How stupid do you have to be to actually believe the following nonsense? Not just regular stupid. Men’s Rights stupid.
Heck, this is even stupid by normal Men’s Rights standards. It made me think of this line from Ruthless People.
Now, horqth could very well be a troll. His account is brand new, and, I mean, this is just amazingly dumb. But here’s the thing: his comments are being treated as if they are completely reasonable by the Men’s Rights subreddit. I noticed only a couple of mostly ignored comments out of more than 100 even raising the possiblity that he was a troll.
Not only has his post gotten dozens of upvotes, but in the comments there are numerous other Men’s Rights Redditors — not trolls — who’ve actually managed to outdo him in the sheer ridiculousness of their opinions. And they’re getting upvotes too.
Milessycamore seemed to suggest that horqth had understated the degree to which men were being victimized in both places, and more than 200 Redditors agreed:
Saxonjf thought it would be nice if more women would act like these strippers and make men feel “important special.”
Itchybrain, putting his economist hat on, suggested that the root of the problem was the massive over-valuation of women:
So how did the ladies get so overvalued in the first place? Blame the government and all that darn welfare. Responding to one contrarian Men’s Righster who suggested — get this! — that women are appropriately valued — FloranHunter laid down this truth bomb, by which I mean a bunch of complete and utter crap:
If only we could return to the good old days, when women would starve unless they were super nice to unattractive dudes who pestered them in bars!
Lawtonfogle also has no problem with the idea of men being valued for their money; he just wants to get more bang(s) for the buck.
![Lawtonfogle 10 points 1 day ago (12|2) Government intervention in the means of social support programs that result in a woman having far more bargaining power in relationship dynamics. If it weren't for laws that provided support for children and forced fathers to pay for children (even when they aren't the biological father), it would be a very different issue. Men would still be valued for their money and women for their attractiveness, but money would hold more value and being a male willing to commit would also hold (more) value. permalink source parent save give gold hide child comments [–]IOIOOIIOIO 5 points 23 hours ago (7|2) Effective male contraception is going to be amazing.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/lawton.png?ssl=1)
I give up.
It kind if strikes at the heart of what drives MRAs though. When it comes down to it, they feel they aren’t loved. They aren’t loved enough, or correctly, or as much as other people, and rather than work for love, than compromise and use empathy and sympathy to connect with people, they construct a grand conspiracy that permeates all of life and all of history, so that they can frame themselves as legitimately disadvantaged and downtrodden. They’re obsessed with, if not love, validation. They seem to believe that there is a magic amount of it out there that they are entitled to, or that they once had, and that something beyond their control is preventing them from receiving the proper amount. All humans need love and validation, which is what’s so tragic about MRAs, because by aggressively demanding inordinate amounts of validation, by pulling down those they perceive as getting too much without earning it (ie attractive women), they ensure they will never get it themselves, or worse, become incapable of recognising and appreciating it when they do.
It looks like a submission to a select committee, depending on the committee and the topic, submissions get made public. It’s *not* a government publication.
Feel sorry for the public servants who have to read submissions like that, try and work out their main points, and summarise them into a document grouped by themes. This is your tax dollars at work people /sigh
@Hookerwithaheartofmuscle
Hi! Here’s your welcome package. =D
So…regarding the line about effective male contraception…have these men never heard of condoms?
Not only half a person’s genes come from their mother, but all of their mitochondrial DNA. I know a young woman who got herself sterilized so as not to pass on a familial disorder. My youngest son got his high-level math skills from his maternal grandmother who royally aced it in an Ivy league school back in the 1940s. (and was told to knock it off and just get married and be a housewife) Yes, women have genes too.
@ally thanks for the link, love my cat avi (as a proud cat baby and mumma since birth… yeh my parents cat thought I was her kitten when I was born. I lead a confusing childhood…) Might be “hookergal” now not “hookerwithaheartofmuscle” guess its shorter… Given the hate of sex workers by some MRAs (he doesn’t like hard chairs) I think its also kinda apt…
Anyway, glad to have stumbled across manboobz during my stumble into the rabbit hole that is the world of MRAs
Cat Lady, our cat overloads are displeased with you for using their name in vain. Beware.
