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.
Mark’s going to run from you as fast as he can WWTH.
@kirbywarp:
“Playdoh trolling” seconded. Let it join the list of bad faith argument types like concern trolling, juking and gertruding.
What says the feminist high council?
Was it the Crocs? Or maybe it was the picture of the babies wearing Crocs? Falconer’s babies are devious masterminds up to no good, so I can understand finding them threatening.
Third! I hope our feminist friend/matriarch Katie signs this one into law.
PLAYDOH TROLLS
http://artfulparent.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/6a00e55246b63f88340148c814713e970c-pi.jpg
http://paintcutpaste.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/DSC_0735-e1287192343627-288×300.jpg
Mark compares raping to eating. Mark does not understand how having a cheeseburger is nothing like raping another human being if that human being is female. Mark compares raping women to spending found money. Mark thinks he is rational. Mark feels threatened.
Poor Mark. Let’s make a thread about men who rape little girls about him and his needs.
My feminist friend Katie stopped stealing foreskins just long enough to say she loves “Play-Doh troll”.
Are you a Christian, Mark? I only ask because that quote about how men should rip out their eyes rather than lust after women comes from the Bible. It didn’t come from us as you so disingenuously try to make it sound like it does. It’s in the thread to counter the common assertion on the religious right that women are responsible for dressing modestly so men don’t rape us in a fit of lust.
Have a problem with that quote? Take it up with the Bible. Personally, my solution to rape would be for boys to be brought up to respect consent and view women as people and for people to make the decision not to rape. No mutilation necessary.
Somewhat related; if you all aren’t watching The Fall, you need to remedy that immediately (that includes you, Mark. You might learn something). The show takes on rape culture and misogyny so well. It goes out of its way to point out that men who hate and hurt/kill women aren’t monsters, they’re humans who are in a culture full of misogyny. Stella Gibson is my hero!
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s—degW-Ws–/19b0y6dldeyemgif.gif
http://38.media.tumblr.com/27c94531bbb9c4babdd9a8b2670a8658/tumblr_inline_n9ubdcw7jR1qbhzja.gif
http://41.media.tumblr.com/74946acab3377c3b9166926c372f117f/tumblr_nit8j6NN8u1u3mvgoo1_540.png
http://38.media.tumblr.com/f65b22b4b11d73b60499ff949ba5f691/tumblr_inline_n9ua2zWdhw1qbhzja.gif
Okay. Thanks for indulging me. I’ll stop now.
@Kirby
Play Do troll sounds good. But maybe Flarp would be better? It makes fart sounds and it gets squeezed.
Flarp troll, farting itself into other boxes, one argument at a time.
@Kirby
Wow…I did not proofread that at all.
@Kirby
Play Doh troll sounds good. But maybe Flarp would be better? It makes fart sounds when it gets squeezed.
Flarp troll, farting itself into other boxes, one argument at a time.
So what distinguishes a playdoh troll from goalpost moving? I want to get my troll terminology correct.
@katz:
With goalpost moving, the troll defines the goalpost first with a challenge, then moves it around in order to claim that nobody successfully answered it. Playdoh trolls stay ambiguous so that others have to define the goalpost, which then allows the troll to claim that the goalpost isn’t in the right place.
In one, the troll moves the posts around. In the other, the troll refuses to accept the posts in any position despite pretty clearly implying where the posts should be.
David Futrelle
The “Quiverfull movement” has also be referred to as the “Christian Patriarchy movement” and it kind of is something like that. The Duggars are kind of like Christian “MRAs” although they probably wouldn’t consider themselves that.
What Is Quiverfull?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/what-is-quiverfull/
A ‘9/11 Every Day’: The Radical Anti-Contraception Ideology That Links The Duggars And The Anti-Choice Right
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/911-every-day-radical-anti-contraception-ideology-links-duggars-and-anti-choice-right
Oh thank God Mr. “I’m not saying that women make men rape them by dressing sexy, but I am saying that biology naturally makes men feel incredibly lustful towards women and want to rape them and that women should be nice to men and not assault their eyes by dressing sexy” is gone.
“The statement ‘seeing money makes me want to take the money’ doesn’t indicate that the speaker has no freedom of will, neither do other statements of the same form.”
Personally, I think that criticizing the above claim on the grounds that it is insulting or demeaning to women is about as intelligent as criticizing the claim “Socrates is mortal is a statement of the form X is Y” on the grounds that it insults Socrates by comparing him to an X. Your mileage may vary.
If I were to sit and glare at a stranger on public transport it would probably make them feel incredibly uncomfortable. That is why I don’t do it. Do I have a fundamental right to look at whatever I please? Should the person who feels uncomfortable be held entirely responsible for their own feelings? I don’t think so. Does that mean that killing someone because they looked at you is any way justified? Of course not. I don’t think you would be in any way responsible for your own death if someone killed you because you *looked at them* – that would come entirely from the mind of the killer. I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t glare at strangers on public transportation because there is a danger they might be killed – I think they shouldn’t do it because it is likely to make others uncomfortable.
