Oh, boy. So that almost certainly imaginary “dude punching his spermjacking girlfriend” story in the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day? The one that inspired all those Men’s Rights Redditors to totally defend the (alleged) puncher?
Well, now Jezebel has weighed in on the subject as well. Erin Gloria Ryan raises a few questions about ineedhelpnow1234’s implausible tale, and about the dudes who not only believed it but got all enraged at the imaginary punched girlfriend:
Where does this legend of the sperm swiping madwoman come from? And why won’t it die? Why are men’s rights activists so willing to believe that in a world practically dripping with sperm, women specifically want theirs so they can be pregnant and possibly farty for 9 months, stretch their skin out, and go through childbirth in order to control the men in their lives?
Apparently, at least one Men’s Rights Redditor is a reader of Jezebel, because he went and posted a link, explaining that
I normally try to stay neutral as best I can in matters relating to the men’s rights/feminism debate, but this has me grinding my teeth.
So this is what feminists think about one of our most pressing issues.
Presumably he is referring to the extremely pressing issue of girlfriends who flee the bedroom after sex, clutching used condoms and shouting that “I’m finally going to get the baby I deserve,” and how they totally deserve to be punched in the stomach so hard it leaves a bruise.
The discussion inspired this exchange:
Oh, and this one, too:
YadaYadaYada2 certainly has a flair for the dramatic, doesn’t he?
Men’s Rights Activists, so emotional!
EDITED TO ADD: I sort of started arguing with the regulars in the comments there, and Glarfugus set me straight on the nature of my sins against the Men’s Rights subreddit:
You quoted accurately, the problem lies where you quote perfectly sound posts and talk about them like they’re ridiculous. You address punching a woman in the stomach as though it’s something of high crime. I’m not saying it’s something that’s right, but punching someone in the stomach in a panicked situation where you have a risk of being fucked by the court system for the next 18 years? Reasonable action.
I put my favorite part in bold. The stuff about punching women is pretty special too.
Antz: I don’t agree with violence, and I think anyone who condones the tummy punch is misguided (if anyone really believed the April fool’s joke, which I doubt). However, the (fake) story has made me think. What should a young man do (if such a thing really happened)?
Aren’t you supposed to be working (at least as a sideline) in the artificial uterus dept.?
So shouldn’t you be aware that sperm are sort of fragile? Most esp. when they are exposed to air? That twenty minutes is the upper end of their lifespan, outide the body?
So what he ought to have done is not worried about it.
Me, I realised when I started having sex, that pregnancy was an option. If I wasn’t willing to take the risks, I ought not be fucking.
But committing a violent assault, one that actually poses some risks of serious injury, or death (a shot to the abdomen which leaves bruises isn’t minor, it’s a lot of work to impose that much trauma to muscles which aren’t backed by bone) isn’t the answer, and your cutesy attempts to minimise it by saying, “everyone was in on the joke, and playing to the rubes” and calling it, “a tummy punch”, are stupid.
Antz: Word to the wise:
When Dr. Hurtsalot tells you “wait as long as you can before the Epi”, do not listen. The anesthesiologist is probably at home (meaning you are a 30 minute drive away from pain relief). My FOREIGN BRIDE gave birth like it was the 1500′s, waiting for Dr. Knucklehead to arrive. No epidural, no episiotomy, no doctor. Just a very surprised nurse.
So we can add stupid to liar (and troll).
I’ve helped at three births. None of them was so fast/surprising, in the onset that there wasn’t time for the hospital (with whom some planning had been done, what with pregnancies not being the safest thing in the world, and a fair bit of advance notice being present… 240 days, or so; on average), to have an anesthesiologist/OB present.
Even the one with the worst management (my second sister, 1984) there was an OB on hand; though he only came in at transition). My mother, who was refusing the epidural, had a gas-passer on hand; though he wasn’t in the room.
But you, you couldn’t, with your brilliant SCIENTIST brain, manage to have that happen.
I see why you worry about your wife leaving you, all things considered.
I was born after three and a half hours of labor. A staff member of mine took a month and a half to successfully give birth (she kept going into labor well before she was supposed) and the actual birth itself took three days. Neither of those are indications of toughness and neither is your wife “pushing” three times.
I am mystified by the idea that there is such a dramatic shortage of sperm available to women that they find it necessary to burgle used condoms rather than drop by the neighborhood sperm bank to take out a loan.
MRAs live a rather dismal fantasy life, poor things, though it always seems to include doing violence to women. I find that revealing.
Actually the birth my staffer went through was pretty tough. Never mind on the indications of toughness on that one.
I never did “violence to women”.
only violence to the english language, amirite
Phyllis Schlafly lays it out for the MRAs:
Due to their inability to master basic googling skills, however, MRAs remain at risk of inadvertently dating spermjacking misandrists.
(Hint: Abzug was just a manifestation of TEH GREAT FRIEDAN)
Strange, they think a woman can get sex with a man anytime she wants but have to steal sperm. o…k….
I am honestly tempted to do a Craigslist experiment to prove that a woman does not need to steal sperm to get all of the free baby making juice she wants.
