So I’ve been skimming through the mass of comments that the Daily Beast piece on the Men’s Rightsers now has trailing in its wake. So far I think this is my favorite exchange.
Yep, that’s DriverSuz — aka Suzanne McCarley, “Senior Editor” of A Voice for Men.
And yep, that’s Angry Harry, the fellow that many MRAs call “the father of the men’s rights movement.”
Some critics of this blog complain whenever I quote some crackpot commenter rather than one of the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement. Sometimes, it turns out, the crackpot commenters ARE the “big names” in the Men’s Rights movement.
Sparky, thanks! Sorry I’m just now responding!
I’ll check out zuilily. And yeah, it’s not like I’m against frills – it just says a lot when that’s the default for little girls. And I really can’t stand all the princess stuff. Sends the worst possible message to me.
Also thanks to bonelady. I’ll check out lands end.
To all the MRAs who think that women would be out in the cold without men: historically, men would have been out in the cold without women, since women have generally (at least in Europe) had responsibility for making clothing–particularly spinning and sewing, and basically all the work that was done in the home (men did things for pay, like knitting, and IIRC some weaving, but if it was home production it was generally women’s work).
Not to mention all the women who worked in factories–I mean, many of the major industrial disasters involved primarily women workers: the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (women didn’t really stop making the majority of clothing–it just moved into sweatshops and they got paid terribly for it), the radium watch workers, and the white phosphorus match women.
So my Opinion(tm) on bitch:
I think the thing about bitch is that it is often used to try to shame women who act “outside their place”, i.e., do anything that upsets a man (and we at Manboobz know how many no-win situations that involves). So honestly I can understand reclaiming “bitch” as an ironic nod to the fact that we’re doing things that the patriarchy doesn’t approve of–which is why I don’t mind the “Bitch” magazine.
But as a general term? I don’t really care for it used as like a general term for women.
As to the “c” word, I’m not okay with using that to refer to people at all. That one, I think, has too much hatred. I am okay with it as a synonym for vagina/vulva in erotica so long as it isn’t used disparagingly–if only because there are so few terms that are neither juvenile nor medical. And honestly, sometimes dirty is exactly what is necessary.
So… I guess the shorter version is that in general the context makes the slur, but we have to be careful of the connotations. But I understand if other people are more sensitive.
Darg, it sounds like you and I are roughly the same age and yeah, it’s worse. There are pictures of my sister and I wearing lots of blue, red, and yellow – you know primary colors usually reserved for boys (like Legos!) and tennis shoes, no bare midriffs, no jewelry, sparkly boots, or nail polish. None of this princess crap, unless it was Halloween or playing dress up.
We were kids playing in dirt. Sheesh, even my dresses were more brown and orange hued, but that could’ve just been a late seventies/early eighties thing. 😉
And yeah, those girl themed Legos are terrible. There was even publicity on it when they first came out. Yep! That’s all we gals are into: shopping, baking, and entertaining! And don’t get me started on the toy section! My daughter got a baby toy purse, complete with compact mirror, toy dollars, toy credit card, and pretend lipstick.
wordsp1nner – it’s interesting about c*** in erotica. Time was I could think of the word in that context (my own imaginings, not anything I was reading) without it bringing the hatefulness with it, but now? Nope, it just changes everything for the worse, to a “couldn’t you think of any other word/do you hate women” feeling, or like the writer’s being coarse for its own sake. The word’s about as unerotic as it gets, now, for me, and has way too many dehumanising, rapey vibes.
Not that I like any of the slang for genitals, really. They’re all very unsexy.
That’s also MyOpinion(TM). 🙂
The thing is, it doesn’t work like the OP says. Driversuz goes: “No external entity prevented them from raising us to think that being treated like barnyard animals was okay”.
Setting aside for a moment some questions about the truthfulness of that particular statement, because it’s kind of a pickle, let’s just… look at it for a moment.
Driversuz is utterly, entirely and completely correct. No external entity prevented all men from getting together and deciding to brainwash half the human race. No external entity but, say, time and the nutrition requirements of holding millions of males in one small area.
