Men’s Rights activists are constantly posting links to stories of women committing horrible crimes – what some have taken to calling “women behaving badly” (WBB) stories – and almost reveling in the fact that, yes, some women do indeed do horrible shit.
MRAs are particularly obsessed with stories of female high school teachers preying on their underage students. While this partly reflects the general MRA obsession with badly behaving women, MRAs do actually make a legitimate point here: while most people understand that female victims of predatory male teachers are indeed victims, quite a few people regard male victims of attractive female teachers as “lucky” boys who get to live out the schoolboy fantasy of having sex with a “hot teacher.”
So when I saw that The Spearhead was featuring a guest post titled “The Hot Teacher Myth, and How it Hurts Men,” I expected to see some version of this argument being made. What I found was one of the strangest and creepiest things I’ve ever read: Walt Forest seems to think that the real problem is that so few guys get the opportunity to have sex with “hot teachers.”
Forest points out (correctly) that cases or female teachers sexually abusing their male students are actually fairly rare. He goes on to argue that all the attention paid to predatory “hot teachers” in the media promotes the “myth” that male and female sexuality is fundamentally the same. This, he suggests, is bad for men:
How does this myth hurt men?
Set aside for a moment the image of the hot teacher and her underage male victim which the media force on us with such insistence. Instead imagine a far more common scenario: a young man (or for that matter, a not-so-young man) who does NOT have sex with his teacher, but desperately wants to.
I’m not quite sure in what world lots of young and not-so-young men – not teenage boys — are being taught by “hot” high school teachers. Perhaps the “hot teachers” here are actually “hot” college professors or grad students and the men in question are college students? Or is Forest simply trying to avoid the question of sexual abuse by pretending that underage boys are “men?”
Forest continues to explore the plight of this poor fellow:
In fact this man would like to have sex with many of the women around him, but — with very few exceptions — he cannot.
Well, yeah. There are 3.5 billion girls and women on planet earth; even the most advanced Lothario is only going to be having sex with a very small fraction of a percentage of them.
But alas, the media tortures this hapless undersexed fellow by suggesting that women like sex as much as men, even though the overwhelming majority of women won’t actually have sex with him personally.
[O]ur media and increasingly ordinary people assure this man that women he hardly knows (even his teachers) will suddenly lead him by the hand to their beds for no other reason than the pleasure of having sex with him, “no strings attached.” This kind of thing is ordinary, we tell him. It “happens all the time.”
Well, in porn it does. Most people are aware that porn isn’t reality.
When it does not happen—of course it never does—he is left to think that he must be something less than an ordinary man. If he dares to voice his disappointment, we tell him that he places excessive importance on sex, views women as “objects,” and the rest of the standard pop feminist rhetoric designed to put the blame back on the man himself. We blame the man because we MUST if we are to avoid blaming ourselves for all the lies we are telling him.
I’m pretty sure that most men – or even most teenage boys — don’t spend their days wondering why their lives aren’t exactly like Penthouse Letters.
These lies hurt men. It is difficult for anyone who has not suffered this hurt first hand to understand just how bad it can be, but from my own experience I believe these lies are helping to create the ongoing male suicide epidemic (which our society, tellingly, also refuses to acknowledge).
Men kill themselves because “hot teachers” don’t seduce them on a regular basis? Really?
These lies certainly make countless men miserable. For this reason I believe exposing the myth that male and female sexualities are the same should be the men’s movement’s first priority. Hot teacher stories obviously make up only a tiny part of this myth, but because they are such a blatant distortion of reality, they are a good place to start.
Quite a few of The Spearhead’s regulars were put off by the, well, weirdness of Forest’s post. But others chimed in to agree. Indeed, Arpagus actually took Forest’s strange argument a step further, earning himself some actual Spearhead downvotes in the process:
[T]he female sex offender charade has been the most frustrating aspect of feminism for me personally, not least because I have experienced a great deal of sexual frustration in the past, and nothing can be more offensive to celibate men than pretending there is an epidemic of female rapists. …
It is a most distinctive sign of cultural decline that we have forgotten that pussy is good. This ancient wisdom has been brainwashed out of our culture by feminism. Now pussy is rape and abuse just like male sexuality is. Traditional society might have punished an adulteress for a student-teacher type of relationship, but they certainly did not indulge in any charade about the boy being a “victim,” because they knew he got lucky if you consider the sex itself. There are reasons why a society might want to proscribe those kinds of relationships, but the boy being a “victim” of “abuse” is most assuredly not one of them.
