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.
That is a adorable! Thank you. Why don’t we have them here?
[Hmm, how much would be the air freight to the UK be for a breeding pair from wherever they actually live?]
Mark please quote where anyone said people have a “responsibility to not be uncomfortable”? If men are uncomfortable looking at women, you A) should not rape them, no matter how much you want to B) demand that women change in order to please you. You can however make the choice to stop staring at women who make you uncomfortable.
And yes liberals do think sexual thoughts are problematic when they describe how much they want to rape women based on how they’re dressed (which is you know, the whole fucking point of this article).
@Alan
You want a pair of raccoons?
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/old-lol.gif
Waldorf & Statler would probably have some suitable caustic comments about the “Your responsibility to stop me creeping” argument.
He, that racoo though! The little chomping noise and the nose twitch, reminds me of Paddington eating a marmalade sandwich.
Speaking of which (in exchange for Kirby)
As for you, Mark, here’s how you can stop what you believe are misunderstandings. Three step process, simple.
1. Define what you mean by “uncomfortable.” Who is uncomfortable, how uncomfortable are they, what are they specifically uncomfortable about? What is the discomfort that you are trying to prevent?
2. Define what you think should be at the limit of female and male dress. Show an example, and explain what that clothing prevents in terms of causes of discomfort listed at 1.
3. Explain why the flying fuck you thought it’d be a great idea to use rapists and men who are describe how they want to rape as a good framing for this conversation. What do those people, who you have labeled as unreasonable, have to do with your list at 1? If nothing, then who specifically in this OP were you trying to use as framing and how are they related to 1? If no-one, then explain why this particular post, which contains men arguing that women should be dressing less like sluts, was a great opportunity for you to describe your own feelings on how women should be dressing a certain way, and why you thought that nobody would draw a comparison between your argument and the argument in the op.
Think you can do that, playdoh troll?
Sparky –
I just feel that when commenters here say that they guys in the OP are wrong because they have the right to dress however they like, that is a really, really, really bad argument. And maybe if we had some good arguments those guys might be more likely to change their mind.
That is probably completely naive, and I apologize if I’ve really offended anyone (though I would say that the misrepresentations of my views have surely been more offensive than anything I have actually written)
Mark, you said a page of comments ago that you were leaving, and I told you to fucking leave. What the hell is wrong with you and your ability to read words? You apparently can’t even read your own.
But since you can’t seem to fucking leave already, let me point out the following:
I’ve marked the important bit there, because you gave yourself away with it.
If we were to tell men that they aren’t allowed to wear those really well-cut suits anymore, because they give a non-trivial percentage of women uncomfortable pantsfeels, you would have a problem with that, wouldn’t you? Your only concern is for discomfort TO MEN. Discomfort to women is just not a problem in your mind. That’s been apparent since the start, but you accidentally slipped up there and made it explicit.
This is why you need to fuck the hell right off, because you are a hopeless case. You privilege men’s (meaning: your) feelings and concerns above the feelings and concerns of everyone else. You have marshaled some arguments for why this is right and true, but in formulating them you started with your conclusion (that you should be privileged above others) and worked backward to find arguments to support it. This is why your arguments are complete BS (you didn’t create them using logic and reason) and why you can’t see that (because any challenge to your conclusion is intolerable). This makes you hopeless and you need to go the fuck away already and stop cluttering up threads.
Mark the guys in the OP are wrong because THEY WANT TO RAPE WOMEN. And yet you keep trying to validate their “feelings” and saying women should be considerate of them.
Yes people have a right to dress how they want. You keep talking about “minimizing discomfort” but you won’t consider that your “dress code” will make women uncomfortable by sacrificing their personal freedom to choose what they want. Why the fuck should women be forced to cover up even if it’s really hot out? You keep prioritizing the feelings of men over the freedom of women, go fuck yourself.
Holy shit. Mark, dude, no. You need to stop what you’re doing here and go research rape myths. Because what the guys in the OP are saying is a very, very old rape myth.
Policy of Madness – all I can say is that several people responded to me, one saying, “Anything else you’d like to discuss? I’m here for the next few hours and I’d be happy to tear apart any of your other arguments.”
with several others continuing to post gross misrepresentations of what I had actually said after I had offered to leave.
You can change that to “men or women” if you like.
OH GOD, NO. Can we say “invasive species?”
Besides, you’ve got a much cuter indigenous urban species in Europe.
If we’re posting cute animals, have some cute squids:
(Because I’m waiting for the video game store to open so I can pick up Splatoon and therefore have cute squids on the brain.)
Nope Mark, we’re not misrepresenting you. You think the feelings of men are more important than the personal freedom of women to choose what makes them happy.
