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.
—
*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.
Happy birthday Canada!
@lowquacks
A* is, to the best of my knowledge, only used in the main public exams (or atleast it was for us), and stands for distinction.
Happy Canada Day!
LOL Shadow, I bet Albert could have said “whilst” and Victoria would have gone all weak-kneed. Mind you he could probably have said “arglebargle fish cucumbers zoot” and had the same effect.
If MRAs think that women are interested only in (a) golddigging and (b) alpha male sperm, how would I know for sure the spermy condom I found in the trash was full of suitable alpha male… sperm? Related: would I be likely to think I’d find any gold there?
This is one of the saddest fantasies I’ve ever read. I’d feel sorry for the bastards, if I weren’t so busy shuddering at how gross it also is.
@ lowquacks
Yeah it exists(existed?) at secondary level and for A level grading in further education. I remember getting A*, A- and B+ at secondary school but only for classwork. For the final GSCE and A level grades there are/were no + or – grades, but you could get an A*, which I have always thought is a bit weird – why do they grade classwork that way when you can’t possibly get that as a final grade? Why was there an A*, and a B+? Why could you get an A* as a final grade but not an A- or a C* or a C+? Maybe I am overthinking it…
I’m not shocked. I remember a YouTube comment on some video on male birth control saying “finally, I bet women are going to get pissed about this!” And this other clusterfuck about sperm jacking and poking holes in condoms and such…
Also he said men had no reason to get women pregnant since they’d have to pay child support. He didnt really see the irony, since *getting* pregnant for revenge has far greater consequences…
That dudebro’s depiction of a woman reminds me of that troll we had a day or two ago, the one who very badly tried to pass himself off as a urban African-American from L.A.
There is no substance known to man which man has not, at least once, stuck his dick into. It’s the rules.
Several years ago I was happily eating my breakfast when I hear an ear – splitting scream and a loud thump from the bathroom. I got up, ran in there and saw my flatmate, on the floor, half in and half out of the shower, holding his crotch and writhing in agony. He eventually managed to groan “it burns” and point to a shampoo bottle. The shampoo in question was a concoction of another flatmates which contained – among other things – a large quantity of nettles.
Just why Dan was putting it on his junk was never established. I’d like to say I helped my poor flattie, but I laughed so hard I couldn’t stand for the next five minutes.
There was a guy in one of those threads who coated a sound in hot sauce. This has been today’s “that’s a bit much even for me” moment.
Happy Canada Day!
I just lit a scented fucking candle (scented of marmite) to honour the Queen (through the GG).
And another one (scented of bitterness) for celebrating bastions of Canadianness, tar sands, the RCMP and non-expressive semi-friendliness.
And another scented fucking candle (scented of alimony) to remember our national MRA treasures.
It’s a haven of misandry over here.
The best/worst part of that story WeeBoy? Roll back into the shower! Flush the area!
Speaking of flushing things, and that idiot troll, the superglue I was using last night said to hold eyes open and flush with water. No instructions for the bits in your underwear though.
@WeeBoy – “Just why Dan was putting it on his junk was never established.”
My guess would be “extreme stupidity”. 😀
The sad/horrible part of the “stick it in anything” mentality is when it’s obvious a woman is just another “warm thing to stick it into and come,” and “you could be his hand, a bowl of warm mashed potatoes, it doesn’t matter” (paraphrasing comments I recall from Nancy Friday’s book Women On Top. Can’t speak for anyone else, obvs, let alone any penis-havers, but that sort of devotion/obsession with orgasm is something I just can’t fathom. It’s not even that I’m “who” not “what” with sex, it’s just … beyond my comprehension. It’s like whichever boring troll it was who said his precious dick was pretty much the centre of his universe.
@ Weeboy
I hope he’s now your ‘ex-flatmate’ (or lock your toothbrush).
Wait, why was there a bottle of nettle in the bathroom?
At least with chilli-based stinging/burning, rinsing with water won’t help at all. Think of how when you eat something super spicy. You know how drinking water doesn’t help at all? Yeah, same problem. Doesn’t work on some other stuff like tiger balm either.
(Yes, my ex wanted to try this. In my defense I was nicer to him than Wee Boy was to his flatmate.)
The nettles were part of the concoction in the shampoo bottle.
One good way to stop flatmates pinching stuff to slather on their dicks …
“Yes, my ex wanted to try this.”
Ha, I’d be “Yup, you can try it, but I’m just going to sit and watch.”
In short: be it on your own head!
::ducks::
I wouldn’t think it would be the nettles that would have caused the reaction, since you can drink nettle tea without any discomfort. I’d think any sort of shampoo would sting like hell if it got up your urethra.
Even so, why? That seems like a pretty cruel thing if someone just wants a spot of shampoo because they’ve run out, or a guest forgot to pack theirs. If it hurts someone’s dick, it must be pretty awful to get runoff in an eye or nostril.
Maybe this can be the new scaring off trolls tactic? Explicit sex anecdotes that aren’t very sexy at all. We can call it “when experiments go wrong”.
@kittehs – Yeah, that is the most likely answer… Close runners up being “I wanted to see what would happen” and “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
@Maude – I haven’t lived with Dan for five years, so I should be safe.
Yeah, that makes no sense, you can’t even touch fresh nettles with your bare hands. If they were cooked, they’re dick-safe.
For those confused about the meaning of A*, it is a reference to Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which is approximately how willfully dense one must be to believe fish fingers’ story.
Today’s unintentionally revealing quote from r/mr:
Women’s role is to sit still and submit.
I think whatever it is in shampoo that makes it lather also makes any sort of mucus membranes very unhappy.