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.
@ J.S
Well, we do have a principle in English law that “submission is not consent”
In practical terms the courts draw a line between “Oh, go on, PLEEEEAAAASSSSE?” “Oh, alright then” and “If you must rape me then please wear a condom”.
I have been in this situation – and I was the ‘no longer attracted’ person. It was a lesbian relationship, and we were about the same size for the first 18 months. Then I lost weight and she gained weight. I became a lot more looks focused (I was in my 20s) and gradually I became less and less attracted to her, and that was one reason the relationship ended.
I know that I would have felt HORRIBLE if I had been the partner who put on weight and was no longer desirable to my lover, but I REALLY couldn’t help it. It MAY be that had she consistently treated me with love and respect instead of constantly criticising and undermining me I would have felt differently about her physical changes, but I really don’t know for sure.
My take on this is that you do not “explode” on someone until they are browbeat enough to take a drug so you can have sex with them that they don’t want to have.
Drugging and sex through coercion sounds rapey to me.
The MRA response to it is brimming with ugliness, but not entirely wrong. He can stop wanting to have with sex her for any reason. It doesn’t have to be a good reason. He doesn’t have to be a good guy to be a victim. She can be sad and still a villain.
That’s the problem with being attracted to people solely on a physical basis. Appearances change as time goes on. Not just weight, either. People acquire wrinkles, gray hairs, varicose veins. Muscle tone and stamina become harder to maintain. lllness and accidents happen. Hairstyles, shoes, and fashion change to cope with the demands of career, kids, and middle age. It’s absurd to expect that the body you’re dating today is going to be the same body 10 years from now.
Nice how the MRAs simultaneously blame women for not being attracted/in the mood (the husband has RIGHTS, you know!) and also for not being sufficiently attractive/arousal-producing (the husband has RIGHTS, you know!)
Looking at that “wate-on” ad, I had no idea that colds were so consumptive and debilitating in the 1970s, people had to work to regain weight afterwards. I don’t think I’ve ever lost more than half a pound during a cold. I’m also fascinated by the idea that a special booklet of tips and recipes was required to regain that lost weight (as opposed to just eating a few extra boxes of Space Food Sticks).
I wondered whether this site was going to do an April Fool article, but I don’t think anything we could make up would approach the level of painful nonsense (Nawn-sense!!) these people say and do on a daily basis.
@ Buttercup
As every (English) law student knows, one of these will cure any ailment….
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Second_Carbolic_Company_advertisement.png
YUP.
It’s also our fault for being harassed and assaulted for looking so damn sexy / too fat and ugly. It’s like their problem is really with us being free and female. We must maintain a perfect (yet unspecified) level of attractiveness while never being too proud of or free with our bodies.
I love all the fucking saints here who wouldn’t be angry if their partner said “yeah I don’t wanna fuck you any more now that you’re fat”. I love them as much as all the people trying to work out how many pounds the OP weighed when she was skinny vs when she was fat to make sure she still looks acceptable and had a “good” reason for gaining weight. Not forgetting the people who assume she’s a troll because no true woman would ever be upset that her husband went off her because she wasn’t making herself miserable in the name of looking pretty.
davidknewton, I think an April Fool’s post would have to be something like “MRAs admit they were wrong!” or “MGTOWs state, “yes, we are not really going away, we just want your attention””.
Seconding TinyOrc And Buttercup. I think it’d be more productive to discuss the MRA reaction rather than speculate on the couple from the post.
Re: wate-on
Apparently that product was only for women and only caused “wate” gain in the breasts and hips? Wth? I’ve had some dramatic weight losses in my life from illness…the most drastic being 60+ lbs over the course of a 9-month sickness. But even then I wasn’t clamoring for a product to pack the weight back on! I’d think this kind of thing would be more geared towards TB or cancer patients, like Ensure, etc are given nowadays.
TL;DR- bizarre and funny, if problematic ad.
MRAs are right about one thing; pressuring men into sex using anger or guilt is rape. Is this what happened here? Only the husband can say what his motivations were. There is just not enough info about his POV. Anything anyone says about whether or not he consented is just guessing and making up stuff to fit their own POV, feminist or MRA.
However, saying that Viagra is a date rape drug, (not CAN be one, but IS one), is just absurd. Most of the time men are 100% consensual about taking Viagra because they wish to engage in 100% consensual sex that they wouldn’t be able to without the drug. Talk about MRAs throwing the baby out with the bath Viagra.
