Even after all the time I’ve spent on this blog, I can still be astounded by the appalling hatefulness of the manosphere. The latest example? This post from the influential far-right manospherian who calls himself Vox Day, in which he argues, seriously, that encouraging rape is better for society than encouraging (white) women to work.
No, really.
Vox, you see, is racist as fuck, and he’s worried about the evil brown people outbreeding the good white people. He figures that
two-thirds of [women] have to stay home and breed in order to prevent society from either collapsing into demographic and economic ruin or being transformed by the imported replacement workers into a third world society.
Now, you might think that some men could stay home and take care of these kids, but that’s clearly not an option since, you know, dudes don’t like changing diapers.
[T]here are a number of reasons that a man cannot stay home and provide childcare. The three most important are that a) most men don’t want to provide childcare, b) most women don’t want to work to support a man, and c) doing so significantly increases the probability that his wife will stop being attracted to him and his marriage will fail.
And all this leads to his jaw-dropping conclusion:
The fact that women may wish to work and are very capable of working no more implies that they should always be encouraged to do so anymore than the fact that men may wish to rape and are very capable of raping means that they should always be encouraged to do so. The ironic, but logically inescapable fact is that encouraging men to rape would be considerably less damaging to a society than encouraging women to enter the workforce en masse. Widespread rape makes a society uncivilized. Widespread female employment makes a society demographically unsustainable. History demonstrates that incivility can be survived and surmounted. Unsustainability, on the other hand, cannot.
Skimming through the comments to this piece on his site, I saw mostly rape jokes. I didn’t have the stomach to read further.
‘The three most important are that a) most men don’t want to provide childcare’
Rock solid logic. Right up there with ‘Because I said so!’
There was also some antisemitism in the Oscars. I think Scott Lynch nailed it:
katz — either way does make sense. With the cost of photographs what it was, there was a reason for the popularity of post-mortem photos. Seems likely that any family who could afford photos for the sake of having a photo would have a nanny (or not quite be able to afford it and be inclined to reduce the number of sitters and thus the cost).
Early photography was weird.
Those photos are intriguing. The one on this post seemed so odd – as if it were a woman in a shrouding veil/niqab/burka etc, yet with European children. It’s seriously unconvincing as “baby sitting on chair”!
I like the one of the hidden (?) father in there – trousered knees sticking out under the cloth, PHOTOGRAPHER FAIL!
The post-mortem ones, assuming it’s correct and that’s what they are, are strange, but … I don’t know, it’s the woman being shrouded that strikes me. I can understand photographing a dead loved one, no problem: but for the bereaved mother to have to be hidden while holding her child, possibly for the last time, seems so hard, although she may have wanted the focus entirely on the child, who knows.
I think the modern-day equivalent of the memento mori baby pictures are people who take pictures of their miscarried babies. And I’m not linking to any of those because they’re creepy.
Now that idea creeps me out, for sure – at least, if we’re talking fetus rather than full-term. Though, again, it makes sense for the people doing the grieving.
It’s very similar in terms of motivation: They’ve developed a strong emotional bond to the baby and this is the only chance they’ll ever have to take a photo of it. They’ll put a diaper on it and dress it up in baby clothes. Freaks me the fuck out and I wouldn’t be able to do that sort of thing without thinking “it’s a dead baby, it’s a dead baby, it’s a dead baby” all the time, but then, maybe I’d feel differently if I had a miscarriage.
kitteh — the ones I’ve seen (the modern ones) are full term or near term. Far enough along that it was probably technically a stillbirth not a miscarriage. Still very creepy, but at least they look human.
I can imagine doing it quite easily if it were my infant or miscarriage (at least, assuming it was a wanted child, which is itself a leap!) but seeing it from the outside … yes, a bit squicky. More so than the Victorian practices, I think. Still, better that than the corpse being whipped away so the parent(s) never get to see it. That was a horrible practice.
Argenti – that’s a small relief. Stillbirth is one thing, but I have a hard time looking on human fetuses as anything more than just that, fetuses. I feel sadder looking at other miscarried or stillborn animals – there’s a series of photos of horse fetuses in a book I have, and it saddens me to think of the horses that never were.
Oops–yes, stillbirths, not miscarriages.
Mind you, I wouldn’t be too surprised if some people did photograph miscarriages – late ones, at least.
Of course deathbed portraits go back way before photography. Imagine being a painter doing a post-mortem portrait, especially if it was someone you knew, or a patron you’d painted many times.
Speaking of a different sort of post-mortem portrait, has anyone seen the facial reconstructions done of Richard III and Henri IV recently? The one of Henri (my FiL!) in particular is stunning. Shows what a difference it makes when there are portraits with which to compare.
Richard III
Henri IV
I think in our times working women and families with two kids max are the most sustainable demographics. We just need lots more “brown” women in education and work force to stabilise world populations in areas where they might be less than sustainable. No need to breed more whitefaces; that is not sustainable. See how feminism solves even your issues, Vox Day? Although for different reasons than you’d maybe like. But solves them anyway better than any of your ideas, so who cares about the reasons if the end result is the same!
