It’s the eternal question: do misogynists spend their entire lives looking for excuses to get mad at women, or are they so naturally enraged by any evidence of female autonomy that they can’t help but erupt in rage over the tiniest of things?
We may never know the answer to that question. What we do know: almost anything can provoke them, no matter how trivial it is, no matter how misguided their anger might seem to anyone who doesn’t actually, you know, hate women. Let’s look at some of the latest things to cause women-haters to lose their shit.
1) British tennis champ Andy Murray’s announcement this week that he was hiring former female tennis champion Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. Even though she’s, you know, a lady.
On Twitter, as Buzzfeed has chronicled, some have taken exception to Mauresmo’s status as a non-man.
https://twitter.com/zainmohammed786/status/475642785979449344
https://twitter.com/ollieman_95/status/475620687391260672
Others have suggested that maybe she’s more of a man than him – ho ho!
Amelie mauresmo to be andy murray's new tennis coach! About sums him up he plays like a woman only she's more man than he'll ever be.
— Paul Kemp (@53pkempy) June 8, 2014
Why it would matter to any of these people just whom someone who is not them wants as his coach remains unclear.
2) An article on the Huffington Post noting that on D-Day, one woman – war correspondent Martha Gellhorn – accompanied the 150,000 men who stormed the beaches.
It’s an interesting story: all the female correspondents who requested spots on the boats were turned down, so she ended up sneaking her way into the invasion by hiding in a ship’s bathroom.
But over on the A Voice for Men forums, someone called Humansplaining w/ Jarred is outraged that “Feminists can’t even let Men have D-DAY for themselves!”
Here we are on the 70th anniversary of a watershed moment in one of the bloodiest wars in human history, where thousands of men selflessly gave their lives, and some Feminist feels the need to devote an entire article to the fact that there was also ONE woman involved! There you go, it’s official – the ratio of worth from women to men, is 1:150,000. Those two are completely equal in the eyes of many Feminists, apparently. You can spend all your time relaying the experiences of that one female in great detail, without even the slightest nod to the individual experiences of those 150,000 other human beings that were involved, many of whom perished in the process. Because VAGINA.
Yep. That’s right. Telling the story of one woman on D-Day is an attack on all the men involved. Hell, let’s take that further. Any story told about any individual person involved in a collective effort should be considered a grave insult to all the others. Saving Private Ryan is an insult to all soldiers who weren’t Private Ryan!
3) LEGO is launching a new series of scientist minifigures – only this time, they’re women!
On the Justice for Men & Boys (and the women who love them) website, British MRA and would-be politician Mike Buchanan sniffs that this move by LEGO belongs in the
‘You couldn’t make this s*** up!’ file. Doubtless it will sell well to hatchet-faced mothers determined to quash any signs of femininity in their unfortunate daughters.
Apparently acknowledging the existence of female scientists is somehow an injustice to men and boys?
4) Older women sometimes have sex with younger men.
There’s a certain kind of man who likes to loudly declare just which women – or categories of women – he “wouldn’t bang.” Our old friend Heartiste – the white-nationalist, purple-prose-writing pickup guru – is a member of a slightly smaller subgroup: he gets angry when other men have sex with the women he’s declared unsuitable, a group which apparently includes all but 0.1% of women his age and older.
In a recent post, Heartiste lambastes the dating site CougarLife.com as a symptom of our “rapid cultural collapse.” Its crime? Matching up “mangy cougars” and their “dusty muffs” with “inexperienced younger men hauling a knapsack of blue balls.”
While Heartiste directs most of his hate at the so-called cougars themselves – for the crime of having sex while female and forty plus – he’s indignant that younger men, in his mind, allow themselves to resort to
the shabby hole of a bottom shelf jezebel to alleviate your incel. … a tepid squirt of pallid pleasure in exchange for your dignity and psychologically distressing confirmation that this is the best you might ever do.
Apparently the idea that a younger man and an older women might actually enjoy having sex with one another is too much for his fragile misogynist mind to take.
