Category Archives: misandry
Scott Adams: Self-proclaimed Misunderstood Genius, Part XVIII
Scott Adams contemplates his favorite subject (artist's conception)
Oy. Scott Adams won’t shut up about that execrable “Pegs and Hoies” piece of his that I (and quite a few other people on the internets) wrote about the other day. Naturally, he’s being willfully obtuse about the reaction his piece caused, and blames it all on the “low reading comprehension” of everyone in the world who is not him and/or one of his sycophantic fans. So he’s decided to interview a number of those who wrote about it. (Not including me. Aww, Scott, but we had such good times together!)
So far he’s interviewed Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon (a great writer and lovely person, by the way) and Irin Carmon of Jezebel. Naturally, the interviewees offer cogent explanations of just what was wrong with his idiotic post, and he responds by completely and utterly missing the point. (Or pretending to; it’s always hard to tell with Scott.)
Scott Adams is so relentlessly irritating – he’s a bit like Eoghan in his stubborn refusal to get the point – that I can’t bring myself to write any more about this idiotic manufactured controversy. So you’ll have to go check out the posts yourself.
EDITED TO ADD: Adams has put up yet another post on the subject, entitled “Maybe it’s me?” in which he decides ” to take a step back and seriously consider the hypothesis that the reason people disagree with me is that I’m an idiot and I don’t realize it.” Scott, your hypothesis is correct.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: And … Mr. Adams has now made a personal appearance in the comments below. Be gentle!
Given Adams’ intense narcissism, I can’t help but get the song “Biggest Fan” by the Martini Brothers stuck in my head every time I read any of this posts. Listen a bit, and you’ll see why.
Men’s Rights Classix: The Age of Consent is Misandry
If it weren't for this guy, there would be no pedophiles.
Today, a trip down memory lane to revisit an until-recently lost classic of modern misogyny: Jay Hammers’ “The Age of Consent is Misandry.” The piece, originally published on Jay Hammers’Men’s Rights blog, inspired some heated discussions amongst MRAs online, with some harshly criticizing the piece as an apologia for pedophilia and others hailing it as a “politically incorrect” masterpiece. Stung by the criticism, Hammers ultimately took his blog down. But the piece has since been resurrected on the Human-Stupidity blog – another blog that seems rather unhealthily obsessed with the supposed injustice of men not being allowed to fuck underage girls.
Here are some of its highlights (that is, lowlights); the headlines are mine.
ALL ABOUT THE MENZ
The arbitrary age of consent is not about protecting women/girls. It is about valuing females and their virtue over males and their freedom. The intent of the laws is to stop older men from having sex with younger women and that is how it is enforced. It was never intended to stop younger men from having sex with older women.
MORE BETA BLUES
Age of consent laws are designed to punish beta males. A beta male in his 20s, unsuccessful with women his own age who are infused with a sense of feminist entitlement and deride all but the top alpha males who take interest in them, who seeks companionship with a younger, sexually mature female who desires him, should not go to prison for acting on that which is normal male sexuality.
FEMINISTS WHO SUPPORT AGE OF CONSENT LAWS ARE TREATING WOMEN LIKE CHILDREN
If we are to treat women as children then we should be consistent. Young women who have sex with older men are as much victims as women who have sex with a pick-up artist after meeting at a club. In both cases, feminists are angry because the woman has been “fooled” into having sex with a less than ideal mate in terms of value. …
This is what makes feminists angry and this is why age of consent exists still today, because it is assumed women are not mentally mature enough to give consent AND because older women want to limit men’s options to increase their own value in the sexual marketplace.
BUT WOMEN ARE CHILDREN, BASICALLY
Older women … are generally not of a much higher intelligence level than teenage girls. The big difference between the two is that older women are less attractive and that is what makes them so damn angry. …
Females generally do not significantly mature mentally past puberty so it should always be illegal for any woman to have sex or it should never be illegal for any woman to have sex. There is no arbitrary age where females suddenly become self-aware, realizing the consequences of their actions, and stop seeking out alpha males. Thus there must not be an arbitrary age of consent for sex.
A MODEST PROPOSAL
If anything, it should be illegal for women to have sex with men until men have been educated on the truths of women, Marriage 2.0, Game, feminism, and men’s rights.
Discuss?
Scott Adams: Male Chauvinist Peg
Sexy!
Oh, Scott Adams! Can you write anything about that whole man-woman business without being a creepy douche about it? In a recent blog post titled “Pegs and Holes” – which refers to exactly what you think it refers to — Adams offers his take on the powerful men who have been in the news lately because, as Adams puts it, they’ve been “tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world.”
After noting that the “current view of such things is that the men are to blame for their own bad behavior” and that this “seems right” to him – gee, ya think? – Adams decides to get all philosophical on us. (When you’re Scott Adams, this is a very very bad idea.) He writes:
The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn’t ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, “Here’s your square hole”?
