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).
Oh, my dear little chickadee… the trick to an effective insult (bear with me, I’m trying to help you out here) is to make it something which is talking about things which are either 1: near and dear to the subject… i.e. finding a weakness and exploiting it, or 2: is a something which actually attacks the targets standing.
So trying to tell me, whom you know not from Adam, that I am slow-witted, and failing to understand the, Oh! so very complex points you have been making; less than effective.
Now, you could poll the readership, and ask them whom they think has gotten the better of the exchange; which isn’t so much a question of the better arguments, or greater likeability, but rather one of style, and effect. Would the casual reader think that you, or I, had been the more clever in parry, had managed the better riposte; even risen to a remise?
Which of the two of us has shown a more nimble manner with words? Has been possessed of variety? Has managed to change the style of attack? Has one of us been working to some level of creative effort?
Or has someone been pretending that humming into a $.25 kazoo is classical music?
As said before, if I were taking a line in Vegas, I know where the smart money is going bet. Rude words and airs of superiority may cut it with other men who are fragile in ego, but this is the big leagues. We get clever trolls in here, if you want to stand out you are going to have to get some Game. Work on being subtle, find a good riff (sadly the VR Segregated Sex World, and the Post Feminism SlaveGirl Motifs have been taken, and the Doll Collecting Plushie Lover Niche is also filled, and we’ve had our fill of Gold Loving, It’s all about me; and any bitch who won’t respect “Mah Authority” can just hit the highway) but hey… you keep telling us how smart you are, I’m sure you can come up with something.”
In the meanwhile, I recommend a good thesaurus, because finding new synonyms for sugartits and illiterate might become something of a strain.
I’m an efficient Santa.
I HAVE ALSO TRAINED MY CAT TO START WITH THE GENITALS
Oddly enough it was a “traditional wisdom” that women and children were stuffed onto lifeboats first for a mere fifty years. By the time the Lusitania was sunk, the concept had entirely faded away and was replaced with the eminently more sensible policy of “have enough lifeboats for the people on the ship.” Unfortunately as we have seen it did not also mean “have enough lifeboats for the people on the ship as well as a few drills on how to evacuate to the lifeboats.”
Cuz you know, that would have been much more sensible than the first and second ones.
“I don’t know about the rest of you all, but I’m finding MRAL to be eminently disposable.”
Yep.
He’s a worthless, whiny piece of shit.
I HAVE ALSO CASTRATED MY CAT BECAUSE FEMINISM.
Blockquote fail on my part, but whatever.
I HAVE ALSO TRAINED MY CAT TO START WITH THE GENITALS
Feminists these days and their ipods and short attention spans. Back in the day, real feminists attacked everything BUT the genitals first… good torture comes to those who wait…
To be fair, they’re only silhouettes of short-haired people with blocky bodies. They’re not that gender-specific.
He’s the only one of our trolls who had the gall to beg for our sympathy and acceptance before and after shitting all over us. That makes the subsequent shitting personal, man.
And now I’m sure he’s telling himself “if they’d only loved me harder, if they’d only stopped going mean things like disagreeing with me and holding me to standards, I wouldn’t have gone back to the MRA side!” Bullshit, dude. There are people who’ve gotten a lot fewer hugs than you who aren’t assholes. You made the decision to be an asshole; now fucking own it or get out.
Actually, just get out.
I’m pretty sure this is not how it worked for me, unless by “flash your boobs” you mean “flash your pristine lack of a criminal record and two forms of ID, then wait a week.” Which is exactly how my ex-boyfriend bought a Glock last time we went gun shopping together, despite his woefully boob-less state.
“Aw, five days?! But I’m angry now!!” – Homer Simpson
I’m pretty sure this is not how it worked for me, unless by “flash your boobs” you mean “flash your pristine lack of a criminal record and two forms of ID, then wait a week.” Which is exactly how my ex-boyfriend bought a Glock last time we went gun shopping together, despite his woefully boob-less state.
Restrictions on men. You’ve just proven my point.
Restrictions on men. You’ve just proven my point.
…By pointing out that the exact same restrictions apply to women?
Either your point is secretly “women and men face the same hurdles when trying to buy handguns,” or it’s “men should not have to face any kinds of hurdles when trying to buy handguns.” If it’s the latter, then your “point” about boob-flashing is totally irrelevant; if it’s the former, then we’re not actually on opposite sides here.
