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.)
Maybe she has a secret yen to wear a cape and external undies and dinky little green boots and a mask …
…come to think of it, she lives with an eccentric, secretive billionaire with parental issues who tells her what to do. I think she actually is Robin, only, you know, terrible.
You beat me to it.
Right, who’s up for writing a really bad, faux-BDSM slash fic about Batman and Robin?
… in the unlikely event it hasn’t been done already, of course.
It is worth asking though, why this stuff gets so terribly popular. I’m gonna do completely speculative arm-chair psychology and suggest two reasons:
– Many women still find it a bit shameful to have sexual feelings. Therefore, it’s comfortable to imagine yourself in Ana’s shoes, since she has NO sexual feelings whatsoever and is RIDICULOUSLY innocent until Christian comes along and starts telling her to do this or that.
– We’re all socialised into gender roles where the woman is supposed to be passive and the man supposed to be pursuing her. Being “successful” on the dating market as a woman doesn’t mean actually DOING anything, it means having men pursuing you. Having somebody actually stalk you and control you (I mean, in the abusive sense, not in some kink-play-sense) is just this taken to extremes. And maybe that’s one reason many women apparently like to fantasise about being stalked and controlled.
That would be fine if people thought something along the lines “Well, this would obviously be terrible in real life, but it’s a nice fantasy”. But an awful lot of women who read these books (just check around at the internet) seem to alternate between “come on, it’s just fantasy” and “Christian is actually a good person deep down, he’s just broken because of his childhood, yada yada, I would totally want to date a Christian in real life” when feminists point out how awful their relationship is. Which is pretty scary. (And this is NOT me saying that WOMEN are stupid – I think PEOPLE of all genders are effected by literature, movies etc that they like, it would be pretty strange if this WASN’T the case . it’s just that this particular book happens to be directed at women.)
I felt the same way about Twilight which it’s based on. Obviously girls don’t think that Twilight is a documentary, obviously they realise that vampires aren’t real, but lots seem to think that Edward’s stalk-and-contro-behaviour was honestly romantic.
And yeah, anybody can end up in an abusive situation, nobody is emotionally invulnerable… But if you start out thinking that abuse is actually ROMANTIC and SEXY, it’s probably even easier to fall into the trap of accepting excuses like “it’s just because I love you so much” etc, and get dragged down.
Yeah, she seems to like the bondage stuff, it’s just that she doesn’t like pain. So… why can’t they have a relationship where they stick to bondage stuff sex-wise? Because Christian decides, and most of the time Ana is too scared to tell him how she really feels.
Well, thank you for ruining my morning on AO3 and ff.net scouting. I should’ve been doing the laundry.
And on top of that, so far no luck, but damn, I hope I find something from the Nolan ‘verse ’cause Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
C’mon, people, write this thing! Write it! 😀
I did end up finding this:
Prompt: On his first visit to the orphanage, Bruce is given an offer to “in appreciation of his very generous donation”, pick a child to take home and use as he desires.
50 Shades wise, I think this is eerily similar enough.
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.
LOL U MAD BRO
(You can tell someone’s super-edgy and properly ‘non-mainstream alternative’ when they use words like ‘haterade’.)
There’s also the fact that Ana’s “submissive contract” doesn’t allow her to leave except at Christian’s request and only under certain circumstances (illness, injury, lack of enjoyment). He determines whether she met those conditions.
There’s the fact that Ana is repeatedly terrified of him.
There’s the fact that he pretty muchbreaks into her home and rapes her after she (jokingly) rejects him (chapter 12).
This is not kink. It’s not fun. It’s not sexy. It’s disturbing and I hope Christian Grey dies a horrifying, drawn-out painful death. Because Ana wasn’t his first either.
Yeah, and when she tries to speak up and say that the spanking session they had previously was a horrible experience for her, he shuts her down with the “you got wet, so you totally enjoyed it!”. And she’s so insecure that she’s like “okaaay…. maybe I did…”.
Sounds about par for fanfic though, I can’t count the number of times I’ve read that from amateur fanfic authors. Of course, this brings us full circle to how the fuck is this published, let alone a best seller.
I felt sad that I missed a Meller sighting, til I realised that it was another drive by. Really Mellertoad, you’re tarnishing your legacy. People have to know when to retire.
I dunno… you can have shitty bdsm in a fictional work because it is, well, a work of fiction. It’s not even porn where the actors are getting exploited (unions, anyone?). I don’t think it’s intended to be a ‘how to operate my real life bdsm relationship’ manual. It’s also not intended to be a great work of literature. It’s intended to be a piece of smut that gets a portion of the female population off. Whenever there is a piece of smut that gets a portion of the population off, dudebras get up in arms because they are deeply offended at all the self- actualized orgasms women are having, and women get all up in arms because pop-culture doesn’t necessarily sell their type of empowering smut. My prognosis- a good deal of chilling out needs to occur. It’s a crappy novel that many women enjoy flicking the bean to. And good for them. Maybe in a few generations time they’ll all enjoy flicking the bean to Xena fanfic, but ’till then let a gal get off in peace. Read Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Underworld series- it’s full of healthy bdsm between supernatural creatures and the women totally run that universe. If the disempowering smut is still the stuff that makes the best seller lists, we have an obligation as feminists to read the empowering smut.
