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).
JohnnyBB – I also notice what they DON’T complain about–which is anything they can’t blame women for.
Men’s higher suicide rate is a legit problem, for example, but MRAs don’t talk about it except as part of a list of Ways We’ve Been Done Wrong, because addressing that would require them to take pro-man action instead of anti-woman. (It also involves a lot of queer men and boys, and the MRM’s deep ties to homophobia and transphobia won’t allow that.)
All of the pressure on men to fit extremely narrow masculine social roles is a huge problem, but dealing with that head-on would require them to accept feminine/androgynous men and femininity/androgyny into their culture, and they’re way too invested in showing off and reinforcing their masculinity.
The MRM has a big ol’ blind spot for any problem that can’t be fixed by drowning women.
I don’t think “male disposability” is a real thing. I think “women and children first” comes from ideas of male competence–that men can go last because they can “take care of themselves” but women should be first because the poor dears need a little extra help.
It’s the same reason armies have been traditionally composed of men–not because they thought the men were disposable, but because they thought they were stronger and could fight better.
@Holly
Exactly, it’s all part and parcel of Poor disposability
On top of that, it was other men making those decisions. There were women who would enforce it but ultimately it was men making the determination that other men could be put in harm’s way.
The captain of the Titanic was not a woman-it was a man. So how exactly are women to blame for that decision again?
Esp. because it was men who decided the lifeboats weren’t really needed.
So, basically … Costa Concordia ran aground because of feminism? The (male) captain abandoned his passengers because of feminism? Evacuation for ALL was delayed to the point where some boats could not be lowered and people had begun drowning because of feminism?
Oh heeeeey, look who’s baaaack :-/.
@Shadow, I think Manblob Vs Womanblob should have been a cheesy 50s horror film. It’s The Blob meets The Bride of Frankenstein meets Mothra vs Godzilla.
I do think that it is a real thing in some situations, but more on the level of a “side effect” rather than “the driving force behind” that MRAL seems to think it is.
@You all: Tsk, you are disagreeing with MRAL’s theory of the world which is that males like him are totally disposable, and it’s all cruel and evil, and all the things women complain about really come down to male disposability, and it’s his life, and how dare we disagree with him.
All the rest of history and culture and experiences which contradict his “what I’ve seen in my life” are completely unimportant and unreal and not really important.
I get so bloody sick of the “women and children first meme” by asshats who don’t realize that everybody in steerage including women and children were NOT given access and as far as I recall (I’m almost done with lunch break) actively barred from the lifeboats. The chivalry issue which strikes MRAL as the most terrible thing ever was completely and totally classist, and NEVER applied to the majority of women (women of color, working class women, poor women, MOST OF THE WOMEN).
I’m adopting the “that’s nice, dear” plan with our returnee from now on.
“Women and children first” is a statement about women’s lack of competence – it’s literally putting women’s ability to take care of themselves on a par with that of children. Which is indeed sexist, just not in the way that MRAs think. I’m not sure how even they can take the rantings of a conservative journalist about chivalry as signs of a feminist conspiracy, but MRAs work in mysterious and not very logical ways.
Reminds me of the scene between Rose, her mother, and Cal in the James Cameron movie (and yes, I do realize that the movie is a work of fiction, not a docu-drama)
ROSE: Oh, Mother, shut up! Don’t you understand? The water is freezing and there aren’t enough boats…not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die!
CAL: Not the better half.
No, Ithiliana, take a look at the Titanic’s survival rates. More (quite a bit more) women survived in the third class (way in the depths of the ship, where it was hard to even find the deck) than did men in the first class, where the deck was right next door. Women- all women- received extremely preferential treatment, which back in the day I suppose was to be expected, due to a combination of the concept of women’s incompetence and the concept of male disposability. These days, we’ve only done away with one of those concepts, but clearly it’s enough to rattle the Women First! real life meme. Unfortunately, not enough to prevent pro-men-dying articles after the fact.
And again, I point to the OUTRAGE re. women being shunted aside, and the relative silence re. the children. I think it’s because some children are male.
