So The Spearhead has weighed in on the Cleveland abduction cases, and has not failed to disappoint.
Spearhead head boy WF Price uses the terrible unfolding drama as an opportunity to attack the notion of patriarchy. His logic: the alleged abductors weren’t rich dudes, so therefore patriarchy is a lie. No, really, that’s his argument:
Feminists love to point to these incidents and use them to discredit the overwhelming majority of ordinary men, as though they have anything in common with the Castro brothers. They are used to portray every middle class guy as a potential menace to society and freak who would keep girls in a sex dungeon. But it turns out that, in fact, the fellows who kidnapped these girls are about what you’d expect: a few disheveled, low-class weirdos.
So why is it that despite the fact that the guys who commit these crimes are almost always on the bottom of the male power and privilege scale, feminists are constantly linking abuse of women to men’s power, and agitating for stripping what remaining male privilege exists?
It’s time for the patriarchy/male privilege narrative to be exposed for the sham it is. Privileged men are least likely to abuse women; patriarchal types are most likely to protect them. It is overwhelmingly the powerless, those without privilege and the undesirable who resort to crime to obtain sex. The few others, like Ted Bundy, are simply the exceptions that prove the rule.
Price ends his post with an especially nasty bit of victim blaming that seems to be a favorite trope of MRA types:
But perhaps the real issue here is that women aren’t as interested in making up stories about guys like the Castro brothers, because those guys don’t turn them on like Christian Bale in American Psycho.
Yes, that’s right: Price thinks that women worry about rape and abuse because the thought of being raped and abused by Christian Bale turns them on.
Of course, The Spearhead being The Spearhead, the comments are even worse. Norm starts the party off with this:
The Castro bros. will have many women getting their panties wet over them, especially when their trial is over.
Daniel, meanwhile, is angry that Ariel Castro’s alleged crimes have done real damage to … men. That is, if the whole thing isn’t a big false-flag fake:
The truth is, this was the worst that could happen for anti feminist public relations at the moment. If this guy – Mr Castro – only knew how much damage he has done to men by doing this.
The case is such a gift basket for feminism, that I almost suspect it is fabricated.
Groot blames feminists for driving non-alpha men to desperate measures to obtain access to “multiple women”:
What feminists fail to see is that as men are driven more and more by their agenda to the bottom of the power and privilege scale, more and more crimes like this will be committed. Unchecked hypergamy ensures that men like these have no real chance for healthy relationships and often take through criminal efforts what alphas and the elites have access to; that being multiple women.
MRA agrees:
Heroic singles moms created most of these men, we can say that is women exploiting women. The Betas and Omega that commits such crimes are the results of 40 years of feminism raising the number if these low privilege class men.
Keyster offers up this miniature manifesto blaming feminism:
Of course feminists have been playing a game of “self-fulfilling prophecy” with regard to disenfranchising men and destroying the concept of the nuclear family. This can only manifest and perpetuate itself through more instances of disaffected and socially pathological males acting out. The male/female relationship is what tames the male. And so there will be more cases where feminists can say – “See, men are the problem.” But of course there will also be more females acting out that will not be reported or discussed – such as the recent proliferation of female teachers sexually abusing students.
Jacob Ian Stalk — you may remember his 12-Step Program for Recovering Feminists — moves beyond blaming feminism and “single moms” to blame the literal victims themselves:
I have to ask, how did three adult women with at least one child between them fail completely to make their distress known, if it ever existed, to anyone in their own street for ten years, unless they themselves had no intention of being found?
There’s a great deal more this case that we are being told by the hysterical press. Call me a trafficking apologist if it satisfies your need for drama, but I suspect we’ll find the women are nowhere near as innocent or as victimised (if at all) as the cutesy-pie pictures being plastered all over the papers suggests.
Doc, meanwhile, uses the horrific story as an opportunity to brag about his alleged success with the ladies:
The fact is that men who are desirable to women have no need to resort to these types of crimes. I pretty much have my pick of women for my bed, who will pay their own way so that they can have sex with me on trips that I take, and otherwise do whatever necessary to be with me.
So thanks to feminism I have an unending supply of 18-25 year old women who are more than willing to share my bed. Why would I want to commit a crime to limit myself to one, or in this case 3? Seems way too limiting to me – it would be worse than being married. No thank you…
That’s nice, Doc. You’re a moral monster.
EDITED TO ADD: And here’s a late-breaking extra-creepy comment from Darryl X, edited slightly (and paragraphs breaks added) because he’s not only creepy but very verbose. Also, as you’ll see, he apparently thinks Jerry Sandusky was innocent too.
