The contest for the Most Ironic Use of the Term “Nice Guy,” When Applied to Yourself –otherwise known as the MIUTNGWAY Award – is heating up. The previous front runner – the Tumblr guy who compared his inability to get laid to the Holocaust – now faces a serious challenge from a Redditor calling himself DogmaDog.
The other day Mr. Dog wandered into a discussion of the SlutWalks in the Feminisms and offered his two cents: he declared them “stupid,” and suggested that they won’t really help victims.
And then he started in on his own tale of woe.
I know I’m going to be shit on for saying what I’m about to say, but please hear me out.
Not a promising start, Dog.
I’ve never raped a woman, and I’m the ‘nice guy’ who never took advantage of a woman.
Do you want an award for this?
But a girl I was infatuated with in high school blew me off and treated me disrespectfully. She ended up being raped one night, while intoxicated. I do not know how I am supposed to feel about it.
As Don Draper would say, “what?”
How do you think you’re “supposed” to feel? Did you accidentally dislodge the part of your brain responsible for basic human empathy?
Apparently, the answer to that is “yes.”
[H]ow do you suppose I am supposed to feel about this woman I knew who got raped? I mean, I’ve never taken advantage of a woman, but I don’t understand how my ‘friend’, this girl I went to high school with, could go out and party all the time, and in turn treat me, her classmate, as though I were an inferior person for not enjoying the atmosphere of drunkenness at high school parties.
As it turns out, you’re an inferior person for an entirely different reason.
That girl was a mean girl, no? And by being disrespectful toward men, and prejudiced toward men, wasn’t she asking men to behave badly toward her? The only men she gave attention and physical affection to were the ones who hurt her back.
So let me see if I get this: she didn’t go out with you, a “nice guy,” so she was therefore “asking” to be raped?
Naturally, this being the Feminisms subreddit, and not The Spearhead, some of the regular commenters took exception to Mr. Dog’s victim-blaming and his complete lack of empathy for the victim – especially strange, since Dog, who says he is suffering from an (unspecified) mental illness, considers himself “a victim, in my own way,” of prejudice towards those with mental health issues. This experience, alas, has not given him any sympathy towards other vicitms.
Indeed, it seems that DogmaDog didn’t misplace his sense of empathy after all; rather, he threw it out of the house and got a restraining order against it. Responding to someone who suggested he show a little empathy, Dog lashed out:
Your empathy can go suck a dick. Empathy does nothing to help my situation. I suppose that is just the excuse people give themselves so that they can feel like they are actually doing something.
You basically called me an inferior human being because I can’t or won’t empathize for my friend who was raped. Well, ask yourself this, smart-ass, have you ever really wondered what good your empathy does? It does nothing. …
In reality, you are doing nothing but attacking me, and I may or may not have a ‘complex’, even though I don’t know what that is, but I can guarantee you, I HAVE NEVER RAPED ANYONE!!!
The sound you hear is me banging my head, ever so softly, on my desk. Empathy is what connects human beings to one another, what allows them to understand one another on a deep level.
When people are suffering – as you are, Dog, in dealing with your mental illness – a little bit of empathy from someone else can make all the difference in the world.
If you can’t feel even a little bit of sympathy for this woman you were once “infatuated” with, you’re not a nice guy at all; you’re an even bigger asshole than those drunken high school partiers you disdain. You may never have raped anyone — as you’ve repeatedly insisted, as if this should win you a prize – but “in your own way” you’re thinking like an abuser. Your lack of empathy for the victim, your continued bitterness towards her for turning you down, your sense of wounded narcissism; none of this is healthy, for you or for anyone who comes into contact with you.
You need help, dude. Please, please get it.
By the way, why are the MRA’s complaining about “big Daddy government” helping single mothers pay for their children if they want the government to make child support payments on behalf of deadbeat parents? These are contradictory views.
Kendra, Rutee … so, I don’t have any children (although I hesitate to call myself “child free,” having recently found out what that means), and while I think MORE of my taxes should go toward helping children get a better start in life, I also look at the SS mess we’re probably gonna be going through, and look at Congress’ reluctance to raise taxes on corporations and billionaires, and Congress’ eagerness to slash funding for public programs, and … well, I worry about the U.S.’s ability to meaningfully fund a nationwide tax program established to replace the child support system and finance child welfare.
Then again, I’m a bit skeptical of the U.S. government right now in general.
I don’t think child support system is perfect, but I’m at least kinda sure that the government can’t raid it and tell the kids who rely on that money that they should have just planned better, or whatever.
