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?
Kim, most of the Alaska Zoo is native critters! Most of them are rescues, who wouldn’t survive in the wild, but are still gorgeous and fuzzy.
There’s even an orphaned moose enclosure filled with baby moose and muskox in the spring.
There’s also a large animal center out of town, with all sorts of beasties.
In the interior, no zoos, but a large animal arctic research center with lots of caribou, reindeer, muskox, and the occasional yak that got imported and dumped with them.
Alas, no raccoons.
Sorry, had to blarf about the Alaska zoo. It and the Seward sealife center are kind of my favs.
San Diego’s safari park is also pretty awesome, but they don’t do the native critters.
Funny how all those scientismicky dudes tell us that male violence is really totes okay because chimps, just like us. Science!!!! I tells ya. They seem never to mention that in chimp groups the most popular mating partners among these chest beating, uber competitive, fierce winner male chimps are the older, more experienced female chimps.
Makes me wonder, makes me ponder thoughtfully. Why is it so?
@takshak
If I am ever in Toronto, I will make sure I go check out the zoo.
@pallygirl
What kind of possums are they?
This is an awesome idea, and I can make it happen. 🙂
Re male beauty: I actually don’t mind chest hair– it’s fun to run my fingers through. As for facial structure– well, they don’t have to be square-jawed fellows but given that some of my attraction to my husband was driven by his resemblance to Vincent Price, I’m not sure it’s all about the pretty boys either…
@Kim horrible Australian possums, that are ruining our bush and killing our native wildlife. And they spread TB to cattle.
Makes me wonder, makes me ponder thoughtfully. Why is it so?
I hope you said that in your best Julius Sumner Miller voice.
/jokeforpeopleofacertainage
We did. You aussies are at war with them.
As far as I can tell from 5000 miles away, raccoons are basically smart cats with thumbs.
EXTERMINATE THEM BEFORE THEY EXTERMINATE YOU!!!!
Three guesses why they so strongly want to preserve “femininity” and are so afraid of it being “quashed.”
The entitlement reminds me of those douches who gripe about International Women’s Day. A quick search will reveal that, yes, there IS an International Men’s Day. But that’s not what they actually care about. They just want women to be denied rights/recognition.
We play a game like that with a kickball and call it Four Square. I mostly remember it having an ever-increasing elaborate set of house rules.
Oops, everyone else already mentioned Four Square. Sorry.
@emilygoddess
If I was to make that “animal directory” site you requested, would you object to it being called Animals for Emily? It has a nice cadence to it. 🙂
Re: foursquare
is that what the foursquare app is named after? It never made any sense to me before today.
Prairie dog cuteness at my local zoo
“Why is it so?”
I got that reference! [/steverogers]
Back to lurking 🙂
Hmmm we played handball here in California, but it was this elaborate racketball-like game done against a wall and played with a small, hard, rubber ball. I remember it being hella popular with the Hispanic kids, so I’d bet our particular version is a Mexican import.
A game similar to four square is wall ball. Instead of a square, you bounce the ball off a wall. Otherwise the rules are the same.
@Binjabreel, this sounds like the game you’re describing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_alai
I want to pronounce this as “jay ah-lay” but I think that’s wrong.
@Michael Buchanan: I’m a woman. I’m a scientist. I’m not famous, but I have a PhD in chemistry and 8 peer-reviewed articles to my name and a patent.
The first time I saw the English expression “clutch the pearls”, I somehow intuitively assumed it referred to touching your balls for security. Later, on Pharyngula, it was eventually revealed that it actually refers to Catholic prayer beads (which are totally not a thing where I live).
Now I’m not sure any more.
Oh, I thought it referred to old women who had pearl necklaces, and would put their hands to their necklaces when bad news was received. With a lot of “oh my”ing.
Is it a reference to Catholic prayer beads? I know it’s a reference to the image of prudish woman clutching her pearl necklace in shock over something once salacious, now commonplace like when your elderly maiden aunt gasps, “Oh my!” when the topic of sex comes up.
Yeah, I always associated it with twinset-and-pearls images, though it has been used to mean a rosary, and goes back before twinsets and pearls were around anyway.
Late to the women in science party, but Professor Giovanna Mallucci leads the team that recently made one of the biggest breakthroughs ever in the field of neuroscience; they successfully stopped brain cell death in mice with prion disease. The implications are huge. No one has ever been able to completely prevent neurodegeneration in any living creature before. This is potentially the first step on the path to preventing Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, etc.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-24462699
Prof Roger Morris (A MAN), from King’s College London, said: “This finding, I suspect, will be judged by history as a turning point in the search for medicines to control and prevent Alzheimer’s disease.”
This happened last year. Do you think that’s important and modern enough for Mikey B?
This happened last year. Do you think that’s important and modern enough for Mikey B?
Nope. Nothing ever can be because Mikey B’s reasoning goes like this:
1. Lego are making female scientist figures.
2. This might encourage women to become scientists.
3.Clever & successful women, especially in science, make my boner sad
4. Nothing must make my boner sad
5. Lego must be stopped from making my boner sad.
6. I can’t think of a single famous female scientist.
7. I’m always right so there cannot be a single famous female scientist.
8. If I say Lego should make a range of famous female scientist figures, they won’t be able to (because there isn’t a single one) and my boner will stop being sad.
9. Result!
10. People are telling me I’m wrong, that there are famous female scientists. People are making my boner sad. SADBONERALARM! SADBONERALARM! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!