Sometimes posts by Men’s Rights Activists seem like transmissions from some alternate universe, a Bizarro world that bears a superficial resemblance to our own but where everything is backwards and upside down.
Take a recent post on A Voice for Men by FeMRA Diana Davison with the seemingly innocuous title “Women don’t own sex.” Ostensibly a response to a piece about rape in the Irish Times, the piece contains a series of bizarre assertions about relations between men and women that Davison apparently thinks she can use as proof that, despite all evidence to the contrary, it’s really women, not men, who run the world. And that men only commit crimes in order to make women happy.
Let’s go through her, um, argument:
Though men appear to rule the world, that is because women treat them like gophers: Go get me stuff.
Really? Perhaps on Real Housewives, but I’m pretty sure most women in the world don’t actually live like the Real Housewives do. Nor do they particularly want to.
A man’s worth in our world is not assessed on how much wealth he possesses, it is based on the level of happiness of his woman.
Really? Here’s Forbes’ list of the 71 most powerful people in the world — most of them, of course, men. You will notice that “the level of happiness of his woman” is not one of the criteria used to determine who gets on the list or not. Barack Obama is the top name on the list; his “woman” outearned him for years until his books took off. The Pope is #5. He doesn’t have a woman, at least as far as I know. Going down the list you will see powerful man after powerful man, none of whom are judged at all by how much stuff they buy their “women.”
But no: in MRA-world men are helpless creatures who exist only to give stuff to women– and who are sometimes even forced into a life of crime to fulfill the feminine need for more and more stuff!
Why do men commit crimes? I’ll posit this: because they need more stuff to make a woman happy or because they have been rejected by a woman shaming them for not being good enough and feel they have nothing left to lose. Committing a crime has a penalty. They need a reason to risk that penalty. It’s going to be primal. Think… think… are you with me?
Uh, no?
MRAs complain endlessly about how women need to “take responsibility” for this and that — which mainly seems to mean that they should sit still while men call them sluts for having sex like men do — but in MRA world men are never, ever, ever responsible for anything they do. There’s always a woman to blame.
Hell, even if a dude rapes a woman who’s sleeping in a bed beside him, he’s not to blame, because in Diana Davison’s bizarro universe lying in a man’s bed automatically overrides the necessity for him to obtain consent before having sex with you.
Men have every right to believe that a woman sleeping in the bed next to them is going to be happily awoken [by sex]. If you don’t want sex, don’t sleep in their fucking bed.
So if you’re a married woman, or you live with a guy, and you share the same bed, apparently he has the right to have sex with you any time you’re asleep in that bed. No matter what. In Diana Davison’s world, no means no, but sleeping in bed means yes. And if you don’t like it, ladies — that’s your own damn fault! Go sleep on the couch. (Or does that make you fair game too?)
Davison then turns to the power of metaphor to clinch her case that women are to blame for everything:
The man is the head of the house but the woman is the neck and she can turn the head any way she wants.
This may be the strangest metaphor I’ve run across in weeks, and as a regular reader of manosphere blogs I’m used to some pretty strange metaphors.
Speaking of which:
Feminists claim that men objectify women but it’s women who think that men are just walking, magical penises and that the penis has the mystical quality of getting them stuff.
I don’t really have anything to say to this stupidity, but I would like to share with you some of what I found when I searched YouTube for the phrase “walking penis.” As you might imagine, a lot of what follows is probably sort of NSFW, unless you work in a sex-toy recycling facility, so view with appropriate care.
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The comments are just lovely too.
If you don’t want people making disgusting photoshops of you then you better not call them a misogynist! This is a totally fair and reasonable approach and does not at all resemble how a toddler would approach the situation.
This, however, made me LOL.
“Very anti-skeptical; very bad karma.”
I guess karma is no longer a religious concept because blah blah new age something or other, I can appropriate Indian things and ignore the parts that I don’t like and just re-frame them in a more convenient way if I want to. White privilege sure is awesome.
