Misogynists hate, hate, hate it when women get tattoos. They just can’t all agree on why. The standard misogynist line on tattoos for women is that they are all, essentially, “tramp stamps” – a way of broadcasting that the woman displaying them is a slut, a skank, a whore. You know the drill.
But the “alternative right” racist/sexist/homophobe who goes by the handle agnostic has a rather different take. In a post on his blog Face to Face, he argues that women with tattoos are actually trying to broadcast their Puritan prudery.
Tattoos, you see, are just plain ugly, and help to accessorize a dreary look designed to repel men.
Notice how those girls dress in drab, dark monochrome colors, wear no girly jewelry, and sport flat hair rather than Big Hair. Their sassy, sarcastic, even nasty attitude echos their off-putting look.
Fundamentally, they are part of the larger trend toward drab dressing, and its signal of reluctance to get loose. Their personalities are more anti-social, so they express the neo-Pilgrim style in a more antagonistic fashion than the less abrasive girls in their generation, but they’re both variations on the same theme.
The tattoo-bearers are likely to be man-haters as well.
They are also part of the larger trend among women toward fear of or hatred toward men. …
In such a climate, women will alter their appearance and demeanor in order to deflate rather than excite the male libido. They act like prey trying to give warning signals to potential predators. The tattoo chicks are only the extreme version of this widespread trend. Girls sure don’t look or act as cute and flirty as they used to in the boy-crazy Eighties, when they thought of guys not as predators but as conspecifics who they wanted to court with engaging mating displays.
“Conspecifics” simply means “members of the same species.” Agnostic loves to drop that sciency lingo in order to make his prejudices seem smart.
Anyway, he continues by arguing that tattoos are especially offensive to pickup artistes and other “assertive” dudes.
Off-putting style also serves to filter out the more assertive and independent males, who would rather spend time on a girl who looks cute, rather than settle for one who’s all marked up or not willing to show anything at all. … By inking themselves up, girls ensure that only the guys who are willing to get walked over and slapped in the face will approach them. Why go through the long hassle of having your new boyfriend fixed when you can advertise that only the neutered need apply in the first place?
Ah, but this last bit is perhaps more revealing than agnostic means it to be. Tattoos are an affront to misogynists because they’re seen as too assertive, too masculine – a challenge to traditional femininity, and to men who prefer traditionally feminine women.
Tattoos on women make misogynistic men angry because on some fundamental level these men don’t think women have the right to decorate their bodies in a way that displeases men –or at least their kind of men. It’s the same kind of creepy, possessive anger that many misogynistic men show towards women who cut their hair short. It’s as if these men on some level believe women’s bodies belong to them, and not to the women themselves.
And that’s pretty unattractive.
Yeah I’m just going to add to the Us- Europe thing too, Europe is pretty far from being some kind of equality haven. You can find some terribly sexist attitudes in/from France, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Poland, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the UK just to start with.
Plus this treating Europe like one country in discussions about society and culture needs to stop. Sweden is not representative of Europe. I’m laughing here, sat in the UK, thinking about that.
You shut your mouth! As a morally superior enlightened Scandinavian, I do find all this grovelling before my clearly superior society to be exactly what befits you lackluster lower orders of humanity.
What racisme? There’s no racisme in Scandinavia. We’re all perfect. There’s no way there can be any racisme in Scandinavia, because Scandinavia is perfect, so you’re just a jealous non-Scandic person, you. Here, have some free healthcare to tide you over. Oh. You have the NHS over there in the UK? Uh… uhm…
[ I joke. Sort of. ]
——————
Europe isn’t perfect, and I don’t think there’s any real kind of sense in making the argument that “femnism took longer in Europe because there was less need for it”, since, well, I don’t know, the Société fraternelle de l’un et l’autre sexe was founded in 1790. (It’s the fraternity of patriots for both sexes)
That’s just failing basic history.
I mean, let’s talk about the Swiss for a second. Can we?
National female suffrage was instituted in 1971. That doesn’t mean that the Swiss as a people and culture are anti-women. I’ve been to Switzerland. It’s a lovely country. Several cantons, of which Vaud is one, had female suffrage before the national vote in 1971.
