The regulars over on the Men’s Rights Subreddit are currently getting amused and/or outraged by the existence of a book titled “Girl, Get That Child Support,” a guide to help single mothers track down deadbeat dads and get the child support they are owed. A few of them were apparently so overstimulated by the book’s title, and a reference to “Baby Mamas” in the subtitle, that this little conversation ensued:
Note the upvotes and the (scarcity of) downvotes. And the complete lack of anyone saying “hey, you’re being racist assholes.”
The Men’s Rights Movement, the “most significant civil rights movement of the 3rd millennium.”
I wrote a comment yesterday, but internet ate it. 🙁
Ruby, I’m gonna join the crowd of “please fight fire with scientifical proof”. Although I don’t really expect you to do it, both because that would be a first for you and because the proof doesn’t actually exist.
In the meanwhile, please considere the following facts:
– cave people rarely ate mamoth, nor the like of it. Actually, most of what they ate wasn’t from hunting, but from gathering and scavenging. And hunting mainly provided small animals.This is due to several reasons, in no particuliar order: meat can rott pretty fast if you don’t have anything to conserve it, big animals are both very difficult and very dangerous to hunt, any kind of animal is difficult to hunt, if you only have your fingers and eventually primitive weapons. Which is why I find hilarious the idea that my DNA want me to marry a hunter: our DNA doesn’t even ‘want’ us to be hunters.
– women were providers too. They didn’t spend their lives just making babies.
– The society back then wasn’t the society in the USA today. Your idea only makes sense if each man feeds ‘his’ woman. I won’t go into detail of the sociatal organization by fear of saying bs (the odds are there is someone in MB who knows much more about it than me)
Finally, even if you could prove that cave people lived exactly the way you think they did, you still wouldn’t have proven our DNA wants us to go for the provider. Some people lived in caves, some in trees, some feed on insects, but that doesn’t mean that’s something we have to do. Religion have been a part of most of recorded human history, does that mean it’s in our DNA? I don’t think so.
And please explain my case: shortly before I met BF, I was presented to a young man by his brother, my friend D. D (jokingly?) told me, before I even met the guy, that his brother could buy me drinks and stuff, as he had a job. That scared me, as it felt like it would be an umbalanced relationship. Then I met BF, math student who want to be a teacher. The odds are he’ll earn less than me. Please tell me how that makes sense in your world.
Ruby –
Please read. PLEASE READ. Please read.
The reason you think we’re nothing but nasty asshole babies is because you don’t read the people who disagree with you. You just mentally file it under “meanies” and don’t respond to the reasons people disagree with you.
These reasons are substantial and consist of a lot more than just meanness. Learn what they are and respond directly to them.
Why would you want to stay somewhere you aren’t liked? It’s not about bullying, it’s just about–are you having fun here? There’s a big ol’ Internet out there and it seems like a lot of places would show you a better time than here.
Not that I want you to leave. I’d prefer, if I got my druthers, that you stay and listen to the things we’re saying. I get the feeling, Ruby, that it’s a little bit like this:
Rutee says: “We can’t really map genetic code to phenotype expressions yet, so the easy way is out. We can only rely on data gathered through human society, and that data doesn’t say what you want it to, because while women in unequal societies are indeed prone to searching for status, those in less equal societies are correspondingly less likely. to do so. On what grounds do you base this bullshit claim?”
Ruby reads: “MEANNESS DISAGREEMENT MEANNESS bullshit MEEEEAAANNNESSS.”
But there’s content there. You’ll look stupid and obtuse if you don’t give some indication you’ve read it.
Other people have already said it better, but:
1. Scientifically proven where?
2. “Science” means “a special kind of knowledge proven by rigorous observation or testing.” It doesn’t mean “a special kind of knowledge pertaining to sciency subjects.” So without evidence of this observation or testing, and details of how it was done, saying “it’s science” means nothing.
3. I’m genetically programmed to feel thirst, but you don’t have to tell me that, because I feel thirst. I don’t feel anything about rich men.
4. It is an insult to women to say we’re all gold-diggers, yeah. It suggests that we’re mostly dishonest about our intentions and that we don’t feel actual affection for our mates as people.
5. Money is a very recent invention. How can something like money be in our genetic code? People in hunter-gatherer societies don’t have very much in the way of wealth distinctions.
6. I’d prefer to take care of my children by acquiring my own wealth, thanks. (Although I’d also prefer not to have children, so, you know, maybe human behavior is really hard to explain in terms of simplistic “put sperm on eggs!” drives.)
