VIDEO: Misogyny Theater: Stefan Molyneux explains why women are the root of all evil

It honestly worries me that Molyneux has a pretty big following….

Wow. Words fail me.

I know. Maybe the solution to “women choose assholes,” which creates all the evil in the world, is to use a technology which allows two women to create a child (always a daughter) by combining two eggs. No sperm = so sons = no assholes for women to choose from = no evil in the world. Problem solved! Yay! Oh, wait….one problem. Most women like men and lots of men are not assholes.

Would not want a world without David. 🙂

His hypothesis is predicated on there being an asshole gene or set of genes that can be bred out. Unsurprisingly he offers no evidence of this.

Molyneux started podcasting by setting up his laptop in his car and sort of rambling on his way to work. He did hundreds of hours like that and had done thousands of hours more or less rambling on a theme for an hour at a time since then. You might say his format of choice lends itself to repetition.

His central fallacy here is assuming that women’s choices are free and are the overriding factor throughout history in determining reproduction. He speaks as though there were no cultural context which acts to normalize abuse, as though there were no pre-existing power structures which normalize abuse, as though people’s preferences and actions aren’t shaped by history and society. It’s the same sort of blindness to how human societies actually work that leads him and others to think anarcho-capitalism is a good idea.

It’s sad to see having a daughter hasn’t cooled off his sexist tendencies; he’s gotten way worse with regards to women since I listened to his podcasts.

Wow, his theory conveniently absolves “assholes” of any responsibility for their behaviours. Not to mention, that just because your dad is an “asshole” doesn’t automatically mean you will be an “asshole”, nor does an “asshole” son indicate an “asshole” dad.

Unlike other MRAs I read about here, I had actually heard of this guy before, maybe from reading stuff about libertarian politics. Well, it does my heart good to know he’ll never have a national political career if he’s saying this stuff in public.

@Glenn

Gee, you seem nice.

Women choose and set the conditions of reproduction in large part in western society. They largely decide who they will have sex with and who they will reproduce with while men largely propose and wait for women to dispose.

Do you have any knowledge of history? Allow me to enlighten you. For most of human history, it was the FATHER of the woman who chose, for political and economic reasons, the husband of his daughter. It was always a deal made betwen MEN, since a woman and her virginity were considered ASSETS that could be traded for other ASSETS. In many parts of the world today, similar values and traditions are held. In some Middle Eastern countries, “honor” killings are still given, at most, a slap on the wrist. In case you do not know what they are, it is the father or brother, usually, of a young woman KILLING that woman because she may have feelings for or a relationship with a man other that the one DADDY wants to “give” her to. So much for women always being the ones who choose.

Oh, and leave us not forget the ancient custom in many places, including England, of abduction of a woman and raping her, thereby giving the rapist LEGAL OWNERSHIP of her.

Feh. You and your “philosophies” are not worth the “paper” they are written on. One more example of whiney baby-men refusing responsibility for their own misery and blaming women for it.

1. Do you even understand Stefan’s argument? It’s actually fundamentally based on a truth that any anthropologist or sociologist or biologist or geneticist will tell you.

…which would be why no anthropologists, sociologists, biologists or geneticists say it, just him. Yes, that explains everything.

So, either women are sentient humans making the choice to reproduce with “assholes” or they are not fully sentient human beings.

Fun logic learning time!

Most people bungle ‘begging the question’ because we tend to use the colloquial form in speech. “That begs the question, where was the butler?”

But ‘begging the question,’ as a fallacy, is when you assume one portion of your argument to be true, and then proceed from there. It comes from formal debates, where you can ask your opponent if you can just, for the sake of argument, assume one point you’re debating as true–so you can get to the real meat.

With that fun teachable moment out of the way… look! A prime example!

Let me repeat it!

So, either women are sentient humans making the choice to reproduce with “assholes” or they are not fully sentient human beings.

I bet he thought he was being clever when he did that.

Frankly, I would really enjoy diagramming the hell out of that. Soooo much.