And there may very well be someone who is so bothered by people looking at them that they go online and suggest that they want to kill those who do it. I would say that if such a person came from a society similar to the ones I am familiar with they would be emotionally disturbed. (Sorry, as far as I am aware being emotionally disturbed isn’t the same as mental illness?) I would also think that what they were suggesting was evil, but that the underlying discomfort of having someone glare at you is very common and that this is therefore *the worst point on which to attack their thinking*. And if they haven’t actually killed anybody they might still be helped by being introduced to a different way of thinking.
So, there are two separate points here:
1) Some men have made extreme statements about doing evil things;
2) We don’t have the right to do whatever we want without consideration of others.
I don’t think I disagree with anyone about point (1), I disagree with point (2) with regard to clothing. In fact, making the claim that we have the right to wear whatever we like and damn how anyone else feels about it, if anything undermines our ability to criticize the evil statements in (1). The reason why rape is evil is because the perpetrator does not recognize the feelings and wishes of another person.
So now, you are going to tell me that women’s clothing doesn’t actually have an effect on men, or that you’ve never experienced any uncomfortable feelings because of the bodies of others so it can’t be true. Well, ok, if you say so. Maybe it is all just a social construct and there is a society somewhere in the world where no-one bats an eyelid at women walking around in the nip, and the men wear penis gourds or whatever. Fine. You might even be able to imagine a society where everyone walks around naked and the women are actually treated well.
Now, I don’t believe in biological determinism. You can probably get people to do almost anything with the right social pressures. However, there are underlying facts of human nature that make certain societies more likely or easier to achieve – and the liberal dream world where we all walk around in the nip *without it even generating a sexual thought* and without those sexual thoughts causing any discomfort is going to require a lot of work. Maybe that is a worthwhile project – but it isn’t going to just happen because you realize it’s possible and think it might be rather nice.
So, in my opinion we don’t really have a fundamental right to dress as we please without regard to how it affects others, how we dress does generate sexual feelings in others, and that may cause discomfort. However, at the same time, the clothing someone chooses to wear could never be used as a justification for any act of violence against them.
@ alaisvex
Nooo! You summoned him! LOL
Look at that teal deer. I’m going home soon and I’ve got yard work to do, so I’ll leave the chew toy Play Doh troll to everyone else.
How many flounces would a dumbfuck fail if a dumbfuck could fail flounces?
Oh, FFS. Mark, whatever you even arguing for? Why are on a thread about a guy who said that he wants to rape women based on how they are dressed – and arguing that:
And:
One, arguing that people [women, mostly, it seems] need to dress in a way that doesn’t make other people [men, mostly] “uncomfortable” is asinine. Arguing that the way women dress “generates sexual thoughts” in men, on a thread about rape, is asinine.
Two, you have no idea how rapists operate. We could, indeed, walk around buck-naked, all of us, and have the expectation of not being raped or harmed in any way. Being naked, being seen as sexy or attractive, that is not an invitation to rape. Rape is a conscious decision made by the rapist, and is not about sex or sexiness. It’s about hurting and exerting power over others. To come on this thread, and argue this, is fucking asinine.
Third, are you truly advocating for some kind of legislated dress code?
I think the teal dear was trying to say that clothing has an effect on men. So even though it’s not okay to rape women because of our clothing, if we wear skimpy clothing we can expect a risk of rape.
Of course, there’s no evidence that wearing skimpy clothing actually increases the risk of rape. So we’re back to square one where we already pointed out that women get raped in burkas, long dresses, sweats, and everything else because rape is not actually about uncontrolled lust. It’s about power, domination.
@Mark
You know, those people being stared at that feel uncomfortable? Ever thought that’s how the women these men are staring at are feeling? Maybe, you know, those guys could just stop staring at people and making them uncomfortable? You can easily stop staring at college girls but you can’t easily stop someone from staring at you. (People can follow you around to keep staring at you and shit and that’s awful when they do that.)
Hang on, I accept that clothing has no effect on the incidence of rape. I’ve said that several times. That isn’t relevant to what I am saying, which is that people should dress conservatively to prevent other people from feeling uncomfortable.
Mark just wants us to please be more considerate of the feelings of rapists when women get dressed in the morning. Mark thinks women should put aside their freedom to choose whatever makes them happy in order to not make those poor, poor rapists uncomfortable.
“You know, those people being stared at that feel uncomfortable? Ever thought that’s how the women these men are staring at are feeling? Maybe, you know, those guys could just stop staring at people and making them uncomfortable?”
Isn’t that what I just wrote? Exactly what I just wrote?
No Mark you told WOMEN to dress more conservatively to prevent rapists from feeling uncomfortable, we’re saying MEN should stop staring at women if they’re uncomfortable.