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.
@Ugh:
So what, you probably also agree with MRAs that 1+1=2.
Unbelievable, he chose playing Skyrim over sex!
Two words: three weeks.
@ostara321:
Look, I didn’t start the speculations, I just read that “they sacrificed themselves for their girlfriends because they loved their girlfriends.”, well, I’m agnostic on that issue, I don’t claim to know why they did it, really, in one case, I can think of reasonable alternative reasons.
And we disagree that that alternative is reasonable.
Diogenes: It’s easy to support patriarchy and bullshit while thinking you’re opposing it. I’ve done it.
Yep. This is the MO of the MRM. Along with , “I am too much of a douche to have a meaningful relationship with a woman, therefore all women are wh*res.”
Keep telling yourselves MRAS: Every human relationship you’ve ever attempted has gone sour, but it’s not YOU, who is a shitty person. It’s just that every other human being on the planet sucks. LOL
Motherfuckin theives guild all the way, champ. I’m still trying to get the best dagger.
Men choose lots of things over sex. I work some nights when I could call in sick. I write novels. I play video games. I go out with my friends. I do actual human being things, as do most men. If my life revolved around having lots of sex than my entire life purpose would have been acheived in a two week period of second semester between papers and finals.
Yep, but I wouldn’t agree with them that people who give their lives for others are suckers just trying to get laid.
You really think that wanting sex is a reasonable explanation for why someone took a bullet? Like, really? Moreover, you’re arguing that it is more reasonably than actual caring about people, which is SUPER misandrist.
I fell in love with my current partner in roughly 3 weeks. Sometimes it just happens, you know?
Haha all he did was jump in here to tell us what feminism is all about, and how it means we should join in with people insulting recently murdered heroes? Why would that ever provoke a hostile response?
I just posted this on a totally unrelated thread, because today is my day to act stupid app, but in case anyone wants to read it JtO has written a lovely piece on the Aurora shooting.
And by “app” I mean apparently. Today is just my day for FAIL.
How cynical are you?
This aligns perfectley with the typical MRA view on romantic love. You think it doesn’t exist, because for you it doesn’t. Well, fuck off. Just because you are an unloveable piece of shit, doesn’t mean those men and women in the theater are.
And just because they’ve only been together for three weeks, you have to somehow devalue their relationship because it doesn’t align with your view of romantic love? I don’t know the man, I don’t know his motives, but the simplest explanation is probably the best. But you would rather shit all over a dead man and convince yourself that he just wanted sex, or was brainwashed into sacrificing himself, so that you can feel better about yourself. Seriously, fuck off.
How about no? There are no non-sexist unicorns; everyone supports patriarchy, inevitably, at some point or another, and that’s fine, because lots of people do so unwittingly. You want me to think you’re a unicorn, you better show me a horn first.
Not if you don’t have evidence to support it, and you don’t. Love is more parsimonious.
…so robot then? Because love happens in less pretty frequently.
You aren’t well versed with nerds, are you?
Oh, a failskeptic. How un-novel.
It’s irrelevant that they were dating only three weeks. People die for strangers, that they have just met. How is it such a stretch for someone to care about someone they’ve known for three weeks?
garvan —
“The real reason why Leonardo DiCaprio died on the Titanic. Futrelle pushed him off of the driftwood Kate Winslet was on.”
Not only is that a movie, but it’s exactly the sort of movie discussed in the OP —
“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.”
And wtf does any of what you said have to do with Title IX?
(Yeah, I realize I’m commenting on a comment that was 2 pages ago, but damn)
Nikan:
What hints suggest that? Really. What information do you have to support the contention?
That one of the couples was only dating for three weeks?
Not good enough. Maybe it was “infatuation”. Infatuation is a sincere emotion. It’s the core portion of “NRE”, which is what makes for the happy glow we all get when we start a new relationship. Maybe it wasn’t, “the one”, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t something important.
So, unless you’ve got a letter saying, “Dude, I’d do anything to bang this chick,”, you are making it up. And what you are making up is some pretty man-hating shit.
RHW: The priivlege of having the glory of being a human shield!
Um… No, that’s not what, “our cultural narratives of heroism privilege and glorify men and put them at the center of almost every story.” means.
It means Horatio at the Bridge, and the Siege of Camarone, it’s Lexington and Concorde and the Charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo. It’s the Alamo, and Custer’s Last Stand and the Battle of Rourke’s Drift and Thermopylae, and the Battle of Cannae, and the Battles of Culloden, and Bannockburn and Flodden.
It’s Crecy and Angincourt, Dunquerque, and The Bulge, it’s Ft. Zinderneuf,and the Battle of Hue City. It’s the Battle of Britain and the Invasion at D-Day, it’s Stanlingrad and Pt. Arthur and I could go on.
