Category Archives: rape
Using the myth of the “Pussy Pass” to justify rape and murder
From MEN-FACTOR
Quite a few MRAs and MGTOWers seem to have have convinced themselves that women rarely if ever serve real time, or face any real consequences, for committing crimes. In the parlance of the manosphere, this is known as the “Pussy Pass.”
Now, this is, of course, almost complete bullshit. Why the “almost?” Because women do in fact receive somewhat lesser sentences when compared with men committing the same crimes. (So do white people, though you don’t hear the MRA crowd talking much about the “Honkey Pass.” )
Are the lighter sentences for women the result of evil feminist man haters? Not so much, Ampersand of Alas, A Blog argues in a thoughtful look at several studies on the subject. The author of one study concludes, as Ampersand summarizes it,
that this may be caused by sexist paternalism among judges; women are seen less as full adults, and as being less capable of being responsible for their own actions, and as a result judges depart from sentencing guidelines to give women lighter sentences.
Another study found that, contrary to what virtually every MRA or MGTOWer would assume, male judges were more likely than female judges to give especially harsh sentences to men. Let me repeat that: Male judges gave the harshest sentences to men. As the study’s author noted, “the greater the percentage of female judges on a district’s bench, the smaller the gender disparity.” (Emphasis mine.)
Just don’t try telling this to the MRA/MGTOW crowd. We saw the other day how the idea of the “pussy pass” – the notion that “the law does not serve justice” – has led some MRAs to advocate or voice their support for lynching female perps (with what degree of seriousness I don’t know).
Meanwhile, over on NiceGuy’s MGTOW forum, nigeles175d “humorously” suggests that the supposed existence of the “Pussy Pass” should also give guys the right to rape women who happen to give them boners:
[I]f we men cannot control our passions as women often claim, why don’t we get a Dickie PassTM like women get the Pussy PassTM? If women cannot control their tears, their screams, their giggles, and if women are driven to poisoning or murdering their sleeping husbands and use the excuse of years of abuse and being unable to control their mental state, why do we not consider a similar excuse for men. The way some women dress (hint, hint, SlutWalkers) to deliberately entice men to want sex with them, why is it not an exonerrating circumstance in the same way as it is for women? It seems women are never made to take responsibility for their actions, nor are they ever held accountable. Alternatively, if men are not allowed it, but women are, then we’re treating them like children and they don’t deserve the vote or positions of authority.
And of course it all goes back to women having the vote — the source of all evil in the modern world. Attitudes like this are, of course, what make the Slutwalks (and feminism in general) necessary in the first place.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest: A Rorschach test for misogynists
Looks like another evil lying bitch, doc.
Some highlights, by which I mean lowlights, of a recent discussion on The Spearhead of IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest on sexual assault charges. The Spearheaders, naturally, have some unique and interesting perspectives on the case:
Black women (like the accuser) are all a bunch of liars. Run away!
Reality May 18, 2011 at 11:04
I knew it was going to be a black woman- I suspected from the second I heard about this. Crystal Magnum anyone? Don’t want to make this a racial issue- but how can you avoid it? You take 5 ounces of Female/Feminist hate and deception, add 8 ounces of the stereotypical black thing of always sniffing around for a lawsuit, stir .. and you have more than enough reason to avoid black women even more vigorously than women in general.
The case is somehow all about how badly “beta” men are discriminated against by evil women:
Commander Shepard May 18, 2011 at 11:53
Typically false rape allegations are made when a woman realizes she’s slept with a beta but doesn’t want her rep taking a hit and wants to avoid feeling like crap (betas are icky) my gut tells me either this is a totally fabricated set up (politically motivated) or Strauss-Kahn is getting a lesson in how betas have to apologize everyday for their existence.
She’s accusing him because she’s got AIDS and therefore (?) wants to make a quick buck, ethics be damned:
Avenger May 18, 2011 at 18:55 …
Since she has AIDS she knows that an infection could take her out at any time and she has a teenage daughter. A person like this will certainly not think like a normal person and may very well do something for a lump sum of cash since she has nothing to lose and may have some resentment towards men and doesn’t care what happens to this one guy. She also may be thinking that if she dies at least her daughter will have the money. This is not someone I would trust. …
I predict that Strauss will be released on bail tomorrow. He’ll pay the female’s lawyer some money and then the whole thing will just fade away.
