Never doubt the ingenuity of the internet’s misogynists in coming up with new reasons to hate a woman they’re already inclined to hate.
Actress and geek icon Emma Watson has been near the top of the new Misogyny hate list all this week, in the wake of the speech she gave at the UN gently praising feminism and suggesting that traditional gender roles aren’t always such a good thing for dudes either. She’s made this point before, declaring in a Tweet last month that
Gender equality not only liberates women but also men from prescribed gender stereotypes. #heforshe
— Emma Watson (@EmmaWatson) August 18, 2014
But wait, the Red Pillers of the internet declare: Watson is herself dating a hunky jock rather than a “bald scrawny impoverished poet.”
WHERE IS YOUR FEMINISM NOW?
According to the UK’s Daily Mirror, Watson is currently dating a fellow Oxford student who also happens to be 1) gigantic 2) a rugby player and 3) handsome. As The Mirror put it
Matt was dubbed Oxford’s most eligible bachelor and was previously named the best looking player in his on-field position by the university rugby team’s Twitter account.
I know, you’re probably not exactly shocked – shocked! – to discover that a famous actress is dating a handsome dude. But in the Red Pill precincts of the internet, the regulars think they’ve got their CHECKMATE FEMINISM.
Right wing “journalist” and blogger Robert Stacey McCain triumphantly cackled
All the hot babes like Emma Watson are crazy for guys who don’t fit “prescribed gender stereotypes,” right? So you will probably be surprised to learn that Emma Watson is dating a
bald scrawny impoverished poetthe biggest jock at an elite university. …In other words, an Alpha male, the epitome of “prescribed gender stereotypes” from which Emma Watson says we need to be liberated.
Smart young fellows figure out that listening to what women say is less important than watching what women do. Women are constantly saying they want sensitive Ashley Wilkes types, even while they’re actually going crazy for the Rhett Butler types. …
When all is said and done, the basic human sex instinct is still as simple as, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
On the Red Pill subreddit, the regulars celebrated what they saw as a great victory over feminism. Redpillbanana seconded McCain’s “analysis.”
As a man in our new feminist world, you are liberated from your gender stereotype and have permission to be vulnerable and human. And women have permission to dump you for the next nearby alpha male who decided that he doesn’t need to be liberated from his gender stereotype.
Other Red Pillers made sure that everyone knew that they didn’t think Emma Watson was all that hot anyway.
WOULD NOT BANG.
Meanwhile, proudly racist, woman-hating dating guru Heartiste offered these, er, thoughts on the matter, in his trademark, er, style:
Feminism long ago abandoned any pretense to logic or internal consistency. It’s nothing but feels all day, every day, with an extra helping of feels. Watson’s rationalization hamster, like most rodents residing in the brains of her callow ilk, is 700% thigh and 800% glutes. A swole spinner on the wheel of ego-masturbation.
Ok then.
So how do you respond to this sort of thing? Point out that Watson was previously dating a guy who most Red Pillers would probably consider a big ol beta? Post examples of conventionally hot actresses who’ve dated “nerds” and intellectuals and otherwise not stereotypically macho men – from Marilyn Monroe (playwright Arthur Miller) to Christina Hendricks (nerdy actor Geoffrey Arend, who’s not even as famous as her).
But what’s the point? All you have to do is step outside to see examples of happy couples who don’t fit the “me Tarzan, you Jane” stereotype the Red Pillers are so desperate to assure us is the One True Way.
The human heart and libido are complicated things. Yes, some feminist women date macho dudes. And some traditional women are drawn to nerds. Some women date men who make more money than them; others date guys who are broke. And a lot of women don’t have clear “types” at all. (Watson doesn’t seem to.)
It’s also worth pointing out that, well, you can’t always judge a book by its cover. A gigantic rugby player who is ferocious on the field may be a teddy bear in private. And scrawny nerdy dudes can be horrible people (e.g. Woody Allen).
Feminism doesn’t deny that some women – including some feminists — are drawn to macho men. What feminism says is that traditional gender roles are not the only way to do things.
Emma Watson can date whatever kind of person she wants to date. It’s her own damn business. That’s feminism.
Yep, Adonis Belt it is. I’ve had a few boyfriends on whom it was very pronounced and yep, my hamster was excited.
Presumably this makes me evil, somehow.
@LBT: Second verse, same as the first.
They’re saying that if you ask criminals who they think would make a good target they tend to pick people who have a prior history of victimization. This holds true for rapists too, according to my criminology classes in days of yore. Apparently there’s something specific that occurs in the body language of people who’ve been victimized before that predators notice immediately, even if all they’re shown is an outline of the person moving with all the distinguishing features in terms of age, race, and so on hidden.
@Kim
The methodology used videotape of people walking, taken from behind (without their knowledge, but later they were told and had a chance then to back out if they didn’t want their tape used). These people were then asked about a history of victimization. The researchers selected 6 people who had not self-reported victimization and 6 who had, for a total of 12, and that’s what they had the study subjects rate.
It just sounded from that paragraph that they weren’t checking “what makes psychopaths think people will be easy to mug” so much as “psychopaths are actually good at determining who would be easy to mug”. Sounded like they are making assumptions, but I haven’t actually read the article, so it’s probably me making assumptions. 🙂
It really reinforces the idea of them as predators though – like literally how animal predators can instinctively see which of a herd will be the easiest prey by the way they are moving.
I read the article. It has the same problem as most psychological studies, in that the sample group was a bunch of college students. Other than that, my superficial perusal reveals no major problems, except that they suggest, for future research, studying how different intensities of victimization change people’s body language. That strikes me as Not Okay, from an ethical point of view.
