Over on Reddit, a regular on the Blue Pill subreddit — devoted to mocking Red Pill ridiculousness — recently reposted the cartoon above, one of The Onion’s brilliant parodies of the terrible political cartoons that are pretty much omnipresent in every second-string newspaper in the country. I don’t think I’ve ever posted it here before — I’m not sure I ever saw it until today — so I thought I’d share it here as well.
What makes this particular cartoon extra delicious is that its “argument,” such as it is, is one that a lot of Men’s Rights Activists actually believe. Indeed, it calls to mind the cover of the revised ebook edition of Warren Farrell‘s seminal MRA manifesto The Myth of Male Power, in which a picture of a woman’s posterior is presented as if it truly is, somehow, a threat to the rights of men:
Hell, as you can see, that woman’s butt is literally shattering the word “power.” The only question in my mind is whether the butt-damage was caused by some overenthusiastic twerking, or by a particularly powerful fart.
But Farrell — who is essentially the Founding Father of the Men’s Rights movement — didn’t mean it as a joke. As he explained in the new introduction to his book, he intended the cover to highlight the power “genetic celebrities” — his term for attractive women — have over hapless horny men:
When asked about the cover in a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread, Farrell doubled down:
MRA’s: when the arguments of your most famous “intellectual” are indistinguishable from a parody editorial cartoon in The Onion, it might be time to rethink your whole movement.
I think sometimes very attractive people (…defined by whatever the prevailing cultural definition of “attractive” is) whether male, female, gay, straight, whatever, can sometimes get away with things that the less flashy can’t. Insofar as there’s a “chicks like bad boys” thing happening I think it’s probably just that women like very attractive ones and are sometimes willing to tolerate some crap to keep the hottie around…
I mean, who among us hasn’t ever rationalized some obnoxious bit of behavior from someone with the face of an angel and the body of a greek god… mmmm What was I saying?
Thing is, that door swings both ways, (I’ve seen men tolerate some ridiculousness just because the woman dishing it out was so beautiful.)
so I don’t see either gender as having a competitive upper hand or the moral high ground there.
I think the manosphere has slowly started to come around to accept that women do value looks in men but I’ve seen a lot of them do all kinds of elaborate tap dances around confronting that idea head-on. I remember one of them saying guys should work out because it will “make your woman’s hamster spin” and then she’ll have sex with you because “the hamster will tell her to have sex with you so she doesn’t lose you”
instead of just saying, “guys should work out, because women like to have sex with hot guys!”
I didn’t find out until his first episode when he was two, so I don’t know if it counts as bringing home a sick cat, but my furbub is epileptic and will be on medication his whole life. Hasn’t slowed him down a bit, though!
Both Darrow and Dracarys had respiratory infections when I adopted them. Apparently it runs rampant in shelters. Luckily it’s the only time either of them were ever sick and Dracy didn’t infect Darrow when I brought her home.
Thanks to the crew here for understanding what I meant by attractive. The way I wrote my comment it came out poorly 🙂 but yes culturally defined beauty standards was more what I was trying to get at… As pointed out, “beauty” is in the eye of the beholder. Sorry all for being clear as mud 😛
Same here. My little torbie Sasquatch just showed up at my door one morning, hungry and scrawny and meowing urgently. I suspect she was abandoned. She was underweight for a three-month-old, but otherwise healthy, and adopted me on the spot. I gave her milk at first to see if she could keep food down, and then canned cat chow, and kept my grey old lady kitty from beating up on her. Once she’d settled in, I took her to the vet for her health check, shots and spay. Now she’s 18 months old, and solid as a pile of bricks. And loves to snooze on my cot with me in the study at siesta time. Soon as I’m down, she’s up on my legs, purring.
She’s the sweetest natured kitty, too…on the day I took her to the vet for her little operation, she woke up out of anesthesia purring, comfortably rolled on her back with all fours in the air like she just didn’t care. All the vet staff loved her. The only thing she ever objected to was the anti-flea medication they gave her. Everything else, from nail clippers to vaccinations, she took like a trooper.
I’ve never adopted a shelter kitty, because out here in the boonies, kitties just somehow keep finding their way to me.
Same here. It’s sad. Our dog was dumped as a fluffy adorable white puppy… turned out to be a Great Pyrenees. He’s huge now.