He’s probably innocent, but he’s a white-hating Commie Jew bastard, so ha ha:
goldenfetus May 18, 2011 at 09:57
Libertarian here. I doubt this guy is guilty. Seems unlikely, yet possible. But as observed, this guy is a White-hating elite Marxist Jew. So while I agree that political disagreement is not sufficient grounds for wishing false-rape accusation/conviction on him, I submit that his hostility toward my people coupled with his general evil is enough to justify the enjoyment of his suffering. We can’t forget that his politics are what makes this possible in the first place, or ignore the ‘reap what you sow’ component here.
As a white guy, I’d like to say that goldenfetus does not in fact speak for “my people.”
And before anyone steps in to complain that I’ve picked the “outliers” in the discussions, the fanatics whose opinions aren’t shared by the MRA masses, I will note that (as is generally the case with Spearhead comments I quote) all of the comments here have gotten numerous upvotes from Spearhead readers, and only a handful of downvotes, if any. In other words, they represent something close to the Spearhead conventional wisdom. (And by “wisdom” here I mean “offensive idiocy.”)
MRAs respond, predictably awfully, to the arrest of IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn
There have been some strange, but hardly surprising, reactions in the MRA-verse to the arrest of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on attempted rape charges.
On The False Rape Society blog, Pierce Harlan seems bothered that the police would arrest such an important man, citing an assortment of articles saying that Strauss-Kahn’s arrest will likely have a big effect on markets and on the global economy.
Harlan titles his piece: “So rape claims aren’t taken seriously? Reuters says the claim against Strauss-Kahn could impact “the well-being of the global economy.” After quoting from an assortment of news stories that suggest that, yes, Strauss-Kahn’s arrest has already affected markets and could affect the global economy, Harlan ends with this petulant conclusion:
All because of a disputed rape allegation. Right now, that’s all it is. I have no idea if a crime was committed, and neither do you.
But I know one thing: the entire world is taking very seriously — and perhaps way too seriously — the word of an unnamed maid it knows nothing about.
First of all, just as we don’t know whether or not Strauss-Kahn is guilty of this alleged attack, we also don’t know what evidence the police have. What we do know from other media accounts suggests that there is more to go on than the “word of an unnamed maid” – including DNA and other evidence at the scene, footage from the hotel’s security cams, injuries suffered by the maid, who was treated at a local hospital. There may well have been witnesses too; we simply don’t know. (Also, the maid has now been named in the French press. Wonderful.)
Second, and more importantly, why should the fact that the arrest has affected world markets have any bearing whatsoever on the case? By this logic, no important political or financial figure should ever be arrested for anything.
To make myself perfectly clear here: Harlan does not say explicitly that DSK is too important to be arrested on the word of a lowly maid, but that seems to be the implicit suggestion of his post, the whole reason to quote several articles about the effect this is having on the world economy, all because of “the word of an unnamed maid [the world] knows nothing about.” I have asked him to clarify what exactly he did mean, and he has refused. In a followup post he asks rhetorically “Have we handed an unnamed maid too much power to destroy a presumptively innocent man?” and answers himself by saying “The question scarcely survives its statement.” Which I will take as a “yes.” He goes on to say:
We reported yesterday what the world press is saying about the sexual assault claim against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. About how it could impact not only the IMF he heads, and France where is a presidential hopeful, but the global economy itself. It is widely believed that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s reputation has been marred beyond repair, regardless of the outcome of this affair.
To say this is morally grotesque does not capture the evil of what is happening to a presumptively innocent man. …
If there is a running theme in this blog, it is this: we have handed anonymous women and children far, far too much power to destroy the lives and reputations of presumptively innocent men before even a scrap of evidence has been introduced to prove their guilt.
If I am reading this correctly — and please correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Harlan — he is saying that ALL men are too important to be arrested on sexualk assault charges based on the word of “anonymous women and children.”
Again, let me ask you, Mr. Harlan, is this what you mean? I invite everyone here to read the two posts in question — the first one here; the second one here – and tell me what you think he is trying to say.
