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].
.
.
.
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.
@ Kittehs
I did describe one ex as having the personality of a Golden Retriever when I first met him. He turned out to be a pretty good boyfriend too.
I don’t prioritize the maintenance of your illusions over womens lives, GOM. You will have to tend to them yourself without the silence of women to assist you.
alaisvex – if it is, I’m battling with morbid curiosity: do I want to know, or not?
😀
I’ve never done choking during sex but my friends and I played the choking game when I was teenager. We definitely didn’t know what we were doing and it’s lucky nobody was harmed.
On men who don’t respect women’s boundaries, I don’t know if they can change. What I do know is, I wouldn’t stick around to find out. If a man displays one red flag, I’ll never trust him. I can’t and won’t feel bad about that. My own sense of safety is more important to me than male feelings.
cassandra – awwww!
Makes me think a groodle would be a good dog personality for boyfriend material: smart and mellow.
Big puppy-dog happy smiles don’t hurt, either.
WWTH:
This. Maybe he’ll change, but it’s too high a risk to stay around and find out.
Heh – dogs/boyfriends, a certain person is all “What, after I make the effort to purr and everything, now it’s dogs?” in the background.
GOM, did you seriously tell her to shut up so you could maintain your illusions about your fellow men? D00d, not kewel.
Gotta agree with cassandrakitty here. I was so sure that I’d gotten through to another one of my exes (well, really, more like a rapist who talked me into a relationship so that I could pretend that what had happened was okay and not really rape even though I was having nightmares about it) with my talk about respecting boundaries and recognizing discomfort and reluctance in other people. So when he got into another relationship, I assumed that everything was okay. Then she dumped him and started face-booking me, talking about all the awful things that he’d done to her and how she’d realized that when he was talking about crazy I was for reacting badly to what he’d done and for breaking up with him after only a week that he was misrepresenting the situation with us to her. He hadn’t changed. If anything, he’d gotten worse. Oh, and he also told me that his first girlfriend broke up with him because she “couldn’t handle the fact that they’d had sex.” Clearly a pattern of behavior for this guy.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that women laughing at men during sex isn’t happening in mutually satisfying relationships. These include a emotional attachment to the person.
And if we’re talking one-night stands, with randoms, who cares? I can’t talk to this point though.
Not only that, was that MegaFucks graphic aimed at me for having the temerity to burst some cherished illusions? Classy.
FWIW I read GOM’s ‘let me maintain my illusions’ as joking (unsuccessful and oblivious though it was), not meaning it, and the Megafucks as a random pic insertion, not an attack. I could be wrong.
I’ve gotten giggly during sexy times before. I’ve always explained that’s it about me and my impulses not laughing at him though. There’s something silly and absurd to me not so much about sex itself, but the kissing and groping. I guess it’s a good way to weed out insecure manbaby types.
@ pallygirl
I’ve laughed with men during sex, because sometimes sex is funny. Laughed at, no.
Except when he farts, of course. Because farts are there to be laughed at. 🙂
@pallygirl
Laughing with men during sex can happen in mutually satisfying relationships. It’s part of the fun.
Oh yes, I have laughed during sex too, but it is always *with* and not *at*.
GOM’s point was strictly laughing *at*. That is what I was addressing.
The Atwood quote really is the best response to “but the wimminz might laugh at us and that’s far worse!”
Which makes me wonder, too, if some dudes (I’m not talking about you, GOM) register any laughter from a woman as laughing at them and not with them.
… which in turn would kind of rule them out as any fun to be with in any context.
Would she be as amazing if she wasn’t Canadian? Discuss.
Eeeek!
I start actually paying attention to my day job, and come back, and we’re talking about choking and stopping blood flow to peoples heads!
Anyone lurking: DON’T TRY IT.
It only takes 4.5 pounds of pressure to cause a backup of blood in the jugular vein, potentially causing ruptures in finer blood vessels in the brain that get overloaded by backed up, oxygen deficient blood. 5.5 pounds of pressure can damage the carotid artery. I’ll get to that more in a bit. But, in context, that’s way less pressure than it takes to form a bruise. Chokes don’t need to leave bruises to be deadly.
