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.
Brandon’s “I work, save my money and invest, travel, date, and pretty much live the life a lot of men claim they want to live” also sounds a bit odd to me when I think about it. “Being single and traveling” is a big middle class/hipster dream, yes, but it’s also not *that* uncommon. Having a job, saving, and investing isn’t that odd either, unless you’ve got a low-paying job or are unemployed. Dating is also pretty universal.
Is Brandon the only middle-class person in his social circle? The only single person?
He’s a social circle of one from the sound of him.
To be fair, travelling isn’t actually that common in the US, even among the middle class. Salaries are falling thanks to health insurance and companies specifically screwing their own peons over.
I mean, whatever happened to old school hedonism, where you’d get rip-roaring drunk with all your dandy homies and overturn carriages on Pall Mall? Or where you, a hot gay man, and your sister would convert a virgin to anal sex in your villa? You could at least have a naked dinner party.
Brandon’s idea of “hedonism” looks downright normal. I’m glad you’re living the life you want to live, but dude, you really need to get out more.
I love this idea that NOT AGREEING with feminists shouldn’t be grounds to be considered not a feminist. Like, really dude? You can chip in on the issues you support, but feminism is kind of a package deal. I mean, there’s lots of kinds of feminists and lots of different opinions, but if you’re trying to join a movement and you find you disagree with most of its core ideas, maybe you shouldn’t be surprised when you’re not welcomed as an ally in their spaces.
“like anti-male bias in the media, fighting Title IX, Marriage, child support, shared parenting, boys are failing in primary schools, making government programs gender-neutral (VAWA), getting rid of the idea that all men are rapists, anonymity in rape accusations, combating paternity fraud.”
Okay, let’s go through that list
-anti-male bias in the media, yes, that field of almost total and complete male domination (there has been a grand total of what, one female newsanchor on primetime network tv, producers, directors, show writers, etc. are massively male dominated, shows have more male protagonists and more male speaking characters by far on average)
-Title IX-so you are against the act calling for equality in educational opportunities?
-Marriage, sure, let’s get rid of marriage as a legal and social institution, I like that XD (probably not what you were thinking…)
-child support, how exactly is this an issue? What is wrong with child support?
-shared parenting, okay, in theory, can work well in at least some cases
-“boys are failing in primary schools” This isn’t true. It is later that the discrepancies mainly arise. Also, a quick look at gendered wealth gaps will advise you that women have more economic incentive to complete education that men don’t need to make comparable amounts of money (a woman with a high school diploma does not make more on average than a man without one)
-making government programs gender-neutral (VAWA), VAWA has been totally gender neutral in provisions for quite some time
-“getting rid of the idea that all men are rapists” I don’t really think this idea that all men are rapists exists too much among anyone but a small group of misogynists who are generally pro-rape.
-“anonymity in rape accusations” NEVER occurs under US laws and never has either. Wtf are you talking about here?
-“combating paternity fraud” Define this, explain what you see as reasonable measures.
PS, I hazard that the reason people’s minds jumped to sex tourism and child abuse is because this is a thread about sexual abuse of children…
Brandon:
I’ve pretty much never seen a feminist group say men are not welcome, but nor have I seen any where men in fact weren’t welcome.
If you mean that men’s issues aren’t welcome, and people who wish to raise gender issues aren’t welcome to focus on men, that’s true, but I think it’s a bit circumscribed on your part to assume men can’t or won’t advocate for women, just as there are women who advocate for men. And I’m not sure that “feminists advocate for women” is a bug.
Perhaps, but I’m not sure whining about the ebil feminists qualifies.
Brandon:
Right now, in 2011, equality benefits women. The equality agenda benefits women. So I suppose the actual words you used are true, in an extremely literal way.
Brandon (the hits just keep on coming):
I wonder what he’s going to say when the answer turns out to be perfectly reasonable. Probably find one sentence that can be read as unreasonable without context and complain about it.
AntZ:
Not being allowed to print my own $100 bills = man-hate. Whenever I have to pay for something in a store instead of walking out with it, I feel just a little more ground down by the system. The law against driving a train drunk*? Totally sexist.
