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.
Nope. So long as there’s no ‘threatening’ element you can be as offensive as you like.
“The freedom to be inoffensive is not worth having” [Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999)]
Oh, technically there’s no general “UK” law; it’s separate systems for England & Wales; Scotland and Norther Ireland.
I really don’t think that kind of unfounded insinuation does you any credit, M.
Okay.
You’re showing no consideration, simple or otherwise, for other people who might be made uncomfortable by this conversation. So we can put you in jail, right?
Mark demanding women dress to your satisfaction isn’t being considerate of their personal freedom, comfort, and happiness.
@Kirby
You know what makes me uncomfortable?
Christian t-shirts, especially ones that try to be funny.
http://www.lookhuman.com/render/product/0600/0600104903448127/tr401atg-w800h800z1-79262-there-are-two-things-that-cant-be-topped.jpg
http://www.christwear.com/images/detailed/5/13212-back.jpg
Outlawing those would make a lot of people feel more comfortable, for a lot of reasons.
While we’re at it, outlaw Christian parody songs. Those make me uncomfortable as shit because they are fucking awful.
LMAFO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It” but as “I’m Blessed and I Know It”.
That’s just fucking lame and trying to recruit kids by trying to make Christianity “cool” and it’s just really bad propaganda.
Stop it, Christians, stop it. You ruin everything.
Okay, I’m saying this as a person who does dress pretty conservatively, and always has. Like, there’s a lot of stuff for sale at the mall right this very moment that I’m plain not comfortable wearing because I feel too exposed in it.
And I still think it is a steaming pile of nonsense to say that women’s clothes are what cause men to have destructive sexual thoughts and/or actions.
Mark, your “staring on the train” analogy breaks down, because staring is something that you do *to* a person. On purpose. You choose to focus your eyes on them and not move, no matter how uncomfortable that person gets.
Wearing clothes is not something you do *to* someone. It’s something you do. Other people can be affected by it, since you’re doing it in public and all, but if you are not doing it *to* them then they do not get to take it as a personal slight and demand you stop. Unless you are literally draping yourself over the handrail and asking if they like what they see, your appearance is flat out not their problem.
Here’s a better analogy: I have misophonia. This means that there are certain sounds that induce a fight or flight reaction in me. A lot of these noises are tied to hearing other people eat. But people around me (in public!) keep eating, because they have a right to eat food, they can’t read my mind, and they are not eating their food *at* me. They’re not even thinking about me at all.
It is up to me to cope with my emotions in that moment. I can do breathing exercises. I can remind myself that this is my misophonia acting up on me, and my emotions are not the fault of the person munching on an apple. I can wrap my purse handle around my hand and clench it to give myself a stress release. But if I go on the internet and rant and rave about those awful apple-eaters in my office, particularly if I fantasize about retaliating against them in a violent way, then yes, I am super duper out of line. And the solution is not for everyone to stop eating anything except mashed potatoes in public. The solution is for me to find ways to cope with my own brain.
A guy who freaks out about women wearing things that get him aroused? He can bring a book. He can do something on his phone. He can look out the window. He has a zillion potential ways to reduce his discomfort, without requiring the woman to do anything at all.
On a related note, with the scary idea of women being allowed to wear whatever they want, I can affirm that with total confidence that this will not result in women wearing bikinis all day erryday. Firstly, I mean, cold. And chafing. Secondly, there’s the whole public indecency thing, which means that anyone who does not want to get arrested will wear at least a minimal amount of clothing in public. Thirdly, there are all sorts of dress codes for work, school, church, etc., that many women already spend most of their lives dressing for. Fourthly, not all women feel comfortable in skimpy and/or sexy clothes, even when they’re not on shift. Fifthly, cultural peer pressure is a pretty dang powerful force, and it feels WAY awkward to be over- or under-dressed for any particular occasion.
Women almost never wear ball gowns to the grocery store, or swimsuits to the doctor’s office, or ratty, mud-stained yardwork clothes to have an evening out. Nor will women start wearing club-worthy outfits for mundane errands. Our ideas of what is and isn’t presentable in public will not collapse overnight because we (finally) collectively agree that men’s lust is 100% men’s own responsibility. Fashion will continue to morph and evolve, and there will always be a few women at the provocative edges of it, and always a few women at the dowdy edges of it, but most women will be most comfortable hanging out somewhere in the unobtrusive middle ground. Basic social dynamics at work. No rape threats necessary. (And I stress again: the women at the provocative edges are still not men’s problem.)
Most women dress reasonably conservatively as their default already. I’d wager that for every woman you see in a crop top or a miniskirt on your daily routine, you’ll see at least ten women in some combo of jeans/slacks and a tshirt/blouse.
