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!
I’ve only been ordered to smile once, but since then, I’ve been tempted to give them my best pod-person Uncanny Valley axe-murderer grin and imitate Gigi.
She’d probably do so and say, “I will eat your spleen.”
And I bet if you smile TOO often, you’re just “inviting” men to rape you. Women can’t win ever.
MCY: I don’t know that joke, and now I’m really curious.
Consider yourself warned:
http://www.rot13.com/
Ur: “Url! Pna V fzryy lbhe srrg?”
Fur: “Pregnvayl abg!”
Ur: “Evtug – zhfg or lbhe phag gura.”
Regarding the worst thing in the world fallacy, I just had a very annoying conversation with my mom. I was telling her about my friend who is wrought with grief and guilt over her miscarriage. My mom kept saying crap like “women have gone through far worse! She’s gotta get over this! It’s gonna destroy her marriage! She’s mentally ill!” I didn’t even know where to begin with the wrong in this conversation. “Mom, people going through worse doesn’t take away her pain. I’m sure her husband is trying to support and love her through this horrible time. Mom, I’m mentally ill, and so are you. This is not the way to go with this.” Gaaaahd! She was unusually ridiculous in this conversation. We’re really close and normally she “gets it” when I bring up something intense. I don’t know what the fuck that was about. My poor poor friend is tearing herself to shreds. So glad I didn’t respond like my mother did.
Michelle,
I so lol’d at that pain chart thing. “I never knew that about giraffes”. Hahahaha!!! Always thought the pain chart was ridiculously over simplified and objective. The chart she proposes basically outlined my experience giving birth to my daughter. I especially remember the “my pain is not fucking around” all the way to “I am most definitely going to die, why is this happening to me, and I’m actively being mauled by a bear”. Only I was being mauled by a gigantic human head shooting out of my girly bits like a cannon. And no pain meds. Fuckers gave me anti anxiety meds in my IV. “This isn’t fucking working!!!” I kept screaming. Ok so my birth plan stated no pain meds. Had no fucking clue.
I think even among the subset of cishet men who survived rape and abuse, still no. Neglect, however, I could see rejection being a trigger to neglect memories.
But people who grew up neglected don’t often feel that giant entitlement thing.
She sounds fun…or at least my one protector guy’s given value of fun…at any rate he wants me to pass on his approval.
@cassandrakitty
THIS.
I don’t like having to turn down people, because I know it’s ouchy.
I’ve been on the receiving end enough.
I try to do it as gently as possible.
But the answer isn’t going to change BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME THIRTY TIMES!
Plus, if I get angry and mean in the process of turning you down 30 times, you know, because you’re being really creepy and have aggravated me past what my patience can deal with?
I’m the asshole for not being sweet and kindly?
And you, who has been asking me out for the past ten minutes after a bunch of clear and polite brushoffs, you are the injured party?
[/rantyness]
Sorry. Nice peoples who do take a polite ” no thanks,” for an answer, please to ignore that.
Errrr,,, these are the kind of statements that really piss me off. The MRAs in this case are actual right but they miss the point entirely. Yes, men fear castration because of the loss of status, because in effect castration make a man a woman. it is the MRA attitude and societal attitude in general that makes being a woman a thing to fear. The same applies for the hate and fear male homosexuality causes. Basically Man “lowering” himself to be like a woman, is always bad to these people.
I’ve never been very familiar with Freud, but wasn’t castration anxiety supposed to be aimed at the father/other male authority figures? That would make some actual sense, since as far as I’m aware historical castration has always been male-on-male violence or patriarchal tradition.
@Blahlistic,
There are probably a lot of cis/het men for whom “rejection and mockery” does recall memories of abuse. It’s less likely to have been sexual abuse, but I think physical abuse toward cis/het men is often tied in with mockery of gender performance.
Lately I’ve been wondering…
Guys talk about how such-and-so is bad because “It makes me feel like less of a man!” but why is “a man” such a vitally important thing to be? As opposed to what?
Ideally, it would be as opposed to a boy–i.e. they don’t want to feel or come across as immature or not worthy of adult status. But why do I get the feeling that what they mean is “It makes me feel like a woman!”?
Freud, jesus, he had so many issues it’s hard to know where they began and where they ended. But I know this much, his whole theory about penis envy has its origins in how his older sister felt about his arrival as a baby to her home. She was a very gifted pianst and wanted to become a professional, or be a paino teacher at the least. Well, when Freud was a child, he hated her playing the piano, it bothered him, you see. So his parents told his sister, basically, “We’re taking your piano away from you, Sigmund doesn’t like it.The music bothers him.”
Her parents were like, “What you want to practice and become proficient at it? Who cares? Forget your dreams, it bothers Sigmund.”
He noted her resentfulness toward him after that and catergorized it as “penis envy.” Except his sister did not literally want a penis — she was jealous that he automatically got priviledges over her for being a boy. SOCIAL priviledges. What she wanted didn’t matter. It only mattered what Sigmund wanted, ’cause he’s a boy. This is where Freud lacked social awareness — to any degree. He, in fact, seemed to actively deny any part of culture that gave him bonus for being born a white, cis male.