Then I got to thinking one day, “you know, I wish we had a cat.” Not a week later my husband came home and said there was one hiding under our porch. The universe had answered my call. “I dunno if it’s stray, though. Looks kinda fat to me.”
Not fat… PREGNANT. lol Ah good times. Mama Cat nested in my bedroom closet and the wee kitties pooped on my wedding dress… but hey, they WERE super cute. She’s fixed and the babies are gone. I’ll never wish upon a star for another critter again though.
Our cat was literally thrown away by someone. Makes me furious whenever I think about it. Like she was a piece of trash. A co-worker of my mom’s found her and hooked us up. She was about the size of a 4-week-old but had the dentition of an 8-week-old, so my guess is that she was a runt further stunted by no food.
I fed her kitten formula for a few days with little bits of wet food. You can’t feed them too much food right away, or they’ll get sick, but kitten formula seems to be safe in whatever quantity they’ll take it.
She was so tiny and so skinny that I was afraid she’d freeze so I had her sleep next to me. She woke me up at like 3 AM, and it turned out that she needed to use the litterbox but was afraid to cross the room by herself in the dark. LOL Cute from day 1!
Your stylish cat obviously wanted to bring a little glamour to the blessed event, I respect that.
@ Kate Minter: I just got a taste of some of your and Mark Minter’s writings and it seems that you and he are not only reactionaries, but also racists as well. His claims that white men never had any interest in black women is laughable and sickening at the same time. What are you doing here except to try to advance your sick agenda? You’ll get nowhere. This is my first post and not as articulate as I would like it to be, but I heartened that the regulars here are giving you the drubbing you deserve.
Our kitties were all dumped or feral too; first I bought from a shelter was Mamie, in ’89. The others had arrived or been thrown over our back fence.
Bina – you have a torbie? PICTURES PICTURES PICTURES!
http://i.imgur.com/gWpvY2x.jpg
You all warm my cat-foster heart. Things have been pretty quiet around here; two of ours are in enclosures, including our lovable troublemaker.
Looking at the planet of the apes picture, all I see is an insurance analyst in the midst of a nervous breakdown. He’s screaming “Assess!”
(Do we say “nervous breakdown” any more? Is it too specifically associated with (outdated) psychiatry, or is it now an idiom that doesn’t refer to diagnosed conditions? If it’s out, how about “breakdown” simply, or “meltdown”?)
Orion, LOL, yeah, I realised after I posted it that “Asses!” like that could well be “Assess!” Oh well. I’m too lazy to rewrite the text now.
Isn’t Roosh’s whole oeuvre based on that? “I hate women, they’re so stupid, yet their sexy butts compel me to keep going after them!”
We got 2 of our cats through a rescue – the rest were:
Bunny, RIP – spotted busband downtown at an ATM and followed him around, then jumped in his car with him, so he brought her home. She was preggers, and we kept 2 of her babies (Cow, RIP and Nemmy, who is now head puss in the house) and gave the other 2 away to friends. As an aside, if not for busband being a light sleeper she’d have birthed her babies in between us while we slept (she climbed in with us to give birth – he whisked her off to her birthing box just in time!)
Benny and Walle, the gingers: found in a box in a garage as kittens, brought to my sister’s vet clinic.
Eva: was my sister’s cat, we took her in after it was discovered she was terrified of my BIL’s kids
Isis and Moofie, both RIP: busband got a call from a friend about 90 minutes away, saying he had to come rescue 2 geriatric cats who were going to be – I am not kidding – shot by their owner who no longer wanted them. Needless to say, those cats were home with us that same day.
We also help look after a colony of ferals/strays in our neighbourhood, feeding, monitoring and catch-spay/neuter-release. There’s 4 of them who love being petted, and we’d love to scoop them up and bring them home, but many of them have FIV and we just can’t afford to take that on, unfortunately.
We recently buried our 15 year old kitty who was born under our house. He was the runt and had to be bottle fed. We could not have asked for a better friend.
I love my rescue kittehs.
