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).
You want me to recount the rise of every tribe across the globe for you? Go read a fucking book. A good place to start would be the scandinavian countries, wherein women and men *were* equal until the Christianization of the region. It turns out that more important than the fact that women were perfectly capable leaders and pillagers is convincing them that the sacred, ordained place for them is in the home.
Ami – In some eras and places Arabs have oppressed Jews and in others Jews have oppressed Arabs. How are we going to know which of those groups was oppressed because their natural inferiority allowed them to be? Confusing stuff.
Also, if men are oppressed right now that’s because men are inferior. I mean, how else could they have allowed this to happen?
efasfas: @ Holly Pervocracy
I’m dim! Great.
Admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery
If I’m so dim can you tell me about different muscle fibers. Or do you have to go to wikipedia or your Feminist textbook.
You want to talk about the gross differences between fast/slow twitch? Are you perhaps interested in the ability of soe molluscs to use very slow twitch fibers to attain long-term, very strong, contractions with almost no cost? Perhaps the ways in which the really long, but not, “fast” muscles of the cephalopoda to get incredibly speedy contraction of their tentacles?
Or are you interested in the relative rates of bulk? Perhaps you want to talk about the relative mass between individuals?
Yes there are some women that are stronger then some men. If you can picture with your progressive brain then that makes a suitable argument for deconstructing sports segregation based on gender. After all they both overlap. Or could it be that the overlap isn’t as wide as you think.
You got proof of that 50% mark? No? Then be quiet.
She gave a proof. A mathematical one, having to with the known distribution of relative strength in groups being a parallel bell curve. That being true (it is) all the rest follows.
Have you got an actual refutation? No. Then be quiet.
See above, about you being a trifle dim.
esfasfas: When were you in the Navy/Marine Corps/Coast Guard (those are the services which have boot camp).
I’ll wager you weren’t, and you say, “boot camp” because that’s the memorable phrase from the movies.
Because, for all you mock it, Basic does do a moderate amount about talking about feelings. Line units do it too, because having your friends get killed is hard. Bottling up your emotions isn’t great for people. There are different opinions on this (George MacDonald Fraser, for one, is derisive of it, in “Quartered Safe Out Here but he is from a different age/different war, and the ways in which things were done were different.
I can only speak to the modern Army, and we talk about shit, because being closed up about it to end up suicidal. John Keegan, the instructor of Military History at Sandhurst, has some interesting insights as to what battle looked like across the ages, in “The Face of Battle“, where he compares Agincourt, Waterloo and The Somme. Any of Lyn MacDonald’s (no relation to Fraser) works on WW1 will give some ideas too.
Paul Fussell, in either, Doing Battle or, “Wartime” (the latter of which Fraser derides a review of, because it seems the reviewer is too fond of the idea that being in a war is traumatising), talks about WW2, as he saw it, and as other discussed it.
Sassoon, or Blunden’s poetry, and the letters between Sassoon and Owen were all about, “talking about it”.
In short, you don’t know the least of what you are talking about on this subject.
@ Pecunium
No nit wit. I cut and paste with the entire post. I just am trying to respond to everyone and the post wouldn’ve been too long
Think before you post.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BlsLZY4Qci8/TSOXXYQGBdI/AAAAAAAABUY/V9oKVZ0uhuk/s1600/liefeld_cap.jpg
Men according to efas ^
http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxnj0hbgGY1r34y4ho1_500.png
Women ^
Translation: You didn’t like what they had to say, but had no actual arguments or understanding of what you were talking about, so you assumed the problem was on them.
Would you like some Dunning in your Kruger?
And I apoligise for the lack of quotations from the sources I referred to, and to a lack of specifics on the issues of muscle, I didn’t have the time to actually look anything up, and was going on memory.
There aren’t any differences in muscles based on gender.
There are some differences in muscle mass based on sex, but these differences are smaller than the differences between an athlete and a non-athlete of either sex.
@ Ami Angelwings
“I’m just asking you xD Because you said that being manipulated means that you must have some inherent weakness. xD
What about emotional torture? Can I torture you despite being physically weaker than you? xD Torture isn’t necessarily a physical act, and even when it is it isnt about who is physically stronger than the other in terms of musculature o_O”
You sure are right now babe. Ha ha.
Holly Pervocracy | January 31, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Ami – In some eras and places Arabs have oppressed Jews and in others Jews have oppressed Arabs. How are we going to know which of those groups was oppressed because their natural inferiority allowed them to be? Confusing stuff.
Also, if men are oppressed right now that’s because men are inferior. I mean, how else could they have allowed this to happen?
They’re ALLLLLL INFERIOR!!!! Even men. Nobody is as intelligent, emotionally stable and physically powerful as Efas! XD
@ Ami Angelwings
“http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BlsLZY4Qci8/TSOXXYQGBdI/AAAAAAAABUY/V9oKVZ0uhuk/s1600/liefeld_cap.jpg
Men according to efas ^
http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxnj0hbgGY1r34y4ho1_500.png
Women ^”
This is supposed to allude to what?
I don’t dig comic porn. If that is your thing, no judgement.
I think he’s having so much fun he’s snapping XD
You should click on my website
efasfas: What is with you that if I respond to you I didn’t rest my case?
Because to rest one’s case means one is done, compete, finished: there is nothing more to say, case closed.
If you are responding, then Q.E.D., you weren’t actually resting your case.
Thank you Pecunium :3 I knew I could count on you to explain it to him
@ Pecunium
No she didn’t give proof. Saying 50% isn’t proof.
It is called sarcasm. We ain’t talking about other animals dumb. Get with the program.
Go suck on this.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/l47235487q162675/
*sighs and goes to get the broom*
Leigh Steinberg is filing for bankruptcy? D: that would have been a bad ending to Jerry Maguire :
It is called sarcasm. We ain’t talking about other animals dumb. Get with the program.
Go suck on this.
xD
*clicks the stopwatch*
@ Ami Angelwings
I really wish he’d respond faster…I want to know his worldview already xD It’s prolly the strangest and most hilarious since NWOslave’s giant conspiracy theory xD
Sorry to disappoint you honey.
Perhaps I have smarter friends but most of the information I have received via Facebook has checked out as accurate. No one has ever sent me inFOmation though.
@ Ami Angelwings
Because I don’t have an account. Being slow meaning intellectually. Not typing.
efasfas: And someone who is able to torture does so because of some advantage.
But that advantage is rarely physical. It’s almost always structural; the victim is held against his/her will. Or do you think the people being tortured in Gitmo are staying there because they are physically weak?
efas: No nit wit. I cut and paste with the entire post. I just am trying to respond to everyone and the post wouldn’ve been too long
My dear boy, think about selecting just the important points, and using them. It will reduce the confusion you are laboring under, and make the responses you finally get around to making much more coherent.