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.
I would like to meet the parent who never saw their kids post divorce who wasn’t either A) totally not interested in seeing their kids or B) provably abusive.
Nice dodge, Owly. Wikipedia actually kind of agrees with you in the definition of a parent. Good job! Have you been developing those wiki-smarts you so despise?
In any case, if you voluntarily undertook the actions which resulted in a child, you are still morally responsible for its welfare, whether the dictionary calls you a parent or a Farfignugen.
But hey, I realize you just want an excuse to rage at evilwimmenz who have sole custody of their children. Carry on!
I take that back, that’s not a good dodge. According to Owly’s definition, a man is not a parent if he has 40% custody. It’s just a stupid ranting dodge.
Since the men I know in the real world make between 15 and 25 dollars an hour, lets do some math with the average of $20.00 an hour which is 40K a year. Big Daddy takes 25% minimum cut, so that’s 30K a year. $800.00 a month is another 10K a year so that leaves 20K. If the man gets to care for the child for 3 months out of the year and it actually does cost $200.00 a week that’s another $2500.00 leaving 17.5K left for him which is about $9.00 an hour for himself. The woman has the further benefit of claiming the child as an exemption since she has the claim of custody, (ownership).
Once again, your math is so fucked that the true nature of just how fucked it is would take a billion light years to reach Earth, but 25% in taxes? If that’s the case, you are doing it wrong. Even when I was contracting, it was ~15%, and it’s probably only slightly less now that I have a non-contract job.
As always, you’re assuming that women don’t work. Fuck off, NWO.
blockquote, why you fail me? That first paragraph is NWO’s blather.
“Danny’s head was the size of a navel orange at birth (4 inches). My FOREIGN BRIDE pushed three times and popped him out. I do believe that she is baked from tougher dough than any of you.”
Which is why you’re so paranoid about her leaving you, right? Because she’s such a tough cookie?
(It’s funny how he sings her praises now and thinks we’ve all forgotten about the whole she might leave me and take the kids because women are evil bitches part. I’m also curious about why FOREIGN BRIDE needs to be in all caps, in Antz logic.)
Show of hands, who’s surprised?
Except they can’t, and even if they tried, they’re not going to get very far. It’s not really doable.
And my dad would be happy to know that while my mother had custody, he wasn’t a parent. My mom would feel the same way.
Antz doesn’t realize that births happen the way they do just because. I got his wife beat. Had my child in fifteen minutes flat, from first labour pain to in my arms. Its nothing special really. Some of the length of birthing is based on how wide your pelvis is. The women in my family have wider than usual pelvises with an unusual tilt. OB and doctor figure that’s why its easier and shorter for us to give birth. Nothing to do with toughness.
Antz, the toughness of a woman is measured by having looong labours and still having both mother and child come through healthy. Tough is measured by how difficult the struggle was, not how easy.
@Cassandra
Actually, the most memorable thing about AntZ to me was that he was always singing his wife’s praises (i don’t recall him badmouthing her, though I may have missed it), and then going on to tell us that even though she loves him SO much, she can still run away with his kids whenever she damn well pleases therefore the only solution is to have her on the other side of the Mississipi!
It is rather obvious that his fundamental objection to our current legal system is that women are considered citizens rather than property. He won’t rest until his wife has no rights at all.
I have a friend who knows a woman who was having a C-section and her anaesthetic didn’t kick in fast enough so they had to do it while she was still conscious. THAT’S toughness.
Damn, Katz, that made me go semi-fetal upon reading that. Ow ow OW. Yeah, she’s tough.
Antz, are you saying your FOREIGN BRIDE has extra wide, child bearing hips?
Aaaaaand looky;
http://www.reddit.com/user/ineedhelpnow1234
http://theageofeschatology.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/mens-rights-activists-its-ok-to-hit.html
Really, i’m still not sure whether to laugh or cry. Frankly after reading everything thats come from this and all the stuff it triggers off – i’m just going to go get drunk
also, is it just me that is horified that jezebel included the line ‘(Note to self: next time you punch your girlfriend, aim for the stomach!)’ – i’ve heard that from my dad talking to his friends and its something I know abusers use given the amount of damage you can do before marks show in this area – do we really need to be teaching people this!?! I know they’re saying it sarcastically and can only assume that they haven’t been a position where this is something people _do_ but – I really, really wish like hell I hadn’t had to read that and that it wasn’t put out there for people who might use that sort of ‘advice’ 🙁
Kendra:
It true, of course, that contraception fails sometimes and that’s nobody’s fault. It certainly doesn’t amount to “oopsing” you partner. Short of some super duper lie detector thingie (I don’t mean the usual lie detector test, which is notoriosly unreliable) that doesn’t exist , I don’t know how you would determine the truth. So yes, prosecuting would be very difficult and maybe impossible.
There’s also the possibility that men will use the arguement to get out of paying child support for any unplanned pregnancy.
