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).
Yawn, another issue that MRAs whine about but don’t care about-boat safety.
In the Coast Guard they taught us how to do CPR on women and children, and also how to imitate doing it on men so bystanders would think we tried, instead of just laughing and letting them die.
@Pecunium,
CB: To be fair to White Star, they didn’t have the materials science to know the significant brittle-making effect the cold water would have on the hull.
But they did knowingly use rivets that were subpar even by the standards of the time.
I can’t seem to copy and paste the NYT link on my phone, but there’s an article from 2008 that makes this argument.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/17/todays-letters-our-forces-toy-role-models-should-be-of-both-genders/
Re: Heroes Force’ 100% Canadian, Joe O’Connor, Jan. 14.
I’d like to thank Shannon Thibodeau for representing our Canadian heroes with the Heroes Force action figures. Our children need to recognize the Armed Forces as a vital aspect of our country; playing with Canadian action figures will foster national pride.
I just hope that Mr. Thibodeau can produce a second line of figures, featuring the women of the Armed Forces. I know that I would love to purchase a female Canadian Forces action figure for my niece, whose aunt is a chaplain in the Army. Canada is a nation with a policy of equal access and full gender integration in its Armed Forces. Let us hope to have a series of action figures that represents this policy as well.
Mary Frances Jung, Toronto.
Strange, I thought being in the army was proof of how much we hate men and that we don’t want women to join, and mothers CERTAINLY wouldn’t want to encourage their daughters and nieces to join, and how could women be asking for female military action figures to inspire future female soldiers? O_O
This woman is almost talking as if it’s an honour in Canada to be part of the military. As if, we have tributes, and politicians talk glowingly of soldiers, their sacrifice and national pride… but… but… I thought we spat on soldiers and celebrated their deaths? o: That’s why the military and men are tied together right? And the reason most soldier figures are male is because being a soldier is a dishonourable duty and we hate men right? o:
MRAL: But it might be a more pleasant place overall without, well, you assholes.
Then WHY are you still here!
I don’t go read and post at MRA blogs or forums.
I don’t go read and post as feminist blogs I disagree with (and even besides Hugo’s, there are some).
All of us assholes would prefer if you went off to find some people you want to hang out with who might actually like hanging with you and stop playing the faux victim card here.
WHY don’t you stay away as you keep implying you will?
HINT: When I am tired of reading on the internet and want to go to bed, I just go–I don’t announce it everywhere–anybody who understands the basic internet knows you don’t have to announce every move. Announcing that you are LEAVING and then weaseling back and saying you just meant that thread is a dick move.
I found AntZ in Animal Crossing!! O_O
http://imgur.com/ySNBA
I know you’ve already responded to this, but I have to add my reasoned commentary:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
So funny. Can’t breathe.
I didn’t quite trust the Christmas miracle, as I remembered the “I’d like to gouge out her left eye” far too clearly. Welcome back MRAL, welcome back. Now with even more whining.
MRAL: Ya know, if you weren’t who you are, I’d be willing to talk about the extent to which the post-capitalist consumer behemoth global corporations which are (to my perhaps jaundiced eyes) outweighing national governments in scope and power consider ALL FUCKING HUMAN BEING disposable.
TPTB don’t give a flying fuck about any of us.
The problem with having that discussion with you is that you’re so farking solipsistic and narcissistic that you don’t really give a damn about anybody but you: you don’t care about other men (you haven’t called the posters here you know are male Alpha Fucking Dicks that can recall–but that may have slipped my mind–so many trolls, so little originality, but you don’t exactly who any awareness of the very real oppressions that many men face in a kyriarchical system). You sure as hell don’t care about women who all have it better than you. You truly don’t see anybody here as real except yourself–I’m not sure I even buy the “oh poor me” lip quiver woobie act you’re trying to put on as reflecting anything other than “Q didn’t work to manipulate them, so let’s try C.”
No, you’re not a speshul snowflake deserving of all that is good.
Yes, life is fucking unfair.
Yes, most people around you probably don’t give a damn if you live or die–why should they? What have you ever done to make anybody care about whether you live or die?
So what’s fucking new about that situation? You think you’re fresh and original and edge because you come up with this tired old shit again…and….again….and….again?
