Well, it took them a little while, but the folks at Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men have finally figured out an angle on the Trayvon Martin case. According to regular AVFM contributor August Løvenskiolds, the whole thing can be blamed on a woman — specifically, Rachel Jeantel, the friend of Trayvon Martin who was on the phone with him just before he was killed.
According to Løvenskiolds, who seems to know more about what happened that night than it is in fact possible for him to know,
During a post-trial interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, Rachel Jeantel, the reluctant phone witness who was talking to Martin just before Martin assaulted Zimmerman, finally revealed that she had warned Martin that Zimmerman might be gay, or even, a gay rapist preparing to approach Martin.
This isn’t news; Jeantel said in her testimony that she told Martin she was afraid the man following him might be a rapist. But Løvenskiolds moves quickly from “sworn testim0ny” to “making shit up.”
Martin freaked out over the idea that Zimmerman might have sexual designs on him or his family, and this seems to have precipitated the attack on Zimmerman – which, of course, would make the attack a violation of Zimmerman’s human rights as a (purportedly) gay man, and make Jeantel the proxy instigator of the attack.
Yes, that’s right, the whole thing was “violence by proxy” instigated by an evil homophobic woman.
Would you like some armchair psychoanalysis to go with your unfounded speculation?
So, Trayvon Martin was killed in the act of gay-bashing (in Jeantel’s and his own minds, anyway). The fury of Martin’s sudden turnabout attack is now explicable (he had been avoiding being followed up to the point of the introduction of the gay rapist idea) and it indicates the degree of Martin’s revulsion that he went from flight to fight mode in so short a time.
And this of course makes it all All About The Menz Rights.
The men’s human rights issues related to a woman (Jeantel) being held blameless for using gay/rape threats to precipitate man-on-man violence ought to be obvious.
It’s always a woman’s fault, isn’t it?
Elsewhere in the post, Løvenskiolds seriously suggests that when a police dispatcher told Zimmerman that “we don’t need you” to follow Martin, that was Super Seekret Man Code for “we actually DO need you to follow him.” No, really.
Such negative suggestions are as clear to savvy men as this: “Honey, you don’t need to buy me roses for Valentine’s Day” – meaning, of course, “if you know what is good for you, I’d better get flowers AND chocolate AND jewelry AND a nice dinner AND…”
The fact that the dispatcher further expected Zimmerman to meet with officers – drafting Zimmerman into the militia, as it were – made it clear to Zimmerman that his continued pursuit of Martin was expected by the police as well.
The societal expectation of militia service by all able-bodied adult males is certainly a men’s human rights issue and an indication of inequality between the genders that needs to be redressed.
MRAs may not be good at much, but they’ve got mental gymnastics down to a science.
EDIT: I added a graf after the first quote from Løvenskiolds clarifying that Jeantel says she did in fact tell Martin that she thought Zimmerman might be a rapist.
RE: CassandraSays
Yeah, I’m surprised he said he’d drown me with his historical knowledge, after that complete FAILURE of understanding.. Confidence is useless if it’s misplaced, ESPECIALLY when it’s so easy to prove that you’re factually wrong.
Also, oh god, we need brain bleach and brain recovery techniques. The day was going great until we had breakfast, and then it was sunk. Son of a bitch.
Kenny can’t string a coherent thought together, so much for him “drowning” anyone with his historical knowledge.
Brain bleach
David: Sorry I didn’t mean to imply you had made anything unclear one of the comments right above mine was just asking if Rachel had in fact said the gay rapist thing.
On a bit of good news, Derek Black, the son of Don Black (the founder and administrator of the racist site Stormfront), has renounced white nationalism. You can read more about Derek’s change of heart on the SPLC website, but this bit stands out to me:
If a woman makes a dumb decision for a guy she thinks is handsome, would you blame him? Is he an evil tempter now? Was she innocent of her decision and some poor, poor victim of his handsomeness?
No, she was an evil hypergamous bitch riding the alpha cock carousel. Come on, @auggziliary, get with the program.
The only correct time for a woman to have sex is when an MRA wants it, and the only right person for her to have it with is him, obvs. Once she has sex with him once, she is supposed to be hooked for life because science. Women are evolved to be monogamous. Oh wait no, they aren’t, they’re natural born cheaters. Whichever, I keep getting that part mixed up.