I have a sneaky suspicion that these women (when they were still girls) selected these men. The same way more than half of all women in the US during the past forty-five years selected men for marriage knowing darn well they were going to divorce him later, take him for everything he’s got and then marry up. Too many things don’t add up about this case. So many that I am even willing to question whether or not these girls were even kidnapped. More likely they are runaways who thought they were getting a better deal with these men than with their own parents. And when they got old enough to realize that they can do even better still, they stuck it to these guys (never underestimate the irrational boundlessness of hypergamy). … I don’t think these men are as guilty as the media portrays them and I don’t think the girls are as innocent as the media portrays them. …
When I try to think about how I would go about kidnapping just one teenager and hold her for a decade into her early 20′s in a suburban neighborhood, I am presented with so many logistical obstacles that it would seem near impossible to overcome all of them. Just for a few months let alone a decade. Then throw two more into the mix and that isn’t just near impossible but almost completely so. Not without their voluntary complicity. None of these guys looked to be of any excessive financial means. They weren’t rich. None of them looked like Einstein to me either. There was nothing accommodating about the geography. Their home wasn’t isolated from the community. It wasn’t off in the wilderness somewhere. It wasn’t remote. Think about how hard it would be to hold just one captive for a decade under these circumstances. Then think how hard it would be to hold three. The problems with that don’t grow linearly but exponentially. The cost. The risk of escape. Many other logistical problems.
I don’t buy any of this for a second. As soon as I heard this story, little red flags went up all over the place. Same with Casey Anthony and Arias and Strauss-Kahn and Sandusky (yes, I know). Too many red flags in this culture of feminism usually means something. I’m not sure what it means here but it definitely means something.
So, yeah. Actually, the other brothers aren’t being charged, so even that aspect of Darryl’s disgusting bullshit is off the mark.
Joeb, meanwhile, has a completely surreal and fucked-up Evo Psych take on the whole thing. It’s possibly the most perverse comment in the whole thread, which is saying something.
These men picked these women as sexual companionship , Not mating stock .
If they where looking for mating stock the number of off spring would have been Higher .
I think some men today get confused with Mating and breeding . VS sexual entertainment.
These men are predators but , They have Truly deprived themselves of the one thing men should be looking at , The quality of offspring .
I know its eugenics , but we all look for the best possible outcome when choosing . We want large Male children .
These men choose what I would consider ” good entertainment” but , Not worthy of my DNA .
We make suggestions ever so lightly around the MRA , the modern Male being smallish and effeminate, But when the Modern Male chooses his stock for procreation we chose fucking stock over breeding stock .
I would consider this an evolutionary sickness . A mental illness or defect . Witch is obvious in this case but,It gives us a chance to look at The problem ” for what it is , Inferior males seeking sex . Or like we hear a lot of in the MRA , Pussy hounds , Pussy beggars , These might have been white Knights if put in a social setting that lets them flourish .
Most Likely they would have been The same ,pussy beggars :with the ability to influence any social setting .
What the hell, dude. I don’t even know where to start with this crap.
To clarify, because dominant women run into this a lot and the dynamic may be clearer to us than it would be for someone less dominant…when these guys say “well some women like X” what they mean is “they would let me do X to them if I wanted to, so why won’t you? stop being so difficult or I’ll replace you with someone more compliant”. Which is a. blatantly manipulative and b. a misunderstanding of how submissiveness works too.
Yeah, I get that they are certainly women now, I just think that people seem to be forgetting that they really weren’t when they were taken. I look at the 13/14 year old girls next door, and they are still just little girls to me (but then again, maybe I’m old). Hell, I look at the 17 year old kids at the high school down the road, and I don’t necessarily see adults. For that matter, when I think of myself at 22 compared to the woman I am today…
Anyways, you’re right, the last thing I want is to infantalize the women that they are, I don’t think that would be helpful, I just think that the fact they were children when they were taken is getting lost in translation? I dunno…it’s just one of those things that niggles at me every time I read about it.
And the victim blaming makes me twitch. I don’t know how *I* would react in that position, because I’ve never *been* in that position…but I can guess that fear, shame, and the drive to just *live* would certainly make attempting to escape difficult.
@freemage
That Dispatches piece makes me wonder…when reactionary asshats pearl-clutch about American culture being “too feminine,” do they also have a conceptualization of too much masculinity in a culture? Or do they think of masculinity as purity and femininity as a pollutant which is tolerable in small amounts but needs to be strictly regulated by the FDA?
Also – I see this all the time – they talk about how feminism puts women in more positions of authority which “feminizes” the culture and is therefore bad, but then they turn around and talk about how feminism “masculinizes” women. How does it feminize the culture to have masculine people in charge? They can’t seem to decide what they’re actually arguing.