Felch, are you fucking kidding me with this shit? Go learn something about consent and get back to us.
Yes, you are so edgy in your love for 50 Shades and Twilight.
[gets on smut writer horse]
The problem with all this is that there’s so little access to real sex advice out there that people are afraid that this WILL be the model people will use for real relationships. We get affected by cultural stuff in weird ways that, even when we KNOW it’s fictional, we subconsciously absorb the values. So yeah, a lot of feminist pushback isn’t because we don’t know it’s not a guide to a “real” relationship, we’re afraid people will use it as one because they don’t have access to better resources.
[/gets off smut writer horse]
It’s made very clear that the relationship between Christian and Anastasia is consensual
If a hesitant “I guess so” and “because he says so” is your definition of consent, I suppose you could say that. After all, it’s technically a “yes”.
I imagine a world where “Hell yes” and “Yes, definitely” are the prime models for consent and anything less than that is a “no”. No “I guess I’m okay with it” and “well, if it’s really what you want to do” and “if it makes you happy…” bullshit. I imagine a world where instead of “used lollipop”, teenagers are taught that sex is a fun thing to do, and you don’t have to absolutely love the person to do it, that protecting yourself is perfectly normal and natural, that there’s many ways to have sexytimes, that boundaries should always be respected out of a basic respect for all humans, that you can and should negotiate what and when sex happens.
Those books don’t teach that. Instead, they teach that you should do anything for a person that you’re attracted to even if you are uncomfortable with it, that there’s really no boundaries between partners, and that women should remain pure for The One True Penis, for they will be rewarded with a Wooden Trojan Pony filled with Abysmal Relationship Gremlins.
School is important for both sexes. Why? Because school isn’t about getting a job (contrary to popular belief). Sure, school can get you training and experience in a field of study that may eventually translate to a job, but school IN AND OF ITSELF (unless it is a trade school that specifically certifies you to do A JOB, in which case, they tend to be both lower class blue-coller sorts of jobs that are overwhelmingly taken by men) does not equal WIMMINZ GETZ AAAAALLLLL DA JOBZ.
School, especially college, is incredibly important for many reasons- it teaches you to deal with shit on your own in a still semi-supportive environment (especially if you live on campus), you’re expected to feed yourself, to get out on your own, to prioritize you own time, etc. Some people don’t really do well at these things, but a lot of people (after some trial and error) become much better at dealing with Real Adult Life afterwards. Ostensibly, our parents should be teaching us how to do adult things on our own through our adolescence, but that generally doesn’t always happen in our self-centered materialistic modern world where both parents generally tend to be over extended, have no support network and must work multiple jobs to keep a roof over their family’s heads (and something tells me that if we made all the women stay home and be housefraus, this still would not change the basic economic changes that have made it basically impossible to be a single-earner household).
Just setting aside the fact that I think that critical thinking skills ought to be taught in elementary school, college is often the first experience most kids have with “you must actually give evidence for your position” and “teacher doesn’t give two shits if you’re going to class or not.” It’s also often one’s first experience in having to work a job, go to school and deal with one’s living situation all at once. These are all imperative skills that everyone ought to learn, and college is one way to learn these things in one fell swoop (not to say that NOT going to college isn’t an option, it’s just often a good and sobering introduction to being an adult while still getting some breaks).
Plus, I don’t know about you, but I would be BORED OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND if I wasn’t allowed to go to school and basically reduced to domestic servant. I would still study even if I didn’t get that degree. I would probably still want to expand my mind even if I wasn’t allowed to go to a four-year institution of higher learning.
And I don’t really want to be married to (or partnered with) someone who isn’t also intelligent, someone who I can’t have fun and insightful conversations with, or someone who I dislike to spend time around.
I spent a huge amount of time as a kid in a stressful house with an abusive stay-at-home mother who made everyone walk on eggshells on the off chance that she was having one of her “bad days”- we were all relieved and happy when she went back to school for her teaching credential and then started teaching. The other nice thing about her getting a degree? When my dad got laid off because his job moved overseas, her job and benefits from her job covered everyone left in the household so that he didn’t have to take a job in a shitty retail position or move a couple hundred miles away to get a job in engineering because all the engineering jobs in my hometown went to Malaysia.
When I moved out, I vowed that I would never live in a home environment that made me so neurotic, stressed and unhappy EVER AGAIN. I would rather be an old maid, living in a tiny apartment above a textile mill (isn’t that the stereotype or something?) than be married to some drunken ass lout who beats me because he’s pissed off that he’s been taken advantage by his shitty job and therefore I’m the only outlet for his anger (which, apparently is the only “ok” feeling for men like that to express).
