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.
Do any anti-authoritarian communists actually call themselves liberterian though? That thought tends towards “anarchist” or “anarcho-syndicist”. Most of the left-leaning folks who use the term “libertarian” I know of emphasize the personal freedoms and abuses of state police and military power over issues of financial regulation, but nearly everyone who has described themselves to be as liberterian also identifies as capitalist.
Beloved and I heard about what Affleck did to the story of Argo we won’t be going to see the movie. Too many problems on too many fronts.
Also, I love that Carter is trying to set the record straight.
The eternal problem of actor-directors. Although arguably directors who insist on acting are worse than actors who insist on directing (like Affleck).
This is the only one I’ll defend – it was tremendously black humor, but for once it was clever black humor rather than MacFarlane’s more typical “I’m being offensive for the sake of being offensive without any actual joke here” schtick, and it was not targeting anyone alive today to be hurt by it. The rest ranged from “stupid and mediocre” to “downright awful,” but the Lincoln joke did make me laugh in that “oh god that’s terrible” sort of way.
I’d say the low point was the Rihanna domestic violence joke, followed up by him smugly chortling about, “This is what you were all afraid of, right? I’m so NAUGHTY!” Ugh.
Historophilia – those recreations are marvellous, aren’t they? I didn’t know who Jim Broadbent was, but yeah, he could pass as Henri in his later years, though he might be older. Henri was only 56 when he was murdered.
It made me laugh a bit that different branches of the Bourbon family are arguing over whether it’s him. The reconstruction was done from a skull believed to be his, rescued when the royal tombs were desecrated during the Revolution. I’m going with what the people who did the reconstruction said: if it’s not him, he had a double walking around!
He doesn’t present as that age now, btw. The beard’s not grey and he has teeth! 😀
of course vox day. i become much less attracted to men who participate actively in their children’s lives. i am sure men are totally willing to support a SECOND adult human on their dollar due to the preachings of some whacked-out tradition. women working is a totally new phenomenon! not like precious aryan farmwives ever did anything other than pop out white babies Back In The Day
>>>If someone is conservative, they stand against libertarian values.
In so far as libertarians will shake their heads and tut-tut with a bit of disapproval in their voice when conservatives seek stronger government interventionism (like corporate welfare, eminent domain for oil pipelines, more military spending, etc) and howl at the moon the second somebody takes a fraction of that corporate welfare and decides to give it to the poor instead.
You’re right, folks – I missed the context. I really hate the word “libertarianism” >_>
Do any anti-authoritarian communists actually call themselves liberterian though?
Some do – especially the early ones. However, because of the rise of what we call libertarianism today, it’s not a common synonym for “anti-authortiarianism” these days. And I’m glad it isn’t.
I have to delurk for a moment to say I’m really hung up on him referring to rape as problematic because it leads to “incivility”.
We’re not putting red wine in white wine glasses here for chrissake….incivility is making fun of someone’s appearance, incivility is shoving someone out of the way to get a better spot on a bus, RAPE IS A DEHUMANIZING VIOLENT CRIME.
And what’s this about how society can recover from it? I’m sorry, I’m pretty sure rape is frequently used as an act of aggression by plenty of warring factions looking to decimate their opponents. You never hear someone say “alright, first lets kill the men, then send the women in to the workplace so they never breed at replacement rate again!!!”.
Ugh. Argh. Ugh.
It’s funny, this new thing they’re doing where everything they want to complain about is worse than rape is supposed to force people to take them more seriously, but in fact it just ends up demonstrating that they don’t deserve to be taken seriously because they have no sense of proportion. Not to mention that all these analogies could basically be summed up as “I don’t see why women being raped is such a big deal”, and even the average person who doesn’t much like feminism will tend to side-eye misogyny that obvious.
Exactly – it’s not simply overstating their complaints, which they could do with all sorts of comparisons. It’s that they minimise rape’s existence and consequences, and they do it all the time.
No surprise, given they’re the abusers’ lobby. I suspect a lot of their complaining would disappear if rape were legal.
Spot on.
LBT: I have to laugh, because only someone incredibly naive and douchey could think these ideas would actually be practical. (Economic ruin? Sure, dude, just try removing HALF THE WORK FORCE. I’m sure our economy will do FABULOUSLY.)
Well… the reason is you can take the non-white folks and pay them less than the going rate; everyone wins (who is well off and white, which is all Theodore Beale cares about).
Hi David and All: I made a spite donation in Vox’s name. Here’s the link to the video about it. http://youtu.be/yIXKNMteJqg
I would not call Vox a christian. He thinks the sole determinate of how christian a church is how much it teaches that women should obey their husbands (according to his standards of obedience and submission). He never mentions the next verses about how men are to be, that they should love their wives just as Christ loved the church and died for it. Vox does not appear to understand the gospel (Christ died for sinners such as him – and me – and that he freely offers forgiveness and eternal life to those that would believe in him). He mocks what he calls Churchianity and him and his followers appear to believe in not attending church at all (a practice that is condemned in the Bible).
@Christian, I hear he’s not a real Scotsman either
You make one little typo and you don’t get logged in. David, I promise that was me and not an impostor (or false god)
Your descriptions of his essays are false. I’ve read them. Your readers should read them for context. They won’t like them, generally, but they’ll see through your attempt to divert their attention.