This is the part that they always miss (and I would argue purposely, because what they are really doing is rape apology). Engaging in fantasy role play with someone you trust is not remotely the same as being attacked and violated. The operative word that MRAs ignore is CONSENT. In one scenario, consent is present. In the other scenario, it is not. And this is not a subtle point!
Karalora:
Most definitely the ‘purity’ notion. This is made explicit when you look at the holy books most of these ‘traditions’ were rooted in–‘purity’ is a thing which must be defended at all costs, and any impurity is considered sacrilege. That’s actually the basis, for instance, of the Old Testament kosher rules.
*Smashes brain a bit to better grok the thought-process being described here.* Ah, I’ve got it:
[asshat mode]
“No matter how much a woman is ‘masculinized’ by feminism, she can never actually be a man. Thus, the masculinity that she has stolen–for, after all, she was only able to achieve it by feminizing a man–is just as polluted as the remaining masculinity in the feminized male. Instead of one pure vessel who can be placed into dominance, and one ultra-polluted one that can be placed into subjugation as is good and proper, we end up with two equally polluted vessels that are both unfit and unclean, with no clear hierarchy between them.”
[/asshat mode]
Ow. Some days, that ability really, really hurts….. BTW, it’s worth noting that this is how religious types also talk about pre-marital sex; there’s a number of outfits that go around doing a whole spiel where they compare a woman (sometimes they’ll include men, but they really do target girls more) who has sex before marriage to a glass of water that people have spit in, and asking, “Wouldn’t you rather have a clean glass?”
Turn one word into a short sentence.
“These women, who were kidnapped at ages ranging as low as 14,…”
Sure, it takes longer to say. But, y’know, accuracy. Something the media ought to have a little of.
@crella
As hellkell pointed out, the above post contains multiple comments by multiple people in the group you support.
However, I will agree with you that a lot of the posts on this site are based on a single MRA comment. However, interesting fact – look at all the upvotes these comments receive and all the comments that follow, praising them. It can be inferred from this that more than one MRA approves. Quite a lot more than one. A LOT more.
Some other versions of this are the flower and pizza analogies. With the flower one, the teacher pulls petals off a flower to represent a girl “giving some of herself away”. When the flower has no petals, zie asks, “Now who would want this flower?”. In the pizza one, the teacher passes around a box of pizza for students to take a slice. After the box is empty, zie asks, “Why would a girl give it all away like that?”
Something I wonder about is how they say marriage makes sex good. In that case, does a woman get an infinite supply of petals and pizza? You only lose petals for trying a new dick, but the same dick over and over has no effect?
Note: In these abstinence classes, the lessons do not apply to boys, because boys will be boys. Also LGBT students do not exist, apparently.
Maybe, it’s like marriage gives you that ability that that kid had in the fish-and-bread episode of the bible… wear his lunch transformed into forty fishes and forty loafs of bread when he was willing to share it. Except this time it works with sex ability, or purity, or whatever they’re trying to apply it to.
/I have not heard that story in forever, so it may be … off
@freemage:
This may be putting the same thing another way, but how about:
1. Men are better than women. Just, you know, ’cause.
2. Therefore masculinity is better than femininity.
3. Therefore masculinity (which is superior) should be reserved for men (who are superior), and inferior women only rate inferior femininity. It’s wrong for women to attempt masculinity.
4. What does “circular logic” mean? Did you learn that in (ugh) school from a (retch) WOMAN?
Karalora: You need a 2.5: Masculinity only comes into the world when a new male baby is born; it is his birthright, and any woman who acquires masculinity can only do so by stealing it from a male.
After all, if masculinity isn’t a super-rare element, like plutonium, but is simply a collection of arbitrary human traits that have been lumped together in a single, ill-defined basket, then there’d be no need to worry about masculinized women.
@crella
OK, so why don’t you take the Manboobz Challenge*: point us toward some moderare MRAs.
As for the “SOME women like murderers” thing: and? Why does it matter, and why is that the hill you’re trying to die on given all the horrific shit this post is about?
*It’s like the James Randi challenge, except you don’t get a million dollars. But you are about as likely to win.
Given that fully 75%* of everybody we ask points us right back to AVfM…
…where they have a call to terrorism on their activism page…
…you may be more likely to win the Randi challenge.
*made-up statistic**
**93.4% of statistics are made up on the spot
Freemage: I think it’s not so much that masculinity is a limited resource as that it’s a relative measure. Remember, these people can only conceive of human value by comparing to people who are less valuable (who bangs the hotter chicks, who’s more alpha, etc). So they need women and femininity as a sort of reserve of lesser value so that, regardless of how little they distinguish themselves, they’ll always be better than half the population. If women can gain the trait that makes you better than other people, they’re out of luck!
