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.
Hey M., come quick, marinerachel just screamed and swore at someone they disagreed with. You need to scold them!
Thanks for importing hostility between yourself and someone else and dragging me into it, Cyberwulf. Super grownup of you!
How about just dropping the issue or dealing with it directly with M. and leaving me out of it entirely? Because all you’ve done here is engender hostility and unnecessarily carry on conflict. You haven’t contributed anything of value.
Telling someone to blow it out their ass isn’t screaming.
marinerachel:
I call bullshit. Most people on this thread have acknowledged that the husband did nothing wrong, that you cannot control who you are attracted to, that no one should feel pressured into having sex with someone their not attracted to and that this may well have been a legitimate reason to end their marriage.
Most people have also acknowledged that discovering your partner is no longer attracted to you because of a change in your physical appearance would be devastating, and that devastation may manifest it as an emotional reaction which could reasonably include crying/yelling/etc.
People are attempting to “neutralize” the wife because for some reason commenters on this thread have built up an entire abusive wife narrative around the use of LITERALLY ONE VERB. People are assuming that because this lady did not express remorse for her “explosion” in a couple of paragraphs of hastily-typed comment giving an undoubtedly abridged version of events, she obviously never apologized to her husband in person and probably explodes at him on the regular and never feels any remorse at all. I don’t know how we got here, but it’s bizarre. As I said in an earlier comment, the wife could well have been an asshole in that moment or an asshole more generally. But there’s a large gulf between “She probably shouldn’t have lost her temper” and “She abused him into medicating himself into having sex with her.”
Mrex:
If you think expressing anger is a fundamentally abusive, I don’t think we’re going to see eye-to-eye on this. In an ideal world, obviously we’d all talk about our problems and disagreements in calm measured tones and never raise our voices in frustration or swear or say things we don’t mean in the heat of the moment. That’s not reality.
I’m interested – do you think yelling at your SO because you discovered they were cheating within a committed monogamous relationship is abusive?
I will tell a story. I had a boyfriend who used to make fun of me in front of his friends quite a lot and share what I considered private things about our relationship framed as funny stories. I had several calm reasonable talks with him about how this made me uncomfortable and I understood that this kind of teasing was the culture of his friend group but I always felt like a punchline and not a participant and I never knew how to respond and it was very upsetting and could he please stop? He did a good show of listening in the moment, but always lapse back into after a while. One day, after a particularly egregious evening of constant jokes at my expense, I was burning with humiliated fury as we left the party, but keeping silent because I didn’t trust myself to speak without “exploding”. Boyfriend obviously picked up on the monosyllabic answers and refusal to meet his eyes, and eventually came out with an utterly oblivious “What, are you annoyed with me or something?”
“Exploded” would have been a mild way to describe the level to which I flipped my shit at that moment. I said everything I’d said to him before, except this time I said it about twenty decibels louder with my face going red and tears streaming down my cheeks. He screamed back, we had a huge row, my voice was hoarse and my face was puffy for the entire next day. But do you know what? He listened. When we talked about it afterwards (and we both apologised, since some people on this thread will apparently assume that bit never happened if I don’t explicitly state it) he told me he had not realized over the course of our several reasonable discussions that he was hurting me that much. It was the eventual explosion that made him start taking this issue seriously. He made a visible effort to stop making fun of me in public and respect my need to keep certain parts of our relationship private. That fight released a huge amount of tension I didn’t know I had been carrying. Our relationship improved.
So, was this a legitimate expression of anger or was I abusive for “exploding” at him? Was he abusive for exploding right back? Was the ensuing screaming match both of us abusing each other? Do you think I manipulated him into changing his behaviour by abusing him with my anger? I’m asking out of genuine curiosity.
The husband has repeatedly been referred to as an asshole repeatedly.
Becoming angry out of hurt is perfectly reasonable. Taking that out on your partner because they don’t want to fuck you is not.
“She manipulated him into using boner pills/having sex with her with her anger” is a HUGE, stupid leap of logic. We don’t know whether “explosive” behaviour is habitual for this person or that her husband agreed to therapy and boner pills out of fear. They may have been his ideas. She may also feel terribly sorry for having gone off on the dude. Maybe all exploding is was bursting into tears. Who knows? Not us.
Another stupid as shit conclusion is “He’s obviously a bad guy”. The fact a guy doesn’t find his wife attractive after she gained 65lbs and he didn’t tell her so until it was too late doesn’t tell us that at all.
