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).
Efasfas:
“Well Pecunium I did looked back on here. You live in LA (with your 5′ killing machine friend). Want to meet?
Or are you too scared?”
That has to be the funniest thing I’ve heard all week! The stupid is strong in this one.
Darksidecat:
I picture you more as Sekhmet. You know, sharp claws, great big fangs, lashing tail, drinking rivers of blood shed from wicked humanity…
But on a good day you get to be Bast, curl up and purr at everyone.
Happy:
“@ Ami
Yes, it’s almost like they staged the entire registry of actual female criminals in order to publicly describe some other women as “bigots” and “corrupt public officials”. It’s nothing more than a happy coincidence that some of these “featured offenders” are high profile names and might draw some attention to their sad little website. But that couldn’t be, noble soldiers in the gender war would never, nay COULD never stoop to such a pathetic level.
Re In the Shadow Dachau
I couldn’t stop laughing when I first read that. It’s like reading a MRAs most deranged, projected fantasy.”
Hmmm…I know what you mean but some of the links to the news articles made me cry. I don’t know how they come up with the idea that because a woman was involved in the Rwandan genocide, when hundreds of thousands if not millions of men, women and children were raped and killed that it was somehow a.feminism’s fault or that b. given the chance feminists would do the same to men. There is a total disconnect here. They are manufacturing outrage and an excuse to “get us before we get them”.
I just wish that these men would just go. “Go their own way” and leave us the fuck alone. I’m beginning to think that reading their shit is just too depressing. I have a hell of a lot on my plate right now and it won’t get better any time soon and this misogynist bullshit drags me down and makes it harder to fight when it actually matters.
Sorry if I sound depressed. It’s because I am.
I’m off to read some slash, I’ll be back when I feel better.
@Quackers
From a Western perspective sure, but it’s not uncommon at all in Hinduism. Doesn’t make them any less patriarchal or sexist though, unfortunately.
@Saru Goku
Hope it’s a better tomorrow for ya
@ Saru
It is very sad that there are such disturbed people out there but try not to let it get you down. I just look at it realistically – they, literally, live on the internet. With their scatological names, masturbatory revenge fantasies and paranoid ramblings, certain disparate sections of the blogging community are the only places such creatures could live.
They amount to nothing and they know it. They have achieved nothing and they know it. They will never under the good work that feminism has done and they know it.
So they write “a body of literature” (Elam, AVfM) that would get laughed out of a high school diploma class and convince themselves that they’re changing the world.
They play toy soldiers. Don’t let them get to you. They’re scum and they know it.
@Saru Goku
I hope that you find some slash that cheers you up. Slash is my go-to for the happy too. 🙂
“[I]n our day, with the advent of feminism and the professional woman, chivalry and manners are considered stuffy and old-fashioned.”
Please please please tell me someone pointed out, in this monster of a thread, this single sentence at the very beginning. Anybody who reads this would know that it is not feminists who are promoting “women and children first,” it’s feminists who are opposing it.
Please…
Captain Bathrobe
No.
“I have run off.” It is correct in terms of proper English, however it denotes something that I just recently did (towards the present).
Whereas “I ran off” denotes something done further in the past (a couple of days not posting and being on here). Simple past vs past perfect.
Learn it, live it, love it.
hey internet tough guy XDXDXDXD
@ ozymandias42
“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people, not the radical notion that women are goddesses.”
You mean before Feminism women weren’t people? What were they if they before such a movement? Here is the crux of stupidity.
One of the very first another poster made the comment that if someone couldn’t express themselves then they weren’t a person. Which was so incredibly stupid on many levels
So I guess by your definition Queen Elizabeth the first wasn’t a person, nor was any peasant women from early Britannia. I guess the women slaves in ancient Egypt weren’t people. They must of been earthworms [this was sarcasm, for the stupid out there].
According to you, any slave or aristocrat is not a person, because your definition of a “person” is someone being treated equally. Except that isn’t how it is defined in the dictionary:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/person. It says “human being.”
That is pretty derogatory of women from the past. I thought Feminist weren’t supposed to be misogynistic?
