Ugh. No jokes this time, just an appalling little exchange on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit. First, a Redditor called xbyiu offers some unsolicited, and pretty pig-ignorant, thoughts about SlutWalks. The basic thesis:
Personally, I think a lot of feminists just don’t care about rape victims. They’d much rather see women as a whole being a victim of the patriarchy and fight against that sort of abstract idea then deal with the reality of rape, which can be fought against with simple tips on how to protect yourself.
Hold on; it gets worse.
To this the r/mr regular EvilPundit replied (in a comment that, last I checked, had gotten three times more upvotes than downvotes):
I’d go even further, and say that many feminists love rape. For them, it’s a perfect way to demonise men in general.
If rape didn’t exist, feminism would invent it. In fact, feminism does invent a lot of rape, with its imaginary statistics such as “1 in 4”, and so on.
In other words, feminists don’t really want to prevent rape. But most rape is imaginary. So feminists are trying to not prevent something that doesn’t much happen anyway. Brilliant.
A note on the “1 in 4” thing: EvilPundit’s insinuation that it’s an “imaginary statistic” is a common MRA talking point. It’s not imaginary, but it’s not quite accurate either. The one-in-four number comes from a study conducted in the 80s by researcher Mary Koss: based on a detailed survey of college women, she found that roughly one in four of her respondent had been a victim of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14. This is often simplified – and distorted – into “one in four female college students are raped while in college.”
In fact, Koss’ survey found that one in eight college women answering her survey, not one in four, had been the victim of completed rape. Other studies have reported numbers not far off from this. The National Violence Against Women Survey, for example, found that roughly one in six of female respondents reported being the victim of rape in their lifetime.
The fact that some people have misrepresented Koss’ study doesn’t mean that her findings are “imaginary.”
I’m not even sure why I’m writing all this, given that as a feminist I presumably don’t care at all about rape.
Pic above taken from here.
EDITED TO ADD: EvilPundit’s comment has gotten some downvotes since I posted this, but it still has more upvotes than downvotes.
Quoted For Truth. People get too wrapped up in what’s “fair” or “unfair” in the patterns of whom or what other people pay attention to, for whatever reason.
“…would not be interested in dating a vampire, either…”
Really? Damn.
Thing is, my personality and culture have already been molded by the necessity of dealing with the privileged on their own terms. I taught myself to appear psychologically normal to neurotypicals, despite having been dangerously depressed all my life, with inadequate treatment whether in a social-welfare medical system or not. I taught myself to be an extrovert to fit in with extroverts, though I am a natural introvert. I learned to stand tall, to take up space, to stare other men down. I taught myself English, French, and German and became an erudite Ivy Leaguer though born the son of a Communist-proletarian maritime engineer from Haifa. I hold my tongue at the favor shown to the Islamist Palestinian narrative in American universities. My name is “whatever you want it to be, baby.” I can sometimes get women to buy me nice things. All of these things are my real self, all of them are constructs and disguises. And it is not dehumanizing women to notice their patterns, to notice how beautiful young women are drawn to wealth, to know that some of them want to follow a masculine lead. For whatever reason, as I said, every woman who has dated me has been a non-conformist in some way, disabled, depressed, fat, a hyper-butch scientist–luckily for me the depressed ones were young, thin, lithe, conventionally-attractive, but I can only rarely attract women without my exhibiting some form of performative masculinity, some Pick-Up magic, ars amatoria. The other half of my training is in caregiving, and a lot of my relationships involved a certain amount of mutual support. I can avoid treating women as prizes, the problem with Hollywood is they display themselves as such, and, well, who am I to question their self-presentation?
I realize I’m being a bit of an ass, but whenever I back off the full-court press of PUA, I wind up alone for years, despite the extroversion and being on the fringes of the well-connected beautiful people. Probably because I’m still poorer than most everyone here, still a bit disabled, and not on the fashionable party circuit. The problem is that whenever I became a sexist and took the romantic lead, I got rewarded. And there are plenty of women willing to date actual vampires, just go looking at showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and take normal safeword precautions to avoid draining her dry. (Unless you want to/have to kill your partners, in which case YKINOK.)
