From Human Stupidity, an MRA blog rather obsessed with underage girls and the alleged evil of age of consent laws:
[I]f a 15 year old … can decide to have sex with a 16 year old … [h]ow come she cannot have sex with a 35 year old? Age discrimination by law?
Are you worried about manipulation of the tender 15 year old? I have a solution:
what about legalizing sex with underage adolescents, if they first undergo an hour of mandatory counselling and a 2 day cool off period? That should take care of this issue. This would guarantee safety for the 15 year old against being conned or manipulated. More safety that is offered to 21 year old tipsy Friday night party girls who may feel sorry for what they did yesterday
I think he might actually be serious here. Though it’s pretty clear he’d be happy with any excuse to make it legal for 35 year-old men to have sex with 15 year-old girls.
@Pecunium: If you want to see it that way. I doubt I would ever just flat out call my kid stupid (if I had kids) it seems overly harsh and lacks tact. If anything it would be “I love you but I don’t agree with that decision”
I’m sorry you were homeless, that really rough. I’m glad you are back on your feet again.
You say things that make it seem like it was easy for you to overcome some problem, so it should be just as easy for everyone else, no matter what their circumstances. I guess if you have been homeless yourself, you can see how hard it is get out of that situation for other people, who don’t have friends, family, good health, education and so on.
@Magpie: Being homeless was actually a good learning experience. It helped put life into perspective and find what is really important in life.
Some people over complicate things. They over analyze and over intellectualize problems which makes those problems seem more difficult than they really are.
The epiphany I had while homeless is that nobody really cares about you more than you. If you don’t care about yourself…no one else can help you. Sure they can help you in the short run by giving you a meal…but they can’t make it so you don’t have to rely on those meals.
The problems I had to deal with being homeless weren’t really that difficult. They were however very uncomfortable choices. I didn’t like the choices I had so I bitched and moaned and hemmed and hawed about making the choice. But once I did, things weren’t really that bad. The problems weren’t hard…fighting myself to make a decision…that was the hard part.
BrandonL Magpie said nothing about class. That you read that into the comment is amusing, given how often you complain of people inferring things which you say you never meant (mind you, it’s not the first time you’ve done exactly that; see this thread re your thought that people were accusing you of pedophilia).
I happen to think it’s not an unreasonable reading of your philosophy, based on what you’ve written.
Which brings me back to something else I said before, if a number of people are all getting the same sort of subtext from your writing, you might want to look at at why. Something you are saying is giving them those impressions.
Brandon: I do see it that way. You keep saying that getting married is for fools. That it’s a way to housebreak men they way one trains an indoor pet. You say all it does is make one partner dependent on the other, while making the other unfairly responsible for the effects of that dependency.
Try to read the quotations of your I posted as as if they were someone else’s words.
Think about how you reacted to accusations which didn’t include elements you took offense at, and then look at the offensive elements you did include.
@Pecunium: Then what did Magpie mean with”Upper class twit of the year.”?
Ya, I could say the same about you and a few of the other commenters. This whole time has been a bunch of misinterpretations. I have either been dodging insults or re-clarifying my position.
I mean if I was living with Ashley and we had a kid…how could marriage make that situation better? I just don’t see it.
I get people sometimes telling me I should marry and I always use the same statement on them to try to point out my position. The statement is “Sell me marriage”. They always bring up things like: kids, love, sharing your life, starting a family, having a sex partner. All of those things can be done without marriage. Every once and a while someone will mention things like spousal protection in court and hospital visitations. But it’s very rare. In the end people see my position as cynical and calculating. I see it as smart and a way to manage risk. Making good life-altering decisions are made with thoughtful planning and weighing the options not whimsical flights of fancy.
‘upper class twit of the year’ is from Monty Python or the Goodies or something. Sorry – forgot I wasn’t talking to my friends 🙂
This bit: “The epiphany I had while homeless is that nobody really cares about you more than you.”
I’ve never been homeless (I’ve been extremely lucky). Some of my friends who have, have a different attitude, more “we’re all in this together”, and very easygoing and tolerant.
No it’s really not.
Taking a dangerous and unwarranted assumption that you care about the kid at all, they’re going to get the full benefits of the best insurance in the house. So’s the other partner. You probably don’t realize how fucking HUGE that is in America but…
That’s just off the top of my head, especially since the biggest problems exist primarily in your mind.
I don’t really care much about marriage. I find it fascinating that “I’m not a narcissist at all” brandon would rather talk about Brandon Getting Married than things he claims to care about, like VAWA and Title IX, or ‘Paternity Fraud’
And dude, it’s really not just MAgpie who thinks your philosophy is “Fuck you jack, I’ve got mine” based solely on your own words.
