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?
@katz just purchased it. What a nice cheap game. 🙂
@katz
It’s on sale right now (for another 4 hours) so I grabbed it.
Thus Spake Zarakatz:
It’s also not reflex-dependent, so don’t worry if you don’t have the reaction time of a 14-year-old on an espresso bender.
That’s another reason I’d love to see more games like Gone Home — both in narrative content and game design, it’s quite welcoming to demographics who wouldn’t normally consider themselves “gamers.”
Direct sale puts you though Humble Bundle and you get it DRM free. Which I support, even though I tend to buy my games with DRM dumbdowns. It’s the principle that counts. I must purchase it for Mr pallygirl (pallyguy?).
Scroll down to the bottom of this page. Basically, you end up buying it through Humble Bundle, which is the main site I support these days.
Pocket Nerd, I hadn’t read up thread enough to realise you were the person to recommend the game originally. Thanks for doing that. 🙂
@pallygirl: You’re most welcome!
And for climate scientists, there’s
Jennifer Francis (one of my favourite people)http://climatecrocks.com/2012/09/22/the-weekend-wonk-jennifer-francis-on-arctic-sea-ice/,
geologist Maureen Raymo, http://climatecrocks.com/2014/04/09/new-video-maureen-raymo-welcome-to-the-pliocene/,
Julie Brigham-Gette – great work at Lake El’gygytgyn http://phys.org/news/2012-06-arctic-climate-vulnerable-thought-linked.html
meteorologist Judith Curry
and dozens of others whose names escape me just now.
Marine biologist and ecologist marinerachel…..
Just going to point out that Florence Nightingale was, of course, one of the first applied statisticians. 🙂
Marine biologist sounds like a dream job – do you scuba dive or to go exotic locations?
Hah, no! Like, 1/100,000 marine biologists actually swims with dolphins and most of them work for SeaWorld (bleh.) The rest of them test water samples in the Yukon or somesuch. I’m still in school and the full extent of my research to date is benthic sample collecting for analysis of invertebrate communities. That means taking scoops of dirt from the sea floor so you can look at what squishy critters live in them at what densities. Very glamourous, I assure you.
I’m from the Pacific Northwest and consider our kelp forests more beautiful than any tropical locale. They’re not as pastel in colour and the animals aren’t “pretty” like the ones in Finding Nemo but they’re just as varied and beautiful. My passion is orca. The likelihood anyone ever gets to study cetaceans though much less the cetacean species of their choice is minute. My interest in marine aquaculture stems from my home and love of orca. The endangered Southern Resident Orca population, who live in the Salish sea, are salmonid specialists. They consume 97% salmon and 78% of that is Chinook. It’s larger and more energy-rich than other species. They utilise their echolocation to determine the shape and density of a specific salmon they’re hunting which tells them whether it’s Chinook or not. They are picky eaters. Chinook salmon abundance levels reflect survival and recovery of this killer whale population.
It’s in their personal and our ecological best interest to allow these two species to thrive. The orca need the wild Chinook salmon. We don’t. In order to discourage people from purchasing wild-caught Chinook salmon I want to educate them on the harm harvesting wild Chinook causes to our resident killer whales and give them an alternative. That’s why I want to develop ecologically sound aquaculture practices. Yes, in its current form, fish farms do some ecological harm though it’s blown way out of proportion by non-scientists. That’s why we collect and analyse benthic samples around them and measure the time required for these sites to recover. Our marine ecosystem’s apex predator is being KILLED by our choice to eat wild Chinook salmon though! That literally destroys our ecosystem. So I want to establish a ecologically friendly marine aquaculture system that enables people who simply MUST have their Chinook to do so without killing killer whales or burying lobster habitats in fish poop.
There are still individuals who are convinced “BUT IT’S NOT NATURAL” and therefore conclude farmed fish can’t POSSIBLY be nutritious and delicious or ecologically friendly. I hate them. They’re stupid, selfish assholes. They don’t have to eat farmed fish but, environmentally and ethically, they have no right to be eating wild Chinook. Their satisfaction is not of greater importance than an ecosystem’s and animal population’s survival.
I’m also appalled by the standards of what constitutes “sustainable seafood” certification. They are horribly lax and do not leave any room for long-term survival of the species they’re intended to protect. I want them to be held to higher standards, recovery standards, not “sustainable for the next five years” standards. That’s another battled though.
