Our old nemesis The Pigman — the MRA blogger and one half of the cartooning team responsible for atrocities like this — has some thoughts on the Aurora shootings, specifically on the men who lost their lives to protect their girlfriends from gunfire. Their heroism makes him angry, much like the fellows on The Spearhead we looked at the other day. Here’s his complaint:
How’s that for inequity? How’s that for disposability? These guys appear to have sacrificed themselves for these people primarily because of their sex.
Well, no, I think they sacrificed themselves for their girlfriends because they loved their girlfriends.
After all, where are the guys who jumped in front of their best mate, or their dad or brother? And above all, where are the women who died saving their boyfriends?
There were many heroes in the Aurora shooting. Jonathan Blunk, Matt McQuinn, and Alex Teves died protecting their girlfriends. Stephanie Davies risked her life to keep a friend shot in the neck from bleeding to death. Other acts of heroism had less storybook endings: Marcus Weaver tried to shield a female friend. He was wounded but lived; she died. Jennifer Seeger tried to drag a wounded victim to safety, but fled when the shooter returned.
But the Pigman is interested in none of this:
This isn’t heroism, this is male disposability at its worst and by praising it society is encouraging it.Cheering these men’s actions is as reprehensible as it is stupid and discriminatory.
The heroes in Aurora acted quickly, and on instinct; they didn’t have time to stop to think. Is it possible that, in the cases of those men who tried to shield the women with them, gender socialization had something to do with what their instincts told them to do? Almost certainly.
But “male disposability” has nothing to do with it. We live in a society in which heroism, as an idea and as a cultural ideal, has been gendered male for thousands of years. In the stories we tell ourselves, the video games we play, the movies we watch (including The Dark Knight Rises) , the “hero with a thousand faces” is almost always male, and the damsel in distress is, well, almost always a damsel.
The Pigman ignores all this, instead attacking the three dead men as
foolish enough and unfortunate enough to fall for a lifetime of anti-male propaganda telling them to die for the nearest woman whenever the shit hits the fan.
I have no doubt that many are concerned with the feelings of the dead men’s survivors and wish I would just shut up.
But then he barrels ahead anyway:
But this is a simple case of “What you praise, you encourage,” and I for one think calling out those who encourage men to waste their lives for people worth no more than themselves is more important than being “sensitive”. Die for a child if you must, die for some guy on the verge of finding a cure for cancer if you must – die for someone no better than you simply because you have been taught to and you are a fool.
Had these men died protecting male buddies, would The Pigman have applied this calculus of worthiness to the beneficiaries of their heroism? Would he have suggested that the dead men thought they were worth less than their friends? Of course not.
The three men didn’t do what they did because they thought they were worthless or disposable. They did what they did because they wanted to protect those they loved. Others in the theater, like Stephanie Davies, risked their lives for friends, or people they didn’t even know. There’s nothing foolish or “wasteful” about putting yourself on the line to protect others. In every major disaster, whether natural, or like this one man-made, ordinary people emerge as heroes precisely because they are willing to put the lives and safety of other people ahead of their own.
Do these real-life stories of heroism play out in gendered ways? Often times they do. Men may be more willing to risk their lives to protect their wives or girlfriends; mothers may be more willing to risk their lives to protect their children.
In real life crises, it’s hardly surprising that people sometimes act like characters in these stories we tell ourselves. If you want to change how people act, you need to change these stories.
MRAs like to pretend that men are the “disposable sex” but in their hearts they know that’s not true. They’re well aware, as are we all, that our cultural narratives of heroism privilege and glorify men and put them at the center of almost every story. MRAs like The Pigman aren’t interested in expan ding our cultural narratives of heroism to include female heroes — nor are they willing to even acknowledge that there are such things as female heroes in the real world. They certainly don’t want more stories, more games, more films featuring female protagonists.
Instead they’d rather wrap themselves in the mantle of victimhood, and attack real heroes like Jonathan Blunk, Matt McQuinn, and Alex Teves as “white knights” or “fools.”
How people react in a crises reveals a lot about them. How MRAs like The Pigman, and like the Spearhead commenters I quoted the other day reacted to the Aurora shootings has certainly revealed a lot about them, none of it good.
Unfortunately, attitudes like theirs aren’t confined to the fringe that is the manosphere.
After hearing the stories of Blunk, McQuinn, and Teves, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto tweeted “I hope the girls whose boyfriends died to save them were worthy of the sacrifice.”
After numerous readers responded to his remarks with outrage, Taranto offered an apology of sorts, along with an explanation that suggested he really didn’t understand why people were angry in the first place. When someone does something noble and heroic out of love, it’s not up to you to second guess their actions or their love. Taranto’s words not only dishonored “the the girls whose boyfriends died to save them;” it dishonored the heroes as well.
Like The Pigman, like the Spearhead commenters, Taranto has failed this test of his humanity.
The only one fooled by your lies is you.
Excuse me? This was recently claimed in Boobzland’s forum, which I was researching for an AMBZ post.
Vile. Nothing but vile liars. This blog is so sickening. Disgusting. Evil. Hypocritical.
is that sort of like how ragey dude gets worked up easily?
So you DIDN’T claim not to have sockpuppeted here? I mean, come on son. After all, we live in a misandrist society.
“Shaming misandrist-feminist language is misandrist and shaming, what else is new.”
