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).
There you go again, Ami, using your strange Earth logic. XD
He’s kind of a walking counter to his own arguments, isn’t he?
“Talking about feelings is useless!”
“Mad? I’m not mad. Why the #@% would you think I’m mad?”
“I don’t understand why my leaving multiple ranty comments in which I get increasingly testy about the fact that people just refuse to see the obvious correctness of my position would make anyone think that I was upset.”
Is this troll worth scrolling back to read the earlier comments? I could use some laughs tonight.
Eh, not really, unlike you find bad grammar particularly amusing.
Unless, not unlike. Please remember that alcohol and typing don’t mix, kids.
Ok, I’ll give it a pass then. Too much bad grammar triggers headaches for me.
Thanks, Cassandra!
efasfas: Again, a skinny white man bitch (saw your profile about how you broke your ankle–trifle dim) who talks–no glamours–about being frustrated that I don’t take time just to focus should, by and large, shut the fuck up and deal with it.
Right. Because having a branch grab your ankle at 20 MPH on 600 lbs of motorcycle is so… what… weak? Silly? Unmanly?
As to, “talks no glamours about being” frustrated means. As to your not taking time to focus… I don’t care. I’m not the one with problems being understood. I’m not “frustrated” that you are being foolish. It’s pretty much par for the course with people who fail to take the time to write clearly. They blame their lack of clarity on an attempt at speed. That’s folly. It’s also a sign that one is letting one’s emotions take charge. The need to respond,now takes over from the desire to respond well.
If you can’t cope with that, well my boy, accept suck it up, if you don’t care about being taken for a fool, that’s not my problem, is it?
So far, consistent. Coordinated doesn’t have a hyphen. And, you shouldn’t put entire sentences in parentheses. Parentheses are used to explain certain ideas, not further riddle with sentences. The commas got raped too much, and you don’t know when you to exactly use it. Basically, my English teachers would’ve given you a F for being such a failure.
Which is neither here nor there to the conversation. If my English is less than perfect, I can blame it on French and Russian (which is terrible for encouraging one in the use of parenthetical asides, the glory of каторий, in everyday life). As to co-ordinated and hyphens, the use of them in duplicate letterings is allowed, and I am consistent with it, so again, your ideas of what your English teachers would say isn’t of great concern to me. The one’s whom I cared about gave me high marks.
Gee, statistical smart ass, how do you factor in these social constructs? What mathematical equation do you use? Social constructionism (with such small empirical evidence) has no actual validity other then a few sparse experiments that where badly run by marxist hippies during the 1960s?
Ah… but you are the one making the posistive assertion, and you are mistaking the point of Huck Finn. That Twain was able to paint the picture, and everyone who read it understood it as a practical means is the point. The social cosntructs was extant, and Twain used it. It mapped to the real world Which was the point. But Goldman’d world doesn’t so map. It’s not that your example was fictional, it’s that it was false.
Simple idiots like me? Have never taken a biology course… I refer you to my earlier response on the nature of different muscles; across different species. Again, I refer you to my writing, and the role of nurture. Somethings (breathing) are instinctive, others, (throwing a ball) are not. I’ve played baseball with Brits. None of them (male or female) was any good at throwing the ball. They’d never been taught.
Now if you’re going to be a little white man bitch and whine about grammar, please don’t italicize what I write and then italicize all your quote. If you want to re-quote what you wrote you should put it in quotations marks. Quotations marks are for quoting. Just being picky.
Be picky and whine about my stylistic choices all you want. It changes nothing about the content. And none of the reductive aspects of what muscles do has anything to do with how they are used. You might be instructed were you to have Hayashi-sensei, give you a small lesson in how muscles work in practice (she’s 5′ tall, and can, almost certainly, take you to town).
But, you’ve had your fun. You aren’t upset at all. You don’t respond to more than half the argument… and never did. You, of course, aren’t upset at all… that’s why you use derogation, and suddenly start whipping out attempts at latinate precision; and references to your, implicit, expertise in the classroom. Yep, not a single bit of this has pricked your tough and manly hide. Even if it had you’d just, suck it up, not let it affect you.
Right.
If I had too constantly repeat what I’m trying to tell you and you continue regress back to your 50/50 argument about how men and women would, of course, be unequal due to the random sampling where 5 point different is key in the prof sphere, then I don’t want to hear that from you.
Awe… diddums. The problem is you keep 1: bringing it up, and 2: being wrong. It’s not that I care to bring it up, but that you keep insisting on talking about it (sort of letting your emotions show, to all the world; that’s a bit of weakness, and someone might choose to exploit it).
