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.
There once was a man named Butthorn
Later Steele, but he was Varpole-born
He got lots of miles
Using multiple viles
And woke shrieking “misandry!” every morn.
Is it to late for me to point out that “Sharculese, I implore you” can be sung to the tune of “Lady of Spain”?
And that while TDKR may technically pass the Bechdel test, its screen time is occupied mostly by men (dudes?) and a woman in a fetish outfit. I enjoyed it, but not for its social worth on gender issues.
Dude: Well, as I said, I could give a rip if an M-feminist like you believed me; however, for the record, I have never once lied at Boobzland.
Really Torvus?
How about that, “I thought everyone knew it was me?”
Sharculese:
im going to get internet lawsuited again, arent i.
that’s like twice in one week.
i am the fucking greatest.
You are on fire tonight!
Duuude: Can I ask the mods to ban this vile slanderer?
There is only one person who could do that. You are entitled to ask.
Dude, Steele should never get high with anyone, ever. Then again, getting high is probably misandry too.
Steele:
1.The wage gap exists, the jury is in and people have posted link after link in evidence. Get over it and stop being an arsehole.
2. In my experience most feminists, when going out on dates, prefer to pay for their own meals. This avoids the situation where their date feels entitled to demand sex from them because he paid for dinner. Also, there are women who will pay for their companion’s meals if, for example, said companion is a poor student or on a low wage. This is not especially unusual, in fact, I’ve done it myself on many occasions when my husband to be and I were studying, I had a part time job and he didn’t.
I wish certain people would understand that you never actually know how you are going to react in a crisis situation until you actually find yourself in one. People don’t often have time to think and tend to react as their gut, heart and conditioning demands. Some people will see a loved one in danger and will do whatever is necessary to protect them, others will place themselves in harm’s way to help total strangers at great personal risk. Others will act to save themselves, sometimes at the expense of others.
The young men who died protecting their girlfriends did so out of love and criticizing them for that only proves that the critic has:
1. A heart the size of a pea and
2. Has nobody they’ve ever loved enough to be prepared to sacrifice themselves for them.
Personally I find that sad.
King of the Dudes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evander_Berry_Wall
From Wikipedia,
“King of the Dudes
A journalist of the New York American, Blakely Hall, made Wall famous, proclaiming him in 1888 “King of the Dudes” for having won the “Battle of the Dudes” against Robert “Bob” Hilliard, another sartorial dude when, during the blizzard of 1888, he strode into a bar clad in gleaming boots of patent leather that went to his hips.[4] Nevertheless, some historians still consider it was Hilliard who won that dude battle.[8]”
I’m not sure if this is misandrist, but it made me lol.
Nikan, you came back, but you didn’t answer my questions! I want to hear more about your totally objective scale of human value! Here, I’ll repost my questions for you. It’s very important that you answer them – how else am I supposed to determine my worth as a human being?
@NWOslave
How’s that tinfoil hat fitting for you?
Maybe Slavey’s hat is too tight and that’s why he’s always in such a bad mood.
You know those HR jobs you love to complain about? They might just be relevant here.
You may also want to consider that women are still assumed to be incompetent at the more dangerous (and often higher paying) jobs — weren’t you yourself saying that women can’t be decent firefighters? I know you think women can’t be miners or electricians. Yeah, as long as that’s a common-ish belief, no amount of “you could save money by higher women at a lower pay” is going to get women those jobs.
And how fucking typical of you — on one hand, women only take pointless HR and safety girl jobs because that’s all they’re good for; on the other, there must not be an actual pay gap because then women would get hired for everything.
Could the illustrated Big Book of Learnin’ maybe get a Safety Girl comic? That’d be hilarious…
Is it just me, or does the whole MRM have a vibe of not having grown out of the whole “girls have cooties” mentality. Of course now they use the terms “false rape accusation” and “misandry”, but in the end it really starts to seem similar.
If the markets and the people in them were actually rational, maybe, except rational agents wouldn’t pay women less on grounds of status to begin with.
Filing that under shit that never happened.
Though Steelpole will always be rude,
He blogs only when in the mood.
To put him in his place,
I shall say to his face
Dude dude dude dude dude creepy dude.
I have been trying to advertise this post because it was written by a friend of mine and also because it is so true. I am starting to despise most people in the media over the handling of the shooting but it is possible to report responsibly so I say we hold them to that standard. http://comicbook.com/blog/2012/07/26/an-aurora-theater-survivors-message-to-the-media/
I don’t really have much to say to MRA assholes who think they know anything about the people who were killed or the people they may have died protecting. I choose to contemptuously ignore them, for my sanity. My heart can’t take them seriously right now.
Curse my differing timezone and my need to sync my sleep with my kids’ – I missed out on all the fun!
And surely even Torvus Buttmunch must now concede that his belief that he’s the calm and rational one surrounded by a whirlpool of hysterical crazies has now been exposed as delusional in the extreme? Since when does endless repetitive squawking of “Vile!” and “Misandry!” without a scintilla of supporting evidence count as intelligent debate?
Mind you, the great thing about truly silly people is that they’re almost always so blissfully unaware of how the rest of the world perceives them. And if they don’t have a sense of humour, this disconnect becomes even funnier.
Did we just open this can of worms? Awesome!
I’ve spent 30 minutes now trying to find a good study on income disparity by gender. Haven’t found anything yet that I would consider a good metric.
My standard for a good study would measure the incomes of recent graduates broken down by major. This is for several reasons: women marry younger than men, and have families sooner, it reduces the pipeline disparity that the past has, it controls for the natural differences in majors, and it would start everyone at an equal footing.
I have yet to find anything.
Your standard for a ‘good study’ is an incredibly small sample size to begin with if it’s only ‘recent college grads’. The world is a lot bigger than that.
Also, not only does your measure not control for marriage and family status (Which is what you should say if it’s what you want), you are kind of conceding the larger point on women to begin with by restricting yourself to only unmarried women because you know what happens with married women.
But that’s all besides the point, because wage gap studies tend to control for hours worked to begin with, as well as experience. So why should familial status matter here?
also, wage gap studies check people in the same job, you flagrantly stupid asshole. ‘women are paid less because they pick trash majors’, is it? Because dudes are never liberal arts majors, nor do they get great jobs despite that *rolls eyes*
>I only suggest that Feminism’s own paradigm would suggest this privilege isn’t much of a privilege at all. However, Feminism is not a good-faith ideology – it serves sectional interests, the clue is ultimately in the name.
So I guess the Freemansons are actually a conspiracy serving the sectional interest of non-union manson builders? I mean, it’s right there in the name.