Indeed, it’s hard not to wonder if Heartiste actually likes sex at all – or if his own alleged lovemaking prowess extends much beyond a “tepid squirt.” This, after all, is a guy who thinks going down on a woman is “beta,” because burying your face in what he calls that “fetid, humid mess” is sort of icky, and might lead her to think that you think she’s hot.
And last but not least:
5) Some people are trying to get colleges to take rape more seriously.
In a column in the Washington Post, George Will sniffs that colleges, by addressing what he calls “the supposed campus epidemic of rape” are bestowing upon “’sexual assault’ victims” a “coveted status that confers privileges,” thus encouraging others to jump aboard the victimhood express.
Others have already torn apart Will’s argument pretty thoroughly. So I’ll just note one not-so-little irony: the headline for Will’s column, as it ran in the Post, was “Colleges become the victims of progressivism.”
Why is it that the people who most loudly condemn the supposed “cult of victimhood” are the first to claim that they’re the ones who are really being victimized – by “progressives,” by feminists, by female tennis coaches, by stories about women in war, by LEGO figurines of female scientists, by women they don’t like having consensual sex, by anti-rape activists trying to create a climate in which more than 12% of rape survivors on campuses feel safe enough to report their rapes?
@Ally S. Shit. I should’ve looked that one up. Wikipedia, brace yourself!
enhanced vibes,
My apologies for the error, but yes…it seems to me that FREEZE PEACH according to right wing types means they can say whatever horrifically offensive shit they want without consequences and any critique thereof is PC POLICE,,CENSORSHIP – which apparently is not protected speech. Fascinating. Unfortunately, Scalia would probably dig this idea.
WRT “Patriots,” they love the idea of the Constitution, but understanding constitutional law requires a sense of nuance that they reject in favor of a black and white, good versus evil view of pretty much everything. They prefer blanket statements like “it’s a free country!!!!1!eleven!” Whatever the fuck that means.
Don’t even get me started on their fascinating interpretation of “freedom of religion.” (RWers, when you say “freedom of religion,” to what exactly are you referring? The Establishment Clause? Free Exercise Clause? [derp derp argle bargle] [malfunction])
And speaking of religious and government, none of them seem to recall that the Revolution/Constitutional Convention took place during the Enlightenment Era and the influence that had on both the Founders, many of whom were Deist rather than Christian, and the Founding documents. No, no. We’re a Christian nation!!
Did my comment get eaten on accident or did I accidentally say something that got it sent to moderation? My bad!
Did anyone mention Hedy Lamarr yet? Doesn’t get much more famous than that.
@emilygoddess
Awesome! I’ve registered the domain name, and I’l start working on the code this weekend. For content, there will be a lot of research for sure, but I’ll design it so anyone who’s keen can contribute.
That’s Hedley!
Citation or GTFO. We don’t run with that shit here.
@Winter Walker: As a former history major I can tell you that, yes, archaeology is a science, and that’s precisely what’s wrong with it.
@babylawyer
UGH, I know exactly how you feel about all of that. Despite conservative justices saying how much they despise judicial activism that is exactly what the SCOTUS conservatives did in the DOMA decision by voting against it as though its ok for the federal govt to discriminate, eejits every last one of them.
Conservatives and liberals think very differently about issues, as you pointed out conservatives view issues in a very black and white fashion. That is why the blatant lying by their media and own politicians resonates with them so long as they feel they are on the “right” side of the issue. If youre into politics like I am you may find Moral Foundations Theory to be interesting, see link below. Im also posting a link for the article on why people vote republican. I read all the responses by academicians and it was a darn good read. I think liberals will have a hard row to sow in the coming elections because there js so much angry hate on the right right now driven solely by fear lf our country’s growing diversity, which i find truly scary.
http://www.moralfoundations.org/
http://edge.org/conversation/what-makes-vote-republican
scientists–Dr. Frances Kelsey is kind of famous. She’s the person responsible for the fact that thalidomide was never approved in the U.S.
raccoons and tree rats (squirrels)–I’ve had both of them living in either my house (just squirrels) or my carriage house/garage (both squirrels and a raccoon). Sorry that you’ve experienced that too, takshak.
