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.
Neither do “I’m so feminist but abortions kill baybeeeees!” trolls.
What is it with guys like this and their obsession with rape? Are they angry they can’t get away with it? Countless times I’ve seen a woman bring up her rape experience and get flooded with angry comments. “Well sure you were raped (but you’re a woman so you were probably lying) but men are the REAL victims”. I just don’t get this mentality.
And RightWingnut adds “ableist” to his list of charming qualities. Colour me surprised.
In his defence I don’t think anyone told him that we consider “crazy” to be an ableist slur, which is pretty unique to this blog. I mean, I’m totally on board with that because it IS ableist, but I can’t think of any other places IRL or online where the same belief is held. But if it’s not his first time offence, do correct me.
Erika: I can’t understand the frothing fervour with which rape apologists defend rape, but I think the main reasons vary. A big one like you said is that they don’t like the idea of having to behave in a way so that they don’t rape someone. From the female rape apologists it might be a “just world” belief that they cling to – they don’t like that they have no control over whether they’ll be raped or not, so they impose on other victims a “she shouldn’t have done that” formula, believing that if they follow the formula they’ll be okay.
Or they’ve straight up internalised misogyny and bullshit and are pushing it on other women. Like the FeMRAs.
One thing I’ve noticed is how much rape apologists lose their shit if you call them a rape apologist. “How DARE you say that I think rape is okay. I DO NOT!! I think rape is AWFUL and I hate rapists!”
1) The over the top denial is kind of suspicious.
2) None of their previous arguments really fit with that.
3) More than anything, rape apologists don’t necessarily argue that rape is OK (well, some do but they’re proto rapists), they argue that whatever happened wasn’t rape. They’ll give a number of crappy reasons as to how she “consented” (clothes, drunk, she was alone with him, she’s had sex before), they’ll claim she’s lying because she can’t remember what colour the carpet was, they’ll say women love to be “dominated”, she changed her mind out of slut guilt etc. Or when they have nothing they’ll try to distract by saying “womenz lie!” or “women rape men too!”
Wow, what a teal deer. That evolved into quite the rambling.
@sunny
In any other case you’d be right, but this isn’t his first offense. Right Wingnut is a boner troll, he knows exactly what pushes buttons here and pushes them as hard as he can, to the point that he’s already been put on moderation for his disgusting behaviour elsewhere. (Don’t read his posts in other threads if you’ve just eaten. Trust me.)
That reminds me of the video where George Takei read that book, and was getting seriously turned on before he realized that the protagonist (such as a limp sex doll can be a protagonist) was female (I hesitate to say “woman”. “Mary Sue” or “complete fracking moron” might be more accurate).
I tried it once, and I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It was kind of like Twilight, just without the vampires and with even more Urple Prose and other bad writing. I lost interest about a third of the way through, because there’s only so much sexual abuse I can be expected to sit through before losing my lunch.
Going back to an earlier subject in this thread, that is, pecs and boobs…
This is Sandra Lönn: http://www.nyan.aland.fi/sport/index.pbs?news_id=55470
She can benchpress 240 kilos (485 pounds). Therefore, you’d probably be hard pressed to find a woman with more well-developed pecs… Also, she’s not super-deffed, she clearly hasn’t dieted away all her bodyfat either (from what I read she weighs close to 100 kilos, that is, 220 pounds). She still doesn’t sport huge boobs.Same goes for the world’s strongest woman, Kati Luoto: http://www.worldstrongestlady.net/page/2002 To be the world’s strongest woman she’d need all her muscles to be extremely well-developed, including her pecs. She’s also got some body fat, but no big boobs.
If I go to myself I’m obviously very far from these ladies in strength, but I do work out pretty hard, and if anything, I think my boobs have acquired a flatter shape as my pecs began to visibly grow. They used to be more spherical… with bigger pecs, it’s like the fat tissue has become stretched out over a bigger surface area, making them flatter than before. (Personally I’m not complaining, since I feel more comfortable with a more masculine body shape, but yeah, I would never recommend “do a lot of benchpressing” to someone who wanted bigger boobs.)
I mean, you have to be pretty ignorant of female anatomy to think that boobs are actually muscles, but the idea that you can make your boobs look a bit bigger by doing push-ups or the like is fairly commonly advertised in women’s magazines, and as far as I can tell, it’s a load of BS too. I think it’s because women are supposed to have a duty to conform to societal beauty standards, and if we don’t, we’re supposed to be morally responsible for our failing. Therefore, the message that we’re in control of our looks has to be promoted over and over again. Fat? Just diet and exercise more! Wrinkles? Detox, use the right lotions or whatever! Small boobs? Just do some push-ups! (And it should be noted, too, that even getting visibly bigger pecs, regardless of their effect on boob size, requires waaaaay more than merely doing some push-ups for most women…)
Btw, here’s the TV-trope site to which I was referring: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/BoobsOfSteel ” It’s actually possible in Real Life to increase breast volume with large pectoral muscles. If a woman wants larger breasts and is already working out a lot, this is actually a plausible way to increase breast size by at least two cup sizes.”
It’s the same for folk who like to froth and rage about how there is no such thing as rape culture because since feminism totally won y’all and it controls all people via hive mind, EVERYONE hates rape and NO ONE ever ANYWHERE thinks that rape is okay. But of course then there are the studies that show people admit to coercing someone into sex and thinking that it’s totes okay to do so, as long as no one uses the “r-word”.
Rape is sort of like racism. Very few people proudly calls themselves racists. Rather, they’ll go to great lengths to explain why this or that is TOTES NOT RACIST AT ALL!
