Many Men’s Rights Redditors see themselves as fighting a noble fight against genuinely evil, misandrist radical feminists on the internet. One of their most powerful weapons: the deadly downvote.
Reading through one old thread on Men’s Rights last night, I noticed how some Men’s Rights Redditors had deftly deployed their downvotes to fight off the evil feminist misandry lurking in this comment:
Outrageous! A statement that could have been ripped straight from Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto!
Kudos to the brave Redditors who saw this vile misandry for what it was.
Elsewhere in the same thread, I happily noticed, Men’s Rights Redditors were helpfully upvoting the reasonable and uplifting sentiments of decent fellows, like the Men’s Rights Redditor who goes by the name theboners, who offered a sensibly critical take on the always controversial question of whether or not it was a good idea for men to give in to “pussy privilege” and let ladies have the vote:
Oh you irresponsible women! Why do we let you do anything?
I mean, aside from letting GirlWritesWhat make YouTube videos; that’s ok.
–
It might be time for that blinking
gif to remind possibly literal-minded readers that I do not actually agree with theboners or think SweetieKat is a reincarnation of Valerie Solanas.
Like, say you really enjoy dancing, and you’re looking for a dance partner. You might be willing to accept one who doesn’t have any dance experience, if you like them and think that you’d enjoy their company, but would you actually assume that they would be better at dancing because they’d never done it before? It just doesn’t make any sense.
I guess it’s easier to think it’s a good thing if you see “passive recipient” as being a good woman and “enthusiastic instigator” as a dirty slut.
I’ve heard a lot of arguments about “tightness” from the dudes pushing the idea that virgin = best sexual partner ever, which, um, first of all, the vagina doesn’t work that way, and secondly, if you’re trying to have sex with an inexperienced woman and she’s really really tight maybe that’s because she’s all tensed up because she’s scared? And if you’re getting off on that, well, ew.
I’m pretty sure that most misogynists don’t even care about the woman’s sexual experience – at least not in any respect beyond “I hope she’s a virgin or else I will not be the first person to have possessed her.” I have a feeling that misogynist men frequently lie about their motivations, given all of the men I have noticed gloating about their misogyny in the real or imagined absence of women.
Well, a quote from the book after they had sex for the first time.
“A small red bloodstain was on the sheets, and again the possessive monster inside me threw back his head and roared his pleasure. I stood there holding her and letting the proof I was the only man to be inside her to wash over me.”
Dude is creepy.
Wait, so, if they’re in the bed, how is he standing up? I’m not even touching the whole T-rex roars in a scene lifted directly from Jurassic Park thing.
No, they just had sex, but they were already out of bed, because he had carried her to the bathroom to clean her up. Him treating her like she’s precious, fragile and helpless is also a big part of the story.
Ick.
Imagining a canned roar (T-Rex, MGM lion, Godzilla) on the scene does make it a bit more bearable.
Wow, did I ninja everyone? Or is it only ninja-ing if you post it right when other people are typing their comment?
As for this part:
I do recall the statistics and articles around the 2012 US Presidential election that the people who voted for Obama were mostly women and racial minorities. One article even said Obama had the “Women’s Vote.” Basically people outside the straight white male demographic. And Obama has been called socialist and anti-freedom among other things.
*wiggles butt at blockquote monster*
Nanny nanny boo boo, stick your head in doo doo!
Eh, while the quotes are creepy, I also hated the negative things expressed towards the inexperienced, as if there’s no way for a virgin woman to do anything other than lie there and bleed her first time. I did have some anxiety issues from this being an older virgin, because I have heard people talk about how virgin women have absolutely no clue how to get themselves or a man off and how this would be sad for a man’s penis and ego. Both attitudes play into this false idea that a woman’s sexuality only happens with PIV.
Rant over.
Oh, come on.
Just found asixpack on this thread, too.
Friendly note: volunteer fire-departments like having women on the crews. In small districts, you take anything you can get, and a well trained lady crew is better than no crew.
Plus, it’s pretty darned useful to have multiple body sizes and shapes. Having the tank sized guy try to do an extrication in a narrow tunnel? Yeah, right. There are just some places the big guys won’t fit.
Plus, with modern techniques, you don’t HAVE to be burly to get the job done. Yes, you have to be strong. BUT you don’t have to be stacked.
For instance, we did window exits and practiced hauling downed firefighters down the 24 ft ladder at a recent drill. Just to prove a point, the instructor had the smallest firefighter (120 lbs) haul the biggest guy (290 lbs easy) down the ladder.
She didn’t even break a sweat, because we know how to haul people down ladders. That’s what we (as volunteer rescue personnel) do.
So, dude, DON’T come here and tell us what people are and aren’t capable of, when you obviously don’t have a bleeding clue.
Also, NO ONE in the department would freaking carry you. We’d be dragging you. Keep things low, where the coolness is. We save the pretty carry for light things. NO ONE is going to risk throwing out their back saving one guy, when there’s a chance there are more civilians inside. Dragging is way easier, and WAY cooler, literally.
Sorry to ruin your idyllic dreams of a buff fire-fighter carrying you out with a proud swagger, you draped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. That’s just the TV talking.