Luckily, I never encountered the raccoon and didn’t even realize it had been living there until after it left (as a result of some work I had done on the carriage house). The squirrels are gray squirrels, the same ones that are an introduced species in the UK and are killing the native red squirrels there. I like wildlife, but when something is living in my house it’s no longer wildlife, it’s vermin.
chest/body hair–I had a mild preference for chest hair that has become a strong preference for chest hair due to some combination of 3 factors: it seems to have become unfashionable (and I’m a contrarian and also do not like for people to feel obligated to remove hair and told that their body is gross if they don’t); my fiance has a fair amount of chest hair; my fiance is somewhat self-conscious about his body hair and that makes me feel protective of him.
Fiance and I are making our way through Season 2 of Once Upon a Time. Fiance said about Colin O’Donohue/Hook, surprised, “He’s as hairy as I am!” 🙂 Colin O’Donohue is a good-looking man, IMO.
Mikey: Maybe LEGO should inspire young wannabe female scientists with a range of modern era ‘famous’ scientists rather than ‘female’ scientists? Hmm, how might that work out? How many famous female scientists in the modern era can YOU name, in the wake of quite a few decades of equal opportunity? Yeah, I got the same number.
Nope: off the top of my head (no google) Rosalyn Yallow (who discovered aspects of diabetes which saved the lives of lots of men: earned her a Nobel Prize).
Barbara McClintock (who pretty much solved where Corn (maize) came from, by teasing out its genetics, and finding the gap; then inferring the gap was evidence of a “fortunate monster”.
Maria Mayer: Nobel Prize for the Shell/Nuclear theory for modelling atom.
Esther Conwell, who helped create the information age with work on semiconductors, now working on how electrical charges move through DNA; which has potential for making it easier diagnose/treat cancers. It might also make nano-computing possible.
So that’s four. Being up on the subjects that interest me means I see lots of research done by women. Those were the one’s I recalled under pressure.
Oh, also, WRT scientists–I’m having trouble thinking of any scientist, male or female, who’s both recent enough to be the beneficiary of affirmative-action type programs (which seemed to be what whasisname was getting at) and famous solely because of their work and not because of their work in media/science education (like Bill Nye and Neil DeGrass Tyson). Jane Goodall is the most recent truly famous scientist who’s known primarily for her work, and even so, she’s spend much of her career doing awareness-raising and activism. And I don’t think she’s quite recent enough to be a beneficiary of affirmative action?
paul: See you are just trying to paint an entire movement with one brush. The only relevant, on-par reply would be for someone like me to say ‘why would i want to ally myself with a bunch of man-hating lesbians’.. When we all know that’s not what all femenists are like.
I’ll bite, where are the MRAs who don’t hate women.
@david – I can’t… oh.. so even though, “we all know that’s not what all [MRAs] are like”, you don’t know it, because you admit you can’t find any.
Got it. You are a liar.
closetpuritan–Yeah, science is so big now that it is hard to separate out individual scientists of any genders. However, for some important recent female scientists (i.e., since the fifties), I’d like to name Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, who won a nobel for her work sorting out the developmental genetics of fruit flies, and Tomoko Ohta, who is the theorist behind nearly neutral theory, a foundational theory in evolutionary genetics.
The reason you may not have heard of them may be that their work is more inside-baseball biology, though Nüsslein-Volhard won a nobel and nearly neutral theory is behind a lot of genomics analysis.
In the more infamous category, the lead scientist behind the recent claim that acid baths can create stem cells is female, but there is increasing doubt over those experiments.
If you want the more rank-and-file female scientists… may I suggest you look at your local research university’s staff page? Or open up a scientific journal. Here’s one from an open-source journal with at least two female authors, and several authors with names I couldn’t use to determine gender (like Jamie):
http://www.particleandfibretoxicology.com/content/11/1/28/abstract
And that was the top result, too.