Ok, evo psych time!
Women have a “bonding hormone” that they release during sex, but they only have so much of it (that part may be fundie nonsense, not evo psych)…so when they ride the cock carousel they use it all up making them unable to bond with a long term partner.
Men are programmed to be poly apparently, per evo psych I saw over the weekend. But that’s bad, because it causes wars because there are men without partners. And only Muslims are ever suicide bombers because they’ll get virgins for being martyrs. Relevance of that last piece of shit? Same article, so apply salt to the rest of the paragraph.
Yeah I’ve heard this.
1) Oxytocin (like so many neuromodulators and neurotransmitters) is a renewable resource. But people have different baseline levels due to genetic variation and probably environmental factors. There’s some evidence that autistic people and other people with empathy deficits aren’t as sensitive to oxytocin (or don’t produce as much in response to environmental cues) and thus have difficulty understanding social reciprocity, etc.
2) Men also release oxytocin during orgasm, but they supposedly have a second chemical release in addition to that (vasopressin). From the evidence that exists now, it looks as if cismen have lower baseline levels of oxytocin than women do on average, which is often touted as an explanation for why women are calmer and less violent. Lower baseline levels don’t necessarily mean less sensitivity, however– in fact, it may mean that smaller changes in the concentration of oxytocin in the brain can cause more noticable perturbations of the whole system. Also, I’m not up on the literature, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the variance of baseline oxytocin levels within sexes is as wide as it is between sexes.
The neuroscience behind this stuff is actually complex and not well understood. The evo psych studies are mostly riddled with methodological errors and full of wild speculation based on surveys and self-reports.
Would a kitten knocking over dominos help?
I saw a passing mention of oxytocin last night, in a documentary called The Secret Life of Dogs. It was about the phenomenon (which I’d guess everyone here knows) about the bonding between humans and dogs during petting – that hormone’s released in both. Dogs get the same lower heart rate and blood-pressure benefits from cuddling up with humans as humans do. It all goes back to bonding with their mothers (and the dog kissing your face goes back to licking mum’s muzzle to get her to regurgitate food). I also presume it works the same with kitties, because the benefits work the same way.
@katz, love the kitty!
FTR, I know it’s bullshit when applied like that. Whereas saying it’s released during breastfeeding and encourages bonding with the kid makes actual sense.
Now I need kitteh video!
Heh – anything coming from evo psych faithful is almost guaranteed to be bullshit.
I’ll work the can opener but I’m not throwing up for anyone.
Yeah the scientist in me just bristles at everything MRAs say about biology so I had to get that out…
The real reason humans evolved thumbs! Biology!!1!eleventy!!
LBT said:
“Pretty much. I mean, Rome isn’t my strongest point (I mostly wanted to learn about Carthage, Egypt, and Judaea) but from what I’ve read, Cleopatra was pretty much desperately trying to juggle everything to keep Egypt out of Roman hands. Considering she had at least two siblings who wanted the throne, plus Roman intrigues, PLUS varying levels of support at home, I think she was pretty clever to have lasted so long. She was dealt a bad hand at the start, and she played well, but there’s only so much you can do in that kind of situation. Egypt was the bread basket of the ancient world; keeping the Romans away was pretty much a doomed enterprise.”
To me she came across as a very astute political operator and her situation was desperate enough that she had to use every weapon and talent she possessed just to stay in the game but to suggest that equally competant politicians like Julius and Marcus Antonius were mere “putty in her hands”, as SocialKenny maintains, would be selling both men seriously short as well as being misandrist as hell. They knew what they were doing. Trade with Egypt was important and if they could bring Egypt to heel, as it were, by controlling Cleopatra, obviously they would try. It would save them from having to take Egypt by force of arms and destroying what they wanted to posess.
Octavian didn’t play that way, though, and was more than happy to drag her back to Rome as part of his triumph and rather than be humiliated that way she (probably) killed herself, although probably not via an asp (cobra? Eeeew!), poison would more likely have been her choice.
She played a losing game and played it well.
