The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
If you hope to make it through the day without losing all hope in humanity, you may not wish to read the following thoughts on Ray and Janay Rice from our old friend from The Spearhead, W.F. Price.
I know people instinctively and reflexively sympathize with the victim of a brutal attack, but …
Yeah, I’m giving you all one more chance to back out of this right now, because we all know that nothing good is going to come after that “but.”
… there comes a time when one has to ask whether or not the victim bears some responsibility for putting herself in this situation. Does Janay really think that will be the last time Rice gives her a beatdown? And even if she does, what statement is she making in marrying a man willing to treat her like that?
The statement is clear: she thinks the violence is a reasonable tradeoff for whatever she gets in return for her relationship, whether it’s sexual gratification, status or money. …
But feminists would have us believe that domestic violence is a patriarchal imposition, despite the fact that married women in patriarchal families suffer the lowest rates of domestic violence of all partnered women in the United States.
Price cites a previous post of his as evidence for this claim, though to declare it wildly misleading would be an understatement. While domestic violence rates among married couples are lower than among cohabiting couples, this isn’t a clean comparison; as Joanna Pepin notes on The Society Pages, it ignores “that selection out of cohabitation and into marriage – and selection out of marriage through divorce – creates an apples-and-oranges comparison between these two groups.” It’s also worth pointing out that as marriage rates have fallen over the last several decades, domestic violence rates have fallen as well.
In fact, study after study after study after study find that domestic violence rates tend to be highest amongst those with traditional – that is, patriarchal – values.
Let’s let Price continue, as we haven’t even gotten to the worst stuff yet.
Maybe feminists think the patriarchy has secretly implanted little chips in women’s brains that lead them to seek out men who will beat them up.
Somehow, instead of choosing granola-crunching lesbians, these women make a beeline for musclebound athletes, beefy bikers and ghetto thugs.
How many different types of bigotry can he fit into one sentence? I count three.
But maybe it isn’t the patriarchy. Maybe there’s something about female sexuality that defies feminist ideals. Perhaps it’s kind of a chaotic, anarchic thing that doesn’t pay attention to pronouncements about what’s right and proper.
Maybe, just maybe, the only way to really cut down on intimate violence would be to restrict women’s sexual freedom.
Well, aside from the fact that this is, uh, an utterly appalling thing to say, particularly in response to an incident in which a man knocked out his then-fiancee in an elevator, it’s also completely wrong. Indeed, studies show the opposite – that the more control women have over their lives, the less domestic violence there is.
Oh, but Price stops just short of explicitly advocating that men should be put in charge of women’s sexuality.
Would I advocate for that? No. As adults, women should make their own decisions in that regard. However, to blame men in general for the results of women’s sexual decisions is absolutely unacceptable.
As terrible as Price’s post is, the comments from The Spearhead’s regulars are, as usual, even worse.
According to the fellow who calls himself TFH,
The biggest error that Western Civ ever made was assuming that women could be ‘adults’. …
The woman’s brain-gina interface is obsolete. She is programmed to get gina tingles from men who were suited to excel in the world of pre-historic times, while she is programmed to be revulsed by the man who would have fared poorly then (the introverted STEM guys of today).
One cannot fully understand why women write love letters to serial killers and continue to get back with violent boyfriends, without also realizing the hate that women have for tech nerds, and how there is an obsessive push to divert tech money to women (i.e. they hate that money is appearing in the hands of men their gina does not tingle for).
Again, the brain-gina interface of women is obsolete. That is the most complete explanation.
I should point out that TFH – also known as The Fifth Horseman – is considered one of the leading intellectual lights of the Men’s Rights movement, with his loopy 2010 manifesto The Misandry Bubble winning praise from everyone from A Voice for Men’s favorite therapist Dr. Helen to self-promoting British MRA Mike Buchanan to crusty old Counter-Feminist Fidelbogen. Oh, and WF PRice, too.
Back in The Spearhead’s comment section, meanwhile, Eric J Schlegel trots out some evo-psych just-so stories to buttress a similarly backwards conclusion:
Women get the ‘gina tingle from the alpha male because, from an evolutionary perspective, those are the genes that contribute to survival. Trouble is, those same sociopathic thugs are not at all any use as protector and provider, so she takes the results of her selective breeding, along with her black eye, and finds a beta schlub provider to help raise them. … [P]erhaps others here have similar stories where female aquaintances chose assholes in their hormoned youth, only to settle for a nice guy with 3-4 thug bastards in tow. Women such as the one you’ve talked about here are those who have not overcome their animal instincts, every bit as much as the men who put them in ICU. The authority that a man used to have over his daughters as well as his sons used to act as somewhat of a check on this social dynamic, but we all know what happened to that…
I think it’s safe to say that if you ever run across a dude who refers to “‘ginas” instead of “vaginas” you should run as far away as your legs will take you.
Someone called Stoltz concludes
This is what happens when a society tells women they are equal – no,no – superior – to men. Movies and TV shows that show a female character acting like a hellish b*tch, goings around kicking everyone’s rearends. … Feminist and a feminist-backed government who tell women they have no responsibilities, and all the rights, so they believe they can do whatever they please to whoever (of course, the ‘whoever’ are men).
