The SlutWalks have not just driven many MRAs to distraction; they’ve also driven one of the bloggers at the Gates of Vienna to set aside her usual Islam-bashing for a few moments to take on the awful bullies marching in the SlutWalks. Yes, bullies, for how else can we describe young women who go out of their way to highlight their foul sexiness whilst denying their bodies to the helpless males who happen to catch sight of them?
According to the blogger who calls herself Dymphna:
Women who walk around in slutty clothing in order to “voice” their opinion about male sexual aggression are indeed acting out a hugely immature power trip. … Call it for what it is. Strutting your stuff and daring anyone to stop you isn’t real freedom. It’s a sneaking, sadistic bully-girl game.
So evil is the behavior of these slutbullies that if any man decides, upon catching sight of one of them, to grope or otherwise assault her, well, she’s at least as much to blame as the dude who lays his hands on her.
If the act of strutting your stuff results in an equal reaction, a girl must take at least half the responsibility for whatever transpires as a result.
Dymphna seems to mean this quite literally, suggesting that a slut who gets assaulted should be charged
as an accessory before the fact — i.e., if some dolt grabs her, then at the very least she is his partner in crime. And the offense in which they both participate is a serious transgression against civil order. Sadistic provocation is a breach of the peace.
Ironically, Dymphna the blogger has apparently named herself after Saint Dymphna, a 7th century Irishwoman who, legend has it, was murdered by her father after she refused to marry him.
In the light of Dymphna the blogger’s airtight logic, we have to wonder if Saint Dymphna was wearing something really, really slutty. I mean, what else could have inspired her father’s foul desires?
@shesaidwut
“If you cannot recognize that it is wrong to have sex with a woman against her will, completely regardless of what she is doing or wearing at the time, then I must assume that you, like my bunny, lack sentience and the ability for abstract thought. That you are not smarter than my bunny is a given–HE is actually capable of learning.
So tell me, NWO, who’s the misandrist here? Me, or you? Your the one who thinks men have no more sentience than bunnies.
P.S. Not being allowed to hump Ada has not made Einstein even remotely mean. A little confused at times, but then, he does go at it from the wrong end on occasion. No wonder that’s confusing.”
I didn’t copy your entire rant but as far as my history, I am able to grasp the effects social moralities had on previous cultures, you on the other hand prefer any excuse for womens actions.
You are most definitely a misandrist. Lets use a few analogies, since they always work for feminists lets see if the work for the bad man.
If a child would say, “I have a cookie, you can’t have any, hahaha!”
If a child would say, “I have a shiny new toy you can’t play with it, hahaha!”
Now the child doing this is teasing and we all know that’s bad. Does the child doing this get satisfaction from teasing? Most definitely.
A normal parent would punish the “teaser” to teach them that action was bad. Just a wild guess here, but I’d say if parents all taught children teasing other children was “good” you’d have some pretty mean kids.
Now I do love a good cookie, and shiney new toys are equally nice, but I’d guess being all humans have those 2 drives of survival and reproduction, a mans sex drive might be a tish higher. So when women dress and act very sexually they’re “teasing” and they get sexual satisfation from their lack of control, just like the spoilt child did. Now instead of being chastised for this destructive action women demand praise.
As far as your einstein the bunny analogy, I’m guessing the castration might have had a small effect. Wild guess here. In ancient China they castrated lotsa men as well to “guard” the royal woman. Of course rebellion took place. I think they called it the eunich wars. I wonder if those women thought it funny men were castrated and than ordered to guard them. Nah, I’m sure they were most sympathetic, in an abstract sort of way.
NWO! You’re back! Care to describe, or better yet post a picture of, one single woman who DOES meet your standards of dress and decorum?
NWO, you were asked a lot of questions that remain unanswered. You’re always very upset when you think your questions aren’t being answered. We don’t need another woman as cookie/toy metaphor.
Answer the questions you’ve been asked. Provide evidence for your multiple, erroneous assertions.
NWO, if you can’t find or even IMAGINE a woman who’s being appropriately modest with her sexuality, then I have to assume you think society is being destroyed because women exist, and women are raped because they exist.