On the flip side we have Boudica.
There are, of course, the women who died, or actively risked death trying to save others in this very tragedy who are being ignored.
Sort of like the the disparity in that list above.
Ugh and Sharculese, you are vewy pwecious, but I think we all know this isn’t really a debate site. And Shar doesn’t debate so much as snipe inanely anyway.
What actual arguments are you making?
It’s not about privilege, because you are equivocating; using the meaning of privilege as personal advantage, do attempt to disprove the privilege of social structure.
So that’s dismissed out of hand; since it’s either wrong, or offered in bad faith.
RHW: You said they ought to be treated with kid gloves.
But, let me help you.
condescend [ˌkɒndɪˈsɛnd]
vb (intr) 1. to act graciously towards another or others regarded as being on a lower level; behave patronizingly
2. to do something that one regards as below one’s dignity
[from Church Latin condēscendere to stoop, condescend, from Latin dēscendere to descend]
It’s that first sense which Viscaria was using.
English, it’s subtle.
@Ugh
“Noone said specifically that it was a privilege. But it is a side effect of the whole “men are stronger, braver, and more moral and rational than women” part of our culture, which is privilege.”
It can’t be a side effect of society since these same tales of bravery exist in stories from every culture through all history. How could every society thousands of years ago be socialized in the same pattern?
Was it socialized 3000 years ago in Japan? 4000 years ago in Persia? 2000 years ago in India? 1500 years ago in France? 2500 years ago in China?
3000 years ago China might as well have been a myth to the average Morrocan. Yet the stories of bravery were the same. They didn’t turn on the TV and were socialized.
The fact is, men have a greater ability to overcome the fear of, or even certainty of death to save others. Why cheapen it to some theory of socialization? In the previous page comments we’ve already been graced with the, “See how patriarchy hurts men,” nonsense.
The luxury feminists enjoy of thoerizing about gender norms, patriarchy and socialization is because of mans inherent ability to overcome certain fears, namely death, for the good of others.
From the AVFM article on the subject:
“Those three men are not heroes, they’re just dead. The calculus of death, where one life is traded in celebration for another by preference of a vagina, is pathological and regressive. It must be recognized as the sickness it is. Those who lionized these men, whose fatal and unexamined instinct led to self-destruction; those who held them up as a heroic example to follow, are cordially invited to go first — or to go fuck themselves.”
What kind of a grotesque caricature of a human being thinks this way?
@Rutee Katreya:
So do you think that if we have two different valid explanations, we, as rational people, have to accept the simpler one as true?
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
@pecunium:
And even if that would be the case, why do you take that so seriously? People here think that I am male, straight and an MRA, though they don’t have even the remotest evidence for any of those assumptions.
Shorter version: I didn’t START all this hateful garbage of making this tragedy even more painful for the survivors, but I mean, since someone else was already being an asshole, I figured, hey, I may as well be one too!
Seriously, you’re an ass.
Diogness, “feminists should be mad that men died for women”? Uh, again, did seriously THAT many people miss how feminists have been petitioning to let women serve in combat for like, ever? And the freak-outs on MRA blogs over that?
Seriously, if you’re gonna whine that not enough women are dying for men (which is missing the point entirely and again, just making a tragic event worse for the survivors, and really, you’re wishing for more people dead? WTF are you?), start pushing at the very least so they’re given more of an opportunity to see themselves in what are traditionally considered more heroic roles.
Nikan — it’s called Occam’s Razor and yep, the simpler option usually is the correct one.
Nikan: So what, you probably also agree with MRAs that 1+1=2.
Spot that Fallacy:
Everyone who said, “Begging the question gets 10 pts.”,becuase the implication is his agreement with them is because it’s true.
Look, I didn’t start the speculations, I just read that “they sacrificed themselves for their girlfriends because they loved their girlfriends.”, well, I’m agnostic on that issue, I don’t claim to know why they did it, really, in one case, I can think of reasonable alternative reasons.
No, you aren’t. You are antagonistic to the notion; actively hostile even. No open mind. You keep adding implausible justifications to shore up your counterintuitive speculations.
Two words: three weeks.
To which I counter, 10 years, or 20 years.
Because guess what: every one of those “meaningful” relationships you think would justify such a sacrifice had a point when it was “only” three weeks.
Wow, I’ve never seen calculus done with vaginas; JtO is a mathematical genius!
Are you? Because I wouldn’t get too mad if I were you at people correctly associating the belief that men are sex robots unlikely to feel higher emotions or to enjoy running around as the Dragonborn with straight men who like MRA shit.