I’m assuming that Adams doesn’t actually think that baby boys are born with erections, and realizes that it is biology, not society, that hands out penises and vaginas to babies in the first place. I’m just trying to understand the whole pegs and holes metaphor. Why does he think “round” penises and “square” vaginas are somehow incompatible? In the context of consensual sex, after all, penises of all shapes and sizes generally fit into vaginas quite nicely.
As far as I can figure it out, the round-vs-square analogy simply refers to the fact that men can’t simply stick their “round pegs” into any conveniently located “hole” whenever they feel like it. The fact that these “holes” aren’t accessible to any random guy thus renders them “square.” This seems to frustrate Adams, who goes on to complain that “society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness” and that “society is organized as a virtual prison for men’s natural desires.”
Looking at Hugh Hefner’s marital history – he’s been married and divorced and just got stood up at the altar – Adams concludes that:
For Hef, being single didn’t work, and getting married didn’t work, at least not in the long run. Society didn’t offer him a round hole for his round peg. All it offered were unlimited square holes.
What does this even mean? I suspect that over the course of his lifetime, Hef has had about all the sex he could possibly want, and then some. Is it somehow unjust that he couldn’t force his latest fiancée to actually marry him? Or that some women are sexually unavailable – that is, square holes – to him?
It goes without saying that Adams’ notions of human sexuality are profoundly insulting to both men and women . On the one hand, he’s suggesting that men are basically all potential rapists walking around with, er, turgid pegs; and, on the other, he seems to regard women as little more than passive (if stubbornly recalcitrant) receptacles for these male “pegs.”
And so it’s hardly surprising that his grand solution to the conundrum he’s invented is a rather depressing one. After noting that it really wouldn’t be a good thing for men to go around willy-nilly raping women and/or, as he puts it, tweeting their meat, he suggests the real solution is for men to be chemically castrated. And no, I’m not making that up. Here’s Scotty:
I think science will come up with a drug that keeps men chemically castrated for as long as they are on it. It sounds bad, but I suspect that if a man loses his urge for sex, he also doesn’t miss it. Men and women would also need a second drug that increases oxytocin levels in couples who want to bond. Copulation will become extinct. Men who want to reproduce will stop taking the castration drug for a week, fill a few jars with sperm for artificial insemination, and go back on the castration pill.
That might sound to you like a horrible world. But the oxytocin would make us a society of huggers, and no one would be treated as a sex object. You’d have no rape, fewer divorces, stronger friendships, and a lot of other advantages. I think that’s where we’re headed in a few generations.
Is he being serious here, or is this all some satirical “social experiment?” Who the fuck knows. Though I suspect if I accused him of being serious, he’d claim he was being satirical. And vice versa. Because that’s just the way he is.
Also, while I’m at it: the idiomatic expression about pegs and holes posits a square peg and a round hole, not the other way around. Why did Adams reverse this? Why!? Why!!?? Is he trying to drive us all mad?
EDITED TO ADD: Check out Feministe for more on Scott Adams and his peg.
EDITED AGAIN: And Pharyngula as well.
Are false rape accusations the fault of feminism?
Holly Pervocracy's SlutWalk sign, which apparently causes false rape accusations.
If you thought the “meat market” guy from a couple of days ago – you know, the one prattling on about the “market makers of pussy” — was risibly wrongheaded, here’s an even more insidious attempt to reduce the complexities of human sexuality to a question of “supply and demand.” Over on The False Rape Society blog, Pierce Harlan has a new post with the title:
False rape claims: increasingly a tool to skew the current economies of sex, where sex is cheaper than most women prefer
As you might imagine, the post itself is based on some fairly twisty blame-the-victim logic – with some feminist-bashing thrown in for good measure. Let’s wade through the muck here.
According to Harlan, the “cultural tenets governing sexual encounters” have gone all loosey-goosey in recent years, due to birth control, a general loosening of sexual mores and “the feminist-inspired norms that pressure young women to ‘party like the guys.’”
I assume you have all read Mary Wollstonecraft’s classic A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Get Totally Wasted and Fuck Some Dudes.
But, alas, feminists totally don’t understand the law of supply and demand –and that in the market of sex, they are the supply and not the demand (because it’s not like women ever really want to have sex themselves). As a result, the feminist-inspired young women of today are totally flooding the market with cut-rate pussy.
As Harlan explains:
The experts tell us that men have a much easier time obtaining sex than they did in days long gone. … Women who’d prefer to put a higher price tag on their sexuality are finding themselves locked out of the market.
The results are all too predictable. Women are having sex more often when they secretly are conflicted about it. We’ve frequently reported here about the proven gender “regret asymmetry” where young women have much higher levels of after-the-fact regret than men following sexual hook-ups. Regret too often is transmogrified into feelings of being used, and feeling used too often metamorphoses into a false rape claim.