Anger is a normal, healthy, reaction to feeling hurt. What’s not healthy is “exploding” on someone. The feeling is healthy, the behavior is not. And I think that if you’re expected to be in a monogamous relationship, it normal to feel entitled to sex. I consider sex to be an emotional need. If someone, man or women, is not able to meet their spouse’s needs, then it’s unfair to expect the spouse that wants sex to spend the rest of their life unfullfilled. In this situation, either the spouse that doesn’t want to have sex has to figure out how to boost their libido, the spouses have to compromise on a certain amount of sex to have no matter what, the horny spouse has to figure out how to meet their needs themself, or if nothing else works, they have to discuss opening up or ending the relationship.
I think part of the problems that arise when men want less sex than their wives is that some women are reluctant to masturbate in relationships or don’t know how to do it well. Part of this is because much of the “need” for sex in men and women have is oftentimes really the need for companionship and other emotional needs. Once they learn to meet those needs outside of sex, the part of sexual frustration that is an actual need for physical release usually can be relieved through masturbation, if they spend enough time practicing and learn to do it well enough. 😉 I know masturbation certainly saved my marriage to my husband. 😉
The excuse that a wife/husband gained weight and is no longer physically attractive because of biotroofs is such hogwash. NO-ONE stays the same, physically or emotionally, throughout a long-term relationship. Physical attraction in humans has evolved to be extremely flexible for this reason; so that it COULD evolve along with relationships over time. If physical attraction was meant to be some fixed thing then humans would have evolved to have short courtships that ended in quickly growing bored, splitting apart, and dumping off kids young, instead of the long term cooperative relationships across great change that we see throughout our history. Usually “I’m not attracted to you because you’re too fat” = “There are other emotional problems going on with me, or with our relationship, that I’m not able to face, so I’m going to hide my issues behind some b.s. excuse of biotroofs and stay in denial.”
You can frost a turd, but it’s still a turd. People who think their wives/husbands have physically changed too much usually have other issues going on. It may be that having a fat wife hurts his need to be admired by/fit in with other men, or that he’s actually commitment-phobic or otherwise unable to maintain a long term relationship. (It’s amazing how many married people are commitment-phobic). Whatever it is, it’s likely that the wife’s weight gain isn’t the actual problem.
Also seconding Cyberwulf.
The most weight I ever lost from illness was about 20 kg (44 lbs) – swine flu – but that was a full quarter of my average-for-my-height weight at the time and I did need to go on weight gainers afterwards. Swine flu = Sucks ass.
This reminds me of a fun little anecdote from my love-life:
My ex-bf and I were together for 6 years and there was almost NO sex after the first 6 months. But we were such good friends that I tried not to let that bother me too much (and took matters into my own hands). Of course, after about the 4th year of this (we were having sex maybe 1 or 2 times a year) I was really frustrated. I had talked to him about it too many times to count and nothing else I tried had worked. Well, by the last year we were together we had both put on weight…about 40 pounds each. I didn’t care about his weight gain and I don’t know how he felt about mine. The only “reason” I got out of him was that I was sick all the time and it was too much for him (I have a chronic condition that was pretty bad then). Which I thought was very hurtful, if not honest…but also felt there were other factors involved that he kept hidden. With about 6 months left of our relationship, he started working out furiously and dropped all the weight he’d gained. At the very end he started seeing an old flame and the lights turned on. We broke up shortly after.
I’d never stay with someone that long again with the same issues going on, because I know myself much better and what I want/need. It will always make me sad though- after so many years together and being so close, I felt like he chickened out because of physical reasons…then he got in the best shape of his life, not for me but for some other woman. Ugh.
Ok, end of sad ex story.
@M.
Geesh! Swine flu? Wow that does suck! I hope you don’t have any lasting effects from it (like I do from my lovely brush with chronic illness).
Who wouldn’t be angry? Who wouldn’t come apart? Please don’t think I would take this sort of rejection from a SO with a shrug and a smile. I’d be devastated. My heart is fragile and I have a complicated relationship with myself. I’d be a mess in her place.
That’s not the problem I see in this story. A man can be a complete asshole who breaks your heart and you still have no right to coerce him to get it up for you. Love may be unconditional but lust is not.
You can
1) Acquiesce to his standards and be miserable.
2) Live in a passionless marriage with a man only found you attractive for fitting a cultural standard of beauty and be miserable.
3) Leave
4) Poly?
If he wants to try therapy and you do too, you have more choices. She says she’s making him do things. Maybe I’m being too literal.
“Explode” may mean something different to this woman than it does for me. Maybe she just told him off in her outside voice. When I read “explode” I think of something more fierce.
Probably more telling of me than of her.
@Alan Robertshaw – It’s amazing that after losing that lawsuit, they doubled down and started offering £200.
Also, puffing powdered carbolic acid up the nose sounds a lot more painful than having a cold.
