Given the enmity towards women in general, and feminists in particular, that’s omnipresent in the manosphere, it seems logical to assume that most of the dudes lingering around MRA, PUA and MGTOW sites online would take a certain secret pleasure in seeing women suffer.
As regular readers of this blog know all too well, oftentimes the desire to see women suffer is not so secret: some MRAs and others of their ilk literally laugh at women getting cancer, declare that rapists should be given medals, openly fantasize about “beat[ing] the living shit” out of women, and tell feminists who complain about this sort of shit that they’re “so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.” (Those last two examples come from Paul Elam, one of the MRM’s most influential bloggers.) Still others send rape and death threats to outspoken women online.
But good news, folks! It turns out that not all manosphere misogynists want women to suffer. Why? Because suffering is an ineffective way to put women in their place. That, at least, is the argument of a fellow calling himself Höllenhund. In a comment on Susan Walsh’s Hooking Up Smart blog, he offered this argument:
Making women suffer wouldn’t achieve anything in itself – I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of the Manosphere would agree. Women are normally solipsistic and they fail to understand their own urges and don’t comprehend the connection between cause and effect. They’d never understand why they’re suffering in the first place.
So, basically, in his mind, women are dumber than dogs and thus harder to train. Even worse, the suffering women can sit down in the street and cry, and countless “white knights,” hoping to win their approval (and get in their pants) will rush to their aid:
Suffering only motivates them to fish for male sympathy (and thus investment) through crying and whining, to blame ‘ bad men’ for their ‘misfortune’ and thus play the game of ‘let’s you and him fight’. That’s how it has always been.
So making women suffer is largely pointless. I’d go further and say it’d actually be detrimental to men because it encourages white-knighting and intra-male competition. …
And some of the ladies even seem to sort of like it:
Not to mention the fact that many women actually seem to find some sort of twisted pleasure in suffering, that all this’d simply serve to justify more anti-male legislation and whatnot.
Poor Höllenhund doesn’t have much hope that women will ever see how totally terrible they really are
[T]he notion of making women ‘admit their faults’ is pie-in-the-sky as well. Again, I’m sure pretty much everyone in the Manosphere would agree. You have a bigger chance of seeing pigs fly.
If women are to recognize their faults in this SMP [Sexual Marketplace], they need to have a realistic picture of both their own sexuality and the SMP in the first place, plus they need to have empathy for beta males …
Er, you’re lecturing us about empathy?
Sorry, on with the rest of the sentence:
plus they need to be imbued with the sense of morality without which the very concept of ‘fault’ is meaningless.
And lecturing us about morality too?
I think we’ll sooner see Haiti become a dreaded military superpower.
I’d rather see that than live in a world in which women were so self-hating that they actually believed they were guilty of whatever unnamed sins Höllenhund attributes to them.
NOTE: I found Höllenhund’s comment because the blogger at Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Technology cited it as a prime example of the sort of brave “truth telling” that will get you banned “on feminist sites that supposedly support men.” And yes, it apparently did get poor Höllenhund banned from Hooking Up Smart. I’m not quite sure how Susan Walsh, a traditionalist devoted to slut shaming in a thousand different flavors, counts as feminist, but that’s not the point. The point is: I’m regularly accused of “cherry picking” comments from MRAs. In this case, Mr. PMAFT picked the comment for me.
These are lies from Imaginary World. There are men’s shelters, and when there aren’t, it’s because of the (NOT FEMINIST) idea that men don’t suffer DV.
I’ve never heard the thing about “havens for male abusers” ever, probably on account of how it makes zero sense.
No, I’m pretty sure the OP was about “it would be awesome to make women suffer, but they’re too stupid to learn from it anyway.” …Did you also read the OP in Imaginary World?
No ,it was not. Please go reread it. And try to comprehend it this time. Reread multiple times if need be.
It could be worthy of discussion. On a thread about that topic. But this is not that thread.
