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.
LEA! Can I print that on a poster and hang it on my wall?
Regarding that whole “giver of life” thing…
Motherhood: A job that is SO VITALLY IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY that unwilling women must be coerced, shamed, browbeaten, and nagged into performing it…yet at the same time so trivial and worthless that they must not expect to be paid for doing it, or even to have their other burdens lightened in order to make it more feasible.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Of all the things you could have commented on, you thought Ally’s politics were the most pressing issue that needed to be argued about?
Can we not?
Wow. So apparently men going to war and building bridges, or participating in dangerous professions, throughout history has been for women, not families or society or themselves. Also, apparently women have worked dangerous jobs for men, not families or society or themselves.
It takes a pretty distorted worldview to characterize something as mundane as working for money as a “symbiosis” between genders.
contrpangloss,
I guess so. If’n you wanna.
See, that’s why nobody likes Libertarians.
The “protection” offered by patriarchal gender roles takes away options from women. It’s as “protective” as slavery. It prevents women from making meaningful choices, often with harsh punishment (abuse, rape, lobotomies, death, poverty, exclusion) for those who try to choose.
Safety nets INCREASE options for the poor. They provide people who have fallen through the cracks (or who, because of circumstance, might have extra obstacles in life) with necessities so they can take their life in a direction more meaningful than “what keeps me from starving today”. You can either decline the benefits or reach the point where you’re no longer eligible for them, and there’s no punishment for either.
lame… the <emph> tag isn’t working for me… wasn’t that a thing? Oh well, back to the stone-age of HTML with <i> and <b>.
No law against it. Off topic is on topic here.
Lea, very well said! A that selfless expectation is encouraged for convenience sake. It’s sooo much easier to ignore suffering when they’re quiet about it. And poof, the problem goes away (for the people not affected). If people are loud, the privileged have to do something… which usually starts at demanding that they shut up about it.
She and Sunshine Mary really should be friends, they both have the same behavior pattern where they come here, try to start a fight, and then run off to blog about how mean and awful feminists are when we point out the flaws in their silly theories.
And of course, Inanity Bytes forgets that early feminism wasn’t just educated upper-class feminists speaking for lower-ranking women…it was also the campaign to abolish slavery. When women (black as well as white) weren’t allowed to speak at abolition meetings (because to do so not sufficiently demure!), they went off and started the first feminist movement there. And that was just in the US. In Germany, working-class socialist women were feminist leaders.
And NONE of them needed “protecting” that would keep them from making important gains for ALL women.
hellkell,
True.
Contrapangloss, you might like this: http://thebloggess.com/2010/05/this-is-why-i-shouldnt-be-allowed-to-use-large-appliances/
Wow, that blog post of IB22’s is so naïve. It sounds like something I could have written when I was fifteen and didn’t realize that everyone didn’t live the same way.
It’s “em”, not “emph”. I think it should work: Test.
Not that I thought like that when I was a teenager, or anything, I just didn’t realize that everyone wasn’t just like me and the people I knew.
I’m just lurking about but I find it irritating that instead of engaging with commenters this troll just drops shit and leaves. Then retreats to her blog where she can control the discussion. I would also guess that she could use the page hits that this provides her. Silly little troll.
I guess Insanity bytes is too much of a coward to come back and address our points. No wonder she thinks women are weak and need protection. She’s projecting.
I guess engaging with the people you started a debate with, looking up terms and providing citations is just something meanie pants women’s libbers do (I use that term because IBs idealogy plus lack of Google ability makes me think she might be posting from the early 60s or something)
I see she still didn’t answer my question. It’s OK, insanitybytes, I’m a benevolent person so I won’t make fun of your cowardice too much.
Not that I believe for a second that protection was the true motivation for all of this rampant historical misogyny, but even if that was true, why do these guys think it’s excusable because they meant it to be something good? I mean, haven’t any of these MRAs heard the phrase “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”?
@z:
That’d be it. Thanks.
Does this actually work
Oh, hey, guess it does. I’ve now reached the html equivalent of learning that if you bash things with a rock you can crush them. Fire, alas, remains beyond my graps.
Or grasp, even. Imma go get some coffee.
Why is this better than this? (one was <em> and the other was < i>)
I think they’re the same? Emphasis and italics? Not sure!