I hadn’t seen the male version until you posted it, but goddamn are there some stark differences between the two.
For those who haven’t seen it, I’ll elaborate:
The experiment: Have a skinny person with a Tinder profile put on a “fat costume” and set up to meet some dates.
Fat Woman Tinder date: Men made as many excuses as they could to leave quickly. Forced polite conversation. Aggressively asked her about her Tinder photos. Not one stuck around.
Fat Man Tinder Date: Women stuck around, made plans for other dates, gave kisses and hugs, sat down and relaxed with the guy, and talked about everything he asked about (even though I felt he was being a little contrary with the whole “I hate dogs” and “I can’t stand working with kids” comments).
All in all, the women were shown to be far more compassionate and non-judgmental.
@because reasons:
I completely agree.
It seems to me that any subject that results in this kind of disagreement is one that hasn’t been discussed thoroughly enough – i.e. there are issues that need resolving (even if the resolution is to live and let live). The real problem is that paradoxically that makes it a topic that’s really freakin’ hard to discuss without disagreement and argument so people avoid discussing it 🙁
It’s the airing of opinions that riles people, it challenges people’s long held assumptions/beliefs/sensitive points, which can be painful (even assuming no deliberate trolling making it worse).
And yet it’s the hard conversations like this that are the most valuable, I guess like lancing a boil, it just needs doing. It’s getting through it without casualties that’s the real trick.
@Paradoxical Intention:
Does anyone know of any studies regarding peer pressure on guys to only date ‘hot babes’?
It’s my feeling that a lot of guys measure their self worth entirely on such things. It’s sad really because you’d spend all your life trying to live up to the expectations of ‘your group’, when in reality it’s possible that noone in your group even likes those things, they just believe everyone else does and are unwilling to challenge it. How would you even know, when everyone’s internalised it and won’t admit how they really feel?
Leela | April 1, 2015 at 10:35 pm
“This is just a huge onion for lots of people with sooo many layers. I think people should take a step back and look at the reasons why you’re having a strong response.
And then can we get back to mocking the dum-dum mras?”
So much this!
And:
“I’ve also got a higher libido than my husband – and the lack of sex in a relationship that happens because the man doesn’t want to do it, that can be very hurtful because our socialization that men *always* want sex.”
Virtual hugs if you want them. I know that feeling.
marinerachel:
Exactly. Which is why all the speculation on this thread about her probably/maybe being an abuser is horrifying and deserves pushback.
And yeah, I think the fundamental divide on this thread is that one camp think that expressing anger to a partner (beyond “actually dear, I’m really quite ticked off about all this”) is never ever acceptable and pretty much always abusive. The other camp thinks that anger is a valid emotion that absolutely can (and should) be expressed in non-coercive/manipulative ways. I don’t think the two camps are going to be reconciled, but at least now I have a better understanding of why so many people had such a strong reaction to the word “exploded”.
Anger can absolutely be abusive. Silence can also be abusive. Or it can be a defense mechanism against abuse. Mockery can be a fun part of a couple’s dynamic, or it can be a particularly awful and insidious form of abuse . Or it could be somewhere in the middle. Personally, I think putting a blanket label of “abusive” on surface behaviours (i.e. yelling) that could potentially in some contexts be abusive is unhelpful because it makes it more difficult to identify the patterns and dynamics that drive abuse.
Oh lith, there’s a whole bundle of issues there!
Now, don’t know of any peer reviewed research but hey, we’re only not CERN so we can go with anecdotal evidence if we want.
You only have to consider the phrase “trophy wife”.
I suspect also there’s a lot of pressure on young guys too; but let’s face it. They get judged on what cars and trainers they wear.
Interestingly though, it seems not uncommon for some men, once the relationship becomes ‘permanent’ to suddenly get all possessive if the woman continues to dress in an attractive fashion (“Why you going out all tarted up like that?” etc
Come to think of it, one area where this is demonstrated is in our self defence work. We’re always advising men to “leave the aggressor a way out”. So, for a pertinent example, if you get the classic “Oi, you looking at my bird?” we advise a response along the lines of “Yes sorry, couldn’t help it. She’s very attractive, you must be some guy to pull someone like that”.
Pandering to the male ego as a practical measure.
I wish I’d repeated the word repeatedly a few more times repeatedly.
I know Paul’s gone, but I saw this hypothetical yesterday and didn’t get a chance to respond.
