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.”
And let me add awwwww, look at that cute little cuddlebug wombat.
I’m just going to point out the obvious, here. The screed about how women want abusers is written by a man who *literally calls his penis a weapon* (spearhead).
I haven’t seen the Dan Savage being horrible things yet. I think he went and put his foot into his mouth about autism, but that’s all I can remember about it.
Manboobz is an independent journalist ?!?!?! LOL!!
He makes no significant money. No respectable place pays him anything, and this blog gets an embarrassingly low amount of traffic.
Plus, he keeps whining about how he is broke (and how no woman has ever loved him).
Manboobz is just a loser who thinks groveling to women will get him laid (that too while criticizing sites that actually teach men how to do well with women, like Heartiste and Krauser and RooshV).
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, and expecting a different result. Manboobz has spent 5 years of his failed life on this cause, with nothing to show for it at all.
Savage can be pretty terrible. I mean, he isn’t the worst person in the world, but he’s very much unaware of his own privilege and the biases that go along with it. Occasionally, after lots and lots of criticism, his positions will get slightly better (like he finally seems to admit that bi people exist), but even then it’s always accompanied to snarky references to how silly and mean his critics are. And lots of people, mostly women, have stories about how his whole “You should be good, giving, and game” has been used to coerce them into doing things they don’t want to do.
Hugs to oraclenine and ConservativeGirl, if they want them. I’m glad you were both able to safely get away from a bad situation!
Huh. So, Anon2 seems to equate physical appearance and number of women slept with with being right. Anon2 also seems to think that all men are like him and only do things in order to get laid, and views women not as human beings but rather as sexual objects. That’s seriously sad that Anon2 doesn’t seem to understand logic or reason.
“and how no woman has ever loved him”
Project much, Anon2? 😛
Srsly, I have been reading this blog for ages and I haven’t read any mentions from David about a relationship OR the lack thereof. Which, considering the kind of trolls that he gets here, is probably for the best.
@Anon 2: Or, he could, you know, believe that women are PEOPLE. It could actually have nothing whatsoever to do with getting laid. I know that’s a foreign concept to you, considering that’s your sole motivation in life, but there are people who have other things that they think about. Just to let you know.
Is anyone else getting the impression that Anon2 is only interested in arguing with the other half of his brain called “Anon1”?
Uh, TFH? Women are not fucking computers, you jackass. We’re not objects. We’re PEOPLE. We were not “programmed” to do anything, and you cannot reprogram us, either — via the vagina or any other part.
Also, introverted guys must have done all right in passing on their genes in the past, because they exist today. They’re not mutants; their DNA is the same age as all the rest. Clearly, introversion IS a desirable trait. I happen to be the daughter of one, and he produced five more offspring after me, all with the same mother (also, albeit to a lesser degree, an introvert). Do you even science, broseph?
Cool story, Bill. I think I’ll file it under Things That Never Happened.
My ex husband stalked me for years. He called my job repeatedly under phony names, and stood across the street with a giant knife which he would pull out when I looked. He threatened my elderly grandmother. He made up horrible stories about me in court and told my mom all sorts of embarrassing lies about me (which she stills believes). He told my child horrible lies about me and hurt him to get back at me. I had to let my 3 y/o spend Friday night to Sunday night unsupervised with that monster. That was the scariest thing of all. He taunted and threatened me in open court, the guards would sneak me out the back door, and still the law guardian said that I was not thinking of my child’s best interest when I (after 2 serious injuries to my child caused by my ex’s neglect) petitioned for supervised visitation. And never did I ask for or receive one dime of child support, though my ex made five times my salary, and I was so poor I couldn’t afford a phone. Order of Protection? I had one. When I went to the police and filed a report that my ex was coming to my job and threatening me with a knife and called me every day describing how he would kill and maim me, the detective told me that he would talk to my ex and get his side of it, even though by law he had to arrest him. It took me a week to catch up with the detective who was supposed to let me know what had happened with my ex, but never returned my calls. He looked at me with patronizing mock sympathy and said, “Miss ___, sometimes a man leaves a woman, and she feels hurt and angry, so she makes up a story to get back at him . . . Your husband is a pretty nice guy. He told me that he feels really bad about what happened between you.” I’ll never forget that as long as I live. I did however get full custody because the judge had no choice but to order supervised visits (with supervision by a neighbor, a friend of the family!!!). When my ex and his family of lawyers thought that over for a few days, they dropped their custody petition and gave up their visitation rights claiming that it would be too embarrassing for them. My poor son never heard from any of them again. It was best for him, but cruel to just drop out of his life like that. I wouldn’t have no matter how embarrassing. The Law Guardian’s social worker came up to me in court that day and said, “this wasn’t a victory, you’ve done a terrible thing to your child.” Sooo….leaving an abuser really can be as bad as staying with one. I spent too many years looking over my shoulder, imagining my ex in crowds, waiting for that surprise blow he promised me just when I least expect it.
Logrey, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Thank you for sharing your story. I’m glad you and your son got away from all of them.