I think MRAs have trouble grasping the difference between getting positive and welcome attention from men (as usual the existence of lesbians doesn’t occur to them) and facing an onslaught of club creepers and street harassers. The latter are in no way prospects for sex, dating, or marriage.
To those redditors, I have one thing to say to you.
Warning there is some language that could be considered by some to be insulting to people with mental illness.
Wait, do they want women to only be interested in them for their money? I thought that was one of the things they complained about.
They never say who’s doling out the violence men are supposedly protecting us from, either. Of course pointing out that it’s male violence would only bring outraged cries of MISANDRY! and NAMALT!
BTW jefrir, don’t know if you’ve been on site lately, but a big thank you for the tip about Firefox’s text formatting toolbar. I don’t think I’ve been devoured by the blockquote monster once since I installed it. 😀
Gods, that is so amazingly wrong.
Anyway, the OP.
I… have to admit, I don’t actually find it that dumb or odd or weird. I think it makes perfect sense from the perspective of an MRA. Women in a strip club want something from men (They want to fulfill their jobs, and earn a wage, and make a living, and live a life), which CLEARLY boils men down to nothing but their wallets, while every man in every nightclub at all times, everywhere, want something from the women-things present, namely the vagins they are mere life support systems for – and these two things, someone doing a job and someone boiling someone else down to nothing but a thing manipulated sequence of words into providing an ejaculation are obviously entirely analogous.
Yes.
Yes they are.
Entirely so.
Uhuh.
what the eff, MRAs? THat’s not how analogies work!
Glad it helped, Kittehs! I found out about it on Pharyngula, and thought I’d pass the joy along.
Regarding the OP, it wouldn’t be such a bad analogy if the conclusion they reached was “and just like the guys in clubs, strippers are not actually interested in you, and their flattery should not be considered actually flattering – it’s just a way of getting what they want.” But instead they go for “strippers are awesome, so what are women complaining about?”
Plus there’s the minor fact that people go to strip clubs pretty much exclusively to see people strip, whereas women generally go to nightclubs for reasons other than being hit on by douchebags.
And MRAs certainly have no idea the level of sexual assault in UK night clubs. Was talking to my nephew at Christmas about @everydaysexism’s posts which seem to imply that it is impossible for an attractive woman to go to a club, these days, without being groped. And he confirmed that it is the case. And my nephew was saying how frustrating it is because he can do nothing to help his female friends escape being assaulted – it seems a given that that will happen. Basically, if you are female in a club, someone will grope you during the evening.
So yes, MRAs, you try being physically assaulted every time you go out to go dancing. Because apparently the cost of being female and wanting to dance is being sexually assaulted. Obviously, you wouldn’t go to a club unless you wanted to be groped.
My conclusion – if someone opened a club in the UK and guaranteed that they would bounce and ban anyone accused by another customer of sexual assault, they would be packed with women customers. And they would be targeted with hate mail as being misandrist. I mean – false accusations!
When I was at uni, I knew a lot of straight women who drank in gay bars, because they could drink and dance without being groped.
So basically they want women to value them for their money yet men are under-appreciated in terms of attraction. Contradicts. And what if they find a girl that values them for their money… wouldn’t it be a gross overestimation to actually PAY for her costs even though she’s just a woman? (as they said that women are being overvalued now, let alone when they actually pay for one, who’s only staying with that particular dude for his cash) Or do they believe they’d get the hottest women ever? Jeez, what DO they want!
Oh, I was under the impression that strippers want men for their money, and don’t MRAs hate gold-digging sluts? Come on guys, you are giving mixed signals here – do you or do you not want women pretending to like you for your money?
It always disappoints me a bit when I see terms like “stupid” or “idiot” or “moron” used on this blog as insults. If, for instance, “r**ard” is not allowed, why allow synonyms of it?
