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.
Or shorter (more fun :D) version:
“I don’t… I don’t believe it.”
“And that is why you fail.”
XDDDDDDD
“No one cares that 30 years ago some man accidentally-on-purpose brushed your side.”
Um…or, like the example posted just before you wrote that, someone left black bruises in the shape of finger-marks after ‘brushing up’ against someone else.
But MRAL – tell us, what hardships have you suffered beyond a woman not saying ‘hi’ nicely and not getting one single job?
BTW, today in the elevator a guy said hi to me and even though I didn’t really feel like talking I said hi back and asked him if he thought it had stopped raining. I was just tired after a long day, and, like I said, elevators not my favorite place for conversation so hopefully my tone wasn’t “spitting” (*eyeroll*). He seemed OK with it. He was a fellow bicyclist so I guess we have a bit of a common connection thing there (my building lets people bring their bikes upstairs if we use the freight elevator). Turns out the rain HAD stopped and we biked off in opposite directions.
“Yeah, I’m not showing anyone in real life my posts here, not because I’m ashamed, but because we live in a highly misandric society and this could get me in trouble, again simply for not sucking up to the mighty women.”
Translation of MRAL’s bullshit: “I can’t show this to my mom, or else she would likely go to bed sleepless at night wondering how she spawned such a POS.”
Seriously MRAL, there’s garbage, and there’s willfully proud garbage. Guess which category you fall under?
” Experience some real hardship and some real bad luck, idiot.”
What hardship have you actually experienced in life MRAL? Because you yourself have told us you’re just a white kid from Maine who lifeguards in the summer, in between being a hideous Quasimodo eye monster Boston of course.
I don’t believe there’s too much credibility floating around here. Somehow that’s like a horrible thing to say, but I really don’t understand why.
Because it’s not up to you to decide credibility? Because if you want people to take you seriously about the rough shit in your life, you have to take them seriously, too?
But then again, if you acknowledged that women are frequently the target of unwanted groping by men, and that this is rightfully upsetting to the women it happens to, your whole house of cards would come tumbling down. Your philosophy of life is based on the premise that women don’t experience actual unpleasantness in their lives, especially at the hands of men. If you had to accept that men sometimes do shitty, shitty things to women, and that women have a right to be upset about it, then there goes your entire basis of complaint.
MRAL how long would it take for a black eye to fade? How much force and pain does it take to gain said black eye. If you were the recipient of an unasked for black eye should the guy who punched you (with no provocation) get in trouble for it?
fuck why bother, you’re not listening to a word are you… BLACK BRUISES. Those really “pretty” ones with dark purple centers, blue and green outsides, slowly fading to a rainbow of purples, reds, yellows and greens. How long does it take to heal? How much force needs to be applied to cause them? (note, for the two different colors of blood to appear (making the reds and the blues) it means that both veins and arterial blood vessels were broken so that the pretty oxygenated and non-oxygenated blood show up at the same spot)
HOW IS THAT SOMETHING TO SHRUG OFF AS NO BIGGIE? What if it was your dick? What if it was your nipples? What if it was a random guy you had seen once upon a time who came up and punched you in the face hard enough to bruise you for weeks, gloating afterwards “damn that felt gooooood honey” and sauntering off as if it was nothing at all and no one would stop him… and no one did?
And do you know what? In ethics* there’s something called a “mom test”. You’re not willing to confront whether you are behaving ethically in your dealings here with people because you are unwilling to explain yourself to an unbiased respected outside source. If you are right/fair/ethical/non-troll in your dealings here, you should be able to explain easily in a face to face discussion with someone you respect, who respects you, how you came to those conclusions and why you are presenting yourself like this to a group of strangers. You should be able to justify yourself.
That you aren’t willing to do so just proves fairly conclusively that you know that you’re being a little fucker and that you aren’t willing to examine your own treatment of others.
You can’t even justify yourself to yourself can you? Can you structure any of your arguments in a way that would pass any (let alone all three) of those really REALLY easy ethical dilemmas?
*the other two famous prongs of this three pronged test are the “front page” test and the “smell” test.
MRAL: The way you call other people liars; and then the upset you have when your stories of “abuse” are questioned.
See, other people exaggeratel; but you, with your stories of being spit on, and despised (for being short… at 5’8″…) get all huffy when we say our experience doesn’t match what you talk about.
Here’s a news flash: Some of us have known hardships. Real hardships. Shit like living out of cars, and praying someplace to live would show up, before the extra expense of not having a house ate up the money needed to put down first and last.
Or months of living in tents, or the back of Humvees, with people actually trying to kill you; followed by months in hospital, wondering if you would ever again be able to sleep through the night without having your sleep interrupted by the pain.
