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| From In Mala Fide |
The reaction of the “manosphere” to Lara Logan’s reported sexual assault in Cairo has been highly revealing, to put it mildly. And what it reveals about the assorted Men’s Rightsers, Men Going Their Own Way, pickup artists, and others who make up the manosphere is pretty ugly.
Take, for example, Ferdinand Bardamu’s posts on the subject. On Tuesday, Bardamu, whose antifeminist blog In Mala Fide is widely linked to in the manosphere, spat forth a snide, sarcastic rant that attacked Logan for having the temerity to even set foot in Egypt. He started out dismissive:
Apparently, a CBS lady reporter got raped while covering the revolution in Egypt. For some reason, we’re expected to feel sorry for her.
Then turned up the sarcasm:
Oh, what a symbol of courage Miss Logan is! What a beacon of determination and grit and…no, seriously. I can’t go on.
Fuck Lara Logan. Fuck her and the shit-for-brains idiot who thought it was a good idea to send a WOMAN to report from a war zone. …
Of course, Bardamu ignores the simple fact that is is dangerous to send ANY reporter, male or female, into the midst of a revolution — indeed, the Committee to Protect Journalists has documented more than 140 attacks on journalists in the Egyptian unrest so far; one journalist was shot and killed. Despite this fact, it is an undeniably good thing that some reporters (male and female both) are willing to risk their lives to cover wars and revolutions and other dramatic, dangerous, and important events. No one has suggested that the attacks on male journalists mean that men should not be covering these events. No one is mocking the male journalists who were attacked. (Well, almost no one. Bardamu refers in passing to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, also famously attacked while covering the events of Egypt, as a “twinkle-toed pansy [who] couldn’t handle the heat on the streets of Cairo.”)
For Bardamu, though, Logan’s story is one of a woman foolishly trying to make her way in a man’s world:
You send a chick into a situation like the one in Egypt, you might as well hang a sign around her neck that says “FREE FUCKTOY”. I don’t care how many disaster areas she’s reported from, how many awards she’s won, it was going to happen eventually. …
Sucks that Lara got raped, but she had it coming. [Emphasis in original]
To Bardamu, this case is evidence not only that women journalists should not be sent to cover the Egyptian revolution but that they should not be allowed to leave their home country at all:
[O]f COURSE Lara shouldn’t be sent on another foreign assignment again! She, nor any other women should be allowed to be a foreign correspondent for their own safety.
And then, after arguing that Logan “had it coming,”and that any western woman who has the temerity to leave her hotel room and step out into the streets of Cairo should expect herself to get raped sooner or later, Bardamu then suggests that Logan may be making it all up:
There’s a non-zero chance that she didn’t get raped at all, and that she made the whole thing up to garner attention and sympathy from the weepy, chivalrous masses. …
I have no evidence that she’s not telling the truth, only a tiny feeling in the pit of my stomach that’s been growing year by year, with every venal vixen who falsely accuses a man of rape because she wants fame, or she feels like a slut after sleeping with the guy, or she’s mad that he slept with her best friend the day after, or whatever else.
Naturally, in the comments, many of Bardamu’s fans agreed that women women who trespass into male spaces deserve whatever happens to them. According to “John”:
Women do not belong in men’s locker rooms, Mike Tysons apartment at 2:00 a.m., drunk in a bar bathroom with the Steelers quarterback, and they sure as hell don’t belong “reporting” in the middle of a revolution. Women should not go to Frat Parties dressed like sluts and get drunk with the expectation that “nothing will happen.” …
This woman, Laura Logan, is not just an idiot – she is an adulterous whore. She shares this unfortunate circumstance with tens of millions of others of her sex, and deserves no pity whatsoever.