Come on, if you know what you don’t want you must gave some idea of what you do want. Show or describe us a modest, unslutty woman, the kind that doesn’t inflame men’s passions.
(“gave” should be “have.” phone keyboard from work, oopsie.)
I’d love to chat ladies but I’m on my way to work, day number 26 in a row, 135 degrees in the ceiling, very dangerous. Keep up the good work! Sexual teasing has a positive effect on men!
Haha NWO doesn’t want to give an example of a woman who doesn’t deserve to be raped
wouldn’t want to limit his options I guess
NWO, when you come back can we have that picture please?
Also, NWO, you totally missed the point of the bunny story. It was Bunny = Not Sentient, not anything to do with the castration itself.
Pre-Christian Norse Women also wielded substantial political and economic power in their communities, in additiont o going to war. In fact, they continued doing so post-Christianization for quite a while. They weren’t exactly equal, but they were better than the remotely local competition by a wide stretch.
Right, time to go. I’m getting nowhere here as usual. It is probably not good for my mental health to spend so much time arguing the toss with people who hold views which are the polar opposite to mine, especially when I have to address several different counter-arguments simultaneously from different corners. As it happens, I think I did a pretty decent job of explaining myself, or at least, trying to. Doubtless most, if not all, of you will disagree with me on this: but there it is.
actually you asserted a bunch of sloppily-reasoned crap and when i called you on it you ignored me, but keep telling yourself what you feel like you need to hear
Johnnykaje – we linked to the modesty survey in another thread (a million and one uses, that thing) and so I recently went through it again. I think they whitewashed it a bit – I can no longer find the questions where young boys admitted to incestuous thoughts and some of the more creepy responses from older men. The whole open-ended questions section is a bit thinner on the ground than I remember it. Can’t imagine why.
NWO
Wait…hang on…laughing too hard…
Okay, there. Better. Whew! You are a one man barrel of monkeys, NWO.
I notice that you didn’t actually address the (accurate) history I presented you with, but chose instead to say…well, a whole lot of nothing, actually. As someone who has studied quite a bit of history, I can assure you that your idea of “social moralities” have not had nearly the effect you think. Of course, you think keeping women in “their place” is properly moral, so it’s no surprise you don’t get it. The good news is, anyone can crack open a history book and see that you are clearly (and alarmingly) wrong.
As to your child analogy…well, if I didn’t already know you were a vile misogynist, I would now. Incidentally, no child is required to share a cookie or a toy that belongs to them. In particular, they’re not required to share said cookie or said toy with someone they’re not interested in sharing them with. The idea of teaching a child that they have to share their things with anyone, even if that person is a violent bully who’d take their toys without permission, is repugnant. I don’t remember ever taunting or being taunted in that manner when I was a child, but I do remember being told I was supposed to share, even when all I was doing was quietly keeping to myself and playing with my toys. I don’t think children should ever be scolded for this. That’s the early stages of teaching them to be victims.
Really, you’re just a bitter loser who can’t get laid, and can’t stand the fact that no woman is required to sleep with you if she doesn’t want to. That’s all this boils down to.
Now, if I’m reading this correctly, you’re trying to argue, what…that Einstein was humping Ada in rebellion because we castrated him? Wow. That’s…nuts even for you. I find it odd, Mr. History Wizard, that you don’t know that in China, eunuch were of two varieties: Those who castrated themselves willingly in order to earn places in Imperial service, and those who were castrated because it was a punishment for prisoners. Though I can’t find any trace of this War of Eunuchs you mention (even with the word eunuch spelled properly).
Keep working on the sentience thing, pal. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll get there. Snowball’s chance in hell, really, and I expect Einstein will start speaking in Arabic long before you get a clue, but anything is possible, I guess.
NWO: You do know that 1: Rome was a socialist state and
2: the “Fall of Rome” was more an abandonment of the Western Empire after the seat of government moved to Constantinople. It’s only a Euro-centric reading of events that has “Rome” “Falling”. Constantinople (and so, Rome, as a political entitity”) lasted until 1453.
