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.
Female power through sexuality, isn’t the good “doctor” stealing his premise from old Camille Paglia articles of the 1990s?
Trust, hunty, that premise is flawed. Whatever “power” women have in “wielding their sexuality like a weapon” is illusory. An object has no agency, and if it has no agency, it has no power. What you may be observing is actually a woman relenting to the patriarchy for as long as she can tolerate it, instead of someone exerting actual power.
Happy Holidays, Bina.
@WWTH, cats’ noses can be irritated by things, just like ours. Have you introduced anything new in the last few days? Turned the heat on, used a new perfume, etc?
You’re right that an indoor cat probably can’t contract a virus, but IDK if you can rule out bacterial or fungal infections on that basis, and sneezing could possibly be a sign of something serious. If it goes on for another day or two I’d call your vet and see if they think it’s worth bringing her in.
ceebarks:
Roosh has turned himself into a sexbot. Discworld karma is real!
Lea, I’m so sorry you had to farewell your kitty. 🙁
Bina, your Sasquatch kitty is SO beautiful! And what a magnificently oppressive tail she has, too.
katz, squeeeee! I bet Mads looked like that little torbie when she was that age.
emilygoddess – I had Fribs at the vet the other day; she’s a light touch of the flu at the moment. I wondered how the heck she got it, given I’m the only one who goes out of the house and hadn’t had any contact with other kitties, but my vet said the virus is hardy enough that I could have passed it on from contact with another human whose kitty’s got the bug.
Yes, my first cat (long passed, but I still miss her) developed allergies. It manifested as itchy skin or something, that made her compulsively lick the backs of her hind legs until all the fur was gone and they got scabby. It resolved with a shot of steroids, but kept coming back her entire life. We never did figure out what she was allergic to.
@ David Futrelle, et alia,
Just wanted to say that your blog is worth it for all the lovely pussycat pictures and stories alone. I’m unable to keep a pet at the moment, so I have to live vicariously… sniff, sniff!
How does someone type these words and not realize they’re describing gender parity. There’s no misandry there. It’s just “less attractive people sometimes feel envious of more attractive people.” In other news, dog bites human.
It makes sense when you filter it through the assumption that men are entitled to hot women, dammit, it’s their birthright. Kate appears to be permanently drunk on the kool-aid.
Actually, I’ve never thought of it in exactly these terms, but the contradiction goes way deeper than the one sentence. You shouldn’t be able to believe both that “women as a class have a *unique* sexual power over men, which is not reciprocal.” and “women are choosing to pursue ‘bad boys’ even when said bad boys exploit them and don’t have their best interests at heart.”
Like… that’s a clear-cut example of men exercising the exact kind of sexual power that Dr. Farrell is so concerned about.
Well, yes, but by his logic that too is women’s fault for making the wrong choices. It’s never going to make sense, no matter how you look at it, because Farrell and friends are actively choosing to disregard any data that doesn’t fit the theory they’ve already committed to. He did the same thing with his research into incest, decided that since it showed that female victims were unhappy about what was done to them they must be lying, rather than admitting that his theory turned out to be incorrect.
That book cover looks like it belongs on a woman’s romance/sex novel for a new author. It’s very generic: no head, no face, no personality. TThere’s nothing interesting or really attention grabbing about it. Doesn’t even look like it’s worth borrowing from the library.
His excuse for why he used a female silhouette is ridiculous. It has nothing to do with male power.
@Tina S
The genericness is the point. WTF is dismembering women into body parts, and then claiming that the body parts are oppressive. This means that the actions that individual women take are irrelevant, since the body parts are oppressive regardless of to what (or to whom) they are attached.
I can’t help but wonder what his motive was for doing that “research” in the first place, since he is not an expert in the field or anything remotely related. It seems he had an agenda going in, and the agenda was to prove that women are supposed to LIKE being abused, and even little girls are into it. Of course he was going to be proven wrong — what was he expecting? Abuse is only enjoyable to the abusers. The idea that both parties are on a par when it comes to power and pleasure is just flat fucking bullshit. That’s why we consider incest a form of abuse, ghaaaah.
Also, I hope to Goddess he doesn’t have any daughters. Or granddaughters. >shudder<
My guess would be prurient interest, as gross as that is.
ha! I haven’t read much of the Discworld series and it’s been years since I read any at all, so I had to look it up. One of the discwiki pages said that when rat catchers killed rats, the rats’ souls appeared to be collected, but they really just went to a revolving door with a sign that said “REINCARNATE AS RATS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE”
I’m now imagining a demotivational poster with a pic of roosh and that sign as a caption.
Ceebarks – except that Roosh might actually do less harm as a rat, sequential rats or even multiple simultaneous rats.
Mild divergence -I wonder what rats were like before human beings created an entirely new ecological niche for them. Probably far less numerous, for one; small mammals with high fecundity are typically prey for larger mammals, birds and other predators.
I wonder what rats were like before human beings created an entirely new ecological niche for them. Probably far less numerous, for one; small mammals with high fecundity are typically prey for larger mammals, birds and other predators.
I have no idea but they have been pretty darned successful living with us, haven’t they?! Maybe they are still evolving and adapting… I found a rat in my chicken run the other night, was mightily displeased b/c usually they’re just there for the chicken feed but sometimes they’ll kill a chicken. :/
It had gotten in through this tiny hole in the wire and it was frantic to escape once I showed up, but it couldn’t seem to remember how it had gotten in to begin with. I started chucking pebbles at it when it was on the wrong end and it seemed to take the hint and look nearer the hole, whereupon it exited, and I added some reinforcements.
Til next time, Ratty.
dammit, blockquote
ceebarks – LOL! I hadn’t seen that about reincarnating as rats until further notice. Though for Roosh, he’d have to reincarnate as himself of course; coming back as a rat would would be a major step up.
Ceebarks – they are scavengers, after all, and we’ve provided them with unnatural concentrations of scavengeable material since before the Neolithic. A human midden heap would have been a very attractive nesting site. Except for wild cats domesticating humans during the Agricultural Revolution, our living spaces have also kept them safe from predators.
Like termites evolving to live off dead trees, and discovering that we would collect dead trees into piles for them.
re: dead trees in piles… with us living in the middle…
We are such a thoughtful species dangit. And hey, don’t forget the cats! Without stockpiled scavengeable material, we wouldn’t have rats, and without rats, surely we’d never have had cats. It all comes back to the furrinati
Oh, you didn’t forget the cats. I’m sorry. My children are raising some kind of ridiculous ruckus in here about… zombie pigmen. Thinking cap no work too good under such conditions.
Oh, but look: BEDTIME… as soon as the clock ticks over to 8PM. HEAVEN FORBID we go at 7:59.
Children, rules-lawyers since before there were lawyers. 😀
Ugh, so true. I let the “s-word” slip while joking around with the husband earlier and my daughter gasped and ran off to tell her brothers “Mama said a BAD WORD!”
She’ll probably tattle to my mom and grandma later, too. Sheesh, kid.
This reminds me of the lectures I used to give my parents about smoking when I was about 7 or 8. My dad brought that up recently.