Does Harlan have any evidence to back up this hypothesis? Yes. And it comes straight from his ass.
Having studied the false rape phenomenon closely for a number of years, it is my conclusion that young women are increasingly resorting to false rape claims as an inappropriate method of skewing the current economies of sex, which favors men and which makes sex cheaper than most women consciously or subconsciously prefer.
In other words: he has spent the last several years searching out news stories on false rape accusations to post on his blog. Because there are almost 7 billion people on planet earth, he has been able to find a fair number of such stories. So he’s concluded that there is some sort of “false rape epidemic” going on. In other words, his conclusion seems to be based almost entirely on what’s known as the “availability heuristic,” which, as Wikipedia puts it, “is a phenomenon (which can result in a cognitive bias) in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind.”
Were I to start a blog entitled “The Dudes Peeing on Things You Shouldn’t Pee On Society,” guess what? I too could cite many examples, drawn from the newspapers of the world. Were I to do this for several years, my brain would be stuffed full of stories of men urinating on just about anything that can be urinated on, from prayer rugs to cough drops. This, through the power of the “availability heuristic,” might convince me that we faced an epidemic of inappropriately urinating men, and that this epidemic was getting worse by the hour. (I mean, before I started specifically looking for such stories I almost never heard about this terrible social ill.)
But back to Harlan and his argument, such as it is:
Women are pressured by feminist-inspired norms to make themselves more available to men than ever, but they have also learned that crying rape after-the-fact is a culturally accepted, indeed, feminist approved, antidote to sex they feel was too cheaply obtained. Instead of saying “no” up front, they are retroactively saying “no” — with false rape claims — after-the-fact. And society has given this backward state of affairs its imprimatur.
One solution? Women need to stop having so much sex — for the sake of teh menz. Or as Harlan, still working the creaky economic metaphor, puts it:
One cure is to enhance the value of female sexuality by decreasing the supply and thereby reduce both regret and false rape claims.
But, darn it, this won’t work, because women are out there marching in the street for the right to, you know, have sex when they want to with consenting partners without being shamed for it.
That, of course, can never happen in a society where “slut walks” are celebrated as liberating events, where colleges excuse women from underage drinking charges so long as they report they were raped, and where false rape claims are routinely excused and implicitly encouraged. In short, it can never happen in a society that encourages young women to be promiscuous and to then tell rape lies when that promiscuity results in an unfavorable sexual experience.
Harlan ends his piece with a call to lock up false accusers for a long time.
Certainly malicious false accusers should be charged. Women who identify the wrong guy in a lineup? No.
And it would be nice if Harlan extended the sympathy he shows for falsely accused men to real victims of real rape, a much larger group of people than the falsely accused. But instead he writes pieces like this one, and links in his sidebar to a host of misogynist blogs that, among other things, routinely joke about female victims of rape and murder, that urge men on juries in rape trials to vote to acquit the accused even when he’s clearly guilty, that claim that age of consent laws are inherently man-hating, and that think it would be great if sex robots and artificial wombs rendered women obsolete.
Those actually interested in helping those falsely accused – rather than supporting Harlan’s retrograde agenda — would do better to support The Innocence Project, and to stop reading Harlan’s drivel.
Children of Dudes
Dude! I'm making a baby!
Ladies, your days are numbered! The sexy lady sexbots are only a few years off, which will free men of the onerous task of having sex with your cootie-ridden human bodies, and pretty soon you won’t be needed for anything at all, not even making babies. At least according to this comment by “JR” on Roissy’s blog, which was recently highlighted on the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology blog:
I think the obvious gender-wide frustration of women today can partly be explained by this lowered value of children/reproduction altogether. Women understand that their primary purpose will always be tied up with reproduction and not civilization-altering achievement; now that this purpose has been largely removed, what do they have left? … [M]en are as useful as ever, whereas women’s role as child-bearer is rapidly becoming unnecessary and in many cases even harmful.
Babies? We don’t need no stinkin babies!
And if after a few years of childless Children of Men-style dystopia we male humans decide that maybe it would be good if we, collectively, had a few kids, well, by then some clever dude will have invented an artificial womb. And then, ladies, you’re toast! (Which we dudes will be eating a lot of in the future, by the way, as actual cooking, not to mention sammich-making, is for bitches.) As Mr. Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology explains:
Before … our current level of technology, women were in complete and total control of reproduction. Women could get knocked up by one guy and claim another guy is the dad and there was no way of knowing what the truth was. First came increased scientific knowledge about reproduction. Before that the process of reproduction would have been considered to be almost magical given women room to exercise total control. This lessened women’s control over reproduction. In the 20th century came paternity testing so men could know without a doubt who a child’s father is. Now women have no room to hide except that the law allows for paternity fraud. Eventually we will have artificial wombs which will allow men to have children without women if they so choose. The artificial womb represents control of reproduction being wrestled away from women. This is a pretty direct progression of how women become less and less necessary in reproduction.
