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.
So even though any feminist worth their salt knows that rape has nothing to do with attraction, beauty, or even sex—and there are literally whole websites out there explaining this—they secretly want to be raped, because they want sex from a man who’s attracted to them?
And all feminists are old and unattractive and lonely, even though three of your top targets (LWs 1, 2, & 3) are none of those things?
I mean, besides the whole attitude being a steaming pile of misogynistic poo, the claims do not bear even the slightest bit of consistency, either with real life or with other rantings of the manosphere.
I was about to say “wait, in which way is this ‘insight’ different from the same shit they have been vomiting since ever?” and behold, they indeed have been regurgitating it in different forms.
It’s interesting to see how often Erin Pizzey, like other women who work to support MRAssholery such as Janet Bloomfield or the execrable Valerie Keefe, comments on the appearance and mental health of the women they’re issuing broadsides against.
It’s almost like they’re admitting that what they’re judging is appearance and not the words we’re saying or the actions we’re engaging in…almost like the MRAs are using these women as shields or something.
Where *have* I seen that before?
For people who have absolutely no clue about what other people want or how they think, it’s amusingly ironic that they’re able to describe themselves with such pinpoint accuracy. They’re just not aware that they’re doing it.
People generally thought Gloria Steinem was gorgeous. And Gloria later in life married David Bale, father of the actor Christian. (she’s now a widow) Some other feminists were considered quite good-looking, depending upon the observer’s personal taste of course. Several of them married or had romantic partners, including Andrea. Again, the MRAers are so in love with their theories that reality is oftentimes barred from the premises once they get going.
What does one say to this? There is no point in trying to convince maniacs that rape has nothing to do with physical attractiveness (and who defines what is “attractive” anyways?). It has to do with control and violence.
There would be no point in even trying to debate these idiots, it’s just a matter of making people aware that this kind of garbage is at the heart of the so-called men’s movement. I was raped by my mother for example as a little kid. Did that have to do with physical attractiveness? Rape says more about what is going on with the rapist’s mind than the person they attack. Hands down, all the time, that is the fact. Period.
I’m so thankful that Mammoth posts these blogs to educate people on what is going on out there.
Hi kylab! Welcome! *waves*
Yes, rape is about exerting power and control whereas sex is meant to be a mutual thing. It’s never about physical attractiveness which is why I’m so sick of rape apologists trying to throw as much junk as they can into the idea of what is consent. From the very start they’ve used everything they can to make it seem like rapist thought he had the green light: her clothes, her looks, her sexual history, her (wholly misinterpreted) body language, her state of inebriation, her relationship with the rapist (remember it’s only rape if a stranger jumps out of the bushes), if she agreed to one thing it means she agreed to another, on and on and they won’t stop shit stirring. They turned “no means no” into “unless she says a solid no/if she’s not fighting you off and screaming she’s a yes” and “yes means yes” into “yes means yes even if she’s very very drunk/coerced into saying it/fearful for her life”. They put 100% into dictating what both consent and non consent looks like and its fucked up.
Thus they constantly shine the interrogation light on the victim so the rapist can slink away and PEOPLE ARE FUCKING BUYING THIS SHIT. INCLUDING THE COURTS AND POLICE. WHY GOD WHY??
/rage
Thanks sunnysombrera. At my most generous I think of these Paul Elam types as emotionally immature, lonely and spurned people but at my most cynical, I think they would love to actually be able to sexually assault or kill a woman and get away with it. I think they would not be unhappy if some disturbed follower of theirs went off and did just that after dining on the garbage they spew out. They would be able to say legally that they never incited any one to hurt or kill a woman (but I think they would secretly be happy about it).
The Twilight series is filled with patriarchal and religious themes. The author is very religious herself and a little too obsessed with the “romance” of Wuthering Heights (sorry, I don’t believe that book is a romance). The only women I personally know who like these books are self-professed non-feminists and conservatives. Apparently the books were huge in the reading circles of Mormon wives.
