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.
Thanks for posting those links, Neurite, Tulgey.
I went to Argo knowing nothing more than that there was the hostage crisis in 1979-80. It’s quite something to see how very far Affleck was from the facts. I didn’t expect it to be 100% accurate – films never are – but cor, he really took the barest bones for his story, didn’t he?
It’s a damn shame in a minor sense – that a film I still think told a ripping yarn IS just a Ripping Yarn – and in a major one, because it’s so far from what happened.
I’m divided on how the Iranians and Americans were presented. Looking at it as a total outsider … I didn’t see the Iranians as barbaric or foolish or childish. Yes, scary, but revolutions are, all that fear and anger coming out, it brings fanaticism with it. The hostage crisis did happen.
I didn’t read the Americans from the embassy as being innocents abroad – whether or not they had actually been spying I don’t know, but I saw them as part of this whole mucky business of diplomacy/espionage/corrupt regimes/you name it. Not heroes, not innocents, but by this time a group of frightened people. Not much related to their real reactions and dangers, I know: I’m talking about them as presented and how they came across to me.
I did wonder at the time about Affleck being Antonio Mendez – not that I knew the man, but in a sort of “Whut?” way. At best it seemed like, “Okay, he has presumably Mexican ancestry on his father’s side, but doesn’t look it …” I thought his acting was fine, but yes, he shouldn’t have cast himself in the role.
I rather suspect I wouldn’t have gone to see it if I’d known that stuff first …
Heya, tigtog, lowquacks, you two okay after that drenching Sydney got today?
I’m fine, but I’m been in Dapto. We did have a lightning strike very near the house last night, and a mini-tornado ripping through a town just south, and several floods nearby just recently, and that catastrophic bushfire risk, and a duststorm not too far away, I think, but somehow I’ve always managed to be in the right place.
Plague of locusts next maybe?
The rain and wind was much worse yesterday, Kitteh. I am often v. glad that we live on a hill, so the potential for flooding more than just a low bit of the garden is minimal.
Glad to hear you’re both okay!
I hope they don’t get more floods in Queensland. My sister moved back to Gympie last month. Only went and arrived the day of the floods, didn’t she?
We flooded again…the storms on Friday were quite something. Our neighbour was out during calm bits hammering his garage roof down.
Has the town been cut off, BigMomma?
Yeah, the river peaked late Sunday and the pacific highway closed. It’s not as high as a month ago (last month peak 3.3m, this time 2.4m, with the levee wall being 3.4m). It’s all good, we should reconnect with outside world in a couple of days. Nasty lot of rain sitting inland though…3 floods maybe?
Cripes! 🙁
I’d better get to bed, it’s 10pm. Niters all!
Night..watching Q&A again.
I skimmed a bit of what was linked, written by Vox. He’s a Christian Libertarian. Isn’t Libertarianism Ayn Rand’s baby? She hated religion. Anyway, same old nonsense that’s been around for years. As to this post, even either Elam or Esmay (not sure of spelling) knows and admits that women have always worked. Vox and his readers/commenters truly believe what they say. They believe that men are superior and women are nothing but breeders. What is with this obsession with breeding?
Tina
Ayn Rand came up with a philosophy called objectivism. Some call it rational ethical egoism. Same thing. It is not the same as libertarianism.
Some objectivists are libertarians, and some libertarians are objectivists. But thats it. Being one does not mean being the other.
lowquacks
libertarians=/=conservatives
If someone is conservative, they stand against libertarian values.
Just go away Diogenes.
Naïf: I see you have changed threads, as per norm. Those ongoing conversations you were in before not interesting anymore?
libertarians=/=conservatives
If someone is conservative, they stand against libertarian values.
A no true scotsman defense I see. So which are the Pauls? Not conservative, or nor libertarian?
Except insofar as the modern Republican party calls itself conservative, and is focused on cutting the federal government down to just the military, as far as I can tell, and that includes deregulating everything, which is something the libertarians want very much, isn’t it?
It is selfish, sloppy, “fuck you Jack, I got mine” thinking that is just wrong headed about so much. If any of it were implemented, it would make us truly second rate.
You know a person is a jackass when they are a Randroid. Case in point, Diogenes.
Ayn Rand came up with a philosophy called objectivism. Some call it rational ethical egoism.
Those who examine it with a critical eye call is self-centered egoism, with a total lack of ethics and reason.
Shorter objectivism, “It’s immoral to not fuck you over to get mine”.
Except for the opposition to welfare, taxes, regulation, the federal government, civil rights legislation, business regulation and the bodily autonomy of women. Not to mention a fanatic devotion to the second amendment.
Aside from that, completely different.
(FWIW, I also used to think libertarianism and Christianity were incompatible, but then I realized not all libertarians are Randian objectivists, and not all Christians care about Christ’s messages of charity, compassion and wealth redistribution.)
Those reconstructions of the faces of the English Kings are amazing. I love those reconstructions, it suddenly hits you that these were REAL people, not just names in a history book.
L
and does anyone else think that Henry IV looked like Jim Broadbent? Like scarily so: http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BOTY4ODgzMTg3MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMDE4NTc0._V1._SX214_CR0,0,214,314_.jpg
Just give him the whiskers and beard he had in Moulin Rouge but make them grey. Spitting image, I swear.
Glad the Australian manboobzers are okay! Not so glad that DtC keeps popping up like a hard to shake infection.
He’s right if you take “libertarian” to mean “anti-authoritarian communists” and not “American fiscal conservatives who often have socially conservative views.” The former kind of libertarianism, which is actually anarchism, is entirely antithetical to conservative attitudes (both fiscally and socially).
@mxe: so if we allow him to just treat the vague term libertarianism as a grab-bag we can totally almost in some circumstances avoid Diogenes being wrong?
As long as we ignore the original context he used it in?
That sounds just right for DiogenesThinking! (patent pending)
What howardbann1ster above said. There is no set definition for libertarianism and both left and right use the term for their own ideologies. Context is key here.
Context is key, but Diogenes uses vagueness as a weapon. Every post he puts up is padded on every side by it. Specificity is kryptonite to him.
Of course, so are WORDS…