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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I am very pro-choice, and try to discuss birth control with my clients unless they’re very adamant against it. I’m always surprised by how many people are confused about the options, even the “natural” ones. I’m in Canada so it surprises me sometimes how many people don’t understand these things… And pregnancy, so few people know things about pregnancy, that always surprises me even though I see it so often.
Then again, thinking back before I started school for it, I really didn’t know anything about pregnancy either, despite having decent knowledge about birth control. Now I’m just really glad I can argue with incredibly poorly informed pro-lifers who want to tell me shit about fetus’ development, because they pretty much make me laugh and I find it hard not to be condescending. And I love it when they argue and then demand to know “what would [I] know about it!!” and I’m like “…yea, midwife, medical degree, you fail so hard.” Sometimes I think people invite me and these people to parties just to watch me smack down their bullshit.
Well, yeah. I must’ve seen at least sixty women today. I didn’t rape a single one of them, and let me tell you, all that not raping has really taken its toll on me. I am literally falling apart at the seams – my penis has actually fallen off! If I don’t rape at least three people by dawn, I might die! It’s, like, trying to force a flat fish (though not a flatfish, because that would ruin the joke for cladistic reasons) not to go skate boarding.
“Only YOU can prevent forest fires”? “NO!! WHY IS IT MY RESPONSIBILITY?! WHY ARE YOU CALLING ALL FOREST WALKERS ARSONIST!?!!?!”
I mean, I’m pretty sure that the idea is that if everyone makes an effort to not drive drunk, swindle investors, or rape people, then that would result in vastly reduced numbers of car accidents, investment fraud, and rape. It’s almost as if MRAs have immense difficulty – or perhaps intentional difficulty – in understanding basic concepts… but that couldn’t possibly be true, because they’re the logicmasters.
My sex education was remarkably unmemorable… we had a talk around the 10-11 mark, of which I remember “so how are twins made? Uh huh… and triplets? Uh huh… and quadruplets?” And then there was a video in science class, which had nekkid people in it! O_O;
Oh, and my niece is a thoroughly dorable little pixie who, despite my general disagreement with reproduction, makes squees escape me at any time that I encounter her. <3
My sex ed was fairly comprehensive, but there were still gaps. I was left with some pretty weird misconceptions about sex, particularly concerning LGBT people. We didn’t ever talk about the existence of trans* people in school, never mind their sexual health.
I actually despised babies as a kid, despite my stance on abortion at the time. As one of the older cousins, and certainly the eldest cousin west of the Mississippi, I always got stuck babysitting at family gatherings when the adults went out drinking or whatever, and I was already the eldest at home, with all that entails. When I started babysitting outside the family, I had a firm policy that the kid had to be pottytrained; I just was not going to deal with that shit, not for love or money!
These days, it’s the other way around; I’m hoping we can start trying to get pregnant next year sometime, since ostensibly then I’ll be all healthcare-ized and income-having! I basically want Falconer’s kids; they’re soooo cuuuuuute <3
This science class was around the 14 mark… just in case anyone was wondering why the teachers decided to show nekkid people videos to 10-11 year olds.
I phrased that really weirdly. To be clear, I’m trying to say that my overall education failed its students, particularly its trans* students, when it did not include anything about trans* lives and histories. That overall failure trickled down to sex ed.
I have met/held exactly one baby in my life and hope to keep it that way. I am really not a baby/child person.
Take responsibility for nothing, hold women responsible for being abused: the MRHM motto.
I actually know a lot of people like that, and some who even work in obstetrics. It’s pretty common.
As an aside, I have held hundreds of babies. When they are little and tiny and I can give them back I think they’re pretty cute.
I don’t always mind children, as long as they are well-behaved and unlikely to hurt me or terrorize my dog (so not our neighbors’ spawn), but they have to be old enough to carry on some kind of conversation. Otherwise I don’t know what to do with them.
Besides, tiny babies freak me out because I’m always afraid I’m going to drop it or fall on it or something. Not a graceful person, me.
What boggles me is the occasional parent on public transport who can’t fathom that other people don’t want their kids climbing on them/dropping their food on them, etc.
Jayem – me too, though “old enough to hold a conversation” means about, oh, fifteen-plus? (How old is our youngest Manboobzer?) I just don’t have anything to say to kids.
My aunt is one of those OB/GYNs who, honestly, doesn’t like kids.
I think the climate between people who OMIGAWD LOVE CHILDREN SOOOOO MUCH AND THE WORLD WOULD BE SO MUCH WORSE OFF WITHOUT MY PRECIOUS LITTLE MUFFIN and those who HATE KIDS is just too polarised. As much as people who hate them need to realise children are people with every right to exist and act like children, people with kids need to realise having children doesn’t entitle them to let their kids inconvenience others. When you have kids you make the choice to inconvenience yourself. You take that on. If you chose not to have children, you still have to learn to exist with them. Children are people.
In my experience, people with children are the default and face less social obstacles than people without (though people with them have the obstacles of parenting.) I think some people who hate children are just frustrated because they’ve received pretty crappy treatment in response to their not having children, which is infuriating. You don’t get to take that out on people though.
I think another one of the issues is that people are forced to take sides. I think a lot of people are generally in the middle in some way, and the issue gets forced into “I hate/love kids” and you have to choose.
Yeah, and it’s nonsense. I’d LOVE to have children but I can’t honestly say I like children in general. I like some children like I like some adults. They’re people. Some of them are pleasant. Some of them are not. Liking children as if they’re monolithic doesn’t make any sense.
My mother absolutely adores, and is very capable with, babies and young children; but she still gets when strangers let their babies crawl all over her. It’s just not terribly respectful of other people’s space.
Gets irritated**when strangers etc. etc. I accidentally the whole thing!
I think some kids feel the same way about grown-ups being in THEIR space. Some don’t seem to mind being passed around and squeezed but others make it pretty clear just because I’m little and cute doesn’t mean everyone gets to snuggle me whenever they feel like it. I feel so badly for kids who are denied their right to personal space.
We don’t seem to have much cultural space for adults who like children but don’t aspire to have any of their own, do we? I enjoy entertaining my friends’ children, but I feel like if I had my own, more children around would just be a chore.
RE: abortion – Today there was an anti-abortion thing on campus. Some group was handing out these adverts. Thankfully, no plastic fetuses, except the intellectual dishonesty in that advert that they passed out was too high.
I side-eye the whole HATE KIDS idea anyway. No, I don’t enjoy their company; yes, I would like parents to supervise them and have some respect for others in public space. That’s not hating kids. Hating kids to me suggests wanting harm to come to them, or being indifferent to their rights and humanity. Nope, not the same thing at all, not for me.
In unrelated news, in addition to rotating your owl, you can now also rotate your chicken! At least if you own a Benz.
marinerachel – urgh, yes on the unwanted touching with kids. Gods know the Obligatory Aunt Kiss was bad enough.
I deal pretty good with kids–got a couple here, did some babysitting. Babies, however, are kind of terrifying for me, because they’re tiny and frail and prelingual and I feel like I’d ruin one for life just by existing near it.
Hubby really wants kids, but the very idea petrifies me. Also, I’m already responsible for a system of five; the idea of taking on someone even more tiny and frail and dependent is kinda exhausting.
What they’re not admitting is that the original line was “Mercedes Benz: as smart as chickens.”
It failed with test audiences.