The “Fall” of Rome was more that the size of the Empire, and it’s 1: lack of rapid ability to move large bodies of goods/troops from one end to the other; as large bodies of encroaching peoples pressed against the borders. Add that the system wasn’t working on a money based economy, but rather one of “family”, and the incredibe conscentration of power in the heads of family (the paterfamilias had absolute legal control over all of his offspring until [and unless] they were able to marry and establish a family of their own. This is why in Roman drama their was [esp. in the comedies] so much emphasis on an inheritance. A paterfamilias could legally, and without repercussion, kill any of his children, so long as they were not married, or in the Army, no matter what their age).
But wealth was, esp, in the later empire, so concentrated in the West that the economy was moribund. Bringing client states into the borders of the Empire, and then mistreating them (esp. the Goths and Vandals), led to skilled combatants rising in revolt, inside the borders of the Empire, which was an even greater problem than it would have been had then been beyond the edges of the limines which defined the border.
At that point the vaunted roads were working against the gov’t, as the enemy could (and did) use them to move against Rome. That the Western Roman Emperor chose to lead the troops himself, and was militarily incompentent led to the loss at the Battle of Adrianople, which marks the official beginning of the end of the Western Roman Empire, though the actual end was more a decline of central authority, and a reversion to smaller political entities which could maintain themselves in the absence of the tax-collecting, and distributing, which was essential for the maintenance of the Empire.
But hell, don’t let those pesky little facts ruin your tidy little theories. I’d hate to see you ruin a perfect record.
@ VoiP and others
I think the problem with what I’ve been attempting here is that, basically, I don’t fully have an understanding of what I’m trying to say. Or in other words, I concede that I don’t fully understand what I’m talking about. This is not to say that I’m bullshitting, or making things up. A lot of what I’ve written is more like my thoughts than my opinions and I appreciate that most of this has probably been of little use to anyone here who may have read it (other than for the purpose of their own amusement).
I think my little visit to ManBoobz has taught me two things:
1) I need to stop arguing with strangers on the internet.
2) I need to do a lot more reading and research before I wade into a discussion with people who have obviously spent a lot more time discussing these matters than I have.
This, of course, is not to say that all this feminist theory is correct, but that I, for certain, don’t understand it as well as I would like to, and probably should.
I don’t in all honesty see myself becoming as involved in the issues of gender, equality etc. etc. as the people here. I think I can probably find more productive things to do with my time. Not to say that you are wasting yours.
Assuming that I can manage to stick to my intentions as above, I might well return here one day to engage in a hopefully more useful discussion.
Best wishes to all here.
qwert666
[ pedant peeve ]
All animals are sentient. To the best of our knowledge none, apart from us have provable sapience.
Sentience is an awareness of one’s existence. Sapience is a sense of self, apart from the rest of the world.
There is evidence some birds are probably sapient, and it’s possible that octopi are.
[ /peeve ]
NWO: “NWO: A woman who doesn’t dress, act and flaunt sexuality is exercising sexual control.”
You disagree with this statement?
Yes.
And I agree with this one.
If that’s the case, a woman who “does” dress, act and flaunt sexuality is exercising sexual control.
She is in control of how she displays her sexuality, and (if she doesn’t touch people who don’t want to be touched, and takes no for an answer when she makes an offer of sexual interaction) she is in control of what sexual contacts she has with people.
Gotcha. And here I thought self control actually pertained to self control. What was I thinking?
It does, and you weren’t.
Tell me something, what do you mean by the words, “self control”.
Pecunium:
I maintain that NWO and similar MRAs lack sentience. And sapience.
Sadly they are sentient. They are also, worse, sapient.
If they weren’t, why should we care. A slime-mold may hate women, it matters not at all.
Damn, I missed all the fun last night. I knew NWO would show up with his tired teasing analogies.
Bye, qwert. You really didn’t need to write that “GBCW” dissertation, but if you’re gonna go, please go this time.
I think a more important question is: if they’re sentient and sapient, why don’t they act like it? I think I’ve met better behaved slime-molds, in fact.
