Over on Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder has posted the excerpt below from A Love That Multiplies: An Up-Close View of How They Make It Work by Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar — yes, those Duggars — explaining how women “defraud” men when they dress in a way that men find exciting (in their pants).
This, sadly, is not exactly an original or even unusual notion in reactionary religious circles.
Indeed, a couple of years back, I found a rather scary post on a radically pro-patriarchal site called the CoAlpha Brotherhood in which one young man calling himself Drealm lamented that, as a man living “in a university town that’s overrun with young girls” he was literally “forced to stare at hundreds if not thousands of women a day, all of whom bring sluttiness to all new pinnacle”
Like the Duggars, Drealm thought that “a woman dressing provocatively and leaving a man in an unfinished state of excitement … is an assault on men’s sexuality.”
When women dress like this, he argued, he and other men couldn’t help but want to rape them.
[T]he only thing I want to do to a slut is rape them. … dressing like sluts brings out murders, rapists and sadists in men. … A society based on sluts, might as well be a pro-rapist society.
Reading back over this now, it’s all a bit too reminiscent of the thinking of Elliot Rodger. Indeed, after Rodger went on his misogyny-driven murder spree, one CoAlpha Forum member wrote that Rodger “would have been a true hero” had he only killed more sorority women; the site now adorns its front page with an homage to Rodger.
But it isn’t just those on the margins of the manosphere who think this way. In The Myth of Male Power, the 1993 book that essentially provided the ideological blueprint for the Men’s Rights movement today, Warren Farrell famously wrote of the “miniskirt power” secretaries allegedly had over their male bosses.
Farrell is a couple of decades older now, and apparently it takes more than a miniskirt to render him powerless these days. And by “more than a miniskirt” I mean less. As in no clothing at all. When Farrell put out a new eBook edition of The Myth of Male Power last year, he had his publisher put a rear-view shot of a nude woman on the cover, “to illustrate,” as he explained in an appearance on Reddit,
that the heterosexual man’s attraction to the naked body of a beautiful woman takes the power out of our upper brain and transports it into our lower brain
This sort of logic, like that of the Duggars and of “Drealm” from the CoAlpha Brotherhood, also conveniently takes the blame for (heterosexual) male behavior and transports it into the bodies of women. With the Duggars, we’ve seen exactly where this sort of logic can lead.
Farrell, much like the Duggars and the excerable “Drealm,” also seems to think that women commit a kind of fraud against men when they “stir up sensual desires” that they don’t intend to fulfill. As Farrell wrote in The Myth of Male Power, when a man pays good money to take a woman out, and she doesn’t repay him, as it were, with sex, she is in his estimation committing a kind of “date fraud” or “date robbery.”
Or even a sort of date rape. Farrell wrote that
dating can feel to a man like robbery by social custom – the social custom of him taking money out of his pocket, giving it to her, and calling it a date. … Evenings of paying to be rejected can feel like a male version of date rape.
Emphasis mine, because holy fuck.
This is what happens when your ideology makes women responsible for (heterosexual) men’s desires. Hell, it’s what happens when you make anyone responsible for the desires of someone else, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
Your pants feelings are your responsibility. Not anyone else’s. Full stop.
http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/swatted.asp
😐
Thanks for pointing it out guys. If you want, you can boost the edited post here, and you can boost my tweet about it here.
… Wait, how the hell is “15-year-old SWATs people” supposed to be “Satire”? We’re not talking about The Onion here, plenty of 15-year-olds have SWATted people. Just fishing for ad revenue, I bet.
Hooray that Mark’s finally banned!
I’m almost sorry to have missed it, but my Beloved walked by naked and I found it too distracting… lol, no, actually I was just tired.
I don’t think he was a chat-bot, but it was weird that he didn’t seem to need sleep. How boring does someone have to be to repeat the same goddamn tedious point on a thread for days on end?
To add to the distraction pics – Here’s a picture of my personal favourite Doctor, and his fantastic companion, Martha Jones.
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1576645376/nm0855039?ref_=nmmd_md_nxt
David Tennant can give me distractions just by glancing at his face – guess out of consideration, he should just wear a paper bag all the time? But wait – how inconsiderate of him to deprive us all of his beauty! Oh Noes!
Glad to hear at least one little shit is getting prosecuted for SWATting. I agree, there needs to be a national crackdown on the behaviour – it’s not like any other worrying teen fad like vodka tampons. People are actually attempting murder by cop every time they do it, and the law needs to reflect that.
@SFHC
The worst part is that I can’t find a single part of the site that states it’s satire. I had to google its disclaimer to get the disclaimer page which isn’t linked to anywhere on the main site.
Some of its stories are kinda obvious, like a vaccine-free school opening, but they sure really like to hide the fact that it’s satire.
Combining my love of hot, progressive guys and my contempt for Mark in one gif
http://media0.giphy.com/media/h4ot8thGxKQFy/giphy.gif
Is it hoax? All I got from the search are articles from the Daily Dot and The International Business Times and Gamespot. Not sure if I could trust those sites anymore than the National Report. (except maybe the International Business Times). Still, SWATting is still a very serious problem. Maybe we can write to them about the SWATing in New Jersey? That one ISN’T a hoax.
AltoFronto-I love David Tennant! But my favorite companion is Donna Noble, she is awesome. I love her delightfully prickly personality. 😀
http://i39.tinypic.com/qq8jso.jpg
http://38.media.tumblr.com/98bff2c37653438af28ea05d51421c75/tumblr_nb6f6wRK6W1sh88mmo3_500.gif
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6cjny2G5o1qi14oi.gif
Missbe4 – Did you see them both as Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing?
http://vdownload.eu/watch/980318-2011-david-tennant-much-ado-about-nothing-part-1.html
They were a bloody perfect pairing for the roles, I thought. 😀 Tate as Beatrice is my heroine.