@Pecunium: I stand by my statements:
I do think marriage tends to tame and domesticate men to a certain extent. It really isn’t about the wife but that you do all the things an adult is supposed to do. It’s like the ultimate “I am conforming to what society wants from me” statement. It’s about those social pressures actually “breaking you” and you giving up and saying “Fine society you win. I will go buy a house, get married and have kids”
Marriage CAN (how many times to I have to use the word “can”?) make people dependent. If both parties work and earn similar incomes…then no. If one person is relying on another to “bring home the bacon” then yes. It depends on how the marriage is setup. But marriage overall promotes those choices. I know no single person that thinks “I just want to stay at home and raise kids” without the qualifier “…when I get married”
Even when I use stern or harsher language…I am still pretty calm. The commenters here are people that I don’t even know and most likely will never meet. I see no reason to get all emotional. I do however try to not respond to people that are overly rude or like to hurl insults (which explains why I haven’t answered Rutee’s questions). You, Lyn and a few others have been able to disagree without hurling insults every other sentence. This is mainly the reason I keep responding to you and not others.
We are discussing ideas and concepts…not people. There is no need make things personal.
A song for Brandon the bachelor
On domesticating feral men.
Are Brandon’s friends becoming domesticated because they got married, or are they getting married because they are feeling domestic at this time in their lives?
A lot of men are domestic anyway.
Pecunium and Ginmar could probably tell you that going into the forces domesticates feral men more and quicker than marriage does.
Just for a refresher.. xD
What’s the dispute about here o_O Like what’s Brandon so upset about? o_O That he doesn’t want to be married, or that other ppl are being married or.. whut o_O
Ami- Basically, Brandon is sad that he is not the President of Feminism since he decided he is interested in gender roles and such, even though he really disagrees with most of Feminism. He has Important Thoughts and Opinions on this subject!
Just because he doesn’t really understand concepts like privilege and intersectionality and facts and hasn’t actually thought out his opinions on many subjects doesn’t mean his Awesome Philosophies of Brandonism should not be brought to the lowly masses of the Manboobz commentariat!
Also, people here are mean to him! Marriage is stupid and awful and for suckers and making men and/or women dependent and/or domesticated! But that totes doesn’t imply anything bad about peeps who get married (the idiots)! And he loves Thailand, but not in a sex touristy way! Because Ashley keeps him well serviced sexually (eeeeew…)!
His Important Thoughts and Opinions, Ami! Listen to them and be appropriately awed or else you’ll hurt his feelings and that’s mean!
SecretiveRob, that was an awesome summary. You should do one for all the weird threads from now on 🙂
Brandon, in what ways are we women ‘domesticating’ men in marriage? Expecting them to do some chores, spend time with the children, not letting them go out drinking with their buddies every night, not having enough sex? What’s your definition?
So, should only women be expected to act like adults? That’s not fair at all.
Amnesia, that seems to sum up the position.
Also, marriage may tame and domesticate men a bit, but I’d say it would do the same thing for women. Cept women spend a lot of time learning how to be tame and domesticated from birth forward. So it only seems fair that men take their turn.
I don’t know if Brandon means “domesticate” as “act like an adult”, Amnesia, so much as “have to show some consideration for another human being”. Which you should be doing in relationships anyway, but for some reason Brandon doesn’t seem to think so.
I mean, it’s not an awful lot to ask of the person you live with and are romantically committed to that they share housework, childcare, and expenses, consult you on important matters like big purchases and moving halfway across the world, and keep you informed of their movements so you’re not sitting at home at 1 AM wondering if they’re dead. It really is not. And I don’t know many couples where more is expected, though most couples do socialize together a lot and that adds an extra wrinkle of scheduling.
But Brandon? Thinks that these bare-bones expectations of consideration and common courtesy and the extremely slim chance he may have to pay alimony someday make marriage just like breaking a wild horse. OK.
And if he’s so pissed off about unwanted personal advice:
I’d advise him never to get pregnant, because now that I’m out of the “Is she a bit chubby or is she pregnant? ” zone I’m getting all sorts of unwanted advice from not just family and friends but TOTAL STRANGERS on my diet, clothing, attitude, possible parenting style, choice of place of birth, choice of pain relief while giving birth, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It’s really annoying and there’s not much I can do about it except go around with a perma-scowl and rebuff all attempts at conversation.
But wait, Brandon can’t get pregnant, so why would he care?
Brandon: How many times are you going to project other people’s ideas onto us?
Show me one person here who has said, “Brandon ought to get married”.
Just one. Any one.
If you think that’s the fight you are having, the first things to realise is you are wrong. The second is that you will never be able to convince us, because you are arguing against something that was never said (and you do that a fair bit, e.g. your claim that getting married costs a lot of money. You kept insisting that societal pressures meant that getting married on the cheap was impossible).
I get that you feel abused. It is tough being the singular opponent. That, however, goes with the territory when one takes a contrarian viewpoint. When one does such a thing, one has to be exact. When one has to keep clarifying one’s position it means one isn’t being very clear.
@Pecunium: I stand by my statements:
I didn’t ask you to stand behind them. I asked you to try to read them from an outsider’s perspective. That you seem to not be able to that is problematic, and it relates to the people who don’t have my… for want of a better word, advantages, in staying calm (I did a lot of work which required me to divorce the more immediate emotional response to people I was dealing with; it’s affected me, for good and ill).
We are discussing ideas and concepts…not people. There is no need make things personal.