Mr. Harlan, if you want to clarify what you mean here, I will put that clarification up without comment as a post, under a neutral headline (Pierce Harlan clarifies what he meant in his posts on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrest”).
I would also like to point out, again, that the police seem to be going on a lot more than the “word of an unnamed maid,” including surveillance tapes, statements from those who spoke to the maid immediately after the alleged incident, DNA evidence in the room. There may also be DNA evidence on her clothing; that we don’t know. But it seems fairly clear that there is evidence beyond the maid’s testimony.
Meanwhile, over on In Mala Fide, a guest blogger from Human-Stupidity.com, an MRA site that devotes a lot of its attention to railing against child porn laws, attacks the accuser and dismisses the charges. It’s hard to know what in the post is sarcasm and what is simply astounding stupidity. But as far as I can figure it, Mr. Stupidity is far more distressed by reports that the maid accidentally walked in on a naked Strauss-Kahn than he is by the possibility that he sexually assaulted her:
The story is very strange, and dominated by clear mistakes and screwups committed by the accuser. A five-star hotel maid trespasses into a naked client’s room? Unforgivable. …
This is not supposed to happen in a high-class hotel. Were the sex roles inverted, were a male employee to walk in on a prominent female guest, like Mrs. Hillary Clinton, the male employee would be fired and arrested for sexual harassment.
Mr. Stupidity then goes on to suggest that such a powerful man would never try to rape anyone because, you know, powerful men don’t do that sort of thing.
A hitherto well behaved, civilized man, suddenly goes crazy? Just because he was naked, he wanted to take advantage of her and rape her?
A man pictured on the covers of magazines, admired by millions of women, who could get any woman he wanted with a snap of his fingers. A man from a country with legalized prostitution who could afford two luxury prostitutes per day, if he happened to be a sex addict. And this guy, exactly the moment the woman walks in, illegally, incorrectly, grabs her and rapes her?
Never mind that other women are coming forward with stories of assaults by Strauss-Kahn, suggesting that he may not be quite so well-behaved as Mr. Stupidity assumes.
So what does Mr. Stupidity think really happened? After raising the possibility that this is all some political setup, he ends the piece suggesting that the maid – who, he says “committed a serious professional lapse, almost a crime” by accidentally walking in on Strauss-Kahn – simply made up the story in order to protect her job. Because maids are instantly fired for accidentally walking in on guests? Because never ever in the history of hotels has a maid walked in on someone naked? (A quick Google search suggests not only that this is relatively common, but also that it’s a sexual fantasy of quite a few men.)
Meanwhile, Ben Stein – not, as far as I know, an MRA, but a neocon and a bit of a dick – has offered his own highly problematic defense of Strauss-Kahn, which boils down to, well, envy:
this is a case about the hatred of the have-nots for the haves, and that’s what it’s all about. A man pays $3,000 a night for a hotel room? He’s got to be guilty of something. Bring out the guillotine.
More on this as it develops. And it’s developing fast.
On The Spearhead, it’s always women’s fault
It wasn't me.
A sex offender in Washington state who has spent most of his life behind bars, convicted of an assortment of different crimes ranging from check kiting to child molestation, is close to his release date. Not surprisingly, given his long history of preying on young girls, prosecutors are pushing for him to be sent instead to a facility for sexual predators, as a recent story on SeattlePI.com notes.
A state psychologist has described Donald “Theo” Holmes as a remorseless psychopath and a pathological liar who has managed to rack up an impressive array of crimes, many involving underage girls, during his stints outside of prison. As the psychologist observed:
“He uses women and children to feed his sexual desires, and he uses other members of society to supply him with money, clothes, and cars that make him look important and fuel the grandiosity which is an ingrained part of his personality. …
“He admits to multiple sexual conquests and is proud of the fact that he has 22 children and that he has had mothers and daughters … pregnant at the same time with his child.”
Holmes, for his part, simply describes himself as a “womanizer.” Apparently 12-year-old girls count as “women” in his world.
Over on The Spearhead, W.F. Price uses this case as an example of what is wrong with, you guessed it, women.