I don’t think the answer is to browbeat the guy into taking meds to be able to function sexually with someone he’s not physically into! Geez.
She seriously needs to apologize for “exploding” and get on with having a real honest adult discussion. It’s understandable but it’s not ok.
And maybe they need to break up. This kind of thing is a good illustration about why no-fault divorce exists. Sometimes relationships don’t work out and no one is Officially At Fault.
He’s not an asshole for not being physically attracted to someone who has physically changed a whole lot in a relatively small amount of time.
She’s not a bitch for wanting to eat more dessert and spend less time at the gym.
It may mean they’re not compatible anymore or right now, though. I think they need to talk about THAT, esp if there are no kids in the mix. sometimes I think people work too hard on their intimate relationships sometimes, oddly… let it goooo, let it goooooo
I believe that it can be the problem, just (as Ellesar and others have noted) that it’s likely not the entire problem. There are almost always other issues in play, whether or not people even realize it at the time.
Also, people don’t just change physically over time. I have made some huge changes in the last ten years that are both attitude-based and emotional in nature. I am very fortunate that my husband has also changed, and in the same directions (mostly).
so true. It’s so weird to watch a skinny guy talking smack about how overweight so-and-so is, how they need to start taking their health seriously before there are REAL consequences with cig in hand.
i’m like, no, Smoky, this is about… your ideas about hotness, and maybe secondarily your addiction-denial. Not So and So’s “health!” sheesh
My wife of six years recently stopped having sex with me.
I asked her why, and she said it’s the 65 pounds I have gained in the past year.
She said she loves me more than anything but is not physically attracted to me now.
I exploded at her. In response, she promised me sex.
She also agreed to take a vasodilation drug that will make her body at least SEEM to want the sex.
My wife is a real asshole, isn’t she?
Not a single one of us is saying we wouldn’t be devastated to hear our SO tell us they’re not physically attracted to us anymore. I’ll wage ALL of us would be shattered.
I sure don’t find my fat self attractive though. I don’t expect my partner to either. Whether its just wired preference or social conditioning, I don’t think it makes someone a shitty person or gives anyone the right to shit on another person. That’s not acceptable.
Its also not fair to try to twist the story into a man who wanted not keep his wife unhappy or unhealthy. He’s not unhappy with her. Shes overwhelmingly happy with him. She just wants to get laid. He just doesn’t want to have sex with her anymore and its not because she’s happy or because she’s healthy. Its because her physical appearance changed.
This isn’t the story of the asshole husband who left his wife when she deviated from his expectations. Its a story about a guy who loves his wife and doesn’t want to hurt her but doesn’t want to have sex with her sinse major weight gain either.
@Lea “When I read “explode” I think of something more fierce.
Probably more telling of me than of her.”
No, I think you were right. “Explode” means something fierce. If I got an anonymous tip not to open my mail because one of my letters might “explode”, I would be thinking “bomb” not “slightly critical letter”. This is because “explosions” are defined by verbal and physical violence.
@Hambeast “I believe that it can be the problem, just (as Ellesar and others have noted) that it’s likely not the entire problem. There are almost always other issues in play, whether or not people even realize it at the time.
The lack of sexual attraction is usually a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. Sexual attraction is flexible.
It also takes either trust/intimacy, or tons of novelty. As the novelty wears off, intimacy is supposed to take over, but the sad fact is that no person will trust someone who criticizes, or worse, explodes on them.
Sexist society that we are, we consider a need for “intimacy” in sex to be feminine, and reduce men down to beasts that only respond to visual stimuli. Not so. Not so.
“Not a single one of us is saying we wouldn’t be devastated”
I didn’t say “all the [people] here who wouldn’t be devastated”, I said “who wouldn’t be angry”. People are behaving as if she should’ve just choked down her anger and the poor man and she’s coercing him and date-raping him and he can’t help it if he doesn’t want to fuck her fat ass any more etc. etc. Did it ever occur to the sanctimonious “expressing anger is nasty and coercive” set that the woman’s a human being too? And maybe for her, when the husband came out with “…yeah…um…it’s because you’re…” *makes fat signs*, her first, knee-jerk, human reaction was “OH FUCKING TYPICAL YOU WANT ME FUCKING KILLING MYSELF IN THE GYM AGAIN AND OBSESSING OVER EVERY MOUTHFUL BECAUSE YOU’RE SHALLOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW EXHAUSTING THAT WAS FOR ME”?
And by the by do any of you understand how Viagra and other ED drugs work? They aren’t instant boner-pills:
https://www.bpas.org/bpasman/viagra
http://www.menshealth.com/health/common-erectile-dysfunction-medication-mistakes