7. In societies where women can’t get their own wealth, they may resort to golddigging as the only way to get a comfortable standard of living, but that’s a social thing, not a genetic thing.
8. Lots of women date poor men. I’ve dated unemployed dudes. Although sometimes their poverty was a source of stress on an intellectual level, it never seemed to influence my gut-level attraction one bit.
Now, that’s a lot of points, and you don’t have to respond to all of them, Ruby, but it would be nice if you responded to any of them instead of crying “IT’S ALL JUST MEANNESS!”
Oh, I forgot, which made me sade because I am indeed a meanie: you do realize you’re currently defending a MRA alking point? “Men marry for love, women marry for status/money is a big part of the “All you need is love” post.
*sad
Ruby I’ve never cared about rich men. I’ve never dated one and money has never…in all fucking honesty at this point in my life all that matters is physical attraction. He could work in McDonalds but if he’s hot in my eyes and not an MRA or misogynist that’s good enough for me. I’m not looking for a provider. I’m looking for a partner. Also how do you explain women who partner up with poor men? studies also show that people tend to date within their socioeconomic class too. Furthermore, what does being a provider even mean? a father that works all day to provide money for his kids yet never sees them? he may be providing money but not much of a parental bond. What about a stay at home dad who isn’t the breadwinner? what if the mother makes the money and the dad stays home? he’s still providing something to his kids…love, education, caregiving. Define provider.
Saying people are genetically programming is just an excuse. Even if it were true people still have the capacity to make choices that go beyond their programming. That’s kinda why we’re human beings. When you say shit like *males/females are programmed to do X, it removes personal agency and choice from them. This naturalistic fallacy is used by MRAs all the time to rationalize the twisted shit they say. For example- Women are programmed by nature to be emotional and not understand politics or laws, thus they should not be allowed to vote. Men are programmed to spread their seed and turned on by fertile women, of course they’re going to catcall/leer/sexually harass women. Its in their nature they can’t help it!
Do you see where I’m going with this?
My wife’s been married twice, and on neither occasion was she doing it for status or money.
In fact, she positively relishes the fact that she’s the one with the “proper job” whereas I’m the freelance layabout who brings in less than half her annual salary – in fact, I’m earning less now than we did when we first met over a decade ago.
But none of this seems to matter. How very odd. Maybe she’s some kind of freak?
The whole money/status thing…it’s just so damn foreign to me. I do want to make a lot of money, who doesn’t? But it never occurred to me that in order to get status and money I’d need to obtain it from a man. I thought if I’m ever gonna get rich or famous, I’m gonna do it out of my own talent and hard work. Call me crazy but maybe it has something to do with NOT living in the 50s? even with all the disney films I watched as a kid (and still do) the provider prince thing just never occurred to me as realistic or desirable. I’m in my late 20s and have pretty much come to accept that I don’t think I’m ever going to be very well off or even able to live a really cushy middle class life. Oddly enough marrying a rich dude still hasn’t popped into my head as an option.
Either I’m one of the weird ones like your wife, and hanging around with a very different crowd of people, or MRAs and all the other people who insist women demand money and status from men don’t talk to many women, or just hang around the meat-market bar scene. Or watch too much Jersey Shore. My money is on the last two.
To add to everyone else, while I certainly am looking for someone compatible (read: not someone of status) with where I want to go with my life, I really don’t care what kind of money my partner may have, nor have I ever. I am attracted to men who are good people (that is, more than just minimal decency), who are roughly my intellectual equal, and whom I subjectively find reasonably attractive. There’s no status and money in there.
Decency is a surprisingly underrated virtue in these discussions, but it’s often the glue that holds many of the most genuinely successful relationships together.
I’m talking about actual decency, of course, not just pretending to be a decent human being in the hope that you’ll get into someone’s pants as a by-product. And it’s quite hard to be decent towards someone that you don’t regard as fully human, or as a mere springboard towards achieving a wholly different goal.
@Ruby: You say “science” but what do you even mean by that?
For example: the college of sciences at my university includes the Physics department (they’re not doing anything gender, pretty sure, and there are no women faculty); the Chemistry department (ditto, and ditto); the Biology/Environmental Sciences department (the one woman faculty member left for a better job because of how shittily they treated her–so did one of the men–that dept. is in trouble) probably doesn’t do too much with gender in the human species (I know a bird guy over there, and a newt guy, but no human guys, heh heh heh). As someone pointed out, the project/process of mapping the human genome does not give us any simple “gender causes x” results.
