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.
It’s possible to say “this book is incredibly poorly written and the characterization is crap” without all the stuff about Ana being an un-person because she lets all that stuff happen to her, you know.
I’m saying that neither the creep nor its victim are people.
Again, if it were real life I’d judiciously beat up the creep and then have it sent to a mental hospital, and give the victim a blanket or something reassuring and send her to serious counselling.
I just found myself unable to see these characters as real people. Which says a lot, for me.
If Ana is poorly written and badly fleshed out as a person, I’d argue that it’s the fault of the writer, not the character. And since the rest of the books is just as badly written as she is, I feel sorry for her. Even if she’s not real, her plight is. Someone get that poor girl a decent author, and will that author please finally extricate her from that shitty relationship somehow? Thanks awfully.
PS: There’s a hilarious Tumblr called 50 Shades of Suck, which is basically a running riff on the drecky writing. I haven’t checked back lately, but for a while there, it was a laff a day at least.
… Petrel, you’ve already been warned for violence and ableism. It’s getting kind of creepy.
I’m not quite sure why you think that suggesting that hypothetical victims are pathetic and that you’d totally beat up their abuser is going to be more helpful to them than just not suggesting that the behavior caused by victimization makes them pathetic.
(Also, yeah, all the “I’d totally beat that dude up!” chest-beating is getting kind of old in general.)
nom nom nom YUM!
GroundPetrel, yeah, as M. said, I did tell you about the violence and ableism stuff last night. I’m reminding you now that it’s not acceptable on this blog.
Sigh. This is starting to feel like a retread of our fun with right wingnut.
GroundPetrel, I said I liked your previous comments and I do, but seriously back the fuck down . This blog does not tolerate fluffy justifications when something unsavoury has been pointed out. I don’t want you to be put in moderation so seriously, CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY.
WWTH: he’s put out some great comments on the inflatable pussy post (or whatever Roosh was talking about) so let’s not be too hasty.
::applaud::
Well said, sunnysombrera.
See, I kinda agree with you there, because they are at best cardboard cutouts with only the most rudimentary flesh on their stock central casting stereotype bones (heck, I’ll even agree with you that Moffat’s writing is at best mediocre and I hate the direction he’s taking Doctor Who in, but I don’t get and I am super creeped out by the chest thumping “I’m going to beat everyone up” crap.
I’m not calling for a ban hammer or anything, but usually when someone ignores the first warning, they aren’t going to change. But we’ll see.
WWTH: we’ll see. Hopefully enough people have piled on him for him to get the message. And sometimes people need two warnings, who knows.
Well, in my second year of college some chest-thumping posturing guy thought I was moving in on his girlfriend, so he kindly and helpfully backed me up against the wall, thoughtfully put his hand on my throat, and gently warned me that if he had to drop by again, he would bring three friends and they wouldn’t use words.
I have firsthand experience at being threatened with physical violence, and let me tell you, it’s not really likely to change anyone’s behavior at all, whatever it may be.
Beloved just remarked to me that “Mary Sue” anymore means “I don’t like this character” and she wishes it would be used less.
I think that Ground Petrol needs to realize that, while Ana is definitely a poorly written, badly developed character and that she does definitely come across as a pretty nasty person in her own right, her plight as a victim of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse comes across as very realistic and that the insistence on dehumanizing an abuse victim (however poorly written a character she is or however unsavory a person she might be) leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. This goes doubly if you’re implying that she’s pathetic and unrealistic for putting up with Christian.
So there’s this thing people do where, when they don’t approve of a woman’s behavior, they say she’s not a woman or not “really a woman” or something similar (and to be fair, I have seen this done to men, too). And since it’s a given that fictional characters are not actual people, singling out a specific one for “not a real woman” status tripped some alarm bells for me. I mean, it’s true that she’s not a real woman, but neither are Lizzie Bennett or Sybil Ramkin. I just can’t see the point in even pointing it out, excpet in that gender-policing way I mentioned.
Also, you don’t really need to go on and on about how you’d totally beat up Christian Grey if you met him IRL. Even if you had the opportunity, it wouldn’t be helpful, and also, it has fuckall to do with the rest of the conversation.
Yeah…when you pull the “no true Scots(wo)man” logical fallacy on women, fictional or otherwise, it’s pretty harmful when we already run the risk of not being seen as actual people by…other people.
Yes, it also happens to men, and that is toxic and bad too.