Of course, there’s that whole issue of actually raising the little buggers. But don’t worry, dudes are totally better at this, too!
[W]omen’s role as child bearer in many cases is becoming harmful. … All the pathologies caused by single mothers do not need to be repeated here. Beyond single motherhood take a look at younger women in their 20s. How many of them would you really trust to be mothers even if divorce wasn’t an issue? Take a look at the current crop of teenage girls, and it’s clear they will be even worse for motherhood than women currently in their 20s. Don’t forget all the misandry that these women carry which will have a negative impact on any sons you might have with them. … All things being equal the two parent family is probably better for raising children, but all things are not equal. Because of divorce the two parent family can become single motherhood at the drop of a hat. Single fatherhood from the beginning is better than that. Even without divorce women are increasingly unqualified to be mothers. … We are getting to a point where single fatherhood may be the superior system of raising children, especially when it comes to raising sons.
In your face, ladies! Moms suck! DudeMoms rule!!!!
Of course, not all dudes want to be single fathers. As savethemales notes in the comments on Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology,
Robogirls can take the place of mothers and assist in raising children for the biological dads who employed artificial wombs in the labs to incubate their babies. Personally, I never want kids and frankly, what reason is there? Children and women are a big liability. Actuarial escape velocity and transhumanism will be the answer and logical choice over procreation for many men.
I have no idea what he just said there, but I am totally 100% behind it. Except maybe for the part about Robogirls. I mean, how do we know for sure that Robogirls aren’t going to teach robomisandry to our dude-children?
Personally, I wouldn’t trust my artificial-womb-born dude-children to anyone but a RoboDudeMom.
Blogger: SlutWalkers deserve to be raped
From the website of the Edmonton SlutWalk 2011
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the most odious misogynist bullshit I have seen thus far on the topic of the Slutwalks: a post on The Third Edge of the Sword, a blog that seems to go out of its way to be offensive and “edgy,” that takes victim blaming to a whole new level. Here’s the basic, er, argument of the post, which the author has put in giant pink letters so we won’t miss it:
Every woman marching in the Edmonton Slut Walk is publicly declaring herself a slut. This means every woman there desires sex with any and all partners. Any sexual activity you initiate with them comes with implied consent. They cannot say no, and if they do understand all their ‘no’s mean yes. They are all asking for it. They want it bad. Now. From you. Go get ‘em!
Some other highlights:
[I]f you … dress slutty, men are going to stare at you. We’re going to catcall. We are going to tell you all sorts of sexual things we want to do to your body. And if you dress slutty and wave your ass in our face, we will do them. The organizers of this event are not oblivious to this point: what they want is a fake sexual revolution. They want to be able to impersonate sluts without actually being sluts, and that’s unacceptable. If you don’t want to be treated as a piece of meat, don’t marinate and grill yourself and sit perched on a piece of garlic toast. You dress slutty, you show off the goods, you try to get a reaction, you will get one. Hint: it’s not always going to be the one you want. …
The “reaction” he has in mind is rape. By calling rape a “reaction” instead of what it is — a criminal assault on someone, an act of sexual violence, a violation — he of course is attempting to switch the blame to the victim. He spells out his “logic” in more detail:
[W]hen you impersonate a slut we don’t fine you, and we don’t throw you in jail. There’s really only one punishment for dressing like a streetwalker when you aren’t one: you do have to endure the occasional rape. You should really suffer it in silence. Accept the character flaw within you that caused this, and move on. Police and court resources are already busy enough with real criminals: like actual rapists who do nasty things to their niece or the homeless native chick passed out under the bridge, or a conservatively dressed urban professional walking to her car, or a girl out jogging in a track suit. To equate the act of actually violating and raping one of these people with having sex with a girl who’s every square millimetre of public persona screams anybody who wants to can screw me right now is ridiculous.
Once again, this brand of misogyny leads to some conclusions that are pretty misandrist – namely, the notion that men are at heart rapists who can’t control their violent urges:
If you go out on the street in an outfit that would make Britney Spears feel uncomfortable, you do so knowing that your ultimate aim is to make men want you. Well, they want you now. Congrats. Oh, wait, you mean you didn’t understand what that implied? That in the great Bell curve of sexual congress you’ve just pushed everybody on the right-hand side of the -2 std devs line past that imaginary barrier that says “there is no power in the universe powerful enough to stop me from sliding my finger inside your panties”? I call bullshit. You do know. But you want to be a virginal slut, to dress in ways that makes men helpless to their urges but still leaves you fully in restrictive control.