Have I mentioned earlier how wonderful and amazing the regulars here are? Well, you people are wonderful and amazing. Thank you.
And OMG, I’d love to know what challenges Woody is failing, if only to post, “Shut up, Woody, you’re loosing.”
@Orion
Freud’s theory actually was bi-gender. boys matched with father, girls matched with mothers.But few modern studies have been done.Their where a few religion that practiced it but for the most part, Historical castration by the by has more to do with farming then anything else really. I feel it gets a lot of press when it did happen because lets face it man or woman we all think about how sensitive the area is and it makes all shiver a little.
@ Karalora
Boy just as bad to those type of people in fact it maybe the one thing lower in society then being a woman being a child.
Thanks for the explanation about the joke.
Oh, anti-anxiety meds, for childbirth? Whaaaa?
So, my sister came home from the hospital, with TWO prescriptions for “Agitation.” I just looked at that, and asked her, “What did you DO in that hospital?”
Apparently, however, they are using them off-label, for something else. She was a good patient.
We’ll see how it all works out. She’s doing SO MUCH BETTER!!!! Yaaaay! My sister is not going to die! Well, not any time soon. We’ll all die, eventually. But not today! HOORAAAYYYYY!
Thank goodness for kind health care professionals who took good care of her.
Hey, Michelle, great to see you back again! I hope this malaise clears soon, that sucks.
MITTENS
She’s such a darling! I’ve had two tuxedos, Sheba and Mamie, over the years. Soon as I saw your video I said to Mum “She’s a Mimsie cat!”
This is correct. WHTM Laws and Bylaws, Volume 1, Section 1, Paragraph 1a.
Not to mention that women have the same fears of not measuring up, and more, because we automatically don’t measure up by virtue of being female and being socialised female.
Shiraz, Freud and his little fanclub shrinks get ALL the eye-rolling from me.
They took away her piano because it bothered the boy? What, they couldn’t send him outside to play during her practice time? Or even make some arrangements for her, or him, to be elsewhere? WHAT THE (#&$^&@*#(#!!!!!
Raging so much right now.
My heart goes out to everyone who needs it in this thread. It is stuff like that which makes me relieved to be a guy, because I don’t know if I could deal with all that stuff without the shield of privilege, given my inability to read social cues.
I thought I would post a comment tonight simply because I would like to offer a different perspective on social insecurity than most of the dudes we’ve read about: learning about feminism — actual feminism, not what-other-men-say feminism — actually made me less insecure, not more.
It’s kind of hard to describe what my issue is, but I suspect I have undiagnosed Asperger’s. The best analogy I can give is that when I try to read a person, I get all the information from their body language and voice in a deluge, and I can’t tell what is important to determining thoughts and feelings and what is not.
I told a joke and they laughed… but was that a fake laugh or a real one?
This person is being nice to me… but not very, so is that just their style, or are they being polite and really secretly want me to leave?
I just tried to make a humorous remark, and they didn’t laugh, but did change the subject. Did I just bring up a bad topic and upset them slightly, or was it simply not funny?
The answer to all of these is: it depends on the social cues. And I’ll (almost) never know the answers when faced with those actual situations, unlike most people who can tell the difference. This creates, as you can imagine, a lot of social insecurity. But I’ve learned quite a bit about psychology in the past several years (studying on my own) in order to unravel those questions, and part of that was my study of feminism.
It more than anything has helped me with my insecurity. In particular, the idea of priviledge, the idea that I have an invisible social shield, which have been carrying around this entire time.
This was wonderful news to me. All those bad things I was worried about? People talking down to me, dismissing me, or ostracizing me for being weird because I made a social screw up? They haven’t really happened much since Jr. High. But it’s not random chance, with those things right around the corner; it’s because of that shield. And the next time I screw up, it will protect me then too!
Every time I have been able to objectively check (through other sources, for example) it’s been there for me. That shield lets me leave a party if I’m getting tired, or not talk to people I don’t want to talk to, or not drink at a bar when everyone else is — and if I’m asked, to defend my decisions rather than shying away from them. Because, thanks to that shield, the worst thing that will happen is the other people will think, “whatever, dude” or “he’s a little weird” — as opposed to what women get, which is “what a stuck-up b****!”
It’s a nice thing, having this shield. I wish everyone had one. But apparently not everyone does. I wish I could give one to everyone, so that means I’m a feminist.
Far from a perfect one. I’ve almost certainly bashed a number women with that shield too, taking advantage of my privilege in ways I’m not aware of. (Every day I read a feminist blog, I learn about another one to avoid.) I try to make up for it, though. The most recent example was 18 months ago (I’ve not had many opportunities lately), when I got two smart women taken seriously by a misogynistic douchebag by pointing out they did a lot more work than he was giving them credit for, and that was unfair. He actually listened to me, and treated them better for the couple days I was able to observe. (I can only imagine what would have happened if either of them tried giving that speech…)
I’ll keep trying, and just hoping that’s enough to balance it out. It’s all I can do.