Meanwhile, another commenter suggests that the only solution is “to repeal the civil rights laws that prevent people from keeping ‘those’ people out.” Yet another declares that “Ray Rice triggers my gaydar pretty hard” and suggests that Janay “looks like a tranny.”
Price himself shows up with some comments even worse than his post, arguing that abused women stick with their abusers
because it feels good. Having a dominant man is a pleasurable feeling for a lot of women. It’s like a shot of dope for a heroin addict, who knows that he’s taking a big risk each time he injects the drug into his arm, but can’t stop himself from doing so anyway.
Just a couple days ago there was a power outage where I live due to some construction/maintenance in the area. I had to go to a nearby hotspot to do some work online and so did a few neighbors. One of my neighbors was an ordinary, middle-aged woman. She left her phone on speaker for some reason, and she got a call from her man that I heard as clear as day. He called, and then when she didn’t pick up immediately I could hear him yelling at her in a threatening manner for not answering promptly. Then, the guy demanded she get power of attorney over her mother so he could drain the old lady’s bank account, and when she raised reasonable objections to it he was insistent and angry. I was just shaking my head, but this mild-mannered, very plain 40-something white lady looked positively radiant upon receiving this kind of violent attention from her thuggish, scumbag boyfriend.
This is what English teachers like to call an “unreliable narrator.”
Conservative girl
I’m sorry to hear that. But yay! You did it! And I’m happy!
@Conservative Girl:
I’m sorry about what happened to you, but no amount of soul searching will ever enable you to do the mind-reading necessary to guarantee avoiding abusive partners.
Anon2 comment has vanished. Looks like the ferrets got ’em.
I dunno, I’m seeing a lot of misandry coming from Anon2. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the wise MRAs, it’s that women are evil and marriage is a trap and raising kids is like the worst thing ever (unless you’re a woman; then it’s just expected). And yet here Anon2 is praising three men who are married and have children, and insulting a man who isn’t married or has kids. Anon2 is defending manginas!
No, the addiction model doesn’t fit explain why women don’t leave abusers.
I just deleted a long entry on economic and social pressures, our fucked up model of romantic love and victim blaming.
Content warning- Abuse
Her’s a short example- I fell in love. Through a series of events I ended up broke and isolated, physically and socially. He became violently abusive.
I stayed because he told me over and over he would track me down and kill me if I ever tried to leave. Believe me when I tell you he was capable of doing it.
I left because one day he casually indicated he didn’t want to move a particular piece of heavy equipment because that was where he was going to bury me. Eventually. I started planning my escape maybe 20 minutes later, when the initial shock wore off.
@oraclenine: That is seriously scary! I’m so glad you got away from that horrifying person!
Before our noble Agents of the Furrinati tracked him down and vanished him into the ether, Anon2 said something along the lines of:
It’s not the first time I’ve seen this sentiment, and it always simultaneously cracks me up a little and makes me throw up in my mouth a little, because…what is that even supposed to mean? Natural selection doesn’t have a purpose. It’s simply the tautological process of creatures whose traits tend to make them have more descendants than the alternatives, having more descendants than the alternatives. It literally cannot function any other way by definition.
Ultimately what that statement means is “I can think of examples of people I like who have more kids than some other examples of people I don’t like.” And then declaring victory or something.
@oraclenine
I can’t even think of anything to say that adequately expresses my horror on your behalf. Good on you for escaping.
Virtual hugs to Conservative Girl too. I’m glad both you and oraclenine got out of your bad situations.
Re: the genetics of Alpha/Betas. We’re assuming alpha/betaness is a monogenic condition with a fairly simple Mendialian inheritance. It might be better classified as a polygenic trait. It seems to have both physical and behavioural characteristics which is suggestive of the involvement of the more than one locus. If that’s so it might explain the persistence of ‘betas’ within the population. Never-the-less, without some form of selective pressure in favour of the gene variants carried by the ‘betas’ I would still expect to see ‘betas’ at a low level within the population – not the overwhelming majority that the MRAs seem to think they are. ‘Alphaness’ is a genetic trait the explicitly manifests itself during the fertile years whereas other deleterious polygenic conditions do not manifest until quite some time after the individual has reproduced (Here I am thinking of conditions such as arthritis which has a genetic component which is polygenic in nature). Am I over-thinking this bunkum? Yes.
Thank you Conservative Girl for sharing your experience. And thank you to ej who posted the link to the woman who married her abuser.
It’s just so hard to understand.
And also, I know women (in my own family) who do not seem to fit into any of these patterns. Women who have a support system well in place, family and friends ready to help, and still won’t leave, they become sort of fixated…. sometimes, from outside, it really looks like a kind of addiction. They try to convince you that it’s you who don’t understand the depth of their love, you are a cold insensitive idiot who can’t comprehend what real passion is like. They are very probably being manipulated into thinking like this, but then, how can anybody help them?
It’s very painful to watch, it makes me feel so useless.
Hugs to anyone who needs them on this thread. Some scary stories indeed.
