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’m too lazy to go get a Grumpy Cat “good” meme right now, but just imagine it there. You’ve all seen it!
Regarding soy…phytoestrogens, which soy has, are less potent that natural, bodily-produced estrogens.
They use, and block, the same receptors. They therefore act act a weak estrogen agonist. This is why soy phytoestrogens lower the risk of breast cancer…and shift the bodily balance of hormones a little bit in favor of testosterone.
That, as I understand it, is why soy is not only good for most people, it has the potential to make them sexually a little more frisky.
Neither did I, contrapangloss (I know zip about how the awards work).
Sometimes there really is justice!
That’s why there’s a No Award option: So that if there are terrible options, you don’t have to vote for any of them.
It’s not all good news on soy. It can interfere with thyroxine medication for hypothyroidism. Doctors don’t generally have much to say whether it has any effect on thyroxine produced by the endocrine system itself. The main recommendation is to avoid soy milk in the first few hours after taking your daily dose. (On the other hand, fermented soy as in tofu and soy sauce, seems not to cause such problems – even according to the non-medical and anti-science nutrition crowd.)
This is where I am finding the oestrogenic properties of Tamoxifen interesting – its an antagonist for breast cancer cells yet has a protective effect on bone. So it doesn’t act the same as oestrogen, the action depends on the particular tissue. I find this fascinating, and I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me how this works biologically – a link would do.
@ mm will look into that, thanks.
Day lost to “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”. Hee.
I know nada for tamoxifen, haven’t had cancer yet…
Was looking into ways to masculinize. I’m physically female, but was kind of…um, thinking about getting less so. Why I happen to know about estrogen agonists.
Ah, I had assumed you were some sort of biologist or healthcare worker.
Oh gosh, not that the two situations are mutually exclusive /embarrassed hanging of head
Men have conceived, designed, built and maintained society and everything women enjoy, so there isn’t one alive who can say they don’t live or die on the intellect, insight, ingenuity, efforts and labors of men.
… Used to be that men were obeyed, appreciated and respected for what we’ve done for women, civilization and society
Yes All Men are responsible for everything good any man has ever done! (But Not All Men are responsible for the bad things other men have done.) Seems legit, if you leave deciding when an entire gender is held accountable for the actions of individuals to the MRA-types.
You know, funny, the whole “protecting against one’s will” that insanitybytes22 used.
See, we had a friend when we were newly out of the closet. Said friend was a woman, and verrrrry protective. Extremely so. And it wasn’t that she was toxic at all, it was just that we were stupid little children who couldn’t be trusted to do fucking anything because she knew better.
What I’m saying is, to “protect” us, she physically restrained me and DRAGGED me to the bathroom to force me to brush my teeth, while I kicked and screamed with all my might but couldn’t get free. Because apparently I couldn’t be trusted with such a mundane task.
Later, she outed me to a ton of people and told me everyone knew I was crazy, because I’d left her, and she was doing so much better without my crazy emotionally unstable ass but IF I EVER NEEDED HER…
So yeah, fuck off insanitybytes22. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
RE: WWTH
I’ve never really bought the premise of apocalyptic fiction.
I hear that. I write post-apocalyptic fiction, but most of it is just people going about their lives as best they can. There are assholes and there are nice people, just there are also zombies, which everyone views like any other dangerous wild animal. People are more wary of catching a godawful bacterial infection than they are zombie plague; plague zombies are FILTHY.
RE: cassandrakitty
Why worry about trying to make solar panels when you can just hook some zombies up to a windmill and make them run? Dangle some meat in front of them and you can power your whole farm.
…I might have to use this for a future story.
RE: blahlistic
I was on a low dose of testosterone for about a year and a half. It’s put me where I want to be, if that’s of any interest to you.
@pallygirl
Hyatt: Yes All Men are responsible for everything good any man has ever done!
It works the same way for race, too. A white man once landed on the moon and I am a white man so, despite every possible indication to the contrary, i am a Noble Hero worthy to Rule.
Reblogged this on Shouts from the Abyss and commented:
Don’t you love it when those with power form their own “rights group” to protest the long-overdue system correction? My reblog of the week is a sadly funny take on why men kept women from having those oh-so-dangerous careers.
I sincerely don’t know how to read these MRA’s posts online without wanting to cry. I have an uncontrollable urge to send them a very impassioned rant but i’d be flooded with comments about how I’m “on my period”. One day I will be able to read these and laugh.
And I worry about being mugged by a stranger some night… A more realistic fear is that I’m apparently surrounded by idiot men who never got out of the caves.
This blog has made me want to ask mra’s this one thing. Vagina envy much?