Here are a couple of, well, let’s just call them very intriguing questions asked of me by a Men’s Rights Redditor. Since I can’t respond to them on the Men’s Rights subreddit — I’m banned — I thought I’d respond here:
Mr. Levelate, allow me to answer your serious questions with some equally serious questions of my own:
I’ve wondered for a long time how people like you react to the men’s rights mantra of ‘all women are wombats’, when you see a woman who isn’t a wombat, how do you explain this?
Also, many MRAs advocate turning all squirrels into bologna, what makes you think squirrel bologna would taste better than regular bologna, and what would the world do with all those extra uneaten nuts, were it ever to come to that?
Here’s the thing, Mr. Levelate: those things you think feminists believe? FEMINISTS DON’T ACTUALLY BELIEVE THEM.
That “all men are rapists” quote from Marilyn French you guys like to pass around? That was from a character in a novel.
The number of radical feminists who seriously want to get rid of men, or a significant number of them, you could probably count on your fingers. I’m not sure how many MRAs want to make squirrel bologna, but the numbers are probably similar. And, fyi, there are actually more than a few MRAs who fantasize about breeding certain types of women out of existence, like this dude on The Spearhead, and a small army of MRAs and MGTOWers who pine for the imaginary future where babies are gestated in artificial wombs and women are all replaced by sexy sexbots.
Listening to MRAs talking about feminism is a bit like sitting in on a book club in which no one has read the book.
So true, Xtra, with the added benefit of the victim-blaming narrative of “Why did you get so drunk? Only bad girls who deserve rape get drunk.”
Rapists know exactly what they are doing.
Exactly how big is this fish? Does it have teeth?
Me too, especially since I have *been* in the “What if BOTH people are drunk?” scenario. We discussed whether or not we were going to have sex BEFOREHAND while SOBER, genius! It’s not that hard!
(I have no idea how to embed videos…this is very triggering for rape, specifically rape under the influence of alcohol)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3TT0TfQHKM]
This is what raping a drunk girl looks like. I wonder how MRAs would comment on the video. It’s chilling in how realistic it is.
There’s an obvious irony joke to be had about how the MRA-ians can’t wrap their heads around “diminished capacity.”
All their reasoning is like a crappy syllogism:
Men are humans.
Women aren’t men.
Therefore women aren’t humans.
Except “women” stands for anything “other.” Children, gender queer, etc: non humans. They’ve all slammed us irrevocably varelse. Which is sad. And frustrating.
>>>A social justice warrior once said, “I have neither the time nor the patience to educate my opposition.”
A sentiment I concur with. The liberal myth that opposition is usually due to lack of education or consciousness-raising instead of irreconciliable difference in interests is not a tenable position. At best it represents a tiny sliver of the opposition.
In the end what matters is winning, not whether you changed minds (even if changing minds is one possible way of winning).
Finally bothered myself to look at the People link. Despite Factfinder’s use of this quote as support for the idea that French believes the statements of the character Mira, I don’t gather that from this selection at all. A couple months ago I was going through a great deal of emotional trouble and used poetry as an outlet for that. Sometimes I would write a poem centered around an idea, but I would then think twice about that idea and find that I disagreed with the sentiment expressed. Even though I felt everything I wrote at some point or another, that doesn’t mean I agreed with it permanently. And the goal of a fiction author is not, in fact, to only present ideas with which one agrees.
Furthermore, even if Marilyn French does or did agree completely with that character’s statement, it is pretty obvious that the definition of the word “rape” in that context includes much more than any legal definition encompasses—it’s more like the “male gaze” than rape.
In other words: no, factfinder still hasn’t made a coherent point, though I’m sure he fancies his “point at thing A and point at thing B” approach to be very cutting; and pathetic anti-feminists lose this argument on all fronts.
@Magical Laura:
I guarantee MRAs would find a way to pin the blame on the girl in that video. Guarantee it.
I really like this one. I don’t know if it’s the original, but it’s the one I first saw.
And
@Lauralot
Hey now, there ain’t nuthin playful about that. This hurr is serious MRA bidness!
@Argenti
Finally someone explains why I’m a self-hating mangina!!
How does one tell if a fish is cranky and hates people?