” If those of us in the left started demanding the taxpayers take over child support for deadbeat parents, many voters in the center might be alienated ”
Are you familiar with the overton window at all? This is why the actual left has no respect in the US; it’s because we keep being scared to actually point out, you know, facts.
“Kendra, Rutee … so, I don’t have any children (although I hesitate to call myself “child free,” having recently found out what that means), and while I think MORE of my taxes should go toward helping children get a better start in life, I also look at the SS mess we’re probably gonna be going through, and look at Congress’ reluctance to raise taxes on corporations and billionaires, and Congress’ eagerness to slash funding for public programs, and … well, I worry about the U.S.’s ability to meaningfully fund a nationwide tax program established to replace the child support system and finance child welfare.”
Yeah, that’s not going to go away by not pointing out that the center can’t hold. I know it’s politically unpopular to specifically press on this issue now, but this is why it’s important to start pressing for higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations in general. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that we really need to start seperating out, but this is a big one.
Actually Ms Kellett had a case. A case. So to claim she has made it her career is to fly in the face of logic. She also has not had any bar complaints about her filed (I checked twice.)
Your problem, among many Mr. Zarat, is the default assumption that men will lose even when they try. So we need to completely destroy everything out of revenge for those evil nasty feminists and to put all power back in the hands of the men.
To quote a story I heard just this past weekend shows why your assumptions are just that-assumptions:
A young woman had a child here but the father moved to Wyoming. They make an equal amount and so when it came time for splitting custody they were able work out a two month agreement-she has the child for two months then he has the child for two months with each person traveling to the other state to pick up the child. There is zero child support being given because of the equal custody. However, Dad is having financial troubles and refused to pick up the child two months ago when it became his turn again (he, in fact, demanded she pay for him to come out, she refused.) He showed up last week to force her to give him the child even though it has now reached her time for her to have the kid.
———–
This was not some woman forcing a man to not see his kids-this was a guy who was unable to come out and now wants to exercise rights he simply does not have (taking the kid for a time that is not his per their stipulation.)
No one went to prison. No one forced the man to screw up his finances. No one made him refuse to call her and try to work something else out. Nope, this is just one of many many reasons why joint custody is not the cut and dried land of lollipops and sunshine you assume it would be if those evil feminists did not come in and ruin everything.
I absolutely agree that our biggest focus right now should be raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. This is a pressing issue right now, and it actually is a popular idea. If we keep pushing for a popular idea, and Republicans and Tea Partiers keep defending the Bush tax cuts, we gain political popularity and capital. If we finally get our way on the tax hikes, and we get the debt under control, then we can realistically start looking at where more money needs to go. Right now it will be a battle to even fund what we already have, like the educational system, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, FEMA, public infrastructure, etc.
I don’t want to offer any political assistance to people like AntZ. His cause for deadbeat parents looks like it belongs in the unthinkable category, based on what I just learned about the Overton window. (Rutee, I just found out about this from you. Thank you.) Since he is probably an MRA, and the MRM is mostly composed of right wingers, then he needs to bring his cause to the Free Republic or the Conservative Caucus.
“this is why it’s important to start pressing for higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations in general.”
AGREED. I was so happy to read that Warren Buffett article yesterday. Good ol’ Warren. Hope Congress takes notice.
“AGREED. I was so happy to read that Warren Buffett article yesterday. Good ol’ Warren. Hope Congress takes notice.”
LOVED that piece.
@Anthony Zarat | August 16, 2011 at 9:59 am:
1) Your point is pretty worthless because you admit you have no evidence. The fact that you say it “stands to reason” doesn’t make it so, especially since you aren’t put in with “hardened criminals” for refusing to pay a child support, AFAIK.
2) You keep repeating “late payment,” which might make your point work. You shouldn’t be sent to prison if you are intending to pay, but are late on the payment. However, the men who are put in prison are the ones who refuse to pay, who refuse to try to work with the system, who don’t make any honest effort to pay child support. So your point is irrelevant.
3) Sure, the US has an absurd prison population. But you seem to have pulled the number 50,000 out of your ass. Also, the population of the US is 300M, the population of Britain is 60M, and Spain and Italy have 46M and 60M respectively. Just on numbers alone, you’d expect the prison population of the US to be much higher.
4) You seem to have pulled $6B out of your ass as well, and that works out to 120,000 per inmate. Source?
