There’s a post on the AgainstMensRights subreddit today highlighting a comment from a Men’s Rights Redditor that offers some, well, interesting theories about why feminists are “obsessed” with rape and abortion, even though he thinks they are very ugly.
Actually, in his mind, it’s because they are very ugly, and secretly wish someone would be attracted enough to them to rape them.
I’m sure there are MRAs out there who would like to dismiss his posting as the ravings of a random Redditor. Sadly, it’s not. Despite the terribleness of his “explanation,” or perhaps because of it, it seems to be a common one amongst Manosphereians and Men’s Rightsers.
Indeed, in one notorious post a couple of years ago, A Voice for Men founder and all-around garbage human Paul Elam — probably the most important person in the Men’s Rights movement today — offered a much cruder version of this argument. [TRIGGER WARNING for some primo rape apologism. I have bolded the worst bits, and archived the post here in case Elam decides to take it down, as he has been doing with some of his more repellant posts].
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Isn’t it more than just a little fascinating that underneath all this hoopla about rape is a whole lot of women who, when thinking about some guy pinning them down in a kitchen and forcing a hand up their blouse, generally tend to do so with their own hand or a vibrator between their legs? …
And isn’t it also interesting that the most rape obsessive morons on the planet also happen to be some of the ugliest morons on the planet?
Consider this. If rape awareness was a religion, Andrea Dworkin was The Fucking Pope. The 300+ lb. basilisk of man-hate had a face big enough and pockmarked enough to be used to fake a lunar landing. Her body was roughly the size and shape of a small sperm whale.
And she thought of little else in her life other than rape. The subject drove almost everything she said and did.
She even claimed to have been drugged and raped in 1999 in Paris, an accusation that was never proven and which came under a great deal of scrutiny, apparently for damned good reason.
C’mon people, Dworkin’s problem wasn’t that she was raped. Her problem, and I mean all along, was that she wasn’t.
Oh, it gets worse:
Like a corrupt televangelist who only shuts up about sexual purity and morality long enough to secure the services of a five dollar hooker, Dworkin was the poster child for “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Or, in other words, she was obsessed with rape, quite possibly even creating the illusion it happened to her, precisely because her worth on the sexual market was measured in pesos.
Dworkin wanted to be raped, which in her mind meant being sexually desired, but didn’t have the goods to make that happen so she made a career of hating both the source of her rejection, men, and the source of her competition, attractive women.
In the end, the most narcissistic of all Men’s Rightsers concludes that rape is all about female narcissism:
The concept of rape has a lot of utility for women. One, it feeds their narcissistic need to feel irresistible. Two, if feeds their narcissistic need to feel irresistible. That level of irresistibility is the pinnacle of a woman’s sexual viability and worth. And for a whole lot of women, sexual worth is the only self-worth they know.
A Voice for Men’s domestic violence mascot Erin Pizzey seconded Elam’s argument during an appearance of hers last year on Reddit.
If you’re referring to Paul’s statement that many or most women fantasize about being taken, I’m sorry but that’s the truth. That doesn’t mean they want to be raped, but it’s a fantasy I think almost all women have. And I think he went on to say that feminists like Andrea Dworkin who were and are so obsessed with rape are really projecting their own unconscious sexual frustration because men don’t give them enough attention. Andrea was a very sad lonely woman like this
This is an “insight” that many other manosphereians keep reinventing and announcing to the world. In a 2013 post, for example, the “Red Pill” blogger and sometime Return of Kings contributor who calls himself TheMaskAndRose offered a very similar take on the subject.
Feminists are ugly women. They are fat, old, masculine, aggressive, hateful, sociopathic, unattractive, or any combination of those things. Attractive women tend not to be Feminists, so I encourage you to think about why that’s the case. So keeping in mind that they’re not the type of women who normal men desire or pay any attention to, here’s my theory:
Rape culture is the ugly woman’s rape fantasy. …
I think the true heart of a rape fantasy is narcissism.
I think it’s about the idea of saying NO to a man, over and over, but he throws caution to the wind and gives into the animal instinct to just overtake you–because you’re so attractive, so beautiful, so alluring, so irresistible that he just can’t help himself.
It’s about being wanted, more than anything else. Wanted so badly that a man would risk throwing his whole life away just for the chance to put his penis in you.
So, since Feminists and unattractive women generally don’t have men paying any attention to them at all–at least not the sexual kind of attention they crave but won’t admit to … they instead cast themselves in the role of heroine in a cultural narrative whereby men think they’re just so fucking deliciously hot that they can’t wait for the chance to rape them.
They project that insanity onto the world around them, and voila–“rape culture.” A world full of scary men so overtaken with lust and desire for these fat, ugly, manly cow-beasts that you never know when one of them is going to risk his career, family, money, and life outside of prison just to have sex with you.
There is, of course, a much simpler explanation for why feminists tend to be “obsessed” with rape: because it happens all the fucking time.