But why would anyone be thankful for that not happening? It’s…
I don’t go around demanding people thank for me for not dressing up as a hopskotch monster and dancing down the street singing “I’m a bee! I’m a bee!”. I am not in the habit of demanding thanks for things I would never do anyway, and requiring people to be grateful for every mad, murderous things I haven’t done. Demanding thanks for things you didn’t do is kind of a weird, entitled way to look at the world nevermind I just got it, I get it, it all makes sense now.
kittehserf–like I said, that it kind of a personal opinion. Though I have to agree–there are no good terms for genitals. Just “least bad”, which probably depends on which problems you find the most unsexy.
It’s like expecting people to walk up to strangers and say “thank you for not murdering me or running me over with your car”.
@Nitram, I can anecdotally confirm the ‘getting worse’ thing. I think I’m probably about 10 years younger than you and Dvarg (I’m 24) and barely remember pink from my childhood at all. But I have a little sister who is 9 now, and the pink princess culthood thing is terrifying. She’s basically a mini-me for all intents and purposes, and has the same interests I did (reading, space, science, history, dinosaurs and alt music) but whereas I was relatively popular at school, despite being a lot more abrasive and anti-social than she is, she’s positively shunned for it, but only by the other girls. I feel so terrible for her, but she is freaking awesome 🙁
Also I went to buy socks and PJs the other day and couldn’t find any without pink on. What the actual fuck. I am a grown up.
@Fibinachi – more to the point, why the hell aren’t teh menz thanking us for not rounding them up and putting them in cages? They seem to have agreed that we’re capable of it, yet we haven’t. WHERE’S MY PARADE?
If anyone is interested in more about fiber arts history, I recommend “Women’s Work: The First 20,000 years”. I read it years ago and really plan to go back to it. It is mostly about the mid-east and Europe up until about the Classical Era, but it is still quite interesting.
Have you all seen the latest article on rawstory? http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/21/new-mens-rights-movements-leader-doesnt-give-a-fk-about-rape-victims-when-theyre-women/
I love seeing these hateful sacks of crap being exposed for what they are by the media. And having all the little MRAs in the comments screeching versions of No True MRA fallacies. Or in the case of this post, making themselves look like even bigger shits.
wordsp1nner – I hope I didn’t come across as disagreeing! I was interested and wanted to add my feelings on it.
About the best I can think of for some words for genitals is “funny” and they tend to be personal ones – y’know, not so much pillow-talk as pillow-giggling-fits. 🙂
No true MRAs, huh? Paul Elam defended that video of JTO’s in a video yesterday; I’ll have something about that in my next post.
It would’ve been so easy to quietly smother our male infants, until there were few enough for us to control. Who would’ve stopped us?
Your complete inability to comprehend anything beyond a 3rd-grade level never ceases to amaze me. Carry on, [slur redacted by DF].
Totally. Who is saying it and why is critical.
If it’s said about a woman meaning “she is doing something a woman shouldn’t do and she should stop and/or shut up” it’s very different from a woman saying it about herself and meaning “I am doing something I am told a woman shouldn’t do and *they* should shut up”.
But sometimes people use it to mean “I am doing something horribly mean that no one should do and I am going to co-opt feminism as an excuse for it”. And sometimes it’s used about either men or women to mean “they are doing something horribly mean that of course we expect women to do aren’t women so awful and predictable”.
Which leaves me feeling like it’s not worth reclaiming. I would never call myself a bitch, and I feel like it’s much more useful to try to claim the positive words that are used about men instead.
JtO’s “rape rescue” story sounds like a complete fabrication; a fantasy.
As re: sexist legos. One time I found these little boxes of legos (about the size of a box of animal crackers) that were supposed to be “unisex.” There was a picture of a girl on one side, and a picture of two boys on the other.
But the boys were shown building this fantastic structure using many thousands of pieces (there were probably 50 in the box). This thing was worthy of legoland; fancy turrets and staircases, and nearly big enough for them to actually live in. They were working on it together. The girl was shown with a small house, the size of a fist, with a simple roof and open windows. AND HER DAD WAS HELPING HER.
As a girl, I automatically bristled at the girl pic, right? But, I’m a mom of boys, and it didn’t take long to occur to me that the picture of the boys was equally harmful. Those little boys didn’t build that damn castle. Adults — hell, _engineers_ built that thing! So the girls were shown an example of helplessness, but the boys were shown an example of something way, way WAY beyond any child’s capacity to achieve, *as though _they_ should be able to.*
I can’t believe how profoundly we are failing our kids.