The blogger concludes by arguing that the Slutwalkers are all “lying bitches” because they dress like they wasn’t to be raped, but do not actually want to be raped. Then he makes this lovely suggestion:
If your wife is one of them, I’m very very sorry. Maybe a good rape might make her a little more manageable around the house.
Now this post is an atmittedly extreme example of a misogynistic response to the Slutwalks. But the basic “logic” of this blogger’s would-be argument is essentially identical to that of many MRA and other “manosphere” pieces I’ve seen on the subject, the main difference between them being that this guy embraces the logical conclusion of his argument — that Slutwalkers deserve to be raped — while the MRAs who make essentially the same argument (and fling the same sorts of insults at the Slutwalkers) make a show of saying that they don’t really think the Slutwalkers “deserve” it. And maybe they’ve convinced themselves that this caveat means something . But in that case the extreme reaction that manosphere misogynists have had to the Slutwalks – the insults thrown at the Slutwalkers, the “jokey” references to rape, the prurient sneering – makes little sense. If you argue that women are “asking for it” when they dress like “sluts,” you’re essentially saying they deserve it. You’re making the same argument this guy is making, but pretending you aren’t.
NOTE: The graphic above is taken from the official web site for the Edmonton SlutWalk 2011, which took place a week ago. Here are some pictures of the march.
The persistence of prejudice
The burning of the Jews in the Black Death pograms
Among those MRAs who are actually willing to acknowledge that women actually suffered oppression in the past, you sometimes find this argument: “Sure, things were bad for women back then – in the 1950s, or 1890, or whenever — but these days women don’t suffer from sexism. It’s men who are the real victims.”
This argument not only flies in the face of, you know, reality; it also reflects a naïve and simplistic understanding of how prejudice works, and why it persists. Misogyny, like other prejudices, is deeply rooted; it’s been around for literally thousands of years, and permeates culture and cultural/social/political institutions. The idea that a couple of decades of feminism have been enough to eradicate centuries-old attitudes and beliefs is, if you know anything at all about history or sociology or psychology, simply absurd.
How persistent is prejudice? A recent article in Slate looks at a historical study of anti-Semitism in Germany. As Ray Fisman notes in the Slate article, the study found that:
Communities that murdered their Jewish populations during the 14th-century Black Death pogroms were more likely to demonstrate a violent hatred of Jews nearly 600 years later. A culture of intolerance can be very persistent indeed.
Let’s just let that sink in for a second: Six. Hundred. Years. The noxious ideas of anti-Semites in the 14th century deeply affected what their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren believed (and did) when the Nazis rolled into town six centuries later. (I’m assuming an average 4 generations per century here; if that’s an incorrect assumption you may need to add or subtract a handful of “greats.”)
Here are more details, from the study’s abstract:
This paper uses data on anti-Semitism in Germany and finds continuity at the local level over more than half a millennium. When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews. Cities all over Germany witnessed mass killings of their Jewish population. At the same time, numerous Jewish communities were spared. We use plague pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. Pogroms during the Black Death are a strong and robust predictor of violence against Jews in the 1920s, and of votes for the Nazi Party. In addition, cities that saw medieval anti-Semitic violence also had higher deportation rates for Jews after 1933, were more likely to see synagogues damaged or destroyed in the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ in 1938, and their inhabitants wrote more anti-Jewish letters to the editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.
As Fisman notes,
Changing any aspect of culture—the norms, attitudes, and “unwritten rules” of a group—isn’t easy. Beliefs are passed down from parent to child—positions on everything from childbearing to religious beliefs to risk-taking are transmitted across generations.
You can read more about the details of the study on Slate; the actual study is available here.
EDITED TO ADD: And, on a lighter note, here’s what happens when a “white-men-are-the-real-victims” dude (who clearly has been reading about pick-up artistry) goes a-courtin’ on OkCupid.
EDITED AGAIN: Added more details from the study’s abstract.
The Gropes of Wrath
Evil woman oppressing men
In various countries around the world, women and teenage girls are regularly groped while riding commuter trains. This, I suspect, is not news to most of you; indeed, I know one reader of this blog who’s had this happen to her. In Japan, one survey found that two-thirds of female passengers in their twenties and thirties had been groped. Because the problem is so prevalent in that country — and the authorities are so ineffective at controlling it – some train lines have instituted women-only train cars in an attempt to cut down on groping (and on false accusations of groping as well). “Women-only” train cars have also introduced, in a limited way, in India, where harassment of women in public – known as “Eve teasing” – is distressingly common.
So what’s more appalling – the fact that groping on trains is so common in Japan that two-thirds of young women commuters have had to endure it themselves, or the fact that a small number of train cars have been set aside for women in a fairly half-assed attempt to curtail some of this groping?