Fathering 22 children is not easy even without spending so much time incarcerated, so one can only assume that his criminality had absolutely no ill effect on his success with women. In fact, it may have enhanced his love life.
Here again, we see that being a good man has nothing to do with one’s success with women, and often is an impediment. One of the big lies of feminism is that women will shower affection on well-behaved men, and have no desire for the low-life thugs of society. Sadly, this is not the case.
Perhaps the most important message we can get out there to young men is that there is little connection between what turns women on and what is objectively good for society.
I don’t know any feminists who think that women only go for “good” guys; indeed, the feminists I know spend a lot of time discussing (and trying to help) women who are or were involved with not-so-good-guys. Evidently the imaginary feminists Price hangs out with, though, are reincarnations of Victorians who assume all women are perfect little angels.
Price is bad enough. Do we have to look at the comments too? Yes, yes we do. Let’s start with the very first one, from Opus, who asked:
but is he really so bad [?]… there is nothing to suggest that the minors were anything other than enthusiatic. Whatever views one may have as to the age of consent, the girls were not infants or children but adolescents.
Yep, in Opus’ mind, sex with 12- and 14-year-olds is no problem, so long as we assume (based on nothing) that they were “enthusiastic” about it. Last I checked, this comment had 16 upvotes and only 3 downvotes, so apparently he’s not the only one willing to blame underage girls for being raped. Sorry, having “enthusiastic” sex with a career criminal many decades older than them.
Meanwhile, Anonymous Reader (in another heavily upvoted comment) takes aim at:
the state of Washington. There’s no way this guy could have spawned 22 children if he had to support them on his own. How many are on AFDC, WIC or other welfare programs, paid for by ordinary, working Beta men? Yes, this is a result of liberalism but it also is a result of feminism.
AFDC and WIC are, of course, intended to make sure that the children of poor women don’t, you know, starve to death. Now, I’m pretty sure Holmes wouldn’t have given a shit if his kids all starved. But apparently neither would Anonymous and his numerous upvoters. Why exactly should the children – some of whom may well be the result of the rape of underage girls — have to pay the price for Holmes’ despicable actions?
Yes, you can blame liberalism and feminism for the fact that these children are being fed. That’s not a bad thing. The actions of Holmes weren’t the actions of a liberal or a feminist; they were the actions of a seemingly psychopathic sexual predator who assumed, like many traditionalist men, that women and girls are put on this earth for men to use as they see fit.
NOTE: I didn’t set out today to write yet another post about The Spearhead. But I read Price’s post and sort of had to say something. My next post will have nothing to do with The Spearhead. I promise.
EDITED TO ADD: Picture credit: Zampieri, “God reprimanding Adam and Eve,” detail; photo G. Piolle.
>Two Holes Don’t Make a Right, and other somewhat baffling MGTOW slogans
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| Grace Jones will kick your bumper sticker’s ass. |
The good fellows on MGTOWforums.com want to change all that. Recently a batch of them began brainstorming about possible slogans for MGTOW bumper stickers. Womanhater started the discussion off with a doozy, managing to be both belligerent AND baffling to anyone who hasn’t already taken a sip of the MGTOW Kool-Aid:
Chivalry is Treason!
A promising start. Not all the suggestions that followed quite lived up to this standard. Quite a few were earnest and plodding, not very slogan-y:
When Was the Last Time You Treated a Man Fairly?
Single moms should stay single.
Some men live happy fulfilling lives, the rest get married.
Women and happiness don’t go together.
Still, some of the more earnest attempts managed to be attention-grabbing nonetheless:
I don’t believe any accusation of rape
Many others simply rehashed basic MGTOW themes:
We Are Men, Not Wallets
Marriage is for morons
Alimony is Slavery
But a number of the suggestions contained the spark of creative loopiness that keeps me coming back to the MGTOW forums again and again. Take, for example, the surprisingly large number that managed to work vaginas into the equation, generally in a highly off-putting manner:
Give women the finger and not in a good way
Excuse me, is that fish I smell?