For some, the case was not just another excuse for “slut shaming” but evidence that the very notion of equality between the sexes is wrong. As Brett Stevens put it:
American women are rape targets worldwide. They are known to be clueless, friendly, and most of all, sexually easy. If a woman chucks her sexual favors out the door at the drop out of a hat, why not just go the extra mile and apply pressure? … We take these girls from comfy suburbs and send them into war zones and riots and wonder why they get gang raped. Amazing cluelessness, arising from our insane idea of “equality.”
There were other comments even worse than these — e.g., this one — but I don’t have the heart to post them here.
But Bardamu’s retrograde notions were also challenged in the comments — mostly from those who saw his noxious post linked to on feminist sites and on Twitter, but also in a few cases from actual fans of his blog.
This reaction inspired Bardamu to post a second piece on the Logan story, one even more narcissistic and self-righteous than the first. After taking on some of his critics (most notably Molly of Progressive Blogic, whom he labeled a “premenstrual whiner”), and casually referring to Logan as “an unwilling cum dumpster,” Bardamu tried to pretend that it was him, and not the feminists, who had the best interests of women at heart.
Lara Logan had no business being in Cairo, or anywhere in that part of the world for that matter. All of you leftie feminist tossers screeching about “rape culture” have her blood on your hands. How many more have to suffer before your lies are discredited?
Sorry, but a guy who refers to any women, much less a woman who has been raped, as a “cum dumpster” pretty much forfeits any right to be taken seriously on the subject of what is best for women.
About a week ago, Bardamu reported that he’d taken a Psychopathy Test on OkCupid, and had scored an impressive 31 points, which put him in the ranks of the “True Psychopaths.” His posts on Logan — full of narcissistic rage and utterly lacking in basic human empathy — seem to bear out this diagnoses all too well.
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>Being provided for also means another has total control of your means of survival if you have no resources of your own.Also, I consider it incredibly goofy that MRAs want to portray women as the benefactors of male largesse for most of history, when in fact for most of history, the women who have been entirely provided for by their husbands did so because society forced them to. A gilded cage is still a cage, as the saying goes.
>David, you must be familiar with the sheer bullshit that Chuck is promoting by citing Warren Farrell and Charlotte Allen, right?
>ginmar, I think that's actually the least of the problems with his "argument."
>Bee, you are correct in not wanting to take this conversation too far off track. Bringing it back to:1. Most American women work.2. About half the American workforce is made up of women.The following excerpt from my last post on the "Neither saints nor whores, just women" thread is relevant:"… the proportions of women and men in the workforce are subject to variables that are not explained by citing how many women are employed in one profession and another. There's affirmative action favouring women, there are air-conditioned office jobs favored by women over dusty, dangerous mines favored by men, and so on, on and on. Wage gap stuff all over again.Do we get it? Telling me that there are as many women as men who are "employed" (whatever that means, whether it includes part-time or full-time, or casual, or 1 year over a 10 year period, on and on and on) does not tell me anything. It tells me nothing about the social forces at work, and it tells me nothing about Lara Logan."
>There's affirmative action favouring womenActually employers' ingrained biases in favor of men are far more powerful as an influence than the rather loose and nebulous series of policies referred to as affirmative action.I remember how shortly before Obama nominated Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, she and the other two frontrunners for his nomination were all women. Naturally conservative pundits, including Limbaugh, jumped all over this and claimed that the nominees were picked because of "affirmative action." In reality, of course, they were picked because they were qualified (Sotomayor has a longer list of qualifications than I'll likely have in my life for anything). And we're talking about three people here. If you pick three random people out of a crowd, there's a 1 in 8 chance that they'll all be women. Not a huge chance, but not really a tiny one either. I'm not saying the selection process was random. But let's be honest – if it had been three men up for nomination, would those pundits have made a peep about gender bias? Of course not.there are air-conditioned office jobs favored by women over dusty, dangerous mines favored by men, and so on, on and on. Wage gap stuff all over again.More nonsense. Everybody favors air-conditioned office jobs. Well, every group. There are plenty of people (of both genders) who prefer the outdoors, although not a lot of people, I'd wager, who would prefer coal mining over less dangerous options. I mean, what image is in your mind when you say this? Did you grow up in a John Wayne movie where all the men were busy being manly men doing manly men things just for the hell of it? Men like air conditioning too.Women did work in mines a great deal before it was made illegal in many countries, including the US and England, in the 19th century. It wasn't until equal employment opportunity laws were enforced of mining companies that women came back into the mining workforce. And again, employers hiring for coal mines are going to be pretty heavily biased against women.But, y'know, go on pretending that the choices society forces on women are actually choices made happily by women because they're weak and lazy.