Mathematics, well ditto and ditto (they do have a few non-tenure track women there to teach the courses for Education majors). See, that’s one thing: historically and even today, a whole shitload of “science” has been controlled by men–in recent decades, women have participated more, and even some feminists have started challenging the assumptions that affected scientific observations (Donna Haraway, primate biologist: a lot of early primate studies, in the Victorian period I think, looked at gorillas and other critters in ZOOS and never thought, gee, maybe their behavior will be different in captivity). Jane Goodall (LOOK A WOMAN) is the one I associate most with the “let’s observe them in natural environment and see what happens.). So a lot of the earliest ‘science’ on primates has been disproven because, again, that’s what scientists do, TEST theories. And no theory is ever ‘conclusively proven–it’s just been tested a whole lot and not been disproved (but it could be! I forget the concept, but it’s important–falsifiability?). I am NOT even close to being a scientist, but I was raised by geologist, and I like reading the more popular stuff about science, and I work with academics in those disciplines.
NOTHING is as simple in “science” as you portray it.
Your discourse is not scientific; it’s magical thinking. You think if you keep saying “it’s science” you’ll (perhaps?) convince people that it’s true–but as you can see IF YOU OBSERVE, it’s not happening. Among others, there are probably people a lot more informed about specific aspects of scientific thinking and scholarship than you OR me.
I think you probably are, as others have noted, drawing on popularized evo psychology which is horrendously flawed and often fairly roundly condemned by the psychology, sociology, and anthropology scholars who are in SOCIAL SCIENCES. Case in point: Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam did a popularized book on the internet that is all evo-psychology (though neither of them is in fact in that field–that’s why POPULAR). You can google to find the sff media fandom response to their flawed survey and methodology, and if you’re interested I can point you to a blog or two by anthropologists that critique their earlier work (oh, heck, here’s the link to fanlore article on “Survey Fail”: http://fanlore.org/wiki/SurveyFail).
I’m not even going to try to discuss/debate/engage with your basic claims about gender essentialism because they’re not worth it: the scholarship on gender in MULTIPLE disciplines is complicated and the questions about what impact our ‘genes’ have on us vs. our environment are often clouded by the kind of thinking that you are exhibiting (and there are some researchers who are affected by that as well, unfortunately).
Look at how we treat DKM who, I would say, most of us would like to see driven out, compared to how we treat you. I don’t think you’ve done enough to have that sort of rhetoric aimed at you–though you might, if you keep escalating. I don’t care if you post here or not–more and more I’m skipping your posts because you’re falling into a pattern–you say the same thing over and over.
If you added “FOOD FOR THOUGHT” and “FACTS NOT LIES” to your posts as well as
“SCIENCE PROVED IT,” you’d be right in the mainstream of trolling.
And here’s a question: if you do in fact think that science has proved whatever, and there’s no convincing counter-claims you’d accept (like, oh, all, of history and anthropology that show major differences in how gender roles are constructed and how gender is performed across time and cultures), then why bother with us silly little manboobz. Why is it important that anybody listen to what YOU say? (It’s clear nobody here except the other trolls would agree with you, and I don’t see either DKM or NWO coming to your defense–at least once in a while I think they used to come to Brandon’s and even MRAL’s defense, though I could be misremembering–if not their defense, they’d at least do a few trolly high-fives to each other). Have any of them supported you? If not, why do you think that is?
Ruby: Let’s examnine an example of your thesis: that we’re “genetically programmed” to have women latch onto to the, “best provider”.
The !Kung of the Kalahari are one of, if not the, oldest stocks of humanity*. They still live (about half of them) in their traditional ways. If there were going to be a group more likely to show your thesis, “in the wild” they are it. In the past 5,000 years they’ve had even more selective pressures to make the trait more pronounced; as access to resources has been contrained by other peoples.
Eating Christmas in the Kalahari is a report by an ethnographer about how they responded with his “wealth”.
Read the entire piece, it’s not long.
It’s also science.
*a BBC article on genetic typing/mapping in Africa)
In my experience, women aren’t so much bothered about a man’s income as they are about his drive/ambition/dedication. I suppose that comes from wanting someone who is keen and active.
I’d never date a smoker or a heavy drinker – everyone’s different.
Specifically, it will be disproven, at an unspecified point in time; anything short of a completely accurate grand unifying theory of the universe is ultimately incomplete, and new information will come along to render the old theory void by introducing new data that simply couldn’t be measured, hadn’t been accounted for, or for a connection not previously seen. Newtonian Physics has had holes in the theories exposed. No, I don’t know the term for this.
