The dudes of the manosphere are concerned, deeply concerned, about the fate of young women today who won’t have the opportunity to marry dudes richer and better educated than they are, as they are apparently hard-wired by evolution to do. Turns out when women start investing in good educations and getting good jobs, some of them end up making more than most dudes! Clearly, this portends disaster, for these young ladies, and for civilization itself.
On his Alpha Game blog, reactionary racist doucheblogger Vox Day has a puckish solution to the Hypergamy Crisis: we should just eject a good chunk of women from our universities – as 36 of Iran’s universities have recently announced they will do, starting in the coming academic year, by making 77 different fields of study male only.
Vox explains his, er, logic:
[T]he Iranian action presents a potentially effective means of solving the hypergamy problem presently beginning to affect college-educated women in the West. Only one-third of women in college today can reasonably expect to marry a man who is as well-educated as they are. History and present marital trends indicate that most of the remaining two-thirds will not marry rather than marry down. So, by refusing to permit women to pursue higher education, Iran is ensuring that the genes of two-thirds of its most genetically gifted women will survive in its gene pool.
Well, that’s one … way of looking at it.
No doubt the Iranian approach will sound abhorrent to many men and women alike. But consider it from a macro perspective. The USA is in well along the process of removing most of its prime female genetics from its gene pool as surely as if it took those women out and shot them before they reached breeding age. Which society’s future would you bet on, the one that is systematically eliminating the genes of its best and brightest women or the one that is intent upon retaining them?
Let’s just say I’m going to bet on the one that respects and utilizes the talents of all of its people, instead of treating half the population as little more than egg repositories and baby-making machines.
This isn’t the first time dear Vox has addressed the dangers of allowing women into college. See here for some comments from him that are a good deal worse than the ones I quoted here. (TW: Violence against women.)
Yep, because you know, men have no jobs as politicians, spiritual leaders, counselors, doctors, etc.
Also, I’m assuming you left out the “white” before that last word just by accident.
50 Shades of FUCK YOU JAMES is offensive to me on multiple levels. Shit, if all it takes to get published is to write highly disturbing fanfic… *cries*
Also: Christian Grey is Patrick Bateman as a love interest.These books would work much better as a thriller or horror.
Patrick Bateman….ew
I was just thinking that. Apparently there’s going to be a movie version of this. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the director played it as a psychological horror in which the audience clearly knows what’s going on, and so do all the other characters, but it only very gradually dawns on the heroine that she’s been lured into a relationship with a sociopath?
Yes, Cassandra, yes it would. I would be sublimely happy for once that a movie deviated so far from the book and it’s original intent.
*its
In the meantime, the fact that someone rewrote 50 Shades as a deliberately creepy Hermione/Draco fic? That’s pure genius.
http://crushable.com/entertainment/50-shades-of-malfoy-el-james-snowqueens-icedragon-759/
And then EL James showed up in the comments to accuse the author of plagiarism, proving once and for all that she is a complete imbecile.
What?!? Oh lmfao! I went to the grocery store today; I should have bought popcorn.
Okay, wow. Have any of you actually read 50 Shades of Grey? It’s made very clear that the relationship between Christian and Anastasia is consensual- they even draw up a contract which is actually excerpted in the text. Christian is always very careful to check Ana’s boundaries, and it’s emphasized that the pleasure is mutual at all times. I mean no, it’s not great writing but it’s not really meant to be, and there’s much worse out there. Everyone just jumps on the haterade wagon because it’s popular and has a premise that’s easy to make fun of. Twilight- which when it came right down to was a pretty good YA series- was the same way. Mainstream alternatives, is what I call you people. Shades fan represent, fuck all y’all.
