Oh, the Men’s Rights subreddit is on a roll! Earlier in the week, as regular readers will already be well aware, a sizeable number of the regulars there were waxing indignant about a spermburgling girlfriend who turned out to be imaginary, and expressing sympathy for the imaginary girlfriend’s imaginary boyfriend, even though he’d admitted to punching her in her imaginary stomach.
Now they’re directing their wrath at a British journalist whom they’ve decided is being insufficiently grateful for being rescued from being hit by a speeding automobile by Ryan Gosling.
The backstory: Earlier in the week, British journalist Laurie Penny was wandering the streets of Manhattan, lost in thought, when she almost stepped off the curb into the path of a taxi. A man standing nearby grabbed her and pulled her to safety. That man happened to be famously hunky young actor Ryan Gosling.
Naturally, Penny tweeted about it, and her tweet aroused something of a Twitterstorm, in part because of the novelty of the situation, and in part because the thought of someone so dashing performing this little act of urban heroism made more than a few ladies (and men) swoon a little. I would probably react the same way if I heard a story about Kate Winslet saving a kitten.
Anyway, Penny was a little bit overwhelmed by all the attention her story was getting, and ended up writing a funny, spiky little essay for Gawker reminding people that while, yes, Ryan Gosling had indeed done a very nice thing for her, for which she was grateful, that it wasn’t really the biggest deal in the world. For one thing, she pointed out, lots of ordinary decent people perform similar acts of “heroism” all the time. For another, there are bigger heroes out there – like those working tirelessly to keep Rick Santorum from becoming our next president.
She ended the piece with this:
I really do object to being framed as the ditzy damsel in distress in this story. I do not mean any disrespect to Ryan Gosling, who is an excellent actor and, by all accounts, a personable and decent chap. …
But as a feminist, a writer, and a gentlewoman of fortune, I refuse to be cast in any sort of boring supporting female role, even though I have occasional trouble crossing the road, and even though I did swoon the teeniest tiniest bit when I realized it was him. I think that’s lazy storytelling, and I’m sure Ryan Gosling would agree with me.
And the thing is, I’m sure he would. I’m sure he’s as embarrassed about the attention as Penny is.
Well, for some people, Penny’s refusal to play the “boring supportive role” was simply unacceptable. Over on The National Review, antifeminist asshole Suzanne Venker wrote a snide and misleading piece portraying Penny as an ungrateful bitch:
If Western women want to know where all the good men have gone, they need only look in the mirror. Not only can men no longer hold the door open for women or pay the check after dinner, they can’t even save a woman’s life and get a simple thank you.
Never mind that Penny wrote explicitly that she was “grateful to the dashing and meme-worthy Mr. Gosling.” We can conclude that Venker either has terrible reading comprehension, or is deliberately lying about Penny. In any case, she continued on in this vein:
Feminists have totally destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Not all women seek the feminized version of the American male. Most women like big, strong, sexy men. They want men who are willing to put out fires, fight in combat, and, yes, even save damsels in distress. But in post-feminist America, Marlboro Man is a rare breed. We can thank women like Penny for that.
Well, actually, the reason the Marlboro Man isn’t around any more is that he died of lung cancer. (Well, to be more specific, two of the actors who portrayed the Marlboro Man did in fact die that way.) But let’s continue:
If Americans don’t wake up to the evils of feminism, the next time a woman walks down the wrong side of the street, the men of America will simply walk right past her and let her get hit.
And we’ll have no one blame but ourselves.
Really? Really? I’m pretty sure that Penny’s Gawker essay isn’t actually going to turn American men into a bunch of woman-hating psychopaths. I think we can all agree that Venker is being a giant turd here.
Well, not all of us, I guess. Someone posted Venker’s little screed to the Men’s Rights subreddit – you were wondering when I’d get back to them, weren’t you? And the regulars responded, well, like you would expect them to. Here are two of the most highly upvoted comments there, from two of the subreddit’s most prolific posters.
Stay classy. Men’s Rights Redditors!