Feminists justify punching someone in the face as retaliation for verbal harassment:
http://jezebel.com/5878537/why-i-punched-a-stranger
Or because they are on the rag and feeling ratty:
http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-cause-uh-we-have?tag=gossipdomesticdisturbances
Meanwhile, boob king Futrelle sings a mighty sermon, stirring the faithful into a frothy fury because a few MRAs responded to an April fool’s joke by saying it would be OK to tummy punch a GF to prevent “genetic material” theft.
Differences:
1) The Jezebel articles describe a real violence, the reddit punch was an April fool’s joke.
2) At Jezebel the articles support the violence, at reddit only a small number of comments support the violence.
3) At Jezebel the violence is either retaliatory or random, at reddit the punch was a desperate attempt to prevent theft (and 18 years of indentured servitude).
If someone is stealing a TV, the victim has a legal right to use force to prevent the theft.
How can feminists not recognize the legitimacy of throwing a punch to prevent theft of genetic material that carries a $250,000 liability? Not to mention the emotional, legal, and health consequences.
You are all a bunch of whining bigg .. you know the drill 🙂
I don’t have anything to say other than that gif is freakin’ hilarious.
If you want sperm THAT bad and can’t afford to buy sperm there are people offering to make a baby with women on Craigslist Casual Encounters.
Antz: Jezebel is stupid. Don’t beat your boyfriends.
Once again, pacificism is only for the oppressed, not the majority. As a pacifist, that shit pisses me off. Not every feminist is a committed pacifist; that doesn’t change that it’s not advocated generally, and the character of rage at repeated oppression eventually leading to an immediate and violent response against a single person is not the same as the gender war you morons propose.
FYI, the second article is something an MRA that cared about men’s rights would like; it’s admitting that women can commit DV against men. Actually read things before you comment.
No worries there, I tell dudes upfront that I’m a feminist. For some reason though, that seems to draw more assholes who think that means he’ll get to tame a shrew.
That I’m a spermjacking reincarnate of Betty Friedan is something I keep to myself until after I get pregnant off of the dead sperm in condoms and get all their millions.
Something else occurs to me, if ladies so wanted to rope guys into “servitude” it’d be easier and a hell of a lot more effective to simply say they were on the pill and that it just must not have worked. Those silly ladies! Don’t even know how to steal sperm efficiently!
Antz: No, I read the comments and there wasn’t any “justifying”. Not even in the OP. There was explantion of what happened.
Then again, Peter Nolan© says that what she did is what equality justifies, so all she was doing was living as the MRM says she should.
And the real difference is the reddit post had lots of people saying it was hunky-dory to hit someone hard enough to cause internal injury, and the Jezebel post didn’t.
Of course you didn’t respond to my comment about what he ought to have done (i.e. nothing), nor the reasons I said that.
You can’t judge the MRM by “a few extremists”, but apparently you can judge all feminists by a publication that’s been criticized by some of them. Well isn’t that… predictable.
Okay, seriously, what is up with the quarter million figure? My dad’s child support (that he and my mom, like most divorcing couples, arrived at without going to court) was twice as much per kid a month as the average $300 figure that’s being presented here (I’m assuming CAD = USD for simplicity’s sake, although their relative values varied throughout the period when my dad was paying child support). Had he been paying that sum starting when one of his kids had been born, rather than starting when he got divorced, it still wouldn’t have come to $250,000. It also wouldn’t have covered the cost of raising a child, even in Canada where child-rearing is less expensive than in the US, largely because of less healthcare costs IIRC.
I’d also like to point out that my dad, while not extremely extremely wealthy or anything, was a millionaire with a high-paying job when my parents divorced. I’m not really seeing how some 21 year old with student loans and no job is going to be forced to pay much more than him in child support, because that makes no fucking sense.
If women stealing sperm is one of the MRM’s most pressing issues, then they have even less of a basis for their “movement” than I thought.
I keep asking for stats on sperm stealing.
For some reason, they won’t answer me.
Zarat, I salute your FOREIGN BRIDE for quoting Captain Kirk while giving birth, because that’s always been my dream.
Also, as is accustomed, my translation of Antz’s posts in this thread:
FOREIGN BRIDE VIRTUAL REALITY MISSISSIPPI DIVIDE I’M FLUENT IN PORTUGUESE YOU’RE INCOHERENT.
Okay… Allison is a person in my social circle. I have serious issues with people using the fact she came forward and honestly told her story – what she did, why she did it, and what it is to be LGBT in fratboy Boston surrounded by a jeering crowd – as another cudgel to beat women with.
Civil assault is “acting intentionally, that is with either general or specific intent, causing the reasonable apprehension of an immediate harmful or offensive contact.” It’s a judgment call if a yo-dude surrounded by a crown of yo-dudes on the street in Allston felt a punch in the chest from a short woman caused “apprehension of an immediate harmful or offensive contact.”
What’s not, reasonably, a judgment call, is whether a punch in the stomach during a domestic dispute hard enough to cause bruising is civil assault. It’s not. It’s criminal battery.
Sorry, but I have zero sense of humor about this.
People!! Never mind all of this!
That lady is making off with my sperm!! Help! I’m being Sperm-napped!
A navel orange is totes bigger than a cantaloupe, right, guys?
Dude, your credibility suffers when I can hear you fapping to Star Trek movies.
We can if a pattern emerges over years of the regulars not telling such folk to get lost and welcoming them with upvotes, open arms, and pie.