Yeah, I’m all out of charity in that particular instance. I will admit to being absolutely fed the f*ck up with coddling the feelz of clueless dudez who can’t seem to do the basic work of getting to the point where listening to women is at least as important as talking at us about their bonerfeelz.
Even if you take out the specific nope factor, in what universe is that appropriate out for drinks with people from the office conversation? Lack of boundaries and sharing of sexual information that’s likely to make the women you’re sharing it with uncomfortable is another big red flag.
“Not all women are submissive” ~cassandrakitty
QFT
This is a really awkward conversation, and I don’t have much to add, but as an ace I’ve never had any of that sort of fantasy. That doesn’t make me cooler than people who have in any way, but this entire conversation is way out of my league because of it.
I have had happy dreams about being tied up, though, but ALWAYS with the “I’m going to Houdini out of this and it’ll be amazing, and NO MERE ROPES CAN HOLD ME!” thing. Being trapped without being able to escape in 10 seconds flat?
Nightmare.
Like, second worst nightmare following the one of my entire family getting caught in a house-fire and dying except for me because I crawled out a dog door. That one had me up and crying for the rest of the night. Worst nightmare EVER. I think I was seven or so, but worst nightmare EVER.
Being unable to escape ropes even beats out “carnivorous stegosaurus chasing me through the church basement”, which is number three in the bad dreams department.
I don’t know if that actually relates to the topic at hand, but yeah.
I’d be really stinking suspicious of a dude who admitted to finding the thoughts of someone getting raped arousing.
Really, really stinking suspicious. Like “Avoid for the rest of forever” suspicious.
BTW, that specific coworker was so creepy (even though he was really good looking, athletic, and so on – take note, whiny dudes) that a random woman who I’d never met before felt the need to rescue me when I ended up being left alone at a table with him in a bar. She just grabbed me when I was coming back from the bathroom and said “I don’t like the look of that guy and you didn’t look comfortable, you should come sit with me and my friends instead”. So hey, I made a new friend! But yeah, his creepy was broadcasting on a pretty wide band.
Wait, weren’t we talking about bathroom dreams recently? Dunno if that planted a suggestion or what, but I had one last night, where I was wandering around this giant warehouse that had sort of cordoned off sections with people living in them like a squat looking for a place to pee, and all of the toilets I found were unsuitable for some reason (filthy, no paper, obviously broken), and then I finally found one that looked OK and just as I was about to pull my pants down and sit down someone grabbed me from behind and I jumped all “holy shit who the fuck is that?”
And then I woke up and realized that I needed to pee.
I am with you, Contrapangloss. I do not know if it is because of being asexual or not but it all reads like horror stories to me, and while I did like being frightened by stories when I was young I outgrew it a very long time ago.
One thing that bugs me is when a photo of a sexualised man (e.g hot shirtless guy) gets commented on by women commenting on his hotness, there’s almost always a dude who shows up to complain that women are being hypocrites when they complain about being sexually objectified, look here they are doing it to a man. He would have a good point if it wasn’t for the fact that there is an unbalance in these things, AND that on certain sites when a picture of a hot shirtless woman is posted the men write not just about her looks but what they’d do to her sexually. ALWAYS written like she’d have no say in the matter, they’d do it and that’s that. This is the the difference. In a way the hot male model is still being sexualised but not nearly as much as women get it, and not to the same degrading level. At least on the whole he doesn’t have the female commenters writing about what gross sex acts they’d make him do/do to him if they could get their hands on him.
Thoughts? I’m open to a better mindset on this.
My point was that the so-called charitable interpretation didn’t excuse them for the reasons that you stated. As I said, “Responding to cultural conditioning that makes you think that it’s okay to harm other people because *that’s what they really want* is still wrong.” Even if they honestly believe that all women are submissive and want whatever it is that we’re supposed to want, they’re still being misogynists because they’re still choosing to ignore women who say, “No,” to certain sex acts or say that they don’t like being dominant. In fact, they might be even more misogynistic than guys who admit that they’re “dominating” women because they like hurting people because they’re assuming that women are too stupid to know what they really want and that the big strong manly men need to save them from themselves and their anti-slut defenses.
Granted, I don’t think that they deserve the so-called charitable interpretation (not that I think that it’s charitable because it requires them to regard women as immature, lying children who need to be shown what they really want need) because they should and probably do realize that if a woman says that she doesn’t want something, it’s best to believe her. They’re probably just using excuses handily provided by the culture to excuse their behavior.
cassandrakitty: Ugh. Yeah, that co-worker of yours should be given his own personal little red flag, surgically attached to the back of his head.
I get what you’re trying to say, sunnysombrera. There’s always an undercurrent of “I wish he liked me, or even knew who I am” when it’s women talking about hot guys, and even when the conversation is blatantly sexual it’s more “I want to do X with him” than “I’m going to do X to him, and if he hated it that might actually be kind of a plus”.
Alaisvex: I read a report about a college rape where the perp actually confessed that she’d said no and he’d done it anyway, because he thought that her saying no and pushing against him was some sort of fantasy she was playing out. He didn’t see it as the real fucking deal.
