So there’s a hilariously alarmist post in the Men’s Rights subreddit at the moment in which one concerned MRA called aegorrivers offers his ideas on How to avoid paternity fraud and toxic relationships in general while still reproducing.
The post starts off with a lot of nonsense about allegedly rampant paternity fraud – indeed, it’s such clear nonsense that even a few MRAs feel obliged to correct him in the comments – and then moves on to describe just how terrible life is for men who (horror of horrors!) find themselves in relationships with women:
On top of this, relationships in general seem to be a problem for men, as men are routinely arrested over false domestic violence and rape claims, even when they are the ones being beaten and raped. Divorce courts are heavily biased in favor of women, and men usually lose custody, end up paying alimony and child support, are thrown in jail with serial killers and rapists and are left to be raped by the inmates if they cannot pay.
He concludes that the only reason men are willing to put up with all this is that
women are the gatekeepers to reproduction. This is the key power that women have always had over men, and they will continue to have it as long as we continue to allow ourselves to suffer just to maybe have the chance to reproduce (assuming she doesn’t cuckold you).
Weird. For a bunch of guys whose only interest in women allegedly stems from a desire to make little copies of themselves, (straight, cis) Men’s Rights Redditors sure spend a lot of time trying to figure out how not to pay for or indeed have anything to do with any children that might result from their (ugh) amorous adventures.
Be that as it may, aegorrivers has a solution: Hire a cheap surrogate mom in India!
With this reproductive strategy, you not only avoid all of the hazards of relationships and divorce, but also can guarantee that the child is your own child (put a condition in the contract that says that all payments are on the condition of a positive paternity test), get your pick of the litter in terms of attractiveness and intelligence (just pick an awesome egg donor!), have no problems with mothers trying to alienate your children as the mothers will have no right to them (some states do try to pull shenanigans on this one, but just don’t hire a woman in that state and go to other states to create economic pressure on the states that do this).
But it’s the next part that really got my attention. Emphasis added:
There is even research that is currently attempting to develop an artificial womb. This has succeeded with goats. (http://abcnews.go.com/US/straight-single-men-wanting-kids-turn-surrogacy/story?id=16520916). Perhaps in the future, we won’t even need surrogate mothers.
Goats? That’s right. You heard it here first: MRAs are planning on raising an army of goat children, hideous monsters that are half-MRA, half goat.
And aegorrivers, like some MRA Dr. Moreau, wants to be in the thick of it:
I also will be supporting the artificial womb research by attempting to pursue a PhD in a lab that does this work. I encourage all MRAs to pursue STEM degrees and do this as well. …
This has lifted a great weight off of my shoulders. I no longer feel as much pressure to conform to society and don’t feel as bad about not being able to attract women. I think this might be the key to ripping their power away from them.
Clearly, feminists need to come up with a way to counter the coming MRA man-goat apocalypse.
Might I suggest … Catpeople?
NOTE: Thanks to the AgainstMensRights subreddit for highlighting aegorrivers’ post, though the AMRers don’t seem to have realized the full implications of his argument.
NOTE TO EXTREMELY LITERAL MRAs: I’m aware that aegorrivers is not literally advocating raising an army of goat children. I am pretending that I have misconstrued his already silly argument for comedic effect. Likewise, I am not literally advocating that feminists start breeding an army of human-cat hybrids.
I doesn’t seem right that women, in particular, can make more money by renting their bodies than by renting their brains. Hmmm. There’s something about that sentence that doesn’t seem quite right.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough that by “which is, uh, fucked up” I meant that what’s fucked up is that some women turn to selling their bodies out of a need for money that a desk job isn’t going to provide (at least not entry level jobs anyways)?
@Argenti Aertheri: Oh, I understood what you were saying quite well, and you’re absolutely right. The question is not whether selling yourself for sexual use is bad; of course it is. I was just musing about whether selling yourself for a mindless low level job (as I did for many years) is all that much better. You almost have to accept that sex work is dishonorable in order to believe that being a low-paid drone is less demeaning.
And not all prostitution involves sex. Many corporate lawyers and lobbyist, for example, earn large salaries engaging in a high-class form of intellectual prostitution. They are hardly more honorable than a woman who has to be a stripper to survive.
I believe what you’re trying to get at is that the fact that these are the only well paid options for women indicates rather clearly that society considers our bodies to have more value than our brains.
“This fantasy says nothing at all about women, but a lot about the men who have the fantasy.”
Considering it’s men who are the ones put out about being friendzoned, strange how they fantasize about stuffing up the women’s game by cutting us out of the reproduction picture altogether. Seems to me the ones who want access to the reproductive gateway for fun and manpoints, shouldn’t be making themselves even more irrelevant to a woman’s life than they are now.
Because no sensible woman would sleep with someone who uses ‘friendzone’ in earnest, expecting to enjoy the experience!
Cassandra — thank you, as yes, that’s much closer to what my brain was saying than its sidetrack into occupational hazards!
