Empirical means “derived from or guided by experience or experiment.” Prima Facie, in legal terms, means something that is self-evident.
So I was intrigued when Man Boobz Man Boob All-Star MarkyMark recently promised, in the headline to one of his blog posts, to present “Empirical & Prima Facie Evidence Women Should NOT Vote.” I’m game, MarkyMark. Where exactly do you find the empirical evidence for this evidently self-evident proposition?
In a vast collection of empirical observations called “The Bible.” Specifically, the book of Genesis (not the one with Phil Collins in it).
If you remember Genesis 3 in the Bible, you’ll remember that God gave men & women their respective curses after The Fall. For men, it was to “labor by the sweat of their brow all the days of their lives”; IOW, men were cursed with work. Women were cursed “with pain in childbearing.”
So far this empirical evidence is pretty powerful. MarkyMark continues:
Now, what feminism sought to do was, in ADDITION to having their own curse, was secure for women the curse of men too. And women FELL for it-real smart, Ladies! Not only did you swallow the feminist bullshit hook, line, and sinker; it looks like you ate the rod, reel, and line to boot! Only women could do something so foolish, idiotic, and STUPID.
And now he comes to the nub of his argument:
Though many arguments could be made against women’s suffrage, though many arguments could be made against giving women the right to vote, this situation right here provides both empirical and prima facie evidence that women are NOT smart enough to vote; they do not have the mental wherewithal to vote. I mean, come on! How stupid do you have to be to DOUBLE your cursings from God? …
Seriously, men do NOT go around seeking to add to their curses in life. Have you ever seen men CLAMORING to experience child birth, and all the pain that goes along with it?! No, you have not. …
In closing, though many arguments could be made against women’s suffrage, we don’t need many arguments; we only need one: women, not men, chose to DOUBLE their divine curse; women, not men sought to ADD to whatever pain child birth brought into their lives; finally, women did this eagerly, accepting men’s divine curse with gusto as they STAMPEDED into the world of work. That alone shows us that women cannot think causally, linearly, logically, or for the good of others. Therefore, women should not be allowed to vote-end of story.
After all this talk of divine curses, I thought I would share with you a Divine blessing. Here’s Divine, with her 1983 club hit “Love Reaction.” I think they call her Divine because she sings like an angel. And yeah, the song does sound an eensy teensy little bit like “Blue Monday” by New Order. Her producer was sort of known for completely ripping off other people’s songs.
It seems like a lot of people misunderstand the core of his argument. Voting isn’t man’s curse, working is. Women are stupid enough to want to work, which is stupid because nobody in the world actually enjoys their job obviously. Since women chose to work, they must be too stupid to vote. QED!
The Markster is unemployed, right? I guess he must be having the time of his life, except he doesn’t seem too happy.
What if they decided to work instead of having babies? That is only a single curse so they get to vote, eh? Are atheists non cursed voters? I think some of them work, and there is a rumour that some of them have even had teh babies!
Wait, does that mean epidural is a sin, are we cheating god??
‘Neway, the spaghetti monster is cool with me voting, I just asked him.
@thebewilderness: That icon is gonna haunt my dreams. So thanks for that. 😀
So women should be denied the right to vote because in Genesis 3 women were cursed with feeling pain in childbirth instead of the pain of doing hard work like men were?
Holy non-sequitors, Batman! How did MarkyMark get from “women shouldn’t work” to “women shouldn’t vote”? Does he realize that having a job and having the right to vote aren’t the same thing?
Even if we completely ignore MarkyMark’s rather idiosyncratic use of the word “empirical”, even if we accept the Bible as an unquestionable source of authority of gender roles, even if we accept his view of Genesis as totally accurate, his argument is still invalid. Even if we grant him all of his premises, his argument doesn’t work.
That’s an impressive sort of failure. It’s almost beautiful in its stupidity.
The curse of labor pales compares to the curse of “having your own money”, anyway. 😛
(Trigger warning for graphic Bible stories and rape)
According to Christian apologetics, Cain and Seth married their sisters. They said that Adam and Eve had daughters, but didn’t record their births because girls didn’t count as real descendents. This is all just speculation to make it where the sons didn’t have babies with their mom.
As for Noah, it wasn’t him that impregnated his daughters. That was Lot. Noah is the one who got drunk and naked, his sons saw him like that, and they covered him up to be decent. That pissed him off, though, so he cursed Canaan, the one who gave him a robe to cover up with. The story of Lot and his daughters, though, is about the girls getting their dad drunk and raping him so they could have his babies.
It used to be considered a sin to give pain relief to a mother in labor. Hardly any Christians think that anymore, though. They figure, what the hell, if we have labor saving devices to ease Adam’s sin, we might as well have epidurals to ease Eve’s sin.
Actually, as long as MarkyMark’s going to use the Bible as his authority on women’s rights, can I use Luke 10:38-42 to argue that women should receive an education if they so choose (instead of staying barefoot and in the kitchen), and therefore are smart enough to vote? Or could I use the Book of Esther to argue that women should voice their opinions in politics? Or could I say that because Deborah was a judge, women ought not only have the right to vote, but the right to hold office?
Someone ought to tell MarkyMark that the Bible was written and compiled by different people living at different times. These different people had different views of certain things, including women. There are verses in the Bible that are incredibly misogynistic, but there are also portions of the Bible that are rather proto-feminist. People can use the Bible to argue against him and their arguments will be just as valid as his are.
Of course, MarkyMark can’t deal with arguments involving actual empirical evidence, because if he argues based on the facts, his arguments are obviously much weaker than those of his opponents. So maybe keeping it in the realm of Biblical interpretation and Scriptural justification where his arguments are equally as strong as his opponents’ is the best he can do.