@misseb47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Report
http://realorsatire.com/nationalreport-net/
http://nationalreport.net/disclaimer/
Pandapool-Thanks! 😀
AltoFronto-Thank you so much for sharing the link. 😀 I haven’t seen it yet, but I will. I will let you know what I think of it as soon as I watched it. 😀
misseb47 on May 30, 2015 at 10:28 pm
“dudeinthewoods-He’s awesome isn’t he? He plays my favorite character, too! Along with Matthew Gray Gubler’s character, Spencer Reid. :D”
Lol, I’m afraid I don’t watch the show very often, it’s too much with my PTSD, especially the episodes with kids.
I enjoy his attitude though, from what I have seen. Reid is also a hoot. And Gideon was fantastic.
Matthew Weigman did plead guilty to criminal conspiracy related to swatting, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
http://www.justice.gov/usao/txn/PressRel09/weigman_swat_ple_pr.html
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/september/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences/the-crime-of-swatting-fake-9-1-1-calls-have-real-consequences
Mark doesn’t think women have strong sex drives. He doesn’t think we get turned on looking at sexy people. HE”S never seen evidence of women getting hot and bothered over a man. So, it must never happen.
Much like the MGTOWs claiming women aren’t active in bed, I suspect Mark has said more than he meant to.
Thanks for the ban, David.
if a woman’s attire, or what time of night she is out, or her patterns of “promiscuity”, or whether of not she drinks had ANY relevance to being the target of rape or murder by men, then virgins, people who never touch alcohol, people who never leave their homes at night, and women in birkas would never experience such things. and last time i checked, they do.
further, these particular individuals seem to think that women want to use their “superpowers of seduction” by wearing push up bras and padded fanny pants. again, last i checked, unless if i missed a massive feminist meeting and/or memo, that’s the LAST thing we want. It’s the antithesis of what we want. We never asked for that power – patriarchy subscribed it to us – they invented the damn things – just like high heels. Just like subscribing the fallacy of the domesticated housewife/mother – it’s THEIR fucking definition subscribed to us as being the only competent people to care for the home and children, and then we are demonized because of custody issues and being given preference in custody cases. DAMN IT MRA’s, pull your collective heads out of your arses. You guys did that!
those in power make the rules – from the halls of congress, from the judicial bench, from the board of directors. you cannot blame people for rules YOU put into place. that is definitive stupidity.
as for the duggars, i weep for how brainwashed those girls are. a five year old cannot seduce a man to sexual acts. wow, they can even find a way to blame someone who doesn’t even have a concept of male and female or their ascribed gender roles
Apropos of the Duggar crap in the OP, my wife sent me this link yesterday:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/05/29/christian-family-values-how-to-punish-a-wife-if-she-wont-pleasure-her-husband/
So much wrongery….
That same guy also wrote a response to people who argued that trying to convince his wife to have sex by telling her that she would go to hell and cutting off her income if she kept refusing constituted sexual coercion. http://biblicalgenderroles.com/2015/05/31/the-frustrated-feminist-wife/ His argument is basically that the police wouldn’t take a wife who argued that her husband was coercing her into having sex by telling her that she’d go to hell if she kept turning him down seriously, so clearly, his actions are moral and right! The worst thing is that even during his script, the husband sounds like an abuser who refuses to understand that his wife has a lower libido than him.
Oh god, those articles are creepy.
Yeah, it’s just affirming the Christian patriarchy’s belief that the only legitimate form of abuse is physical abuse and that the only way to pressure someone into having sex is physical force. Oh, and being a wife who won’t put out except when she wants to have sex.
Also, I like how proper sexual ethics are determined by what the police would and would not consider rape.
@ Katz
Here, have some Raccoons [I did get *some* work done today, honest]
@alaisvex – As a Christian woman (and wife) those articles make me want to literally be sick. There is in fact no scriptural basis for the idea that a wife does not have the right to refuse sex. It speaks about the fact that sex is necessary for a fruitful marriage, but unless there is some secret version of the Bible out there that only people like this psycho have access to, there is no-where that encourages any form of coercion or refusing to participate in the marriage because the wife is denying sex. Gah.
I showed that article to my husband once when I first heard about it, and he was so angry that a man who claimed to be a Christian would say something like that.
The whole modesty issue also drives me bonkers. Regardless of whether a woman is or isn’t dressing specifically to obtain attention does not suddenly make her a vile temptress, and does not make a man’s ‘lusting’ her fault. The verse they pull to support that is the one that reads ‘But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ They tote that because it says ‘with her’ she is somehow held responsible, and must somehow be doing something to incite that lust. Yet with her, does not necessarily mean she is a willing or guilty participant. A man who rapes a woman still had sex ‘with her’ yet, she was neither a willing participant nor guilty of the act that was forced upon her.
Plus you know, men have lusted over women who are completely clothed, dressed modestly, and doing absolutely nothing to incite a man’s desire over them.
Well, this thread was a roller coaster. At least I got to learn about some awesome people I didn’t know existed before.
@Tabitha Wells,
As someone who grew up Catholic, those articles turn my stomach as well, especially when I realized that he was basically complaining about women who had lower libidos than their husbands. He honestly thinks that the person who has the higher libido (and he thinks that that’s going to be the man almost all the time) should be deciding how often sex occurs. Sure, he says that husbands owe their wives sex too, but it’s clear from his statements that he believes that men are going to want sex more often than women and that men are hardly ever going to be in a situation where they’re not in the mood for sex when their wives initiate. So, when he tries to defend himself by saying that husbands also have to put out for their wives, he fails because in the paradigm that he’s set up, this command puts a heavier burden on women than it does on men.