It just means that on the chronological level, the Swiss can be proud of the fact that the Cuban missile crisis happened before they had national female suffrage. Compare that to Denmark (1908, but more importantly with alterations in 1915), France (let’s call it 1945), Norway (1901, but more importantly in 1913, beating the DK by 2 years the bastards), Sweden ( 1743, waitwhat, but let’s call it final national elections in 1919).
Or possibly Finland, in 1906, which is a first for full parliamentary elections and means they beat everyone.
Also, Europe is not The United States, and I know this is so meaningless as to be almost insulting, but I think sometimes people accidentally think that the countries in the EU is like the states in the US. Denmark, for instance, is 6 times smaller than Colorado, while France is about twice as big – France is just about the size of Texas.
But the people of Colorado share the same language and general federal laws with Texas (insert joke about the political spectrums of the US here), and if nothing else, at least they both know what Constitution they’re referring to, even if they sometimes disagree on the specific interpretation. People from Denmark and France can’t even talk to each other without using a third language. Or learning Danish or French, but really, who would, and neither of those can talk to the Germans. And all three of those have a wildly different legislative structure with centuries of precedent that turns into three separate constitutions, with wildly different ramifications and protections.
And none of these can talk to the Fins without, again, everyone talking in another language.
I know that must sound super obvious to anyone with the least passing familiarity to geography.
But I figure that might explain it just as well as:
or
I mean. Obviously, I am more enlightened than the lot of you, and my society is near-perfect, but it’s not all that. Sometimes, I find cracks in the pavement that aren’t fixed within a fortnight. Oh, and this one time, I ordered a sandwich, and it was cold when I got it.
Oh and the prevailing narrative of happiness, superior morality and equality has become kind of a joke because it means people get to maintain their bigoted viewpoints and argue that they aren’t actually being racist or sexists or foolish when they casually call people nicknames like towelhead as a term of endearment or spend the first half an hour of a political meeting joking about how women should stay in the kitchen.
God I’m sick of political organization meetings where people spend hours doing that, and then, with a completely straight face, go on to discuss the finer points of having more women participate in running the organization. There is irony, and there this is baldfaced stupidity.
::is seriously confused why a person would brag about being an asshole:: :/
Hi Guys, Mammother-newbie here. 😀
A lot of good points have been mage about Europe not being a country but a continent (*sigh*) and I guess I don’t need to add anything, but I really wonder how anybody might catch the idea, that feminism is a latecomer in Europe? For all I know the first feminist writings are from french women during the enlightenment. ö_ö
Validation from similar assholes?
I’m Dutch and I grew up in France. I got plenty of sexism from people (men and women) from both countries.
@scott1139:
Large numbers of adult men I have met will boast with a smug grin about how they are completely useless at household tasks and how they have purposefully messed up when their wives ask them to help out so they are not expected to ever again.
::is seriously confused why a person would brag about being an asshole::
My Dad, my uncle… They both have scathing things to say about my other uncle, who actually irons his own shirts.
@Emma
::is judging you::
@Bon O Bolishus
??? Nobody cares what you think of the woman in the picture.
@Scott
Men 😛 i kid, (sort of) there are plenty of nice men here, but it’s definitely one of those obnoxious masculinity-gender role things.
@girlscientist
man, how do you insult people for being able to iron his own shirts?
*pulls a face*
There’s a bunch of those little life skills that are passed down in the most haphazard (and often sexist) ways possible. I feel lucky that I learned to cook, clean, launder, sew and woodwork from my parents.
@bluecat, girlscientist, Marie
Thanks for answering. 🙂 I forgot to think above the individual level again. >_<
assholes validating each other, ugh :/
"awful people validating each others' awfulness" is pretty much the definition of the MRM, Stormfront, TERFs…
That was our old pal Tom Martin. I wonder how his documentary is going?
Yup. A young woman went missing in the town where I went to college – scaring the shit out of all of us who’d done exactly what she did that night – and was eventually found dead, with evidence that she’d been raped. And the guy who did it was also accused of drugging and raping his long-term girlfriend. Everyone who wasn’t drinking the rape culture kool-aid was, of course, unsurprised that a man with such a history eventually escalated his crimes, and we won’t be surprised if this Indiana guy does, either.
It was actually kind of painful for me to learn (embarrassingly late in life) that Scandinavia isn’t a utopia because I grew up idealizing it. Not because of any white supremacist reasons. Just because I’m 25% Norwegian and also have some Swedish ancestry. Minnesota was heavily settled by Norwegians and Swedes and the culture here is very Scandinavian influenced.