You’re tonight’s star of Spot That Fallacy!! (I’m pretty sure that’s new)
Begging the question (petitio principii) – where the conclusion of an argument is implicitly or explicitly assumed in one of the premises
Asshole creep is an asshole creep, what else is new. See how this works? Or rather, doesn’t work? Try making an actual argument.
EXCUSE ME but making Steele throw tantrums is hilarious. How can we bribe Sharculese to do it every day?
Is anyone else reminded of HAL shutting down when Steele is reduced to repetitive sentence fragments? But, you know, if HAL were unimaginably boring and whiny.
Oh lord he keeps making more. Fuck, I need to get Gajeel up in here, I think he eats iron fast enough for this shit XD XD XD
Bechdel test.com is wrong.
Wra naq Fryvan unir n pbairefngvba nobhg gur angher bs gur jbeyq cbfg “yvorengvba” bs Tbgunz juvyr gurl ner ybbgvat gur ncnegzrag bs fbzrbar jub jnf, vg nccrnef, jryy gb qb.
Wra gryyf Fryvan guvf vf jung fur jnagrq, naq fryvan ybbxf yrff guna unccl.
Sharculese: I had a sense of personal investment when he engaged in an intentional mis-spelling of my nom-de-net. I say intentional because he changed it up later; and he made a point about, “how we all know that…”
Nikan: Now, tell me where are your “MRAish dudes”, who say that? That’s what I say, and if you classify me as “MRAish dude”, you’re wrong, as wrong as you probably can be.
No, we aren’t. It doesn’t matter a whit what you are elsewhere, all we have is what you present here. What you present here is MRAish.
You, because you are new, are being given the benefit of some doubt. You are fast spending that credit.
Um…. no, it’s not true. People with disabilities aren’t inherently less valuable as human beings.
They may be less capable, but that’s got nothing to do with inherent worth.
Keep telling yourself that, you obviously believe it, but it’s not true, and you aren’t going to convince anyone here of it… though you’ve just done a bang-up job of convincing them of other things.
Excuse me. I do believe I need to take a breather. Anyway, I need to make plans for a Friday date tomorrow with Ella, and we will be splitting the check, because we are egalitarians, not female supremacists, M-feminists, and disgusting, hypocritical bastards.
dude you already admitted to lying, and then you tried to blame us for it. it’s a little late for this.
Torvus (Dude) Buttsteele: You’re full of metaphorical feces. I do not believe you. More men are killed in wars than women. I’ll grant there may be rare geographic exceptions, but World War II destroyed an entire generation of European men… not women.
Ok… show the proof.
Butt… you’re going to have an uphill struggle with WW2 because of “strategic” bombing.
Don’t forget the rampaging armies of Germany, Russia, Italy, Japan, weren’t running about going, “oh… you’re a non-combatant, I’ll just leave you be.”
And the RAF strafed (usually by accident, think of it as “blue on blue) refugee columns in France.
But throughout the world those nations at war diverted resources (food, heating oil, medicines, physicians) to the troops.
One of the big complaints in the US was that German Prisoners of War weren’t rationed, the way civilians were; because the Geneva Conventions prescribe that POWs are to be given the same rations as the Detaining Power’s soldiery, and US soldiers had no rationing of food, ergo German POWs didn’t either.
So, when you look at targetted killing of civlilians, things like the Rape of Nanking, the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, starvation, random killing in Ethiopia, Ukraine, China, Germany, as well as reprisal killing in France, Belgium, Norway, etc. and the organised murder of 13 million people in the camps, and measure it against combatant deaths…
You’ve got a lot of people to account for.
Steele: If we upset you so fucking much, why don’t you go somewhere else?!?! Read some fanfiction, watch some youtube videos, go fly a fucking kite!
So, Steele. Any hobbies?
@ Gametime
You read the thread where he decided that Tom Martin was a feminist plant, right? Bleep bloop, the MRA android broke down and started spinning in increasingly comical circles.
that’s what we keep telling you! this shit cannot be good for your blood pressure
I have to admit, he wields “Excuse me” like a virtuoso
Should I even bother setting odds that His Dudely Steeleness is gonna stick the flounce?
Excuse me? Substantiate your claim or retract it. Nothing you have provided has substantiated it.
From: http://manboobz.forummotion.com/t1033-things-they-think-are-feminism-that-are-actually-sexism#27543
What part of that is “Pay for women’s livelihoods” in Steele’s world? XD
Why do all the MRA trolls here think we can’t remember things that happened last week? Seriously. Also, why can’t any of them read for comprehension?
Calling someone a creep isn’t an example of shaming language. Shaming language puts a negative spin on behavior that isn’t all that bad. Like being a slut- nothing wrong with sleeping around, but we make it out like there is to control women’s sexuality. Compare that to calling someone a thief. You might be ashamed at being called a thief, but if you steal stuff it’s still an accurate descriptor. So any useful definition of shaming language doesn’t include stuff that it’s actually bad to be. Like a creep. If you are ashamed of being called a creep, stop creeping people out. That will make the word go away.
Excuse me, but could we consider setting up a pool to fund a blood pressure monitor for Mikey? As funny as it is to make him sputter, I’d hate for our mockery of his trolling to cause him actual injury.
Ah yes, I forgot about that.