I cannot find a single definition of sapience that actually supports the idea that NWO has any. It seems to require things like common sense, wisdom, and sound judgment, and having the ability to think and even to reason does not, in actuality, mean a person has common sense, wisdom or sound judgment. Any sapience he might, theoretically, have bears no relation to reality.
Aha! There’s the problem. NWO is not, in fact, from this dimension. It all makes sense now.
NWO can distinguish self from others.
If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be able to think he’s smarter than everyone else.
Well, even a blind hen finds a grain once in a while.
Qerty666: I teach writing/argumentation. You failed here not only because your lack of knowledge of history and theory (and by the way, there are multiple, often conflicting, feminist theories), but because you do not know how to “argue.” Constructing a good argument requires more than expressing your opinions/thoughts (especially if those opinions are woefully uninformed). The problem you had is that as soon as you move from your personal preference (I feel like X), to general claims (X is bad for Y), then you need to provide evidence, including definitions of terms (did you ever define what you meant by “misogyny” in the whole “I am not a misogynist” mess?).
When I teach my students how to create good academic arguments, I tell them “opinion” means unsupported/unsupportable claims or preference. For example: you say you like pizza. I cannot argue against that because it’s your preference, your opinion, and it’s not possible to make a logical argument against the claim. Everybody who likes pizza will agree with you while everybody who hates pizza won’t. It’s possible to make claims about the relative nutritional value of pizza compared to hamburgers because there can be evidence presented. A claim, or an argument, is a statement that can be supported by evidence (and evidence is not always the same as ‘facts’ which is a slippery term in argumentation). Arguments don’t always convince people who disagree, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to evaluate the relative strength and persuasiveness of claims/evidence. The error you made, as several pointed out, is trying to generalize from your personal preference (‘going your own way’) to claims that relate to others, and to social issues. You cannot make any credible larger claim (larger than “this is what I want to do”) without being able to define terms, present evidence, and construct a claim that is not based on the assumption that other people are just like you, that is, think the way you do, and define things the way you do.
And the on-going passive-aggressive shit is tiring too: most recent example:
I don’t in all honesty see myself becoming as involved in the issues of gender, equality etc. etc. as the people here. I think I can probably find more productive things to do with my time. Not to say that you are wasting yours.
You don’t need to become involved with issues of gender equality because you do not have to face gender inequality, nor, apparently, do you know/care about women who have (and that also applies to racial inequality, class inequality, etc.). You’re privileged in that respect (meaning, “you’ve got yours, who gives a shit about others”).
Those of us (men and women) who are “involved” are involved because we find it more productive for us *and others* than not giving a damn. Saying “not to say you are wasting yours..” is bullshit–you are saying you think we are wasting our time, and you are not choosing to waste yours, so quit hiding behind disclaimers.
I do gender studies as a professional thing; I get paid to read and write and think and teach, and it’s a lovely job, and I like discussing these things with others who also like to read and write and think and given where I live, I find more people online than offline to talk with. Many others here read and write and think about gender and philosophy and argumentation as part of how they live life — and there’s nothing wasted in testing your ideas and thought with others. And I started caring about gender and inequality more than thirty years ago because DUH I’m a woman, and I was discriminated again, and it pissed me off.
The problems you encountered are due entirely to you coming into a blog and thinking that you are the big know it all who just has to share his speshul experience (look up “mansplaining” and think about it) and just wants to “play with ideas” (he has no experience playing with) that aren’t, for anybody with any experience in these issues, remotely original, and then are upset that people who just may be more expert than you are in the topic of the blog-which in the case of this blog is, ta-dah, misogyny–don’t immediately fall down and agree with you. Then you try personal insults, and then you leave (a bit more politely than most, I will say, which is why I’m writing this). Also, not original–meaning a very common pattern, not only on this blog but all over the internet.
Sapience is a sense of self, apart from the rest of the world.
If you count looking in a mirror and recognizing that it’s a reflection of you, rather than another like you, some monkeys and many apes fit this as well. And… I want to say at least African Grey parrots and maybe ravens (? I may be conflating the videos I’ve seen of reasoning and tool use with sapience, or misremembering something I read on this one).