Sitting near the top of the front page of the Men’s Rights Reddit at the moment, with more than 300 upvotes: A post, based on a three and a half year old comment on a Fat Acceptance blog, with the title “Woman gains 65 pounds after getting married, forces husband to get Viagra after he is no longer attracted to her.”
Brace yourself for the HORROR of a wife who put on weight in blatant disregard of the rights of her husband’s boner.
Naturally, the Men’s Rights Redditors are OUTRAGED at this insidious assault on a man’s right to tell his wife that she’s too fat and ugly to fuck.
Here’s the top comment, with more than 100 upvotes:
The charming blueoak9 set the “ignorant sow” straight on a question of Boner Science:
Others concluded, from the fact that he agreed to try Viagra, that she was essentially drugging and raping him. No, really.
![Surprentis 50 points 4 hours ago Might as well be rape at that point. permalink embed save report give gold reply [–]ManRAh 31 points 3 hours ago She's literally drugging him so he'll have sex with her. By definition, it absolutely is.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/drugrape.png?resize=526%2C209&ssl=1)
Carchamp1 expanded on this, er, logic:
So never let it be said that Men’s Rights activists don’t take rape seriously. They take it very seriously when a man is raped by a woman by agreeing to try Viagra and then having consensual sex with her even though she’s a fatty.
There is no way that OP was written by a real woman.
That ad art almost looks like R. Crumb’s work, but it’s not, I know.
blech, I hate the term “real woman.”
@erika, what about the OP rings false for you?
I was going to comment on double standards and the incoherence of the husband but you know what? Screw that. The whole thing just made me sick! The comments are abominable as usual, but I can’t stop thinking about the poor woman with the crappy husband.
Grrr… this really rubbed me the wrong way.
Of course she could have been an unhealthy weight to begin with and now is horrors a size 10 or 12
erika, I thought the same when I read it, but seeing it in context gives a different perspective. It comes about halfway down this page https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/dating-fat/ in the comments. The people replying appear to take it seriously.
So, according to MRAs, if a woman is so drunk she’s passed out it’s not rape because drunk sluts are asking for it. But if a man agrees to try Viagra and has consensual sex with a woman while she’s on it, it is rape?
Somebody is very confused. It must be me and my inferior ladybrains because we all know that manlogic is always impeccable. This must only make sense to the superior male brain.
Yeah the OP sounds just like an MRA imaginary woman.
@MaudeLL You think the OP sounds just like how MRAs imagine women? But if she’s real, then you’re saying they’re right, that the woman’s feelings and expectations are ridiculous.
There are certainly women who are shallow and prone to fat-shaming, but the idea that a woman OWES her partner to stay beautiful and thin even after her youth is past is a pretty gendered idea. Women might gripe about their husbands gaining weight as well but I’ve never heard a woman claim her husband *betrayed* her somehow by gaining weight, and I definitely haven’t heard it with that much rage, like it’s this horrible crime to gain weight over the years.
Hell, Aishwarya Rai, dubbed by many people the most beautiful woman in the world, got a backlash for not losing enough weight quickly enough. After pregnancy: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/05/most-beautiful-woman-in-world-slammed-over-baby-fat/
Wow, way to misunderstand what rape is, MRAs! Unless said MRA is a doctor and has a patient has cholesterol, etc., stuff like this is none of their business. Although, an MRA would probably make a terrible doctor because they’d be generally unpleasant.
Speaking of which, I really ought to start exercising more. I want to live as long as possible. I guess should try some of those rules for myself.
The OP sounds real to me. An MRA writing the OP would have put emphasis on how much food she eats, and how horrible her husband is to betray her this way. Instead, the OP sounds like she is genuinely in pain and conflicted.
I did feel a little squicked at the part where the OP said she “exploded at him”, and the idea of taking what is effectively a potent cardiovascular medication for what is presumably a psychological issue. Like, her husband comes off as a shallow jerk, but ideally, I’d think the therapy would come before trying to initiate sex again… But it’s clear none of what the MRAsshats have to say to this is helpful or respectful. They don’t want to think of ways for men to negotiate his side of the situation, they just want to disparage fat women.
Ok ok so let me get this straight – marital rape laws ought to be irradicated because after you exchange vows women can’t say no to sex, but if a men can be raped after marriage?
Don’t get me wrong, there’s an element of coersion to giving someone viagra when the reason they can’t get aroused is lack of attraction. The husband is still an asshole, but that changes nothing. But saying women can’t be raped by their husbands after marriage but the husbands can’t is well hypocritical as fuck. Surprise there.
Of course we know this isn’t about alleged rape. This is about her being “a lazy hambeast” as they would put it. They do not care about rape victims of either gender – they never have. Male rape victims are just a talking point for them, much like white feminists who bring up black women issues to justify feminism, but exclude black women and other poc from feminism and/or make them feel bad for speaking out about problems native to them specifically.
TLDR; MRAs are hypocrites, as usual.
I feel bad for both parties. Dude can’t help it that he’s not attracted to his wife anymore. He’s agreed to try to change his thinking in therapy and take frigging boner pills to save the marriage. It won’t have been easy to tell someone you love you’re not physically attracted to them any longer.
Agreeing to go to therapy and take Viagra in order to attempt to have sex with someone you love but aren’t attracted to though is rape in 0 ways.
