Complementarian Loners, a relationship blog of sorts run by two kinky but reactionary Catholics (and which I’ve written about before), describes itself as “primarily a blog of ideas.” The main idea seems to be that women are awful, worthless creatures. Surprisingly, it is CL, the female half of the blogging team, who is often the most vociferous on this point.
In a post unironically titled “Tits or GTFO (a.k.a. How Women Ruin Everything),” CL defends the regular harassment women face when entering – sorry, “invading” – “male spaces” online. As she writes:
Too many women will waltz in and expect to engage everyone, with no sense that perhaps they should just hang back once they’ve had their say if they even have it. They talk and talk and talk, derailing conversations, going off-topic usually to talk about themselves, until all that’s left is a room full of clucking hens and all the smart guys eventually get fed up and leave.
They want to be considered equals yet prove they do not deserve it both by showing that what they really want is to be up on that pedestal and that they are incapable of rational thought.
I have to confess that I have never actually seen this happening in any “male space” online, though I’ve seen numerous female spaces invaded and overrun by blabby mansplainy guys, often of the MRA persuasion. That’s certainly happened often enough on Reddit, where virtually every woman-centric subreddit from TwoXChromosome to Feminism has been rendered almost useless for discussion, a process depicted symbolically in the gif below.
Meanwhile, over at the “male spaces,” women are all too often shut down and/or run off by obnoxious dudes calling them bitches and worse and demanding nude pictures. CL, for her part, finds this all rather wonderful, and suggests puckishly that Complementarian Loners might well adopt a similar “policy” to deal with gals who won’t stop disagreeing with her shut up.
There’s a reason the only people we have banned on this blog are women and a couple of manginas. These people don’t know when to shut up and have no sense that they’re wearing out the welcome mat – also known as being entitled. … I’ve lost whatever patience I had for it and I don’t like to see insightful comments lost in the kerfuffle of women clamouring for validation.
So, perhaps a new policy for women should be, since they refuse to apologise or drop anything, tits or GTFO.
Sure, that might be seen as demeaning. But these women are asking for it through their behavior:
If a woman is making no sense and adding nothing to the discussion, while making it all about her, defending other women, being a special snowflake and NOT wanting to learn anything, she is a liability and worthless in that forum, so she has reduced her worth to only sexual. Therefore, she should just be sexual and show her tits to show she has something to offer.
Really? Because I’ve run across a lot of awful guys online who continually say things that make no sense, and I’ve never once thought that this “reduces their worth to only sexual.” I think it just means they are incoherent assholes with terrible, terrible ideas.
But no, in CL’s mind, women bring this sexual harassment onto themselves. Not only that, but the harassment is good for them:
Men do not do this to women; women do it to themselves. Due [to] their lame, banal talking, they show they are only good for sex. Showing her tits is a humbling and reminds her of her worth. With any hope, it makes her think and realise that in order to be more than a sexual object, she must STFU or prove herself able to be rational.
CL, your argument here isn’t exactly, you know, rational to begin with; you’re essentially demanding that the women you disagree with transform themselves into people who are irrational in the same way that you are.
I am embarrassed for my sex. It makes me cringe to see how they ruin everything once they get their claws in, and how little they really seem to care for men and male spaces. We all want our own spaces free of drama. Perhaps they don’t realise that it is they who create all the drama, but apparently this is what women seem to want.
Yeah, it’s not like angry dudes online are ever known to conjure drama out of thin air (*cough*avoiceformen*cough*).
Of course, when those poor MRAs start having fits over nothing, we need to remember that the poor babies have been treated so badly by the ladies of the world:
Women need to understand that MRAs and MGTOWs are disgruntled, angry, and frustrated with good reason … These are men who have loved, and their anger is proportional to the love of which they are capable.
Well, that’s your theory. My theory is that, by and large, they’re a bunch of entitled assholes.
In the end, CL brings it all back to one famous naughty lady and her love of apples:
If only women would stop this fight. If only women would submit to male leadership and stop this urge to control everything. Alas, it seems unlikely that most will ever be able to see, but it is sad how bad things have gotten, how cursed the world is, by dint of the daughters of Eve and our disobedience.
That’s right: Because Eve bit an apple, it’s fine to sexually harass women online when you don’t like what they say.