Two holes don’t make a right
This last one, while not without its charms, is a little puzzling. If you do the math correctly, women have seven holes, and men have six (or seven, if you include one very small hole). Up to three of these lady-holes (and up to two for men) may come into play in the course of routine sexual activity. (More advanced fetishists may use more holes, as this somewhat NSFW video illustrates; don’t worry, it’s not a link to a video of someone putting something in a man’s seventh hole, because, OW!) I’m not entirely sure which two holes our sloganeer is fingering as the villains here.
Quite a few of the suggestions seemed almost designed to baffle everyone outside the confines of MGTOWforums.com (and even some within it):
Don’t blame me for 1920
Hammurabi was correct about women
Listen to Cato the Elder
For those playing along at home, 1920 was of course the year in which matinee idol Douglas Fairbanks married actress Mary Pickford, known as “America’s Sweetheart,” even though she was Canadian; it was also the year in which construction began on the Holland Tunnel between New York and New Jersey, thus setting the stage for the horror later known as the “bridge and tunnel crowd.” But I’m guessing the event our sloganeer is really concerned about is the passage of the 19th Amendment, giving American women the vote, though, unless our sloganeer is quite elderly indeed, I’m not quite sure why anyone would be blaming (or crediting) him for the Amendment’s passage.
As for the other two, well, the Code of Hammurabi, the first king of the Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC, “mark[ed] the beginning of the institutionalization of the patriarchal family as an aspect of state power,” as historian Gerda Lerner notes. Hammy (as I like to call him) also invented the idea of “an eye for an eye.” And Cato the Elder? He said some nasty shit about women.You can look it up yourself. I’m lazy.
Other slogans weren’t so much obscure as just plain odd:
If the FDA screened pussy, you’d need a prescription to get it.
I’d rather have guns than gals.
A cow in the bed…but a freak in the courtroom!
And then there was this little riddle:
Q)Why don’t women respect men?
A)Becoz a Mousetrap laughs at the Mouse
Uh, what?
Of all the proposed slogans, only one actually showed any real wit, this punny little contribution from Apeiron:
Better dead than wed.
Indeed, this one was so good I suspected it had to have been used somewhere before. And indeed it has been. A quick Google search showed that the UK anarchist group Class War used the phrase back in the 1980s on a poster protesting the marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson. Of course, that temporarily happy couple ended up separating after only six years, and divorced a few years after that.
Maybe slogans can change the world.
Scary thought.
Despite that risk, I would like to encourage the MGTOWers to make up some stickers of their own. Maybe some t-shirts, coffee mugs, and baseball caps as well. Heck, put these slogans on everything you own. Seriously, anything that makes it easier to identify you, preferably at a distance, is more than welcome.
>Comment of the Day: Child support is worse than rape
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| Er, not so much. |
Exactly, it’s much, much worse. The latter lasts for some number of minutes, the former for at least 18 years. Given the choice it would be a no-brainer for me, and I think a very large number of men agree with me on this.
EXTERIOR, MOVIE THEATER
Cold’s 10-year-old son: Happy Father’s day, daddy! I’m so glad we’re going to see Toy Story 5! I love Woody!
Cold: Yeah, so does your whore mom, if you know what I mean.
Son: Huh?
Cold: When you get older, you’ll understand. Did I mention that you mom’s a whore? One, please!
Son: Um, daddy, why did you buy only one ticket?
Cold: It’s for me. Get your own. You get enough of my money as it is. I stick my dick in your mom for two fucking minutes, and I’m screwed for life. It’s worse than rape!
Son: Um, daddy, I don’t have any money. I’m ten.
Cold: Well, you should have thought of that when you were a sperm!
Son: When I was a what?
Cold: I’m going in. See you in two hours.
Son: Dad? What am I supposed to do now?
Cold: Not my problem! I’m Going Galt! I’m Going My Own Way! You were a MISTAKE!
Son quietly sobs
Cold: Hey, when we get back to your mom’s place later, remind me to tell her she’s a filthy whore.
>The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
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| I’m walkin’ here! |
Pierce Harlan of the False Rape Society has broken past the limits of mere logic, arguing that the fact that a small number of guys at a couple of events have put on women’s clothing to raise money for women’s causes means that rape culture doesn’t exist. That seems to be the main message of a post of his today with the baffling title “Boys in bras, boys in heels, boys in pink — all to raise money for women’s causes: Is this the ‘rape culture’ we hear so much about?”