Re: Anon2’s one of many juvenile misconceptions:
My feminist husband and I have been together over 30 years now, and we are into each other more than ever. You are sorely mistaken if you believe that women are attracted to anti-feminist misogynists that comprise the manuresphere. If that were the case, these individuals would not be wasting their time and energy by posting daily misogynist screeds, but would be enjoying their happy lives with their adoring women. Alas.
@ikanreed:
“That’s the first time I’ve heard of someone consciously ascribing their own will to abuse and manipulate. I know everyone will pile on me again for ablism or whatever, but isn’t that clearly sociopathic behavior?”
I’d say. The manurespherian in question may not have been entirely serious when he shared his hopes to totally control his wife and finally implement “full dread” in the absence of her family, but one is forced to ask, who says and believes things like that?
There is a very limited range of responses to that, and it includes the one you propose.
Anon2: At least natural selection is working properly :
You have to be pretty damned stupid to realise that ideas aren’t transmitted sexually.
The MRAs are a dying reaction to feminism and equality. When it comes to what makes us human – culture – Futrelle is more successful than Price can ever dream of.
Logrey: I’m glad he’s out of your life.
Anon2: got anything else besides schoolyard level taunts? C’mon, son, bring your troll A game, if you have one.
This what I think of when I hear dudes like Anon2 extol the “virtues” of PUA:
Ignoring the obvious racism and sexism for a moment- I strongly suggest these twits actually take some anthropology and archaeology courses the next time they feel the need to discuss evolution and history.
During the times where our fossil records show the greatest evolutionary changes, there were dips in food availability and population. These changes in the fossil record are very specific- our teeth grew smaller and flatter. Our craniums enlarged.
We evolved into what we are now because of thousands of years of promiscuity with what these twits refer to as “betas”.
“up to approximately 100,000 to 40,000 years ago, hominid evolution was driven by the criteria females used to select males for their procreation partners (Tanner, 1981) included males who were increasingly cooperative, social, and less aggressive (Young 1971). Males with these characteristics were more inclined to succeed in a promiscuous social environment (Morgan, 1877;Margulis & Sagan, 1991) and more likely to be responsive to the needs of women with infants and children helpless for long periods. These characteristics were evidenced by males with less testosterone (T) than the more aggressive males”
“By choosing males with low T, females are prolonging the developmental and maturation rates of their male progeny. In humans the relative levels of testosterone (and probably estrogen) in males and females is the primary hormonal intermediary between the eight environmental cues and relative rates of maturation. By prolonging growth, whether explained by heterochronic concepts of neoteny (Montagu, 1955, 1989; Gould, 1977) (prolonging child features into adulthood) or by hypermorphosis (Shea, 1989; McKinney and McNamara, 1990) (prolonging all developmental stages), one of the net results is increased brain and cranium size (Riska & Archley, 1985). Prolonging growth rates is achieved in humans by lowering T. Accelerating growth, in effect condensing developmental stages, is achieved by raising T.”
http://serpentfd.org/section2hominidevolution.html
(The above has been confirmed again more recently after a detailed analysis of the fossil record. )
Imagine that- female’s control over their own agency leads to leaps in our development as a species. /facepalm
I’m guessing Anon2 is kept around for entertainment value.
@Anon2:
“Manboobz is just a loser who thinks groveling to women will get him laid (that too while criticizing sites that actually teach men how to do well with women, like Heartiste and Krauser and RooshV).
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, and expecting a different result. Manboobz has spent 5 years of his failed life on this cause, with nothing to show for it at all.”
LOL! You and your projections are funny, dude.
Of course you cannot conceive of anyone, especially any man, doing anything in life that would not be designed to lead him to sex.
And therein lies your own limitation and misery it creates, as it does for all your brethren. Since all life boils down to a pussy chase for you, you are unable to comprehend the motivations of people who are unlike you — who are, for example, able to transcend their most primitive and egocentric drives, and are motivated by higher human values, like altruism and justice, in their actions.
It’s OK (well, not really, but, you know). Your existence serves as a reminder why the work David’s doing is so important.
@Arithia: Anthropology FTW!
Thanks to all who shared your abusive relationships stories (and to ej for that Frisky link). I too am glad you were able to get away, and I am quite certain that sharing your stories will inspire others to do the same.
Neither Price nor you. You’re both idiots.
Anon2, Price’s post was about abusive men being the most successful with women. By going on and on…and on…and on about how successful Price, Dalrock, Roosh, Heartiste, etc. supposedly are with women, you’re basically claiming that they must be abusive men and that David (who according to what I’ve seen on the blog so far has had dates with women, sex with women, and relationships with women in the best) must be bad with women because he’s arguing that being abusive isn’t okay.
Okay. I’ll be fair to you. You didn’t actually read the whole post but just got from the little bit that you did read that David was criticizing Bill Price.