Of course, CL is perfectly fine with offline harassment as well. In the comments, she laments that fact that dudes can’t call a woman a “whore” in a bar these days without that woman getting mad, and suggests that women working in male arenas – sorry, women “playing at being construction workers or what have you” – just learn to appreciate this sort of “jocular speech” from the fellows.
Blessed are the sexual harassers, because women talk too much.
So when she shows up here whining–CL: tits or GTFO, and I hope David bans the hell out of you.
Well, the Bible says women are punished by painful childbirths and men by having to work hard. You could argue that women’s punishment is much worse (although MRA:s would probably disagree), but still, both genders are punished, because both are held responsible. Historically, it’s also been pretty common among church fathers to contrast Adam with Jesus and say stuff like “we were all condemned through Adam, we are all saved through Jesus”: Saint Augustine for instance always brings up Adam, not Eve, as the one who brought sin on humanity.
Adam willingly ate the forbidden fruit; it’s not like Eve forced him or conned him into doing so.
Besides, why would you expect your churches to teach you about Lilith? That story is not in the Bible, it’s some old Jewish folklore. And I can’t really see why anybody would find it empowering. She doesn’t want to submit to a man, so she’s cast out and becomes a demon. It’s not like she gets some kind of reward for standing up for herself.
So she is saying that by virtue of existing, women deserve to feel alienated, unsafe and attacked?
http://unwinona.tumblr.com/post/30861660109/i-debated-whether-or-not-to-share-this-story
So I am guessing that the above story is totally ok behavior on the part of the men because the author provoked them by asking to read in peace?
Since when is refusal to comply with complete stranger’s requests a situation where you are “at fault” for their subsequent abuses?
Does she honestly think that some random man would “deserve” to be beaten up by an evangelical just for saying “no thanks” to a free bible?
Wait. I bet she would.
Ugh. Why don’t women who think women should shut up actually take their own advice?
Eh, from the way the story has been translated into English, at least, I would say that Eve pulled a real asshole move on Adam. The forbidden fruit came from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so neither Adam nor Eve knew that eating the fruit – or violating the commandments of the god, for that matter – was an evil thing to do. However upon eating the fruit, Eve would have had that knowledge and yet she still tried to get Adam to eat it. So I would say that Eve did con Adam into eating the fruit, given that he didn’t know the gravity of the action, but she did.
That story is not in the Bible, it’s some old Jewish folklore
*cough*
I think the Bible is great – I do! It’s old Jewish folklore, though, so apparently it’s not … a reputable source? Is that how we’re having this argument (just wondering)
Of course not. Evangelicals are heretics.
And they have heretical Bibles.
Why the fuck would God create something forbidden for his beloved children, tell them not to eat the fruit and then allow a serpent (who God ostensibly created as well) to get all peer pressurey on Eve when she had not shown any prior interest in said forbidden fruit?
If God created everything and everyone and is all-knowing, then there is no fucking thing as a “test” because he set them up to fail.
If God created everything, he also created good and evil. Which means that evil is part of what God is.
Or you could be over here with me, all not believing in God and shit.
Of course I can only speak to the teachings of my particular church (Methodist), but I was taught that Original Sin was attributed to Eve. We lived in a utopian paradise until she ate the apple and offered it to Adam. Therefore all hardships that humanity faces today is the fault of women.
“Therefore all hardships that humanity faces today is the fault of women.”
Like I said, an excuse to condemn women. Original misogyny if you will =P
Sorry, I didn’t mean to derail with a religious discussion. My real intent was just to say that my road to feminism started in childhood with my horror at realizing that I, as a female, was to blame for everything bad that humans experience. This is how my seven year old self interpreted that story. It was a major headtrip at the time for me, and something that really upset me. But it eventually lead me on the path to analytical thought, skepticism, and a rejection of religion.
Hi Blitzgal – if you get the time look up June Tabor’s version of Maggie Holland’s song “A proper sort of gardener” on Youtube. Sorry can’t figure how to embed.
@ Elodieunderglass: No, I didn’t say the Bible is a reputable source but Jewish folklore is not. I said you can’t expect your church to teach you a story which is not in the Bible but merely Jewish folklore.