Or having soldiers who had nightmares, or some pretty hideous scars; from having the truck they were driving carved off their bodies after the wreck, and knowing her marriage was falling apart because her husband was self-medicating the PTSD he had from being part of the team that did the carving; while she was (thank god) unconscious (I say thank god because her A-Driver had been decapitated in the wreck).
Or having recurrent dermatosis, with the unending itch and the discoloration. It takes drugs that fry your liver to treat (and right now I have one on my left cheekbone, just outside my eye, so if I screw up with the medication, I’ll probably go blind in that eye).
That’s just some of the hardships I’ve had. So boo-hoo, cry me a fucking river about how much your life sucks. You’re 20 years old. You are in college, whole bloody life ahead of you. I’ve probably got more credit hours than you will, and still no degree. I couldn’t afford it.
I coped.
I’ve been homeless. Showering at friends, or the gym of the local college.
I coped.
I’ve been the target of bullies and thugs… large enough, or numerous enough to beat the shit out of me. I spent weeks learning every twist and turn of every back street in my city.
I coped.
You have a slight problem in one eye, and you are of average height. You are white, male and something in the range of middle class. You have (though you have been convinced it’s not true) every advantage society confers by way of birth (ok, maybe you lack “Wealth” but the average person doesn’t go to college).
Cope.
And… get over yourself. You aren’t being “held down”. You aren’t suffering because you are a man.
You are being a snotty kid, whining that someone else might get to go first, or play with his precious toys.
Grow up, and cope.
Thanks to kodiak and Pecunium – I’m really angry right now but can’t put even a semi-coherent rant together 🙁
It is a period of gender war.
MRA trolls, striking
from a hidden forum, have won
their first victory against
the evil Feminist Empire.
During the battle, MRA
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Feminist’s
ultimate weapon, the MAN
BOOBZ, an armoured comment
section with enough women
to spit on an entire planet.
Pursued by the Feminists’
snarky agents, Prince
MRAL races home aboard his
web browser, custodian of the
stolen plans that can save
his gender and restore
freedom to average heighted guys….
Aaaaand Pecunium ably demonstrates that you should never go toe to toe with a soldier unless you want your ass handed back to you damn smartly.
Big zen hugs to you Pecunium, hope things are on a more even keel now and that you’re still coping. It’s criminal the way the “civilized” world treats its soldiers… and sadly it always has been. Here’s hoping that while the government manages to stop paying for extra engines for planes we don’t want or need they funnel those funds towards the VA and other veterans’ service groups.
And it can never be said enough, thank you for your service.
Lyn: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset anyone. There are times I lose my shit, and that’s the sort of thing I say.
The funny thing… MRAL’s violent fantasies aren’t, based on my experiences of violence (I used to work in ERs, as a security guard, and I was a journalist, before I realised I wasn’t going to get a job without moving to someplace like Topeka, or Spearfish; then I spent 16 years in the Army) all that bad.
I’ve seen worse, and when I have an atavistic moment… well MRAL is a piker in the imagined violence department.
But he’s being a snot, and there is only so much whining I can put up with, esp. when it’s based on a mix of willful ignorance, hypocrisy, and bigotry (in this case misogyny).
And I snap.
Ami, yes.
http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww151/puck35/so_much_win_graphic.png
Kodiak: For the most part, I’m ok. My disability is (mostly) invisible (the dermatosis comes and goes, and usually is under wraps). I don’t sleep as well as I used to.
It cost me a partner, but I’ve got new ones, and the old one and I are still close. I don’t blame her, the man who came home wasn’t the man who left. I think she could cope with who I am now, but the bridge wasn’t passable.
It’s the attitudes that suck. The people who talk a good line, until they have to deal with you as a person. I like Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried Sassoon, and a whole lot of other WW1 poets.
And sometimes, I drink.
@ Pecunium – nono – I meant thank-you for cogently telling MRAL he was being an absolute snot. I appreciate you sharing your experiences with us – really puts it into perspective. Particularly when you can muster sympathy for women who’ve been groped on trains despite all you’ve been through because, well, you see where the violence and the badness in it is.
*gives Pecunium giant hugs*
You rly are the main eventer of this blog 🙂
left a bit out…thank-you for telling him he was being a snot because I was too angry to do it myself.
“Add this to the fact that I think a lot of them are heavily exaggerated and I don’t believe there’s too much credibility floating around here. Somehow that’s like a horrible thing to say, but I really don’t understand why.”
I missed that last sentence earlier.
The reason it’s a horrible thing to say is that you expect us to take every single god dammned hyperbolic statement you make as gospel truth, never to be doubted. But people relating their own personal experiences to you… well they be lying whores ammirite? (*headdesk*)
I’ll give you a pass on this if and ONLY if you can explain to me WHY we, as fellow travellers on the internet, should bow down to the “obvious” truth of your sketchy single person anecdotes of how the world is, but why you, travelling alongside, refuse to accept our multiple, detail laden ones.