Derailing the cat thread into DOGGIES: right now, I have a chubby chocolate lab snoring happily by my feet. She’s a TRIPLE rescue dog: about six years ago, we found her soaked, on the highway, in a horrble rain storm (Sorry for those of you who read this on my LJ already, but um, just skim down!). It took us about ten days, but we found her people. YAY, happy.
A few years later, we found her on the road again–confirmed it was the same people-they said “oh we’ve been trying to get rid of her, you can keep her.”
We had too many cats and dogs at that point to keep her, so we found her a lovely home.
Downside, the woman is moving to California, and so we have Katie back: she has to be indoors (she was indoor dog, and our other two dogs would probably kill her to preserve the pack territory).
Luckily she is good with cats: after only about 48 hours, she’s trying to lick them all and she lets them steal her food (of course our vet has told us to put her on weight reduction diet, she’s 93 pounds, needs to really lose 40, we’ll hope for 20). I’m taking her to school with me because she cannot stand by be alone and freaks out–this way, I can take her on multiple walks during the day (WEIGHT REDUCTION, and good stress reliever for me as well).
Working with a lovely chocolate lab snoring happily by your feet is rather pleasant, if nap-inducing.
Her name is Katie; we only threatened to call her “Bad Penny.” We drive by her ex-home every day and have so far nobly resisted throwing bricks at the house.
Now that I’ve read the thread, I am tempted to say, dang, waste of time on smackdown of MRAL, but then remember: 1) I type fast.
2) He’ll be baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.
Maybe this time he can make it 36 hours instead of a mere 25.
Was Goose the world’s dullest troll, or what? It’s hardly even worth telling him “Yo mamma’s so fat she can’t fit into a bag of holding.”
Not actually related, I just got reminded:
Aw, Katie sounds like a sweetheart, and she’s lucky to have turned back up to you. I hope there’s a special hell for her original owners.
Do you have pics of her?
I am sure the Spearheaders will be delighted to know that the missing (and at this point, probably dead) include an elderly woman and a 5-year-old girl.
Katz, the Goose made Brandon look smart.
No, he doesn’t. Brandon was more narcissistic, but not actually smarter. I mean, this isn’t high praise, they’re both lackwits, but let’s not get the rose-shaded glasses over yesteryear’s trolls.
CB: I recall an examination of the wreck which showed the plates splitting along the rivet line, but not the rivets shearing/popping.
It was, however, not as recent at 2008.
Ami: The only Canadian I’ve seen being less than supportive of the troops was Michael Coren (that twisted, little fuck): who spat on the achievements of Trooper Karine Blais, of the Van Doos.
@Hellkell: I do! I have them on my Livejournal (cannot tell you how much I grimace at LJ’s name).
I’m not sure if I can link to them–will give it a try!
Katz: I’d say Brandon was smarter. He knew when he was being pounded; and would just clam up, as if it wasn’t happening. It was a form of avoidance, but more intelligent a response than Geese (who couldn’t even be arsed to find a real website that insulted women; he just made one up so he could have an “edgy” link show up when one moused over).
Geese seems to think the last word = victory; even more than Brandon did.
Rats, the way it works on LJ, I get some programming that embeds the picture. That doesn’t work here (I tried a while ago), and I’m not sure how else to handle it. I dno’t have any accounts with photos, or any other accounts.
And Geese was also here to “count coup”. Now he can say he bearded the feminists in their own den and showed them who was boss.
Who will there be to say him nay?
XD
@Pecunium,
Yeah, I don’t know enough about ship building to know if the argument is valid or not, but it does appear some corners were cut in the construction, partially due to a shortage of premium iron rivets.
Wikipedia, FWIW, tells me that the Titanic actually had more life boats than was then required by law for a ship of it’s size–life boats were apportioned by tonnage, not passenger capacity. So, the tragedy was as much a failure of regulation as anything else. The Invisible Hand didn’t come through on this one. Color me unsurprised.
BREAKING NEWS: My kitty is trolling my husband. She is lying on his keyboard typing “lololololololol…”
If Goose brags on the internet, and no feminists are around to contradict him, is he still a shallow, pretentious mediocrity?