MRAs regularly accuse feminists of promoting the idea that all women are “perfect princesses” who can do no wrong. Which is a rather silly accusation, as every feminist I’ve ever met is well aware that women, like men, are capable of vast evil. Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, was one of the ringleaders behind China’s bloody Cultural Revolution. Madame Delphine Lalaurie was a 19th century New Orleans socialite who tortured her slaves and performed bizarre medical experiments on them. And then there were Ilse Koch, the “Witch of Buchenwald,” and her counterpart Irma Grese, the “Bitch of Belsen,” sadistic Nazis who tormented the prisoners under their charge and kept grisly “souveniers.” (For more on them and other truly evil women see here and here.)
But today I’m going to talk about some women who aren’t so much evil as retrograde and wrong: the 800 women who have reportedly joined the newly formed Obedient Wives Club in Malaysia, an offshoot of a fundamentalist Islamic organization called Global Ikhwan, previously known for its Polygamy Club.
If you set aside the whole fundamentalist Islam thing — MRAs by and large don’t seem terribly fond of Islam — these Obedient Wives would pretty much represent the ideal women for manosphere misogynists; much of what they profess sounds like it came straight from discussions on The Spearhead or one of the popular MGTOW forums.
According to the Obedient Wives, for example, “disobedient wives are the cause for upheaval in this world” — including social ills like domestic abuse. As one spokeswoman for the group sees it, “domestic abuse happens because wives don’t obey their husband.” Asked by the newspaper The Star if this meant that a wife was at fault if she was abused, the spokeswoman replied with a “yes,” because “most probably … she didn’t listen to her husband.”
But it’s the group’s pronouncements about sex that have caused the most controversy in Malaysia. Apparently Obedient Wives need to be sexual dynamos as well as submissive helpmeets, eager and willing to “obey, serve and entertain” their husbands “better than a first-class prostitute” can. As one of the group’s founders put it at the event heralding the formation of the Obedient Wives,
Sex is a taboo in Asian society. We have ignored it in our marriages but it’s all down to sex. A good wife is a good sex worker to her husband. What is wrong with being a whore … to your husband?
Several days later, another Obedient Wives Club spokeswoman attempted to “clarify” these remarks in an interview with the Malay Mail:
I believe we have been misunderstood and misinterpreted. When we said that husbands should treat their wives like first-class prostitutes, we were not putting wives on the same level with prostitutes. We are talking about first-class elite types, not street hooker types.
So that’s … good, I guess? Although we should point out that actual prostitutes in Malaysia – even those working at “high end” clubs — are treated like shit.
Before all the “American-Women-Suck” dudes reading this convert to Islam and buy one-way plane tickets to Malaysia, I would like to note that there are feminists in Malaysia who think these women (and the men Involved in starting the group) are full of it. Islamic feminists, even.
Fucking MRAs. They’re misogynists, so they hate independent women, but they’re religiously intolerant racists, so they’ll find a way to hate these women too. There is literally nothing a woman can do to please MRAs.
Cause, really, it’s not like men are capable of making rational decisions by themselves or anything like that.
Yes, Amnesia, that really is striking about all this gender essentialism business — it is so insulting to men! They are incapable of dealing with a person who won’t listen to them without resorting to physical violence. They are incapable of seeing a flash of thigh without flying into a rage of lust and raping the owner of said thigh. They require constant sexual satiation or else they will be incapable of honoring their marriage vows. They require perfect obedience at all times or else they just might start a war or crash the economy or something. Etc., etc.
Anyway, these women have obviously been listening to too much Ludacris. He was way ahead of them with the “lady in the street but a freak in the bed” stuff.
I think those lists of “evil” women Dave linked to were a bit hard on Mary I and Elizabeth I, as they were probably no worse than male rulers of the age–and certainly no worse than their grandfather (Henry VII, who had quite a few political opponents executed), their brother (Edward VI, a fanatical protestant in his own right), or their father (Henry VIII, surely no comments necessary).
In the second link, the clarification between elite prostitutes and street walkers, the club’s spokesperson makes it clear that wives should be sexually skilled but that their club will not be giving practical sex lessons. I wonder, assuming as with most religious fundamentalists that they value chastity in a woman prior to marriage, how they expect wives to be able to perform as well as prostitutes?
Although I suppose, that since they’re basing the whole sexually skilled thing on the tenant of obedience, I’m probably over thinking it. Any wife who does whatever her husband wants whenever he wants it will be considered skill, I guess. I wonder if Islam has religiously based sexual manuals?
The thing that annoys me is that they almost never ever ever ever admit that a man did something wrong (and if he did, women and manginas drove him to it) but expect feminists to constantly agree that this or that woman was bad, did something bad or wrote something bad to or about men.
Sexual skill comes from god’s will and love. You will automatically know how to give an amazing blow-job and be a good kisser if you love your husband enough and do what he says. If you can’t, then there is something wrong with you, and you should feel ashamed. Also, you orgasming has nothing to do with being good in bed. Don’t worry about that.
@Captain Bathrobe: Just because they were no worse then the men around them dosen’t make them not terrible people. Those men did some pretty awful, horrible things too. Just because everyone else is doing it dosen’t make it right.
Female orgasms make it easier to get pregnant with boys. You would think the men would know this…
Mary and Elizabeth (and many queens throughout history) are why I have never believed or argued that if the world was run by female rulers there would be no war.
Elizabeth I just did it to make some dude happy. She thought war was useless.