For a lot of MRAs, the latter. The subject came up on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit recently, inspiring some of the regulars to fulminate against this allegedly misandrist outrage. Fatalistic pulled out the n-word and this facile comparision:
Here’s what I’m seeing here: “At least we let you in the back of the bus, nigger.”
ExpendableOne, meanwhile, managed to work in a staggering number of standard-issue MRA complaints into this one sentence:
I think it’s discrimination and subjugation entirely based on misandry, negative male type-casting/stereotyping and anti-male heterophobia.
Ztakn seemed to suggest that it was all part of some oddly indirect money-making scheme on the part of, I guess, women:
To keep it short they exploit and propagate fears not only demonizing men in society but also terrorizing women and scaring the shit out of them making them more paranoid than they need to be.
And then they do it for money.
How would that work exactly?
1) Get groped
2) Set up women-only train cars
3) ???
4) Profit?
Given that the Men’s Rights subreddit is one of the few Men’s Rights forums online that is not completely overrun with misogynist fanatics, there were others who responded more reasonably. Alienblonde noted:
In Japan it’s a massive problem where school girls get groped by older males on trains in peak hour.
Happened to me in Europe too when I was back packing. Some old Spanish guy sat beside me and decided to feel me up.
Women shouldn’t have to deal with this and unfortunately, until it stops happening, I think [women only train cars are] justified.
Naturally, this being a Men’s Rights forum, she quickly found herself the focus of a game of “blame the victim.” Fatalistic accused her of “[j]ustifying discrimination with this all men are potential criminals feminist dogma.” When she pointed out that she was not, in fact, doing this, he moved on to castigating her for not making a public scene when she was groped:
You should out the people who actually do these things rather than treat the rest of us as criminals by default with disgusting bigoted policies and the back of the bus mentality.
When she pointed out that this could have put her in more serious danger, he merely scoffed:
You would have to be paranoid and spoonfed the most egregious of feminist women are helpless, men are unstoppable beasts that need other men with guns to drag them away dogma to believe that all but the most psychopathic would persist or try to harm you if you outed them to a crowd for their actions.
Easy for you to say.
Of course, when women DO confront sexual harassers on trains, as I noted in a post on the infamous New York Subway flasher last November, they get reactions like this sarcastic Reddit comment from one member of the men-are-oppressed club.
Yes, because obviously her heterophobia needs to be glorified… Penises are so disgusting and scary, obviously women should totally be justified in fearing them and there couldn’t possibly be any kind of misandry involved with such contempt, befuddlement or “helplessness/horror” to the mere sigh[t] of male anatomy. /s
Yep, if you’re a woman on a train, not wanting to have some random dude pull his penis out and rub it on you is “heterophobia.” Who knew?
In the case of the subway flasher, the alleged perp did indeed flee when confronted. (He was later arrested.) That’s pretty much the best-case scenario. But it’s hardly the only possible result, and it’s understandable why a woman riding the train to work (much less one backpacking alone in a foreign country) would hesitate to publicly accuse a groper of groping her. Having women-only train cars cuts down on the number of times women are put in this difficult situation.
Yes, in an ideal world, there would be no need for women-only train cars. In an ideal world, men wouldn’t grope women on trains.
Hating female sexuality: Is it normal?
You'll see why I used this picture in a minute.
So I recently ran across a site called “Is It Normal?” The idea behind it is simple, and kind of wonderful: people confess some possibly odd thing about themselves, and others tell them if it’s normal. Now, normally (as it were) I’m against the too-rigid enforcement of what is considered “normal” behavior, especially when it comes to sexuality and sex roles. But that’s not really what we’re talking about here. Ohhhh, no. We’re talking about grown men and women eating their own boogers; having sexual fantasies about zombies; feeling an urge to jump off of high places; or wanting to be turned into a doll or manikin. (Hey, whatever floats your boat.)
Naturally, I did a search for “misogyny” just to see what turned up. Is that a normal thing to do? I don’t know, and I don’t care, but I did it and the search pulled up a couple of pretty interesting little discussions.
The one that really grabbed my attention was from a guy who said he hated female sexuality. Which may not be “normal,” though as readers of this blog know it’s not uncommon. But this guy is no Christopher from Oregon, whose hatred of female sexuality is part of a package deal that includes hatred for pretty much everything female.
No, this guy hates female sexuality in part because, well, he thinks the male body is ugly and so assumes – or at least feels on a gut level — that any woman having sex with a man is being coerced, bamboozled, or raped. Yep, we’re talking about a rich and toxic stew of misogyny and misandry here. Let’s let him explain:
I Hate Female Sexuality
What little mysogyny I have in me is directed at female sexuality. I can’t stand it that females are attracted to males, ever. I hate them a little for it, just feel it in my gut. I thought for a long time when I was younger that females were basically asexual, not interested in sex, and that romance for them was something far removed from physical love. It didn’t occur to me that anyone might find the male form attractive, and I always suspected males were using some form of deception or raping women in some way when they were with them. I don’t understand this hate and distrust for my own sex. It really bothers me.
