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You may remember Hesse Kassell — aka “strongsloth” — as the supremely creepy Return of Kings contributor who argued, among other awful things, that women in relationships should never be allowed to say no to sex.
Well, he’s back with a new Return of Kings post. This time, he’s aiming his prohibitions at men, with a list of “10 things men should never try.”
Somehow, this new list manages to be as skeezy and awful as the last one I wrote about — quite an achievement, even for a Return of Kingser, particularly since several of the items on the list (jail, smoking, gambling, consumer credit) are things that guys probably should try to avoid. But the rest of the list is a concentrated mass of weird assumptions and outright bigotry.
So let me bring to you what I’d like to call the Top Four Reasons You Should Back Away Slowly if You Ever Meet A Return of Kings Fan in Real Life.
Let’s start off with the first item in strongsloth’s “list of things that make no sense when the costs and benefits are considered” — “Sex reassignment.”
A man has the fixed sexual function of providing sperm. A girl has the fixed sexual function of providing eggs and carrying the baby. When someone pretends they can change sexual function it ends badly.
Not only is this virulently transphobic, obviously, but I’m pretty sure that there’s more to sex than having babies, and that very little about sexuality is “fixed” by the particular genitalia we’re born with.
Strongsloth then moves on to consider prostitution. After posting a picture of two seemingly random women he apparently thinks are prostitutes, he offers this reason why men should avoid their deadly embraces:
A prostitute takes a man’s strength, then his money but gives nothing in return.
Huh. Prostitutes take a man’s strength? I thought that General Jack T. Ripper was a fictional character.
And then it’s on to the evils of piercing and tattoos. Once again strongsloth seems to be channelling the General:
A man’s body is his only tool. It makes no sense to drill holes in it or deface it with pictures. All bodies age, decay, and die, but why accelerate the process?
Last in my list, but not least, strongsloth warns dudes to avoid the temptation of … other dudes:
Some men are apparently tempted to perform homosexual acts. A man who does endangers his health, fertility, and mental well-being. Every man has the power of choice. Make the smart choice.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.
And while I’m down this rabbit hole, what about masturbation. Is losing precious bodily fluids from masturbation somehow less taxing essence-wise than losing it through mutual fun sexy times with another person?
MRAs, why do you make me think of these things? Can you guys, just for once, not be science failures?
Maybe he read about maternal only mitochondria in most mammals? He heard that mitochondria, a cell’s source of energy, are stripped when sperm pass on their DNA and centrosome so thought this had some sort of reverse impact on the source. After all the witchy women ova do everything so easy, as if they had some master gene regulators able to build entire organisms from a single cell once they became the receptacle of a man’s necessary contribution..
Since basic women are insufficient, it’s obvious a woman is like a succubus and needs the energy drawn from her sex partner’s molten gold jizz energizing life, in his world view. I’m sure he has some such confused biofax behind his peculiar beliefs.
I am reminded of this video segment now:
Yeah, the Manosphere tends to turn to My Precious Bodily Fluids quite often. My favorite was the Redpiller who was afraid estrogen from slut pee getting through his pores in the shower.
The hatred for sex workers is a bit more hit and miss–some claim that sex workers are the answer to all their woes (even though no sex worker deserves a MRA for a client–*Shiver*) and some hate them for usually badly-articulated reasons. Though none AFAIK quite as much as a certain lawsuit-happy British failure.
On a cuter note:
@Pallygirl: Have you never read the diatribes about masturbation from before World War II? You were virtually guaranteed to go blind or insane, and failing that, you would grow hair on your palms and everyone would know the nasty things you did in private, you pervert.
The mucosal method of determining fertility is one of those things that is constantly being forgotten and rediscovered.. I recall reading about it in a newsletter sent our by a hippie-ish anti-war group in the 70s — written by a woman who was farming in northern California and trying to avoid the money economy and artificial substances as much as possible. It has obvious drawbacks — it’s not as effective as a birth control methods as the Pill, condoms, or diaphragms. As far as sex-ed is concerned, I suspect that educators believe that teenage girls aren’t going to want to know what is going on Up In There, eww, eww, eww. But I am of the opinion that you can never know too much about how your body works, and particularly that rather complicated apparatus that produces human beings. You really do need to know, as much as possible, what is normal and what isn’t.
