It’s a challenge for every serious writer of fiction: how to write convincing characters of the opposite sex.* Some writers can pull it off, some — even eminent ones — can’t. James Joyce is still getting props for the way he got into Molly Bloom’s dirty, dirty mind; Tom Wolfe was nearly laughed out of the sorority by some critics when he wrote a book from the point of view of a college student named Charlotte Simmons. (And it’s not just men who get accused of not being able to think outside their own gender: an essay in Salon not long ago suggested that Girls creator Lena Dunham “can’t write men.”)
We can add one more name to the long list of male authors who can’t write women: The fellow who calls himself fish_finger on Reddit.
The other day, Mr. Finger posted what he claimed was a true story about some women at his workplace who had been passing around a list of their male colleagues, rated “hot or not” on the customary 1-10 scale, and covered with crude sexual comments about them. The comments about the hottest guys, he wrote,
incited rape and were seriously disturbing. One female forwarded it onto HR and the rest of the department, but no action has been taken. HR have said it was just a joke and should be forgotten.
So far, it sounds unlikely, but it’s at least within the realm of the possible, allowing for a bit of the typical Men’s Rights exaggeration.
The trouble came when someone asked Mr. Finger what the comments were like, and he replied with this:
Yeah, I think it’s pretty safe to say that no woman in the history of the universe has ever uttered, or set down on paper, either the first or third comment in that list. I’m pretty sure women don’t sneak around in the alleys behind the houses of handsome dudes with turkey basters in hand, rifling through the trash in hopes of finding discarded condoms with still-viable sperm swimming around inside of them.
These aren’t comments from actual women. These are Men’s Rights myths come to life.
Naturally, the folks in r/againstmensrights are having a field day with this one. And while most of those in r/mensrights are taking Mr. Fingers completely seriously — his post got nearly 700 upvotes, and the most heavily upvoted responses to these allegedly real comments urge him to take the company to court — there are even some there who can see it’s a fake.
Still, Mr. Finger doesn’t seem like a typical troll. His account is four months old, and he seems to spend most of his time on Reddit talking with utmost sincerity about pet rats.
But he has posted previous comments in r/mensrights about his workplace that have the same air of unreality about them. In one, he claimed to have gotten in trouble “for not being courteous to a females colleagues request that only females sit next to her and men must not be within 10m [of] her desk.”
He got 86 upvotes for that one. How many offices are big enough to make this even possible?
As best as I can figure it, Mr. Finger is both a sincere rat lover and a sincere Men’s Rightser; it’s just that he apparently thinks the best way to advance Men’s Rights is to tell tall tales about men being oppressed.
That, in itself, is not all that surprising; the Men’s Rights movement is built on imaginary oppression.
But what is a little more surprising is how willing other MRAs are to accept the completely unbelievable comments he claims are from the women in his office as real. Are they really that out of tune with how women actually think?
Do they have so little empathy and understanding that they actually think the women sitting next to them at work not only look at men as little more than walking repositories of genetic material — but that they would rather steal their sperm from the garbage than have sex with them? That they think these women think of sex in terms of “engulfing” men’s penises?
Apparently for a lot of Men’s Rightsers the answer is yes.
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*Gender is obviously more complicated than the traditional gender binary; I am talking here mostly about cis men and women trying to write from the point of view of cis women and men on the opposite side of the binary.
Because they see women as objects and vessels, they can’t imagine women don’t see them in the same dehumanizing manner.
and first comment woot! (yes, I’m 12.)
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1hbkev/female_colleagues_have_a_list_of_male_colleagues/casw7uz?context=2
Someone asking for doxx is at +5 after two days. “post that shit online, preferably here.”
Screenshot
bad puppy – first comment brings out all our inner twelve-year-olds. 😀
Of course MRAs think this rubbish is real. They’re not on speaking terms with reality. The condoms and hot sauce one made me laugh: I’ve never heard of anyone except MRAs talk about stealing sperm. As for the idea of women even jokingly talking about pinching used condoms from the rubbish – have these clowns no idea of how ewwww that is? Fellas, you’re talking about us putting that manky gunk inside ourselves; plausibility FAIL.
