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So over on A Voice for Men, young Jason Gregory seems faintly jealous that young women who put up dating profiles online tend to get flooded with messages — and the occasional dick pic — from horny guys.
F]ree cock is everywhere. Men give it away like it’s worthless. … I doubt that it is unusual at all for a woman to get 300 messages in her inbox from men who are desperate for female affection, approval, and sex. There is no doubt in my mind that men send “dick-pics” and clamor, bother, and sometimes harass women for their affections and attentions.
But Jason feels no sympathy for young women who put up profiles hoping to meet some nice young fellow who’s also into Sherlock and Neil Gaiman and Indian food and instead get messages from guys who introduce themselves by expressing a desire to ejaculate in their hair.
No, Jason is angry because he’s convinced all these offers of “free cock” only serve to make the women of the world into snooty-stuck stuck-up so-and-sos who think they’re all that and a folder full of dick pics.
All you men who give it away, all you do is reinforce the entitlement mentality of women who believe that their being present is plenty. You reinforce the idea that women don’t owe anything to the relationship—that they deserve a free-ride of cocks and that they don’t even have to break a sweat.
Jason, I should add, means this last bit literally. He’s resentful that when he allegedly engages in the act of coitus he has to do all the work while his alleged partners allegedly lie there like inflatable love-dolls.
Anyhoo,.Jason has a plan to take these stuck-up ladies down a peg or two: A cock strike.
Yep, he wants men to start saying “no” to women who are interested in them, just to see how they like it. But he doesn’t want them to just say no. He wants them to be giant dicks about it.
Try telling a girl no. Tell her, after she makes it clear that she wants your cock, that you’re not interested in giving it to her. Tell her that she isn’t interesting, that her soul is dog-shit and that she has nothing to offer other than boobs and booty, that she is a piece of shit and a total failure as a human being, that you don’t find her attractive and that she isn’t even good enough to be a cum-bucket. Tell her that she is never going to be any good at sucking cock and that she needs to stop pretending that she is doing any favors and learn to compensate for her inadequacies by becoming “kinky.” Tell her that her vapid life of shoes and pop-culture and materialism are soulless pursuits of dog-shit. Watch what happens. If you Jez-ladies wanna know what “hostile” means, see this rejected woman.
Emphasis mine.
A Voice for Men, you may recall, sees itself as leading the most important civil rights movement of the 21st century. I am sure Jason Gregory’s post here will be remembered alongside Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail as a classic in civil rights literature.
EDIT: I added a couple more “allegedlys” to a sentence I thought needed them.
I thought chalking pace meant something like this. 🙂
def buttboy69(typicalMRABullshit, counterarguments)
shittyArgument = typicalMRABullshit
print “Man Boobz, here is my #{shittyArgument}”
ourResponses = counterarguments
print “Okay, but here’s why you’re wrong: #{counterarguments}”
1000000.times {print “Man Boobz, here is my #{shittyArgument}”}
print “FOR FUCK’S SAKE BACK UP YOUR ARGUMENT”
1000000.times {print “Man Boobz, here is my #{shittyArgument}”}
print “Oh, you guys never listen to me. Productive conversations are impossible here.”
end
And we can ignore you too. Convenient, huh?
I just jumped in here a couple months ago and nobody objected so far. *shrug* Maybe I’m just that good in blending in, or maybe I just took my time to ensure my foot wouldn’t be anywhere near my mouth.
Ally: you forgot to put in an MRA infinite loop that produces nothing and has no escape function or error trap. 🙂
I seriously think we’re as un-cliquish as it’s possible to be when hanging out with people that you know well. I mean, we made the Welcome Package originally just so new people would be able to understand all our favorite in-jokes.
I understand that from a newer person’s perspective it can look like there’s a core group and then outsiders, but FWIW I don’t really find it looks that way from my side. Hell, I can’t even keep track of how long people have been here; hang around for a month and I’ll be going “Oh yeah, so and so has been here for ages!”
If I thought this community was cliquish, I would feel too intimidated to even comment here. Yet I delurked early on and I became accepted here almost immediately. That’s not something I would experience in a cliquish community.
Look what happened with emilygoddess. She was sitting there thinking the regulars didn’t consider her part of the group, and meanwhile the people she was thinking of were all thinking of her as being a regular too.
In any internet community there are always more lurkers than active commenters, though. So, people who don’t normally comment – does the calling out of stuff like ableism make you not want to comment? Would most readers (all of them, not just the ones who comment all the time) like this space better if people who said things that some people find offensive weren’t asked to stop saying those things, or if when they are asked to stop and they double down and insist on their right to keep saying those things the people who comment here all the time said “oh, OK then, I won’t ask you to stop doing that if doing so hurts your feelings”? Part of what’s bugging me about this is that, honestly, refusing to stop using terms that people have told you they find offensive just because you don’t like being called out on the use of those terms just seems really rude, and kind of childish.
Seconding all what Cassandra said.
Plus, how many of us have pointed out already that we’ve learned stuff here? I know I’m not the only one who’s become more aware of things like ableist language and its implications. I never thought about that before reading here. If anyone reads MB because they’re interested in social justice issues and not just our sparkling wit and kitties, surely awareness of this stuff isn’t going to be unwelcome?