Ellipses, as with other aspects of orthographic usage, are objects in perennial flux (unless, of course, one is a die-hard prescriptivist). As a means of showing rhetorical pause, they (as with the use of “they” in the indirect singular, English lacking a neuter pronomial form), go back quite some ways (to at least Austen), and are quite commonly so used in the rapid conversations which take place on the internets. Do try to keep up with the times.
As to the rest, not much better. “It was just an analogy”…. I suggest you take that to your English instructors, and see what they say about the way it’s structuted and the usefulness of it.
Assuming that someone is keeping someone else to stay, use of force is necessary. The person with the strongest use of force wins. It also means someone who has some intellectual advantage to out smart a prison guard escape. As these two forces collide the one with the advantages that outweigh–or out preform–wins through some means of a prison break or subduing.
But that’s not what you said before. Before it was all “the strong person will leave.” Now it’s that force can be used to compel them. You, however, ignored my questions content (why they were staying) and chose to spew nonsense about why they had been apprehended. The point was, simple size/strength aren’t the keys to keeping someone captive, nor are they key to defeating their will. There are structural aspects to that as well (as the US Army Field Manual on interrogation makes perfectly plain).
So, as you are done, run along, and play with the other children.
Bad grammar and even worse logic.
With this one it’s best to just skim his comments. If you actually read them in detail the pretzel logic will make your head hurt.
Hey efasfas, how do people stay in jail? I mean, there are thousands of prisoners in a jail and not that many wardens and guards in comparison. Do you think it’s because all of the prisoners are weaker and stupider than the people guarding them?
Christ on a stick, for how stupid this kid is, and how much he insists other people didn’t pay attention in classes (Hey kid, I already pointed you to some history you clearly know nothing about), he clearly slept through English. This is the second worst writing we’ve gotten out of a native speaker.
http://www.marna.ca/files/website%20files/terryfilesdonotdelete/biopic.jpg
Scary man indeed. I’ll run off now.
And this picture tells us what, exactly?
(Wow, this one is stupid even by troll standards.)
I’m betting on that being some sort of attempt to “Gotcha” Pecunium.
Maybe he’s going to go the Things Are Bad route, and post a picture of his own dashing, handsome self to prove that he is right about everything. Or something.
You morons are such geniuses. That’s a picture of Pecunium “IRL” as you kiddies would say. In other words: he just owned you.
Again, what does a picture of Pecunium have to do with anything?
Um, it’s proves that he’s skinny? And a white guy? Which we all knew already, but I guess it means… something?
His haircut proves that feminists are misandrous, and his shirt proves that all cruise ships still evacuate just like the Titanic. Clearly the picture provides relevant and useful information.
Somebody above mentioned the sports agent Leigh Steinberg. Do you know why he filed for bankruptcy? Because he suffered from alcoholism brought on by his divorce. I notice nobody mentioned that when it was brought up. Telling, isn’t it?
Or, he’s proven how keeping your personal information private (rather than talking about it like women and manginas do) means nobody can target it.
It tells me that I’ve gotten under his skin. He’s gone digging some to find things about me, and his response to my critique is… “you aren’t built like Vin Diesel”. That’s not news to me, and no secret from the rest of the world.
He could have gone for something like this and tried to mock me for needing such a large knife.
He might have gone for this and made fun of someone so effete as to have a decanter, a campaign hat and a sword in the photo, while having so meagre a beard, and narrow a mustache.
That, of course, would have required imagination. He could have used photos of me in uniform. He could have found the self-portraits from when I was about to be evacuated, when I looked like shit, and asked if that was what a “strong soldierly type” looks like.
He could have called me effeminate, were he to use photos of me in Court Garb from the Faire, or in Dickensian clothing from Dickens. It wouldn’t have mattered to me, because I don’t know efasfas from Adam, and it’s not as if his low opinion of me is 1: a surprise, or 2: of import.
As usual, the internet bravo has failed to think about the target of his ire; he hasn’t managed to find the weakness in my psyche. Having failed in one attack (on my commas and parenthetical usage), he is reaching for insults of my manhood (“whiny bitch“, and what I look like), without paying attention to my having been comfortable talking about those things, and posting those photos. I am what I am. I know what I am, and what I am doesn’t bother me.
I wonder if the same can be said for him.
Kind of OT, but what is that knife for?
Cassandra: It’s a cimeter (the name is derived from scimitar), and it’s used to take some prime cuts off of quarters, and to break subcuts, (and portions) from prime cuts.
Here’s a shot of it in in action, and here’s a shot of the finished product
If you add the http to this (://pics.livejournal.com/pecunium/pic/0004e26t), you can get some perspective to the size of the prime cuts I was breaking down.