Well, nobody said you had to. Indeed, nobody even asked if that thought had crossed your mind, as I recall.
And really: “political correctness” and “cultural marxism”? Careful there, dude, some of us can hear right-wing dog-whistles.
When they taught us about this in criminology class it was over 20 years ago. Not sure if the experiment being referenced here is more recent, but this is a phenomenon that psychologists have known about for a while.
(FWIW, all the anecdotal evidence I have tends to reinforce the idea that yep, predators can very accurately identify people who’ve been victimized before, and use that information in deciding who to target. Whether or not they’re aware that’s what they’re doing seems less certain.)
ROFL!
But Mr K really is baroque. He’s never even bought me a coffee!
As if a woman writing love letters to anyone would turn around and start dating someone else. Why even think this is a potential situation you’d have to deal with? Much less being forced to date someone you didn’t want to date on penalty of political incorrectness.
Generalizing all women who love convicts as people who are attracted specifically to criminal behavior is not accurate at all. There are plenty of reasons for someone to end up a convict. Minorities, especially, are more likely to end up imprisoned for extended periods over behaviors that might not even get a white man arrested at all.
At a certain point in the conversation our friend seems to have realized that people weren’t going to let him get away with the shit he was saying earlier, and responded by building a straw village.
@cassandrakitty
It was published in 2009, so, fairly recent. One of the things they did was ask the subjects why they rated each person the way they did, and found that the people who scored high on the psychopathy scale were unable to clearly articulate the criteria they used. So: if this was taught 20 years ago, I guess nothing new has really been learned?
“But I’m still not going to date a woman who writes loveletters to convicts though. No amount of political correctness or cultural marxism will make me do such a thing.”
That sounded like snark to me. Either that, or he’s got a very poor ear for what flies on WHTM.
As to the study about predators and potential victims, it would seem pretty difficult to design a study that would really be persuasive; however, it does seem intuitively evident that a predator would study potential victims and learn to identify the most vulnerable prey, as, for example, a rapist might learn to identify women who can be pressured into drinking more than they intended by playing on their wish to be friendly and agreeable.
Also: PoM’s kitty is Teh Squee. And yup, count me in as one of those “You’re a kitty!” people. If there’s a friendly cat around, I’ll be so petting that. And scritching those widdle ears, too…
Oh, and LBT? In case you needed to hear this from anyone tonight, I just gotta say:
I BELIEVE YOU.
And that it sucks that those predators did to you what they did. It’s all their fault, not yours. I don’t blame you for anything, and especially not for your reactions, both then and now. It’s unfathomably hard to talk about, but you’re doing it. Get as angry as you damn well want — it’s a healthy and thoroughly understandable part of recovery. And don’t feel that you have to forgive anyone for their part in it unless YOU want to. Hang in there! You might feel worse before you feel better, but when you do, it’ll be amazing. All the hugs.
Do you think it’d BREAK THESE DUDES BRAINS to hear that the two most vocal feminist dudes I know are both rugby players? One of whom is definitely of the “buff and handsome” subtype?
And I played rugby?
@ Policy of Madness
Yeah, it sounds like they’re no closer to figuring out the how than they were when the idea was first taught to me, but the basic idea stands up to repeated testing. IIRC one of the reasons the experiment hasn’t been repeated more often, or more research done going down that path, is because of fears about how easily the results could be misused by people looking for excuses to blame the victims. Certainly they were very careful about how they presented that information to us and made sure that everyone understood that it didn’t mean that the people being targeted were at fault.
@LBT
GROOOAAAAANNN.
@zoon echo login
According to Wikipedia, this is also called “Poseidon’s Fanny-pack.”
I’ve heard these referred to as “cum gutters” by the gays I hang with. Gross name for something good looking. (IMO)
I made an actual face when I read that. Why the constant need to try to make sex as degrading and un-fun as possible, dudes both straight and gay?
My educated guess is that they read body language subconsciously, and do so better than most people do. They see “tells” that the rest of us aren’t tuned into.
…I read body language consciously now because I’m not nearly as dissociated as I have been most of my life…but the “tells” I look for are things that will allow me to determine whether a person is a threat or not.
Kate or Die (an online comic) has a strip on this topic. The protagonist is dating a guy, and she asks him why he broke up with his last girlfriend. “Oh, she went psycho on me.” Followed by panels illustrating his behavior with protagonist over time, gradually becoming more and more appalling. Last panel, he’s with a male friend. “So, why did you two break up?” “Dude, she went psycho on me.”
Abusers don’t act like abusers from the jump, as has been pointed out here several times in several ways. Mine certainly didn’t.
@cassandra
From the gay side, coming on someone’s belly/coming on your own belly isn’t actually degrading. IME a lot of bottoms don’t necessarily want a top coming inside them (for HIV and other reasons) and coming on yourself usually just means you’ve had a lot of fun.
I remain clueless over straight dudes.
It’s not the action that I take issue with, it’s the language. It’s just needlessly offputting.
That kitty-hat is SO PRETTY. ::is ded of cute::
Oh gods, me too. Every time. I have missed trains and trams because I have been saying You’re A Kitty!
I get it, I get it! I’m Henery the Eighth I Am!
LBT: HI KID! Despite the subject (and damn yes, I believe you) it’s good to see you posting here. ::waves::
WEEBOY! Welcome back, haven’t seen you in too long!
Offie also has no use for ShadowNirvana’s shit.
http://i.imgur.com/0KNKUZ9.png
Did you name your cat after an off-license?