>Oh Chucky. Even assuming arguendo that any of the points you've raised are true (about offices vs. mines, e.g.), how on earth does that support your argument that "for many women, marriage is retirement, and any notion that women have been systemically oppressed by patriarchal forces arrayed against them is patently absurd." Working in an office instead of a mine is patently not retirement. Period. Part-time work is not retirement either.Besides, I really am curious about your well-considered ideas concerning lawyering. Please enlighten us. If it really is that "well established that the legal profession does not provide any real economic value," it should be fairly easy for you to prove. Here, I'll make a statement about that, and you rebut it. Nothing in business or government gets done without the assistance and advice of lawyers. At all.Your turn.
>@bee "Part-time work is not retirement either." True, especially when women with young children work part time far more often than their childless counterparts. Then again, the notion that women not in wage labour might be doing valuable work, like being the primary caretakers of children, is not even on the MRAs radar.
>gee I guess I get to post it again since people are too stupid to read.http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/perinc/new03_001.htmif you would like to read about how they got these figures wikipedia (for once) actually has a cited article about it. You can follow the links and read them if you like.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male%E2%80%93female_income_disparity_in_the_United_Statesfurthermore, I would like to point out the study that calculates what it would cost you if you had to pay your stay at home wife for all the work she doeshttp://events.salary.com/easyir/customrel.do?easyirid=C62ED049D69BA1E0&version=live&prid=615803&releasejsp=custom_117
>What part of "for many women, marriage is retirement" (as I originally phrased it), don't people understand? Just as many men go on to become imoral layabouts and criminals, so too, women are nothing like the pristine idealizations portrayed in feminist propaganda. Some women are gold-diggers, some women are lazy, some women are slobs, some women are child abusers, and so on. Newsflash… women are imperfect, just as men are.So it logically follows that among this sea of imperfect humanity, some women will regard marriage as retirement, an option that men do not have. And just like retired people do, they sometimes work part-time, or they work for part of a year, whatever their fancy takes them, while neglecting and abusing their children (refer Child Maltreatment 2002), and so on. Retirement. I overheard a conversation between two women at work recently:"I am so relieved to be leaving work for good.""Yeah, I wish I could go. But John doesn't earn enough, so I have no choice but to stick around.""It'll be fun raising the kids, and to not have to take part in all this workplace bullshit again. Imagine not having to have to wake up to prepare for work, ever again. [sigh of relief]"It's not an uncommon exchange between women expressing relief at the thought of never having to work again. Even my sister (a staunch feminist in a previous life) was elated to be able to pull out of all the workplace politics in favor of homecarer responsibilities as a devoted, responsible mother (for her, as for most women, marriage is definitely NOT retirement). But to be relieved of this workplace bullshit, to be able to pull up and never have to set foot in it again is a form of relief. It provides many women with an escape-hatch. And for a minority of women, it's one of the perks of marriage, an opportunity for retirement. An opportunity for part-time work, an opportunity for a bit this and a bit of that, whatever takes your fancy.Are you people trying to tell us that such women don't exist? What sort of cuckoo land are you living in?
>Chucky: Many =/= a minorityIf your point now is that one or more such women exist in this world, sure. But even if we're only talking about the (small) universe of women who are able and want to quit their jobs to take care of their husbands, homes, or children, most of these women are still working (quite hard) in one way or another.