NO WAY. Seriously.
And it’s kind of fucked up if you think about it- these MRA assholes are willing to take advice from Middle Eastern countries when it’s misogynistic and fucked up, but they’re not willing to give the PAID MATERNITY LEAVE that even places that tend to be woman-unfriendly (such as IRAN) gives to women.
After I wrote the above rant, my daughter put on her backpack and started excitedly jumping around and saying, “Can we go to school?! Can we?!”
Unfortunately, Preschool is only 3 days a week, so we’re going to the park instead.
She loves going to school and she’s only 3 years old. There’s something to be said about structured learning, and the joy that it brings to anyone, regardless of sex or gender.
D’aww. 🙂
I think you make some good points here. There’s definitely a misogynistic subset of the 50 Shades hatedom. (You know, the people who hate the book and rage about how stupid and weak women must be for reading this, who derisively call it “mommy porn” as if the very idea that women with kids have any sort of sexuality is ridiculous, etc.) There’s a lot of badly done, misogynistic smut out there, and it does make me a bit uneasy that the piece of badly done and misogynistic smut that everyone is suddenly outraged over is one that’s directed at women. I can’t think of any one piece of poorly done, misogynistic smut aimed at men that’s resulted in such mass hate. (And given that it could be argued that a lot of mainstream porn falls into that category, I’d be willing to bet that there’s a lot more badly done, misogynistic smut aimed at men than at women.) There’s a lot of badly done and misogynistic art out there that isn’t smut. But I don’t really see a lot of outrage over poorly written, misogynistic thrillers or action movies. I can’t help but feel that there’s a sort of underlying misogyny that leads to 50 Shades becoming something so widely ridiculed and despised while most people don’t really seem to care about all of the other badly written and misogynistic stuff out there.
But at the same time, I think a lot of the feminists who have criticized 50 Shades have also been willing to criticize misogynist works in other genres. And I worry that the fact that some of the hate that 50 Shades gets seems to be driven by misogyny will be used as an excuse by some people to dismiss any criticism of the book. That doesn’t seem fair either, I don’t think that any of this should make 50 Shades exempt from criticism. I think that badly written stuff should be critiqued. I think that misogynistic themes should be called out. And I don’t think 50 Shades should be given a pass simply because it’s smut directed at women.
TL; DR version: Some of the mass hate for 50 Shades of Grey seems to be driven by misogyny, but that doesn’t mean that we should give the books a free pass for being poorly written or misogynistic.
I very much agree with this. Misogyny needs to be pointed out on both sides because neither gives the other a pass. Same with Twilight. It really bothered me all the sudden criticism leveled at Kristen Stewart for playing Bella. From what I knew, people mostly thought she was a good actor before that movie, and then suddenly it was “the many blank faces of KStew” “she can’t act” “why won’t the bitch smile?” and on and on.
I’m one of those people who thinks Kristin Stewart is a terrible actress. She is totally flat. But my opinion has nothing to do with the Twilight movie. I watched her most recently in Snow White and the Huntsman. Yuck. And she was terrible when she portrayed Joan Jett.
It is an extension of the Twilight hate-on. Feminists (like me) were all like “Edward is absolutely the worst image of a boyfriend for teenage girls to fall in love with. He’s controlling, stalker-y, and he wants to eat her and not in a good way.” and dudebras were all like “And he sparkles” and feminists were like, “Yes, and he sparkles. Wait, what?” And all these women who are enjoying their fap material are getting dudes shaming them because they are fapping and feminists shaming them because they aren’t fapping to the right things. Feminists critique pop culture- it’s what we do and we do it well- but somewhere we kind of ought to applaud there being a successful novel that gives women license to explore sexuality of some kind. That being said I have not read these books- I had enough rage after reading Game of Thrones, so ya know, maybe shame is the way to go? But at least let’s spend an equal amount of time criticizing the dudes who criticize the books for dumbass reasons.
I liked Kristen Stewart in The Panic Room, The Messengers, and Twilight (I honestly liked the movie better than the book), but opinions differ and that’s okay. But Stewart got just rage-fested for her involvement in the Twilight film, and it’s not like she’s the worst actor in Hollywood. Look at Nicolas Cage. Robert Pattinson got made fun of, but it was almost affectionate. Criticism of Stewart literally went so far as to go beyond her acting ability/inability to attempt to dictate her facial expressions. Being told by strange men to “smile” (or in one case, “Smile, bitch!” as I was sobbing uncontrollably) is at best a pet peeve and at worst rage-inducing. I don’t like being told it, and I don’t like other women being told it.
Smokers who blow smoke rings have perfected this particular unnatural mouth shape.
I will picture Christian Grey as this forever. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__AuwUApfRb4/RhVP7RDX8FI/AAAAAAAAAig/KaAfmLbdflM/s320/nasalvowels%2B003.jpg