Oh gods Biologists as a rule HATE those people (Evopsychers). I’m not kidding a lot when I say devobio is a lot of fucking work. It’s entirely possible to produce evidence that strongly suggests something is or is not adaptive in an environment (The real kick in the pants to Evopsych would be if things adaptive in one culture aren’t adaptive 300, or possibly even 30, miles down; hint, this is probably the case); evopsychers don’t bother. They just make their myth and move onto the next one. That’s fucking insulting to people invested in working on, you know, actually demonstrating evolution’s effects XD
I mean, it’s insulting to everyone else too, but you can’t expect scientists to care about that XD
Happy:
Yes, that’s very true. And provided you don’t actively worry about keeping a roof over your head or about where your next meal’s coming from, questions of income are often decidedly secondary if the relationship’s built on solid foundations.
It was lack of ambition on her ex-husband’s part that killed my wife’s first marriage, and when she ran into him a couple of years ago (nearly two decades after they split up), she was amused to find that he was still doing exactly the same dead-end job, thus completely vindicating her decision. By contrast, I made it clear when we got engaged that I couldn’t come close to matching Robert Mitchum’s famous “Marry me and you’ll be farting through silk” promise to his fiancée, but I’ve kept myself more than busy enough.
Fun story: my senior year of high school I found two of my aquaintences talking about how Disney movies had ruined them because they wanted a prince to come sweep them off their feet. I thought, “Really?” My favorite Disney movie was Aladdin, but only because I wanted to STEAL his flying carpet for myself! 😛
RE: M Dubs
So wait, there were investment bankers in the days of the cave man? “Thag get 10% interest! Thag hunt mammoth, sell on commodities market!”
BAHAHAHAHA.
Also, as a wee childthing, of Disney, Beauty and the Beast was our favorite… but from earliest childhood, we felt that they were WRONG. Here they’d gone on and on about accepting people who look different than you, that sometimes people have different tastes, and then what? The awesomely-designed interesting-looking beast transforms into some bland boring pretty boy! THE FUCK WAS THIS SHIT?
I kinda love our wee child self for thinking shit like that so early.
If I could have had both the carpet and the pet monkey, sure! Certainly being the princess didn’t seem like much fun.
Even as a child I think I was a bit too cynical for Disney movies. I can remember watching Sleeping Beauty and thinking that Maleficent was much cooler than the boring princess who did nothing but prick her finger and then sleep for a long time.
I daresay the original Shrek has dated pretty horribly by now, but kudos to its makers for completely subverting that ending.
RE: Wetherby
Ah, Shrek. Has indeed aged a bit badly (probably due to massive overwatching when it first came out) but still has a soft place in my heart. Feel bad for Maurice Tillet, though, if the rumors about that are true…
Still holding out for a Beauty and the Beast retelling where nobody transforms at all and nobody dies in the end. Thus far, only Mercedes Lackey has acheived that. (Of all people.)
So,… what is Shrek? Is he an alpha, since he gets the princess? Is he a poor ugly beta? Is he white knight? Rahh, that shit is complicated.
As a kid, I thought that Dysney movies were boring, for the most part. Still do actually, as I still haven’t recovered from the adaptation of my once favorite novel, the Sword of Truth. (why Dysney, why????)
Shrek’s in a completely different chunk of mythos… he’s a Green Knight.
Disney has moved away from the theme of a prince saving a damsel in distress and sweeping her off her feet. At the end of Hercules, Meg actually saves Hercules, subverting the whole theme. Tiana from the Princess and the Frog is another subversion of the old storylines, because she is ambitious and goes into business for herself at the end. While
Disney hasn’t had a great record for positive potrayals of women, they are at least aware of
that and want to improve.
I’ve always found most villains to be more exciting and interesting than the protoganists on Disney movies. Hades (voiced by James Woods) was one of the funniest Disney characters of any of the movies. Robin Williams tried to be funny for his role as the Genie in Aladdin, but he was oftentimes more annoying than funny (just like Robin Williams is most of the time). I also think the heroes tend to be so good that they come across and predicable and one dimensional, while the villians have more depth.
Disney’s good characters are so treacley sweet that they should come with a free toothbrush. Pratchett’s versions of the old fairytales are so much more fun. I believe the comment one of the witches made about Sleeping Beauty was “all that for a little prick”?
(I’m paraphrasing, too lazy to go find the actual quote.)