“And there are plenty of women willing to date actual vampires, just go looking at showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and take normal safeword precautions to avoid draining her dry. (Unless you want to/have to kill your partners, in which case YKINOK.)”
Wow, for about 500 words it was just a regular old Nice Guy rant and then it took a sharp turn into “this guy is genuinely unhinged”.
I’m honestly not sure if you’re just going along with the joke, Eurosabra.
While a woman may swoon over the Hollywood image of Brad Pitt, for example, many of them would probably find the “real thing” uninteresting.
Not. A. Gain.
To my knowledge, I have never in my life met a woman who was attracted to Brad Pitt. I’m only counting the ones who’ve talked to me about who they like, but still.
Does that put you firmly into either “marry” or “screw” categories? ;p
Eurosabra’s story sounds a bit like those “who am I?” questions on game shows
Oh, c’mon people, you haven’t seen/heard of safe/sane/consensual blood play by “vampires-for-purposes-of-kink”? I mean, I’ve never seen anyone bite without permission, I’ve never seen anyone lose more than a superficial quantity of blood, but I think it’s just like anything else–you set up a safeword with someone you can trust and you play. The YKINOK bit is meant jokingly, but–as everyone has been noting–“Twilight” itself is bad because it’s romantic representation of bad, patriarchal life-endangering kink, it’s not like she can say “No” to the wolf and the vampire.
I’d be very happy to date a pretend vampire of the “is a goth and has insomnia” type, Eurosabra. The real thing not so much. Do you know how hard it is to get graveyard dirt stains out of bedding?
CassandraSays, that might be an actual kink? I mean, bloodplay is a BDSM thing, and there’s a big Rocky Horror/kinkster overlap. Also, Otherkin. So Eurosabra might not be totally nuts.
Also, it sounds like you’re hanging around with a rather superficial group of people, so maybe changing that would be a more ethical way to go about finding a date than being an asshole to women? Just a suggestion.
I liked him in Fight Club, but only ’cause I kept imagining him and Edward Norton getting it on. Oh yeah. 😀
I’d have assumed he meant the people who pretend to be vampires because they’re goths and like biting things if it hadn’t been for the bit about maybe killing them at the end. It’s really rather difficult to kill someone just by chewing on their neck or making small cuts in their skin. Maybe he knows some really clumsy, incompetent wannabe vampires, though.
Ah, Bagelsan, I knew there was a reason that I liked you.
Sorry, Eurosabra, I just couldn’t tell if you joking or semi-serious or what. I was really just kidding, though to be fair, I do like biting.
@Bagelsan: Well, I’m not really the marrying kind, so I guess that just leaves option: “screw”.
@Bagelsan I think Pitt’s wardrobe in Fight Club is one of the most under-appreciated things about that movie. The bottom button of his shirt was ALWAYS unbuttoned to show his abs!
Also, the same women who were disinterested in Brad Pitt expressed a preference for Edward Norton. A pattern emerges…
I envy the coffee mug bathrobe.
A sociopathic true believer in fatality-inducing blood magic like Countess Bathory would be unbelievably dangerous, a clumsy goth who knows he/she is not really a vampire, less so. The fetishists who wind up on cautionary television news specials about the kids’ dark secrets may actually believe in blood magic and believe themselves to be vampires, but don’t fatally drain their partners. Hence, if you’re a “vampire” and believe you actually have to drain your partners dead, Your Kink is Not OK. If you’re an actual supernatural vampire, I hope never to meet you.
After watching that movie I couldn’t get over the prettiness, and obsessively told my friends “they fight! And then THEY ARE ALL SWEATY AND TIRED AND HAVE A SMOKE TOGETHER argle bargle asljkfhsuinaw!”
I do think there are a few random weirdos in the vampire subculture that might be dangerous, but that’s true of any group. Many years of involvement with BSDM has helped to train me to spot the people who aren’t quite right in the head immediately, though, since adding sharp objects to the picture ups the risk factor.
What all of this has to do with the OP I’m still not sure.
Eh, now Bagelsan and I part ways. I’d rather skip the fighting and get right to the hot men lying around together naked part. You can’t say I’m not efficient!
Oh, it wasn’t the fighting, it was the totally unsubtle sharing a cigarette after strenuous physical activity together that I liked! 😀