>chuckeedee, you clearly have not spent any time at a university lately. Many, many young men are opting to find woman to marry and be a stay at home parent. It is just as much an option for men in 2011 as it is for women.
>Fascinating how personally some of us are taking this "retirement" interpretation. Why are we so defensive? It's only one interpretation among many.One of the dangers with taking things personally and dwelling on it is that you project something about that's bugging you. What you might in effect be telling us, perhaps, is that a part of you is feeling guilty that women do in fact have this retirement option, and that some women do in fact exercise this privilege in the very spirit that I describe it.Be careful of projecting. Every word you utter says as much about you as it does about whatever it is that you are trying to defend.
>Chuck-it was a stupid characterization that treats housework and raising children as not as important as working.It is work and hard work.
>What's bugging me, Chuck, is your straw(wo)man arguments (the idea that feminists portray women as "pristine idealizations" is the tritest of bullshit) and your moving of goalposts.Look, it's obvious why you said that "for many women, marriage is retirement." Your unthinking compliance with antihuman capitalistic dogma, wherein the value of work is measured in how much money it generates, led you to imply that housebound women don't actually work. When the severe error of this was pointed out to you, you pretended that that's not what you actually said.
>@Elizabeth"It is work and hard work."When done properly, of course it is. But no matter how well it is done, housework and child-rearing are exempt of the following:1) The stress of having to confront where your next paycheck is coming from. In times aplenty, for most people, this is not an issue. But as we enter into more uncertain times, it matters, and it matters a lot;2) The stress of having to negotiate on a daily basis with people that you can't stand. And as times become more uncertain, the people that you can't stand become even more unbearable;3) The stress of having to take responsibility for all the things that can go wrong, both at work (injury, loss of career) and at home (finances, maintenance).Do we get the drift? Housework has its challenges, like the responsibilities that come with raising children, what school they go to, and the heartache when things go wrong. But no matter what, it is all related to the comfort of familiarity, and not the angst of the unknown. Ultimately, it's about security versus risk. I appreciate that what I am getting at might seem obscure to some of us, but these are ultimately existential questions, and should not glossed over lightly.@Triplanetary"unthinking compliance with antihuman capitalistic dogma"Hardly. I am addressing questions related to obligation and morality. The shallowness of contemporary humanity extends to both men and women, and the simple truth is that some women are self-undulgent and bone-lazy, just like some men are. Why do we seem to have a problem with this?
>Shorter Chucky: Remember that stupid thing I said, that you all keep poking holes in? Can't we make like that didn't happen? Hey! What's that over there? *hides*
> I appreciate that what I am getting at might seem obscure to some of us, but these are ultimately existential questionsOh ho, we have a Junior Philosopher in the house. Did your Philosophy 101 course just go over Nietzsche's notion of the unheimlich?
>deny, deny, deny. Projection, projection everywhere and nary a spot to think.
>@triplanetary, my BA is actually in philsophy and I fucking hate exitentialism with a passion. Their arguments are simply terrible (even just structually). Existentialism boils down the this discussion:Existentialist: "Why X?"Physicalist: "Detailed causal explanation leading to X."Existentialist: "I am not satified with even a complete causal answer. I want there to be a purpose or intention."Physicalist: "Other than the ones that people insert into the causal chain, there is no overarching purpose or intention in events, period. Get over it. Reality and truth is not determined by how warm and fuzzy the answer makes you feel."Dualist (interjecting): "God did it."Existentialist: "I will ignore all of your criticisms and just go into detached rambling metaphor and pretend to be 'deep'."
>Oh yeah, no, I have nothing against philosophers. My best friend is about to get his PhD in philosophy. I just kind of laughed out loud a little when Chuckee said, "I appreciate that what I am getting at might seem obscure to some of us". Apparently he thought he was getting into some Deep Shit.