And the comment section still had a bunch of MRAs in it saying she was lying and had simply changed her mind.
sunnysombrera:
My own observations match yours pretty well. Women commenting on random hot dude tend to be more inclined to make their comments about the guy–what it is about him they find attractive. While I won’t say all guys go the “What I’d like to do to her” route, it’s certainly more frequent, and in a large enough group you will be almost certain to get that kind of commentary (and usually, no one else will object).
@sunnysombrera,
Do you think that the perp really believed that she wanted it and was just playing hard to get or that he was just using an old trope as an excuse?
I’m a person who really gets off on some things that in any other context would be frightening and threatening behaviours, but if any man ever actually used the word “rape” in describing his fantasy to me, whether that actually involved me or not, I would not trust that man at all. Gift of Fear indeed.
Oh, and last thing I’ll say on the wedding crasher trope: there are two subverted examples I know of. One is an episode of Family Guy where Brian tries to win Jillian back with a speech as she’s at the altar with another man. It doesn’t work and she rejects Brian.
Another is in the film Corpse Bride where Victoria, Victor’s ex fiancée, watches despairingly as he’s about to marry Emily the corpse bride. The ceremony involves him drinking poison so they can be together in the death world. Emily catches Victoria watching them and realises that she’s taking Victor from a still-living woman who deserves him more than she does, as the marriage is partly because she loves him but also to fulfil a proposal Victor accidentally made earlier in the film. She doesn’t want to ruin the life of someone who is still living it. Emily stops the wedding and leaves, leaving Victor and Victoria together.
freemage: yeah, defiantly not all men make those kinds of comments but they will pop up and face little to no resistance, or even agreement. Depends on the website as well.
alaisvex: to be honest I’m not sure. The fact that he actually confessed she said no tells me he might have been stupid enough and rape cultured enough to believe that no means yes. Then again, he might have been trying to use rape culture to his advantage with that excuse.
There’s a difference between saying you find someone sexually attractive and objectification. It’s more of an I know it when I see it kind of difference than one I can always clearly define and articulate. I would agree that talking about what you want to do a person is objectification. It’s also in the language some use to describe women. When body parts are described as meat products or fruits, that always makes me uncomfortable. Referring to a whole woman as just her vagina or her ass is objectification too. Just saying a woman is hot or sexy is fine in the appropriate setting. I think the context matters too. Men often feel the need to offer boner updates at all times, even when the conversation has nothing to do with sex. When women talk about the men they find hot, it tends to be when it is organic to the conversation. For example, I’ve always thought that President Obama is hot. But I don’t bring that up every time I see or hear a conversation about him. If it’s his policies being discussed rather than his looks, I stay on topic. When men interject pants feels into every conversation about a woman, that makes me think they view women as sex objects.
Ugh. Sorry for the lack of paragraph breaks. I rambled more than I thought I was going to.
In some places, you’re more likely to see comments escalating in grossness from guys. A couple dudes might say a girl is hot, then a few more would say they’d “hit it”, then some more will demand naked pictures, and then before you know it, it’s rape
threats“jokes”.I rarely see the same sort of thing from women. With women you’re more likely to see the conversation go in a “muscles vs skinny vs chubby” or “body hair vs skin” direction than a rapey direction. Which, granted, is still kind of gross in some contexts, but it’s a different level of gross.
I feel like conversations about sexy men between women very rarely lose track of the fact that there’s a person attached to the body you’re appreciating, whereas the same conversations between men often seem resentful of the fact that the person exists and is getting in the way of their access to the body.
Yes! to deniseeliza and cassandrakitty. I’ve yet to see a conversation between women detailing what sexual things they’d like to do to a particular man. It’s always “He’s hot” or “Not to my taste, I like this bloke” – the person he is (or they are) is always present, it’s not just a collection of random body parts.
Or, for another point of comparison, look at the difference between the way that lesbians or bisexual women talk about attractive women and the way straight men talk about attractive women. We’re keying in on the same physical characteristics a lot of the time, but the conversation just never goes to that horribly, aggressive and at the same time angry/resentful place that it would if it was a group of men talking about the same woman.
I’ve been in conversations with women about what we’d like to do to certain attractive men. That all women present were drunk Pro-Dommes might have had something to do with it. We NEVER kidnapped that beautiful bass player back to the dungeon with us – we never even got a chance to ask his consent!
I’m really not comfortable with the suggestion that that sort of “I’d love to do X to that person” thing is a trait shared by all dominant women. Nope, no thanks, not interested in going down that path at all.
OMFG Cassandrakitty, THIS!
I’ll admit that my pals and I have been known to objectify men, and, say, discuss kidnapping Daniel Craig or a particularly pretty bass player. But I have never heard women spew the kind of vile hate we hear from men every time they get turned down. For all that we women are judged for our sexual attractiveness, we move on pretty easily when turned down. I’ve never heard a girl mad enough to beat the living hell out of, or even kill a guy just because he wasn’t interested. I’ve seen girls mad enough to resort to violence when a recently turned-down guy gets mean and grabby, but never vice-versa.