NWO, are there any men in your limited view of the world who DON’T work in factories or mines? Are there any women who work, according to you? Except for HR and in fine silky drawers, that is. What do you think I do?
i find this to be the funniest part of the post. Has he forgotten what his posts pre-moderation were like?
Yeah. Washing my laundry takes the 30 minutes it’s in the washer plus the time it takes to haul them up and down the stairs. If the garment isn’t something you can put in the dryer (most bras and the majority of what I’d consider stuff that’s okay to wear to a low-level office job) it’s got to be hung up to dry too.
Maybe he just washes his boxers in the sink? o.O
Thanks for the advice, NWO. Just feed them and bathe them. I sure do appreciate it when people who aren’t parents tell actual parents how to raise kids. If you haven’t stayed up all night with a colicky baby, chased a toddler around the house getting him out of trouble all day, broken up sibling squabbles in the backseat while you’re driving, or dealt with a temper tantrum in a public place, then you don’t know the reality of raising children.
Women make up the majority of workers in dirty, low paying caregiving jobs. You imagine all women as working at high paying office jobs, rather than working at a daycare for minimum wage, waiting tables, or cleaning bedpans at a hospital. Men usually don’t want these jobs, because they have crappy pay and low status. They can make better money in construction, factories, or skilled trades. The dads working as plumbers, machine techs, and electricians couldn’t do their jobs if they didn’t have someone (usually a woman) to take care of their kids for them.
The thing is, NWOslave, I have a vagina and I *have* worked those jobs.
My first ever job was as a maid in a hotel. Cleaned up people’s spit around sinks, used condoms, and dumped out glasses full of tobacco spit juice.
I worked on grounds crew every summer for 3 years in college. I hauled rocks, pulled weeds, picked up trash, you name it.
Post college, I worked at a variety of food service jobs. That went on for about, oh, four years or so. I was the chick that made your coffee, washed your dishes, and put your pizza together at Pizza Hut. I was a hostess for a while too.
Are you *sure* I’ve never done any manual labor? Or does it only count if I risk death every day?
Nnn, the main problem is that feudalism as it’s commonly understood really didn’t exist for very long outside certain parts of Germany, some of France(/Berry/Bourbon/etc) and England. It’s really, really, *really* a hot button for my girlfriend XD
Actually she was pretty rage-y at just Crusader Kings 2, which portrays, well, all of Europe working based on this understanding. Which is really weird, Paradox knows better, I’m sure. That and just how damn centralized and stable the HRE is.
And i’ts not just that vassals had rights; people pretty commonly don’t know just how much power the peasant class wielded. And not just the merchants either; the simple fact of the matter is that kings were constrained a lot by what would, for instance, piss off the mayors (Who were elected! So what pissed off a lot of people by default pissed them off!) The middle ages are really weird to talk about for this sort of thing.
That might explain it! But then how does he get them to dry so fast? Mr Slave please enlighten me, here I am spending hours doing laundry when I could be done with the whole thing in 10 minutes. Don’t hold out on us.
owlyslave said:
lol. Hey nwoslave, could you find me just one thing here on manboobz, just one statement, that derides men just for being men?
Because it seems awful odd that an anti-man hate site is both run by a man and gets frequent comments from an audience that’s about 50% male.
It would sure be nice of you, owly.
I don’t think Othomsom was seriously wishing death on her.
Yeah, it’s a funny thing. See, I’m a man, and I’m not really feeling all that hated here, Slavey. I daresay I’m rather well liked, actually.
But then, it’s obvious you’re conflating “man” with “bitter misogynistic hate-spewing asshole”, as usual.
Biden/middle eastern
?
@Dracula
Well, it is a good time to be a vampire 🙂
Biden’s from Delaware; perhaps Slavey has confused the middle of the East Coast with the Middle East?
Delaware is kind of in the middle of the eastern coast of the US?
…I got nothing.
Aw, man, ninja’d! :-p
It took us both exactly 20 minutes to think of that.