(This post is meant to be read with slightly sarcastic tone where applicable)
Tulgey: that link is a nice start into some of the things that were cruddy about the Oscars, but there was, alas, so much more.
My personal low point was right at the beginning, with Seth McFarlane serenading all the female actors with a lovely number titled “We Saw Your Boobs” – listing specific names and movies. Including two movies where we “saw her boobs” because the character in question was brutally raped (Jodie Foster in The Accused and Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry).
Then there was a joke about Daniel Day-Lewis getting into character as Lincoln to the point of trying to free Don Cheadle; a Chris Brown/Rihanna DV joke; a “Flight done by sock puppets” skit with Denzel Washington played by a brown sock constantly doing drugs, followed by a joke about how Seth McFarlane as a white guy is not allowed to to “blackhand”; a horrifying Lincoln assassination joke; the joke that Zero Dark Thirty is about “every woman’s innate ability to never ever let anything go”; the “antisemitic jokes are okay if a Jewish guy wrote them” delivered by Ted the
Seth McFarlane mouthpiecetalking teddybear…Oh, and all the nominations (and wins) for a movie about slavery were for white guys involved with the project. Not knocking Christoph Waltz’ acting skills, just noting who was noticeably not nominated.
I spent the time the Oscar’s were taking up television to watch Untold Stories of the ER repeats (because who doesn’t like seeing surgeons manage to save a teenagers train crushed feet?)
Apparently I missed absolutely nothing worth watching. Also, 4 am here >.< G’night
I only saw the Oscars mentioned on the news, which was more than enough. Never heard of this McFarlane person, and reading what he said, he’s instantly forgettable.
Glad Argo got Best Picture.
Niters Argenti!
Argenti Aetheri: Well, you did miss fabulous song numbers by Jennifer Hudson, Shirley Bassey, Barbra Streisand and Adele (who was amazing despite being unforgivably mixed by awful sound techs), and a total surprise appearance by Michelle Obama via video feed at the end. (She even managed to sneak in a shout out to gay rights!) So there were some good moments, just… man, Seth McFarlane was even worse than I expected, and I had expected bad things.
Kitteh: I’m mostly with you – Argo was a fantastic movie. Still, there’s been some (IMHO deserved) criticism of one aspect of the movie, which is summed up pretty well here.
I actually don’t agree with the author of that article on Affleck’s acting – I thought he did fine – but it bears emphasizing that the usual problem with whitewashing (there are few enough roles for actors of color as it is, let’s not turn actual historic people of color white for a movie) is compounded, in the case of this movie, by “there is little enough public recognition of bona fide national heroes of color as it is, let’s not turn them white for a movie, which is bound to be the way most of the public will ever hear of that person”.
Neurite: add “Lawless” and “Monster” to the list of movies with rape that MacFarlane decided to have a giggle about. That guy skeeves me out.
@Kittehs’: I have not seen Argo, but this article makes me quite leery of it:
http://www.wideasleepinamerica.com/2013/02/oscar-prints-the-legend-argo.html?m=1
There’s standard xenophobia there, but does anyone else feel that people who say that realise that slavery has basically just shifted from the first to the third world and want to keep those foreigners and their awful working conditions as far away from their minds and labour markets as possible? “Seeing something vaguely true and coming to the absolute worst conclusion” seems to be reasonably common around the more paranoid libertarian elements of the US right.
ALSO
Re: Vox Day’s haircut
Dunno what you people see, but I’m in the trendier parts of Sydney (a hip-ish place, certainly hip for Australia) and while Newtown’s stuck-in-the-’70s mix of shaggy-haired bearded men in flannos/thongs as weather dictates and Thai restaurants remains largely consistent, the more cosmopolitan men all seem to favour basically that haircut, or other extreme variations on a short back and sides. Corny middle-class rapper Macklemore is massive right now and sports something similar, too.
Everything (kinda) old is new again!
Hello Tigtog! Haven’t seen you around here but you seem to have popped up over my latest Man Boobz break and it’s always nice to see new faces/gravatars. Welcome to the Australian-bird-piccies club too.
On an unrelated note, scented fucking candles now come in the aroma of space, courtesy of NASA. Does this count as super-misandry since it’s such a manly smell put into candles?
http://news.discovery.com/space/private-spaceflight/space-smelling-candle-130221.htm#mkcpgn=fbsci1
G’day lowquacks! I know Kitteh and Xanthe more from other blogs than here, although there’s a few more familiar faces encountered elsewhere over the years here too. I mostly tend to lurk here, although every now and then I’ve stuck my oar in.
You and I are even nearly neighbours in Sydney by the sound of it. Crikey!
@Tigtog
I’m in south Wollongong but went to Universty of Sydney, which I’m suspending this year to do some non-profit work, learn to drive, make some money, and so on.