My mom and I love going to a local museum called The Swedish Institute and I grew up eating imported candy and cookies from the gift shop. She always made sure to teach me about the Vikings in a way that separated myth and stereotype from fact. I was a fan of Pippi Longstocking books. We watch Varg Veum which takes place in Bergen, Norway, the area our ancestors are from. Could go longer, but suffice to say I was born and raised as a Scandiphile (an Anglophile and Francophile too, but that’s another story).
It was a rude awakening as an adult when stories about racism and xenophobia rampant in Scandinavia started reaching my ears. I still idealize Norway in particular a little too much, but I frequently remind myself that no country is perfect.
I fear I dropped another teal deer in this thread. :/ Oh well.
LBT, your ink is lovely!
@weirdwoodtreehugger
well, it didn’t feel to TL;DR-y to me :3
@Marie:
man, how do you insult people for being able to iron his own shirts?
They seem to think he’s wimpy for ironing his shirts. They say things like: “ha, ha, he irons his shirts!” They don’t say much more than that, probably because deep down they know damn well that they would be lost without their wives catering to their every need, and they don’t want to advertise that. They don’t actually mock my non-useless uncle to his face.
Thanks for the boner update.
But seriously, this is sexist and also, no one cares.
Not that I expect you to respond, since dropping turds in threads and running away seems to be your MO, but a girl can dream…
If you don’t like what David chooses to write about, you could always try this
David, you sound poor.
When those boasted about messing up on purpose it came across as some kind of pride in their masculinity kinda?
There is very little shame attached in the UK to men who refuse to or can’t do household tasks, it’s often considered comical or endearing and it’s a big trope in adverts.
There is apparently something super “manly” about being incompetent, on purpose or otherwise, at house work, so boasting about it affirms how manly you are.
And it’s also kind of a bonding thing with other men, when I’ve heard it said out loud there were women present but the statement was directed at the other men in the room with that *hurr hurr blokes together nudge nudge wink wink silly women isn’t it great being a bloke?* thing that you see so often when men bond over misogyny.
So yeah when MRA’s and the like complain about the trope of the incompetent husband in sitcoms or adverts I have precisely no sympathy because men are 100% the beneficiaries of it and 100% the people who encourage and propagate it the most.
While there’s nothing wrong with finding a particular woman unattractive, there is something wrong with being so entitled and enamoured with the sound of your own voice that you take personal offense to the sharing of an image of a woman you find unattractive and simply NEEDING to inform the world of your disgust over their appearance in the hopes of shaming people who don’t conform to my personal aesthetic preferences. That’s fucked up.
Seriously, I see shit every day I find distasteful, even disgusting. If it serves no purpose beyond allowing me to hear the sound of my own voice and making the target feeling shitty though I keep those feels to myself. My ladyboners don’t matter that much.
@historophilia
Sadly a trope in advertising in the US too :/ And sitcoms. And other places probably.
@Marie, yeah I can’t speak much for media from the rest of Europe since I’ve watched very little of it, but from what I’ve seen sexist tropes in advertising seem to be common so I wouldn’t be surprised if the “incompetent at housework husband/father” is one that exists across the European mainland as well.
And I love it when feminism gets blamed for this dumb trope. Except, um, no.
::Sigh:: Yep, this is still very much a trope and seconding or thirding the wish that it would die.
Because not knowing how to complete basic household chores is neither manly nor endearing. Purposefully messing up while doing household chores so that your wife takes over? That’s being an asshole.
I love how many MRAs obviously think their own desires and preferences are universal.
Personally, I wouldn’t insult someone holding a hot iron.
@hookergal:
I worked as a Pro-Dominatrix for the better part of a decade, and I can definitely relate! Guys who describe themselves as being terribly good looking, or having really big dicks in hopes of a discount or freebee always left my mind boggled. As an old coworker of mine once said, “I don’t care what you or your dick look like! Just describe your wallet!”
“Describe your wallet!” became a permanent catch-phrase around the dungeon.
As for the idea that a sex worker shouldn’t enjoy their work, I don’t even know where to start! The whole idea is just so misogynist and ridiculous. Would they be happier knowing that the person servicing them is miserable about it? Ugh, that takes my brain to places it really doesn’t want to go to.