Harlan, posting as “Archivist,” complains about several recent campus events, in which college guys have literally put on heels (to raise money and awareness about sexual assault) and bras (to raise money for breast cancer research). Harlan isn’t thrilled about the causes themselves: he has sneeringly derided sexual assault awareness as “a supposedly good cause” and, while acknowledging that breast cancer research is theoretically a good thing, he’s evidently tired of hearing about it.
But he seems even more hot and bothered about the cross-dressing by guys he calls “chivalrous clowns,” describing the bra-wearing as “creepy” and deriding the guys “prancing around in high heels.” Apparently, as Harlan sees it, these fellows are just doing it to impress the chicks:
young men will do pretty much anything to help, to curry favor with, and to be admired by young women.
It is heinous to suggest that attitudes of sexual aggression and dominance over women are normalized, rationalized, and excused by the alleged beneficiaries of “patriarchy” in our culture. In point of fact, the foolish young buffoons in heels and bras are far more representative of young masculinity in our culture than is the young rapist.
There’s not a lot of logic in this, er, argument, but in an earlier posting Harlan elaborates on the distaste he feels towards the “Walk A Mile In Her Shoes” event, which was held at the University of Montana (clearly a hotbed of radical feminism).
It would be downright shocking if this or similar events ever prevented a single sexual assault from occurring because: (1) prancing around in high heels and similar useless stunts has nothing to do with preventing sexual assault; and (2) the vast majority of young men who strutted their stuff and who participate in such events are highly unlikely to ever rape a woman. …
If we want to curb sexual assault, we need to teach our young people the truth, but the truth doesn’t jibe with the current rape meta-narrative that holds only one gender responsible for stopping it. …
Young people generally do not understand that women experience much greater after-the-fact regret than men do. Sometimes feelings of regret are translated into feelings of “being used,” and sometimes feelings of “being used” are misinterpreted or purposefully misconstrued as “rape.”
Asking the police, a judge, or a jury to sort out what happened in an alcohol-fueled tryst based on a “he said/she said” account puts an impossible burden on our law enforcement and judicial apparatuses. …
There is no “rape culture”; there is no “rape continuum.” Rape is committed by social deviants, not the nice boy next door. It is almost a certainty that none of the charming young buffoons who strutted around in women’s heels yesterday will ever rape a woman. …
The sad, politically incorrect fact of the matter is that young women have far more power to stop rape than innocent young men by not putting themselves in situations where rape is more likely to occur.
There’s a lot of bullshit condensed into these short paragraphs. There’s victim-blaming, of course: do we regularly attack murder victims for “putting themselves in situations where murder is likely to occur?” There’s his weird complaint that actually investigating and prosecuting date rape puts an “impossible burden” on police and the judicial system: should we simply stop enforcing laws against all crimes that are hard to investigate or prosecute? And there’s his unwillingness to accept the simple fact that rapists all too often do look exactly like the “nice boy next door.” As for his complaint that these events target the wrong people, see here for an argument as to why it makes sense to raise awareness specifically amongst those men who are NOT likely to rape women.
In the past a few MRAs have asked me why I put the False Rape Society blog in my “boob roll” — and formerly in my “enemies list.” This is why. Spreading blatant misinformation and blaming victims: these are not exactly good ways to actually reduce the number of men falsely accused of rape.
And here’s another thought for the MRAs reading this, Harlan included: if you are truly as concerned about testicular or prostate cancer — or any other male malady — as you so often and so loudly claim to be, take a few moments away from your constant complaining about feminism and/or women, and actually hold a fund raiser yourselves. In a comment on his latest post, Harlan writes: “My problem is this: how about an event to raise funds for male suicide, etc. once in a while?” You know how events like these happen? PEOPLE ORGANIZE THEM. There is nothing stopping MRAs from organizing such an event on their own. How about it, guys?
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>Earthquakes and Ideologues
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| A scene in Haiti, after its earthquake. |
Sometimes The Spearhead, probably the internet’s leading angry-man site, seems like a giant interactive game of “pin the blame on the feminists.” When uprisings broke out in Tunisia and then Egypt , you may recall, W. F. Price — head honcho at The Spearhead — suggested that the unrest in both countries was a male reaction to the excesses of feminism and female power.
