Back in the day – way, way back in the day – dudes opposed to women’s suffrage loved to depict suffragettes as ugly spinsters (that is, when they weren’t depicting them as sexy young women using their feminine wiles to manipulate men into supporting suffrage). We looked at some examples of this yesterday and noted that, when it comes to dismissing feminists as uggos, some things never change.
But why, oh why, are feminists so (allegedly) ugly? Or, to turn the question around, why are so many (allegedly) ugly women (allegedly) drawn to feminism?
Well, we’re in luck, because some manosphere dickwads have stepped forward to provide us with possible explanations.
Over on Freedom Twenty-Five, the “red pill” Casanova who calls himself Frost offers this theory:
Feminism is the set of ideologies whose aim is to redistribute the natural allocation of access to desirable men. It is Marxism in the Sexual, rather than Economic Marketplace.
Frost is so proud of this sentence of his that he puts it in bold, as I have. He continues:
The ultimate goal of the Feminist is to create a world in which all women are as hideous and awful and dead inside as they are, so that everyone can have an equal timeshare in the alpha harems, and everyone’s fatherless offspring can be raised by the same uninspired bureaucrats in the same grey-walled, concrete and plate-glass buildings.
I can confirm that this is indeed the ultimate goal of feminism; we talk about it at all the secret meetings. The penultimate goal? To get Sleater-Kinney back together again.
Frost breaks it down:
– Feminists tend to be some combination of fat, old, ugly, abrasive, and slutty.
– Feminists want to convince men that we should be attracted to fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts.
– Feminists want to convince women that it is OK for them to be fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts. They want desirable women to become fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts, so that the feminists no longer look so bad in comparison.
– Related to (1) and (2), Feminists want to convince men and women that it is immoral for men to not be attracted to fat, old, ugly, abrasive sluts.
This is why Feminism is working so passionately to ruin American women. [Who benefits] from the widespread adoption of feminist beliefs that destroy our once-slim, once-feminine, once-nurturing women? The answer, first and foremost, is the women who were already destroyed to begin with.
Feminists know that, in a monogamous world where everyone pairs up with an equally desirable mate, they could only ever earn the favour of weak, bottom-feeding men. Feminist ideology, i.e. the hysteric and childish whining about Patriarchy, Shaming Language, and Socially Constructed Gender Roles, is no more than the set of rationalizations with which they seek to drag the rest of womankind down to their level.
Over on the blog of a fellow named Anatoly Karlin, meanwhile, a commenter calling himself fcomp has a similar theory to explain why so many feminists are (allegedly) fat fatties.
If you think about it, there is a strong rationale [sic] self interest between feminism and the increase of female obesity. If feminism is to be defined as increasing the societal power of women, then it would serve them well for their to be more obese women.
Go on.
The desirability of a women to a man is far more objective then subjective. If women were to be, across the board, more attractive, if all women became, at minimum, 6s, men who ended up marrying 6s, the men who would be the lowest in male desirability in such a society, wouldn’t nearly be as unhappy as men who end up marrying 1s in our society.
I’m not quite sure that fcomp really understands how averages work. Lake Wobegon aside, you can’t actually have a world in which all women are above average in “objective” desirability.
The logical result of that, is that in such a beautiful society, ironically, the value of female beauty would become far less valuable, and beauty would be far less desired. If there isn’t a chance that one might end up with a landwhale, I suspect that most men would hardly bother with stuff like game and the like. I would imagine that such a society would experience little sexual discrimination, but at the same time, be very anti-female, in the sense that women who are competitive with men in economically productive fields would be quite successful, but at the same time, “feminine virtues”, a females capacity attracting men, the only area in which women surpass men, would be far less valued.
If all women are beautiful, then no women are beautiful?
There is a upper cap on female attractiveness, which are the feminine ideals hardwired into us by evolution, but there is no downward cap. … [F]eminism is intrinsically a downward trend because the only thing a beautiful women can do to that makes herself more desired in a society, is to reduce the amount of beauty in that society.
The blogger on whose blog this muddled comment was posted, Anatoly Karlin, is so impressed with fcomp’s theory that he highlights it in a post of his own, adding
This is why your typical Third Wave feminist or rape activist is fat, has a manjaw, or is otherwise unattractive.
If you are ugly, devaluing beauty is not bad evolutionary strategy.
On a blog called Misanthropy Today, meanwhile, Dan Y. is not only convinced that (most) feminists are ugly; he also seems bitter that anyone would dare criticize him for calling women ugly.
[M]ost women who try to guilt us out of using looks as a criterion for judgment tend to not be very attractive. It makes sense that someone lacking in a certain perceived quality would want to dissuade others from assigning value to that quality, and would want those who possessed that quality to be humble and not flaunt it. It also seems extremely self-centered and petty to try to convince others to think and feel a certain way just so we can marginalize our lesser qualities. …
Feminists’ cries of outrage at man’s obsession with physical beauty are not altruistic. They are … upset that other women are benefitting from a quality that they don’t and probably never will possess. Their own perceived value relative to better-looking women will inevitably increase if looks are dismissed as unimportant.
Apparently, suggesting there’s more to a person than conventional attractiveness = shallow and petty. But basing your judgment of a particular women largely on whether or not she gives you a boner is the height of sophistication.
As these guys show again and again, real ugliness is more than skin deep.
I haven’t seen Kendra around recently, but she would definitely be able to sympathize.
Dvarg: Another problem is acting like evolution still affects us in the ways it affects other animals (or is imagined to affect other animals), eg, stronger people being more evolutionarily fit.