So, either women are sentient humans making the choice to reproduce with “assholes” or they are not fully sentient human beings.

“See, either you admit women are making the choice I say they’ve been making, or obviously women are incapable of making choices. As simple as that.”

So simple.

Is it obvious to everybody else that this piece knocked me for a loop and has me laughing out loud? This was so much that I just can’t stop laughing.

This one line reminds me of trolls of old. It’s PERFECT.

Do you even understand Stefan’s argument? It’s actually fundamentally based on a truth that any anthropologist or sociologist or biologist or geneticist will tell you.

Hahaha. No. I just an article about 10 ideas that scientists wish people would stop misusing. You’ve hit a few of them here.

http://io9.com/10-scientific-ideas-that-scientists-wish-you-would-stop-1591309822

Learned vs. innate

One of my favorite [misuses] is the idea of behavior being “learned vs. innate” or any of the other nature-nurture versions of this. The first question I often get when I talk about a behavior is whether it’s “genetic” or not, which is a misunderstanding because ALL traits, all the time, are the result of input from the genes and input from the environment. Only a difference between traits, and not the trait itself, can be genetic or learned — like if you have identical twins reared in different environments and they do something different (like speak different languages), then that difference is learned. But speaking French or Italian or whatever isn’t totally learned in and of itself, because obviously one has to have a certain genetic background to be able to speak at all.

This is why the notion that the world will be peaceful and utopic in a generation’s time if women only stop breeding with assholes is absurd.

Gene

Typically “gene” is misused most when followed by “for”. There’s two problems with this. We all have genes for hemoglobin, but we don’t all have sickle cell anemia. Different people have different versions of the hemoglobin gene, called alleles. There are hemoglobin alleles which are associated with sickle cell diseases, and others that aren’t. So, a gene refers to a family of alleles, and only a few members of that family, if any, are associated with diseases or disorders. The gene isn’t bad – trust me, you won’t live long without hemoglobin – though the particular version of hemoglobin that you have could be problematic.

I worry most about the popularization of the idea that when a genetic variation is correlated with something, it is the “gene for” that something. The language suggests that “this gene causes heart disease”, when the reality is usually, “people that have this allele seem to have a slightly higher incidence of heart disease, but we don’t know why, and maybe there are compensating advantages to this allele that we didn’t notice because we weren’t looking for them”.

There isn’t an asshole gene. Even if there was, there’s no guarantee it would express. This means you could pass asshole genes down to your kid without being an asshole yourself.

Survival of the fittest

Topping my list would be “survival of the fittest.” First, these are not actually Darwin’s own words, and secondly, people have a misconception about what “fittest” means. Relatedly, there’s major confusion about evolution in general, including the persistent idea that evolution is progressive and directional (or even deliberate on the part of organisms; people don’t get the idea of natural selection), or that all traits must be adaptive (sexual selection is a thing! And so are random mutations!).

People aren’t genetically engineering the species through mating. If there are asshole genes they could still survive or resurface because of random mutations.

You don’t even deal with the larger parts of Stefan’s argument. First, he did an entire video on DV stats and what’s very clear from the data is that women are the primary abusers of children, not men. He believes that violent adult males are created in childhood by abuse, hence him creating the chain of accountability. And that in the case of male abuse, that women who marry violent men invite abuse into children’s lives, ensuring they will grow up to be violent. None of this is terribly controversial or hateful. Why does it shock you all here so much?

How is this not hateful and controversial. What you and Molyneux are saying is that if a woman marries an abuser, it is her fault that the kids become assholes. The responsibility is taken off the abusive man.

However, if the mother is abusive, she is at fault if the kids grow up to be violent assholes. Using Molyneux’s logic it should be the father’s fault for marrying a violent asshole. But no. It’s always the woman’s fault.

Oh, look. Another asshat MRA spouting the same tired, dumbfuck ideas that anyone with half a brain and google access can debunk in seconds. Some things never change…