That’s because it’s Twilight Fanfiction. When James & her publisher realized there was a market for it, she did a search & replace and changed Edward and Bella to Christian and Whatsherface, pulled it from the fanfic sites, and made millions of dollars.
It gets worse.
Seriously? I saw creepy sadomasochistic ritual abuse and creepy slavery contracts, how can it get WORSE???
Well, for one thing, despite a constant very important theme of “I can change him through love” that E. L. James pushes, and despite the book saying that he has been changed for the better multiple times, he in fact never changes, never gets less selfish or abusive, and stays manipulative to the end.
This may not sound that bad, but the thing is that it’s practically the driving force of the relationship throughout all the books, and the idea that Grey has changed is used to excuse a lot of the abuse and manipulation. And it isn’t even remotely warrented.
Good thing I got so creeped out I stopped halfway through the first one, then.
This makes me really uncomfortable. Why are you hesitant to call her a woman?
And why do we care that George Takei was into it until he realized it was het?
Have you read Cliff Pervocracy’s reading-through of Fifty Shades? I’d say it’s fairly different from all other mockings in that Cliff takes the whole thing more seriously than most mockers do (although he does joke around as well), PLUS he’s loyal to Ana all the way through.
I’m hesitant to call a blatant Mary Sue who shows no signs of higher cognitive thought a woman.
She doesn’t behave like an adult human; she behaves like a puppet for the creep. And it’s creepy. If she were male, I would be seriously uncomfortable calling her a man, because no adult male would be such a dishrag. It’s creepy enough that I feel uncomfortable comparing the characters directly to humans, and I don’t like using human qualifiers like “woman” or “man” for them.
As for the George Takei bit…it was an attempt at humor. Because George Takei’s awesome and can make anything funny.
My apologies if it came out the wrong way.
OK, I got given mushroom tagliatelli for Xmas. And today I ate them with roast beef and a Diane suace. It was AWESOME!!
Yeah otally OT but…food!
Gilshalos: food apologism and dinner updates are fine with me. You go ahead and enjoy.
Ground: Completely agree. IMO Ana is one of the most unrealistic female characters ever written. And the writing style of 50 Shades is so clunky and awful, the dialogue is two dimensional and forced, and it’s just the worst piece of crap to hit the shelves. Like, ugh. I swear, young adult fiction is becoming more intelligent and original that actual adult fiction. Except for Twilight of course.
I dunno, Mistborn was good, as is the Stormlight Archive.
Warbreaker was great, too; the bit where Siri is like “Seriously? My hot, smart, respectful to a fault arranged husband is illiterate and mute? What the hell, corrupt priests?” is adorably hilarious.
(for reference, Warbreaker is a fantasy novel wherein the character Siri, something of a tomboy, gets basically sold as an arranged bride from her small, conservative country to a neighboring large, cosmopolitan fantasy NYC. She is swiftly married to the God-King, and is told to produce an heir within a year.
She spends a week crouching on the floor naked half worrying that she’s going to be raped and half confused that the God-King is just sitting there every night before she figures out that (a) the sum total of his knowledge of the world comes from a children’s book he was read once and (b) he’s really hot because magic and dangerously intelligent to boot.
Funniest romance ever. She has to teach him how to have sex.)
Anyway, there are some pretty good adult fiction books that I’ve read recently.
OK, so I agree that Ana is an awful character and the books are even worse, but the problem is, some women actually do act like that when they’re in relationships, usually because they’ve been groomed to act that way either by the abuser currently manipulating them or by previous abuse. So you’re basically calling other women who also act like that non-people because of the way abuse might cause them to act. That’s awful. Empathy, please?
GroundPetrel, kind of seconding Cassandrakitty’s last comment, although I totally agree with you that FSoG is a terrible book, and Ana is terribly written, and Ana from the first couple chapters is an extremely dislikable character, and the whole thing is nasty.
Jenny Trout did a chapter by chapter reading, and she started out with so much snark. Then halfway through she got serious because all the creepy abusive flags were there.
This is the post where she took a break from chapters, and snarking, just because it was too red flaggy.
She does a really good job of explaining why everything else is just terrible in her actual chapter summaries. This is the master-post.
I get that Ana isn’t likeable at all too, but still, what contrapangloss said. The whole thing basically reads as “powerful man with lots of sexual and social experience manipulates vulnerable and inexperienced young woman into stuff she doesn’t want”, and in the scenario the woman isn’t the one we should be side-eyeing.
Look, I don’t even see the creep as a human. I see him as a disturbing robot with creepy programming.
It’s like somebody made a movie about abuse with animated characters, wasn’t particularly good at it, and then the whole thing was turned over to somebody who thought that abuse was A-OK.
The sickening part was how she’s ostensibly intelligent and educated and such and she’s walking right into this creep who every man and woman at freshman orientation would be able to spot and avoid half a mile away.
Essentially, I see neither of the characters as human, but rather as poorly-programmed robots. I did take the optional abusive-relationship-spotting course, and when one of my friends was in such a relationship my roommate and I went and cornered the asshole in an unused classroom and gave him a little talk accompanied by suitably unsubtle threats of grievous violence; I’m not saying that anybody in a real-life situation like that isn’t human. I’m saying that those two specific characters are not human, but rather bad robots.
If the female character were an acquaintance of mine, the creep would be getting a late-night visit from my roommate (Kung Fu practitioner) and me (Tae kwon do bleck belt). I’m not without empathy, I just can’t see the characters in that awful book as actual people.