*18 USC §342
I have seen bigger protests outside Planned Parenthood in Massacusetts than anywhere else I’ve been.
The hell? Cool off period? Do they think this is WOW and they’re using a spell or something?
Pretty sure the term comes from gun control law
Freaking MRAs, just spamming the “Hit On Creepily” key in every damn battle. It doesn’t work because you guys have crappy Charisma! It’s not gonna work any better just because it’s the only spell you use!
…Oh, okay. Now you’ve switched to using the “Whine Loudly” command… You realize that only works on friendlies, right? The raging lady hordes still don’t care! :p
Traindodger, I was wondering if the idea of a cooling off period is modeled after a waiting period for buying guns. Maybe their idea of counseling comes from US states that require women to have counseling before an abortion. There really is no telling what inspires their bullshit.
Bagelsan: Now all I can hear is “I cast magic missile!”
Because there are three things nearly every gamer can quote from emory: the D&D skit, anything from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and Monty Python in general), and lots of Weird Al songs. In our group, we’ve added Eddie Izzard, but I don’t think that’s quite so common.
‘cooling-off period’ is a general legal term. blacks law dictionary words it pretty much perfectly so im just gonna quote their definition:
An automatic delay between a person’s taking some legal action and the consequence of that action.
i could have sworn some jurisdictions have a cooling-off period after accusations of non-statutory rape, but i can’t find anything on that now, so i dunno maybe im confusing it with something else.
Oh, on another note, I do think brandon is confusing hedonism with egoism. Because utilitarianism is also technically a form of hedonism, and it is very non-selfish in application. You really mean that you are an egoist, brandon, you think that “good” is whatever serves your own individual best interest, moreso than you mean that “good” means “pleasure” and “bad” means “suffering”. If you are a hedonist, you are an egoistic hedonist, most hedonists are not in fact egoists, so you might want to be more specific on that front.
However, it’s interesting that in this scenario, the underage person must be the one to undergo the cooling off period, not the adult who’s preying upon them (really, her). This reminds me of NWO’s detailed thought-experiments in which 14 year olds come on to him. The girl wants sex like a fact of nature; the agency of the predator has vanished.
well yeah, my comments at the beginning of the thread were because i assumed what he meant was something like:
1. police find out about incident
2. cooling-off period
3. charges are pressed
which doesnt make any sense if the victim doesnt have discretion about whether to press charges.
but i guess hes proposing something more like:
1. teen applies for permission to have sex with adult
2. counseling
3. cooling-off period
4. sex
which is still awful, just a different kind of awful
I know! All that paperwork.
I love the idea that the average 15 year old girl is, not only attracted to 35 year old men (ha!), but has the attention span for this. I was 15 once and I was pretty bright. But if you’d told me that I’d need forms and 2 days of counseling for heavy petting and beyond, I’d have been back at the Ft. Reno flirting with the skaters and teenage Fugazi fans faster than…
I don’t know what. Pretty fucking fast though.
@Lauralot: My state has plenty of Planned Parenthood’s and other women’s clinics. Women have no problem receiving services in Mass. There is also little chance of that changing for the worst since Mass is a Democrat stronghold. So what else needs to get done? It’s legal and available.
@Pencunium: Ya, I don’t have any plans on walking into a NAACP meeting and saying “buck up”. While the treatment of black americans has gotten progressively better since the end of slavery, there is still racism in the world.
Fair point. I think most debate involves people trying to get to common ground and the idea of changing peoples viewpoints on things. However, while I talked about marriage a lot, I have no power to order you to do anything. You could agree or disagree with me and regardless of the outcome, I can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.
Defensive? Slightly. I find it insulting when someone just off the cuff tries to make a connection between me and being a pedophile because I mention a desire to move to Thailand. I thought Voip and Bagelsan were genuine progressive feminists…they seem to find it ok to stereotype Thailand as some cesspool of prostitution.
@Voip: I don’t need a masters degree in Eastern Studies to have an interest in Thailand. I have lots of interests, but according to you they aren’t interests unless I go to college for 6 years…elitist much?