Is this true, or are you implying that MRA’s and traditionalist Muslim men would be thinking in terms of boys when they’re trying to impregnate their wives? I know female orgasms make it easier to get pregnant in general.
I don’t know if this would make her better or worse. Or is this snark?
Sarah wrote: “@Captain Bathrobe: Just because they were no worse then the men around them dosen’t make them not terrible people. Those men did some pretty awful, horrible things too. Just because everyone else is doing it dosen’t make it right.”
Sarah, I think what Captain Bathrobe was referring to is that female rules are singled out for criticism. Acts that are considered par for the course on the part of male rulers (though not necessarily “not terrible”) are held up as evidence of particular evilness when committed by female rulers.
And by the way, the Listverse entry on Elizabeth I is shocking inaccurate and unfair. Elizabeth I didn’t have “thousands of Catholics murdered”. Fewer than 300 Catholics were executed during her 45-year reign (see this , for instance) — only slightly more than the number of Protestants that Mary I had executed during her reign of only 5 years. Most of those Catholics were priests, and Elizabeth had them put to death under pressure from Parliament. Lest we forget, many of those “martyrs” were agents sent by Rome to either assassinate Elizabeth or foment rebellion against her. There were, in fact, a number of Catholic rebellions against Elizabeth, seeking not civil rights or religious inclusiveness, but the deposition of Elizabeth, possibly her death, and the restoration of Catholicism to the exclusion of Protestants. Same with Mary Queen of Scots — Mary constantly plotted against Elizabeth and while still in Scotland, styled herself Queen of England and dined on plates with the English royal crest. She was put to death after overwhelming evidence was produced that she was seeking to have Elizabeth assassinated. What Elizabeth did do was create a religious settlement crafted in such a way as to appease all but the most extreme of Catholics and Protestants. That’s a lot more than can be said for most rulers in that age of fundamentalist faith, intolerance and religious violence.
I think it’s unfair to apply modern standards to rulers who lived in a completely different cultural and political environment, hundreds of years ago. I also think it’s facile to characterize a ruler as “terrible” for the simple fact that he or she had people killed, outside of context. Those in power are responsible for hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of lives, as well as the day-to-day well-being of their citizens. It’s therefore problematic to judge them according to the rules of individual, private morality. Given the very nature of what they do, it’s kind of inevitable that they sometimes have to have people killed.
Sorry for the off-topic discussion.
True. There are some we can judge as “bad even for their time” – Vlad Tepes, Elizabeth Bathory (assuming she wasn’t framed), Gilles de Rais – but beyond that, it gets murky.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m enjoying this particular digression. I’m not a pacifist and consider war an inevitability of the human condition. Which doesn’t mean that I approve of every war or even most wars. I’m just noting, realistically, that humanity has yet to figure out a method of solving some disputes without resorting to violence. Throughout our recorded history, across cultures and continental divides, we have engaged in warfare. That some wars are dismissed as senseless and others heralded as necessary or noble doesn’t really change the essence of war. Every side believes that it’s on the right side of history and the winners usually get to the write the stories.
I’m holding out hope that this is something upon which we can improve. I believe that we have the capability. Already we have developed philosophies regarding human rights that would have been alien all over the world only 200 years ago.
Not to brag or anything but my fiance has on several occasions told me the best sex he’s ever had is with me. I think this might have just a teensie bit to do with me having more “experience” than his prior girlfriends. Of course it does also have to do with us being absolutely crazy about each other and having good chemistry 🙂
@SallyStrange
This just in: Men all over the world are starving to death because women won’t make their sandwiches!
That Delphine LaLaurie stuff is really creepy. We did one of those Haunted French Quarter tours when we were down there, and that house was a big part of it.
Its like bizarro-world sex positivity: “All sex should be great! For your husband!” No mention of female pleasure at all. Sex is still something the wives have that they give to their husbands. They should just give really well.
To bring the word “obedience” into a relationship in a context that isn’t sexual, is pretty twisted.
“It’s therefore problematic to judge them according to the rules of individual, private morality. Given the very nature of what they do, it’s kind of inevitable that they sometimes have to have people killed.”
I dunno. I suspect you may be right, on some level. But the idea of killing a few people for the greater good is definitely something I struggle with. The moral rules governing leadership positions are very murky to me.
But, certainly, I can agree that is is not so black and white as “She was a terrible person for having 100s of Catholics killed! There were mitigating circumstances. (My knowledge of this part of history is quite shallow, sorry. =p)
By the way, I meant tenet of obedience up there. Obedience probably doesn’t have renters.
“I dunno. I suspect you may be right, on some level. But the idea of killing a few people for the greater good is definitely something I struggle with. The moral rules governing leadership positions are very murky to me.”
If you read the writings of the time, you will find that these rulers were not killing “for the greater good”; they were killing to stay in power. Elizabeth I, for example, was reluctantly talked into killing Lady Jane Grey because she was used by her relatives to try and claim the throne. Same deal with Mary, Queen of Scots. If you are going to stay king, or queen, of anywhere for very long, you need to be willing to kill pretenders. When you don’t, or won’t, you end up with civil war.
“disobedient wives are the cause for upheaval in this world”
Your damn right they are that’s why there awesome
“When we said that husbands should treat their wives like first-class prostitutes, we were not putting wives on the same level with prostitutes”
I should hope not prostitutes have more self respect
Seraph, it was not snark-Lord Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester wanted to get involved in the Netherlands’ rebellion against the Spanish. So she supported his efforts there despite not being a big fan of spending the money.