And 50 Shades of Grey is just Twilight fanfiction with the names changed. I’m not exaggerating. The author first posted it on Fanfic.net (where she was booted off for plagiarizing entire scenes from other fanfic) and the characters were originally named Edward and Bella. It’s S&M written by someone who doesn’t even understand how real S&M is practiced, and there is a ton of writing out there describing exactly how damaging the messages in it really are.
But as other have already pointed out, none of this even matters, because again, the word that MRAs conveniently ignore is CONSENT. Women who are fulfilling fantasies with their partners are consenting to the activity. And anyone who doesn’t understand how rape is different is quite a frightening person to me.
Kylag: considering that Paul has shown himself to be pro domestic violence I wouldn’t put it past him. Every time he talks about hitting a woman he seems to do it with a sense of glee, or a genuine belief that if his partner pisses him off its within his human right to hurt her. A belief which he has extended to all men, of course.
Chie: MRAs have proven time and time again that they can’t or won’t separate fantasy from reality. If their ‘movement’ was more well known they’d be considered a dangerous hate group by national leaders.
Phyllis Schlafly to rescue concerning college rapes: http://www.salon.com/2015/01/06/phyllis_schlafly_campus_sex_assault_is_on_the_rise_because_too_many_women_go_to_college/
Some Twilight fun.
Boy oh boy that Phyllis Schlafly. Yes indeedy we need to go back to the days of college campuses being 70% men instead of a more equal percentage between men and women. 🙁
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Let’s not forget — like the bun-hair thread demonstrated — that they can at the drop of the hat define any and all women “ugly” at a moment’s notice, going 180 degree in a blink of an eye.
Skiriki: let’s also not forget that as soon as a pretty woman rejects them she is suddenly a fat ugly whore.
Yep.
I’m sure that the defenseless people in old folks homes and the small children who have been raped were just tooooooo attractive for their rapists to resist.
Or – OR – maybe rape is more about exerting power than sex.
Just fucking maybe.
I saw an interesting thing on Tumblr yesterday where a woman was posting results of a social experiment she was doing.
She would get a message from a guy on a dating site, and they would compliment her. She’d agree with them.
Literally the next message was “No you’re not [complimentary thing they just said here]”
“Hi, you’re beautiful!”
“Yes”
“Uh, no you’re not. lol.”
It baffles me how men can do this. It’s either they don’t believe that this woman is actually pretty, amazing, ect, or they do, and they’re just not capable of handling the fact that she is aware of it.
Sweet I found the link~
http://kingforaking.tumblr.com/post/107591143329/im-doing-a-social-experiment-called-agreeing
Buffy vs Edward:
It says a hell of a lot that anyone feels they can undermine the validity of a woman’s viewpoint based on how much or how little they fit typical beauty ‘norms’. (And let’s face it, that’s not confined to MRAs) What bothers me too is how quick a lot of us are to say, ‘well I’m/she’s not fat/ugly/hairy and thinks x so… feminists are pretty – blah.’ It’s not something I’ve noticed here but it is an invading trend! And like, yes many 15+ stone women have strong opinions on rape. Many women under 15 stone have strong, bleedin’ opinions on rape! All are pretty feckin’ valid opinions!
MRAS often complain about how feminists hate sex and want to allow it. At the same time, they think we are so sexually frustrated that we want to be raped. Why, if we were feminists because we are desperate to get laid, would we simultaneously be trying to ban sex, thus making the sex we’re so desperate for harder to come by?
It makes no sense at all.
Paradoxical: I get the feeling that to those guys the compliments were not intended as actually telling her that they think she’s pretty, but Panty Dropping Trick #317 in their Big Book of Alpha Moves, and when she actually agreed with them their brains went “shit she has too much self esteem! Abort abort!”
@sunnysombrera:
Yeah, that too. What a WEIRD reality they live in, really. Sort of reminds me of that one Ren & Stimpy episode where Stimpy dived into belly-button. I wonder if their reality has Jerry the Lint Elf too?