Explain that dichotomy to us if you can. We’ll wait…
(I’ll wait all night in fact, I’m off for the evening now to let my temper cool down)
Lyn: I like to think I’m better than that. That I don’t need to muster sympathy; groping people is wrong, full stop.
I have a lot of problems with the way Kant extrapolated from the Categorical Imperatives, but I think they are good rules.
1: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”
2: Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”
People aren’t things. They are like me. Like me they deserve respect, and care.
The short version of Kant:
You aren’t special
Oh totally, sorry for implying otherwise – I was making a sly reference to the fact that MRAL, despite all his ambiguous hardships, can’t muster sympathy for another human being who has been sexually assaulted.
“People aren’t things. They are like me. Like me they deserve respect, and care.”
Very well put. Also – when put like that it’s hard to see why people like MRAL have so much trouble with such a simple idea.
before I go…
Penucium good to hear it’s still going mostly ok. I know some guys who were in the Princess Pats* peacekeeping in Bosnia. They had a really hard time coming back home and I know a few marriages that didn’t pull through, and some that have, but maybe shouldn’t have…
Also Wilfred Owen rocks, and every single school child should be made to memorize “dulce et decorum est” in highschool and really consider the price of war… but I had a great teacher who pretty much had us all almost throwing up and in tears with pictures from the war that illustrated the poem… and those were pictures considered suitable for children…
*Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry
*gives Kodiak huge “you are amazing” hugs*
Good night 🙂
Kodiak: I’ve played with Canadians, and the WW1 Section of the War Museum in Ottawa got me all sorts of twitchy; so that the Italian part of the WW2 section damn near made me jump out of my skin.
My favorite Owen is “Apologia pro poemate meo” which ends…
I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.
Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a shell,
You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.
If someone can understand that… then they won’t need to look at pictures.
I’ll give you a pass on this if and ONLY if you can explain to me WHY we, as fellow travellers on the internet, should…
If I may give it a try:
-Because Mr. Al is kind of stupid.
-Because Mr. Al is extremely self-centered.
-Because Mr. Al is sadly delusional and has bought into the MRM BS about all women being privileged and all men being oppressed.
-Because Mr. Al is too young to have experienced anything of the world, but too simple to recognize this.
-Because Mr. Al is too wrapped up in the cloak of his own self-pity that he cannot empathize with anyone whose experience does not mirror his own or confirm his own prejudices.
I could go on, but it would basically be a rehash of the same ideas outlined above. We are liars because we do not repeat what Mr. Al already knows. We are not worth listening to because Mr. Al is a Big Fancy Shithead who knows everything. That is all.
*hugs* Pecunium.
I was going to point out to the little snot how incredibly privileged he is, but you did it so much better than I could have. (my hardships are so minor compared to yours, being lonely/friendless my whole life, including an entire year at university with no human interaction & finding out at 23 that my entire life was a lie)
I actually felt sorry for you when I first started reading here, MRAL. You “sounded” so young & wounded. It reminded me of me when I was that age. Only I turned my hurt and pain inwards and you turned yours to irrational anger and hate. And for that I have zero sympathy.
Unless you were abused as a child, unless you grew up homeless, hungry, in pain, you have lived an INCREDIBLY privileged life. And all you can do is whine about how awful your life has been. Suck it up and get over it. Other people have had FAR harder lives than yours has been, than yours is EVER likely to be and yet they get on with living their lives and trying to make the world better instead of whining endlessly about how hard done by they are and how it’s all the fault of someone else.
And the fat hate? All I can say about that is that you are a fucking hypocritical bastard. Seriously. Your life sucks so much because people are so mean to you because of how you look? And yet, here you are, being nasty to people who have it even worse than you, many of whom have just as little control over their situation as you. I’m pretty sure you’re one of those assholes who think it’s just a case of exercise and eat less, despite the fact that EVERY SINGLE FUCKING STUDY on diet shows that 95% of people who get to their goal weight will gain it all back, plus more, within 5 years.
You are a whiny little boy and you don’t deserve the good life you have been given. You have thrown it away on hate and self pity already.
Get help. Seriously. I’ve got 3 sons and if ANY of them turned out to be a nasty, hateful person like you, I would be devastated beyond belief.
So wait… somebody explain this to me (this should be good xD ) why would women who were sharing their experiences with sexual assault and harassment be making it up when we were talking to each other and sharing w/ each other before ANYBODY else showed up wanting to play suffering Olympics? o_O
Or in this case suffering NASCAR cuz it’s round and round in circles… xD
Also… I might have missed something but did he go an entire thread without once using greek labels or screaming about alpha males? O: (this is my Nitpicker’s Guide side which applies to trolls as much as it applies to any TV show I watch :3 ) He didn’t even mention Alpha Males, or Alpha Males taking jobs away.. today suddenly it became that all men are oppressed by all women (except fat women) xD