@Cassandra
Well, to give AntZ his due, he doesn’t seem to have any problem with women wanting divorce, as long as they leave the marriage as they came and the legal system acts like the whole marriage never existed for her, including rise in SES of the family and any children and/or pets.
Which makes him one of the less hateful MRAs, the saddest statement for the movement I’ve seen yet.
True birth experience thingie: I had back labor so bad that I almost screamed and I wasn’t even in full labor at the time (my daughter was slamming her skull right into my spine. So I got the epidural and slept…then it came time to push and the doctors did perenial massage and I only had one or two little abrasions down in the vaginal area.
My daughter came out after what seemed to be forever (giving birth is basically like having the worst constipation ever and trying to shit out your whole insides- it is totally anal in feeling), and then the nasty placenta, and then I basically dropped huge fucking chunks of what looked like red meat/blood clots the size of my hand for at least a day or two. Of course, you have to wear these giant maxi pads and these weird gauze underwear things. And it hurts like hell to pee, even with small abrasions- I had to use a sitzer bottle to spray on my poor inflamed parts while I peed or it was like burning from hell. OH, and then there’s breastfeeding- where your nipples turn into scabby bleeding painful lumps and your boobs get super engorged to the point where you feel like you’re going to fall over or just squirt all through your shirt. And you totally let down your milk if some other kid (or your own) starts crying in public…which is about as embarrassing as pissing your pants.
Oh, and if you don’t have insurance, hospital births start out at a whopping $10,000 if you have no complications. My coworker’s bill was over a hundred thousand dollars before her insurance paid it.
This ignores the fact that during 9 months of pregnancy you feel horribly vulnerable and scared in many ways (often due to hormonal fluctuations, but it’s also a physically debilitating condition, especially as you get bigger and if you have any complications it gets more scary). It’s the kind of situation where you want to have a partner, a supportive person who is there and is on board with your pregnancy. I don’t think I would ever have decided to have children without my husband by my side and completely on the same page. There is just no way I would take the financial, temporal and emotional risk.
Now, I do not doubt that there are many emotionally damaged women out there who try “oopsie” pregnancies to keep their relationship from falling apart (which pretty much never works), but there are also lots of relationships that are failing (like my husband’s parents, who were fighting pretty much just as soon as they got married), who both decide to have a baby together to “fix” things. And both are unfair to the child that comes of the union, but honestly, I see more people fighting about whose responsibility, and whose punishment and I hear very, very little about the care and love for the child. Which, honestly, disturbs me more than the whole “child support” boogie man. It also doesn’t help that literally every single mother I know (including some who were married but divorced because the guy got into drugs or cheated/left her for someone else) has received little to no child support, even in cases where the support is actually court-ordered. If child support is so easy to just not pay, then why again are these MRA’s so afraid about it?
Ruttee said:
“Yeah, 300 a month is notable, but it is by no means indentured servitude, much less slavery. Even if you contend you had no say in the matter, it’s still not as bad.
But AntZ, I have a solution that’s good for kids. And it makes women pay too. Can you dig it? IT’s tax everyone to give money to all active parents. No unfairness, just smack everyone to make sure kids can eat, get clothed decently, etc. we all have a vested interest in kids doing that (I fucking hate kids and I can admit that much)”
This is a good idea, if men don’t want to pay child support we need an entirely different way of raising kids. I think some kind of levy or tax on all citizens would be a great idea. Everybody pays and everyone benefits from having a healthy, well fed, well educated next generation.
OH AND PS: In every case I know of where the father was active and had joint custody of the children, he didn’t have to pay ANY child support. My best friend had both her parents in her life (they both loved her and her sister, but could not stay married for various reasons) and neither of them paid child support because both were highly active and had partial custody of the kids.
If a man wants to be completely cut off from his offspring, that is his right, but if he decides to make a bunch of kids, the only option that will allow the average single mother to survive is for either society to pay or for HIM to pay. And honestly, I think that if a man decides that he wants to create a mouth to feed but have nothing to do with it, he ought to be offering something towards keeping that mouth fed so that the mom can be a bit less stressed out about where the next meal is going to come from.
Well, to give AntZ his due, he doesn’t seem to have any problem with women wanting divorce, as long as they leave the marriage as they came and the legal system acts like the whole marriage never existed for her, including rise in SES of the family and any children and/or pets.
Except that he’s so terrified of this happening that he wants to preemptively leave his wife and replace her with a VR replica so that she can’t do this to him.
there’s an xkcd for every moment…
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/android_girlfriend.png
oops ignore that dud link
http://xkcd.com/595/
I get $170.00 per month for 1 child for 12 years. Only reliable because it is garnished wages. No parental involvement from poor old child support payer. No health care. I did not steal a condom. FYI MRM, cry me a river of tears for your $170.00. You spend more on your car.
Timid Atheist: the sperm stealing wasn’t rape. The bit where he claimed that his girlfriend was trying to blackmail him into having unprotected sexual intercourse with him by threatening to have him arrested if he didn’t – which David Futrelle completely omitted to mention – was the attempted rape.
Wrong thread.