Strangely I’m not SCUBA licensed, just a free-diver. I’m determined to get my certification this summer. My asthma needs to be well managed before any licensing facility will risk me though.
And I just gave myself a shout out. That should be a douchebag merit badge. Someone, get me some Axe body spray!
Wow. Words.
Marketable: I didn’t know our local orcas only ate Chinook! I will avoid wild Chinook in the future.
Do you have an opinion on the GMO salmon that’s being developed?
Wow, your autocorrect hates you today.
As for female scientists, I can’t remember her name off the top of my head, but the five stages of grief? That’s a woman’s research.
Kubler-Ross, but everyone knows that social scientists aren’t real scientists.
Thank you! But yes, silly me, my mistake.
Alright, I have bought Gone Home! And finally created a Steam account. This will be the first non-JRPG game I’ve played in quite a while, besides Puzzle Pirates, which I come back to briefly every now and then. Oh, and I did also play that Sushi Cat game that I think I found out about from comments here (though that one wasn’t my favorite).
Oh yeah, Argenti, I’ve been meaning to ask you–Do you have contact info for the admins at loaches.com? I can’t get my forum account fully activated. (I think I signed up in November.) I tried sending emails to the addresses that start with comments@ and shafer@ but never receive a response, so I don’t think anyone is currently checking them–and in order to view the admins’ info page, you have to sign in. And when I try to sign in, I get a message of “The specified username is currently inactive. If you have problems activating your account, please contact a board administrator.” Well, that’s what I’m trying to do!
Honestly, EMS is a bit more exciting than marine bio. I got lucky, and got to do some undergrad work on starry flounder (Platyrichthyes stellatus is I’m recalling the spelling right) and did a seal necropsy on a 7 year old frozen ring seal born before I was.
For the curious, there are 10 currently accepted ecotypes of orca. The pacific residents are fish eaters, the transients are mammal eaters, and the offshore are mysterious and potentially shark eaters. 🙂
The North Atlantic has similar groups, and the Antarctic has two dwarf types, a mid size, and a big guy — we know some of them dare seal and penguin specialists, but we don’t know too much, yet.
Some ongoing debate about whether we should split them up into different species… Still.
Sorry, bit of love for orcas. If marine mammalogy weren’t so intimidatingly expensive and comparative… I know what I’d be doing.
One of the southcental pods in Alaska learned how to snag fish off long lines, and there’s some people tracking the behavior. I seems like they’re teaching other resident pods to be sneaky. 🙂
Fisherman hate it though. Also, most of the people on my campus love pinnipeds, so there was a lot of Orca hate. If you want to spend your life studying sealions, it’s hard to be sympathetic to a critter that literally plays fluke-ball with juvenile sea-lions on occasion, even if that’s only one group of the critter.
They’re so cheeky. I’ve seen them take a bite out of a salmon on the line, the other half gets reeled in and they just bob about the boat, checking out the fishers, waiting for the fishers to give them the rest.
I watch the southern residents bat around harbour porpoises until they’re dying, then leave them. Pulled a dying harbour porpoise into the zodiac one day after they’d finished playing with it. The final blow was ripping it’s tail flukes off. :/
California’s stock of sea otters still get the prize for ‘vilest marine mammal behavior’, by a long shot. You don’t want to know. It’s awful.
Fortunately, no observations of that behavior in Alaskan sea otter populations.
Oh gods, why, why did I google california sea otters being assholes? Why?
Really, don’t do it.
Well, I wasn’t GONNA google it, but then I thought, “how bad could it be?” Bad. Don’t do it.
Closetpuritan — I don’t, sorry. I’ll ask the BF when he gets home, one of his ex’s is a big loach fan, maybe we can get you the info that way?
As for otters, I saw a video not long of…you know what, never mind. It was horrid and we’ll leave it at that.
@marinerachel: aha, now I understand your nym. Thanks for giving the detailed post, it was really interesting and I am pleased I asked because I figured I had completely the wrong idea.
Never apologise for writing a interesting long post. And wow, you have an interesting field.
And now I can feel smug for being a vegetarian (ducks and runs).
Sorry I didn’t reply back until now, I had some pain last night, had taken a codeine and was waiting for it to kick in before going back to bed. A single 60mg tab of slow releasing codeine is wonderful for pain.