Listening in on conversations amongst Men’s Rights Activists is often like taking a brief journey into an alternate universe, where cats are dogs and water is dry and men are the most oppressed creatures on planet earth.
Over in the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day, some of the regulars seem to have just discovered a famous feminist quotation, a paraphrase of something Margaret Atwood once wrote:
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
A number of the Men’s Rights Redditors were indignant that anyone could possibly suggest that women have more to fear from men than the other way around. And so, collectively, they came up with a rebuttal of sorts.
OneBigCosmicHorror began by suggesting that the real fear men have of women is much more primal:
Ah, but isn’t being laughed at basically the same as castration?
Indigoanasazi explained:
Oh, you silly ladies with your fears of being killed by men. We men face an even greater peril — the ever-present threat of laugh-castration!
As a total aside: Cassandrakitty, that underwear-thief cat is adorable. Reminds me of a miniature snow leopard (my personal favorite of the Big Cats).
I don’t know that joke, and now I’m really curious.
I wish I could find the news report about the cat in the South Bay who was stealing all kinds of stuff from his neighborhood, it was adorable. Shoes, swimwear, clothes, it all ended up hidden somewhere in or around his house until his people found it and had to fess up to the neighbors.
Sounds like Biscuit, who’s stolen money, bras, wedding rings, batteries, and thermometers. He makes a nest in the blanket at the foot of the bed to hide his plunder.
“The Worst Thing In the World” fallacy – OH! How I hate it!
On the flip side, whenever my sister is in pain, she will often say something along the lines of, “But it’s nothing like YOUR pain, so I don’t have the right to complain.”
PIFFLE! Of course she has the right to complain. 1) All pain is subjective, and she can’t possibly know how her level of pain compares to mine, at any given time. 2) Her pain is just as real as mine, no matter what the level of that pain is. 3) I do not “own” all rights to complain about pain, simply because mine is chronic.
It irks me.
Yes, there are multiple problems in the world, and sometimes, we have the need to complain about the smaller problems specifically because we CAN actually do something about them. Social agitation isn’t going to make it rain, and end hunger, but we CAN do something about making what food we have more readily available, and make a difference in urban food deserts. Street harassment in NYC doesn’t compare to rape in the Congo, but it’s something we CAN help, locally (well, if we’re local to NYC). Baby steps.
Just as we need to come up with multiple strategies to affect change, we can, and DO, fight multiple battles on multiple fronts, and debate about multiple issues! Just because we’re talking about Issue X today doesn’t mean we’re ignoring Issue Y. It’s just that it’s a whole other thread.
So, saying you can’t talk about THIS issue because THAT issue is worse is just plain silly, and counterproductive. Besides, in this complex world, it’s very possible that solving the one issue will have an impact on the other issue, even making it more solvable than it was before.
Those who stifle debate simply because it’s not “The Worst Thing in the World” are doing more to stop progress in solving the worst thing in the world than they even realize.
This kind of discussion always makes me think of the old Melissa McEwan piece about learning to live with fear, and about how the more privilege you have, the more you are insulated from actual danger.
The problem comes when you equate the worst thing that’s likely to happen to you in a given situation to the worst thing that’s likely to happen to someone else in that same situation. If you can’t empathise with other people, and you don’t listen when they try and tell you that their experience is different, and your spectrum of experience doesn’t contain anything truly dreadful that’s pertinent, then I guess you don’t ever make the connection that other people have to live with a level of danger/risk/fear every day that you rarely encounter.
Which is exactly the point Atwood was trying to make. When you’re a man and the worst thing you can imagine in a given situation is having your feelings hurt, and you can’t understand that having her feelings hurt is one of the least bad outcomes for a woman in that same situation, you really just don’t get it.
I think this is why #YesAllWomen caused so many men with unexamined privilege to lose their shit – it forced a lot of them to acknowledge that what seemed harmless or unlikely or could be shrugged off by them could actually be really scary for women, and there was a reason for that fear. Those who could empathise were the “I had no idea” guys for whom the lightbulb went on. Those who couldn’t were the manbros trying to equate women’s fear of unsolicited approaches/acquaintance rape/sexual harrassment with men’s fear of being rejected. To quote Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others.
@freemage:
Thank you. I think I get it now.
@MCY:
Related to both my post and yours, the old XKCD about the worst pain you can imagine. 🙂
Oh, I so relate to that XKCD one. I have quite an imagination, myself.
Also, I really think this pain scale should be posted at all doctors’ offices:
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html
I wish I could use that with my patients, Michelle. I’ve seen 85yos with hip/knee replacements grit their teeth and claim their pain is 2/10 and refuse even basic pain relief, and 19yos with minor surgery and tiny incisions yell out for the morphine as soon as the anaesthetic wears off, claiming 10/10. I think there’s something to be said for life experience giving you a greater understanding of the breadth of possible outcomes. 😛
I used to go to a chiropractor who had 2 different pain scales, and they conflicted, and I never knew how they were interpreting my numbers, which were more in keeping with Hyperbole’s scale.