Honestly, if my husband gained that much weight in a year (or two) I’d worry that there was something physically (hormonally) wrong and/or that he was depressed and manifesting it with disordered eating. I’d address my concerns with him and affirm that I’m here for any and all support that he wants or needs.
I wouldn’t shame, harrass, exclude, or neglect him. (I’m not saying that the husband necessarily did so in this post’s case – there’s frankly not enough information for me to judge – but that’s what the rest of your hypothetical implied).
Point of fact, my (RL) husband has gained about 50 pounds since we got married 6 years ago, but it’s no great mystery why – he’s gone from having a fairly physically active field support position to having a primarily sedentary, programming-centric job.
I’m still terribly attracted to him (he’s muh fuzzy boo-bear) and we still have a very active sex life (for people with small children), but I do worry for him because he’s obviously not as energetic and has expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of his health and weight.
So, I’m making it a priority to set aside some space and money to make a little home gym with some weights and a treadmill (the closest gym to us is a ridiculous 30 minutes away one way – we have memberships, but the commute time isn’t often viable for us).
Besides that, some little diet tweaks are on the table (he doesn’t really drink and we seldom have dessert, but there is some wiggle room before we hit “restrictive diet” territory).
And so we’ll work out a bit more, eat a bit less, and try to be healthy TOGETHER since we’re a committed, monogamous couple and that’s how we roll. But I’ll still love him and have sex with him and annoy him if he doesn’t lose weight or gains weight or gets a horrible disease or becomes a severe burn victim or loses his limbs (again, because he’s muh boo-bear).
Everybody and every body and every relationship’s different, so maybe you should stop trying to lay out false parallels and equivalencies.
No hypothetical or stray conjecture can completely capture the intricacies of even the most simple human interaction. Compassion and empathy are better defaults than scorn and judgement.
@Lith and Alan – oh, no doubt there’s pressure on men to date “acceptably attractive” women. The difference is that it’s more acceptable, imo, for (straight) men to have a certain standard of beauty for a partner. There’s this constant drumbeat of “men are visual creatures”, whereas women are told from the age of four that they must look at “what’s inside” when it comes to a potential partner (and meanwhile nearly all of their role models are conventionally pretty). So if a woman dumps a man, or refuses to date him at all, because he’s fat/ugly/poor/can’t dress himself she’s shallow and picky, while if a man dumps or won’t date a woman because she’s fat/plain/speccy well, boner can’t stoke the fire if the mantelpiece looks like shit! That’s just biology!
And a lot of us do internalise that and look at ourselves and say “of course he didn’t call after that first blind date, I’m chubby/spotty/there’s hair on my chin, I have to start making an effort if I want to be with someone”. It’s very rare to find women who’ll say “how dare men have standards” in the same numbers as men who say the same about the women who won’t date them.
Re: social pressure: Have any on you seen the Louie episode that addresses this?
Here’s a link if you’re in the US:
http://hulu.com/w/jbof
Cyberwulf:
Whereas a vocal subset of men seem to think that being a “nice guy” is the only requirement they should have to fill in order to secure a relationship with the hot woman of their dreams.
I don’t think I have ever encountered a scenario, either real or fictional, when I’ve heard a woman say something to the effect of: “Can you believe he turned me down? Even though I’m super nice girl? What an asshole!”
@Cyberwulf:
I guess what I’m really wanting to know (as there’s obviously some pressure) is to what extent that affects people’s decisions when it comes to choosing who we’d like to be with.
@tinyorc:
I think where the ‘nice guy’ thing falls down is that not many people are going to believe they’re not ‘nice’, so you’re really saying you’re about the same as everyone else. In which case you need to distinguish yourself by also being interesting or fun, or something. And accepting that a single adjective isn’t enough to recommend you to someone.
So much this. Nice pretty much means “not actively unpleasant”. If you want someone to take a particular interest in you, you’ve got to bring more than “nice”.
Nice Guy: “But I’m NICE!”
Me: “…so is everyone I know! That’s why I spend time with them!”
I don’t have a long list of requirements for a partner but I’m an adventurous soul who is not afraid of risks, and I wouldn’t mind a fella who is happy to come along with me for the ride. “Nice” is okay and all, but it’s a basic standard much like you expect a basic cup of coffee to have coffee granules in it (dissolved of course).