@2Dman: That’s an interesting point, I didn’t think of it like that. Well, presumably both Adam and Eve had some prior idea that you ought to obey God’s command, even if their moral knowledge was very limited before eating of the fruit… Otherwise, giving them a command wouldn’t have made sense. But yeah, I can see how you could argue that Eve would be more responsible for giving Adam the fruit than Adam would be for accepting it. Still, Adam is explicitly punished as well by being forced to work hard from now on, so it’s clear that God held him responsible too.
But if Eve had not eaten the apple, she would have never have had children, as even the bible states that Adam and Eve were like children and had no carnal knowledge. Which basically means that if Eve had not eaten from the tree of knowledge, the human race as we know it would not exist because they would both still be in the garden immortal and ageless. So basically God created his perfect zoo and then got bored with it so he created a test that he knew his humans would fail in order to justify getting them to start reproducing so he could get a bunch more followers. But not until he kicked them out into a wasteland completely naked because they were ashamed of their nudity and wanted to cover up. . Tits or GTFO, indeed.
That’s beautiful, thank you.
So, I assume that Ms. “I am the type of woman who disses all other women in order to suck up to men and validate myself” has a permanent piccy of her boobs on all her posts?
No, well, then damned if I shall bother reading her.
*sticks nose in air*
And, oh yeah, if a guy cannot post a nifty chest, or hands (MMMM hands), or butt shot, I ain’t reading his stuff either!!!1!
So how long before SunshineMary Passive-Aggressive Pants shows up to tell us why we should all listen to her and shut up before we end up withered and alone?
Oh,and after I learned the Adam and EVe story in Sunday school, I spent time wondering who their kids married anyway. And how boring it must have been in the Garden of Eden because NO BOOKS.
Plus, lusting after my Sunday School teacher/choir leader who looked just like Julie Andrews!
I think you missed her point. She’s saying that the Bible is just as much Jewish folklore as the rest; that Christians are basically picking and choosing which parts are authoritative.
So few of the “tits or GTFO” crowd are honest enough to admit it’s about reminding women that they are lesser human beings.
There are a lot of connunundra, from here, in the texts.
But if Eve had not eaten the apple, she would have never have had children, as even the bible states that Adam and Eve were like children and had no carnal knowledge.
The bible doesn’t say they didn’t fuck before they ate of the tree.
[2:21] So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
[2:22] And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
[2:23] Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”
[2:24] Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
[2:25] And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
Chapter 3
[3:1] Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
They were naked, and they were not ashamed. They were also, “one flesh”, and they “clung together”.
Next scene, the serpent.
But in the oddities dept. (more than the issue of what would have happened if there was no fruit taken from the Tree of Knowledge) is the oddity of Judas. Because without him there is no salvation. So why is it said he went to Hell?
My friend would call this synchronicity. We’ve been talking how women are treated in public spaces, and then this song comes up on my I Heart Radio feed. How the hell did it take me so long to discover The Dresden Dolls?!
I just checked my Bible and actually God tells the humans to procreate BEFORE the fall. It’s a bit weird, because first it goes on about how God creates all animals, and then human beings, and then tell the humans to procreate. In the next chapter it explains AGAIN how God created humanity, and THIS time it’s stated that Adam came first and then Eve was created from his rib. I think there’s some theory that’s supposed to explain the double creation stories, according to which God first created androgynous humans and later changed this to two genders, or something like that.
However, the Bible does states that Adam and Eve were without shame until they ate the fruit.
Saint Augustine had this theory that before the fall, the genitals (I guess he was mainly thinking about the penis here…) were under complete voluntary control, just like arms and legs are in healthy people today. So basically, if Adam wanted to have an erection, he’d have one, otherwise not. And that’s the very reason there was nothing shameful about genitals at the time – they didn’t DISOBEY us before the fall.
So in addition to the explicitly stated punishment of having to work hard, saint Augustine also thought that Adam and his offspring were punished with disobedient penises.
When somebody objected to saint Augustine that the idea that Adam could control his penis by will before the fall sounded a bit incredible, Augustine replied that there are people today who can wriggle their ears at will. A voluntarily controlled penis is hardly more outlandish.
@Howard: Okay, I misunderstood then.
ithiliana: Lest you no longer decide to give me any merit, I present a photo which shows my hands.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pecunium/3256910308/
I’d rather see the tits of someone I *like.*
If I don’t like someone, I’d rather not see any parts of them.
The idea of “if you’re a useless person, then you’re only useful for sex” is incredibly gross. It makes me worry about what exactly CL thinks sex is and what it’s for.