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 uncanny how Buffy preemptively had comebacks for all the creepy stuff Edward does.
I actually read 50SoG because I was curious – it started as Twilight fan fiction which should tell you all you need to know. I am not sure why it is so popular because the writing, plot and sex scenes are poorly done. Maybe women are looking for erotica and they are willing to buy this dreck because it is suddenly acceptable. I am having trouble articulating what I mean by acceptable. Reading “trashy” novels back in the day was something that you didn’t admit to. I tend to read mysteries and not romance but I find that they have become more sex positive then they used to be. I probably put that badly and I apologize upfront to anyone who may take offense.
50SOG can be purchased in paperback at the local bookstore. Most other erotica has to be purchased online and possibly only in e-format. So…
Also, it was a Thing. A lot of people bought it because it was a Thing, and then didn’t actually like it or possibly didn’t even read it, but their purchases fueled the conception that it was popular.
Ironically, Twilight seemed to be something similar–it was like a gateway book for paranormal romance, which has its problems, but there a lot better novels in the genre, and a lot of dedicated genre fans didn’t like it much.
acrannymint – somewhat OT, but do you like light-hearted sort of mysteries? If you do you might perhaps enjoy (if you haven’t read them already) Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series. Phryne’s a filthy-rich detective in 1928 Melbourne, and she entertains a string of pretty young chaps in between solving murders.
She also has an excellent black cat who rules the household.
Gloria Steinem was able to get a job as a playboy bunny in the ’60s
ah, Twilight, the story of one girl’s choice between necrophilia and bestiality
(I’ll put myself in the corner now)
So on the topic of horrible things MRA-types say about rape I found this KIA thread from a screenshot Srhbutts showed on twitter. I archived it, just in case somebody gets happy with the delete button:
https://archive.today/YNYCW
The grossest bit comes from Aquapendulum2, who was the source of Srh’s screenshot. It is long, but his ideas of what justifies rape are… horrifying:
But then there was this from jMerliL:
Yeah, about that… it isn’t feminists I see punishing the narrative that most rapes are a guy making a mistake.
“must be some pretty weird rapists, except me of course, I am a totally normal rapist.”
I meant pushing the narrative, obviously. Feminists would like to punish that narrative, most likely, except I have no idea how to punish an abstract idea.
takshak – reminds me of a crack in one of the Don Sebastian vampire series, where (iirc) he remarks to a would-be lover that it’s not usually women who’re into necrophilia. :/
Good gods, that specimen’s determined to paint a Poor Rapist! narrative even Republicans would think implausible. Porn banned from his landlord’s building? WFT?
Even in the fantasy land where such a person existed, none of that has anything to do with rape, and even if it did, wolud not excuse it.
Woman: allows the world to know that she has a body. This makes her deserving of rape.
Man: No women are currently sexing him, finding dirty pictures is slightly hard to get due to patriarchal power structures, and he doesn’t want to pay a sex worker because it is illegal. Therefore, his rape of a random woman is understandable, since she provoked him by being visibly female in public.
Spot on.
One of my favorite books of all time is A Clockwork Orange. A key plot point in the first third (the climax of the section, in fact) is a vicious gang-rape scene. I admire the skill with which that scene is written, because that sort of thing is very hard to do without losing one’s nerve (and the narrative’s momentum), but never in my wildest dreams have I even remotely wanted anything sexual to do with Alex and his droogs. Especially not since it was “inspired”, if you can call it that, by a real-life attack which ended up shortening the life of the author’s first wife. And in fact, even in the novel, Alex later comes back to the scene of the crime by accident, and finds out that what he and his gang did ended up killing the wife of the “writer veck” who still lives there, and it isn’t pleasant for him, either. (Of course, in Alex’s case, the aversion is due to an experimental psychotherapy he underwent, which has resulted in his being physically sickened by all violence, and even by all the things he mentally associated with violence, such as classical music.)
Paulie & Co., on the other hand, probably whack off to stuff like that. They certainly all seem mad as hell that they don’t get to do that sort of thing and get away with it for realzies.
I wish that I could just live in my head and determine reality like these assholes do. It must be really nice.
Here’s how I know they’re full of shit. I was a strident anti-feminist for years. Then I was raped. I continued being a strident anti-feminist for years. Then I read Christina Hoff Sommers, and felt justified in still being a strident anti-feminist. So I attended an MRA meeting hoping to make a difference. That made me a fucking feminist.