Also, saying that Christian Grey isn’t a real man because he’s abusive is problematic too. Actually, saying that someone can’t be fully human or fully adult because they’re violent is problematic because it implies that only people who aren’t really *human* or *adult* commit violence and that the rest of us are far too normal to ever do anything terrible ever.
Alright, this is probably going to sound really stupid…
My problem isn’t that those terrible books detail and glorify an abusive relationship. The problem is that from my perspective, they fail utterly.
Basically, it breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.
It’s cool if other people don’t see it that way, I just cannot see either protagonist as a real human being, whereas (to re-use an example posted above) I can very easily imagine Lady Sybil as a real, eccentric, wonderful person.
I suppose it’s just an aspect of the general lack of quality of the author and her writing, but in my personal and highly subjective opinion, neither the creep nor its victim are believable.
As for the incident with my friend and her asshole boyfriend: What me and my roommate did was get this guy alone in a room, tell him to “back the fuck off”, and said that if he touched her again we’d call Public Safety and then Student Health Services on his behalf.
That was when my roommate took over and said that while my concern for the female friend in question was touching, my response needed some work.
I know that I’m a bit immature, and a bit of an idiot (I’m 18 and male, therefore stupid, as all college students are), I’m more than happy to admit that my opinion in this matter is highly subjective and probably stupid.
tl;dr: I’m not saying that the creep doesn’t seem human to me because he’s a shithead, it’s because the sheer lack of quality of the writing made it impossible for me to associate these people’s dumb decisions with realistic emotional abuse; it seemed, to me, like a bad attempt by one person to write an abusive relationship that was then turned into a temple glorifying abuse by a creep with little to no writing talent.
See, I don’t think anyone has a problem with that. The writing was bad, the characters were formulaic and not believable, those were some of the book’s many literary sins. They were trash.
But they were also dangerous, because they glorified and romanticized emotional and physical abuse, and too many people are caught up in the toxic nonsense that the books (and soon the movie) spewed, and when you belittle the characters in the ways you were doing, or suggest that violence is an appropriate response, you participate in that toxicity instead of trying to clear it up.
I’ve appreciated a lot of what you’ve written, but like your roommate, what a lot of us want to tell you is that your posting needs a bit of work. “Dur, I’m just a stoopid guy” is an excuse. We think you are better than that, and that’s why you are getting the feedback you’ve gotten.
@GroundPetrel:
Thank my lucky stars I’ve never read the books myself. But from other people’s reads and reviews, I’ve gotten the impression that, disturbingly, Anna does, in fact, display many reactions and emotions that real abuse victims display. She makes decisions that real abuse victims do make. That’s what’s so terrifyingly awful about the book; the characters tick so many boxes for abuse (symptoms and flags) that it couldn’t be coincidence, but somehow E. L. James thought she ended up with a romance.
I think what makes the characters so unbelievable is that the abuse and relationship seems to be all they are. While the abuse is realistic in its portrayal and the red flags hit very close to home, neither Christian or Anna seem to be fleshed out beyond those things.
OK, first I’m going to re-state that I didn’t even finish the first book, for similar reasons to my inability to finish any of the innumerable Newberry Award winners that involve dead dogs and/or best friends (I can’t stand people reacting unrealistically to serial misery).
Second: In the part that I read, neither the creep nor its victim nor her so-called friend showed any signs of independent thought, inside or outside the creep’s abuse of its victim.
It got to the point where I couldn’t understand why either character was doing the things they were doing. The creep appeared to operate on a hard-coded program of maximum creepiness, the victim (who honestly I found the most realistic by a small margin, but that’s like saying “better than Dick Cheney”) didn’t have enough human traits outside of her massively abusive relationship to be believable, and her so-called friend appeared to be an active collaborator with the creep.
If I had been in said so-called friend’s position, I would have called the cops early on.
In a nutshell, I could not comprehend why these characters were in this abuse cycle, because neither of them had enough outside human traits to appear as anything other than a robot.
Hope that clears some things up.
Oh yeah, that’s true sunnysombrera. Anna likes to read, because that shows how smart she is see how smart she is she reads classic literature, but the main one that comes up is that one about abuse that for SOME DANG REASON James chose to be the biggest literary reference. Even Anna’s most defining hobby is wrapped up in the abuse.
Right. Because they’re both Tess and Alec from Tess of the D’Urbervilles.