Well, since Owly says the Rockefellers and Roth[s]childs are also of “middle eastern” background, and the only “middle eastern” background I can find for them is conspiracy websites pushing the idea that they’re of Jewish descent (I don’t know if it’s true or not, I’m just sayin’), I’m guessing Owly means Biden is also of Jewish descent.
Heh, yup.
I’m still trying to come up with alternate explanations. Best guesses so far include “Well, he’s Irish Catholic. Ireland starts with an I, as do several countries in the Middle East, so they’re basically the same thing!” and “Joe Lieberman is Jewish. All people named Joe are secretly the same person, so we can logically conclude that Biden is also Jewish and therefore Middle Eastern, as are the Pope, Stalin, Goebbels, the main character in Little Women, and that irritating plumber dude,” but mostly I’m favoring “NWO is completely unhinged.”
(Also, it’s sad that I’m so used to NWO’s awfulness by now that the “Jewish or supposedly-Jewish people are all ‘Middle Eastern’ and non-white” thing didn’t even faze me.)
It’s true, slaveman — I was thinking primarily of you when I wrote that most MRAs actually don’t give a shit about letting men act in traditionally unmasculine ways. Thanx for backing me up on that. I’m sure Farson will find your hatred of men educational.
“Teach me all about womens greater empathy. Yes, skirts and weeping in public. Such a major concern. Women wear skirts and fancy clothes to sexually manipulate. And they use tears to emotionally manipulate. It’s not a secret. Men and women are different.”
So now Slavey thinks that the idea that women have more empathy than men is based on the fact that women wear skirts? (See-through miniskirts, as we’ve previously established.) I am curious as to how that would work. Is this why he hates Ozy, because he thinks that if men wear skirts they’ll be forced to display empathy and since Ozy likes men in skirts (so do I, actually) she’s trying to do horrible things to them? Which would make sense if it wasn’t clear that Slavey does think empathy is a good thing, he just doesn’t believe that women have any.
You know when you’re at a bar or a party and some really drunk person keeps babbling incoherently in your ear? Reading Slavey’s is kind of like that, with bonus rants about how women should start punching each other in the nose.
Zie, not she – sorry! Typing too fast.
Reasons I have worn skirts in my adult life:
– Because it was a warm day with a nice breeze, so a skirt was the most comfortable choice.
– Because a skirt looked nice with the top I was planning to wear.
– Because I was going to the sort of event where a skirt was part of the expected attire.
– Because it was part of a costume of some sort.
– Because I was going contradancing, where virtually everyone, male and female, wears skirts because they are by far the most comfortable and pleasant contradancing attire.
– Because I felt like it.
Reasons I have cried in public in my adult life:
– Because I was sad.
– Because I was watching a sad movie.
– Because I was cutting onions.
Reasons that have literally never occurred to me as reasons to wear a skirt or cry:
– To demonstrate empathy. Somehow.
– To manipulate people.
Seriously, Slavey, why do you always go with the weirdest explanation when there are incredibly straightforward ones available? Maybe women cry to manipulate people…or maybe they’re sad! Maybe they wear skirts to manipulate people…or maybe they like skirts! Why does absolutely everything have to be some sort of bizarre conspiracy?
Incidentally, Slavey, my partner and I are long-distance right now. Generally, when we part at the airport, both of us end up crying a little. Is he manipulating me? Am I manipulating him? Are we both manipulating each other? What are we manipulating each other to do?
(Also, he tears up so badly around freshly-cut onions that he literally had to leave the building to stop crying last time I made a dinner involving onions. Clearly he was manipulating me to…um…I would say “not cook with onions” but he loved the dish involving onions and begs me to make it for him as often as possible, so I’m pretty stumped. But it was definitely MANIPULATION, right, Slavey?)
In my experience, women are on average more empathetic. But it’s not some magic womanly magic, it’s because women are taught to be empathetic and men are taught to be unempathetic as part of social roles.
Only women manipulate men, in slave world.
Because MRAs are never manipulative at all.