Lea
Ah, the male ego. The Little League World Series is going on now, and a couple girls are on teams in the tournament. During the commentary today when one of the girls was pitching, the announcers were discussing how being struck out by a girl pitcher might feel worse for the boys than from a boy pitcher. So frustrating! Maybe boys wouldn’t feel like that if it was accepted that boys and girls have the same value.
I remember, back in college days, reading about Freud. Something about him admitting that he didn’t understand women, at all, but that they were all dysfunctional, because they weren’t men.
OK, he got a lot of stuff right, but hoooooboy! What he got wrong!
Thanks, kittehserf!
So, we just got a new fridge/freezer (we had a leak in the ice-maker and had to chip stuff out with a hammer and chisel), and we had to do all the moving of stuff, and I went and bought 50 pounds of ice to keep stuff cool until it really kicks in. I am already feeling the pain, and taking a pain pill. But I’m glad I was 1) sober, and 2) feeling well enough to drive and help out when I did. Good timing. I’ll pay for it tomorrow and Sunday, to be sure, but as I told my Mom, life probably would have hit me some other way, anyway. At least this way I was helpful. Usually, it’s something unproductive that wipes me out. Like, being caught up in a movie, and jumping at a startling scene. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows knocked me out for two days. And I can’t tell you how many times I hurt myself laughing at a good play.
BTW, if you ever get to see Cash on Delivery – that play is sooooooo worth being laid up for three days afterwards from laughing too hard. Absolutely hysterical! Support your local theaters, folks, because a lot of the best plays will never (or not any time soon) be made into movies, and if you don’t keep theater alive, you won’t be able to see these shows, at all.
Good news – my friend gave us an automatic-cleaning letterbox, so I won’t keep throwing out my back cleaning up after the little darlings. YAAAY!
And did I mention my sister is doing SO MUCH BETTER! Her lips were always so bright red, as a child. But for the last few years, they’ve been pale. Now, after 4 transfusions, she looks like she’s wearing lipstick, but it’s just her natural color. And she can breathe! HUZZAH! And that means we can all take off our sweaters, because she couldn’t breathe without the air conditioner running at ALL times, so it was freezing in the house, even in 100 degree weather. LOL. She’s healthier, and I’m more comfortable. Win-win!
I am so incredibly happy right now.
Slightly more on topic, and pithy:
@Karalora
I’m a guy and I have no idea. I have literally never said that.
Yeah, I was not quite thinking when I said that, my guy popped up on line at that point and I was paying the majority of my attention to him, so *facepalm*.
Guys do often get shamed and attacked pretty badly for not being guyly guys. I was thinking about parents being the abusing party…But parents are often as not just as guilty as anybody of jackbooted gender-role enforcement.
It’s really angering to me, I do not want guys shoved into a gender straitjacket. It hurts them.
…Somehow, though, women become converted into… objects to prove masculinity with for some minority of guys. If we were talking about narcissists I’d say “ego supplies.” That’s a problem now, and it’s really bound up in gender roles.
Being a man = agency?
At least in part, but I think that the two are somewhat conflated?
(Agency :One’s agency is one’s independent capability or ability to act on one’s will. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure which one has formed through one’s experiences, and the perceptions held by the society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in and the position they are born into. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(sociology) )
I did a report on Deborah Tannen’s book in one of my sociology classes.
Her theory is that men are socialized to think in terms of hierarchy, women more in terms of connectedness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_theory
So maybe it’s also about a sense that one has just been put “one-down” on the social ladder? That could be viewed as making one “less of a man” too.
Oh, another YAY! moment: I’m so proud of my nephew. He and his buddy are designing a video game, and are consciously aiming for a feminist story. What he’s told me so far has me laughing and cheering.
SO PROUD. He also educated a girl at his school about women in computer science. She apparently thought there weren’t any, but he set her straight, not only listing modern women involved in computers, but even the women involved in the early counting machines, waaayyyyy back in the day. You know, back before they were allowed to be acknowledged, at all?
See? This is what men can do. You don’t have to suffer the same slings and arrows as women. Just be aware, and be active allies, and we will love you so much for it! And respect you, too.
Thanks, bunches, to all the allies! Even if all you can do right now is say, “My heart goes out to you,” just the fact that you are aware is comforting.
When I was sexually assaulted, what hurt me the most wasn’t the assault. It was the betrayal of the people who witnessed but did nothing. If one of them had simply opened their mouths to say “Stop that,” no matter how ineffectual it may have been (those dude-bros would not have stopped, anyway), I would have felt so much better. Even if all you can do is make eye contact, smile encouragingly, nod, or give a thumbs-up, or something like that. A “keep your chin up.” If that’s all you can do, that’s OK. Because that little thing makes a world of difference. Just knowing we aren’t alone. That we are SEEN. Sometimes, it’s clear that the people around us aren’t in a position to help us. Maybe they are as powerless as we are. But they are AWARE. Acknowlegement is half the battle.