Fresh from the Men’s Rights subreddit, some thoughts from some dude called atiwywr on cougars, age of consent laws, and Justin Beiber.
So “cougars” are perverse, but pedophilia – sorry, ephebophilia — is natural and good?
The age of consent in most American states is 16.
Complaining that men can’t legally have sex with girls – sorry, “fertile women” – aged 15 and younger: Men’s Rights activism at its finest!
Kind of on topic: I went to the public library a few days ago, and saw a (really small) card that said something to the effect of ‘most of us don’t see how badly we treat men, and the veneration of women has reached epic proportions. If you want to do something about it, go to blah blah blah website’, followed by a man’s name. I wish I could remember it so I could see whether it was standard MRA fare or something a bit different (probably not).
Anyway, I went back the next day, or maybe two days later, and it was gone! And I know from experience that most flyers there don’t get taken down for a while. Maybe a library employee was offended?
I live in a pretty small town, and know most of the people who use the library, so there’s a good chance it’s someone I know. The mystery is killing me! No, I’m not making this up, I thought I should tell Manboobz. I seem to run into MRAs and assorted conspiracy theorists a lot more than most people. There is a man out there convinced I am an alien sent to destroy him. Anyway, I really wish I could remember the name on the card. I think it might have been Wayne something…
Ruby, you must think we’re as stupid as you are. When you say “maybe it happens in some Muslim countries” you imply that it doesn’t happen in Western countries or (gasp! Say it ain’t so!) the good ol’ US of A.
It’s not that you pointed out child marriages happen in other places, it’s that you implied they ONLY happen in those uncivilized, dirty places with the weird religions and non-white people by throwing out a stereotype.
No religion is without problems, but framing your words to make it look like certain problems are unique ONLY to those religions makes you look like a hateful, ignorant ass.
Nobody’s reading anything into your statements. Your words speak for themselves. And I’ll add, continuing to dig your hole by continuing to throw out stereotypical garbage or deny what you said, isn’t going to change that you said some shitty things.
@Nanasha: I read the article, and it doesn’t seem to me like she argues that you should have sex even though you hate it. I think her idea is rather that you can’t always wait for horniness to kick in, at least not if you’ve been married a long time, have kids etc. Sometimes you must decide to have sex and start making out, and THEN “your hormones will kick in” as she puts it, and you’re gonna get horny and have good sex. That was my interpretation at least. I still think it’s a bit weird to suggest that if you and your husband are drifting apart you’re gonna fix that by simply having more sex. Still, I didn’t read her as suggesting that sex should be something you merely put up with despite not liking it for the sake of your husband.
And even if that IS her suggestion, that you put up with sex simply to keep your man satisfied, that’s not the same thing as saying that coerced sex is good. If your husband isn’t threatening you or pressuring you and you still choose to have sex with him, it’s not coerced, even if your reason for sex was a crappy one and you’re not horny.
I think it’s both scary and amusing how many “forbidden blasphemies!” my marriage represents:
– We’re not Demi and Ashton, but I am 10+ years older than my husband. He looks older, I look younger: we thought we were closer in age. By the time we found out how old each of us was, who the heck cared? I’m in my 30s, he’s in his 20s. Shrug.
– Interracial. Even one of those “black man on yuppie career path marries blonde white woman to consolidate his cultural rebellion” memes, as was explained to us by some people in each of our families. Us = “?!”
– I have children. I had children YOUNG. This means my husband is almost evenly between my age and my oldest daughter’s age. When my future father in law came to the wedding and met us all for the first time, he actually said to my husband, “Maybe you should have waited several years for the daughter to be legal.” When he is himself married to a woman 20 years younger. Fun. My husband doesn’t speak to his father now.
– Yep, I could have lots more kids. For a long time still. But my husband is delighted with the children we have, though biologically not his. Imagine that, tying himself to a woman he won’t be “reproducing” with.
By the books, my first and horribly abusive marriage dinged all the right statistics: age, race, background. And it was terrible. More than ten years later, and with the stark contrasts with my present marriage, I’ve got a new perspective on how terrible. Same for how my children are growing up in a “non-traditional” situation happily, where most of my generation in my family in all the “right” situations dealt with massive abuse.
I’d say it’s pretty simple to understand that marriage should be about love, cooperation, building lives together, no matter designations of coloring, creed, “gender” but yeah.
@Dvärghundspossen:
Yeah, but she’s building on a cultural landscape where the most common meme is ‘women don’t enjoy sex anyway, so go ahead and have more sex you don’t enjoy with your husband.’ That’s a very real thing over here, so even if she doesn’t come out and say it, not explicitly working against that means it’s the backdrop of her message.
@howardbann1ster: When she wrote about doing “whatever it takes”, like getting away, to a hotel, doing it in the car, get a bit drunk or whatever, I read that as doing whatever it takes to help getting oneself in the mood for sex. But maybe I was too charitable. Maybe she meant “whatever it takes” to relax enough to make sex even possible, or something like that.