MRA elder “Zed” gently corrected Arpagus in a comment that was nearly as strange, suggesting that predatory “hot teachers”
are not being punished for “harming the boys”, that is just a convenient excuse. What they are actually being punished for is giving away free pussy.
If you take a close look at the outrage among men these days for having to pay full price for used pussy, their anger is divided between the guys who got it at a price far lower than they paid for it, and the women who gave it away to another man for less than they charged him for it.
It would be like a rich man buying an entire wine cellar of Dom Pérignon at the going price of $200+/bottle – savoring what indulgence his wealth could buy him – only to find his kitchen wench had been pouring free flutes for the pool boy.
Or, like it a member of the Medellín Cartel discovering that their US connection to whom they shipped 2 metric tons of high quality cocaine, was laying out lines for her friends.
She is not being punished for “harming the boys” (HA!) but for black marketing the product that the pussy cartel owns.
The women are being punished FOR allowing the boys to get lucky, and get some without having to lay out 3 months salary for an engagement ring and $35,000 on a Bridezilla party for cupcake.
Now that’s the kind of comment that gets upvotes on The Spearhead, and makes Zed a revered figure in the Men’s Rights movement.
EDITED TO ADD: Not sure how I missed this, but Arpagus is apparently the truly creepy Norwegian blogger Eivind Berge, whom we’ve met before.
I haven’t read all the comments, so my apologies, because someone has probably already pointed this out. But…
Seriously? I thought the entire point of the MRM was not “putting the pussy on a pedestal.” With a healthy dose of “Talking about male rapists is demonizing male sexuality!” But I guess it’s okay when MRAs do it…?
It would be nice to get just a little consistency out of that movement. I guess that’s why the other Pinheads downvoted his comment so much, though. He’s basically contradicting everything I’ve ever heard any other MRA say.
This is how MRAs talk about female sexuality, and they wonder why we say they’re objectifying women?
@Ice – seriously, from a teacher’s perspective, this is even worse. I can’t even get my head around the idea of feeling a sexual attraction to a student. They’re students. The entire dynamic is so defined by the power imbalance, it’s just impossible for me to even think of them as anything other than “students, i.e. people I have responsibility to.” Just, ugh!
(Not to mention that every teacher has a thousand horror stories about students being immature, irresponsible, or immensely annoying. There are reasons burn-out is a problem and “wanting to sex up students” is not on the list.)
@aworld
cognitive behavioral therapy has a good track record of helping people with anxiety problems. exposure therapy generally integrates CBT techniques so if CBT by itself does not work you wouldn’t be wasting your time or anything, you would have a solid foundation to try something else. David Burns wrote a DIY book for CBT that you might find useful. Its called the feeling good handbook.
“nothing can be more offensive to celibate men than pretending there is an epidemic of female rapists….”
Wasn’t the MRM whining a few months ago about how 70% of women were forcing men to penetrate them? Didn’t we have that discussion over how to read statistical reports here???
I’m gonna go read the rest of the thread now.
Where’s the outrage, guys? He’s giving female pedophiles a pass.
I get so tempted to rephrase all these contradictions a bit (or maybe not even bother), post them on r/mensrights or some such under an obviously female SN, wait for the howling about misandry to start in approximately 8 seconds, then link back to the original quote.
“The Pussy Cartel” would be an excellent cable TV drama.
MAN
Who the hell are you?
WOMAN
You know. You all know exactly who I am.
(beat)
Say my name.
MAN
Do what? I don’t have a damn clue who you are.
WOMAN
Yeah you do. I’m the vag. I’m the woman who sexed up Gus Fring.
MAN
Bullshit. Pussy cartel got Fring.
WOMAN
You sure?
(Silence; the men avoid her gaze.)
That’s right. Now. Say my name.
MAN
Mrs. Heisenberg from Algebra II.
WOMAN
You’re goddamned right.
I almost lost my lunch at “paying full price for used pussy”. And they think being called misogynists is unjust?
@aworldanonymous – social anxiety is a bear, isn’t it? I got some use out of a book called “The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook” (it helped with my arachnophobia, too). But ultimately what worked best for me was therapy, particularly CBT – discussed above – and hypnosis, so if you have the option and can find a good therapist I highly recommend it.