@aworld: thanks for the dubstep brain bleach! So enjoyable! Let me counter with this one: heavier on the beautiful vocals, lighter on the dubstep, but still gorgeous:
let’s see how badly I fail at hyperlinks in WordPress
@elodie:
*Slow clap*
aworldanon: You make a valid point, I think I was more trying to say that natural selection doesn’t have nearly the pull on us that it has on other animals. It’s nowhere near pulling enough that it would still affect our behaviour in any significant way, or at least not in the way that a lot of biotruthers seem to enjoy fapping to.
I think it does affect our thinking, a lot. I suspect it’s why we are crappy at long term planning. What I don’t think is 1: it’s as granular as the EvPsych idiots try to tell me. 2: Directed, at all. 3: Anything we can try to affect at the individual level.
Populations evolve, individuals survive (or not).
What we like isn’t necessarity fit, in the Darwinian sense, even if it looks like it. In, “The Beak of the Finch” there is a bird who gets a mate, every year; for 13 years. Being a finch, it’s not the same mate. Some years he gets more than one. They always hatch at least one egg.
Not one of his offspring have survived. He’s a “dead end” even though, at first blush, it would look as if he were doing well. You need to see the follow on.
Back to the OP, I just cannot get over these MRAs. I’m like, what universe do they live in? My younger sister (who passed away two years ago and I still cry nearly every day over that fact) was quite beautiful, and she used to get SO MAD in her teen years about guys she considered hot being out in public with fat women. She would just be like, “How can they DO that! I want that hot guy!” And I would say, well you know it’s not always about LOOKS. I understood, though, that she thought that was all she had to offer, she so underestimated herself and was so conditioned. In later years she wasn’t like that at all. But these MRAs–I don’t know one single man of my acquaintance who even thinks like this. Where do these nutjobs come from?? What a bunch of bitter losers! I used to be active in NOW and most of us were married, had kids, etc. So apparently someone found each of us attractive enough to get sexual with! What on earth are these guys going on about? Do they just live in man caves?
@Katz: Yeah, like people thinking someone who’s either physically strong OR (I’ve seen this more often than the physically-strong-claim) has tons of money and resources is thereby “fit” in evolutionary terms.
Today, the only trait that really correlates with spreading one’s genes a lot would be “wanting to have a big family”.
>You make a valid point, I think I was more trying to say that natural selection doesn’t have nearly the pull on us that it has on other animals. It’s nowhere near pulling enough that it would still affect our behaviour in any significant way, or at least not in the way that a lot of biotruthers seem to enjoy fapping to.
As it seems that some of the stuff that we’re exposed to during out lifetime does end up affecting which dormant genes get activated, I’d say that selection and evolution are still an ongoing process in our lifes.
Plus, you see, we aren’t actually any more conscious of the effects self-induced changes in our enviroment have on us than any other species who manages to change theirs. At least on a species-level, which is what matters to evolution.
Kakanian: But on a species level we have tailored a lot of hostile environments enough to suit us, and in some of them (the Arctic, the Andes, Malarial Africa) we’ve adapted too.
So we are monkeying with the feedback loops of Evolution, and vice-versa.
Or, as Rush Limbaugh put it decades ago, “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.”
Just like radio was invented to give men who look like Rush Limbaugh access to society.
@Nice Ogress
Ingested hormones absolutely do affect the ingesters, see birth control pills, hormone treatment, oestrogenic effects of soy foods, etc. Cooking will probably denature a majority of hormones, but not “completely”, and they are likely to be digested as any other lipid/protein, rather than excreted as a toxin. Hormones are not consumed in reactions, except for their specific breakdown, and there would be “unused” hormones left in the blood in any case.
Sorry for OT, I didn’t want lurkers to be misinformed.
*relurk*
princessbonbon: No. I was thinking of Fleming’s reaction to the film (you may use my titles, but never again the plots) and thought it was the first film made.
Mea Stupide.
‘There is a upper cap on female attractiveness, which are the feminine ideals hardwired into us by evolution, but there is no downward cap. … ‘
Really? Good god, what does she look like? Where does it end? Can we use this woman as a weapon of war or something?
“Do they just live in man caves?”
Short answer? Probably.
Seriously, not a single MRA decided to weigh in on how I should make myself ugly? Well, that’s disappointing. I went with the grotesque paint and scars, but I bet it’s just not ugly enough. You can still tell that I have boobs.
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t92/Lauralot/jokerhalloween.jpg
(Yes, I have been waiting for any excuse to post Halloween pictures, why do you ask?)
RE: Casino Royale:
There is this TV segmet from 1954…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Royale_(Climax!)
And of cousre the bang borked my link, how about this.
@elodieunderglass:
*standing ovation*
Thank you thank you thank you.
I saw a comment from Truthy in my inbox, but it’s not here. Does that mean it was deleted, or it’s in moderation, or what? I have no idea how WordPress works.
I’m a writer, not a scientist, but can I register an objection to the term “obesity epidemic” from that point of view too? The word “epidemic” implies a disease or a virus. Obesity is not something that you can catch because a fat person sneezes on you. Surely it should be obvious why “epidemic” is not the correct word to use even from a purely linguistic perspective.
@estraven – in high school the head cheerleader was in my AP English class. She was sort of the epitome of the blonde, blue-eyed, pretty cheerleader. I remember vividly her saying she wanted to be President someday and we all laughed. I did too. Because she was a cheerleader and a pretty blonde girl so duh, that was all she had to offer the world! Never mind that she was in AP English and ergo probably not stupid. To this day I cringe with shame when I remember participating in that. I hope she went on to have a wildly successful life in spite of us.
Lauralot, your costume is awesome, although under the circumstances, I can’t entirely approve. 😉
(Please don’t shoot me in the spine.)
Grr, broken html tag. Oh well, at least the link worked.
Duel between Polliwog and Lauralot!
Meanwhile, I was Rainbow Dash.