I hate that I feel there’s something wrong with a female having an active sexuality when I know intellectually there’s not. I’m a passionate feminist and attracted to females myself. I don’t really understand this feeling.
I think maybe a small part of it is jealousy when I see a couple, and the rest mostly my wierd, incongruous hatred for the male sex.
I don’t think females are doing something wrong but that something wrong is being done to them when they engage in sexual activity, even consentual, with a male, and they’re allowing it to happen, are complicit in it. This is just a feeling I have and can’t shake. It’s not overwhelming, like I’m freaking out whenever I see a couple but it’s there a lot, subtle but persistent. I’m atheist and I’m not someone who belives sexual promiscuity is wrong or even undesirable in male or females. This is just a wierd, lingering emotional problem, like fear of the dark or something like that.
Is it normal?
So, yeah. For what it’s worth, only 14% of those reading this confession rated it normal. But, as I said, I don’t think it’s uncommon. We grow up, after all, in a society that treats sexuality as a commodity that women possess, and that men try to “get” from women – by charming them into “giving it up,” by buying it directly or indirectly (by going to a prostitute or paying for dinner), or simply taking by force.
This way of thinking about sex is pretty deeply embedded in our culture; as regular readers of this blog know all too well, many MRAs, MGTOWers, and PUAs (especially) seem unable to conceive of sexuality in any other way. Neither does the questioner on Is It Normal (who goes by the name SamuraiPeeper), even though he’s a self-described feminist.
Like a lot of misogynistic ideas, this “women own sex, men must fight to get it” idea contains a heaping helping of misandry as well – suggesting that women basically don’t enjoy or desire sex with men because male bodies and male sexuality are inherently disgusting. It’s only a few small steps from this to SamuraiPeeper’s whole muddled mixture of desire and disgust, hatred and self-hatred.
The biggest difference between SamuraiPeeper and the MGTOWers and other misogynists I write about here is that he’s aware that his views are fucked up, and is trying actively to work through his issues. And he’s actually gotten some good responses to his query on Is It Normal?
PoisonFlowers suggests that some of his hatred and disgust probably stems from a fear of female sexuality:
Is it misogyny? I don’t think it’s as clear cut as that. Perhaps because the image you had of women (almost an idealised impression it seems) when you were younger has been destroyed (instead of having romance that is above sex, it turns out that women can be just as animalistic as men), you feel a sort of resentment and that mixes with the jealousy and then as you say “a weird, incongruous hatred for the male sex.” This then becomes a strong dislike for female sexuality.
Why do you have these feelings about men? Is it the people you’ve been surrounded with throughout your life and their behaviour/attitudes? Have you witnessed a man being abusive towards a woman at any point in your life? …
You say that you feel as though “something wrong is being done to them,” which could point to an urge in you to protect women, or perhaps it is more accurate to say to protect the _idea_ you have of women that stems from the concept you had when you were younger.
randomsensuality offers some similar observations:
It definitely sounds like you want to protect the idea of females as pure, with an almost divine stature. It also sounds like you have been taught or embraced the idea that penetrative sex is inherently degrading or immoral: therefore a woman who enjoys it is equally so.
Another bit on the matter is that many men do not find it attractive when women lead the hunt, as it were. They want to be the ones in control, in the pursuit of the sex and relationships. If a woman is as much “on the prowl” as he is, then he can’t say that it was a full conquest. He wants to know he’s been where others have failed to enter, that it took his prowess to crack the nut, setting him apart and making his mate a trophy and attribute to his stature.
Lets also not forget the angle of loathing the male form, which you say you can’t understand a woman being attracted to. If you are heterosexual male, this makes sense. Of course it’s easier to wrap your brain around lesbian sex, you like women, you understand innately attraction to women. Attraction to men, is scary for more than that reason though. If a woman is attracted to a man, then she could be attracted to any man the way a man can be attracted to any woman: this vision of the situation can induce pre-emptive jealousy and defensiveness.
Meanwhile, a 19-year-old girl calling herself so_damn_unpretty offers a blunter response – and one that might do the questioner as much good as the longer, more thoughtful responses:
I love men… and cock.. and sex… so i really cant relate.
In the end, that’s probably the most important takeaway here, as they like to say in the business world. Women – most women, anyway – genuinely like and enjoy sex as much as men. Sometimes more. When a guy “scores” with a woman – she is also “scoring” with him. Rigid gender roles that define man as the sexual pursuer and women as the sexual prize may make it hard to see this, but it’s true. Not only that, but women – heterosexual women, anyway – actually like and enjoy the male body.