TW for more terrible stuff:
I sometimes hate-read Dan Savage’s column while yelling out better advice than he gives. (Hey, we all need hobbies.) He recently printed a letter from a woman whose husband admitted to fantasizing about killing her. For once, Savage got it right, and told her to call a DV hotline and get away from him as quickly and safely as possible.
I did that for the sake of simplicity. Doing it your way would require much more math than I was willing to put into the exercise. Also: it wouldn’t change the ultimate conclusion, which is that any trait that has such an extreme negative selective pressure on it is not going to be represented in 90% of the population a hundred thousand years later.
For a real life migraine over the ALPHA Alelle A look up the warrior gene. It’s most common in blacks and asians (of course) so it leads to all kinds of racismbiotruths!
Thanks for the supportive comments. Even over 3 decades later I can still remember exactly where I was standing when he said it.
I got out by managing to wheedle one of his family members into giving me a ride to town. While there I reached out to friends I hadn’t seen in months. They agreed to come get me on a day I’d be alone on the property, gave me a place to live and resolutely backed me up when he stalked me.
My table top role playing gamer friends very probably saved my life.
The best thing to do for a person who is being abused is to be patient, supportive, and non-judgmental. Abusers confuse their victims, and society, as well as other well-meaning, but clueless people, reinforce the abuser’s message – that the victim is somehow to blame. Being abused is not an easy thing to talk about. Although you may know that no one deserves abuse, your abuser makes you question your motives, your logic, your own mind. They pick at your flaws and make you feel as if you’re the one who is selfish and cruel. On top of that, many victims suffer PTSD and depression. They are so busy trying to survive the day, that they find it impossible to plan the future. They are so used to being abused, they can’t even imagine a fair and equal relationship, and they usually don’t see it coming until it’s too late.
I did that for the sake of simplicity. Doing it your way would require much more math than I was willing to put into the exercise. Also: it wouldn’t change the ultimate conclusion,
True. I do find it kind of fun to take my horribly rusty Genetics out for a spin sometimes, though. Also, how, exactly, are they proposing all this works on a protein level? It really seems far too easy to tell just-so stories with putative genes and populations. At some point the rubber has to hit the road with an actual protein in an actual biochemical system.
Ughh. Quote syntax fail. Sorry
What the evo-psych dude-bros don’t take into consideration because most of them probably have not had a science course, is that it is a myth that all traits passed down are “selected for”. There are many genes/traits that are not advantageous or particularly advantageous to humans in terms of survival, but are still dominant genes and passed on. I know this idea will burst their narrow little minds, but dominant =/= better.
Also, how is supposedly preferring an alpha male “hard wired” into a woman and her sexuality when through most of human history and even today in many parts of the world women had little to no say in whom they married?
I have the same hobby.
Hey! Fox news has spoken on the Rice assault. Or one of their guests has.
There is no way I’m making myself watch the clip, but according to the title, Rice is the real victim because his wife ‘knocked herself out’ on the elevator rail after he punched her.
Everything is so clear now! /s
That evo-psych bullshit that the MRAs spew about women instinctively going for muscle-brained cavemen makes no bloody sense, even if we ignore the fact that women and people in general have thought processes and make their decisions as individuals instead of some kind of hormone-driven borg.
The reason why humans have been such a successful species is NOT because of muscle mass or athleticism, but because we have the brain capacity to make tools and built on the concepts of previous generations (though this is an extremely simplified version of a complex system, granted). This would be obvious just by looking at humanity as a species. We are the wusses of the animal kingdom physically, which, if we were selectively breeding for athleticism, wouldn’t make any sense. Our species is all about brains and ingenuity and fine motor skills, as that is what has allowed us to thrive. The smart and savvy are the survivors.
The Flynn Effect, in fact, implies that as generations pass, the average intelligence of the population only increases (though, granted, this is based on IQ scores, a highly questionable method of measuring intelligence). So this would imply (assuming that intelligence is genetically influenced), that there is in fact an overall preference for intelligent mates in humans. Not for abusive alpha assholes, you fucking MRA tools.
@Catalpa
Besides that, there’s the naturalistic fallacy too. Even if it were how things naturally fell, it still wouldn’t make it right.
@staying in an abusive situation is an addiction/choice.
Peope often reproduce what they’ve grown up with when they enter romantic relationships. Sometimes people who grow up in abusive situations find themselves emotionally drawn to abuse because that’s what feels “familiar” while normal relationships feel “strange”. This is prolly why on a most abusers are obsessed with girls being “spoiled”/raised with self-esteem by their parents. Despite what the douche-canoes say, the problem isn’t that the girls are being raised to expect being treated as “better than”, the problem is that the girls are being raised to expect being treated as human and are now more difficult to manipate into accepting abuse.
Both my sisters have been physically abused. One I was too young to help, but the other one I had to keep away from encouraging her to leave because she wasn’t ready to leave yet and I didn’t want to pressure her. Now she’s left, and I try to emotionally support her the best I can. People venerally don’t leave until they’ve worked through all their issues and they’re ready to, it has NOTHING to do with being “addicted” to abuse.
A huge part of the success of human evolution has been variation. There are trends but we don’t all find the same type of person attractive. A variety of people get to reproduce so a variety of traits are present in our species.