GrumpyOldMan —
“The question is not whether selling yourself for sexual use is bad; of course it is.”
It is? Because I could’ve sworn some people do sex work because they like the job. Which is, you know, not a bad thing.
“And not all prostitution involves sex. Many corporate lawyers and lobbyist, for example, earn large salaries engaging in a high-class form of intellectual prostitution. They are hardly more honorable than a woman who has to be a stripper to survive.”
What the actual fuck? Yeah sure corporate lawyers can be royal slime balls with less use than a hagfish, but how is what they do remotely comparable to sex work? (A term I note you avoid using)
——
Anyone else here thinking about penguins?
So, I’m probably leaning way more towards the abolitionist end of things than most Mammotheers (and no, let’s not get into that argument), but even so…dude, can we not call jobs that involve being a selfish, amoral shithead “prostitution”? It should be possible to critique the sex industry without suggesting that the people involved in it on the actual sex worker rather than in a managerial position end are as morally bankrupt as corporate lobbyists. The way you’re framing things places all blame for the wrongs that occur within the sex industry on the workers, which is already a shitty thing to do even before you take into consideration how many of those people were coerced/trafficked/otherwise did not enter the industry of their own free will.
I just hope that you realize that the kind of shit you’re pulling here makes the jobs of people who’re trying to help trafficking victims and other people who desperately want to exit the sex industry a lot harder.
Abby Normal!
For me, no. It’s not about sex work being dishonourable, but that it’s more invasive, whether of my body or having to play along with someone’s fantasies on the phone. Any sexual contact that was done for money, not for love, would automatically be demeaning in a way that none of the low-paid drone jobs I’ve had could compare with. Not that I’ve been stuck with truly crap jobs, but the idea of any sort of sexual contact with strangers is just horrifying. But that’s nothing to do with the idea that sex work is per se demeaning, let alone dishonourable.
Isn’t there a shortage of non-white sperm because of this weird idea that people only want WASP donors? Actually some places don’t except red haired donors, which is just plain awful.
I’ve heard that. Turns out that some people want babies that aren’t white. Shockers.
Yeah, donor egg/surrogacy definitely feeds uncomfortably into the belief that women are most valuable for their functioning ladyparts. There is a positive flip side though – it allows infertile/older/single women to have expanded reproductive choices, and puts the lie to the MRA notion that women over 30 are past their expiration date and should just crawl into a corner because omg withered ovaries. Assisted reproduction expands the age range at which motherhood is possible, allowing women to defer family-making decisions and taking some of the pressure off to have children during the prime grad school/career starting years. It also removes the requirement to have a partner in order to be a parent (which pisses off the misters, and frankly I’m all for that). It uncouples motherhood from the functioning of the body and makes it more about the desire to be a parent.
It’s also not uncommon to find surrogates who love being pregnant and are a little sad to be done with their own family building and miss the experience. I….can’t imagine, but more power to them if they want to help people achieve their family dreams, and find the process easy to boot.
Re: the lack of nonwhite sperm, that could also be a function of demand. In some cultures, using a sperm donor is considered shameful and infertile couples are discouraged from even seeking medical help, so there aren’t as many couples/women seeking non-Caucasian sperm. I’m not sure what the basis is for that, but it seems like it might tap into the cuckoldophobia that underpins more conservative religious and patriarchal cultures.
I read “nonwhite sperm” and started thinking of sperm whales who aren’t Moby Dick.
… I’ll see myself out.
“sex work? (A term I note you avoid using)”
I did use “sex work” in my earlier post. If someone does sex work because they genuinely like it, I have no problem. However, I suspect that the majority of the sex workers do it because it is their best opportunity to earn a decent living in our fucked-up economy, and that is definitely not a good thing.
When I wrote that post, for some odd reason I was thinking of an anecdote about Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam. He was a weak character who mostly lived a life of dissipation on the French Riviera financed by the French who kept him as a figurehead/puppet. A couple of times he made half-hearted efforts to stand up for his people, but quickly gave up, When the French money started to run out he appointed the head of the Vietnamese Mafia-equivalent to the post of Police Chief (!) of Saigon in return for a share of the illicit profits. In the anecdote, someone made disparaging comments about the morals of the French woman Bao Dai was currently involved with, who was basically a high-class prostitute. He replied, “Oh, she is just plying her trade. I am the real whore.” Argenti, I agree with almost all of what you say, but I think it is possible to sell your body without selling your soul. Selling your soul — no matter how much money you get for it — is the ultimate self-annihilation. Part of this comes from my experience of being in prison as a war-resister and realizing that the “authorities” can do what they want for whatever reason with your body, but they can’t take away your freedom of mind and spirit unless you let them.
