The other day Darksidecat introduced me to what I now consider to be the Greatest Webpage Ever (this week): Regender, a handy tool that will take any web page and, well, regender it, turning male pronouns and references into female and vice versa. It even works with names.
Following Darksidecat’s lead, I have started plugging the writings of some of my favorite manosphere misogynists into the magical regendering machine. The results are, well, instructive. And frequently hilarious. As DSC noted, Roissy and MarkyMark are perfect for this sort of treatment. As is, I discovered, MarkyMark’s longtime pal Christopher in Oregon. Here’s what happens when Christopher of Oregon becomes Christine of Oregon with the help of regender, and all the horrible shit he wrote about women becomes the horrible shit she wrote about men:
Men are whores. They are far more likely to have STD’s than women. Be aware of this. Handle with extreme care. Men are filthy, and they will lie about their infections. Condoms will NOT protect you. …
Men are walking cesspools of filth! Most of them have or will have a permanent STD infection. It is unavoidable. These are FACTS, and not the rantings of an unstable misandrist.
(I’m a very STABLE misandrist, thank you kindly)
Men are DIRTY creatures, pure and simple. Be dignified, and don’t lower yourself to engaging in any filthy behavior with them. You WILL be infected with the diseases they are carrying. A moral, dignified woman does NOT rut like an animal with one of these creatures. Sexual intercourse and oral sex are filthy, disgusting activities, and ruin a woman morally. They spread disease.
Elevate yourself above such filth of the flesh. …
Do not lust after men in your mind. Masturbate only as a last result to relieve tension. Do not lust after men sexually. It weakens you.
Goddess made woman in Her image, and men was made in the image of Satan. Squeal all you want, but history proves me right. A man is a test; a stumbling block for woman. Our life is an adventure. A journey. A pursuit of our creator, and a pursuit of excellence in our personal lives. A man and his filth is part of the obstacle course set before us. If we are wise, and avoid them, we will grow stronger as a result. We will finish the race successfully.
Men was not put here to support us as such, and we will only grow stronger if we AVOID his snares. ..
Christine in Oregon
Woah. Critics of Man Boobz often say that feminists are “just as bad” as the guys I quote. Well, if they were, the posts on their blogs would look a lot like this regendered post. I ask all of you: have you ever seen something so grotesquely misandrist on any feminist web site? I thought not.
Here’s a challenge for all of you: See if you can come up with a regendered post that tops this one from “Christine in Oregon.” You can draw from old posts of mine, or go poking about in the manosphere yourself. Post your results in the thread below, along with a link to the regendered web page you got them from. I’ll highlight the best in a future post.
Oh fuck.. Dave, can you fix the close tag on the link. You can see where I typoed.
I’m with Capt Bathrobe. Don’t see Wanderer needing to apologize. Posted actual things with substance. I even agree with some of it. Too tired now to elaborate. There was dinner and BBQs and stargazing. ‘Nighty night!
Slavery – The Kajira
Collaring
“Assume the posture of male submission, I told him. He did so, kneeling back on his heels, his arms extended, wrists crossed, his head between them, down. He was weeping.
“Repeat after me,” I told him. “‘I, once Michael Elias Cardwell, of the planet Earth–‘”
“I, once Michael Elias Cardwell, of the planet Earth–” he said.
“‘–herewith submit myself, completely and totally, in all things–“‘
“–herewith submit myself, completely and totally, in all things–” he said.
“‘–to her who is now known here as Hakim of Tor–“‘
“–to her who is now known here as Hakim of Tor–” he said.
“‘–her boy, her slave, an article of her property, hers to do with as she pleases–“‘
“–her boy, her slave, an article of her property, hers to do with as she pleases,” he said.
Hazel handed me the collar. It was inscribed ‘I am the property of Hazel or Tor’. I showed it to the boy. He could not read Taharic script. I read it to him. I put it about his neck. I snapped it shut.
“‘I am yours, Mistress”‘, I said to the boy.
He looked at me, tears in his eyes, his neck in my locked collar. ” I am yours, Mistress,” he said.
“Congratulations on your slave!” said Hazel. “He is lovely meat. Now I must attend to my own slave.” She laughed, and left.
The boy sank to the straw, and looked up at me. His eyes were soft with tears. He whispered. :I am yours now, Tara,” he said. “You own me. You truly own me.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“What ever Mistress wishes,” he whispered.
“I will call you Vernon,” I said.
“I am Vernon,” he said, his head down….
—Tribesmen of Gor, 26:359-360
Regendered – World of Gor – Collaring
Just wanted to say I am so sorry I missed out on this thread.