Dumb person doesn’t understand what the word “consensual” means, tries to lecture a bunch of people who’ve actually done BSDM about how awesome shitty faux-BSDM novel is. Mockery ensues in 3…2…
Meller: Don’t you have some cancer patients to laugh at? Or some kittens to euthanize? No? How about you FUCK RIGHT OFF?
felch, from the beginning, Christian does nothing but manipulate Anastasia to get his way. Throughout all three books. In the third book, he threatens to rape her twice. At another time he reduces her to tears (fine for anyone who’s into that, but Ana’s made it pretty clear that she’s not) after sexually punishing her. The reason he did this? He was more concerned with her obeying him (which might have gotten her kidnapped) rather than going out with her friend (which turned out to be safer). Christian Grey’s abusive behaviour seems almost deliberate. You could get a list and check it off. Furthermore, that damned contract? That wasn’t limited to sex. He wanted to control her in all things for three months. And then his reaction to the pregnancy! Well, for fuck’s sake, if he was that concerned with control and her not getting pregnant, then he should have kept using condoms. Fuck off, felch.
See, the thing is, D/s contracts can be perfectly OK. But emotionally manipulating a vulnerable, inexperienced person into signing one when they have no experience with BSDM and no idea if they’ll like it, and they keep expressing reservations and asking that certain types of play be taken off the table, which request the dom who’s doing the pushing refuses to accomodate? Not OK. Doing BSDM scenes with no aftercare? Not OK. Threatening to rape a sub because they pissed you off? Not OK.
Basically it’s like an illustrated guide to how not to do BSDM, and why you really, really shouldn’t do BSDM with manipulative, abusive people.
Obviously you shouldn’t do ANYTHING with manipulative, abusive people, adding BSDM to the situation just places a cherry on the shit sundae.
Thing about that contract, though, was it required the sub to be obedient, dressed in clothes of the dom’s choosing, etc. even when not in the presence of the dom, plus a non-disclosure agreement. I mean, couldn’t that get really awkward in terms of work and personal relationships? I recall one of Anastasia’s hangups is a lack of social life if she spends every weekend with Christian, so many hours a week exercising, however much time keeping up her appearance however he wants it, and plus work. He doesn’t compromise very well on that either, and when he does, he still tries to go back on it. These books. They hurt.
He doesn’t compromise on anything, because he doesn’t care about her feelings. Apparently people like felch think this is totally cool and not a problem.
This.
Also, the story is told from Anastasia’s perspective, and she says, repeatedly, that she does not like kink, she thinks it is a sign that Christian is terribly fucked up, she is afraid of him, she hopes that if he just loves her enough he’ll stop wanting to hurt her, and she basically only puts up with being hit because she thinks he’s super hot and she has cripplingly low self-esteem. Nothing about that is remotely healthy, and I say this as an actual real-life submissive.
Like, say you are a dom and you have a relationship with a sub who does not like pain and who has made this very clear. There are other, non-hurty things you can do! But no, we’re not going to do those, because our hero is a sociopath and our heroine has been emotionally beaten into submission long before the physical stuff gets started.
Also, even if we put aside the general creepiness of the relationship dynamic, can I just point out that the word “jeez” should never, ever appear in a scene that’s meant to be sexy?
How about the sounds she makes? “Argh!” Agh!” Those are not sex sounds. Those are the sounds of someone sitting on a toilet and struggling very hard to squeeze out a deuce.
Or how about people’s mouths described as making a “perfect O”? I mean, is that even physically possible?
Personally, I crack up at all of Ana’s random “holy shit” and “holy crap” interjections during sex scenes, especially thanks to one in particular (highlighted in the Jennifer Armintrout recaps) that went something like, “He tears off my panties and throws them in front of me so I can see…holy shit!” I recognize that it is supposed to be read as, “He ripped my panties! That’s so naughty!” but (especially given how stupid that is) it’s impossible not to read it as, “Whoa! I pooped my pants!” :-p
ROFL not to mention that it sounds like she has holy skidmarks!
lmao! I want to use “holy skidmarks” now. For one reason only do I wish my friends had also read those books, and that is this. The snarking, the laughing about it afterward.
“Holy skidmarks, Batman!”
Fun fact – someone did the math and worked out that Ana actually says “Holy ____!” more often than TV-show Robin did.