>@DarkSideCat, TriplanetaryJust because you hated existentialism and didn't understand it does not invalidate it. Indeed, it instead proves that you are not in a position to pass judgement about it.Still, let's run with your implied charge of obscurantism. Putting it simply, no fluff. Security is the finished product – a safe home, kids, etc. Security is the mother's priority, and for simplification, let's assume that it is also the father's. In the traditional (pre-feminist) model, the father does not have the luxury of enjoying this security at face value, unlike the mother. The father needs to "earn" it, and he does this through supporting his family, through his involvement in the outside sphere, namely, employment. The mother also needs to earn her security, and in the traditional model, she does this through housework. There is nothing to be compensated for, because security and happy, healthy kids are the prize. If she does not accept her responsibilities with respect to housework, then she is, for all intents and purposes, a retiree. If a mother does not regard security and healthy, happy kids as her priority, then she does not know what love is, and we should not want society to raise her delinquents, taking up valuable jail space. A mother that expects "compensation" for loving her children is by definition incapable of love and should never be a mother.Sure, many women seek opportunities beyond security. But the laws of supply and demand put a price on external opportunities that have resulted in the pre-feminist traditional roles always being more attractive for women. Not because of patriarchal oppression but because security places fewer demands, and because only women were permitted to be stay-at-homes. Only women had this escape-hatch. Men never enjoyed the permission to be stay-at-homes. Men never had an escape-hatch.The only reason that anyone works is because entities outside of the family are prepared to pay for services rendered outside of the family. No-one is going to pay anyone for raising their own children in the family's own interests, and nor should they, no matter how difficult that might be for some of us to accept.Defining "purpose" is an existential question (no tp, I'm not trying to be "Deep"). If you think that your purpose is defined by how you are compensated financially, then you do indeed fail to understand what "purpose" is all about, and it is no surprise that you hated existentialism.Or is all this still too obscure for you? Perhaps you should have taken your classes in existentialism a little more seriously.lol
>Only women had this escape-hatch. Men never enjoyed the permission to be stay-at-homes. Men never had an escape-hatch.And now they do, thanks to … feminism.
>Man this is rich. Let me see if I can put this in a way that won't go completely over your head, Chuckee: I was not accusing you of being obscure. You were the one claiming you were calling on some obscure ideas. I was mocking you because you didn't say anything that's beyond the average high schooler. Existentialism is every wannabe-philosopher's favorite philosophy. You're seriously overreaching yourself here.The rest of your pseudointellectual bullshit can be dismissed without being so wordy, since it's all the same trite historical revisionism (not to mention middle/upper-class tunnel vision) that MRAs regularly engage in, just dressed up (very shabbily) in teleological language and the word "existentialist" thrown in every couple of paragraphs in an attempt to make you sound like you know what the fuck you're talking about.
>Chucky, dude, sorry but nothing you said was deep. The weird thing about this entire line of conversation is that it has such a limited relationship to any aspect of life as I know it. At last count, I know one stay at home mom (who lost her full time job last month and is currently looking for another) and two stay at home dads, who've been unemployed (on and off) for the past decade while their MIT educated wives work in the tech industry. As for "deep"–I dunno. You mean that you suspect the idea that different people have different needs and priorities is gonna BLOW OUR MINDS?I don't really even know what to say to that, really. It's sad.
>Bee and triplanetary, you are projecting your anti-intellectualism (apologies for the big words, I haven't time to explain). Either you know what you are talking about and can debate with me on theoretical terms, or you cannot. I can respect it if you don't wish to go down that route. But given that you dismiss this manner of discussion as "pseudointellectual bullshit", it is clear that you haven't a clue what you are talking about. It is a given that anti-intellectual phillistines will be fundamentally incapable of debating on terms more sophisticated than grunting out unsubstantiated opinions. Ipso facto, you will be doing yourselves a favor to stick within the confines of the thread in the terms that you do purport to understand. It doesn't pay you to diss well-established theory that universities regard important enough to include in their curricula. And it will still be easy to make mince-meet of you, but at least you won't look so ridiculous. I promise I won't use big words any more, just to make it a bit easier for you.