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.
@Catalpa
A fair deuce, those are an unpleasant exception.
And also yes, getting your soul eaten by an evil spirit in that series absorbs you into that spirit, and so you can’t pass on until the spirit is cleansed. Preferably with swords.
Thanks for that bra link. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it before but I’ve safely bookmarked it now. The last thing anyone would ever think of as a problem for me would be big boobs. My problem is a nerve disease and one of the important ways to avoid numb hands is to never carry a shoulder bag nor bras or anything else with straps that compress the nerve that runs down the arm. Finding anything suitable is less of a problem now that sports bras are available, but this one looks worth a shot.
Superheroines etc having huge boobs is just one instance of women not being allowed to have the body type that is realistic to what they do. Even when female characters are supposed to be physically strong, they’re not allowed to have big muscles (there are exceptions, but as a general rule). Whether drawn or played by real actresses in live action TV or movies, they tend to be very slim, because that’s what’s considered sexy. You could say about superpowered individuals that they don’t need big muscles to be strong, but funnily enough this doesn’t apply to superpowered men. Plus, non-superpowered women who are supposed to have made themselves strong by lots of physical exercise are usually portrayed as super slim as well.
And then THE BOOBS. Boobs are mainly made up of fat. You can be fairly slim and still physically strong (though not super slim) if you have very little body fat, so what little body mass you have is made up almost entirely of muscle – but in that case, you’re gonna be flat-chested as well. (I’m not saying it’s absolutely impossible to have a body that store fat in one’s boobs and absolutely nowhere else on the body, but that’s gonna be as rare as having a body that, say, produces a big butt to an otherwise super-deffed body, or big upper thighs whereas everything is super slim… It’s not something you’re likely to come across, and the odds that a whole bunch of heroines would have that same extremely odd physical characteristic is astronomical). You see people in real life who are slim with big boobs, but unless they’ve had surgery, they have some level of body fat (i.e., it’s not the case that what little body mass they have is made up entirely of muscle with the exception of the boobs) on the rest of the body as well.
So, yeah. So much wrong with the “enormous boobs” trope. (Weirdly, TV-Tropes claim that it’s fairly realistic that those heroines who are frequently drawn with big muscles, like She-Hulk and Powergirl, have huge boobs, because according to TV-Tropes, pecs=boobs. Um, no. Pecs=/=boobs.)
They think boobs are a muscle that gets bigger if you work out a lot? We really need to start giving these guys access to some basic anatomy classes.
Is everyone here familiar with Eschergirls? It’s got some absolutely mind-boggling examples of the ways drawn women’s bodies are contorted for maximum “sexiness” http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/
Though re: not having to have muscles because SUPERPOWERS, now I want a super-strong hero who is a tiny, sickly-looking little twig of a person.
You know why I don’t believe this?
Because this.
Let’s be honest, you didn’t come here to have a good-faith talk about the subject, you came here to creep people out, see how far you could push the boundaries and laugh about it.
No, I’m not kink-shaming – everybody has kinks, but we know better than to post about them ad nauseam even after being told to stop – I’m troll-shaming.
The person (or one of the people? not sure if she does it by herself) who runs Escher Girls used to be a regular here. It’s thanks to her that I know the term “boobs and butt pose”, also known as “holy shit what happened to that woman’s spine?”
mildlymagnificent – TitleNine’s sports bras have really been a savior for me.
I humped through basic at 18 wearing 2-3 bras just so I wouldn’t be in pain all of the time (hint: you run everywhere is basic training).
When people wish for big breasts, I wish that whipping out my shoulder divets was a socially acceptable thing to do; or that the empathy gun was actually a thing so that they could feel what a lifetime of Ds-DDDs+ can do to a lower back by the time you’re approaching your mid-30s (especially if kids have come into the equation – the reason for the DDDs+).
Seriously, though, it’s a good company – and their bra descriptions are often pretty funny 😀
Pec development can, er, perk up what’s there, but you’re right that it becomes a matter of diminishing returns once body fat levels get too low.
mildlymagnificent – Going back to T9, I navigated over to try to find some other links for you but then realized that youay have special needs given your compression restrictions.
But the link! Look at this!
http://bounce.titlenine.com/mobile.do
The cover photo (at least on the mobile version of the site) is a fit woman in one of their bras.
Ok, pretty standard fare.
But they’re also showing this (fit) woman’s little belly creases and bit of underarm “imperfection”.
I frikkin’ live this company.
GOM – Your wife really should check them out. They’re not the cheapest bras on the planet, but they /work/.
The whole “kink shaming” thing is a bit eyebrow-raising for me, not least when people claim their kinks to be an orientation. No, sexual orientation is not a matter of your taste in sexual acts, it is about whether you are attracted to your sex, the opposite, both, or neither. That isn’t the same as kinks, fetishes, paraphilias or anything else. Nobody’s born innately kinky or innately not-kinky (I am so over the derisory “vanilla” term).