“Women are fully capable of being assholes, of being abusive, of supporting patriarchy, of being stupid, of being anti-feminist, because women are people and people are fully capable of all the above. Also, you shouldn’t worship women because you shouldn’t worship people. We tried that. It didn’t work.”
Again, you’re equating person to personalities. Person simply means human being (from dictionary above). A human being is an is a specific organism with DNA that makes him or her part of the homo sapiens specie class. A human being has nothing to do with how one is treated.
But then, you fit well among those who also think that “intelligence isn’t physical.”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave
Now look at that.
For the definition of slave it says, ” a person held in servitude as the chattel of another.”
Now why would they use the word “person” as part of the definition of a slave?
Must be the patriarchy right now trying to control the womenz!11111!!#w!!!!!
Peoples Republic of Feminism, unite!
Again with the connotative issues (now that you, “have did looked back in here”).
The issue is one of legal personhood. If you were actually following the issues, or willing to look at the content of the comments, rather than trying for the catty comeback, and brilliant put-down (neither of which you seem to be convincing people you actually have mastery of, but that’s a topic for a separate conversation), you would probably see that.
Then again, you see to be of the, “I can cite a single example, so all the evidence for that being an exceptional case is invalid,” school of “disproving” feminism. Since this aren’t questions which are falsified with a single example (and your example of Elizabeth I is attenuated by the loss of the Kingdom of Hanover as a property of the British Empire, because Victoria as a woman, was ineligible to assume the throne).
So principles such a coverture (which was an issue for Elizabeth I, there was question as to who would actually rule should she marry, but again, that doesn’t help your case, so you gloss it).
Of course, that you are continuing to ignore my previous substantive comment to you, in lieu of pointless braggadocio; from a safe remove, also says a lot about your abilities, or lack thereof, in argument.
intelligence isn’t physical.
Care to expound on the physical aspects of intelligence?
“The theory of evolution makes the claim that species arise through gradual changes.”
You mean before the theory was around, no species arose through gradual changes?!
Efasfas’ inability to comprehend the most basic of English phrases is less than amusing.
efasfas: *sighs* Women WERE people pre-feminism, they were just often not treated AS people, but instead as chattel. This is not a hard concept to grasp. And, um, is it “people are different and sometimes people are dicks” or “you shouldn’t worship people” that you feel is falsified by the notion that “a person is a homo sapiens with DNA”? Do you feel that homo sapiens are all the same? Or perhaps that they are all not assholes? Or maybe that they should be worshiped?
BTW, I don’t agree with that at all… all fully sapient creatures, I feel, are people.
Also yay Argument From The Dictionary!
Did MRA founding father Angry Harry for for women to be farmed?
Efasfas, are you a person? You know, a real living, breathing, individual person and not somebody’s adopted character for trolling? I honestly cannot believe that a person could be as flamboyantly stupid as you are. At least NWOSlave has an excuse for his lack of reading comprehension (being divorced from reality due to his commitment to conspiracy theories). What’s your excuse?
Also you didn’t answer my question about prison. Is everyone in prison inferior to the prison guards? Why do you think prisoners stay in jail?
Wow, the trolls are creating a gigantic vacuum of stupid, aren’t they?
Reading comprehension is misandry. To liberate your mind from gynocracy, you must eschew this indoctrination of the susceptible male brain
Grammar and logic too. They are products of women’s logico-analytical mind and unsuitable for males, who have an aestetical-emotional mind.
talacaris: Ummm… I think I’ve been around MRAs too long, is that sarcasm?
It has definitely been proven (by argumentum ex culo) that womens’ and males’ minds are completely different, but equal. Thus, it is unfair to expect males to handle tasks his mind is unprepared for. A male cannot simply be espected to be as logical and reasoning as a woman
Talacris: Argumentum ex culo? Niiiiiice. 🙂
Also I assume you are being sarcastic.
Argumentum ex culo is the best, beats everything else. Only Betas or lesser would even think of using another type of argument.
I will point out that the proper form is argumentem ex cloacum.
It could of course also be argmentem via rectum.