Nope. No go. No way.
@cassandrakitty
I like your dancing analogy.
@zippydoo
Yeah …
As another older virgin, both the “virgins are the best to sleep with” (What? Seriously, what?) and the “I want women to know how to please me” (And they learn this through … telepathy?) ideas don’t make much sense.
I know I have no experience in this area (literally), but I don’t see why people can’t decide to have sex because they both like each other, and want to have sex with each other, like in cassandrakitty’s dancing analogy.
Of course it could be
begin{sarcasm}
We don’t want women sneaking out of being shameful by being virgins.
end{sarcasm}
Yeah, I wasn’t intending to imply that sex with someone with little/no experience is automatically going to be terrible, it’s just that going “if they’ve never done X before that means they’ll be better at X than someone who’s done it many times” is pretty illogical. The people who do think that way seem to be motivated by really nasty sexist ideas about sex making women dirty and damaged, or the idea of sex where a woman is active rather than passive has never occurred to them. Or they’re just such insecure babies that they’re terrified of being compared to other men and the comparison not working out in their favor. Or, like the story quoted, they see themselves as intrepid explorers who must be the first to plant their flag, like they’re re-enacting the Moon landing on her mons.
@tinyorc
Sorry, wrong tags.
This is why nobody takes libertarianism seriously. Because proponents can, with a straight face, argue that allowing some groups to vote is bad.
And then say that they’re just here for the liberty.
Seriously, this is so full of wrong that my brain nearly sprained itself.
@contrapangloss
Oh, hey, fellow firefighting person! Nicely ranted. 100% agreement here.
Buh-buh-but Dat Ass is soooo oppressive! Warren Farrell said so. And he would know, since he can never seem to pry his poor weak old eyes off ’em…
Srsly, though, this argument gives me the cramps. A man demanding quid-pro-quo sex (as in, “I’ma fire you if you don’t put out”) is not a victim of pussy privilege (which doesn’t exist), but a proud wielder of penis privilege (which most certainly does). And a real skanky slimy one, too. And never slimier than when he insists that She Made Him Do It, Because She’s Too Sexy For Her Skirt. Considering that these men are supposed to be figures of action, they always have the most remarkable way of sliding into the passive voice when they’ve been caught putting their hands where they don’t belong.
Bingo. My first time was pretty spectacular for all the things that didn’t happen: No tearing, no bleeding, and only a momentary annoying reverse-pinchy pain that went away altogether when I bent my knees, tilted my pelvis towards him (not away!), and made a conscious effort to unclench my muscles. “Virgin tightness” is not only a misogynous myth, it’s also a sign that Ur Doin It Rong.
And if I were a sex educator, I’d make certain that all girls knew in advance what I learned by trial and error that night. That way, they could make their first times a lot easier and more fun than mine was.
I’d also teach everyone that having sex with a person ≠ having a person, period. Sex ≠ ownership. And therefore, virginity, which is a non-thing, is not a prize that you have to “save”. Nobody “owns” you through sex; it’s just not possible. And if you don’t want to have sex, you don’t have to, either.
I once had a conversation with a bunch of coworkers (in a bar, before people start wondering wtf was going on in our workplace) where one of them said, and I wish I was joking, “when a man has had sex with a woman he owns her”. Shame nobody had a camera with which to record the look I gave that stupid, sexist little shit when he said that.
misery:
I absolutely agree. I would say that a defining feature of the “new misogyny” is that it appropriates the vocabulary and frameworks developed by women and minorities and uses them as part of a mudslinging who-is-more-oppressed game instead of actually engaging with the theory behind it.
It’s a pity, because privilege was very useful shorthand for referencing how certain groups in society have advantages over others based on arbitrary facts of birth, such as gender or race. It’s still a solid concept, but I feel like the word itself has just lost all meaning in online social justice circles, because people tend to do the digital equivalent of screaming it at each other without even scratching the surface of what it means. People now seem to think “privilege” is “any advantage one person might have over another person” which… just… no…
Recently Thought Catalog posted a colossal fail of listicle about female privilege (link goes to an excellent takedown of same) and I just though “Oh no. This is truly where theories of oppression come to die.”
The problem (perhaps insurmountable) with coining terms is they are either neologisms (and so get mocked as nonsense words, for nonsense ideas) or they have secondary connotations.
It’s the second which reactionaries use against privilege. They see the members of the privileged class, who lead lives of privilege, and make it seem this is what those addressing the social structures mean.
Since it is something of a term of art, anyone who doesn’t have some background in the idea is easy to confuse, which has the unhappy effect of making them a bit reactionary.
The MRM goes a bit further with its asinine pretense that social tools to oppress women are actually benefits to them as a class (e.g. denying them participation in full military service means they don’t suffer in war) and then adding insult to injury by saying those “privileges” prove women need to be further oppressed, “to make things equal”.
The whole ‘sex is something men do TO women ‘ idea is inherently toxic and bad minded. Nothing good can come of it.
I’ll admit, I once believed that women didn’t actually want to have sex. But I grew up.