In the midst of a mostly dull disquisition on the evils of marriage, filled with odd jargon he’s made up himself, A Voice for Men’s erstwhile cooking columnist
sexual fidelity (especially in women, to protect fatherhood), durability (to protect women and motherhood), and presumptive consent to sex (to maximize fertility and protect both father/mother from spurious rape allegations).
To put it in less euphemistic terms than Løvenskiolds: both partners agree not to cheat (but men do it with their fingers crossed); there’s little or no divorce; and marital rape isn’t regarded as rape. Which is, I suppose, one way to reduce “spurious rape allegations,” though it makes roughly as much sense as legalizing marital murder to protect married murderers from “spurious murder allegations.”
But that’s not the bit I wanted to tell you about. That was just some background so you could better understand the context in which Løvenskiolds makes his bizarre and revealing little comment. It comes at the end of this paragraph on the disintegration of traditional “andomarriage.” I’ve put it in bold.
With the rise of gynocentrism and leisure culture, the harsh penalties for violating the andromarriage laws began to erode – as our preferences for expanding the purview of women increased we became less willing to hold women to any standards or responsibilities. We now see women as lifelong children: too weak, frail, stupid and mercurial to be trusted with adult responsibility when it comes to adhering to the strict requirements of an andromarriage contract. Western countries now look on places that stone adulterers as barbaric even though we were killing them ourselves not that long ago. A woman stoned to death is a woman held to adult standards that feminists now reject.
Did he just say that “[a] woman stoned to death [for adultery] is a woman held to adult standards that feminists now reject?” Yes, yes he did.
Løvenskiolds also has some, well, interesting Evo Psychy thoughts on domestic violence. You might have to read these next bits a couple of times before it makes any sense at all. I’ve bolded some of the more striking bits.
Strong men were better at fulfilling the obligations of being fathers and women who chose those strong men left more progeny, so men became bigger and stronger over time as their genes spread. This is why women hitting men is still seen as less serious than the reverse: she is testing his strength and endurance in the face of pain to gauge his ongoing suitability as a mating prospect. A man who hits a woman – even defensively hitting her back – is displaying a weak intolerance for self-control in the face of pain and society reviles him regardless of the viciousness of the provocation unless he takes on an impressive amount of damage first.
Men who selected women based on markers for fertility – youth, breasts, hips and swayback – also were more successful at reproduction. To the dismay of modern feminists, these mate selection preferences still dominate human coupling: women still swoon for strong, successful men and men still have standards for women’s attractiveness. Weirdly, feminists still rigorously enforce the unequal violence standards that disadvantage weak men while they oppose beauty standards that equally disadvantage ugly women.
As far as I can figure it out, he’s suggesting that “unequal violence standards … disadvantage weak men” because weak men have less self-control and are more likely to hit women.
In other words, he seems to be miffed that women might prefer big burly men who don’t hit women to “weak men” who do. And he seems to think that women not wanting to date men who beat them is somehow akin to dudes putting “no fatties” in their personal ads.
Wow. Even after five years of doing this blog, I’m still surprised at the perverse ingenuity of MRA misogyny.
Løvenskiolds claims to be a Man Going His Own Way. I suggest he continue Going His Own Way, as far away from the rest of us as possible.
McLoven talking utter rubbish, as usual.
Completely OT, but has anyone else come across this story in the news:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/child-abuser-in-argentina-has-sentence-reduced-as-judges-rule-sixyearold-victim-was-gay-and-had-been-traumatised-through-earlier-abuse-10261110.html
It’s come to light that in Argentina, two appeal court judges halved the sentence of a convicted child rapist from six years to 38 months. Their reasoning, that because the six year old victim had already been raped by his own father, the child was already ‘depraved’ and therefore in some way party to further abuse, they also considered that the child is gay and was making ‘a precocious choice’. All this happened some time ago, but now it’s recently become public knowledge and there is a petition going round to have the judges impeached.