Now he’s returned with an even stranger article, comparing the current disaster in Japan with the very different outcome of last year’s earthquake in Haiti– and blaming women in general and feminists in particular for the far more lethal outcome in Haiti.
You might think that the staggering death toll in Haiti — estimates range from 92,000 to more than 300,000 — might have something to do with the fact that it’s the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with a weak and corrupt government and almost nothing in the way of intrastructure. And that Japan’s relative resiliance in the face of an even more powerful earthquake might have something to do with the fact that it’s a wealthy nation — the world’s third most powerful economy, with a GDP per capita about 30 times greater than Haiti’s — with a great deal of experience in handling earthquakes.
But Price has a rather different, and highly peculiar, explanation: Haiti suffered more because it’s a “matriachal” country, unlike properly “patriarchal” Japan. Comparing “matriarchal Haiti’s and patriarchal Japan’s respective responses to natural disaster,” Price writes that
in Haiti the women are still living in open encampments well over a year after the quake, [while] Japanese women are already sheltered, which is necessary, because it is still cold in northern Japan this time of year. …
Price goes on to argue that Japan is doing better by its men as well. While in Haiti in the aftermath of the quake, the UN and some relief organizations targeted aid towards women — who tend to literally get pushed aside in the mad scramble for food supplies otherwise — Price argues that
Japanese men … have it far better than their Haitian counterparts as well. There are no foreign troops pointing guns at them and denying them food, they are taken care of and respected if old, and given jobs and a place in society if young. Perhaps most importantly, They are given the opportunity to do what men often do best — they are allowed to take care of their families and communities.
Let’s set aside for a moment that it is a tad early to be declaring, er, “mission accomplished” in the Japan crisis, especially with the specter of a nuclear reactor meltdown looming. Price is a man with an agenda, and he moves fairly quickly to his grand conclusion: The two disasters, he argues,
give us an opportunity to ask ourselves what kind of a society we want to live in. Do we want, as the feminists would have it, to be helpless, disease infested, homeless and starving if we face hardship, or do we want to have the ability to come together and pull ourselves up from the rubble? For the sane people of the world, the choice is clear.
Yes, that’s right. Feminism is the party of helplessness, disease, homelessness and starvation. Anyone who’s just made the argument he made really shouldn’t be offering any opinions on the sanity of others.
Before we get into a critique of Price’s argument, such as it is, let’s pause for a moment to ask how his novel thesis was received by the Spearhead regulars. While a few commenters did take him to task for ignoring economics, others took his absurd argument and ran with it. (This is The Spearhead, after all.) Alucin declared,
Feminism is a crime against humanity. What happened in Haiti regarding food distribution will be repeated again and again as long as feminism prevails. Fighting feminism is something good people do on behalf of humanity. The men and women of Japan will get their lives back together again far more quickly than the matriarchal people of Haiti.
The future is patriarchal. It’s just a matter of which form it will take and when the West will re-masculate.
Epoetker took it a step further, adding a bit of racism to the misogynistic mix:
Haiti is a land of men who look like men but think like women. Japan is a land of men who look like women but think like men.
Rebel, meanwhile, found a grim humor in it all:
The Haitian case is proof positive that feminism is exactly like AIDS.
No matter how many die, feminism will be the last thing to die.
It was planned that way.Whichever way you look at it, the answer is always the same: feminism is a religion of death.
Feminists are death worshippers.That leaves very little hope for the future.
Life is so short and we worry too much. And it’s so futile.
One day we will all be Haitians. LOL!!
A note: These aren’t a couple of weird comments I’ve “cherry picked” to give a distorted picture of the discussion. In fact, these comments got anywhere from 20 to nearly 70 upvotes from Spearhead readers, and almost no downvotes. There were many other comments, also heavily upvoted, agreeing with these general premises. If you don’t believe me, go take a look yourself.
