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.
Yuppers.
And then there’s my best friend and his hubby. Hubby works, bestie is work-from-home dad to their two adopted sons (and cute little dog). The dog is also in the symbiosis somewhere.
If it is, then I’m as “bad” as you…I had that exact same thought. Because no one can be an anti on this issue and NOT have terrible shit inside them, waiting to be spewed…
Nope. It makes you prescient!
Well, of course. The humans feed, house, and exercise the Furrinati overlords, while the Furrinati … um … ah … enthrall us with their cuteness and keep us on our toes with reminders of how barely adequate the service is!
And, BTW, calling women “givers of life” is the same thing as reducing them to a mere “sexual receptacle”. There is no such thing as an immaculate conception. Even technically-virgin births can result from sperm being deposited close enough to a vagina to creep in. And we all know how much the Religious Reich (and its asshole-atheist cousin) like to relegate women to “mere vessels for the greatness of Man”. Who, if you subscribe to that weird homunculus theory that so many of them do, becomes in effect a parasite, living off Wifey-Mama’s innards.
Calling that a “symbiosis” just insults everybody. Personally, I prefer to think of people as people, who can be sexual (or not) as their desires take them. Reducing them to reproducers is just fucking absurd.
Yup. There is no more powerful word in any language than a long, pitiful meowwwwwww.
Because you can also use it against anyone who wants their rights protected!
– This isn’t oppression, we’re just protecting you!
– I don’t need your protection
– FINE! Then no rights for you either! Because prosecuting rapists is PROTECTING YOU, amirite? And any law that focuses in women is to PROTECT them so they must be gone. Especially those who protect you against violence because you don’t need PROTECTION!
So, you see, we’re only evil children who want protection OUR WAY instead of THEIR WAY. Or something like that?
PS: I don’t own any Uggs, either. If I wanted to slop around in my bedroom slippers, I’d wear them out on the street.
In the every woman living with a male protector scenario the question that people like insanitybytes don’t want us to ask is, if he turns out not to be such a nice man after all, who’s supposed to protect us from him? Since clearly protecting ourselves has already been dismissed as an option.
Trusting someone with absolute power over another person not to abuse it is rarely a good idea.
I’d say that situation actively fosters abuse. And that is exactly why so many traditionalists are fighting tooth and nail to keep it in place as the norm. Because if they don’t get absolute power over even ONE person, their whole purpose in life is suddenly under question. And if there is one thing no trad can handle, it’s questions…
My question would be, why do you think that you need that power over another person? So far nobody has provided an answer that doesn’t boil down to “so that I can abuse them if I want to”.
@pallygirl
Not to mention, she talks about the value of conception, which makes no sense from a purely secular standpoint. Conception isn’t inherently valuable unless you believe that ensoulment happens during it. Or find some other justification for the belief that a non-sentient cluster of cells that may, if all goes well, eventually develop into a human being is worth more than the wishes of the actual living and breathing human being it lives in, I guess.
Re: acronyms
QFT is always Quoted for Fucking Truth to me. I realize it’s an extra F but acronyms drop letters all the time, dammit.
Maybe she thinks that trying to pass her ideas off as not being rooted in religion will make people who support abortion take them more seriously, but if so a. she’s wrong and b. she’s not doing a very good job of hiding where her ideas actually come from.
I think some people think men should have power over women for their (i.e. women’s) own good, since women are silly little creatures, weak and helpless. And others think it because women are immoral slatterns. And others just think of us as semi-sentient “sexual receptacles” and incubators, so there’s no moral issue involved — we’re to be protected to the same level you would protect your car or xbox (but similarly replaceable if we “malfunction”).
And that’s gross.
I mean, I already showered this morning, and now I want to shower again.
On the acronyms… My best friend is Brazilian but his English is very good and I often forget he’s not a native speaker. But recently, he was having a hard time and I sent him a few encouraging texts, signing one XOXOXO. He called me and asked “What does ‘shoshosho’ mean?” It took me a while to figure out what he was referring to.
For anyone else not familiar with that convention, it’s a way of representing kisses (Xs) and hugs (Os).
It’s interesting that so many of you seem to believe in the protective and benevolent nature of government and the state, but not in the benevolent nature of men.
So when a man protects me “against my will”, that is abuse and oppression, but when the Gov pays for bc, welfare, food stamps, medicaid, that isn’t?
Ooh, the troll is back! Hooray!