“‘crazy dream’ referring to a bad dream”
Yeah I saw that, and figured you meant a crazy (legit mental illness) induced dream, cuz OHAI PTSD nightmares! I haz crazy dreams.
Also, pecunium is an excellent cook.
Re the illustration at the top, it may be the case that “there’s no gift more welcome than an electric appliance” but not when that appliance is a toaster!
Whaaaat? All she said was that if the woman being discussed at the time didn’t want to receive rape and death threats, she should have followed the convention’s report procedure! What’s wrong with that!?
I mean, to a certain extent, I could see her criticism – I don’t remember what was said well enough to give you an accurate picture, but it’s fairly early in the comments on that pharyngula page she links to – but her point was that rape and death threats are just what you get for not following procedure. The “brutal harassment” (criticism… though, granted, it was pretty harsh) that her anti-harassment group refused to discuss was people telling her that, whatever the details of what happened, victim blaming isn’t cool.
Well, what can you do? People are always the hero in their own narrative.
@ Cassandra
Using the word ‘karma’, isn’t appropriation, it’s a religious concept and people that don’t belong to that religion shouldn’t be expected to use the word according to the rules that the religion dictates, the fact the religion is associated with a certain country (which all religions are) doesn’t change that.
Also ideas naturally cross borders and mutate to mean different things, why do you think athiests say ‘Happy Christmas!” because they’re appropriating Israeli beliefs because of white privilege?
Weak trolling, 0.5 out of 5. Must try harder.
Great, more word wank. Thanks, mysterics.
But…
No, see…
My god, none of my religious background prepared me for this moment AT ALL.
I think he’s trying that “baffle them into submission” trick the PUA dude Dave posted about a while back was waffling about.
Let me guess, I got the origin of Christianity wrong, if I did, I apologize for that, but it’s hardly ‘wank’ or ‘trolling’, if I didn’t you are then stop making out religious (or spiritual if you’d rather) concepts to be the registered property of a certain race when they aren’t. Your religion is not your race, or the property of your race.
“If I didn’t you are” sorry bout that.
*In any case
The power of my incoherence compels you!
(Waves special atheist wand, ruffles PUA cloak)
“That’s not a wand, that’s my katana!”
I don’t exactly expect to come to place that supposedly hates sexism, racism, xenophobia and irrationality and expect to get told that I’m not allowed to criticize or make light of a religious concept just because of where I come from.
“Yes, that is a tanto in my pocket, because I am definitely not glad to see you, you feminazi boner-killer!”
[Aside to everyone else: Does anyone understand what Mysterics is going on about?]
Doesn’t understand that religion is a component of culture and therefore subject to racist appropriation: I see, I see.
Do go on.
[Not so much. He is a perfect illustration of the “trolling or just stupid?” dilemma.]
@Cloudiah:
Mysteric wants to be able to use the word ‘karma’ without being accused of cultural appropriation, OR being accused of being religious.
I think.
Roman.
I say happy solstice, because while I can’t be bothered with the “AHA! So you DO believe!!!” conversation, the “WHY ARE YOU SO HATEFUUUUUL!?” conversation amuses me.
Karma is basically just spiritual victim blaming. Born without arms? It’s because you were a terrible person in a past life. Bah.
The way that the word “karma” is used most of the time by Westerners is exhibit A of the way cultural appropriation leads to concepts being dumbed down into complete pointlessness.
cloudiah: no idea what Mysterics is going on about. I guess the atheists here are not atheist enough for them?
You know, if you don’t understand what I’m on about or wonder what my motives are, you could, you know, just ask me.
I don’t particularly want to use the word ‘karma’ at all,it’s not in my vocabulary.
All I want is to criticism or make light of religious concepts at all, I am not a believer, I am not subject to your religious rules and I do not appreciate accusation of racist attack just to make me conform to religious rules.
The only way for religion to be subject to racist appropriation is to attribute that religion to the members of that race as if they were monolithic, when I have made it very clear that religion is not a trait of any race.
He so desperately wants to criticism, but I just don’t think he has it in him. Maybe if we gave him a cloak it would help?