Once upon a time, you may recall, women were denied the right to vote, couldn’t own property, were prevented from having careers of their own. Well, it turns out that all of these pesky “restrictions” weren’t really restrictions at all! They were protections that men provided women out of the goodness of their hearts. Men protected women from the terrible burdens of voting and property-owning and so forth, because they just cared about women so much.
Or at least that’s what a lot of Men’s Rights Activists seem to think, judging from this highly edifying discussion in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
![rogersmith25 325 points 1 day ago As I read /r/mensrights[1] more and more, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the primary female privilege is empathy. If a woman or girl is hurt, people care. If women are kidnapped, there is international media attention. If women are killed, their deaths are highlighted. If there is a conflict between a man and a woman, then people will jump in to defend the woman. If women are under-represented in an area, people want to take action to make things "equal". If a man is hurt, it's funny. If men are kidnapped, we hear silence. If men are killed, their deaths are glossed over. If there is a conflict between a man and a woman, people will attack the man. If men are under-represented in an area, the president will call it a "victory" (as he did regarding the female majority in colleges). Basically, people are programmed to have more empathy for women than men. 200 years ago, that empathy manifested itself in keeping women safe from harm by having them stay home to raise the family rather than die on battlefields or toil in mines. It was empathy not misogyny that kept women from having careers. Present-day, work is safe in offices, so today we have campaigns for women to earn more money and yet have more "balanced" lives where they can both raise a family and earn an "equal" career and, in other words, "have it all". permalink save report give gold reply [–]sierranevadamike 82 points 23 hours ago wow... as a history major, I never looked at the "repression" of women throughout history as empathy rather than misogyny. I NEVER considered this option.. blew my mind.. thank you](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/empathy1.png?resize=567%2C594&ssl=1)
It wasn’t just sierranevadamike who was “blown away” by rogersmith25’s comment: the Men’s Rights mods were so impressed that they reposted it and pinned it as the top post in their subreddit.
Apparently every day is “Opposite Day” on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
EDIT: Here, courtesy of Cloudiah, some more pictures of girls and women protected from that big nasty world out there.
I know I should be used to it by now, but nevertheless … it never fails to flabbergast me that these dudes think that women aren’t harmed and killed in war. It’s such a US-centric view. Do they think that women weren’t killed in France during the Nazi invasion, occupation, and removal? Do they think the thousands of women who were raped and killed in the Congo don’t exist, or maybe don’t count because they weren’t white? Were Iraqi and Afghan women immune to bullets and bombs?
It takes a special kind of self-centeredness to think that the American experience is the experience of the world.
They also ignore working class women. Especially working class women of color. They have been working since goddamn forever but…somehow….that doesn’t count? The idea of a woman doing nothing but leisure activities was reserved for the very wealthy. Staying at home and caring for the kids was also middle/upper class. But apparently working class and poor women don’t exist in the minds of these fuck faces.
What blows my mind is that this can happen when there are protests because of a male death, when there are people tweeting about suicide and talking about men’s mental health issues! Do these dudes only pay attention and seethe and moan and bitch if they see one of teh wimminz in the news, but if it’s another dude, they just don’t register it? Because I do see attention paid to men, empathy for men in predicaments, like journalists abducted, men killed including soldiers, worries about addiction problems when this problem arises in a male celebrity… do I need to go on?
Oh, and do they not know about the women who worked in coal mines and in factories?
The amount of willful ignorance is painful.
As icing on the cake, I bet none of these fucking fools have EVER had a hazardous job. Or joined the military.
Do women of color even exist in MRALand?
Fucking liar…
Also, that sierranevadamike guy? Is a fucking disgrace to history and all history majors.
@policy– No. I don’t think black women exist in MRAland. If they were ever to exist, it would be to insult them and abuse them along racist AND misogynistic lines.
@saintnick86, he didn’t say he was a good history major.
How they’d no this is empathy when hey don’t have any, I don’t know. I’m no farmer, but this smells like free-range organic bullshit.
Were the only two jobs available to men in Ye Olde Days mining and soldiering? To hear the misters that’s all men ever did before 1945.
“How they’d no?” Oy, reading them makes you dumber.
Yeah, but that was a black man. We know from a couple posts ago that the MHRM is only interested in helping white men. There are apparently too few black men for them to give a shit about.
If you want to see what actual historians thought of this, you might want to read the pretty funny thread on /r/badhistory:
http://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2dru5b/apparently_women_never_worked_in_dangerous_jobs/
katz will be glad that someone even mentions the night witches. XD
Also known in MRAland as “a small subset of men.”
Has the MRM even noticed the protests going on in Ferguson?
Yepp. Empathy. When you’re flat out told you can’t do this or that, and you have to stay at home, which includes having a socially inferior role to your husband – that’s just empathy, don’t you know?
Unfortunately, not necessarily. Having a degree in history unfortunately doesn’t prevent some people from holding some very… pelicular beleifs about history.
For anyone who really wants to know – and most of us really, really don’t – just look at the wiki list of WW2 casualties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
Most importantly, go to the bottom of the main list and look at the totals. The total deaths by military action are almost the same for armed forces and for civilians. (Then there’s the add on for civilian deaths by indirect effects.) There are gigantic differences in individual countries between military and civilian deaths by military action, look at Australia and the USA then look at Poland, Netherlands and Greece for examples of this.
It’s far too easy for Oz/US/NZ/Canadian people who’ve suffered very few civilian casualties in the wars we’ve fought in various parts of the world to overlook the tremendous impact of war on civilians where war is fought over, or troops and materiel travel through, their own backyards.
Oh. My. This is just…I’m seriously at a loss for words.
What insanity. I mean, to be so blind as to how history works and the suppositions of various men in the past as to the supposed deficiencies of women (and PoC as well) that you can actually delude yourself into thinking this, among so many MRA false facts. It’s really a staggering thing.
Whoops. That was in response to Policy of Madness.
It’s how semantics work. Women weren’t allowed many “careers” but of course most women were forced to have shitty jobs. Women were usually not allowed to “fight” in wars (but sometimes were allowed), but that really didn’t stop countless from dying or being taken in them. But to them they just hear about a lack of career opportunity and not fighting in wars, so they think that’s the end of it. Women must’ve just been safe all the time. Empathy!
Let’s forget that the lack of careers was about not wanting educated women (when they were allowed to be educated) in competition with men, so they got the lower quality careers. And let’s also forget that in many wars, women are reduced to “spoils”. Empathy!
When I was growing up, a young woman who worked on her family’s farm not far from us had her long hair get caught in a sod-cutting machine and was killed. Right now, just down the road from us, lives a woman with one arm; the other was mangled in a corn-picker and amputated. Farms are notoriously dangerous places and women have suffered their share of accidents.
Also, Triangle Shirtwaist fire, anyone? Women who worked in textile mills in New England? And all that?
WTF is wrong with these dipshits?
Please don’t use “insanity. MRAs have a very deliberate fucked-up worldview.