The thing you are missing, is you have made it personal. You seem to think that not using directed insults; not telling someone he personally is a neutered dog, or that she is a sex-denying shrew; who hen-pecks her husband, but that men who get married become the one, and have to put up with the other, is just “ideas”.
They aren’t. Words are things of power. Words have meaning. You have insulted people. You have said the things they do are things done by stupid people*. You have said that smart people can get the benefits,and avoid the “traps”. You have also said some sexist things (about the way benefits accrue to women… more of those things you have to clarify; think about how often you had to change language to make it gender neutral).
All of those are independent of you being right, or wrong. I can’t really help you with that. You can make all the fact claims you want, but if your facts are wrong, people are going to call you on them. Some you will get to slide on (so far I’ve let you slide on the conflation of age of marriage with “no one is getting married”. Look at ages past and you will see that the period ca. 1945-1965 in the US was anomalous. The average age of marriage for men in 1600 England, for example, was 27; for women 24. Why? Because they had to be able to establish themselves. That theme is rife in literature, up to the 1920s, but I digress; which I didn’t before because there were other errors which more needed addressing).
Being the maverick has it’s emotional appeal. I get that. But when you are holding forth on a topic and no one is agreeing with you. If the people whom you would expect to be your allies are disagreeing with you, and trotting out lots of different sources which rebut you… it might be time to rethink your central position.
*Do you think that someone who looks a soldier dead in the eye and says, “Only stupid people, or those who can’t get a real job join the Army” isn’t being insulting? Why should that form of comment be different about marriage?
Well, I am against marriage as a social and legal institution. But not because I think children or stay at home parents are inferior or subhuman. Quite the opposite. One of the most horrible legacies of the social institution of marriage is the devaluing of the labor associated with stay at home parents, “housewives”, and women in general. These people are often engaged in work that is extremely time consuming and extremely beneficial to society and not given comparable benefits (including pay, this is mostly unrenumerated labor) or respect. It isn’t child support or alimony that makes me against marriage, those are just two incomplete ways that we try to deal with giving some survivability to children and those that do child rearing labour. Traditional “women’s labour” is not less socially valuable, though we often treat it as such. Forcing survivability to be contingent on giving in to an oppressive class dynamic with a person who receives renumeration for their labor is the problem, not “dependency”. Dependency is only an issue insofar as it denies the dependent class the right to self direction.
@SecretiveRob: President of Feminism? Don’t make me laugh. I would have to shave all my hair off because I would end up pulling it all out if awarded that title to an imaginary position.
Male privilege? Oh..do you mean this ungodly mess of over generalizations:
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
I don’t get mad that people are rude and mean. However, I do have an issue with people wanting to be taken seriously after they just finished yelling vulgarities at someone.
Also, if you think Ashley and I are having sex is “eewww” then don’t think about it.
@Amnesia: So you as me in what ways women are domesticating men. Then you add my quote where I said “It really isn’t about the wife but that you do all the things an adult is supposed to do.” It really isn’t about your wife…but society domesticating you.
@juliejezebel: I can’t say the ways women might feel domesticated in marriage since I don’t experience life as a woman. This is the main reason I stay out of the abortion debate. I have no business in that debate since the law doesn’t affect me directly.
@kristinmh: I would say that I am polite, friendly and helpful towards other people. I actually enjoy helping people. Which is the main reason I do IT help desk work. I enjoy helping people learn more about computers and software.
As it stands now, I do all the household chores. I dislike doing them so I find ways to minimize the time I have to do them. Leading a minimalist lifestyle helps making chores not suck up a lot of time.
@Pecunium: I never said anyone here said I should get married.
Ya, my subjective stance on marriage is wrong…I don’t think so. Some people are pro marriage others aren’t. They both aren’t right or wrong…they just see the institution of marriage differently.
Again, you keep going back to me insulting people getting married…which is what is really wrong with your argument. The system of marriage is antiquated and practically useless. The people that get married are doing it in an effort to be happy. I do not have full reign over what makes people happy and if someone thinks getting married will help them be happy…then I support it 100%.
I think I have seen it from an outside perspective. Some people think marriage is useless and others think it is integral to society. And everything in between. I see it as the former.
No…the commenters here have made it personal. They took my attacks on the SYSTEM of marriage and applied it to people that get married. Again, there is a difference between the two.
Again, marriage is stupid, not the people that get married. Another system vs people misinterpretation.
Are you making the claim that I would look a soldier in the eye and say something like that? There are a bunch of reasons for people joining the Army…I know I enlisted.
“I do think marriage tends to tame and domesticate men to a certain extent.”
Then:
“It really isn’t about your wife…but society domesticating you.”
Okay, Brandon, I’ll bite without snarking: what do you mean by “domesticate”? You’re doing chores and have a job… is there something else I’m missing that makes you “wild”?
@Molly: Society puts a lot of pressure on everyone to conform and to a certain extent we all have to conform a little.
I disagree with the whole notion and societal pressure put on men to get married, have kids, tend to the home, be a breadwinner, etc.. As if this is the only route to manhood or being a “Real Man”.
So by taking someone who values independence and freedom and making them work some corporate 9 to 5 and funnel all that money into children and home…I see it as a way of domestication.