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.
And bonbons! (what the hell is a bonbon?)
I think of bonbons as a chewy, vaguely toffee-like center covered in a powdered sugar-ish coating, like this.
http://www.scottish-wedding-dreams.com/images/McCowans-VimtoBonBonsie-SweetieWorld.jpg
http://www.oldestsweetshop.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/500×500/69e56f6524f6e392acc6de36bd359e85/s/t/straw_bon_bons.jpg
That may just be a British thing though.
Well, if we’re doing British sweets, bring on the Smarties and friut pastilles! And turkish delight, especially the chocolate covered kind!
Also, I thought bonbons were chocolate covered bits of ice cream?
You mean like ice cream mochi without the mochi part?
If we’re doing old school sweets I want wine gums and pear drops.
OMG, now it all makes sense! He doesn’t mean that he’s ironically defending the opposing opinion to highlight its absurdity, he means that he’s a horny goat-man!
Artificial wombs play a somewhat important role in some of Lois McMaster Bujold’s books and they’re portrayed as being widely embraced by women on most planets and the idea of not using one was barbaric due to the risks to the woman’s health. I suspect that should artificial wombs become available that the reality will be closer to her books than MRA fantasies.
When he is stymied in his pursuit of STEM study, it will be because of misandry and not because he’s an idiot who should not be allowed near anything with living cells.
If the artificial womb is created, where does he think the egg will come from?
@katz: thanks, I now have a horny Elam meme stuck in my head.
/headdesk
/rinse and repeat
If we work on the principle that most of what these guys fear that women will do is what they would do to us if they could get away with it, I’m guessing the answer is something like “put women in farms and harvest their eggs as needed”.
OT but some twit on Pharyngula is blathering about the Rothschilds and how Jewish bankers own everything. Gave me quite the Owly flashback, ‘cept this one can actually spell the name.
My theory is still that when Owly was going on about the “Rothchilds” he meant the children of either Philip or Tim Roth, thus the odd spelling.
@Tessa: “women are the gatekeepers to reproduction.” What does this mean?
“Women have Teh Pussy, and this is monumentally unfair.”
This has been another edition of SATSQ.
He could have meant David Lee Roth, and been lazy with a possessive apostrophe.
@Phoenician, I prefer to think he means Zuul, which is the first gatekeeper that always comes to my mind.
Patriarchy is a system in which men benefit from the social and economic exploitation of women. Clearly that means that the role of reproduction that is imposed on women is a source of power. /s
@Noadi: Yeah, I regularly read a blog by a fairly radical feminist (both in the sense that she is a radfem, although not anti-trans, and in the sense that she’s radical in the ordinary sense of the word) who is very much pro the idea of having artificial wombs, and that pregnancy and child birth with all the risks it carries should be regarded as an extreme sport that people can engage in if they are so inclined, rather than something that is so natural and normal that all women are expected to do it.
Also, as I’ve mentioned before, the idea that a man should have a say in whether a woman aborts a fetus or not when he’s the father is completely fucked-up in today’s world. But if it were possible to simply transfer the fetus to an artificial womb, it does make sense that he should be allowed to keep it like that if he wants to (I think it was Cassandra who imagined him carrying the fetus home from the hospital in a water-filled plastic bag like a gold-fish, when I mentioned this before?). I should point out that I hardly think lots of men would take this option if it were available, since I think most men who complain about how women get to decide this completely on their own (or, well, the person with the uterus, but this entire discussion usually takes place in a men-versus-women-context) merely dislike the fact that women have bodily autonomy. But for those few who really do have this epiphany, on finding out that they’ve made someone pregnant, that they totally want to become fathers, an artificial womb would solve the problem.
But the idea that men would now suddenly not need women any longer (and, well, it’s already the case that they don’t, since cis-men and trans-men could reproduce on their own, but these dudes hardly think about that) is as messed-up as the idea that wow, we now have the technology to create a fetus out of two egg cells, so men are no longer needed. Maybe it’s not about need in the first place?
I’d actually have been less against the idea of having kids if artificial wombs were a thing. I like kids, and although part of my reluctance to have any of my own is about not being sure I’m willing to make the lifestyle changed needed to bring them up well, part of it has always been the awareness that pregnancy and childbirth are challenging at best and life-threatening at worse, and that some of the physical changes that occur as a result of those processes may be permanent. If it was possible to just outsource that whole process without getting into all the ethical issues involved with surrogacy, though? Sure, I might have given the idea of having kids a lot more consideration.
LOL!
This reminds me that where Owly is concerned, no theory can be more bizarre than the stuff he came up with.
On artificial wombs – I wouldn’t have children even if they were available. Well, unless I was being queen of France and reproduction was part of the job description.
The misogynists who think that women are scared of artificial wombs seem to picture us sitting there going “I know you feel compelled to pass on your DNA and you can’t do it without me, and thus I demand ONE BILLION DOLLARS!” while rubbing our hands together like some sort of girly version of Dr Evil. This fantasy says nothing at all about women, but a lot about the men who have the fantasy.
Dr Evil has a cat, so that part of the analogy works for me.
Speaking of cats, mine just started yelling at me for no apparent reason, and then ran from one end of the apartment to the other. She’s now wandering around muttering to herself. Cats are weird.
My female cat does that occasionally, running fast enough to slide a hallway rug, but none of the males do it. She doesn’t seem to want anything, she just wants to run and yell a bit.
My old cat used to surf on the rugs at my ex’s place, where there were very long wooden floored hallways. Just run, jump on rug, and happily sit there as it whizzes along the floor. I suspect this one would do the same if the hallway wasn’t carpeted.
Sadly, when the ex-stud muffin was whizzing on the carpet, what you have described is not the whizzing he was doing. I got a cat behaviourist in as well. We now have no carpet in the hallway, and plastic down with those puppy training pads on them, just for him. The other cats happily use the multitude of litter boxes. It’s not spraying either, apparently he just doesn’t want to pee in a litter box that another cat uses. And because none of the others are at all bothered, we can’t keep one just for him. /sigh
pallygirl:
I deeply relate to your cat.
Mr Hadji used to love whizzing around in an empty tissue box. We called it his Ferrari, ‘cos it was red. He’d run and push it with his back feet, or let us push it back and forth for him. Across the other side, he still likes it, and has more room and wooden floors for greater speed. 😀
Maddie showed her guard cat skillz this afternoon. I knew the taxi had arrived ‘cos she sat growling at it through the window.