Anyway, I still think there’s a crucial difference between choosing to have bad sex for bad reasons, and being coerced into sex.
So hooking up with girls is all about babies? Making babies, having as many babies as you can? When they’re fantasizing about having sex with girls they’re actually fantasizing about fatherhood? Why doesn’t Playboy have a knocked-up section, I wonder? Oh, and I thought these dopes were scared shitless of being sperm-jacked.
These guys can’t even tell when they’re lying to themselves.
Oh yeah, gotta love that disconnect. They want the justification of evo-psych mumbo jumbo about how it’s natural for them to want 14 year old girls because that’s when they’re most fertile. But at the same time, fuck those bitches if they trap them with a pregnancy and steal all of their money with child support.
There is… but here we get into that crucial context I mentioned before. The backdrop of this article is folks like Sunshinemary running around yelling ‘if he’s beating you, the problem is that you aren’t catering to him in bed enough.’
But more to your point, recently I saw a little flare-up on Pandagon. An asexual was feeling harassed because of Amanda’s comment that advice to just have sex you didn’t want to cement a relationship made the asexual feel like a rapist. Because Amanda said that it felt coercive. And rape-y.
Well. Leaving aside the obvious confusion over who it is that was being coerced in this–that gets right to the heart of the matter. If you’re not interested in sex, but are actively interested in making your partner happy, is that hostile to the concept of enthusiastic consent?
Nope. But people standing in line behind you and browbeating you that relationship problems are because you don’t make your partner happy enough? That’s pressure. That’s not coming from the person in front of you, but that is people behind you standing there and browbeating you to give more, give more, give more.
That’s the problem with articles like this, in theory. (I haven’t read this article…) That they operate as a club in the hands of folks who are abusive.
So, yeah, to any given situation I might say, ‘sure, yes, that’s fine, that’s your decision, if you’re consenting to that because you really love the relationship, then your reasons are your own.’ But to articles like this, because of the cultural context, I give a failing grade pretty well automatically.
Those were my next thoughts. You’d think they’d want to go for someone who, by their definition is no longer fertile (though, I think a lot of women have proven fertility is more of a genetics thing than anything – some ladies can have babies well into their 40’s and some can’t at all during their teens) since then by their logic they wouldn’t have to worry about some woman stealing their used condoms and running out the door yelling “finally I’ll get the baby I’ll deserve!” and then sticking them with a child support bill of ONE BILLION DOLLARS (cue Dr. Evil face).
But, you know, NATURE, or something.
I hope this isn’t overly personal, but I have always found unwanted (but consensual) sex painful, uncomfortable and humiliating. I know there are others who do not think like this, and don’t find the experience too bad. I find it difficult to think of myself as a human being when I try to have unwanted sex regularly. This hasn’t happened for a long time, however all I remember is how much being in that relationship made me dread leaving work in the evening. I ended it after going away on a business trip and finding myself crying at the end of the trip because I knew in a few days I’d have to see my boyfriend again. I know this isn’t entirely due to the emotions about the physical relationship however that did contribute. I think the point that it can make your partner happier if you have unwanted sex (provided you fake enjoyment). However, it can be incredibly destructive for a person. It strikes me, that the solution is to remain single if you don’t want sex that regularly.
@Pear_tree:
Agh. That sounds awful, and I’m really sorry you went through that.
Singleness is a answer–but it’s not the only answer. Finding somebody with a similar sex drive. Finding somebody willing to reduce the amount of sex they expect rather than ask you to increase what you expect.
Not to say that either of those are easy options. Especially in a culture beating that stupid drum ‘you just gotta have more sex, even if you don’t want it.’
You make good points, howardbann1ster. The difference between coercive sex and consensual but really unwanted sex starts to blur if there’s enough of a pressure from your culture that you SHOULD HAVE SEX.
Peartree, I’m sorry too.
And there’s a huge difference between a) having sex you don’t want just to make your partner happy, and b) starting to make out despite not feeling horny because you know you WILL get horny and have good sex once you’ve made out for a while.
I’ve done b) many times. If there’s lots to do at work and I’m feeling stressed about that, I won’t just spontaneously go into sex mood. But I can decide to initiate sex anyway because I know that I’m gonna get in the mood after a while and it’s gonna be great once I get into it (and take my mind off work for a while). It’s not something I do just as a favour for my husband.
I just thought, on first reading the article, that this is what the writer was talking about. That, plus her theory (which I don’t really believe in) that SEX MAKES YOU BOND so your relationship is gonna get magically better if you have sex a few times a week.
Pear_tree: That sounds awful. 🙁
Definitely sounds like you’ve made some good choices, I’m not going to say anything against that. I still think there could be people around for whom having sex they’re not feeling particularly aroused for, because they love their partner and want to make them happy, is fine- but it sounds really quite clear that’s definitely not the case for you.
I think I’m basically saying ‘People are different’ here (and of course may have missed something; people please point out if this is the case).