Numerous other commenters, I should also note, offered frankly racist interpretations of “the tale of two earthquakes,” blaming the greater scope of the disaster in Haiti on what one commenter called its “largely negro, largely indolent society.” While some objected to the racism, many clearly racist comments got numerous upvotes from the Spearhead crowd. (The comment I just quoted got 60 upvotes and 20 downvotes.)
Getting back to Price’s argument, let’s try to unpack the various layers of bullshit here. First of all, Haiti is no matriarchy. Yes, women often head up households there. But they don’t run the country, by any measure.
Life in Haiti is no picnic for men, but women have it even worse; as one human rights group noted in a recent report, “Haitian women experience additional barriers to the full enjoyment of their basic rights due to predominant social beliefs that they are inferior to men and a historical pattern of discrimination and violence against them based on their sex. Discrimination against women is a structural feature in Haitian society and culture that has subsisted throughout its history, both in times of peace and unrest.”
Rape is a constant threat, and, as a recent article in the Los Angeles Times notes, it “wasn’t even considered a serious criminal offense in Haiti until five years ago. … Before 2005, rape was considered an offense against honor, or “crime of passion,” meaning it was a minor infraction in which the perpetrator would go free if he agreed to marry his victim.”
The earthquake only made the situation worse for women. Rapes are especially widespread in the camps that sprung up in the wake of last year’s earthquake. Instead of “tak[ing] care of their families and communities,” as Price would put it, many Haitian men have instead preyed on women and girls, sexually assaultng them and stealing their food and other supplies. This is not, to put it mildly, a country suffering from an excess of feminism or female authority.
No, Haiti is in dire straits mostly because of its extreme poverty. Anyone looking at the history of natural disasters can plainly see that they tend to cause far more chaos and misery and death in poor countries than they do in rich ones: In highly patriarchal, and poverty-stricken Pakistan, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake killed an estimated 75,000, though the quake there was an order of magnitude weaker than Japan’s.
I’m not sure why I feel the need to remind readers of these basic points; the absurdity of Price’s arguments should be immediately obvious to anyone not blinded by misogyny. Sometimes I wonder if Price even believes all of the shit he shovels. Stupidity would be easier to forgive than that level of cynicism.
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>Check out my post on "Misogyny in the Men’s Rights Movement" on the Good Men Project
>
My contribution to the Good Men Project debate over the Men’s Rights Movement — talking about misogyny in the movement — is up now.
Batman on an elephant says check it out.
>Ruthless Lady-People: Short-haired, smelly, muffin-eating lady-people
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| Women not only eat muffins — they decapitate them! |
Over on an angry-man site that would be called The Pearhead if you removed an “S” from its name, a fellow named Alcuin has a few complaints about the ladies. Let’s listen in, shall we?
Western women are ruthless. They will destroy a family with a lifestyle divorce, and ruin her husband without thinking of their lives. …
Ah yes, the old lifestyle divorce. There’s little that Western women enjoy more than a nice divorce. Well, aside from accusing men of rape, and playing slutty dressup, and going to work:
They will accuse a man of rape when he did no such thing so they can get revenge for hurt feelings or to cover their own infidelity. They will dress like whores, then accuse men of being perverts and of sexual harassment. They will take all the cushy jobs and complain when men refuse to take the shit jobs, but act like “boys” instead.
But Alucin is just getting started. It gets worse:
They will cut their hair short, get fat, avoid shaving (their legs? their face?), smell, and then complain that men go for Asian women or none. They will take advantage of manginas for years, and give nothing in return for such dog-like loyalty. They will take jobs away from men, and become lazy, useless muffin-eaters.
That’s right. You heard him. Women will actually CUT THEIR HAIR SHORT just to torment the men of the world with its shortness! Yet they will REFUSE to shave the hair off their legs! Which are FAT and STINKY! Also MUFFINS! They EAT MUFFINS! I’m not sure if this is supposed to be some sort of lesbian innuendo, or whether Alucin is referring to actual literal ingestion of delicious blueberry muffins, but I don’t care. Either way, MEN ARE CLEARLY BEING OPPRESSED!
Why does writing this blog always make me so hungry? First, it gives me a craving for cupcakes, and now for muffins, the cupcakes’ more demure cousin, the Cathy to its Patty. .
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