@Anathema:
To be… fair? I dunno… MickyMack probably didn’t mean that voting was a curse, just that women were to stupid to vote because they want jobs. -_-
An anonymous comment on the post already made my next argument for me, sorta.
Work is not a curse. It’s nice to be operating under our own power, to have independence, and do work at something you love doing if you have the option. Sure, people’d like to avoid the pain and hassle of being required to do something, but then you miss out on accomplishing anything.
Not to mention, in the real world where work is required, having to rely on others and having no agency by fiat is the real curse. Forget boredom; a gilded cage is still a cage, and all the money in the world means nothing if you have to get approval from your master to use it.
/hyperbole
Look, MarkyMark’s argument makes perfect sense, except that being stupid has never disqualified anyone from voting.
Work is one of the things that gives meaning to human life. Just because the capitalist system has it set up so that most people do jobs they don’t enjoy in order to stay alive, doesn’t mean that work itself is bad. In fact, for lots of people it’s a source of joy.
“Holy shit! The bottom of this barrel has another bottom of the barrel underneath it!”
@Ithiliana
Christian Apologetics have an explanation for all the Bible incest. The reason why incest is bad is because having sex with someone too genetically similar will result in birth defects. Because of recessive genes. But, the only reason we have recessive genes is that our DNA has mutated and broken down over time due to toxins in the environment. Back in biblical times the DNA had not yet started to mutate and break down and so it was ok to bone your family members.
This site http://carm.org/questions/about-bible/where-did-cain-get-his-wife
makes a similar argument but says that it was ok back then because the blood lines were pure (I’ve heard the toxin DNA thing on Christian Radio stations).
This line of argument only works if you buy the first premise, which is the only reason why incest is wrong is because of possible birth defects. Not because of, you know, it being manipulative and the power differential or just how awkward it would be if you dumped your brother and your parents wouldn’t know whose side to take.
If it’s all about pain, and I think it’s obvious we’re talking about physical pain, the women who are teachers, engineers, writers, scientists,doctors, politicians, artists, unemployed and other pain-free occupations, or haver traditionally female jobs: child care and cleaning (though it’s far from being pain-free), none of them have taken the male curse. Ergo voting?
What about women who can’t or won’t have children?
Why would a woman with a ‘man’s life be considered less smart than a man?
And unless you want 12 children, it’s not like bearing and rising children take all your life.
Yupp, that’s right, men are smarter than women, because they oh-so-wisely opted to not bear children. NVM that men couldn’t physically take on the pain of childbirth even if they wanted to…
So yeah, his “empirical” argument needs a bit of fleshing out. For instance, it could use some, y’know, empirical sources. Though, I guess if your basic premise is “it is self-evident that women are too stupid to vote”, it really doesn’t matter what you use to back it up.
And finally, a point that I haven’t seen raised yet: some men have the ‘female curse’: ask Matt Rice, Thomas Beatie or Yuval Topper.
There is more hole than cheese in this argument.
Ugh. Why didn’t this guy stick his blogging flounce, again? There’s so much dumb here, stinking up the place.
Heck, they don’t take all your life if you DO want 12 children. My grandmother had that many, and she also worked and continued to keep busy doing a lot of good for others once she retired. But then, I’m sure MarkyMark would find a way to explain that the roughly 250 hats and scarves my grandmother knitted and donated to homeless shelters around the city per year when she was in her 70s and 80s is proof that “women cannot think causally, linearly, logically, or for the good of others.”
(They were really nice hats and scarves, too – she wanted the people who received them not just to have something to keep them warm but something soft and pretty and cheerfully-colored. My grandma was kind of awesome.)
Does MarkyMark think that before feminism, women didn’t work? Cause that’s not true.
Setting aside domestic work (cooking, housework, child rearing, other random stuff) poor women have always brought in income. Whether it’s creating a little unlicensed day care in their houses, or taking in other people’s laundry, or becoming housekeepers for wealthier families, women have ALWAYS worked. And it’s always been labor intensive, too.
So if you think about it, men got Adams curse of work, and women got Eve’s curse of painful labor AND Adams curse of work.
That is, if you accept the bible as empirical evidence of anything. And I didn’t think men, who CAN think “causally, linearly, [and] logically” would accept THE FUCKING BIBLE, of all things, as evidence of…anything.
So he’s not just an MRA, but he’s a Christian, too? Wow.
I wonder if it would go something like this? Maybe the conclusion is reached beforehand or something… The rest I can imagine, but non-linear is difficult. I wonder what non-linear thinking would actually look like? I dunno, but it would be fun if the correct conclusion is reached, the path is just shuffled around or something.
“women cannot think causally, linearly, logically, or for the good of others.”
This is unrelated to Marky Mark’s amazing logical skills, but I was looking up the Monty Hall probability problem earlier. In 1991 professional smartypants Marilyn vos Savant ran the problem in her Parade magazine column as a reader question and presented an informal but correct solution. It started a flurry of letters – people were really into this problem. Including a bunch of mathematicians who wrote in to tell her, in the most pompous and self-important ways, that she was an idiot. Today some of those letters are still on her website, where you can see such great statements as ‘I guess women think about math differently’ and ‘I can’t believe you cling to the wrong answer after three PhDs have informed you that you are wrong.’
So does he believe that women never worked before feminism came along, or does he think that feminism has been around for as long as humanity has existed?
you hear that ladies? having a vote and a small say in how the government is run is not what you want! oh no, that’s stupid…the smart thing is to let the menz decide everything! freedom is slavery!!!
Above: an example of women before feminism, just having a couple of kids and totally not working the rest of the time.