I’m kind of fascinated by the ethical principle that everyone has a duty to never make anyone else uncomfortable, and that there should be laws enforcing this.
For instance, if Mark’s not-so-thinly-veiled rapist apologia made someone here uncomfortable, could we put him in jail?
Isn’t the truth though Mark, that this ‘discomfort’ isn’t a case of “Gawsh, she’s so hot, she makes my pants tingle” but rather, “How dare women have arrived at a stage where they can have some control over their own lives and sexuality? It was much better when men dominated them so totally we could even dictate how they dress. Now that we’re losing that privilege we can exercise power by raping them back into submission”?
*That’s* why people have a problem with your argument.
@Mark
That’s because these men aren’t just looking at women that way because of how the women dressed. They are looking for an excuse to blame women for the reason they are staring at them instead of just not staring at them.
They are trying to justify their sexual thoughts and feelings by blaming it on how the women dress.
And the thing is is that there’s not one way of dressing that prevents these types of men for thinking this way. Women in militant Muslim countries are wearing clothing that makes men “uncomfortable” that shows off ankle or wrists. Women make men “uncomfortable” in some religious communities for wearing pants. Women made men “uncomfortable” by wearing bras instead of corsets in the 1920s.
Meanwhile, in Europe women can be shown topless on TV (the last time I checked), nipples showing and all, but people in the USA are so uncomfortable by topless women that nipples are censored.
There is no way these types of guys will ever be not “uncomfortable” by what women wear. What needs to change is how these types of guys think of women, not how women dress.
Making a “dress code” that’s more “conservative” will only fetizise bodies more. What needs to be done is to teach people that bodies are not inherently sexual.
But… there are limits to how I can dress, there are lots of limits to everything we do when we live in society. The guys in the OP are wrong because they want to do something evil. The thing about people having the right to dress however they like is a complete red herring.
Anyway, I probably need to do some more research about this topic, I admit I’m ignorant of it, and I apologize if I have offended.
But I really do think “I have the right to dress *however* I like is a bad argument.
Even if it was “gawsh, she’s so hot, she makes my pants tingle,” there is no outfit in the world that women could don to prevent it. Attraction is not objective, it is based on the observer, and the things (heterosexual) men find attractive about women runs the gambit from fetishized outfits to mere existence.
So as I asked before, Mark, what precisely is the discomfort you think women have an obligation to prevent?
Then I am going to make the argument that men should be more considerate of the feelings of women when they buy clothes. We should discourage men from wearing hand-tailored suits and shame them for it, and even off-the-rack suits are suspect because a man with the correct body shape can make even an off-the-rack suit look amazing.
It makes some women uncomfortable to have men walking around all the time in really hot suits, so we should privilege the feelings of those women over the rights of men to wear whatever they like. Men should not wear suits. They need to start being considerate of the feelings of others.
Also, men shouldn’t wear shorts, or shirts with short sleeves, for the same reason.
Maybe that leaves men with a somewhat restricted wardrobe, but we don’t want them walking around making people uncomfortable, do we?
Another one for the raccoon lovers.
@Mark:
Oh for fucks sake. Nobody argues this. Not the way you think, anyway. Everyone here accepts that there exists a limit, that is contextual, in terms of how to dress in order to not be rude in society.
“I have the right to dress however I like” in this context means “I should be able to dress in a way that’s normal in this society without being blamed if I get raped. If the current standards of dress make a man uncomfortable, they have to deal with that themselves because I am not responsible for their attraction.”
@ Katz
Well, that was pretty much my plan. I’m sure they can find a suitable niche.
Foxes are pretty cool though. Funnily enough I saw them all the time when I live in the middle of London. Now I’m in the countryside, not so much. Actually I’m in a debate at the moment with a friend about Basil Brush. She claims he’s *not* gay; but I think she’s in denial because she fancies him.
I think the ethical principle is one of common sense and moderation dependent upon the specifics of the society in question. In my society looking at someone is completely normal whereas staring at them isn’t. So, don’t stare at people. There are a lot of people who will be uncomfortable at the sight of too much flesh, so don’t show too much flesh. If there is someone with really unreasonable demands, we just have to ignore them. That’s how society works isn’t it?
Alan,
I think, to be honest, for most people the feeling is more likely to be one of embarrassment.
The reason your “argument” (if you could call that amorphous mess of playdoh an argument) is so offensive, Mark, is that you think that it is reasonable to change the current societal standards of dress in reaction to the fact that some men get aroused at the sight of a woman. You argue that the standards should be changed to be more conservative, apparently not realizing that this argument, if valid, would still be valid in a society where women where nothing but burqas.