I can’t endorse chokes, at all.
If you must do that kind of thing, be ready to call 911 immediately, and be damned well aware that it could kill you or your partner. Because it can. Really, really, really easily.
Seriously, I highly recommend NOT GOING THERE.
Choking can kill in a lot of ways.
First, there’s the obvious. Obstructing the carotid artery results in hypoxia in the brain. Your brain cannot use other methods for generating ATP like muscles can. It needs oxygen. People can live without oxygen to the brain for a little bit, but there’s a reason choking causes unconsciousness so quickly.
But, that’s just the obvious. There are more things that can kill.
Choking can also cause the heart to have arhythmias because if you choke hard enough to compress the carotid, you’re also compressing the carotid body, which can slow the heart, cause arrhythmias, and even cause cardiac arrest. Which is clinical death.
The risk of a heart attack remains elevated for over a half hour.
Oh, yeah, and you don’t have to have a bruise, because it only takes 5.5 pounds of pressure to compress the carotid.
There’s even more fun stuff!
Remember that 4.5 pounds of pressure in the jugular vein stuff? If any vessels do get damaged, brain bleeds can build up enough pressure to kill if not detected in time. Like, if you ever feel the worst headache of your life in the month following getting chokes, get thee to the ER and an MRI stat… because that headache could be a deadly bleed that needs to get fixed.
Even if the damage doesn’t happen in the brain, slow internal swelling of the throat can still occur without obvious external bruising or swelling, causing a secondary and delayed breathing obstruction or blood flow obstruction. Also, the body will try to heal ruptures in the veins using clotting factors. If those clots break loose, they can get stuck elsewhere, potentially causing something symptomatically and essentially identical to a stroke.
Oh, yeah, and have I mentioned the pulmonary edema yet?
I think I’ll mention the pulmonary edema. For non medical people, pulmonary edema means fluid gets built up in the lungs. The whys are a little more complicated, but pulmonary edema caused by strangulation (even ‘light’) can take up to two weeks to manifest.
Pulmonary edema is not good.
So, in recap:
Strangulation can cause unconciousness and death, really, really easily.
Death is not always immediate, and can occur minutes, hours, or days after.
Choke holds increase risks of fun things like:
Cardiac arrest
Pulmonary edema
Brain bleeds
Strokes
Delayed airway obstruction similar to what happens in severe allergic reactions.
And, all of these can happen, I remind you all, without external bruising.
I can hunt down the links and citations for interested parties, but the short answer is, DON’T DO IT.
PSA over.
Thank you, contrapangloss, for giving me scientific validation for my feelings and keeping me from feeling like there’s something wrong with me for being opposed to things like that. Seriously, choking seems to be popular nowadays. At least I keep hearing about it.
Thanks from me too for laying all that out so I don’t have to be on the receiving end of the sniffy looks of “ew, a radfem, look at her ruining our good time” disapproval for once.
Curious, isn’t it, how supposed “sex positive” so often turns to disapproval of someone simply not wanting to do a particular thing, or pointing out that it’s harmful. Since when is it positive to give blanket approval to things because they happen to get some people’s rocks off? That’s no more positive than the shift from “you can’t say yes” to “you can’t say no” was actually sexual liberation, as far as women are concerned. It’s just rehashing the former, with added risk of abuse when it comes to stuff like this.
*rehashing the latter. Sentence, I borked it.
Remember there are only three options when you’re looking at people who might or might not change in some important way.
They could stay the same.
They could improve.
They could get worse.
Obviously staying the same or being worse are out of the question if the behaviour or attitude are unacceptable. However, improvement can be substantial or partial. If it’s partial, is it enough or not enough improvement to make continuing or restarting a relationship with them?
So the odds are something like 5 out of 6 that whatever troubles you about a potential or former partner is still a dealbreaker.
(People do change. The problem for the rest of us is whether any change is in the right direction in the first place, and if so whether it’s far enough.)