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In a discussion of my “Ladies! Stop assaulting us by dressing like slutty sluts” post, regular commenter DarkSideCat left a comment that really got to the heart of what is so troubling about the CoAlpha Brotherhood and others of their ilk. I thought everyone deserved to see it, so here it is. (I’ve edited it down slightly, broken it into paragraphs and put especially pertinent points in bold; you can see the original comment in context here.)
To set it up: In a previous comment Eoghan had referred casually to the “aggressive flashing of fertility and mating symbols by females.” DarkSideCat replied:
You mean their fucking bodies? Have you so objectified women that you can’t think of their very BODIES as anything other than ‘fertility and mating symbols’? You are thinking of women’s skin as some sort of sexual object for you, rather than their own flesh. … You are assuming that women’s bodies are sex objects or sex acts, they aren’t, they are people’s fucking bodies.
Men show their skin all of the damned time. They even routinely go topless in public places. Because a man taking off his shirt in the heat, or putting on a nice pair of jeans to try and look nice is a person doing stuff, whereas a woman going topless in [the] heat or putting on a pair of jeans to look nice is a filthy slut who deserves to be raped?
Women’s bodies and skin are no more public property than men’s, and, if you can’t manage to see someone in public and find them attractive without thinking they are evil and are asking for you to rape them, you are the problem, not them.
Shit like this is also pretty damned insulting to men. You know, I think more highly of men than this, perhaps that is the difference between me and CoAlpha. I think that men can (and some in fact do) behave like decent human beings, and see women as human beings as well. I do not see male sexuality as so innately out of control and violent that if they see someone sexy, they will feel a burning need to violently attack and rape them.
You want to know why rad fems see all men as rapists? Because they believe the same stereotypes about men as anti-feminists like CoAlpha. If you spend so much fucking time pushing the notion that men can’t help being assholes or rapists, you are going to get some people to believe it, but disagree about the solution.
The quotes here contain direct threats of rape and murder and say that people dressed in certain types of clothes are asking to be raped. Yet, somehow you can’t see how fucked up that is?
Amen.
>Well of course you're going to accuse of politicizing and minimizing female on child abuse when the notion of men taking on more childcare responsibility is mentioned. But men like yourself seem to come up with every excuse in the book for why men cannot/will not/do not take on the responsibility of primary caregiver, or even a larger share of the caregiving, quite content with women taking on the lion's share of that responsibility even though they are the primary abusers of children.Did you ever stop to think that it's not a political statement, that I might actually believe that a more equitable sharing of childcare responsibility (with BOTH parents being both nurturing AND authoritarian) might help to minimize child abuse in addition to creating a stronger bond between fathers and their children? That that is why I vehemently disagree with gender roles of primary caregiver and head of the household authority? Of course not, everything has to have a political angle.
>@Eoghan,There is an international organization called Men Can Stop Rape that campaigns. I can't find an organization or campaign with the name Only Men Can Stop Rape although I see a few individuals using the term. Please provide a link to the actual Only Men Can Stop Rape campaign.
>@Pam, who was addressing Eoghan:"But men like yourself seem to come up with every excuse in the book for why men cannot/will not/do not take on the responsibility of primary caregiver, or even a larger share of the caregiving, quite content with women taking on the lion's share of that responsibility even though they are the primary abusers of children."This is the most absurd comment that I have ever read on this blog. And that's saying something.Within an intact family, the caregiver role is a role of privilege. Caregivers have the OPTION of being supported financially as caregivers, or supporting others financially.Most wives who are mothers absolutely refuse to be the sole breadwinner for the father of their children. The best that such women have to offer is essentially for both partners to go Dutch. Typically it is the wife who heaps shaming language on her husband for not being a sufficient provider, calling him a loser and a deadbeat. That is because she considers the home to be her domain, and she doesn't want her uniqueness as a mother to be overshadowed by her husband in the caregiving role. And so for most mothers it is literally unthinkable that she would ever actually choose to be a sole breadwinner. But the sole caregiver role is one of her options, because her husband is willing to offer her that choice. It is not reciprocal. Therefore it is grossly offensive for you to insinuate that fathers are somehow rejecting the role of sole caregiver; until mothers are willing to enable them financially to occupy that role full time, it is the mothers who occupy a position of privilege.As I have said before, you feminists sure do have a knack for taking your immense privileges as women and portraying them as victimhood. It doesn't work on MRAs, but it sure does hoodwink a significant portion of the public. The most privileged people — western women — are so privileged and pampered that many of them can't even perceive it, let alone acknowledge it. Options equal power, and women have more.
>John…the key here is "sole" caregiver/breadwinner. C'mon…do you really believe that even in traditional families, Mom is the "sole" caregiver. Perhaps the word you are looking for is "primary."Re: "breadwinner-hommemaker families-Only seven percent of US families fall into this category.The world is changing. In some demographic areas, woman are the primary breadwinners in one third of the two-parent households. Across the board, the stat is 20%. In intact dual (full-time) income families, women provide 40% of the total household income. Indeed, it is in the lower-income brackets where one finds the majority of SAHMs.So lets be careful here…as of this year, there are more women than men in the workforce, (unprecedented)and my sense is that this will be an ongoing reality.
>@OPExcellent, DarkSideKat! "Women's bodies and skin are no more public property than men's, and, if you can't manage to see someone in public and find them attractive without thinking they are evil and are asking for you to rape them, you are the problem, not them. " There are soooooo many men who don't do this. Rapists and their pro-rape MPAs counterparts need to stop pretending that wanting to rape is somehow "normal" or that every man feels this way. It's similar BS you see NAMBLA members spouting about how they're "normal". In contrast, I don't go around thinking, "hmm, I bet if I kill that person, I'll get away with it muhahahah" because I'm not a sociopathic murderer nor have said tendencies. The most horrible part is that, since we as a society DO think it's normal to attack women, we allow rapists to blend in…