How can anyone deny the existence of rape culture when a six year old boy is considered partly accountable for his own rape, presumably because the judges considered him ‘damaged goods’?
I don’t know if it’s okay to post petitions here, but here’s the link to it anyway:
https://www.change.org/p/al-p%C3%BAblico-en-general-a-los-ciudadanos-de-la-rep%C3%BAblica-argentina-revocar-la-magistratura-de-los-camaristas-horacio-piombo-y-ram%C3%B3n-sal-llargu%C3%A9s?recruiter=20773159&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-lg-share_petition-reason_msg&fb_ref=Default
That’s horrible. I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not. Judges in the US do that all the time too.
Jesus Christ, that story, snorkmaiden… No words.
@sn0rkmaiden
That’s really disturbing.
Petition signed.
… holy shit.
It’s possible the judges are pedophiles themselves.
They seem to regard humans as little more than animals, don’t they? I guess that would explain the enormous importance they place on their own sex drives.
They’re so inconsistent about evolution, too. One moment they’re all “Evolution explains everything! Evolution is a sacred natural process that must be slavishly adhered to or bad things will happen!” The next moment, it’s “Oh noes, society has progressed in a direction I don’t like. Change is bad! Adaptation is bad! We need to roll back the clock several thousand years to the starting point!”
That’s why evolution is such a lousy argument for patriarchy (or anything, really). There’s no one set of behaviors that you can point to that are beneficial in all eras and places. The modern world selects for behaviors that are well adapted to modern life. That shouldn’t be a surprise to these guys, being so steeped in evo psych theory, but still they fight it tooth and nail.
…wow. That story is really, really disturbing.
I hate to depress people further (skip this comment if you don’t want to be flipping tables) but that Argentina story reminded me of the Paraguay pregnant 10 year old case. I had a look for updates and as it stands: despite universal pressure, yes they’re still going to hold the mother on charges of “accomplice to rape” and no they’re not going to give the girl an abortion.
http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2012/233/b/6/twilight_is_table_flipping_mad_by_sketchinetch-d5bx3cf.png
Sunnysombrera’s image captures my mood perfectly.
@Sunnysombrera,
yep, I’m with Twilight over this one. I also saw parallels between the case in Argentina and the one in Paraguy. That poor girl, not only is her life in danger, but she might also lose her mother into the prison system 🙁
Thanks everyone who’s signed the petition, while nothing can be done to lessen that child’s trauma (apparently he was also abandoned by his mother, but the articles don’t state if that was before or after the abuse) maybe making the petition could stop those judges making more rulings like that.
There’s a good article about this in The Daily Kos too, where it’s revealed those judges have got form, they were also soft on a pastor who molested two underage girls:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/19/1385862/-Six-year-old-blamed-for-his-own-rape-in-Argentina
http://media.giphy.com/media/vwu9UTwIwFr7G/giphy.gif
@ David F
Apologies if you’ve already seen this (I’m a bit behind on internet stuff; busy, busy, busy) but you may find it interesting if not.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/20/troll-uses-twitter-adverts-to-urge-trans-people-to-kill-themselves
Those judges need to be stripped of their licenses pronto. That poor boy, being betrayed by his guardians like that – yes, authorities are a form of guardian too.
Someone also please fire the doctors/health ministers who say that they’ll do nothing because the girl “isn’t at risk”. Mother fuckers, by the time she starts showing signs of physical problems (and this WILL happen) it’ll be too fucking late to save her from disability or even death. If she dies/suffers permanent injury and they give the step father a lenient sentence…God help me. Mind you if the girl is harmed Paraguay won’t hear the end of it from other countries. The build up has been such that the international backlash would be freaking enormous.
@sunnysombrera:
Yes. Also, their previous decisions should be reviewed, as well as their personal lives for sex abuse of children.