@Owly you think the problem here is women demanding too much of men? You realize we’re talking about rape apologists, right?
The “Pussy Cartel” is a conspiracy theory wherein women – especially feminists – maximize their “Sexual Market Value” by denying men sex until the hapless men (who don’t know Game, or who haven’t taken the Red Pill, or whatever) meet their price for pussy (see below). In this schema, Age of Consent laws and restrictions on mail-order brides are not there to protect vulnerable people from being exploited, but to control the pussy supply. Similarly, a woman who just gave her pussy away for free (see below) would be reviled as a strikebreaker, in just the way Zed describes.
To really understand the phrase, you need to remember a few things:
1) These people do not like women. Women are inconvenient obstacles on the way to pussy (which are themselves more status symbols than anything else, because the way these guys describe sex does not sound fun). Every moment spent with a woman, every dime spent on dates or outings together, every penny spent on gifts, is part of the price paid to obtain access to her pussy. A married man is not a man in love who wants to spend his life with the woman he married, he is a chump who has paid a far-too-high price for devalued merchandise.
2) They firmly believe that women do not like sex. At least, they don’t like sex in the sense of “giving (my pussy) away to whomever I choose who chooses to receive it” (wait ’til you hear NWOSlave expound on how women get off on denying men). MRA/PUA belief is that women only want sex with “Alphas”, most of whom are “thugboys” (why yes, it’s just as racist as it sounds). Other men must pay a price for access to pussy, and a woman will try to maximize the price he pays before she lets him in. Thus the “3 months salary and $35,000 bridezilla party for Cupcake” (“Cupcake” being shorthand for “stuck-up, demanding bitch from Hell”).
@Fitzy and Kim – they’d probably go one step further than saying “he got lucky” about a boy who’d been raped, and say he was just another rotten Alpha who was stopping all the poor Beta boys from getting some with the hot teachers.
So if I’m reading this correctly, not being molested by my teachers, or otherwise not having hot babes seduce me by force is the worst thing that ever happened and should drive me to suicide? Uh, no.
No, really. What I’m getting from this is that men 1) can’t have sex with everyone with whom they’d like to have sex 2) are told by society that they should be able to have sex with anyone they fancy and 3) this contradiction is harmful and bad.
OK guys. Step back a moment. Fact: You CANNOT fuck everyone you want to. You’re limited to people who also want to fuck YOU. It’s a mutual thing. FACT: Pussy =/= Fleshlight. FACT: Women =/= pussy life support systems.
If you sit around in in your little pity pot sobbing how teh ebul wimminz are denying you pussy, then just maybe you’re the main part of the problem. You’re not entitled to sex. This is not Animal House and hot cheerleaders will not fly into your bedroom window.
Oh, and one last thing, there is no Pussy Cartel. There are women. Y’know, people. No two the same. Waking up to this might make your lives easier, or at least a whole lot less creepy.
tl:dr Some of these people have serious problems and not in a benign way.
Seraph and Freitag sum it up – these creeps want to have sex on demand (or preferably without being put to the bother of actually demanding it) BUT they actively dislike/hate/loathe women.
Like I said before, get yourselves fleshlights, you slimy creeps. They can’t cost that much. You hate half the human species that much, you aren’t fit to be having sex with any of them. Or, in the most literal sense possible, go fuck yourselves.
When I hear “Pussy Cartel” I think of cats as drug dealers in 80’s action flicks. Although Shaenon’s script is pretty awesome.
But… but, but… Rule 34!
I would watch the hell out of Shaenon’s cable tv drama.
Oh shit I’m wrong! There IS a pussy cartel and it’s, of course, pink!
@Dvärghundspossen
I just want to quickly elaborate on my OH HOLY GOD NO feelings. They’re mine. I totally get that relationships are possible, but I suppose being surrounded with those kids and seeing stuff going on… I kind of grew a bit… umm… obsessively protective? I suppose we all get that.
I simply could not possibly imagine myself in a relationship simply because I’ve been surrounded by these kids’ lack of experience for too long, I assume the worst/youngest in them.
So yeah, I’m OH HOLY GOD NO with that, and don’t expect anyone to feel like a child molester ’cause they dated someone XY number of years younger. We all know it’s not the number of years that’s the problem here, anyway.