1: I agree with Kiwi Girl that the opening story doesn’t pass the smell test. The whole “I didn’t go into the strip club to buy anything but a drink” makes no sense. Clearly, what he means is he wanted to sit there and ogle women without actually tipping or paying for a lap-dance, getting by on the minimum possible expenditure. Which is fine–the clubs factor in such conduct on their cover charge/drink prices. But it’s not like he went in there ignorant of what sort of establishment it was.
2: I can also confirm jefrir’s statement–straight women quite often go to gay bars to evade harassment. It’s VERY common in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood to run into bachelorette parties. There was a brief kerfluffle over this during the past couple of years, because Illinois dragged our heels on legalizing gay marriage; a lot of gay bars banned the bachelorette parties on the grounds that they were celebrating an event that the regular customers couldn’t enjoy themselves, and it felt like having their noses rubbed in it. Now that we finally decided to move forward there, I think that’s done with, though.
3: Having gone to strip clubs back when I was young, single and had spare cash, I will state that the original poster is correct about one thing–the women working there are usually very good at making you feel like you’re the center of the universe (they’re also good at creating archetype roles that mesh with their looks so that a customer gets to feel like he’s found a unique girl to fit his tastes). It’s an ego-stroke, and a nice little fantasy world, and that can be fun when you’ve got nothing real to fall back on. However, at no time does it resemble how a woman at a nightclub gets hit on, and there the OP demonstrates his utter cluelessness. If anything, the best comparison would be to Japan’s host/hostess clubs, which provide the customer with the personal attention, but not the bare skin.
dlouwe: I don’t think most people would necessarily consider those words synonyms for the r-word. Especially “stupid.”
dlouwe said: “It always disappoints me a bit when I see terms like “stupid” or “idiot” or “moron” used on this blog as insults. If, for instance, “r**ard” is not allowed, why allow synonyms of it?”
I didn’t think anyone perceived those words as slurs. I imagine “dumbass” or “asshat” would work fine in place of them, though.
Stupid also means “lacking common sense” and that’s parly what I mean when I use it. These guys are sort of amazing at missing the point, as they demonstrate in the comments I quote in the OP.
Sorry, maybe synonym wasn’t quite the right word – more that they all are used colloquially to refer to “less intelligent”. To me it seems akin to not allowing slurs against women, but being okay with insulting feminine men. I know it’s not quite that simplistic but I’m on a phone and can’t be quite as verbose as I like.
I’ve gotten to the point where I try to use ‘stupid’ and similar terms only for ideas, rather than people. If I want to insult someone’s overall thought process, I’ll use asshat, shithead or douchecanoe, depending on exactly what their overall cognitive error seems to be.
Less intelligent than the average rock is more the case with MRAs. It’s willfull stupidity, with them.
I don’t want to have the only insults available ones that involve “ass” or “arse”. Too bloody boring and it ends up like a kid saying POO all the time.
@dlouwe
random rambling ahead:
In my tumblr time, I hang around lots of disability related blogs and like to talk to other disabled people, and this topic comes up often. As far as I can tell, people are pretty divided, so idk if there’s any “right” answer.
The viewpoints seem to be: someone w/ a mental disability or learning disability will say it (a word signifying lack of intelligence, not lack of logic, like stupid or idiot) was used against them a lot and it makes them feel bad whenever people say it even when it’s not meant maliciously.
Someone else w/ a mental disability or learning disability will say they don’t feel that way and it distracts from the “real issue” (being lack of accessibility/programs in school/ other stuff).
someone will say “Omg this is ableist because it assumes all disabled people are stupid!” (this is actually annoying because it makes no sense?)
Long story short: I’ve never been part of the affected demographic (people who get routinely called that because of a mental or learning disability), and since it’s such a split topic i try to avoid talking about it because I could say some really ignorant shit. I know some of my friends feel its insulting and alienating to them, so they’re not words I generally use a lot but I also know my opinion isn’t really the most important one here.
I also feel when I don’t really have an opinion except that I don’t want to hurt my friends, I can’t really chime in.
So TL;DR this is a kind of complicated issue and I don’t really have a well thought out opinion on the matter.