From Burgundy,
“Roscoe P Coltrane – I used to work for an organization that provided free legal assistance to survivors of domestic violence (at the time I was there, all the employees were women). Guess what we did when a man came to us after his wife tried to run him over with a car? Did we laugh at him? In fact we did not; we provided services to him, so that he could be protected.”
Actual worker with actual data. Provided services for an abused man in the real world.
What have you done Roscoe? Anything to help actual abused men in the physical world? Or are you mainly interested in the hypothetical men?
How would you know if people would support a men’s shelter or not if you’re not even trying to build one? You’ve given up before you even tried. The women’s shelters that are out there operate on a shoestring budget and the workers put their lives in danger to help the women they serve. This is the kind of dedication and hard work MRA’s will have to do if they want there to be more men’s shelters.
So far the only “work” I’ve seen from the MRM is harmful rather than helpful. They oppose the VAWA, even though it provides help to male victims. It’s up for reauthorization this year with more gender inclusive language to extend even more help to men and LGBT victims. Rather than applaud these changes, the MRA’s want to have the whole law scrapped. What good does that do for any victims?
MRA’s call and harass Avon salespeople just because they don’t like Avon for supporting the i-VAWA and selling products that raise awareness about DV and help women’s shelters. They could go out and find their own corporate sponsors to take on the cause of male victims, but instead choose to frighten Avon ladies and gentlemen.
Finally, they even called up donors for a shelter that serves the needs of male and female victims just because they didn’t like their ad campaign. The ads were supposedly misandric for showing that sometimes women are the victims of men. This is why I don’t trust MRA’s that say they are concerned about DV. Their actions speak louder than their words.
@Bostonian:
(paraphrased): “Discrimination based on sex is justified, because you’re complaining about it.”
Yes, doing something about a problem that I highlight is logically consistent. And I am. But the next time you hear someone advocating for the rights of women to receive equal treatment, please apply the same standard to them that you just applied to me (namely, “put up or shut up!”). This is a comment thread, by the way. It’s where ideas are bantered about.
““Empathy for betas” means “please fuck a NIce Guy” in MRAspeak.”
And the answer is “No”. A nice guy, sure, but not a Nice Guy, and definitely not an MRA.
Also, a beta is a fish.
“As we all know, not getting laid on demand is the worst thing that could ever happen to a guy.”
Don’t you understand that not getting laid on demand is lethal for men? This is why every man in the history of the world who ever lived is now dead, and the few still alive today will be dead eventually. It’s sciencey.
@Roscoe:
(paraphrased): “I ‘paraphrase’ people to say things they never said, and no one’s quite sure if I’m that bad at reading or if I’m lying on purpose!”
@Holly
Totally not on topic, but I just spotted this sign outside a furniture store in west LA:
http://i.imgur.com/wFcr0.jpg
First of all, who the hell are all these “alpha males” they keep whining about? It’s like a delusion a paranoid schizophrenic would come up with (no offense to these people).
@Kendra: “How would you know if people would support a men’s shelter or not if you’re not even trying to build one? You’ve given up before you even tried.”
How do you know what I’ve done? You don’t.
Bit like I said earlier, if some shelters can serve both sexes (and not just with hotel vouchers, but actually on the premises of the shelter), then I suspect that all can.
I do not think Roscoe knows what “paraphrase”means.
Roscoe, seriously, shut up. You’re helping no one. This from an actual male who has been abused himself.
I second the notion that instead of whining, you could do some actual research on F on M DV, go volunteer and face some abused people face to face.
Or are you so cowardly/paranoid about getting laughed at/targeted by some Imaginary Femenist Evil that you would rather yell at people on the internet?
But this hasn’t happened on Earth. There are no co-ed DV shelters.
(Am I wrong here? I’m welcome to counter-examples, but I really doubt I’ll get any.)
There are no co-ed DV shelters, and you know what? If there were, it would be dangerous for men, because their female abusers could track them down there!
Aren’t you at all worried about that?
I also should throw in here that I’ve produced fundraising for a women’s shelter and donated to them. Not just sat around on the Internet expressing a heartfelt wish that Somebody would do Something.