@insanitybytes22:
It isn’t “against my will” that should be in scare-quotes, it is “protects.” What you call “protection,” keeping women in the home so they don’t have to do any big scary jobs and such, is not “protection” in the slightest. Government-supplied safety nets are.
I wanted to poke this a bit now I’m not sitting in an exam situation.
The vast majority of people don’t care about intersectionality, hierarchies or structures.
They care about militarized police (a structure of law enforcement set up in a hierarchy of increasingly militant thought), having their kids shot (the unfortunate consequence of the intersections between being poor, having little power, and the police being slowly trained to respond with more force) or the skyrocketing suicide rate among men (the terrible consequence of embedded structures of maculinity that tell people not to seek help, least their fail their allotted task of being strong(tm)… an intersection of mental health and sociology)
I just found that a little funny.
———-
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
Also, if you notice, “government” is more than men now. It is starting to include more and more women. So I don’t know why you think a gender and an elected body of government are comparable.
If you find receiving welfare, food stamps, or medicaid to be oppressive and unwanted, then you can choose not to sign up for those programs.
Oh, look, deliberate misinterpretation and refusal to admit that nobody is questioning her right to do what she wants with her own life. Yep, she’s an anti-feminist alright.
@Fibinachi:
I just found it funny that while 2 out of the 3 things she mentioned were societal concerns specific to a recent tragedy (militant police and having your children shot), the last one was an MRA talking-point.
A talking-point that, like all other MRA talking points, is a bit bollocks. You can hardly call suicide rates “sky-rocketing.”
Here’s a very simple question for insanitybytes – why is it that just because you aren’t interested in having a particular option available to you (food stamps, medicaid, etc) you don’t want it to be available to other people either? Why is your ability to reject those options for yourself not enough?
I can’t stop laughing at this.
It also reminded me of Brazilian children entertainer Xuxa (pronnounced “shoosha”), she was like THE superstar of kids during the 1990s here (I believe she did TV in the US as well, but I don’t know how popular it was).
I believe any person around my age can still sing along most of her songs.
Erh, yes.
The Government, in that vast abstract sense
of a structure of society that we, the people
organize in a bond
is a token of our combined decisions to govern ourselves
That’s what Government is
It’s us
At large
Or at least what it should be
And when We all decide
Hey Taxes
What we pay for Civilization, Integration and Public Road Safety Inspections
Should also be used on helping the poor
buying foodstamps
and subsiziding farmers in West Dakota
That’s… Our decision, taken by vote, in a democratic fashion, as set down by the conventions of the Constitution that our country just so happens to have (No matter what that country is, they’re all basically parliamentary, if they’re not a dictatorship)
But When I
the Better Than You
decide that you suck too much to manage your finances
and you’re stupid to mange your life
and you belong in my house as a my housekeeperly husband
and that to keep you out of harms way and strife
I oughtta protect you from the vagaries of fate and chance
that’s not your decision.
It’s me going, hey, this is the way
it’s going to be
So get protected, or try starvation until you’re forced to see
That for now, this is your working definition of “free”.
————
I believe in the benevolent nature of men. I’ve met hundreds, and they’re mostly lovely, amazing, charitable, funny, charming, sexy, amusing, fantastic, creative, joyous, beautiful, funny, comedic people.
They just don’t get to fucking tell me what to do.
The basic difference between the structure of representative democractic government decisions as agreed upon by a parliament of your peers is sort of a different beast than someone deciding that you’re now not allowed to walk down the street or be seen without a cousin or own money.
And you know what?
if you disagree with paying for foodstamps or housing or welfare? You can vote against it! You can protest and demonstrate and march and argue and convince your peers the system is rotten and change it, Because that is your right! That is what you are allowed to do!
Claiming that’s in any way comparable to the situation where you’re forced to accept the benevolent good will of other people with No other recourse is daft, wrong and insidious. I don’t want to force people to rely on the supposed benevolence of other people, because at some point, at some time, in some place, someone is going to NOT be benevolent. And that’s enough of a chance for me to disagree, because i don’t want to accidentally force people to suffer. That’d be some sickingly insidious utilitarian ethics, of the , “Oh well, it works for 70 % of people, who don’t get beat or starved, I’m fine sacrifing 30 % to drunk rape, beatings, control and despair because I’ve got mine“
@cassandrakitty:
Do you know if insantiybytes22 is one of those people who thinks this is a good meme? Who thinks that providing free birth control takes away women’s choice or belittles them?