@Anthony Zarat | August 16, 2011 at 10:31 am
Assuming your source is reliable, it says nothing about mothers being “given” anything. It is an aggregate over a bunch of possibilities; both parties agree, fathers disagree, mothers disagree, any circumstances surrounding the divorce. Honestly, you’d have to look at cases where both parents are deemed fit to hold custody, and both want custody, to get accurate numbers of how many fathers are slighted by the system.
The rest of your ramblings are tripe. No court automatically believes the mother over the father; only you and NWO hold this opinion.
This whole situation with child custody is real easy. For the next 40 years fathers get default custody and keep the family, if women want equal custody they can fight for it in court. We’ll go by todays percentage and they’ll lose 83% of the time. For welfare, fathers get the children and the welfare, housing and what ever else goes with it. This way women will get to persue their careers, they’ll no longer be held back. It’ll be great, women will no longer be victims.
Actually, that sounds good to me. These men will also quit their jobs and be primary caretakers of the kids before the divorce, right? Because otherwise they’re not going to be ready for the responsibility of sole (or primary, I’m not sure which you’re arguing for) custody.
Custody decisions are ideally about what’s best for the children, not which parent “wins” the divorce. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s what we should strive for.
And why are we not talking about whiny Nice Guys? Whiny Nice Guys are my favorite!
You’re right, Shaenon. We’ve let AntZ spoil a good topic here. We’re supposed to be praising the Nice Guys out there that are only cheerleaders for rape rather than being actual rapists.
Nobody here cares that, when a father goes to court for custody, the mother is FOUR TIMES MORE LIKELY to have custody?
Nobody here cares that, when a father settles out of court, the mother is TEN TIMES MORE LIKELY to have custody?
http://www.divorcepeers.com/stats18.htm
RECAP for those who want to pretend like all is well in the world:
Father fights for custody: mother 4x as likely as he to get custody
Father trusts mediation or settles out of court: mother 10x as likely as father to get custody
This single issue is 90% of the MRM. When feminist tools talk about what the MRM is, remember this: 90% of the MRM is about addressing THIS SINGLE MASS INJUSTICE.
This single injustice is FAR FAR FAR more important that rape, DV, and everything else that feminist whine incessantly about PUT TOGETHER.
This single issue of civil court bias against men:
1) Deprives fathers of contact with their children
2) Deprives children of a relationship with their fathers
3) Transforms fathers and fatherhood into a footnote to motherhood
4) Forces women into a primary mothering role, even when they are ambivalent about this choice
5) Is the primary driving force behind the female wage gap relative to men
Addressing this issue will go a long way to resolving the problems both of men AND women.
Zarat, I’m going to disagree with your “Oppression Olympics” analysis but the site you linked to about divorce is really interesting. I’m looking through it now but having a difficult time ascertaining when the data presented is represenative of the U.S. as a whole or just the state of Michigan. It’s marked clearly in some charts and graphs and not so much in others. Still, it’s an interesting site though I question some of its statistics.
You wrote, “Father trusts mediation or settles out of court: mother 10x as likely as father to get custody”
Now you see this as a grave injustice, that much is clear. Do you genuinely believe that when a father settles out of court and the mother ends up with primary or sole custody that this is because he was tricked, or in some manner coerced into handing over custody?
AntZ, your own source showed that only 33% of fathers want sole custody, while 82% of mothers want sole custody of children. How can we make mothers and fathers have equal outcomes in custody arrangements if so many fathers don’t want custody? It showed that 29% of fathers WANT the mother to have sole custody of the children. They are happy to give up their children to avoid the responsibility of raising them. This is not the fault of feminists. We have no control over fathers that want to give up their own parenting rights.
Even after they give up all claims to custody, they are still responsible for paying child support, though. You want me to feel sorry for a man paying a few hundred bucks a month, and never helping the mother raise the children? I guarantee she is spending more money than that, and she is spending all of her time on it, since parenting is a full time job. You also ignore the problem of fathers winning sole or joint custody, and then refusing to actually take the children during their scheduled time. They only fought for custody to get out of paying child support. If you refuse to view different aspects of these issues, then this whole conversation is pointless.
The actual article was about Nice Guys that are apathetic if women get raped after rejecting them. Since you are probably a right winger, you can bring up your political causes at a conservative Republican website.
@Anthony Zarat:
You still refuse to acknowledge the context of those statistics. By saying “Fathers trust X,” you are implying that every father wants custody. This is not true at all, and your website doesn’t state or imply it.. Come back with stats on when the father wants custody (and is fit, no history of abuse or uncouth behavior that would justify denying custody) and we’ll talk.