Good, go continue to do that instead of whining on here about how wrong it is that women have women shelters and men have men shelters when it comes to DV. (And men also have homeless shelters specifically for them because of their specific needs but never hear you MRAs whine about that now do we? Just those awful awful women.)
Might not want to use gender neutral pronouns when advocating a binarist system. You can say “he or she” when discussing binary separated spaces in which we are generally not made welcome.
I actually support the existence of gender neutral shelters, and this fearmongering that if men and women are housed together they can’t help but get all rapey is certainly unhelpful when it’s the same rhetoric that is used to create binary segregation systems where public accommodations exclude many non-binary people. It’s binarist and heteronormative.
Sex segregation may feel helpful to some people, but it should certainly not be the default of be used as an excuse to deny services in general. The existing binarist systems in homeless shelters tend to work to ensure that non-binary people are excluded.
Sex segregated spaces exclude me by default and make me feel unsafe in many cases. I avoid using public gendered restrooms, especially when I am alone. I will not attend any sex specific event. I worry about being arrested if I use a gendered public restroom, especially on days when I am being read more ambiguously or as a guy. Yeah, sex segregation makes things so very safe. e_e
Shelter the first one and give a voucher or different shelter assignment to the second arrival, you know, like you might do if you were faced with a lesbian couple. Actually, many lesbian and bi victims of abuse by women commonly complain that their abusers are let into the shelters very easily, because of perceptions around who is an is not “safe”. You could stop assuming all female abuse victims are heteros as well in this discussion. Also, there are women who were victims of non-IPV abuse by women. It’s not the case that for all abuse victims, women feel safer or that they find men per se triggering. A few people do, but does that justify exclusionary policies?
Vouchers are a good stop-gap, but this notion that binarist sex segregation is some sort of panacea makes me more than a little nauseous.
Roscoe is being more than a bit trolly, but there are a lot of other people who are making very messed up assumptions about the benefits of sex segregation systems here.
Roscoe, what is wrong with hotel vouchers? Hotel rooms are oftentimes better than communal shelters. A hotel room has a private bathroom, large bed, and a TV. That’s better than the barracks style quarters many shelters have. Neither shelters nor hotel vouchers can give someone a place to stay indefinitely, though. The purpose of shelters and vouchers are to provide temporary accommodations while the victim gets back on hir feet, and a place to hide from hir abuser.
i know it’s frustrating that nobody here is admitting to being the evil manhater you want them to be, but it’s still not a good idea to flat out admit that you’re not arguing in good faith
The public ones (that have locations known to all) apparently do but the hidden ones? Never heard of them being co-ed.
They still provide services to men. If not a bed in the actual shelter they usually have vouchers at nearby hotels.
Roscoe, you have said things that are simply not true at all. You are disingenuous to the point of being asinine in your “paraphrase” of, well everyone you “paraphrased”.
I am glad there are actual people working to help men with domestic violence, because idiots like you hurt the cause more than they help.
Signed,
someone who gives money and time to actual shelters.
Sorry, but in this case I’ll totally defend a binarist system over a “everyone goes in the same shelter” system. It’s not great, it doesn’t serve everybody, but it’s less harmful.
First, note the use of a direct quotes. This willful misrepresentation of other’s statements with bullshit “paraphrasing” is, at best, lazy as fuck.
Secondly, anyone who would write something so demonstrably false is not only lying but proving just how little they know about shelters, how their programs operate, and the level of work involved in running them successfully.
@darksidecat
Thanks for raising this. I was looking for information on coed or gender neutral shelters and found lots for homeless youth, but none for adults. The default DV shelter seems to serve only adults who identify as women and children of any gender. There are reasons for this, of course, but it is also clear there are lots of unmet needs too.
Saying “no offense” makes something not offensive now?
intent really is fucking magic
@Nobinayamu:
There are no men’s shelters. Period.
There are some co-ed shelters. They are very rare.