Thanks, wordsp1nner–but my point wasn’t really about personally being able to find famous female scientists, but that the way the media climate is, I don’t think there are a lot of recent scientists who are so famous for their work alone that they’re known even by people who follow the news a lot. (Follow the news in general, as opposed to following science specifically, even if they do read the Science section in the MSM now and then.) One point I didn’t make before but that I did kinda have in mind is that I think it takes a while before we can determine how great an impact a particular scientist makes/made.
There were of course lots of women involved in D-Day who didn’t land, but nevertheless risked their lives.
There were plenty active in the French Resistance, helping prepare for it, for example. France is only just beginning to acknowledge their contribution.
http://theconversation.com/70-years-after-d-day-women-of-the-french-resistance-are-finally-being-recognised-27598
About the same number of civilians as military died in the first day of the landing.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10877137/D-Day-French-torn-over-criminal-British-and-American-D-Day-bombings-of-Caen.html
Slightly off-topic, but here’s something else causing a subset of privileged man-children to lose their minds: The critically-acclaimed indie game [i]Gone Home[/i] is on sale on Steam for the next 24 hours, and of course all of the gamerbros and fedoralings are coming out of the woodwork to throw mantrums about how it’s a horrible game that oppresses men. A non-violent game with a female main character? OMG MISANDRY!
I can’t go into too much detail without spoiling the story, but I suspect if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll quite enjoy it. Consider checking it out, if you like computer games. (I’m not affiliated with Steam or the game’s developers — I just think it’s a great game.)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/232430/
closetpuritan: yeah, I figured that. I just never miss a chance to introduce people to Nüsslein-Volhard. The part about checking papers was for the trolls/other readers.
@ PocketNerd
Thanks for the rec! I put it on my wishlist 😀
For once, a Mel Brooks reference I actually get!
On the topic of women in science, and how they just naturally don’t want to do STEM stuff, I recently learned that 70% of Iran’s STEM students are women. Must be a lot of misandric state grants going around.
And Mikey, once again, women don’t “get” to quit once they have kids. They are usually pressured to. And anyway, raising kids is work – it’s just not paid work. Such a cushy deal, trading your career for unpaid labor, huh? Really, men should demand to be the ones who quit when they have kids, and force those lazy, bonbon-eating wimmens to stay in the workforce. You first!
(I’m sure Mikey’s response to the note about Iran will be totally fair and not at all Islamophobic, orientalist or just plain xenophobic).
Art-game sale with a side-order of dudebro tears? It’s like christmas has come early. 😀 Thanks Pocket Nerd!
wordsp1nner–OK, cool. I looked up both of those ladies, they seem pretty awesome! I had heard of some of the work involved in the fruit fly genetic research, but not much about the individual scientists involved. The nearly neutral theory I hadn’t heard of, but was interesting.
A female scientist I like Sarah Hrdy; the main reason I know about her is because of her books, which are quite good. (Media presence!) She has also done basic behavioral research on primates; her books both talk about science and advance feminism by challenging things like the idea that mothers are/should be the sole childcare providers for their children, or that it’s “natural” for mothers to stay home with their children all day. She also talks about how our cultural assumptions can influence and bias science. (Example)
Everyone must play Gone Home. There are no puzzles so don’t worry if you’re not “good” at computer games.
At least in circles where people know tennis, the skeptics regarding Murray/Mauresmo were not initially manifesting prejudice (I’ve only see the early reactions). The general line among those who don’t think this will help him much is that her strengths don’t match up well to his weaknesses, although I think anyone coming in after such an obvious choice to coach Murray as Ivan Lendl would be taking on a little extra challenge. Still, even if the partnership doesn’t last beyond the grass season, it’s nice to see AM so much more universally appreciated in tennis circles than she was when she was playing, and at least they’ve already outlasted the Sharapova/Connors debacle.
I just hope the issue won’t be too groan-inducing during the Wimbledon coverage.