Most of the coverage of the Costa Concordia disaster at the moment seems to be focusing on the Italian cruise ship’s captain and his douchey behavior, which involved not only running the ship aground but also abandoning ship prestissimo while passengers remained trapped on board.
MRAs, by contrast, are using the tragedy as an excuse to rail against the notion of “women and children first” and, of course, to make jokes about women drowning.
Now, the Titanic aside, “women and children first” isn’t now, and hasn’t ever really been, the standard way to evacuate those on a sinking ship, though many in the public — including some of those who were on board the Costa Concordia – seem to believe that it is. (See here for more details on how evacuations are typically handled these days; generally only those with mobility problems are given special treatment.)
In the case of this particular evacuation, some on board apparently tried to enforce an informal “women and children” policy, but many men weren’t willing to wait.
What’s got some MRAs in a snit is that some people, in the media and online, are calling these dudes cowards. In The Daily Mail, a right-wing British tabloid, A N Wilson wrote:
[I]n our day, with the advent of feminism and the professional woman, chivalry and manners are considered stuffy and old-fashioned.
As the father of three daughters, I do not, with a single fibre of my being, wish to go back to a time when women could not have the vote or get a university degree. Nor do I, surrounded by extremely strong-charactered and intelligent women in my family and among my friends, feel tempted to regard women as the frail sex.
But the fact remains that there is a longing among most men to protect women and children, and chivalry is simply a manifestation of that longing.
And whatever transpires about the reason for the Costa Concordia disaster, the disappearance of a chivalric code is a sorry reflection on society today.
This is not what you’d call a feminist argument; it’s a traditionalist argument, published in a tabloid rag that’s generally quite hostile to feminism.
Nonetheless, some MRAs are using the Costa Concordia disaster as an opportunity to deliver a big “told you so!” to the … imaginary feminists who live in their head.
Over on The Spearhead, where one familiar commenter actually described Wilson’s Daily Mail article as “feminist,” guest poster Lyn87 wrote:
The MRM is getting more vocal, and a lot of guys are now saying, “You wanted equality. This is what it looks like.” And they are saying it aloud and in public. Even a few women chimed in, saying that men have no obligation to die for women if women want equality. (Somehow I suspect there wasn’t much, “I am woman, hear me roar, watch me drown” on the Costa Concordia itself, but hey, it’s a start.)
MRAs: Always up-to-the-minute with their pop culture references!
This post was helpfully illustrated with a stock photo of a woman drowning.
Commenters got in their digs as well.
Keyster riffed on Lyn87’s incredibly au courant Helen Reddy reference:
I am woman hear me…blurp….rah…gurgle…raha…ffftt…orr…roar…gurgle…help me…somebody…fffft…please…blurp…help…help me please!
Aharon told both ladies and fish what’s what:
I eat fish. Fish don’t eat me. My life is too precious to sacrifice it so some spoiled bitch can have a pussy pass into the life boats.
Anti Idiocy got all hypothetical-cruise-ship tough guy on us:
Anyone who attempts to keep me on a sinking ship because of the genitals with which I was born is attempting to murder me. I have the right to respond accordingly.
And Thomas Tell-truth kicked chivalry – not to mention basic human decency — to the ocean floor:
Equality means that when the ship is going down and you are a woman, you had better get out of my way or you are going to drown with my footprints on your back.
Apparently Thomas Tell-truth is actually George Costanza:
Jeb, meanwhile, offered a more scientific rationalization for being a complete douchenozzle:
As far as I’ve heard, the one and only sport in which women naturally out-do men is endurance swimming. Women are also more bouyant, and as survivalists will explain, women float easiest on their backs (making it easy to breathe while expending minimal energy) whereas men float easiest in “the dead man’s float” (ie. face down, head in the water) and must expend more energy to stay alive. Furthermore, women have more body-fat than men which insulates them better against aquatic dangers such as hypothermia.
Given all these factors it is quite rational for men to pick women up by the seat of their pants and toss them overboard to make way for men and children to safely be rowed ashore on the lifeboats.
It’s all about doing the right thing and saving lives, after all.
MRA humor is very sophisticated indeed.
EDITED TO ADD: The Spearhead has put up a followup post, once again taking aim at imaginary “lifeboat feminists,” though the only person the post cites lamenting the end of “women and children” is Rich Lowry from the National Review (not a feminist publication).
See, this is a perfect metaphor for what is wrong with the MRA. In the real world, the lesson of the Titanic was to HAVE ENOUGH LIFEBOATS for everyone, so that anyone who made it to a boat could get on one right away, so there would be no need for a barbaric and frankly inefficient sorting mechanism like women and children first.
To the MRA, it was “for men to pick women up by the seat of their pants and toss them overboard.”
Real world: make things work for everyone. MRA: punish the women above all else!
Seriously, it’s kinda beautiful.
So MRAs would like us to return to a time when women had no skills – like, say, the ability to operate a lifeboat or to swim – nor any opportunity to learn these skills, and they would like to toss women overboard, knowing that in their ideal world, these women would drown horribly. Got it.