Been raped, no effect on my opinion on feminism. Attended an MRA meeting, then ran to the only alternative.
wordsp1nner
I know I didn’t like it. But, it did lead me to the Tantalize series by Cynthia Leitich Smith, which I’m very happy about. (Eternal, the second book in the series and my absolute favorite out of all of them, made me cry. The ending was amazing and terrible at the same time. Also, there’s a really funny bit where two angels discuss a cherub tattoo, and it’s one of my favorites as well. Also, fuck yeah paranormal romance done right.)
I’ve never read that series. I’ll have to look into that. My tastes run to more urban fantasy with a strong romance plot. I lurve Ilona Andrews, but the writer I don’t think gets enough buzz in the genre is Eileen Wilks. Her World of the Lupi books hold together really well as a fantasy series.
(Books–much better topic than MRAs)
ParadoxicalIntention
Hugs and kisses for you and anybody else who wants them
Soooo the MRAs are obsessed with sperm jacking, paying child support, false rape accusations and divorce does that mean that they want all those things happen to them?
They totally want us ladies
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4NdXJ7Ptftc/U44I2l7jPNI/AAAAAAAARjc/Q8QKKtQPgHM/s1600/Oh+Yeah+Gifs.gif
And also very gross
http://giphy.com/gifs/gross-ew-gif-13YIWW8yFKpRUA
Because of call of duty and grand theft auto I guess men and boys want to murder people and being killed themselves?
My brother actually likes twilight does that mean he wants to drink people’s blood and stalk teenage girls? Making sense and knowing the difference between reality and fiction is Misandry I suppose.
And welcome kylagb here is your welcome package including hugs and kisses
https://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Complete sarcasm btw
I have never heard of a landlord banning porn. I realize that tenant rights vary, but I can’t imagine any circumstance in which a landlord would be allowed to search a tenants computer.
Dollars to donuts, Paul Elam has not read a single thing that Andrea Dworkin ever wrote about rape because if he had, he would know that she viewed rape as a crime of power, not as an indicator of sexual attraction.
Actually, no. By assuming that, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. MRAs complain often enough that feminists don’t understand rape because they portray it as a crime of power rather than as a result of sexual attraction run rampant. Sure, they’ll turn around and claim that feminists are obsessed with rape because it makes them feel more sexually desirable when it suits the MRAs’ purposes because they’re intellectually dishonest shitlords who can’t keep their stories straight.
Also, given Dworkin’s history of having been molested, raped, and abused (this being apart from the 1999 report), claims like this about her from the likes of Elam and Pizzy really turn my stomach. Dworkin has her flaws, but claiming that she was obsessed with rape because she wanted to be raped (ignoring the fact that she actually was) is especially low.
Mr K and I could not agree more. 😉
I read the Twilight books as a pain management tool.
You see, I had a major surgery, and during my recovery period, I was on strong painkillers – I needed to take a pill every four hours or so, and to take a new one before the last one wore off so as to not spend 20 minutes in agony. Unfortunately, I have a very difficult time keeping track of these things while on painkillers. So I got some horrible books (Twilight for my first surgery, House of Night for my second) and just read them continuously. Any time I found myself thinking, “if I could throw something at Bella/Zoey, I would throw ALL THE THINGS” or “what is WRONG with you? I hate you so much” that meant the meds were wearing off and it was time for a new pill.
Twilight wasn’t too bad while high. House of Night was objectively terrible, and eventually got so bad that no amount of opiates could make it palatable.
I found this on youtube. Look and listen for the hidden kitty:
More weaving spam. This one is so freaking cool. If you like this sort of thing.
wrt Twilight & FSoG, I have to agree that they are similar to the old-school rapey romances in both form and function, but that doesn’t excuse them. That just means that the old-school rapey romances were terrible.
The argument it’s fine for people to like them because those people just like bad novels is flawed, because like the rapey romances, Twilight and its fanfiction are teaching a lesson. They are instructive. They aren’t textbooks, but some people use them like textbooks, to learn how the world is supposed to work or to reinforce a pre-existing idea about how the world is supposed to work. The popularity of the franchise(s) spreads the meme that these novels reflect the world as it is, and the lesson they are thereby teaching is a dangerous and damaging one.
There are lots of bad novels out there that teach bad lessons, but Twilight/FSoG managed to accomplish this on an epic scale.