@aworldanonymous: I was extremely socially awkward in my younger years as well, to the point that I’d have panic attacks if I had to talk to people I didn’t know and I still lie awake at night, replaying every potentially awkward exchange I had that day, freaking out about whether I totally screwed up or not. And this goes for most forms of interpersonal communication, whether it’s a face to face conversation, talking on the phone, posting on a forum, etc. I also didn’t have a real relationship until I was out of high school and the relationships that I did have were abusive. My dating pool consisted of men that would chase me and, as it was obvious that I was socially inept, they were mostly people who wanted to take advantage of me.
Counseling and therapy helped me a lot, although I’m still not over my anxieties. I can get by at work, only because I have training in drama and acting, so… my work persona is simply a character I play when I’m at work and has little to do with my real life. I still have some anxiety when dealing with regular customers and other employees, but therapy has helped me understand that few other people are cataloging every word that I say and making judgments as harsh as I do. Self esteem issues were also a huge part of my problem and it’s helped me to see myself in a more realistic way.
I’m still learning how to relate to people, especially those who are just difficult to connect with or I don’t have much in common with. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything like that. I just have no idea how to approach them or what to say when I do. There are a few of those people at work and, for now, I just smile and don’t talk to them much, because I have no idea what to say, but I don’t want them to think that I’m rude or anything like that. It’s a lifelong thing, I guess, but therapy, as well as taking what I perceive to be social risks (likely things that most other people do every day and don’t think about) has done a lot for my confidence and my ability to be more social.
I hope you’re able to find a way that works for you.
I’m surprised no-one’s pointed this out yet, but Arpagus is Norwegian blogger Eivind Berge.
Or rather, he used to go by that name, and I’d be astounded if there were two people with that handle, that writing style and those somewhat individual views.
Still, I suppose posting his drivel on the Spearhead is marginally less offensive than crashing a forum for survivors of female sex abuse to tell them that they were “lucky”.
(Obvious trigger warning, though he wasn’t given a warm reception.)
Wetherby, not sure how I missed that! I put something in the post about it. He’s such a charming man.
No woman would lief be a copesmate to one such as Eivind Berge, so black is his heart.
This is generally a hypermasculinity thing enforced by a patriarchal society. Feminists are not in favor of judging anyone by their amount of sex partners. PUAs and MRAs and the like however… well, you’ve seen all the Alpha-Beta-Omega talk. Viewing sex as a “thing to be gotten” by men is not a feminist construct. Judging men by supposed sexual prowess is damaging for men, but it is something that’s been around since long before the supposed bra-burning feminists of the 70’s and is (at least in my experience) a construct more vehemently enforced by men – not women.
Logically, it doesn’t make sense for feminists to want to enforce the “you’re not a real man unless you have lots of sex with lots of hot babes” mantra. This is a mantra that, along with others, enables the rape culture. Something most feminists are against (sans Ruby, of course).
In other words, as usual, you’re full of shit.
I’m not sure how you’re getting this out of “some women rape kids and that’s bad”, Owly. Are you using babelfish to read this blog or something.
Some Dude: For what it’s worth, I don’t think you should infantilize teenaged men or women as you do here.
Any society that allows 17 year olds to join the army, 18 year olds to vote, really should not be thinking of these people as anything less than men or women.
It’s not an age of consent issue (and nice moving of goalposts, since no age was given in the OP… it’s just “students”); it’s about the ability to give meaningful consent.
Colleges and universities ban student/teacher interactions: all the way up to candidates for Ph.Ds; who can be in their 30s/40s.. The military strongly restricts them (too strongly, in some aspects, IMO, but I bet you don’t know what those are, and can’t guess as to why I think the present policies are asinine). Employers ban it.
Why?
Because the dynamics of power, and the lack of it on the part of one party means it’s not healthy.
When you have an age differential of more than ten years, and the weaker/junior person is also undergoing a huge amount of difficult psychological development, then there is a huge potential for abuse.
Then again you are wrong about the age of enlistement.
1: A person who is 17 1/2 may be allowed to enlist if they have written parental consent.
Varpole Butthurt: Certainly, a society that impresses upon young boys that their worth is measured by the “tail” they get will lead to self-destructive behavior.
That would be the MRM. And you are right, it does lead to self-destructive behavior. cf. Thomas Ball.
Colleges and universities ban student/teacher interactions
I don’t know of any Universities that do this or would get away with telling the professors who they can have sex with, outside of a few of those wacky Baptist or religious colleges.
Do you have the names of any colleges that do this because I want to check it.