Somewhat on this topic I recently heard an NPR report about a town in Mexico whose principal product is prostitutes. Girls as young as 14 are exported — apparently principally to the US — where they are held in conditions that (IMO) can fairly be described as slavery and required to service up to 60 men a day, day after day after day after day. To me (and I assume to almost anyone who posts here) this is horrifying beyond words — it sickens me to realize I live in a country where such a thing is possible without a huge public outcry.
I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing with this. Probably what is making people uncomfortable is you co-opting the term “prostitution” to mean selling one’s soul or selling out one’s values, which implies you see selling your body and selling your soul as going hand in hand.
Cassandra — yeah, I have no real desire to get into that debate either. The short version of my view is that people who want to do sex work should be able to do so safely and legally, and those who don’t should never be forced to, whether by actual force or economic fuckedupness (totally a word)
Bunnybunny — nail, head, you hit it.
GrumpyOldMan — I apologize for having missed your use of the term sex worker. And yes, that is horrifying.
Argenti: No apology needed or wanted. Due to the fact that we deal with some very sensitive topics here, there are bound to be some miscommunications and raw nerves accidentally hit. And tact has never been my strong suit. I do moral outrage much better.
And “fuckedupness” is a perfectly fine word — wish I’d come up with it.
It was my impression that historically prostitution was a general term that was adopted as a euphemism for “whore”, but I appear to be wrong about that — according to one source the sexual meaning can be traced to 1520 and the figurative meaning to 1570. I have certainly seen it used very frequently in the figurative sense, and the dictionary gives “the use of a skill or ability in a way that is not appropriate or respectable” as one definition. In any case it is a well-established use and not my personal invention. Arguably it might be better to reserve it for the sexual meaning, but that horse left the barn 400 years ago.
“which implies you see selling your body and selling your soul as going hand in hand.”
Actually I meant to state more or less the opposite — that you could sell your body without selling your soul, and that selling your soul was worse.
Considering the amount of shit that most of the world flings at sex workers, and how accepted the abuses inflicted on them seem to be, I’m honestly surprised Jack the Ripper’s murders managed to cause such a stir.
Oh look, my favorite argument for using language in a way that further diminishes the underprivileged.
In this particular case the reason to “reserve it for the sexual meaning” is that other commenters are asking you to do so.
Might be easier to use pigs. Plus, the next generation of MCPs could actually be half-pig, on their mother’s side.
I know this thread is very old, but I am the person being laughed at here and I just stumbled upon this today through Google.
First of all, all of you have decided that I’m not capable of getting a PhD. You are right about your claim that I’m not the smartest person ever, and I never claimed that I was. However, I do have something that most people don’t have: a puritan work ethic. So in spite of the fact that I’m not the smartest person ever, I worked my way into an excellent college. That’s because while other people were out partying and having sex in high school, I studied hard because I wanted a good future. And I recently did the same thing with my graduate entrance exams (scored in the 99th percentile). So hopefully I will get into a good school.
Second of all, you seem to be under the impression that I spend all of my time going around telling everyone that I’m an MRA, which is just not true. Actually, as far as everyone on my campus knows, I’m a hardcore feminist socialist. I know all of the hip arguments for it and I can recite them like a tape recorder. But I obviously won’t join any feminist groups or causes or Republican causes or Democrat causes. I just tell everyone that I’m too busy with other things to work on politics, which is not true but I don’t want to get involved in vitriolic political spectacles.
Third of all, you seem to think that I dislike women, which is also blatantly false. I frankly am apathetic towards them as a group just like I am apathetic towards men as a group.I don’t like or dislike individual people based on group characteristics. I’m not even angry. If I were a woman, I wouldn’t be attracted to me either because I’ve never seen anybody as ugly as me. It’s my fault that I’m ugly, and nobody else’s fault, not even my parents because my sister is attractive, very intelligent, and popular but I’m ugly, stupid (but I can compensate because I work hard) and very unpopular. It’s my fault because the sperm cell with literally every garbage gene that my parents had (me) won the race to the egg. The sperm cell with the all the good genes that my parents had (my sister) won her own race and is profiting from that. So it was my own stupidity that led to this situation and nobody else’s and I’m not demanding that the world change for me.
You seem to think that I’m angry. But I’m not angry. Maybe I was a little a few months ago, but I”m not anymore. Now I’m just desperate. That’s what keeps me going towards this goal; this is the only shot I’ll ever have. If I fail this, I will die forever because my genes will be gone. I know it’s my fault that I have bad genes, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t have dreams too and just want to be normal like everyone else.
Another thing you all have decided is that I will be upset if women use this technology so that they won’t have to experience childbirth. Quite frankly, I don’t care if they use the technology. It has nothing to do with me. All I know is that I want access.
Dude. Unattractive and not very smart people find partners every day. Get a therapist, stay away from MRAs, take up photography or something. Be a decent human being. Don’t write long screeds about incubating your spawn inside goats.
No guarantees, but I think the odds are better for you if you follow my suggested path than if you stick with the one you’re on. But it’s your life, and if you want to spend it unhappy and bitter that’s really your decision.