I ran across this remarkable painting, titled “The Irritating Gentleman,” on Sheltered and Safe From Sorrow, a blog devoted to Victorian mourning rituals and other creepiness from that period. The gentleman in question seems to be a Victorian era Pickup Artist in action. He’s even peacocking, Mystery style, with that bow tie and stupid hat and even a non-ironic handlebar moustache. Probably the only thing keeping him from wearing aviator goggles is the fact that airplanes haven’t yet been invented.
What makes it all the worse is that the PUA’s target is clearly in mourning. As the blogger behind rawr I’m a tumblr notes:
She’s wearing all black in 1874. Black gloves, hat, cloak, and dress. In public. The whole nine yards. That’s not a fashion choice or a gothic thing. Back then when people wore all black like that, they were in mourning for someone who died. No one did mourning like the Victorians, that shit was an art form to them.
Someone in her family has died—she could even be a young widow. No one’s accompanying her either. With the carpet bag? She’s traveling alone while still in deep mourning. Look at the closeup. She’s got tears in her eyes. She is upset, devastated in a way that one is only when someone has died. And the guy’s still bothering her, like her problems are flippant bullshit and she needs to just smile or pay attention to him because ladies are supposed to be pleasing for men no matter what shit they’re going through. That’s not a look of “what an ass.” That’s a look of devastation that even in her pain, she’s expected to give people like him focus. She’s not mad. She’s hurt. And to add insult to injury? Everyone would be able to tell. It was a clear sign and still is in ways that someone is mourning, to dress in black crepe like that. He would know why she’s wearing all black, and he’s still demanding her attention.
What an insufferable dick.
Yep.
All I can say is…what a gorgeous painting! God, I NEED to win a lottery.
Correction: human males are naturally attracted, rather
I need to get adopted by Andrew Lloyd-Webber – he seems to own all the most gorgeous pre-raphaelites.
This is totally (well, not 100%) OT (when has that stopped anyone), but I was reading some news articles on CNN this morning and saw something for which I cannot choose an adequate adjective. But I thought it was worth mentioning here.
I was reading about another (new) gang rape of a woman on a bus in India, and although I know that the comments section on CNN is a cesspool of ignorance, racism, sexism, etc., I went ahead and tapped on it to see what people were saying.
Somewhat predictably, you had the folks going on about how Indians are stupid, ugly, etc. etc. And you had people (presumably Indians) calling out others as Pakistani trolls. This has been par for the course in every article on India as of late. Then some people calling for castration and death of the perps. Still pretty normal.
Then there were some guys (I say “some” because there were multiple IDs even if they were saying the same thing word-for-word) who were going on about, “What was she wearing?” and totally unrelated tangents about Western women cuckolding men and laughing about it on feminist forums (uh, what?). And then a lot of posts about FALSE RAPE ACCUSATIONS and women deciding after sex that the sex was unwanted = rape. As if women just get on buses expecting a good time and decide after being kidnapped and brutalized that, you know, that wasn’t all that fun. Wtf.
But wait. There’s more!
One of the commenters talking about FRA had a very familiar name.
It was our good friend … Marky Mark.
At least, I assume there’s only one Marky Mark on the internet blathering about FRA and cuckolding and whatnot.
My journey would have ended here, but I like to be thorough. So I googled (predictive googling totally knew “Marky Mark MRA”) to see if he was talking about this somewhere else (to confirm it was him) and I clicked on his blog. And I learned something!
So I didn’t find anything about India, but I did learn that everything I knew about the animal kingdom, with animals consuming their young in tough times or whatever, was absolutely false. Thanks, Mr. Mark!
@pecunium
Fair enough. It could just be because she just screams Germanic to me, that in contrast he seems less so..
Really? So I guess watching a mother hamster eat her babies was totally my imagination then?
Usually, mother animals eat or neglect their young because of inexperience combined with stress. I had a mother rabbit abandon her babies out on the front lawn. Poor little things died of exposure. And there was no way to help them survive at least according to animal control and the humane society.
And I suppose Marky has never heard of that mythical bird known as a chicken. Various breeds have different degrees of broodiness. Basically some breeds suck at sitting on the nests or caring for the young.
Plenty of men seem willing to kill children a la shaken baby syndrome.
But you know, being othered as an entirely different species. Does he think women are hatched in secret lairs?
Also, I know Britain was king when it came to enforced mourning, followed by the US, but I don’t know how far the rest of Europe took it it that time?
I think Spain had the crown.
Aw… Abnoy had his fee-fees hurt in the Lords of their dingalings thread. Seriously, he lost all pretense of argument and went completely ad hom. It’s kind of funny, in that sad sort of way.
Yeah, no father has ever killed his own children in a rage. I’ve NEVER heard of THAT happening. 😛
And yeah, the stark math of nature: a fetus is cheap, a child is expensive. Most species will practice intentional infanticide, and anyone with the slightest interest in watching nature documentaries will see examples over and over again.
Oh, that’s an inappropriately happy smiley…
Kangaroos reabsorb embryos if the conditions for raising a joey aren’t right. Plenty of female animals will kill their young, especially if they are stressed (in captivity, for instance). Males will kill young, whether other males’ offspring or their own.
Once again Abnoy demonstrates that he’s severely lacking in the ability to read expression or grasp anything of human interaction. (I’d guess he’s AI but deficient in the “I” part.) There’s nothing compassionate or concerned in that man’s face and posture. He’s leering and looming over her and her entire body language speaks of fear on top of grief.
What’s with Abnoy’s inability to say “men” and “women”? Does this “human males” and “human females” mean he isn’t of our species? Or is it just that he’s so totally deficient in empathy that he can’t even identify other people as … people?
So go fuck yourself, Abnoy, you little creep.
@heathenbee – those photos, good grief! 😀 Scary funny weird stuff.
If you click on the painting, it takes you to a screen you can magnify and gives much better detail.
My beads came from a gallery on Phillip Island that sells work by local artists.
Feminists generally hate a confident male sexuality that isn’t in absolute lockstep with their precise vision of the Acceptable MaleTM. In practice, this means feminists basically do hate male sexuality, because almost no one falls perfectly in line with the feminists’ stupidity.
Abnoy: fuck off.
We had a post about MarkyMark’s Deep Thoughts on Nature not that long ago. He’s wrong about it all as usual.
“Deep” as in “abysmal” in his case.
@Merv, what do you define as “a confident male sexuality?”
Confident male sexuaity: the ability to be absolutely certain of gaining the time and type of attention you want as a man because you can safely disregard the womans inclinations, thoughts and outright statements to the contrary.
“Human [males] are naturally attracted to human females when they are showing their softer side, especially when they are crying (as someone once observed, a womym’s tears are her secret weapon) It’s not always neccessarily predatory, as oftentimes the male has the instinctive urge to chivalrously console and comfort and even cuddle the female, to whom he feels kindly predisposed. It’s what the Japanese call “moe”.”
Yah that totally explains why he’s smoking around her in an enclosed space, or that horribly crass tie.
As for that woman’s tears BS, that was NWO, that’s really someone to admire!
I’m pretty sure that what Merv considers “confident” we would consider “rapey.”
I’ve parsed this every which way, but it still doesn’t make a lick of coherent sense.
Um, what? If no men can ever live up to feminist standards, how do (female) feminists ever get laid?
Argenti: we don’t because we’re all fat hairy lesbians* to Merv. and his ilk.
*they don’t think lesbians are real, so lesbian sex wouldn’t count to them.
Shorter Merv: Decent human being 101 is too hard.
@Argenti
We don’t date men, we date the most delightful of ‘manginas’!