If I do a quick intake of breath between clenched teeth, and grate out, in a high, squeaky voice “That’s a FIVE!” I do not mean, “Hurts a little more.” I mean, “Ease up on that poking before I poke YOU, and give me a pain pill, darn it!”
I might be smiling, at the time, but I’ve been highly socialized to smile at people.
Right. That’s why mothers occupy all the highest positions of power in government and the private sector. Because of their privileged status.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9c_KttvQPU%5D
Not to derail the conversation, but I came across this interesting comic about sexual harrassment on Huffington Post:
Don’t read the comments, most will give you a sad 🙁
Whuuuuut happened to my link??? Try again:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/12/robot-hugs-sexual-harassment-comic_n_5671532.html?cps=gravity
Whoops, that’s a link to this page, fnoicby. :/
Strivingally, seems both are…not sure what I’m doin’ wrong…copying and pasting the text in the second should work. 🙁
BTW, that last comment from the idiot above? Read the research about habitual rapists. It’s in there, that status anxiety and fear/anger/resentment/entitlement towards women based on what the men who feel that way think the impact of our rejection of them might do to their status.
Also note how in this scenario women literally aren’t people at all, we’re poker chips that dudes accumulate and show to each other while jockeying for status in a hierarchy that only includes men.
Also, in before some troll comes in to say “but see, poker chips have value!”. Poker chips only have the value that the players choose to assign to them, just like women in your fucked up view of how the world works.
Ariadne Oliver would probably assert that at least three times as many women as men get away with murder, and quite likely that at least three times as many women murderers get away with it as get caught, but I don’t think she ever came up with that particular reason. (As so often, fiction is an improvement on real life.)
I wonder if he was thinking some sort of “well women know about herbs and stuff” kind of thing? Yeah man, that’s how women kill A MILLION TRILLION MEN EVERY DAY, by feeding them baked potatoes laced with mandrake.
RE: cassandrakitty
There’s something odd about the way men see their genitalia
There really is. I don’t get it either. They act like their junk is made of solid gold or something. Trans guys do it too. I don’t fucking get it. THEY’RE JUST GENITALS.
Does it really feel that fragile for everyone?
It did for me, but that’s because of other people. My father told me I was so femme that I shouldn’t come out or transition. Our rapist used my femininity to justify his raping (it was part of his “attraction”). Hell, I had this guy as a roommate. (That system also physically restrained and dragged me to the bathroom once, just to put me in my place.) Gave me a complex for a while, until I realized that the problem wasn’t me; it was the douchebags around me who used my insecurity as a weapon.
The point is, I’m insecure as fucking hell about my failure at gender performance. You know what scares me more, though? Being raped again. Or murdered. It’s just that unfortunately, some really nasty people in my life tried to connect the concepts.
RE: David
CONFIDENTIAL TO WOODY: OK, Woody, that’s one! Just 4 more!
Aw! He’s trying so hard!
RE: Lea
That way, when random people try to talk to me I can say, “I’m Batman” and disappear in a puff of smoke.
I actually call making a hasty social escape “pulling a Batman!” Seriously, I wish I could do that!
@ LBT
I really hope you haven’t seen this guy in a long time, and never will again. What a shithead.
And the shitty thing is that, dudes, everyone knows that insecurity sucks, and so does rejection. It’s just that, seriously, come on now, get some damn perspective.
RE: cassandrakitty
I really hope you haven’t seen this guy in a long time, and never will again. What a shithead.
Honestly, I’m not even sure dude EXISTS anymore. That system may well have integrated; they seem to have vanished off the multi circle of the internet years ago. (Not that dude’s host was much better; she was the one who restrained me and dragged me. And she apparently still has a girlfriend… hope she treats her better than she did me.)
dudes, everyone knows that insecurity sucks, and so does rejection. It’s just that, seriously, come on now, get some damn perspective.
BINGO. Also, pretty sure most cis straight men do not affiliate that rejection or mockery with rape or abuse, as I do. They just associate it with this metaphorical symbolic totally-not-literal castration. *eyeroll*
I don’t get how men can think being ordered to smile isn’t invasive.
I mean, if you’re not handing me a paycheck, why should I smile on command?
…A couple of months ago I was distracted at a redlight, waiting to get somewhere else, probably with resting bitchface and all. This guy was crossing in front of me, then suddenly he turned, looked at me, “popped tall,” and gave me a big grin and a ridiculous comic salute.
The two of us started giggling like crazy. It was awesome.
Thinking about that guy still cheers me up. Whoever he is, he’s freakin’ cool.
I mean, be *that* guy!
Also, I smile at people quite a lot, but you know how to guarantee that I won’t smile at you? Order me to do so. Because, you see, now I’m annoyed, so no smiles for you.