Ditto about the childishness. It so often turns into a prolonged “You can’t tell me what to do!” dummy-spit.
There’s also a level on which, OK, who’s truly more vulnerable here? The straight guy who’s trying to get over his sexism and not always succeeding yet, or the person with a mental illness who might be reading the “crazy” stuff and thinking about what that means about how people feel about them?
When I started posting here a couple of years ago, it was under the main handle that I use for everything. I’ve since changed it to Chie just for feminist blogs after the doxxing and harassment that we’ve seen come out of the MRM. My other handle leads to the real me far too easily.
At first I thought all the commenters were MRAs, we must have been really swimming in trolls at that time. I think the name change turned me back into a newbie again for awhile but I think people recognize “Chie” now, I hope so, anyway.
@emilygoddess, I think you are fabulous. I was a bit scared to talk to you at first because you are always so intelligent and such a good troll slayer.
I always read your comments to Mr M, and he actually said that your name is one of the ones he remembers and he only knows MBs commenters via me.
I can verify that I, at least, have been discouraged from commenting in, and in some cases reading, certain threads because of ableist comments there. I appreciate everyone that asks the commenter to be more aware of their language use.
@opheliamonarch
I laughed when I read this because I have felt mildly intimidated by both of you before, for these exact reasons! But only mildly, because you both seem like cool people.
As someone who is “crazy” I really appreciate that the people here don’t conflate my medical condition with the willfully chosen asshole behavior of the MRA set.
pecunium said: “These days? I can’t think of anything. What I’d recommend avoiding is, “everyone who thinks ‘x’ is ‘y’”, which is the mode of thinking which was on display”
Oh, okay; thank you for explaining.
Well, it seems my guess about how many were feeling left out was completely incorrect. Oh, well–sorry about that.
I’m completely okay with the calling out of inappropriate language, and I think the Welcome Package was/is a fantastic idea. I was worried because, for all but one of my first few comments, I couldn’t tell whether people found them objectionable or not.
@buttboy69: Why not ask many of the women who use OkCupid what their experiences are? Actually, before that, why not read the studies whose links were given to you?
Seconding hippodameia. And yeah, with the exception of really REALLY new people and people who were here before me I don’t remember how long people have been here. Also, we like new people, we give them kittens and spinning seals!
“So I admit it happens. But you know, I can just ignore that minority.”
Woah! I thought it was totally stuck up, entitled b*tch territory to be ignoring all these well meaning, but horny, gentleman. You sir, as a woman on a dating site, don’t get to decide who to ignore or respond to. Those men need to tell you that your soul is dog-shit so you learn your lesson!
Well, of course you can. You’re just a random dude pretending to be someone he’s not. I’m a woman, and I don’t have that luxury. Especially not when some asshole is trying to drive me off the internet with death threats. Which has happened more times than I care to recall. I’ve saved all the abusive messages in case the police should come looking, BTW.
“So I admit it happens. But you know, I can just ignore that minority.”
You are spot on, sir. That’s what I thought and that’s what I’m sure lots of women think when it starts happening. But then, it just doesn’t stop happening.
The ‘minority’ events start to pile up, and when you factor in the harassment of a similar nature many women experience offline (catcalling, workplace harassment, other micro aggressions) it starts to feel like, well, you are living in a hostile environment. You become jumpy and hypersensitive to the level of risk of any given interaction.
It’s like a form of gradual torture, like water boarding. You go in thinking ‘hey, that’s not so bad’ until three days later…
My two cents on the language/clique thingy:
I have no problem refraining from using certain language because of possible offense. I never felt like anyone was attacked for using inappropriate language unless they reacted badly to being corrected. For me, I say, you live you learn. I’ve said it before, but I credit this space (which I lurked in before posting fairly recently) for helping me become more aware of the ways in which my word choice can affect others.
I also didn’t feel intimidated at all when I did start commenting. Maybe it was my extended lurking, but I didn’t feel like I had to prove anything or impress anyone to be accepted. I just post, and that’s it! Simple!
Utterly irrelevant thing, but I think you mean water torture, not water boarding. One is a slow drip, the other is “simulated” drowning. The end of “that’s not so bad” takes under 20 seconds.
@argenti
Yes, that is what I meant! My bad :/
Regarding “clique-y” tendencies: I read every post, and often skim the comments, but don’t comment terribly often. Rather than seeing you all as clique-y, I just think it’s neat that there’s such a strong sense of community, that you all know each other so well, and are supportive of each other. I don’t really have the dedication (or WordPress literacy) to get as involved in commenting as you all, but keep on keeping on as you have been. It’s perfectly reasonable to call people on ablism with regards to mental illness (as a depressed/anxious/possibly bipolar NOS gal). Love reading what you all have to say,..and seeing your kitty photos. At some point I’ll have to play show and tell with my member of the furrinati. 🙂
I’ve never felt intimidated to post for fear of being called out on language/terminology. I’ve actually learned a lot just from reading the comments, and am much more aware of ableist language. I don’t have an issue with not using certain words when I post here – it’s not like it takes any extra effort really, or prevents me from getting my point across. Hell, it’s basic courtesy. I don’t speak the same way with everyone in meatspace, same reasons.
Also, I don’t think anyone here is cliquey at all! Quite the opposite.