Fun story about “nice”: My boyfriend is not a native English speaker, and he tends to use “nice” interchangeably with stronger adjectives such as “great”. In particular, he frequently tells me that I’m “so nice”. While I understood what he was getting at, it always made me giggle a bit, because it’s sort of bizarre to be told you’re “nice” in such emphatic tones. Eventually, I explained that in English, “nice” is generally used to describe a person who is pleasant and bland and has very little else to recommend them. He got the distinction, but now it’s a running joke.
He also once told me that my dress looked “awful”, because he got mixed up somewhere between “awesome” and “wonderful”. I was a bit taken aback, but now it’s part of the joke and we say things like “you’re so nice and awful” to each other to express affection.
/end ridiculous coupleness
@tinyorc “People are attempting to “neutralize” the wife because for some reason commenters on this thread have built up an entire abusive wife narrative around the use of LITERALLY ONE VERB”
*smashes face into table* AGAIN, there is a difference between abusive behavior and being an abuser . Abusive behavior is aggressive behavior that uses your influence on someone to be harmful or hurtful. Abusive people are people who do abusive things, over and over again, on purpose.
Were you being abusive when you exploded? Yes. Was your boyfriend being abusive when he exploded? Yes. Have I ever been abusive? Yes. Are either of you abusers? I don’t know, but probably not. Am I an abuser? No, but due to my rage problems, I’ve come close.
Sorry if that sucks to hear, but I won’t euphamize our sins. There’s a reason why yelling/exploding is listed on every list of emotional abuse that’s ever existed as a tactic used by abusers; it’s an abusive behavior. EVERY behavior on those lists is an unhealthy, abusive behavior. They’re also all really common behaviors. Humanity sucks. News at 10.
(Note: that Carlin skit is great in many ways, and off point in many ways. Much like Carlin himself, it’s great when it’s good, and terrible when it’s bad. Still makes my general point quite nicely).
“Most people have also acknowledged that discovering your partner is no longer attracted to you because of a change in your physical appearance would be devastating, and that devastation may manifest it as an emotional reaction which could reasonably include crying/yelling/etc.”
No, everyone here acknowledged that it would be devastating, and everyone here acknowledged that “exploding” on someone in a relationship is at least unhelpful. The disagreement seems to be in how harmful “exploding” on someone is, and on whether it’s reasonable based on her devastation.
And on that last point; know what else often gets put on lists of abusive behavior? Blaming your behavior on being very upset, angry, devastated, etc. Your free to think she was “reasonable”, I’m free to disagree, but she CHOSE to explode, it’s not a function of her emotions, it was her choice. Nothing more. Nothing less. We ALL have complete control over our behavior. And we all sometimes make the wrong choice.
In before someone replies some thing like; “You think it is abusive to explode on a man, you must think that women must always be sunshine, BJs, gumdrops, and sugarcoat desprate begging instead of directly expressing their hurt and anger”. And as fun as false dichotomies are, the fact is you can be direct and firm, and you can show hurt and anger, without yelling.
tinyorc, that is a sweet story 🙂
Pandering to the male ego as a form of self defense is something I have seen and done. I think we all learn it sooner or later. Deescalation skills with violent men can save your life.
I once saw a high school friend who was pinned against her car by her jealous, yelling bf get him to let her go by telling him that the wind was messing up her hair. He let go, she told him she’d call him later and we got in the car and drove off. I was speechless and impressed. She convinced him that she wasn’t leaving as an act of “disrespect” to him. She was leaving because the wind was making her less pretty. He stopped being threatening and let her go. He felt sufficiently dominate and that kept her safe momentarily. She pulled it off masterfully. I hate to think of why she seemed so practiced at it.
Hey, mrex? I don’t know others’ views but I’d like to let this discussion go. I take your point and I’m hoping the thread can move on. Others may feel differently.
@cyberwulf “There’s this constant drumbeat of “men are visual creatures”, whereas women are told from the age of four that they must look at “what’s inside” when it comes to a potential partner (and meanwhile nearly all of their role models are conventionally pretty). So if a woman dumps a man, or refuses to date him at all, because he’s fat/ugly/poor/can’t dress himself she’s shallow and picky, while if a man dumps or won’t date a woman because she’s fat/plain/speccy well, boner can’t stoke the fire if the mantelpiece looks like shit! That’s just biology!”
^
OMG this soo much.
It’s funny how traditional masculinity constrains men. The way that part of society thinks that men only sexually respond to women based on their looks reminds me of lizards mating. Emotional intamcy? Ewwww what’s that?