Of my current batch of furrinati, Beran (Witchy Kitty) and Brond are 2 brothers also known as the Bear & the Panther. Their mum was a feral cat who a farmer brought in to a local vet as part of his catch-spay/neuter-release, She’d already got this litter of five black kittens and he asked the vetinary nurse to have the kittens put to sleep as he didn’t want them. She got him to sign the kittens over, hand-reared them to 8 weeks, scrounged immunisations off the drug company & got the vetinary practice to neuter them at cost, paid for by the local cat charity – total star. A twitter friend put me in touch & I got first pick – ok, actually the boys chose me.
My other 2, Maisie & Minnie are sisters brought in to a cat rescue place heavily pregnant and barely more than kittens themselves. The cat rescue rehomed their kittens no problem but struggled to find the sisters a hoime together. I turned up after they’d been at the rescue for 6 months and recogised how adorable they were immediately. 🙂
It’s always a bit of a gamble with rescue kitties as you don’t know what problems they may have or may develop so I understand why people are sometimes reluctant. But all my kitties have been rescues and they’ve all been wonderful. I may, of course, be bised. 😉
Awwww, how adorable! My Sasquatch-kitty was already litter-trained, so I didn’t have to babysit her that much. This is why I suspect she was abandoned; she was super friendly and trusting, knew what cat food was, and didn’t need to be socialized at all. If there’s such a thing as a perfect stray kitty, she was it. Nothing wrong with her; she just didn’t seem to have a home to go to, and she was in danger of starving because she was too young to mouse.
Here she is, all grown up, inspecting a laundry basket:
http://t.co/EMnwjE493S
And since this is a butt thread, here’s a photo of her oh-SO-oppressive, fuzzy butt:
http://t.co/lqeZp19FFm
@titianblue
Considering I got Niko from a family friend but only got to keep him for two, maybe three years, before he developed diabetes to the point of no return, I’m not inclined to suspect shelter cats as having any more health complications than any other kind. Just more exposed.
Guess that also depends on the shelter, though.
Dracarys has been sneezing a lot since last night. I’m slightly worried. She’s eating and drinking normally, doesn’t have diarrhea and doesn’t feel feverish so I’m not freaking out yet. But she’s an indoor cat and so is Darrow so I don’t know where she could have picked up a virus. Do cats get allergies? She is prone to watery eyes occasionally. For the time being the only symptom she’s showing is sneezing so hopefully it’s no big deal.
The air in here is pretty dry. I put the humidifier on in the bedroom where she spends most of her time. Maybe that will help.
@Kate Minter
Hmm… Sure and I thought it was “cute kitty playing piano” that broke the internet, thus displaying unequivocally that we are all in thrall to our feline overlords.
P.S. “Broke the internet sounds like a joke from “The I.T. Crowd” telly series. Don’t know if any of ye lot have heard of it in the States, but it’s worth a gander.
Aw, the blessed event had already happened like a decade ago and the dress was a cheap prom dress nabbed last minute from the clearance rack at a strip mall in Fairbanks, Alaska (long story) so… no big, really. 😀
maybe initially, but I think Roosh has morphed into something even weirder and more toxic than that. Like both his hate and enjoyment have become rote and reflexive… he gets really no charge out of either anymore yet can’t break out and find something else to do. Even his attempts to break bread with gamergate reflexes back to that hate/sexy thing. Normal people usually seem to conclude that sexiness isn’t the be-all and end-all of happiness or meaning in life (the manosphereans scream “AFBB!” when it’s women who come to this conclusion)
but at some level I think Roosh has blocked off that exit for himself, so now he’s stuck in a hell of his own devising. Bwahahahhaha
It never ceases to amaze me that there are actual living and breathing human beings who try to frame the “women as a group have sexual power over men as a group, and are therefore more privileged than the gender that holds all the actual power in society” argument as something that holds water anywhere save for bad comedies. I don’t think they really believe it, except in the fanatical “I have to ignore all facts that goes against this desperately wanting worldview” way. How anyone with any sense would ever regard Prof. Warren “WTF” Farrell, who actually made it his main argument, as an intellectual of any sort is beyond me.
Then again, whatever credibility WTF might have ever had in academics surely drowned in the sea of awful just-so stories that make up The Myth of Male Power. It truly is a work of wonder. Wonder as in “I wonder how anybody could ever think this was a good idea.”
“Everybody betray me, I fed up with this world!”
Here is my butt picture contribution (plus one face).
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/339/a/9/untitled_by_jewelleddragon13-d88s24j.jpg