But it’s not really about hating women, is it? /sarcasm
But it’s totally about Men’s rights (to be misogynist buttheads), guys! Not hating women!
This seems to be roughly 1% about “women shouldn’t get preferential evacuation,” 9% about “men should be unloaded first, then women and children,” and 90% about “let’s fantasize in extremely enthusiastic detail about drowning women.”
And here I was under the impression that it’s only women who have rationalization hamsters. Someone better tell Jeb to get with the program!
I’ll go on the record saying I have no problem with getting equal access to lifeboats. But equal means men and women mixed in line. Equal does not mean “the women all drown in highly specific ways that appear to be sexually arousing to some of these guys.”
I wonder how many of them were wanking as they thought about all those women drowning.
It’s like they think (or hope) that it’s either “women and children first” or “men first” and there’s no other possible ordering system. It’s not like people move in amorphous gender blobs, so if you let one woman on a lifeboat she’ll drag the rest of the womanblob on with her, and you’d better make sure the manblob gets the chance first.
@Viscaria
I like your usage of “blob” because it just reiterates to me that these dudes are hallucinating on their red pills
The same amount as would have a boner-killing moment when (actually, if) it occurs to them that those men would then have to provide care and nurturing for the children.
“The same amount as would have a boner-killing moment when (actually, if) it occurs to them that those men would then have to provide care and nurturing for the children.”
Don’t be silly – of course a woman would have to be found to care for the children. There will be lots of women looking for a job like that after they’ve made sure that all the “lawyercunts” are fired for being women and thus clearly incompetent.
“The same amount as would have a boner-killing moment when (actually, if) it occurs to them that those men would then have to provide care and nurturing for the children.”
Damn those bitches digging into my wallet from their watery grave!
I love how they just assume women are going to stand passively waiting to get a life boat. Also you try to throw me off a lifeboat, then you are attempting to murder me, thus I have a right to respond accordingly. Namely me ripping your eyeballs out of their sockets.
It really is comical how over the top they are, and how unable to hide their desire to hurt women. I mean, OK, in theory let’s pretend that women and children first was still normal procedure. The way to fix that would be the remove that rule and institute some other system. Why does that system have to be “throw the women overboard”? Why does it involve NONE of the women getting a seat on the lifeboat?
@Cassandra
I once read a comment on the Spearhead, a guy said he saved that McDonald’s beating clip from a few months ago to his computer and said he watches it over and over again.
Abuser’s lobby, as clear as day.
I do think children should be prioritized to be saved first during disasters. They have their whole lives ahead of them. During the tornado, I wrapped my body over my children hoping that my body could be a shield for them. Several children lost parents that same way. At the Home Depot, they dug out a man with his two children held tightly in his arms. Their daddy died trying to save them, but none of them made it. To me, that’s the most horrifying thought in the world, that no matter what you do you can’t save your children.
I remember AntZ talking about the top ten worst things to happen to someone. In my opinion, the absolute worst is to lose a child. In fact, I think the reason parents sacrifice themselves for children is because we’re much more scared of outliving our children than of dying itself. I had to stop reading one article about the Costa Concordia disaster when one woman described a father trying to get her to take his child to safety and she couldn’t do it. It was too upsetting to imagine what that dad felt at that moment.
Ten bucks says Keyster can’t swim.
@ Quackers
That’s what I meant by wanking. It’s creepy enough that they obviously take pleasure in the idea of women being hurt and killed, but the fact that there’s clearly a sexual dimension to that pleasure is extra icky.
It should be children and at least one parent first if you absolutely must do an evacuation.
I have been on multiple cruises and I am shocked that there was no prepping on this particular one for a disaster like this.
That’s why it would only be a momentary boner-killer…..sorta like intermission…..
I should say “must do an evacuation with that kind of ordering.”
This makes sense. I’d also throw in there “at least one person per lifeboat who has the physical capacity to actually row/steer the lifeboat.” A rowboat full of nothing but five-year-olds, for instance, probably isn’t going to save anyone on board.
In unrelated but still on topic news: okay, so the MRAs are all “men and children” first. But does that mean male children or all children? Or is letting girl-children drown also okay, because they were just going to grow up to be spoiled lawyercunts anyway?
From studies done about reactions to events. Losing a child is top of the mark for bad.
Close behind that is being captured in a war.
After those come things like losing a limb, a spouse, contracting cancer.
There are a few things that MRA arguments always come back around to. Free drinks at bars, opening doors, grumpy women, and (whether they’re for or against them) freakin Daily Mail articles. It seems like a daily mail article is behind just about every MRA complainfest, and whether they’re for or against it varies.
I read the Spearhead piece and got linked to some of the pro-men-dying articles, and it’s absolutely fascinating how in almost every case, the authors rail against women being shunted to the back, and barely mention the children. To me it shows the strength of the male disposability concept (I would postulate that since some children are male, children come after women) and the extent of the pedestalization of women that is still rampant even in 2012.
Pardon my French, but suck it up. The children should be present, accounted for, and taken care of, and then it’s first come, first served.