Also my goal of moving is years off. Who is to say if Ashley and I will still be together. When the goal is within eyeshot, I will bring it up. She also knows that I have had multiple partners in the past and that currently I am in a monogamous relationship with her. I don’t have to lie to her because I don’t see the way I live as shameful of something to hide. I am probably too honest at times. I would only have to lie to her if I thought what I was doing was “wrong”…which I don’t.
NullPointer: Really? Ignoring my parents pleas to get married is all it takes? Everyone’s parents pressure their children to live a certain way. It’s not going to change. So if patriarchy is just ignoring social norms…seems pretty damn easy to do. Unless some form of physical coercion is involved.
@HellKell: I didn’t call you a narcissist. I called Voip one. Voip tried to make a connection between me and my desire to move to Thailand and that of the sex tourism trade. Like I am some “woman crazy” male who only thinks with his dick. Basically Voip is was acting as a narcissist because of the immediate thought that I was moving there because of women. As if my desires to go there couldn’t possibly be valid unless I plan around my interest in women.
@Molly: Maybe the term “perpetual traveler” will make my philosophy on life clearer. And most people do not behave in that manner.
@darksidecat:
Male bias in the media: Men are seen as buffoons and incompetent twits. Wives in sitcoms are always right and the man is a simpering moron. See practically every husband/wife sitcom.
Title IX: My main concern is that male sports programs are held back because sports rosters have to have roughly the same participants. While girls want to play sports, boys want to play sports in bigger numbers. I don’t think boys should be denied playing because not enough girls signed up for another sport.
Marriage: I don’t think that equality can be obtained when we still have an institution that allows one person to become financially dependent on another.
Child Support: While men should pay child support (hey, it’s your kid). I think some of the payment systems can extract far too much. Also the phase “in the best interests of the child” is far too subjective.
Shared Parenting: Since both parents contributed to creating the child, they both have equal rights to be a part of that child’s life.
Making laws gender-neutral: Just because a bill is gender-neutral doesn’t mean that it is being applied properly or in a relatively unbiased way. So I should have tacked on “…and remove gender bias in the law”
Getting rid of “all men are rapists”: Just like women make claims that men can’t understand certain things about women because men don’t live as women. I think the same could be said of women don’t understand what it is like to live as a man.
If women walked around as a man, they might see that men have to be careful around children for fear of being labeled a deviant, even when we just want to help. (i.e helping lost children). Or if a man wants to enter a female-dominated area (like day care). He is seen as creepy because he wants to be around children.
Anonymity in rape trials: I think both sides should have anonymity and news reports should only refer it them in a generic way.
Paternity fraud: While this might not happen all that much (stats go from 3 to 30 percent…so not really helpful), I think it is such an egregious crime that actions should be taken to prevent it as much as possible. No man should be forced to be liable for a child he didn’t help create. Adoption is the different situation since both parties have to sign a lot of paperwork and jump through a lot of hoops to establish guardianship.
My husband works around special needs kids ALL THE TIME. He was a spec ed classroom aide for many years and now does respite through our local Community Mental Health. Not a single person has ever given him so much as a second glance. In this, as in so many other things, you are flat out wrong.
Because it kind of is, dimwit, and being a progressive feminist has nothing to do with it.
Brandon: About paternity fraud, I think you’re misunderstanding the strength of parental love. The vast majority of fathers, if told their kid wasn’t theirs biologically, wouldn’t have their relationship with their kids change a whit (the kid’s mother, maybe, but not the kids). Saying they shouldn’t have to be liable is a lot more relevant when they don’t want to be liable.
Title IX: My main concern is that male sports programs are held back because sports rosters have to have roughly the same participants. While girls want to play sports, boys want to play sports in bigger numbers. I don’t think boys should be denied playing because not enough girls signed up for another sport.
title ix is about a lot more than sports. in fact, sports is pretty minor part of title ix considering some of its other applications. all title ix says is that schools that receive federal funds cannot deny access to educational opportunities on the basis of sex. that happens to include access to athletic programs and athletic scholarships, but the way people you’d go on about it, you’d think the statutory language is sports sports sports sports!
Ah, the old “noticing a problem in another culture makes you a racist” BS. Divide and conquer, y’all. Divide and conquer.