I’d comment on Preggo Punchout’s stupid fucking intentional misunderstanding of rape, but frankly it makes me sick. I’m still reeling from Welmer’s stupid fucking blatant, evil mischaracterization of rape. It is to puke.
You know how, in popular culture, rapists have knives and guns and pull women into dark alleyways, and as a culture we get all confused when someone says they were raped but there was no gun or knife? ALCOHOL IS THE WEAPON.
I always assumed that fish were fairly indifferent to people, unless they want to eat us.
FactMangler seems to be attempting a particularly inept form of gaslighting. Not sure why he’d think it would work.
Because women are stupid, and manginas are like women.
It’s not as if we can read, or remember. We just do what our overlords tell us, unlike the free-thinking Manly Men.
@Bee
My favorite comment is Huck Finn’s.
Pretty sure that any guy that stays away from women because of this court case is blessing humanity. I also love that, for all W.F. Price’s handwaving, Brigadoon’s comments received at least twice as many upvotes as downvotes. Fucking vile POSs.
@David
If you decide to do a post on that post, and Price ends up taking down Brigadoon’s comments, I saved a copy of the page. So let me know and I can mail it to you.
Bee, that article by WTF Price is truly nauseating.
If you don’t know whether or not she “would have” consented, then you DO know that she didn’t. Bleh. If she’s too intoxicated to indicate consent then, by definition, she didn’t consent. How is this difficult to understand??
I agree with this as well. In feminists spaces, pleas for education are usually only deployed as a giant derailing tactic.
I agree with this 100%. And with regard to WF Price, if you don’t know for certain what your intended sexual conquest thinks of the prospect, then plain common sense suggests that you should regard her response as a firm “no”. Even if it means not getting laid at that particular time, which I realize is a sacrifice certain less mature people find hard to make.
Which is not to say that having sex with someone for the first time while under the influence of alcohol is a bad idea per se – let’s face it, we’ve almost certainly all been there. But there’s a massive difference between two people using alcohol as a pleasant social lubricant and just one person cynically using it as a calculated means of breaking down defences.
I’ll take this a step further, even. I think most rapists aren’t just using alcohol as a calculated means of breaking down defenses, but as a calculated means of completely incapacitating their targets and rendering them incapable of fighting back, getting away, getting help, thinking clearly, etc.
I don’t know anything about rape laws in Britain, but in the U.S. typically to bring a successful case you’d need to show that the victim was clearly and demonstrably drunk off their ass — i.e., was stumbling, slurring their words, throwing up, not making sense, blacking out — and that the rapist was not — i.e., was able to drive home, was able to walk and talk clearly, was making rational decisions. This looks extremely different from Welmer’s painting of two consenting adults having drunken sex after a drink or two.
The MRM is inept in its use of the, “No True Scotsman”, in that, even as they are trying to deny that the Brieviks, the Spearheads, the Lepines, the Ball’s are part of the “movement”, they proceed to praise them, and repeat the things they said.
So Elam can’t avoid being lumped with them, and the In Male Fides and the Sodonis of the world, because they are cut from the same cloth.
Are atheists cut from the same cloth as well? Scientists as well? Because Brievik quoted Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin.
I also love how you feminist pussyfoot around the fact that women are also members of the MRM and more are coming out in support of us. Of course, feminism is the only objective school of thought so anyone who disagrees with it is brainwashed, right?
what are you talking about factfinder, we make fun of typhonblue and gww all time.
why do the dudes who bleat about us being ‘ideologues’ always have the most rigid blinders on, themselves?
There’s no shortage of sexism in atheism or science. You must be new to the internet if you think otherwise, PreggoPunchout.
We know there’s women in the MRM, there’s been no pussyfooting here about Typhon, GWW, or others. Love on, you’d know this if you could find a fact.
I personally don’t think they’re brainwashed, I think they’re in for a rude awakening when they step out of line and the boys boot them from the club.
ideologue– So, as a woman, why should I support the MRM? Also, why should I not be a feminist? Lay out an argument and I’ll consider it.
Specifically, I’m a happily married woman in my 30s with an awesome husband and a career I love. The feminist movement has given me the freedom to achieve those things. But maybe the MRM has something better planned for me?
Gaslighting or just stupid? I’m voting “both”, again.