The amazing thing about all of these bizarre analogies is that they have nothing to do with any feature of sex at all and pretty much open up an analogy free-for-all.
“See, this bowl of ice cream is a woman. Each dude she has sex with is a topping. So basically having sex with a bunch of guys makes you more delicious.”
now I want ice cream.
I got taught a slightly softer version: They stick a piece of tape to one person, pull it off, stick it onto the next person, and then go around like that and pretty soon the tape isn’t sticky at all. It’s an analogy for how, the more relationships you’re in, the less you’re able to bond with any one person.
…Except for some reason this metaphor only relates to romantic (and sexual) relationships and nobody ever uses it to prove that you shouldn’t make a lot of friends or have a lot of children (especially not children).
When I read that line about how masculine Michelle Obama is, I heard racist dog whistles. Did anyone else? Don’t racist asshats think that black women are less feminine than white women?
serrana: Oh, there’s some racism there, as well, most definitely.
@Katz:
That happened? That’s a real thing people do?
I am so, so sorry.
@thread:
“A woman is like a tree in that the apples the seeds grow into will one day be used by a farmer to make juice, and juice is like the ocean in that they’re both primarily composed of liquids and the ocean is always personified as a woman and a jealous one at that so what I’m saying here is that the ocean is like juice and juice is misandric and jealous and out to get you!”
from hell’s heart I blab at thee;
for hate’s sake I spit my last analogy at thee…
@katz
You know what’s especially stupid about the tape analogy? The sticky doesn’t go away–it just gradually gets transferred to the people that the tape was stuck to. So every sexual relationship results in one partner becoming less able to bond with future partners…but the other one becomes more able to bond? How do you tell which is which? Oh, right, they’re discouraging female sexuality, so women are the tape. But that means men start out with no bonding ability and only acquire it by playing with tape…er, women.
Right?
@serrana
Notice how Ms. Obama isn’t just “masculine,” but “frighteningly masculine.” I guess the gender-flipped version of the Scary Black Man is the Frighteningly Masculine Black Woman.
Well, it’s a bit nicer to say “you’ll never be able to bond” than to say “no one will want you,” so I’ll count my blessings.
I was sent a depressing but quite relevant link about the connection between “virgin purity” and the way our society makes rape easier.
Elizabeth Smart: Abstinence Education Teaches Rape Victims They’re Worthless, Dirty, And Filthy
I have some more questions for the abstinence-only douchebags:
1. Doesn’t the assertion that promiscuity makes women undesirable conflict with the assertion that men are mindlessly horny and looking for an easy lay?
2. Even supposing there is an inverse correlation between total number of sex partners and ability to bond…what makes you think the causation runs the way you say it does? Isn’t it more likely that people with a low innate ability to bond would therefore go through relationships more quickly?
3. You know that “licked lollipop” metaphor you like to use? I asked a bunch of my friends, and they said they wouldn’t care all that much if someone else had licked it first as long it was rinsed off before they got it. Given that people often shower after sex, how does that affect the analogy?
4. What is it about a marriage certificate that prevents the pernicious effects of repeated sex on a woman? Is it magic? Could it potentially be replicated without involving the notary?
5. Why are your eyes glazing over? These are important questions!
Hmm… tape…
So, if you give yourself fully to someone, you bond. But then, breaking that relationship off is painful, it hurts to suddenly rip yourself away from someone, and in many ways a piece of you is left behind.
If you then fully give yourself to someone else, and then rip yourself from them, then give yourself fully to someone else, etc. etc, you probably would start to get a bit jaded, or at least a bit more guarded. It’s emotionally difficult to completely connect with someone and then break off completely over and over. To make that process less painful, you’d probably stay more distant with future partners, and stick to them less.
But why do it this way? If becoming fully involved with someone is too painful, then you aren’t required to do that with every person you interact with or have sex with. One night stands exist, fuck-buddies exist. Someone can be perfectly fine sticking lightly to people they interact with, and staying just as sticky. It all depends on what you and your partners are comfortable with. Maybe they choose to “settle down,” and maybe they don’t. Maybe some people are double-stick tape, and can bond with multiple people.
Tape is really complicated…
The worst part about all these analogies is that a woman’s sexuality is a resource that is divied out to the men she has sex with. That… just ain’t true. It’s not like there’s some finite quantity of sex a woman can have, except to the extent that it would get very tiring or sore…
Affection isn’t a finite resource either, it’s something that develops between people, and it’s something that can get emotionally tiring rather than used up.