I’m not an evolutionary psychologist and I think the conclusions people use it to justify are pretty much all bullshit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean evolutionary psychologists are wrong about what they’re saying. There are observable differences in behavior and learning among non-humans and there’s nothing particularly special about humans that would prevent that from being true for us as well. What is special about us, though, is that we are potentially intelligent enough not to let those differences influence how we let others find their place in society. There could very well be biological bases for our current concepts of masculinity and femininity, but that doesn’t mean we need to pigeonhole anyone into any societal role based on their genitals and chromosomes. The biggest mistake I think MRAs etc. make when bringing up evopsych is thinking that it justifies their bullshit. Conversely, calling it bullshit because you don’t agree with someone else’s interpretation of it makes about as much sense as thinking you’ve bested thousands of climate scientists by pointing out that the earth’s climate has always changed.
Re: Argentina & Paraguay
Hi, reporting from Buenos Aires here.
Sadly wwth is right, most judges are this kind of assholes here, and also Aunt Edna is right: some eventually turn out to be abusers (this story is from my hometown).
And yes, all those judges should be removed and publicly shamed, but it’s probably going to take a lot of work.
The Argentine justice system is a realm on its own, a few years ago our Presidenta presented six laws to the congress in order to bring some democracy into it.
Both deputies and senate debated, modified and approved all six.
Then, the Supreme Court ruled all six unconstitutional.
So, you can see it’s a self regulating aristocracy, to say the least.
Many current judges were designated during the last dictatorship, in which around 30.000 Argentinians were kidnapped and murdered and their children stolen -all of it with the help of the judges, the catholic church and many powerful businessmen.
We’re still fighting to remove those judges, so I’m not really really hopeful about these. On the other hands, women’s movements and organizations against sexual violence have been growing and getting stronger in the past decade, so maybe we’re ready to pressure hard enough. It’s yet to be seen.
As for the child in Paraguay, it’s absolutely heartbreaking, and all of Latin America really needs to catch up in protecting the young. The abortion laws allow it in “extreme” circumstances at best, except for Cuba and Uruguay which allow free access (and the death rate for abortions in both countries is 0).
Of course, the catholic church should take its bloodstained claws off our democratic States in order to achieve access to safe abortions in this region. With Francis on top of the Vatican and it’s local allies rejoicing, I somehow doubt it 🙁
Damn, I meant its in reference to the vatican.
Except for… I don’t know… culture?
I don’t think male violence is advantageous, either, unless you have a gross excess of males and they really have to duke it out over the females in order to get one. Even then, it seems wasteful and kind of absurd, especially if she goes off with a third guy who is smart enough not to quarrel over her. But violence against women? Well, yeah, I suppose you could bully a woman into submitting to your sexual advances and so forth. But it’s still unhealthy, because a woman battered during pregnancy and/or denied adequate food (as many abused women are) stands a greater chance of miscarrying or dying in childbirth, or producing a deformed child. From a survival-of-the-fittest viewpoint, it renders half the human race (as well as their offspring) less fit. And from what we’re now learning about epigenetics (which I find absolutely fascinating), intimate partner violence can even be traumatizing and deleterious several generations down the road, thus further eroding their fitness! Not good evolutionary biology there on the part of McLovin & Co.
PS: Petition signed. Sharing.
BRB, moving to Night Vale, where everything makes more sense, and the local radio host has no patience for assholes.
In other news, have a chicken.
http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=bLF4NFRpvl8
@Lux
To be fair, the current Pope has said some things that show him to be a pretty cool guy, even though he too has shoved his foot in his mouth on occasions. I’m really hoping that he steps up and speaks out. If Paraguay won’t listen to reason and mercy on the grounds of religious dogma, maybe they’ll listen to the Vatican.
I agree this pope is sort of cool (compared to the previous ones), but I do think it’s far from taking back all the harm the church did and continues to do to people.
I doubt he would take a stance for abortion, he was a militant anti-abortionist (and anti-gay marriage, for that matter) when bishop of Buenos Aires :/
Petition signed. Thank you for sharing.