There’s a hell of a difference between trying to shame someone for their sexual orientation and reacting with horror or disgust to people fantasising about kidnapping, raping or otherwise harming (why not call it torturing?) other people. The whole “your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay” thing leaves me cold. No, not every kink is okay, and the idea that blanket approval is required for them is perfect cover for abusers.
One of the channels on British TV has just started showing the series Andromeda from the first episode. Watched that first episode, last night. On the military spaceship Andromeda Ascendant where all the sets are futuristic steel and the crew wear military uniforms, there are pink metallic robts. With metal breasts.
Seriously, someone in a production design meeting must have said “Oh, and those robots on the military starship. I know, let’s give them boobs.”
Because what could be more useful to a miltary robot than secondary sex characteristics?
I used to be part of the BDSM/swinger scene and I’m sick of hearing about it. Congrats you have a kink, good for you, there are places for you to talk about your fetish without inflicting it on those who got out.
Please take it elsewhere.
Ugh Andromeda. It really goes off the rails after Season 1.
The robot stuff just gets worse, if you make it far enough the chief engineer/genius/nerd stereotype starts drooling over the ships avatar and basically makes a self aware sex not in her image. Fortunately she won’t let anything happen but well, there we are.
“self aware sex bot”
::applauds::
When Cait Sidhe shows up in Dresden, he’s frankly terrifying on some kind of primal level.
I’ll have to check the October Day books out (is that someone’s name?).
I read a few of the Vampire Files, speaking of urban fantasy. The mysteries were interesting and well thought out, but it seemed really easy to cope with being a vampire.
Yes, yes, apparently October Daye is someone’s name.
You know, I’m not even that bothered by BDSM talk in general. I’m honestly curious because I’m kind of new to it, and I trust some of the regulars here who have experience. But can people stop bringing it up in every thread about rape on this site (or anywhere, for that matter)? Especially the oversharing. Many of us are sexual assault survivors, and rape threads tend to be kind of triggery; do you really think we want to hear about how you fantasize about kidnapping, raping, torturing, etc. or watching any of those, and how there’s only one little thing holding you back from doing that? Because I don’t. Not here. Not the time. Not the place. And the fact that people insist on doing it? Makes me think you don’t care so much about consent and boundaries as much as you say you do. If that’s “kink-shaming”, so be it.
Gold Digger did that, admittedly for comedic purposes. A large breasted (and marginally competent) female ninja character managed to hit herself in the face while leaping away from the target she was after. The target winced, commiserated, and started recommending good places to buy bras.
On “Men in the Fridge”, I’m going to submit a bit of a dark horse–the Fu Manchu series.
I read the first couple novels as a bit of an experiment awhile back. While they were every bit as racist as I expected (and that was a big part of why I stopped after the first two), I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised at the portrayal of Karamaneh. Oh, there’s sexism there–this ain’t a feminist work by any stretch. But her motivations are about rescuing her comatose brother, rather than about pursuing her love interest–it’s made clear at several points that she would readily sacrifice Dr. Petrie if it means she could free her brother. It’s only when he dedicates himself to HER agenda that she is able to say, “Okay, yes, I also want to be with you.”
She also repeatedly rescues the male protaganists from jams they got into, often with an air of, “How could you be so stupid” just hanging there, unspoken. Given that these books are literally a century old, that’s some impressive characterization.
(Again, because it needs to be said: The book’s racism is abysmal, and multi-layered. I thus cannot recommend repeating my experiment, despite the rather pleasant surprise of Karamaneh’s portrayal.)
Yay! Fu Manchu novels!!
(OK, yes abysmal racism, and not a feminist nirvana.)
But you are right about Karamenah, and other women in the later books. It is, in some ways, ironic that it is the villain who educates women, and the heroes who think it will be wasted when they marry…but are enthralled by the educated women rather than the ones raised by what they believe anyhow.
Guess it’s time I out myself as a lover of ‘older’ fiction. Not all of it, but some. Fu Manchu, M R James, Bulldog Drummond, a few others.
There are flaws, but some wonderful joys.
@ dudeinthewoods – Y U so COOL????
Thank you! I’ve seen “vanilla” getting thrown around as an insult whenever someone (usually a woman) tries to object to things that sound an awful lot like rape threats getting thrown around. Then someone (usually a man) comes along and accuses her of being shockingly vanilla and not understanding how BDSM works and then (in at least one case) lamenting how boring her sex life must be with her boyfriend. The backlash that Obscurus Lupa (of That Guy with the Glasses) got for calling Spoony out for tweeting to Hope Chapman (aka Jesu Otaku) that he wanted to tie her up in his basement was a perfect example of this. A bunch of redditors rushed to Spoony’s defense, claiming that this was a dominance wish, not a rape wish (even though Jesu Otaku hadn’t given any indication that she would welcome that kind of advance and responded to his tweet with, basically, “Dude, wtf, are you okay?”) and lamenting how boring her sex life with her boyfriend must be. Oh, and they defended Spoony because he was going through a bad time due to a breakup and wasn’t thinking straight.
@grumpyoldnurse
Lol, it’s the prescription marihuana, the more I medicate the lower my GAF factor gets.