*reads last comment*
There was something I was missing…
I think I may have been equating ‘want partner to be happy’ with ‘get off on making partner happy.’
I’m struck by the fact that the MRA poster didn’t mention younger men being attracted to older women. It’s not surprising that he wouldn’t, I suppose; probably can’t even entertain the notion, since for these guys any woman over 30 is a dried-up, used-up, worthless-to-men shell with no further purpose in life, since she’s now unable to attract MRAs, those peaks of masculine perfection. In real life, however, there are men who do prefer older women. What do MRAs think of that? Stop, stop, don’t tell me …
Switching from a 21-year-old girlfriend to a 42-year-old girlfriend was, sexually speaking, one of the best decisions I ever made. I was 25 at the time.
And we’re still good friends to this day.
I wasn’t, “singling out” those Muslim countries, just using them as an example. OH NO, I SAID ISLAM HAS A ISSUE WITH CHILD MARRIAGE. I MUST HATE ALL MUSLIMS!!! What, we can’t talk about the negative side of Islam without being called an Islamophobe?
BigKitty: Yes, Estrus was almost certainly lost before Homo-something became Homo sapiens. And I’m arguing that it was the crucial aspect of the equation.
Quackers: also doesn’t estrus only affect female mammals? cuz its being talked about like both males and females experience it…err estrus…it means going into heat right?
Yes, and for the most most, male animals of estrus species don’t pursue sex when the females aren’t fertile, because the females aren’t receptive to the idea.
By way of example the professional horse breeding market for things like thoroughbreds, and hanoverian wabrmbloods, and the like have made it so that lots of stallions don’t know how to act around other other horses.
The studs aren’t allowed to mingle with other horses, esp. not mares. If they ever get to spend time with a live mare she’s in heat. More often than not they are “milked” with a sex doll (a “phantom mare”) which has been splashed with the urine of a mare in heat.
This makes the studs really tempermental. They come to think that any mare they see is in the mood, and they are aggressive with any horse they meet.
If, however, one turns a stallion out with a herd; one that has an “alpha mare”, he gets socialised in pretty short order. He’ll even tolerate geldings being about (two stallions is still a recipe for problems).
Because the mares… won’t put up with that shit, and if he tries to persist they’ll kill him.
so despite acknowledging that other examples of the practice exist, you focused on muslims as the only example. that is the literal definition of singling out. you dont get to backpedal just because you got caught saying what you really mean.
not by taking random potshots at ‘those muslim countries’ you can’t. i mean, you can on stormfront, which is really where you should be taking this shtick.
or at least dont respond with this kind of craven dishonesty when you get caught.
Well, you can’t, apparently. Unsurprising that the racist can’t manage to do so respectfully.
fatcat: I have a flier here on my desk for a website about the “too many victims few bad judges”.
I found it in January, while walking about New York (up near Harlem, I think, I forget, it was on the way to a seasonal party). It’s mostly about one judge, so I’m guessing the guy has a personal beef.
It’s full of bad caps, some of the expected errors in fact (“a lot of these judges are elected by Michael Bloomberg“), with a plea for people to share their stories at “website.org”.
But the website… is still, “under construction”.
But, “We are going to make a STOP to their lies and false allegations parents. CHILDREN-“
I’m a lesbian married to her partner. There was a time because of chronic pain, stress and hormones, the last thing I ever wanted was sex. It was just not happening. But I love my wife and I love giving her pleasure and I knew it wasn’t fair that she should have to suffer through my dry spell. Lesbian sex is so much different than penis-in-vagina. I could give her a rocking good time several times a week because I wanted to make her happy. Afterwards we’d cuddle and just felt more connected as a partnership.
She wasn’t coercive or manipulative in any way. Most of the time it was at my suggestion because she knew what I was going through. When she did want something, she asked me if I wanted to watch, but even that resulted in me getting involved. And then when my desire did come back, the sex went from just being good to mind-blowing.
Having a relationship that is honestly based on love, trust and equality would just blow an MRA’s mind, too, but in a completely different way. That two women would have (happy, enthusiastic, prolonged) sex after they were already married to each other would just not compute.
Even without the love, trust and equality, women were almost just as likely to agree to have sex with a good looking stranger with a bad pick up line if the good looking stranger was another woman.
I hated to be that person who refers to a study and then couldn’t link to it, but I found it! http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/gender-differences-and-casual-sex-the-new-research/
Searching “good looking women” and “bad pickup lines” meant I had to dig through a lot of PUA garbage, but I just love the conclusions this study draws. Women are much more likely to have casual sex if they think they’re more likely to get an orgasm from it. It’s incredible.
Pecunium: That’s really interesting. I don’t know much about horse-breeding, but I do know something about dog breeding. If you have a pack of dogs with both males and bitches, unaltered, they’re normally gonna be platonic friends as long as the bitch isn’t in heat. The males will often want to mate during the entire heat period, while the bitch only wants to mate during those days when she’s fertile. But if a male actually tries something when the bitch doesn’t want to she’ll show him that this is not okay.