I now want to jump into conversations that ended hours ago. 🙁
If I start going ALL CAPS, can I get another 1000-post thread to play in? *bats eyelashes*
*points up-thread* People have been talking about me! =O
Just to clarify, Slavie’s concern trolling really got to me in that particular thread. His whole “I care about rape survivors, really, I do! I Just don’t want to put any kind of work into understanding or sympathizing with them! I will just propagate harmful mistruths instead!” schtick pushed me over the edge.
I also think that his arguments are so incredibly pointless, circular, and made in bad faith that I am no longer going to even try and engage with him. It’s going to be far too upsetting for me. He is one of the most intellectually dishonest people I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. And that is why I hate him. And I want him to know it.
He put enough hate into me, he is getting hate back.
I really enjoyed the regendering of World of Gor.
Re: the Hummer mom. It sounds like she preyed on 2 under aged boys. So, no, not excessive.
NWOslave seems to be having trouble with then/than in this thread. It makes him even harder to understand than usual. I have to internally translate everything he writes. The “substance” of his posts isn’t worth the effort.
As Dana from Reasoning With Vampires says, “Am Big: you or us?”.
I need a slave to regender all the the Gor novels for me.
@speedlines: me too.
Shaenon: very true–BUT the refusal to allow women to act (and the very spotty history of how women finally became actors), is also why no female protagonists–both are symptons, the first is not a cause of the other. Male filmmaker (and the emergence of film as a popular/lowbrow cultural entertainment was probably one thing that allowed plays to become more respectable) today don’t have that excuse, but still tend to fail at creating female protagonists in any but the most limited way. (I taught Shakespeare in my intro to lit course a few years back, and the majority of students did not know that women did not act then, and the only ones who did learned it from Shakespeare in Love)
Lurkattack: I read most of Michael Ruse’s essay on GoogleBooks. It was nowhere near as brilliant as Mark asserts (admittedly, the 2 out of every 5 pages that googlebooks expunges could have been much better).
Basically the argument holds, much as others have said, that our moral sentiments and personal preferences are consequences of our evolution, and that other evolutionary pathways would have led to other moral sentiments or personal preferences. Fair enough, as far as it goes. He contends, notably, that the Greatest Happiness Principle is likely to be found among all thinking species, but that it is possible to conceive of a species that does not disprefer acts we would consider rape. That’s a crucial distinction here. Ruse argues not that rape might be morally permissible though unpleasant, but that it might be possible to find a species collectively indifferent to what we consider rape.
However, there were a few problems I had with it that I’d like to point out.
1) Ruse asserts, but does not work to show (again, in the parts I read) that because our moral principles seem to reflect our moral sentiments, the former can be reduced to the latter. Thus, he implicitly dismisses all of moral philosophy as a sort of bookkeeping of our hearts. Such a dismissal may be valid. But it is certainly nontrivial.
2) Ruse gets fairly simple examples wrong. For instance, he notes that ducks have a high incidence of rape, and alleges that it is probably reproductively beneficial. However, due to the duck reproductive tract’s odd topology, nearly all duck impregnations result from sexual congress where the female duck is willing. Such trivial errors–the assertion that rape may be evolutionarily beneficial, in a case where it is notably less so–undermine his credibility.
3) Ruse is sexist about rape. He consistently assumes that rape is an act perpetrated on a female, by a male. He does not acknowledge (again, in the sections I read) the possibility that rape might occur in any other configuration. This is essential to his biological reading of rape, but unsupported. Ruse does not, as far as I have read, ask why female-on-male rape is widely dismissed, even though it would have its own reproductive consequences.
4) Ruse gets Star Wars dead fucking wrong. He reads Darth Vader as an example of an alien being with a completely different morality, and then paints his final transformation as a recognition of kin bond. However, this is comically misguided. Darth Vader is a classically HUMAN villain, showing the propensity for evil contained in even the most notable human heroes. Unless Ruse’s argument is that we have no moral obligations to those who behave immorally–an incredibly radical claim–Darth Vader is the worst possible example he could choose. This is pretty simple shit, dude. It’s embarrassing.
Wait, out of all the aliens found in SF, Ruse chose a human cyborg as his example of an alien moral system?
Maybe Ruse himself is an alien. xD
Ithiliana–you don’t consider “Twelfth Night” or “Measure for Measure” as having female protagonists? I’m not necessarily disagreeing so much as wondering who you would identify as the protagonists of these plays and why?