That rawstory article is interesting. I wonder how Elam will react to JTO being called the “new leader” of the MRM.
@Angela Gibbons
I hear you about the internalized misogyny that comes from growing up in a patriarchal religion. I grew up in the Jehovah’s Witness cult and had to hear all about how Eve fucked everything up for everyone and that’s why women have pain during childbirth – they deserve it because of Eve. Oh and that women are the weaker vessels, god made them for men, and that we needed to be under the rule of our fathers until we were married, then we were under the “headship” of our husbands.
I grew up angry and resentful that I was born female.
Sometimes an ex-Mormon stops by on some of the ex-JW groups I belong to and it’s always nice to hear their exodus stories.
So much to read through here. My thoughts, in brief, and if you don’t like swears, avert your gaze:
I love the word bitch, and I use it liberally, in many contexts. (I can’t get ginned over the word cunt– aside from it being my favorite unintentional typo, up until extremely recently it was always a completely neutral slang word for, you know, cunt. The modern use of it is just so modern I don’t even care about it. I like to use it, in the neutral sense. It’s right up there with cock.)
But bitch is a great, noble, and useful word, up there with fuck, nearly as flexible, and generally completely acceptable to me WHEN COMING FROM A FEMALE. If, however, you are male and use it around me, I will cut you. You will be leaving my party ashamed and sorry you ever tried to go there.
I consider the word bitch in the same light I consider the N word– black folk are allowed to use or not use it in whatever context they see fit. As another WOC but not that color, I am not, nor am I allowed to tell a black person how to think about that word, how to use it, etc. (I also consider the N word way more fraught than bitch is, not in the least because bitch is an excellent verb, but the comparison is apt anyhow.)
*****
In a non-sweary thought I had reading the article and comments, I noted one person mentioned that European women owned various means of production, which is why men didn’t have the final say in who lived where. This isn’t entirely true, at least not since the advent of Christianity– women were chattel, and what belonged to them belonged to their fathers/husbands/brothers/sons, in almost every country in Europe– but it sure the hell gave them leverage the dumbass “Game of Thrones” MRAs don’t like to acknowledge. In Europe if you were the one who could weave, bake, spin, churn, and produce children, you were desireable as all hell– something MRAs don’t ever seem to consider in their lame ideas about how the world works. It’s well known that men without wives were pitied, looked down on, and generally considered losers.
In my culture, women actually did own the household, and the children, along with means of production, so no one “let” us live anywhere– but I acknowledge that MRAs believe only white people and white culture exists, so I understand their racism tramples occasionally on their grasp on misogyny.
It must be so hard for them.
@Angela Gibbons Your story just completely opened my eyes. I was (and am, to a large degree) completely baffled by the phenomenon of the FeMRA (I’m very new here). I had a very simple, cursory understanding that a certain segment of an oppressed population needed to be complicit in order for the oppression to be effective but I didn’t get what the avenue was that lead to that mis-identification. Yours is a really powerful story and you just made me a wiser person. Thanks for being an awesome, honest person.
I just followed that link to the Hembling article on rawstory. As I was reading through the comments (and their pretty mild) it occured to me that the likes of Elam, Hembling, Price and the other MRA dipshits, great and small, owe David Futrelle and the Manboobz commentors a big thankyou.
Here the comments might be mocking, angry and often hilarious at the expense of forementioned dipshits, but rarely cruel in a personal way. I mean observations on mental stability or physical disability or comments about ‘mummy issues’, whatever. There is, mostly, a self control shown by commentors here that you don’t see when these stories hit more ‘main stream’ press, blogs etc.
Also I think it is telling that you don’t see such restraint on MRA sites, in fact it is enabled. The thing is this site is seen as evil incarnate by the MRA’s and Futrelle is he who shall not be named, well the dipshits better start bracing themselves and grow thick hides because with more exposure people aint going to be as nice as they are here.
Incidentaly I think the restraint from those here is due to ‘you lot’ being decent human beings, not because of censorship or the threat of the banhammer.
Cheers
Shit spelling,oops