I had to look up HAES, and OMG, did my red flags ever go up. HAES is Health At Every Size. Basically, it’s an anti-diet, pro-healthy-eating lifestyle community. If she gained 65 pounds from eating healthfully and exercising for health and pleasure rather than skinniness, it stands to reason why she was miserable while “slender”. She must have been unhealthy then. Starving herself, even. Maybe she was 65 pounds underweight! And that didn’t occur even once to these misodges. No, she’s an “ignorant sow” for getting her husband to consent to taking Viagra so they can have sex again and he can adjust to what she looks like now, and learn to find her attractive again. Like the dude has no agency, and she’s “raping” him by asserting her desire for a normal married sex life. Yuh-huh…
It also crossed my mind that maybe the husband’s sudden loss of desire could be due to health problems of his own. She doesn’t say what age he is, or if he has any chronic health problems, like diabetes or heart disease, that are linked to impotence. If he developed impotence independently of her weight gain, what then? Would they blame THOSE on her for being a fat cow, too?
The link on reddit is titled “Woman gains 65 pounds after getting married, forces husband to get viagra after he is no longer attracted to her”. But from what it sounds like to me, it seems that she got really angry and upset and then he apologized and promised to try to have sex with her again on his own terms. And since they’re going to counseling, it seems like they’re both trying to fix the problem, especially since it seemed very hard for the husband to tell his wife that he wasn’t physically attracted to her.
It seems they’ve missed the point as to why date rape drugs are bad. The aim of drugging a person is to reduce them to a state where they can’t resist to anything, as in completely unconscious, or at least thoroughly disoriented. In addition the whole concept of “drugging someone” implies you do it without their consent, whereas this story implies Viagra was HIS idea.
Admittedly it sounds like he is coming from a place of guilt. He wants to do the right thing for his lover, he doesn’t want to add to the harmful messages affecting women. These are noble goals, worthwhile in their own right, though I can’t imagine guilt is a good emotion for repairing your sex life. Unfortunately she is physically different from when they first fell in love, and so his physical attraction is diminished. However I think it possible that they could establish a new sense of physical attraction. Ironically “BBW” porn might be more helpful than simple Viagra. The MRAs are right that Viagra simply makes your dick hard, and doesn’t really affect psychology. If they start having sex where he’s simply isn’t there psychologically that will obviously make things far worse.
I agree with you marinerachel. I feel bad for them both. It may be shallow, but the husband can’t force himself to feel attraction that just isn’t there. That lack of attraction is probably a response to societal pressures, but that doesn’t change the fact.
Good for the wife that she has found a way to feel happy with herself.
Clearly they both recognized that there was enough there to work on the relationship and go to counselling, but the use of viagra in this situation still makes me feel squicky (not because it would be rape – he just does not seem to have physical problems).
Ultimately, neither of them is forced to stay in this relationship if it no longer works for them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Just because a relationship doesn’t last until someone dies does not mean that relationship wasn’t *successful*. If they were happy together and then decided that they would be happier as friends from then on, that is still success in my book.
Sorry, got a bit off topic.
Calling the situation rape is so utterly absurd. Is this the new MRA thing, calling it rape whenever a man feels pressured to sexually accommodate a woman? Then simultaneously claiming all reports of rape from women are really because the man failed to sexually accommodate.
Bina-“I had to look up HAES, and OMG, did my red flags ever go up. HAES is Health At Every Size. Basically, it’s an anti-diet, pro-healthy-eating lifestyle community. If she gained 65 pounds from eating healthfully and exercising for health and pleasure rather than skinniness, it stands to reason why she was miserable while “slender”. She must have been unhealthy then. Starving herself, even. Maybe she was 65 pounds underweight!”
That’s what I was thinking. She must have been putting herself under so much pressure to be thin that it was affecting her health. I bet she was more than just slender if she felt that she needed the HAES program. Of course that is lost on these male ‘rights’ activists
I don’t know what to think. This woman does sound like she was miserable before, with all her “rules” about food, and it sounded like she was obsessing about it, which is not healthy.
I wonder if she was 65 pounds underweight, however. A person can only get so many pounds underweight before they stop menstruating and suffering serious health issues, as well as not looking very well. She probably was underweight before, and now has gained some weight and is maybe on the high end of healthy, or slightly overweight?
But, who knows?
Is that enough of a physical transformation to make her husband not be attracted to her? Where there other factors that were in play here?
Don’t know. I wish we could see pictures of what she looked like before, and what she looked like at the time she wrote that post.
In any case, the husband isn’t being raped if he agrees to Viagra. The MRAs are barking up the wrong tree. But then, they always do.
Actually, the couple in the OP should have agreed that he work out more, because older men need a strong cardio to keep those certain functions active. And she participates as the better half of a strong couple, everyone wins.
This comment section is filled with far too many assumptions for my liking…
There’s just enough details to engage in a conversation about this couple’s personal life. She asked for help on that thread and it seems some people offered to discuss the issue with her in more detail, and hopefully the therapy sessions go well.
But all the speculation here is just really… baseless, and feels icky.
Ehhh, the bit about ‘exploding’ at him, and them him agreeing to try to have sex again did feel a little coercive of her, imo.
That said, it sounds like this is a matter of them trying to work through their relationship problems and perserve their marriage, not rape. I’m not sure if popping viagra is the right way to go about it, seems like it’s treating the symptoms rather than the cause (whether this be possible healthy problems on the husbands part killing his sex drive or if it’s a matter of addressing the expectations that have been foisted on him by society). I think communicating should be something they should be emphasizing.