Too bad Cal was wrong (well, half wrong).
http://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm
First Class, Male Survival Rate: 32.57%
Third Class, Female Survival Rate: 46.06%
And for fun:
First Class, Female Survival Rate: 97.22%
I’m getting angry just thinking about it. In my opinion, the Corcordia is a goddamn miracle of God. I only wish the pro-men-dying articles were treated as the hate speech they are.
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.
Ooh… I know people to whom this has happened. It is the worst thing.
I think the real issue isn’t actually supposed to be about whether women, children or men get to go first, but that everyone is evacuated in as orderly and efficient a manner as possible. From browsing around, that seems to be how it is indeed supposed to happen in the real world.
I believe the reason they abandoned “women and children first” wasn’t because of feminism, but because it caused families to be ripped apart. I’m willing to stand corrected on that.
@ithiliana
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Steerage passengers on the Titanic were not locked below deck, and they were not prevented from reaching the lifeboats. The fact that fewer steerage passengers survived than first or second class passengers (and fewer second class passengers than first class passengers), percentage-wise, has a lot to do with the location of their cabins and the fact that the emergency occurred late at night, when a lot of people had already settled in. This is still a factor when ships sink: the lower the deck, the cheaper the cabins — but being below decks means much longer time to access the lifeboats, particularly when you factor in the limited exit points and crowding. This is a consideration even today, if you book a cruise: lower decks have less safety in the event of a sinking, just like higher floors in a high rise have less safety in the event of a fire.
Of course, on the Titanic, although many steerage passengers survived, the likelihood of survival was still much more strongly linked to class than to gender — so the gist of what you said is correct. Although female survivors outnumbered male ones within each class of passengers, first class male survivors far outnumbered steerage female survivors.
Time to dismantle one “man boobz” bigot.
“So MRAs would like us to return to a time when women had no skills …”
Hey female-lawyer, are you capable of rational thought?
Consider Laura Wood, the “Thinking Housewife” and self-styled champion of men and traditional masculinity. Here is what Wood thinks about the sinking of the Costa Concordia:
“Men must take care of women precisely to prevent women from feeling the need to take care of themselves; a woman who feels the need to take care of herself is exactly what a feminist is.”
If MRAs wanted women back in the kitchen, you might think that we would admire a traditional stay-at-home mother like Wood, especially given her record of anti-feminism and vocal support of men and traditional masculinity.
Think again. Here is what the MRM thinks of traditionalist groups that want women back in the kitchen:
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/02/19/a-response-to-the-hysterical-housewife/
Here is one quote about Laura Wood, for those of you (all of you?) who are too lazy to go see for yourselves:
“She is worthless, untouchable filth. She should have been aborted with a chainsaw.”
I challenge you to find anything that has ever been said by any Spearhead poster about feminists that is as angry as this. Keep in mind that Wood is a self-described champion of traditional female roles, an anti-feminist, and a defender of men.
Please understand, I do NOT agree with this violent, terrible quote. However, I think it is time for you man-boobz cheerleaders to be slightly less embarrassingly misinformed as you continue your bigoted quest.
When you accuse MRAs of wanting to “put women in the kitchen”, you betray your own stupidity and ignorance.
Now, you can thank me for enlightening you.
MRAL, nobody here is arguing that women should be given preferential treatment in emergencies. I’m glad that “women and children first” thinking has been left behind in the days of the Titanic (although children should always be first). Who are you arguing with?
Anyway, it’s amazing that whenever a horrific accident or disaster occurs, you never see people on feminist sites cracking jokes about and/or pornographically describing the male victims’ deaths. Can we point Zarat or NWO to this post the next time they come on with their “hate movement” goofiness?
Oh, wait, he’s already here. Hi, Zarat!
Hi, bigot.
MRAL, that’s nice dear. You’re angry, go away.
I’m arguing that the concept- which apparently is still alive today, given the rash of pro-men-dying articles- is a result of the concept of male disposability, and in my opinion it is essentially a manifestation of hate speech, no different than if the KKK had a stranglehold on American politics. I’m not even kidding, think about it. What if the crew had tried to keep black passengers until last? Or hell, even the other way around?
MRAL, why are you so angry over sexism that happened 100 years ago? We live in a revolutionized sexual culture. No one here agrees with the practices on the Titanic.
And, honestly, how on earth is what happened on the Titanic in any way relevant to modern day gender discussions? It was a story of engineering hubris, but sexism.