Anthony Zarat –
I assume at this point that you are ignoring my previous post because you don’t really have an answer to it, which is fine. I just thought you were here for an honest discussion of the topic. It appears that you are actually here to post rants about your personal beliefs.
On a different note – have you looked at the source you keep citing? Do you realize that the statistics are from 1992-1994 studies? Those studies are almost 20 years old, do you have anything more recent?
Also, generally in any form of litigation, including divorce, most parties settle out of court and out of mediation. So while it is possible that more women gain custody of children in mediations and trials, you are completely discounting the situation where people leave a relationship amicably and create a custody arrangement that both parents deem will work best for them and their child/children.
Joint custody is not something feminists are against. It’s the default in many states (and growing).
My father is Tenn. Mediator. He happens, as a result of how his divorces went, to be fairly favorable to fathers. He was a also a deputy sheriff, so he’s somewhat jaded about the ways in which DV (in his experience majority male on female) affects things.
He also has a CCW, and the only times he’s come close to needing it have been when fathers decided they were being wronged. He’s more than a couple of times had the bailiff remove people; once in cuffs. That’s running about 9-1 men to women (the only cuffing was a man).
Most of the time, when he mediates, it’s pretty simple, a parenting plan is proposed, some niggling about the details; and means for making adjustments as life gets in they way of rigidity.
But the cases with disputes… usually the dad engaging in Anal Millinery.
Nobody here cares that, when a father goes to court for custody, the mother is FOUR TIMES MORE LIKELY to have custody?
Nobody here cares that, when a father settles out of court, the mother is TEN TIMES MORE LIKELY to have custody?
According to the stats I’ve been able to Google up, somewhere between 15% and 25% of dads are the primary childcare providers in their families. If the mom is four times more likely to be the one taking primary care of the kids before the divorce, it makes sense that she’d be four times more likely to get primary custody. Again, I can say this until I’m blue in the face, but custody arrangements are supposed to be about what’s best for the kids, not which parent “wins.”
Also, “not primary custody” isn’t the same as “no custody at all.” The vast majority of couples have joint arrangements, and that’s especially true in cases that are settled amicably, like most out-of-court settlements.
AZ: The day when you get served with divorce papers is a little too late to start worrying about being a hands-on dad. If you want (perceived) disparity in child custody eliminated in the courts — you have to start by eliminating the disparity in domestic contributions at home. The rule is simple: primary custody goes to the primary caretaker. If you, as the father, never do any dirty work of raising children and limit your parenting role to pontificating about “manhood” around the holidays, then guess what? You are not the primary caretaker, and you are not entitled to have the custody of children, who have actually been raised by their mother from birth.
Thing are changing, to be sure, but social expectations are still disadvantaging women in marriage compared to men. (Which is one factor that explains why more women than men file for divorce — marriage simply entails far fewer benefits and a lot more obligations for women than it does for men.) A man who deigns to do the dirty work — changes diapers, cooks, takes the child to the pediatrician and gets up in the middle of the night to feed the baby — is lauded as a “hero”. A woman who does the exact same thing is merely an acceptable mother. A man who takes a second job and works long hours in order to make a better life for his children is likewise praised as a hero. A woman who does the exact same thing is denounced as a selfish, career-obsessed bitch. THAT is an injustice, and I don’t see MRA’s doing one thing to remedy that. Instead, what MRA’s want is for women to do ALL, or most of the work of raising children, yet to have, at best, only a 50% statistical chance of getting custody upon divorce. In so doing, MRA’s want to perpetuate an even greater injustice. If women in our society are still expected to be primary caretakers of children — and indeed, of husbands, as well — it is absolutely fair for courts to take that into account in divorce proceedings.
Don’t like it? Change the fucking diaper ever once in a while, stop treating the mother of your children as a servant and nanny, and stfu about “leadership”. But I am yet to see MRA’s shame men into flushing 20 years of hard work down the toilet in order to have more time for cooking, cleaning and pattycake. They far more readily do this to women. Until they switch that around, I call bullshit on all their pontification about “injustice greater than rape”.
The figures you’re quoting appear to be from 1992 and 1994. Do you have anything more recent?
What single injustice are you talking about? Before it was men being jailed for noncompliance with child support orders. (Which only happens as a last resort, when he could pay, but doesn’t.) Now you seem to suggest that judges should place children automatically with these fathers who refuse to financially support them. Is it both? Are you arguing that men should not be forced to financially support their children, but should receive them after a divorce anyway?