Guys, know this: while you are watching sports, or playing video games, or playing with yourself, or knitting (or whatever your favorite hobby is), there are thousands of women writing, sharing, and reading slash fic about dudes (from various TV shows and movies and books) getting it on with each other. There are no women in these stories, at least not in the dirty parts. Just dudes, and their dude bodies, having dude sex with each other. Freud once asked: what do women want? And to that we have a partial answer: stories about Sam and Dean from Supernatural penetrating one another’s deepest mysteries.
Internet Inactivism and the MRA Paradox
MRA in action
As I’ve pointed out before, the vast majority of Men’s Rights Activists aren’t really activists at all, if by “activists” you mean people who occasionally get off their asses and try to engage in political activity in the real world. As I put in in my piece for the Good Men Project on misogyny in the Men’s Rights movement,
Men’s rights activists aren’t much like any other activists I’ve ever run across. For one thing, for supposed activists they are almost completely inactive. Sure, they complain endlessly about things they see as terrible injustices against men. They just don’t do anything about them. While some of those who consider themselves fathers’ rights activists—a slightly different breed from your garden-variety MRAs—try to influence laws and legislatures, MRAs do little more than cultivate their resentments.
MRAs seem to be good at one thing, and one thing only: posting angry comments on websites, whether their own or on those of their many enemies – whether that’s on blogs like this one or in the comments section on various mainstream media sites they consider “misandrist.” (Actually: that’s not entirely fair – on a few occasions, MRAs have been moved to make threatening phone calls as well.) They don’t raise money for anything but their own web sites and their pet projects. They don’t organize demonstrations that involve more than a tiny handful of people. Like, for example, this one, involving one dude dressed like Batman who climbed up onto a highway sign:
Or this one, which involved a dude dressed up as Batman and a dude dressed up as Robin, climbing up on a bridge.
If your protests typically involve fewer people than, say, the line of people waiting to use the Redbox video rental kiosk outside your local supermarket on a Friday night, I think it’s safe to say that yours is not a mass movement, at least not yet.
Am I being unfair in demanding MRAs actually, literally,get off their asses before I consider them to be activists? Perhaps.
But, as it turns out, MRAs aren’t much good at sitting-on-your-ass activism either. Case in point: For quite some time – weeks? months? — MRA elder Paul Elam has been urging readers of his blog A Voice For Men to sign a petition to disbar a District Attorney he and other MRAs have decided is corrupt. But despite his repeated pleas to his readers to sign the thing, it has not yet garnered the required 1000 signatures, even though at least a few of his readers have talked about signing it more than once. [Edited to add: it has now gotten more than 1000 signaturesd.]
Today, this particular example of internet inactivism prompted Elam to lash out at his non-signing readers. Declaring himself “tired and frustrated” and “sick of this shit,” he once again begged his readers to sign. Then he went a step further, suggesting that he might limit commenting on his site to “activists that are contributing to this site in one way or another” as a way of encouraging activism and discouraging those who are “sucking up air and doing little else.”
I don’t think further exhortation on his part – or limiting the comments there to “real” activists only – is likely to make much difference. [Edited to add: Nagging a few more people to spend two minutes signing an online petition is one thing. Actually transforming them into real activists is another.] Elam is running up against the inherent paradox of Men’s Rights “activism” – the fact that most of those complaining the most about alleged injustices against men are not in fact interested in changing anything. Their “activism,” as it were, is little more than an excuse to wallow in their own bitterness, and to blame others for their own problems.
If MRAs really cared about domestic violence against men – as opposed to using the issue as a rhetorical weapon against feminists – they would be raising money and devoting their time to actually building shelters, like the (mostly) women who built the first shelters decades ago, and the (mostly) women who keep these shelters going today. If MRAs were really interested in stopping prison rape, instead of simply complaining about it, they’d be donating money to or working with the advocacy group Just Detention or other groups concerned about the treatment of prisoners. If they were really interested in helping those falsely accused of rape or other crimes, they’d be working with The Innocence Project or some other group fighting for the falsely accused or convicted. Or they would be starting real organizations of their own.
But that’s not, at heart, what the MRM is about. For all but a tiny handful of real activists, it’s not about changing the world. It’s about creating a space where men can kvetch and blame and cultivate their own sense of martyrdom. Actually trying to change the real world would involve , well, going out into the real world, a place where their assertions about the alleged oppression of men are seen as the nonsense they are, a place where their bitterness and hatred of women is seen as bitterness and hatred rather than the righteous anger they like to imagine that it is.
When MRAs do venture out of their self-created bubble they tend to either make fools of themselves – like Batman on the highway sign in the video above – or to reveal themselves to be the angry fanatics they are. Elam, for his part, sometimes even has trouble making his case in the relatively sympathetic environment of the Men’s Rights subreddit on Reddit, and is quickly reduced to sputtering rage when anyone disagrees with him. In the end, sputtering rage seems to be what the MRM is really all about.
