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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Well, there is a Chinese dish called drunken chicken, but I’m not sure how you’d render it in salad form unless you ate the result with a spoon.
(Basically, take some chicken, and cook it in tons of rice wine with star anise and various other seasonings.)
I hope those drunken chickens aren’t the ones in the Mercedes-Benz …
This is Tristan again, & I just want to clarify some things.
I didn’t come here to start shit. Yes, I am a woman. The people I call “bitches” the most are actually straight men in my regular life who are abusive towards me. I’m leaving my online life completely now because I realize I don’t fit into society at all. Everything I do & say is wrong, & it will always be wrong. & I realize that now.
Nope, no drunken chicken in the car, I already ate them all.
(Sorry if I sound loopy, cold meds + trying to transcribe interview where person’s accent is hard to understand is frying my brain.)
TGG, if your need to use the term “bitch” outweighs any pleasure you get from commenting on this blog and any desire not to offend members of the community, then go, go, we would not hold you back.
@auggz read Ally S’s link over to Shakesville. If your examples are compliments by women to women, it is reclaiming the word. If they are critical or not between women, there is misogyny happening.
Leum – you’re not alone. I hate mint too. Oddly, though, I can stand it in tabbuleh. I even hate mint toothpaste. So glad there’s cinnamon available.
As for drunken salad, I made a vinaigrette with a cup of sweet dandelion wine once…OMG was it awesome. I mean, the vinaigrette is good without it, but the wine just added a whole new level of yum to it.
Also be aware that not every woman will be OK with slurs being used in a reclaiming kind of way. For example, there’s no way to use the word “cunt” that won’t make me want to punch the person using it in the throat.
(Which is kind of ironic given that the usual American excuse for using that word is “but the Brits use it all the time”, and I’m British.)
Also, now that I think about, shredded drunken chicken without the sauce work make a pretty tasty salad if you kept the rest of the elements simple, since the wine and spices get absorbed by the meat and you end up with chicken that’s really juicy and flavorful.
I like salads with meat, can you tell? And now I want a tostada with grilled marinated beef.
Cassandrasays, also British and the “but the Brits use it all the time” excuse – not in my experience. Maybe it’s a generational thing but I’ve never heard it used either commonly or casually. In my hearing, it has predominantly been used as the worst swear word possible and with venom.
I always feel like asking the people who claim that it’s totally OK in the UK and nobody finds it offensive one simple question – would you say it in front of your granny? If not then no, it’s not as neutral and inoffensive as you’re trying to pretend it is.
“I only use these words on people who really deserve it”
There is a multitude of other, nongendered words in the English language that one could use to insult a fellow human being. That’s the beauty of language. One need not use the typical shorthand vernacular to insult somebody. And even the people you hate, or feel that they deserve it, still are people. “Bitch” does not occur in a contextless vacuum. “Asshole”, “shitweasel”, and “fuckwad” work just as well.
Cassandra, do you mean people in/from the UK are claiming it isn’t offensive? Because that is totally not my experience at all and I wonder where these people are and who they hang out with. Even the people I know who *do* use it a lot are under no illusion that it isn’t offensive, and use it precisely because they know it is one of the strongest swears and will shock and offend (I know a lot of unpleasant people unfortunately).
I think it definitely gets used differently here than it does in the US but not in the sense that it is milder.
I heard that the word “Asshole” is homophobic in origin. It was based on how the ass hole is the part that gets penetrated. But when I first heard it as a kid, I never thought that. Since we generally call someone an asshole when they’re mean, I thought it was based on what comes out of an ass hole rather than what goes in. Especially since we can also call them various names using the word “shit.”
I’ve switched to using asshole. It’s gender neutral and everyone has one. Or shit- and fuckhead.
If @CassandraSays & I are in accord (which I think we are), we’re saying that Americans claim that the British use it casually and non-offensively and so they, the Americans, should be able to do so, too. And we’re saying that the supposition that Brits do that is wrong (as is the conclusion but that’s another argument).
It seems to be mostly Americans claiming that since Brits use the word as an insult aimed at men as well as women it’s somehow OK, but I’ve seen the occasional (spineless and trying way too hard to win chill points imo) Brit playing along too.
In Scotland I’d say it is used quite a bit, but just like you say, because it’s the uber-insult and far nastier than calling someone a wanker or whatever. It’s definitely not acceptable in the sense of inoffensive though, and men who have manners don’t say it in front of women at all.
(I have never heard a single one of my male relatives do so when I was around, for example, and a couple of my uncles aren’t exactly the most well-mannered people in general. My dad swears like a sailor sometimes, and I’ve never heard him use that word.)
I highly doubt that the origins of asshole come from homophobic and anti-sodomy roots. Much more likely that it’s associated with the part of the body where shit is excreted, and shit is gross.
I’ve assumed that all “douche”-related insults are gendered, too.
I think the idea that asshole is homophobic is reaching a bit. It’s not like women and straight men don’t have them, after all.
I heard of the homophobic thing when I read about it several years ago. But when I search for it now, quite a few of the sources do relate it to excrement, particularly how people used the word to refer to a place rather than a person. Perhaps that first source was the unreliable one since I can no longer find it on the first page of the Google search.
Oh right, I getcha. Wonder where they get that impression from?
Actually, thinking about it, Americans don’t seem to think wanker is a swear so maybe it is related to the whole “those Brits and their quaint silly words” thing.
I spent 7 years in the USA & the amount of swearing I did increased significantly because of “the whole “those Brits and their quaint silly words” thing.” 😉
I’ve switched to saying “pathetic” instead of “lame,” and pathetic has a really nice feel to it so it’s been a satisfying switch for me.
And for “r” I think I just say fucking dumbass. I tend to say fuck a lot.