Also, Roosh is so bad with women that even other PUAs have noticed and called him out on it. http://aaronsleazy.blogspot.com/2012/09/roosh-v-sucks-with-women-and-doesnt.html
Those jerks over at the Spearhead led by price is exactly why the manosphere is considered a hate movement and and deserves to be mocked at. What Ray Rice did was despicable. I mean he could have killed his wife. The NFL is all about greed and making as much money as the can. Commissioner Roger Goodell should be fired. I think he knew about the video in the hotel and their is a cover up. The idiot makes around 35 million dollars a year and should be held accountable. My late dad was a big NY Giants fan and the for years now has always had a big problem with players on drugs, steroids, problems with domestic violence that they have been in denial about.
Hopefully NOW and the US senate will continue to put the heat on the NFL and Goodell will be forced to resign or be fired by team owners who hired him. I have read around 40% of NFL fans are women and if the NFL faces losing revenue they will have no option but to fire Goodell. I also heard on the news that there are no women in prominent positions at the NFL headquarters in NY. That is very wrong for a league where a substantial part of their fan base are women.It will be interesting to see if Goodell attends tonights game where the Ravens(Ray Rice’s former team) play the Pittsburgh Steelers. Hopefully their will be protesters at the game tonight to put more heat on Goodell.
Currently 2 players named Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers and Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers were also involved in repulsive acts of domestic violence. What McDonald did was so putrid I will not even provide a news link. You can Google the stories if you choose but a trigger warning is in effect it is so vile. The commissioner is hiding out and he needs to go along with his 35 million salary. Perhaps he should be forced to donate some of it to an organization to help domestic violence victims. The NFL is all about greed and lining their own pockets.
If number of kids is the measurement of alpha-ness, does that mean that poor people are more alpha than rich people? Africa must be Alpha Heaven, considering all the countries with the highest birth rates are there.
Either alpha behavior is ingrained in some people by natural selection, or it’s a series of techniques that anyone can learn. You can’t have it both ways.
@Policy of Madness
That whole paragraph was so spot on it made me tear up a little. I was comment-bombing a Ray Rice HuffPo article with bits of my story, and I had some people reply that it was helpful to hear it. So I decided to blog it. I shouldn’t have to be ashamed of what happened to me, nor should any other survivor. We shouldn’t be ashamed for staying when our survival often depended on it. People are cruel, but I like to think that it’s unintentional and born of ignorance with some. It helps when we tell our stories.
If it helps me in the meantime, awesome. Part I is up, and I feel a little better. No names are being called out, just stories.
@Aunt Edna
It’s disheartening to see some of the judgment coming from fellow survivors. I don’t quite understand. I get the basics of judging someone–feeling that you have to have someone beneath you so you’re not at the bottom (with the MRM). But how can you do that when you know what it’s like to wish someone could recognize what was happening? When you know how awful it feels to hear people victim-blaming?
Oh for fuck’s sake. Women don’t get into relationships with abusive men because they have special, abuser-sensing genes. They get into relationships with abusive men who are able to act charming, interesting, and kind initially. (Yes, abusers can fake being nice. The eminent manospherian scholars love to bring up Ted Bundy but totally brush over the fact that one of his MOs was pretending to be a vulnerable guy with a broken arm who needed help finding his lost dog and luring in women who wanted to help.) Furthermore, abusers are rarely in “abuser” mode 24/7. Seriously, I though that the cycle of abuse was common knowledge, but apparently, Price has never heard of it.
Furthermore, feminists think that patriarchal culture, by telling men that they need to be dominant and maintain control at all times, often encourages men to be controlling, intimidating, and physically violent in order to stay in charge. They don’t think that women are being fooled into purposefully seeking out abusers.
So, apparently lesbians don’t real. But when they do real, they never ever, ever abuse their partners. And also, all abusive, violent men are “musclebound athletes, beefy bikers, and ghetto thugs.” Are we seeing some racist and classist trends here? I think that we are.
For female sexuality is a monolithic entity and the female mind is a hive mind so all women are sexually attracted to the same traits.
Also, did anyone catch him implying that abuse is only considered wrong because society tells us so?
So, blaming men for choosing to beat women is unfair? What a steaming crockpot of bullshit.
Also, looks like Molyneaux has temporarily taken over.
Because evolution stopped after the days of Our Tribal Ancestors™ and none of the developments of civilization that took place after that have influenced anything at all. Also, aren’t women supposed to be sexually attracted to money because it demonstrates High Value™? Don’t women who supposedly entrap beta providers have sex with the betas too once they’re in relationships with them? Therefore, wouldn’t it follow that betas would also have children with these women and become reproductively successful, thereby making betaness as viable a reproductive strategy as alphaness? Even if the alleged women were cheating with alphas, why would the alpha sperm always impregnate instead of the beta sperm? Gosh! It’s almost like none of this makes sense.
Wait. If men were choosing their daughters’ husbands for so many years and keeping their daughters’ from having sex with other men and doing such a fan-fucking-tastic job at it, why do we have “alpha thugs” nowadays? Shouldn’t fathers have insured that the alleged abuser gene died out?
So, apparently men have never, ever, ever been abused in their relationships with women, have never stayed with women who became abusive, and have never gone back to abusive women. Because men are just better.
Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ! Cloudiah was right. These guys don’t give a shit about male victims of IPV.