One more thing about Cleopatra that gets ignored – her daughter Cleopatra Selene’s success. She was raised with Octavia’s children (her half-siblings, iirc) in Rome and became queen of Mauretania. It doesn’t seem to fit the usual narrative that Cleopatra should have surviving children who did well in their circumstances, does it?
My contribution to this thread is completely OT. Oxytocin is released during labour in order to cause contractions. We have it so well synthesized that we can give it to induce labour. And! We give it after baby’s been born in order to help contract the uterus to prevent postpartum haemorrhage.
(Let’s see if I can work this into the thread)
We are giving women who are delivering babies extra oxytocin in order to bond with people more (after they’ve been all hypergamous and slept with an Alpha and are now forcing their Beta husband to raise the Alpha’s child) in order to avoid their natural expenditure of oxytocin stores. Therefore, childbirth is misandry and we are totes facilitating female privilege by not forcing them to have no oxytocin left any more because they’ve used it up sleeping around.
(Not bad eh? I’m getting the hang of this evo-psych MRA bullshit)
Also, Falconer, Kirk-Piece of the Action-Amazing!! 😀
Thanks, SittieKitty!
RE: Seranvali
Yeah, when I actually READ about Cleopatra, rather than the mythology she’s wrapped up in, i was fascinated. It’s one heck of a story! Also makes me want to learn more about Hatshepsut and Akhenaten.
RE: Kittehserf
I got to meet and speak with an author who wrote a series of fantasy books with Cleopatra’s daughter as the main character! I don’t remember if it was THAT daughter, per se (I know she had more than one child, don’t know how many made it to adulthood) but we had a cool conversation about Ptolemaic Egypt.
SocialKenny: And to be clearer, Caesar (I believe) was so drunk on Cleopatra that he allowed his empire to fall just because of this 1 hot ass: hot-black ass might I add
1: Caesar didn’t have an empire (Julius never did, they killed him to prevent it, and his son Octavius [known as Augustus] won the battle to gain power; and then killed his 1/2 brother, Cleopatra’s son, to secure it).
2: Cleopatra wasn’t black. She wasn’t even “egyptian”, since the Ptolemies were Alexandrian Greeks.
You are as clueless about history (which you could look up) as you are about men and women.
@LBT- She was of lighter complexion because of that admixture or races, but nevertheless, according to the way Americans do it (assuming you live in America), once you have any sort of black in you; you’re classified as black and now white. So either way, it is what it is. But you’re right; she wasn’t pure black, but the blackness in her gave her that exotic appeal which they weren’t used to seeing in Rome. Anyway, different story.
Nope. 1: That’s not, “american”, that’s Southern White Supremicist/Jim Crow.
2: N. Africans aren’t black.
3: She didn’t have any N. African in her ancestry.
4: You are dumber than a box of rocks.
And don’t try schooling me on history, race, the Bible nor religion, because I’ll drown you…metaphorically.
Go to town son, just try it. So far you’ve failed to understand how the Roman Empire came to be, how the Ptolemaic Dynasty of Egypt came to fall (and from the evidence how they came to be), that N. Africa isn’t the same as Sub-Saharan Africa, the structure of Roman Armies (there is no way a foreign potentate can “get between” a legionary commander and his legions; this is why Generals were not allowed to bring their forces across the Rubicon, google, “alia iacta est” for the background on that).
You’ve also blown race relations in the US, in such a way as to imply you comprehend neither the scale of the country, the nature of its government, the variety of its polities, nor the differences between 50 years ago and today.
In short, you couldn’t argue your way out of a paper sack with a firehose.
Octavian didn’t play that way, though, and was more than happy to drag her back to Rome as part of his triumph and rather than be humiliated that way she (probably) killed herself, although probably not via an asp (cobra? Eeeew!), poison would more likely have been her choice.
She might have used an asp (not a cobra) they are a pretty mild way to go, better than a lot of the poisons of the time.
It’s apparently alea iacta est, score one for neither of us being able to spell in Latin? Mostly though this is me popping in to say I REALLY want to see Kenny try to school you on the Bible or religion, I’ll make the popcorn 🙂
@ Argenti
I really like that definition link.
” I REALLY want to see Kenny try to school you on the Bible or religion, I’ll make the popcorn”
Any of the trolls trying to school pecunium on anything is bound to popcorn worthy.