Anecdotal, sure, but the one family law practitioner I know has kind of laughed with me privately about MRM’s insistence that there is any bias against men in the courts. He hasn’t seen it — recently, anyway — and suspects that the myth is being perpetuated by law firms eager to get men’s business through targeted advertising.
Among friends of mine who have divorced — again, anecdotal — I haven’t seen this bias. I know a father who’s never paid a cent to his daughter’s mom, and still sees the daughter regularly. No court has ever been involved, and for most of the daughter’s life, her dad worked under the table to avoid making garnishable wages, just in case. I know another dad who was addicted to meth, beat up his wife, didn’t life a finger to see his son the first five years of his life, and when he decided he wanted to be Dad, opened up a court battle to gain full custody that his ex is still fighting. (His family is pretty wealthy; they have good lawyers.) I know another mom who has an extremely difficult time getting her ex to take his son on scheduled visits, now that his new wife has a baby. Also has a difficult time getting her ex to pay child support. He barely wants to acknowledge the son exists. She’s so frustrated by the situation that she’s thinking of taking him back to family court. Then again, she’s been saying that for years.
I totally love my dad. He’s a great father, always been there for me, and I suspect he would have even if my parents had gotten divorced. But I see this weird pattern in your comments: You’re focused completely on the fathers to the exclusion of the child. In the three examples I gave, I suppose it might be possible that the kid would be better off if Dad had primary custody, but we don’t know that. There is absolutely no evidence, no pattern of behavior that we can point to, that shows that Dad would do anything other than what he’s been doing ever since the child was born: Paying for the kid when it’s convenient, seeing the kid when it’s convenient, etc. Whereas the mom has been caring for, raising, and financially supporting the kid all along. Why wouldn’t, in these cases and others like them, the judge look at the situation and say, Hey, maybe the kid’s better off with Mom as primary and Dad with visitation? How is that biased toward anything other than the well-being of the child?
On topic: You know who I’m reminded of by the guy in the OP? When I first started lurking on this site, there was a poster whose name and avatar were some sort of scarecrow reference. I can’t remember exactly. He seemed to be a regular, less virulent than many with a pretty decent sense of humor. I remember that David had posted a piece on racism an bigotry within some parts of the MRM and the Scarecrow-guy was vocally opposed which I found pretty noteworthy. He also had a decent sense of humor, comparatively.
At any rate, I clicked through to his blog/site once trying to see what a “seems kinda reasonable”-type MRA wrote about in his own space. There were several posts about women he’d known, fairly peripherally, who’d ended up murdered. He presumed -not without merit- that in each of these cases the woman had been killed by a former lover. If memory serves, he was a person of interest, quite briefly, in one case. None of that is absurdly out of the ordinary.
No, what was so strange is that he kept saying (and I’m paraphrasing) that it was crazy that he was nice to this woman and she was rude to him -or snapped at him or something- but she was giving blowjobs and all kinds of other sexual favors to the guy who bashed her head in. He alluded to this more than once with other examples and always with the same odd choice of event order. A guy bashes a woman’s head in and she gives him blowjobs, as if the reward for killing the woman, was oral sex.
I’m certain that he didn’t mean that zombie women were giving out zombie blow jobs. Apart from being appalled by his implication though, what really stuck out for me was the order. “I was nice to this woman and she bit my head off and was rude, this other guy bashes her head in and he gets all types of sex. Can you imagine the kind of sex he got?”*
I remember wondering “Who hears that woman was murdered, possibly by an ex, and thinks about how many blowjobs she could have been giving him?” This kind of guy.
@Bee and Amused: Afuckingmen.
@Nobinayamu:
Yeah, I remember scarecrow. That sounds exactly typical of him. His sense of humor was to say extremely nasty things in a joking tone, even though he actually meant every word. I guess I don’t have as fond of a memory of him as you do.
Honestly it sounds sometimes like these guys think its some poetic justice for snubbing them. Woman of their dreams doesn’t respond the way they like, something terrible happens to them, and the response is essentially “See? That’s what you get!”
Partly it plays into the nice guy tragedy (I was so nice, but I got ignored, this guy got sexed, but he was a bastard that ended up harming her), and partly it’s some perverted revenge fantasy, on a similar level as the guys who dream of the world one day collapsing around them for whatever reason so they can stand on the rubble and shout “I told you so!” Only this has more rape and murder, and less… apocalypse. Blegh…
Amused, by the power vested in me by the state of Missouri, I now pronounce you to be the winner of the Internet.
Any guy who keep ssaying “I never raped anyone!” has a skeleton in his closet he’s trying desperately to keep in.