.
Argh… sorry… I am angry.
pineapplecookies,
Agreed about stepmothers (I can’t speak for stepfathers because mine was a child molester). My stepgrandmother and I very close, and my Nana was stepmother to my uncles and one of my aunts and was a much better parent to them than their biological father. I’ve long resented the demonization of stepmothers.