Clearly, sex workers were vampires all along.
(TMI)
I began puberty well before either sex education or my mom got to me–I started developing around third grade, and panicked the first time I noticed vaginal discharge. I thought I was sick, but I didn’t tell anyone because I was too embarassed. I was so relieved to find out that it was 100% normal a few months later, when Mom figured out I was growing boobs and got me some informational books.
Also, growing breasts hurts like a motherfucker. I had to wear training bras to be able to play jump rope without pain.
@GrumpyOldMan,
I was thinking of those ’20s and ’30s textbooks! That old-timey, thoroughly debunked psuedoscience seemed like it was right up their alley.
It is funny, though, how little they know about that which is “liquid fucking gold.”
@alaisvex: Good old confirmation bias. You can bend the “facts” to suit your agenda on “morality.” My view on the subject is that it was profoundly immoral for these guys to push that sort of misinformation. Think of the women who were fooled into thinking that they were practicing birth control by restricting sex to what was actually their most fertile time.
I have a copy of Vitalogy (the one the Pearl Jam album is named after). It’s hilarious!
That’s because of a basic misunderstanding (or rather, unawareness) of human fertility cycles – it was assumed we worked more like other mammals, and that we were more fertile right after a period. The idea goes back centuries, at least, so it’s understandable.
The notion that you can have sex too often is very old, too.
Ha! They’re failures at everything else, why should science be an exception?
Trivia: it’s suggested that that’s why Stoker described Dracula as having hairy palms. Which is quite bizarre.
Which brings us right back to the question of how exactly the hydraulics might work in the undead.
You know, I actually can see where human fertility might be a pain in the ass to figure out. Even if social mores/religion/health authorities tell people they should only have sex on such-and-such a date… people are people. Also, people are not particularly fertile–one episode of sex, even during the fertile period, is not guaranteed to lead to pregnancy. And pregnancy might not be apparent for a few weeks, or more, especially if the woman’s menstrual cycle is out of whack (say, due to stress or hunger). So in a situation where most people are having sex willy-nilly, it would be hard to tell which periods (hehe) of time are most likely to lead to conception, because by the time she realizes she’s pregnant, they’ll have forgotten, and anyway, there could have been lots and lots of possible successes.
::snerk::
I tend to think of vampires as not losing any capacity except that of being in sunlight or eating/drinking anything except blood. I assume the blood’s got to circulate somehow to keep the brain and sundry other bits working. But there’s so much variation in modern vampire stories it’s sort of “throw the hands in the air” time with that.
Though I draw the line at them sparkling.
My line in the sand is baseball.
Sparkling is for pixies, not vampires. Therefore, Edward is a sparkle-faerie.
I mean, I am theoretically okay with vampires doing sports, but baseball is just too… too… wholesome. I am 100% okay with paranormal romance, but even good vampires should have an edge to them. Unless it is a comedy, in which case go right ahead.
Or you could go whole-hog back to evil aristocrats, in which case they can play…
What would be a good evil-rich-person sport, anyway? Besides hunting.
(I think the defining feature of vampires is “requires blood as food”. Everything else is optional.)
Vampires playing baseball?
… Do I want to know what show this happened in?
Twilight.
The evil vampire aristocrats should play polo, obviously, or croquet for the less athletically inclined.
Vampire soccer hooligans would be quite funny, though, or vampire ice hockey. How to control the bloodlust when someone gets a bloody nose? 2 minutes in the box for unauthorized biting.
Twilight, I might have known.
Wouldn’t zombies be more suitable as undead soccer hooligans?
Those are excellent scenarios for “vampires take over the world” type stories. A whole ice hockey / soccer match full of vampires both in the stands and as players… 100% mayhem guaranteed.
OT but I found the most awesome thing, and it will piss off so many different varieties of assholes so much.Burka Avenger, the superhero who uses her the burqa as a disguise and beats the crap out of the Taliban with books in the name of education for everyone.
Shorter promo