My favorite response. “Clearly fake, but let’s make a wankfest out of it as though it were real anyway.”
FINALLY I’LL GET THE BABY I DESERVE!!!!!!!!!
And yeah, “I’m going to go out and raid the trash for disposed condoms so I can shove the contents inside my vagina” is something no woman has ever said anywhere.
I really like
the cats in a David suit’sDavid’s caption: “Evil woman printing out evil office sex list.”I want to do this. Not that it’ll be about the blokes at work, but Evil Office Sex sounds interesting.
@kittehserf, considering the fact that most women of reproductive age spend FAR more of their reproductive years trying to PREVENT pregnancy than GET pregnant, it’s baffling why they think we need to run around “stealing sperm”. There is a weird sort of narcissism in that idea.
LMAO Cloudiah!!
bad puppy – very true!
Not only that, but if the rubbish bin spermjackers are (presumably) meant to be single, then yeah, most women spend SO much time trying to become single mothers. Because it’s such an easy life.
Is this how they imagine women think about people they find attractive, or how they think about people they find attractive? Either way, ew.
If this is how cis men live, I feel very sorry for them.
Wow. Just, wow. It’s obvious that misogynists are frightened of women. Which makes sense. Fear ultimately leads to hatred and suffering, to paraphrase a fictional character.
And my god, reading those lines, it’s totally like reading transcribed dialogues between me and my husband.
“ROGAN HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU YOUR ARMS COULD FIGHT OFF MAMMOTHS.”
“FORSOOTH MAC AND I’M SURE YOUR LOVELY PENIS FOREBODES STRONG GENES AND PLENTIFUL FAT BABIES.”
Really, I don’t know how those MRAs do it.
These guys really need to stop posting their fantasies in public without some sort of warning and disclaimer. Some of this stuff belongs on Weeping Cock.
The condom-in-trash thing is particularly weird. Granted that I’m more germ-phobic than average, but there can’t be many women who’d be keen on the idea of taking something out of a stranger’s trash can and sticking it up their vagina.
XD You made me snort, LBT!
RE: CassandraSays
I don’t know what you mean. I do that all the time. You’d be FASCINATED what people just throw away! (And what I can fit!)
Dammit Rogan, you’re not supposed to be fighting off mammoths, you’re supposed to be hunting them for manly man food! How’re you gonna keep Mac’s genes up to scratch if he doesn’t get manly man food to eat? You think he can produce plentiful fat babies if he’s forced to live on berries?
I have to confess genes have never entered my thinking, ‘cos 1) I don’t. want. children and 2) my “mate selection” kinda happened by itself (and of course reproducing was never going to be a thing for us anyway, thank goodness).
Well, given what you were suggesting that people do with a foam sword in the other thread…
@ Kittehs
Seriously, do these guys not understand how much effort the average sexually active young woman puts into NOT getting pregnant?
I can see how this could possibly be real (as in .1% probability). I can imagine if Mr. Fish spends his days at work denouncing evil spermjackers that a group of women might have pranked him and he fell for it. As in: holy shit, this guy thinks the spermjacking/garbage/hot sauce scheme is a thing.
I’d love to know if any of them *actually* puts hot sauce in their spunk. That would kind of be hilarious.
I think we should start a counter-rumor that since spermjacking is out of control the only way to truly be sure that your sperm won’t be jacked is to put the hot sauce in the condom before use rather than after.
@ kitteh
You should know that women who don’t want children don’t exist! It’s just a subterfuge to get the high value triple A alphas to put their guards down.
@CassandraSays, I like the twisted, devious way your mind works. 🙂
The “A*” confuses me further, actually. Wouldn’t you put “A+”? Is there a complex system for grading of genetic material by alphaness or whatever? Because a lot of those have “A” as just okay and “AAA” as being the truly top-grade stuff. Which organisation is responsible for introducing these classifications? Are they enforced, and if so, how?
As much as I’d like to hang out here and talk to youse guise, it’s prime time for sperm-focused dumpster diving in my neighborhood. Later!