Yup! Ruse writes:
“However, when we turn to less friendly extraterrestrials, [as opposed to E.T.–ed.] like Darth Vader, the villain in Star Wars, it is hard to see why anyone should have any sense of moral obligation to him. No one likes him very much, even his allies, and certainly the heroes of Star Wars do not feel any obligations to Darth Vader. Rather, they try to do him down at any and every opportunity. Nor were they wrong in so trying. Darth Vader simply wants to do harm to others; consequently, in return, others feel no obligation towards him.”
“I would argue that the heroes, in fact, have no real obligation to Vader. He is outside the moral realm, at least as far as Luke Skywalker and friends are concerned. It is interesting to note that Vader’s moral reclamation, occurring at the end of Return of the Jedi, comes only after Luke sees Vader as his father, recognizes a fellow (albeit fallen) Jedi, and shows love towards him. Vader then, in turn, responds to this love. Luke is his son! A neat case of kin selection at work, possible only when Luke and Vader see analogous beings in each other. Confirmation of my whole line of argument!”
“So in answer to question of whether we have moral obligations to extraterrestrials, and whether they have moral obligations to us, all we can say is that ‘it all depends.’ Are they enough like us that any kind of moral discourse is possible? Is their nature such that they could respond in any kind of friendly way towards us? Is our nature such that it is possible for us to respond in any kind of friendly way towards them?”
Now, there are some obvious problems with this. Paragraph 1 (and the beginning of 2) justifies, quite neatly, the torture of sociopaths. If any human simply wants to do harm to others, those others “have no real obligation” towards them. This is a radical philosophical claim, not an obvious one.
Paragraph 2 grotesquely misrepresents the moral tale of Return of the Jedi. Luke does not show love to Vader, but rather mercy. Luke has seen Vader as his father and Vader has seen Luke as his son for quite a while, but it has not reversed their respective moral stances. As in real life, family members can be divided by ideological and moral conflict.
Paragraph 3 shows what a terrible, shitty example Vader is. Vader and Luke engage in CONSTANT moral discourse; indeed, that is all that the dialogue between the two characters ever is. Plus, Vader can and does respond in a friendly way towards Luke. He just *hadn’t yet done so* in the earlier films. This further distorts the argument in paragraph 1, rendering the reading that “it is morally permissible to do anything to someone who has not yet behaved in a friendly way towards you.” Burn off that mugger’s testicles after you incapacitate him? Why not? He’s not yet demonstrated the ability to behave in a friendly way towards you!
So yeah. Vader. Worst possible example. If Ruse had written about Alien, which had already come out 4 years earlier, he could have done a much better job making his argument, without leading to the epic fails outlined above
Based on what you just quoted, Alien rly does seem like it’d be a better fit…
So his argument boils down to Ducks and Darth.
As an ethical text, what you are discussing is… reprehensible. Also, unworkable. At what point does someone leave the bounds of social interaction required to have moral obligations to them? Who defines the moral obligations? How does subjectivity come into it? If someone isn’t being adequately charitable do they lose the protections of society?
How much friendly is needed to overcome an initial lack of acceptable behavior?
Inquiring minds want to know.
And, sadly, I am not likely to have the time to pursue reading the whole thing anytime soon.
Ducks&Darth is totally the name of my new RPG system.
Ozy, I’ll play with you! I want to play Darth Duck. =D
And I am *really* confused by this guys stance on Star Wars. Did he think that Darth Vader was Luke’s, like, metaphorical father, or something? How can he understand that Vader is Luke’s father, but also think he’s an alien? Did he think love overcame everything? Or is Luke also and alien? Or half-alien?
Sarah, my wild-ass-guess, based on nothing more than Erl’s quotes, is that Ruse is using “alien” to mean “anyone who isn’t like us”, rather than in a biological sense. So Darth Vader is “alien” because he always dresses in black and wears a mask.
IOW, culturally alien rather than biologically alien.
His reading of Star Wars is still crap, though.
Honestly, Ruse isn’t that clear at all about how Darth Vader ties into his “alien” thesis. The majority of his essay is about pretty straightforward alien species: different organisms of a different lineage from a different planet with different genetics and physiology. But when he brings it to bear on Star Wars, he does an incredibly half-assed job showing the parallels. The essay as a whole isn’t terrible; it’s weak and its conclusion doesn’t follow, but it was about as expected from a philosophy article. The Star Wars segment, however, was TERRIBLE. I’m offended as a nerd more than anything else.
Is this the same Michael Ruse that claims evolution is a religion, justifying ethics based on evolution? How does this make sense?
Ah, a bit more digging reveals that *that* was inaccurate. Apparently he was referring to the use of evolution to justify moral and ethical claims. So… I guess his article isn’t even Darths and Ducks anymore, it’s just Darth.