The MRA’s keep saying that feminists shouldn’t discuss women not having the right to vote, because that was ages ago, and is no longer relevant. Then, they’ll turn around and bring up the Titanic disaster as their proof that today’s men are considered disposable. In MRA Land, the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, which is ancient history. The Titanic disaster happened in 1912, which is apparently breaking news.
They’re teaching you to aim for the center of mass. You know who, statistically, have greater centers of mass than women and are therefore hypothetically easier to hit at seven meters with a 9mm? Men! OH THE MISANDRITY…..
Of course, in the movies James Bond is practicing on an interactive target range where cardboard mooks suddenly pop out of doors and policemen spring from concealed spaces, and 007 is only supposed to shoot the mooks. Who are always male. MRAL, do you want to complain about James Bond only shooting cardboard male mooks?
Antz: You are a liar. I googled Waldorf’s suicide. He wasn’t divorced. He wasn’t paying child support. His home wasn’t in foreclosure. His suicide is linked to war-related PTSD, and it’s not the fault of women. Here is the real story. I really hope the MRA misogynist piece of shit who appropriated Waldorf’s name and suicide of his own hateful purposes gets sued by the Waldorf family for everything he’s got.
As for the Soviet Union: You are actually citing World War -fucking- Two as an example of women being pampered? Fuck you. Fuck you very much.
We all know MRAs love to fly their abusive-boyfriend red flags, but MRAL is the worst of them. He’ll act nice and sweet one week, then turn on ‘ya. Don’t ever get in a relationship with someone like that.
“Oh, my dear little chickadee… the trick to an effective insult (bear with me, I’m trying to help you out here) is to make it something which is talking about things which are either 1: near and dear to the subject… i.e. finding a weakness and exploiting it, or 2: is a something which actually attacks the targets standing.”
Given the bloated and grotesque verbosity in this above little gem, I would say the answer to your question:
“Which of the two of us has shown a more nimble manner with words?”
… is obvious.
Anyway, it’s great that you have mastered the art of lyrical auto-eroticism, but until you can present the reasoning ability to match, colour me decidedly unimpressed.
“Rude words and airs of superiority may cut it with other men who are fragile in ego, but this is the big leagues.”
Lol. No further comment.
>>Photo or it never happened.
“Math is hard” is a direct reference to the sexist Talking Barbie (a well known pop culture reference, it was even featured on the Simpsons) and in the context of a discussion on a feminist board (that would necessarily be aware of that reference) it would be a pretty transparent trolling attempt, an implied dig at how feminists are women are bad at math, with built-in plausible deniability. And predictably you’re now all “oh where did I do that, pray tell?” about it.
I would have went with “NO U!!!”
Talk about bloated and grotesque prose.
Thanks for the dose of reality, @amused. Don’t let these creeps intimidate you. 😀
It’s ridiculously weird, yes. I mean, the past *is* important, and you can see how those narratives are still part of the construct that is a ‘Real Man’. Actually, the past is really important. But they’re not actually talking about the past in the way that it’s important. Probably because the overall social picture isn’t good for their narrative, so they’re focusing on theparts they don’t like.
What the little mediocrity did is pretty classic for MRAs in general; they look at the few downsides they receive and whine perpetually about those injustices, while at the same time maintaining their claims to massive privilege. They generally want to be the only ones who can work without being breadwinners; they want to be the only recognized soldiers without being valid for a draft. They want men to win 50% of custody cases without actually raising the kids before then. Ad nauseum.
MRAL on the other hand, has voluntarily entered Milkboy’s parallel universe. I guess he wants to be just like him.
I guess disagreeing with majority is “turnin’ on ya”. I think it’s you who are the abuser, emotionally. Don’t ever get into a relationship with one of those assholes who shames you into sycophantic behavior.
That’s disgusting. Lying about a dead man just so they could blame everything on women? Fuck. That’s really below even their usual level of scumbaggery.
It also means they erased the very real problem–and it’s more often a men’s problem!–of soldiers with PTSD. This is an area where they could actually help instead of blame, and instead they decided to ignore it and blame women instead.
That and the “this wouldn’t be happening if you’d treated me right” bent to it all. He insists on framing his story (as many MRAs do) as “a nice guy pushed to desperate measures,” and that’s a very, very dangerous mindset.