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).
BlackBloc:
“an implied dig at how feminists are women are bad at math”
Sheesh. Not only are you bad at math, it seems basic English is beyond your grasp too. Not that I’m particularly surprised.
Well, what little candy there was in this one has been knocked out. I was hoping for some sense of reflective self-awareness, but even that was missing.
When Brandon is looking the soul of introspection by comparison…
Geese
Your mother is so fat she has mass whether or not the Higgs boson exists!
Breakdown:
Me being “nice”: When David posts an article I find hilarious or reprehensible, and concur with the majority, ie, most of the A Voice for Men stuff, Bardamu, the Spearhead.
Me being “abusive”: When David posts something I don’t find as objectionable, and I say so.
IMO, I am the victim here.
Alas, poor Geese Howard! I knew him, Man Boobz: a fellow of infinite stupidity, of most deplorable insults: he hath bored me with his repartee a dozen times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. There hung those lips that muttered “sugartits” I know not how oft. Where be your jeers now? Your strawmans? Your flashes of idiocy that were wont to set all eyes on a roll? Not one now, to mock your own sneering? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to Futrelle’s chamber, and tell him, let him post a page full, to the Spearhead he must come; make him laugh at that.
And that is how you paraphrase Hamlet.
Xardoz:
“I would have went with “NO U!!!””
Hmmm… ya think? Lemme try…
NO U!!!
Dunno about this. Seems a bit valley-girlish, no? What do the rest of you think?
No you are not the victim anywhere. You are being a spoiled brat and again, go away.
When have I ever said “this wouldn’t happen if you treated me right”? That’s more bullshit. I’m not admitting to any wrongdoing at all, only that I often get dogpiled for being completely innocuous.
If you all weren’t assholes, I’d still disagree and act the same way. But it might be a more pleasant place overall without, well, you assholes.
*applauds Lauralot*
Well played Laura. I’ve never been able to master that sort of pastiche.
Butbutbutbutbut … he’s French? Aren’t you impressed?
MRAL, your “poor little me” narrative only holds if one ignores the overwhelming majority of your behavior on here. Which you have clearly opted to do.
Lauralot:
“Alas, poor Geese Howard! I knew him, Man Boobz: a fellow of infinite stupidity, of most deplorable insults: he hath bored me with his repartee a dozen times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. There hung those lips that muttered “sugartits” I know not how oft. Where be your jeers now? Your strawmans? Your flashes of idiocy that were wont to set all eyes on a roll? Not one now, to mock your own sneering? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to Futrelle’s chamber, and tell him, let him post a page full, to the Spearhead he must come; make him laugh at that.
And that is how you paraphrase Hamlet.”
By trying too hard, you mean?
I’m only seeing one try-hard here.
Hey mral how many women were IN Vietnam. Apparently ‘colateral damage’ and rape as a weapon of war don’t count coz they weren’t enlisted. Even though women in war zones would be better in the military what with the training and weapons. Oh go google the history of women fighting in wars, I assure you Boudica will not dissapoint.
Do you not remember spending months vacillating between “You bitches are horrible because you FUCK ALPHA FUCKS. FUCK WOMYNZ.”, to “Life is so hard for me I’m a socially awkward male and I’m going to therapy, so things will get better” before going back to “You bitches Her Royal Highnesses are just gashes, fuck you”? Because I promise you, everyone else here does.
My favorite part of it, personally, was how you kept doing the ASLDHGFLHKASDLRAFTCLANS rage typing until Shaenon laughed at you for it, saying she wasn’t scared. Then it never happened again. All revealing that, just like every other instance of ASLDGHALKDHLARAFTCLANS rage typing*, you were in perfect control and merely pretending to have rage issues you couldn’t help.
*that I’ve ever seen anyway. Sorry, you don’t consistently manage a “FUCKYOU” in the middle of your ragegibberish unless you’re doing it on purpose. Kinda like how mine always has RAFTCLANS at the end because it’s not real either.
You are never nice, because you’ve never acknowledged or made any amends for your past (and indeed present) here of attacking women and abuse survivors and pretty much anyone who crosses your path.
When you agree with David, I’m willing to sort of ignore you, but when you get all “disagreeing” (which is to say being a complete woman-hating ass), that’s way too far.
Aw, and nobody ever called you an ALPHA FUCK BITCH or told you that your traumatic life events never happened! Nobody ever threatened violence against members of your gender for tiny slights!
POOR FUCKIN’ VICTIM.
But you think that, MRAL. Keep thinking of yourself as a sweet fella pushed to desperate measures. “She made me do this, you don’t know how much she made me suffer, a man can only take so much…” practice those words because if you keep thinking this way you’re going to be saying them in court.
Also, please leave this website. Just leave. We do not want to be your friends and you do not have a good reason to be here. If you don’t want to just be another NWO, another sad little man ranting about a world he spends almost no time in, FUCKING GO. It’s your only hope.
You should not be involving yourself in gender issues, MRAL. You don’t have the education or the cool head to speak well about them so instead you spout off like an asshole, then use it as an excuse for rage when people don’t love your spoutings. If you’re not a feminist and you don’t want to be a troll, get off Manboobz. It is not a good place for you and you are not a good person for it.
@Amused
You should google “purple heart’s final beat” and then repeat your filthy lies.
Geese,
Yo mama’s so broke, she’s been classified as a quasicrystal.
Lauralot:
“I’m only seeing one try-hard here.”
Yup. Me too.
MRAL: You aren’t being completely innocuous.
Let me make a comparison:
The Titanic. You are using it to support an opinion you have about the present day.
Manboobz for the past six months; people here are using it to form an opinion about the present day.
You have a history. It’s a history of being unpleasant, abusive,and (self-admitted) engaging in foul behavior just to get a response.
You are not stupid. You know that people here don’t agree with your theory about “male disposability” (though I have to say I like it a little better than the “greek system” it’s replaced). So making comments which rely on us treating that theory as true, aren’t innocuous, and they aren’t even innocent.
If you want to talk about it, you are going to face resistance. You are going to be asked to support your arguments, and; barring some really strong evidence, you are not going to convince anyone of the conclusions you reach.
Not because the baseline theory is utter crap, but because it can’t support the positions you are asking it to carry. Whining that people disputing you is unfair, is a fast track to scorn; which is a direct result of that, recent, history I alluded to in the beginning.
Bostonian:
Got any salmon?
I think it’s you who are the abuser, emotionally.
In what ways do you believe the people here are abusing you?
Are you emotionally hurt by your interactions here? :
I say again, I’m focusing on American culture because that’s what I know, not because I think the Vietnamese “don’t matter”. I have issues with the male disposability narrative that is rampant in American culture. The pedestalization of women adds to it, but really, the main thing is male disposability, the perception that men are worthless expendable pawns in society.
Notice how this thread has become the MRAL thread all over again xD