So tl;dr, the “Women can’t wear literally WHATEVER they want” concern is really overblown, and still has zero impact on whether or not men let themselves get amped up by women’s clothing.
“You’re showing no consideration, simple or otherwise, for other people who might be made uncomfortable by this conversation. So we can put you in jail, right?”
Should I stop?
I’m perfectly happy to.
Yes. You should never have started. You are a non-thinker and other people who wanted to have nuanced, intelligent discussions got sidelined by your lack of reflection.
Stay out of other threads, too. You have nothing to contribute. Read them and learn, or go away and remain ignorant – all the same to me.
@Pandapool:
That’s a pretty good point actually, because “uncomfortable” doesn’t have to mean “too sexy.” There are plenty of places in the US where people would be overjoyed to see Atheist t-shirts banned. Hell, there was a bus advertisement that was rejected for being to inflammatory when all it had was the word “Atheist” on it and a link to a website.
Along the same lines, people often wear clothing with political messages that are trying to be provocative to make a point. Is that clothing now out because it makes people uncomfortable when the cause might be because awareness of the political cause at all makes people uncomfortable?
Hell, there are people who would be uncomfortable in the presence of full-body styles like emo or goth or punk. Are those straight out because they cause discomfort?
Again, it all depends on what Mark means by “uncomfortable,” because I am completely comfortable with shirts promoting violence or hate speech being considered out of line. There’s a continuum here that Mark so far has been unwilling to discuss directly, but which makes all the difference in the world.
Yeah, I don’t know. Personally, I’m not all that bothered by the way people dress at the moment, though I have a vague sense that more conservative dress might be better. But no real reason for thinking that.
Hmmmm. I’m more concerned about the principle than the actual details.
I really dislike the word nuanced.
Yeah, we figured that one out ourselves.
@KIrby
Yeah. I was going to originally list Nazi paraphernalia and white supremacist t-shirts but that shirt is waaaay too fucking uncomfortable for me and I don’t even want it in my search history.
For fuck’s sake. This whole fashion police bullshit Mark’s trying to argue is giving me a goddamned migraine. Fellow commenters (except Mark) forgive me, for I am about to go on a rant:
Is it really too much trouble to ask men to deal with their feelings (bonerfeels or otherwise) when women are wearing or not wearing clothes?
You’d rather resort to “local ordinances” and get the law involved than sit down and go “I’m going to handle my feelings LIKE AN ADULT WOULD, instead of trying to make trouble for everyone but the people who are doing the bad things.”?
Your argument is like having your house torn down because you don’t like a rug in your kitchen. It’s more work, completely impractical, and just plain silly to tear the house down rather than just change the rug.
You’re asking for complete society reform and demanding that every woman dress in a way that makes men less likely to rape them, because certain clothes might make them have boner feels, which is a BUNK ARGUMENT TO BEGIN WITH, instead of going “Hey, maybe there’s some reason that men feel this way, and maybe it’s not clothes, but rather the idea that women are meant to be owned by men, and that’s not okay!”
Here’s my question: Why should it be the responsibility of women (as individuals) to cater to the impossible, contradictory demands of men (as a monolithic whole) when it comes to what they wear, rather than the responsibility of men to deal with their feelings in a way that doesn’t involve raping, assaulting, or harassing a woman?
Why should we give two flying fucks that some men find shorts boner pleasing? It’s the responsibility of those men to not rape anyone simply because they find shorts boner pleasing.
No one’s saying women should be allowed to walk around naked wherever they go, no one is saying that everyone should be allowed to wear whatever they want, no matter how revealing. We understand that there are basic accepted rules for dressing when it comes to being in public.
HOWEVER,
we are still saying that there shouldn’t be any “laws” or “ordinances” put in place to dictate what women can and can’t wear because it makes dudes who might rape people “uncomfortable”. I don’t give a shit about the comfort of rapists, nor do I give a shit about the comfort of whiny grown-ass babies who can’t handle a woman doing something they don’t personally sanction.
Goddamn, you’re like a monkey on a car. And I have a message for monkeys on cars, straight from the mouth of babes:
https://vine.co/v/eKIdExF5QTu
OK… all I’m going to say is that people should have consideration for each other, and leave it at that.
Thanks for the discussion, I feel that the limits of my ideas have been exposed, which is always the first step to learning.
(Though I didn’t appreciate the rather aggressive misrepresentations that were made of what I was saying.)
Take care!
@Mark
Thank you for at least possibly considering our side I guess if you’re not just saying that to get out of this although I guess you really wouldn’t need to because this is a website you can just not come back too?
Mark, women aren’t obligated to be considerate of the unreasonable demands of men (especially at the sacrifice of their own freedom). Your feelings < My rights. I don't give a fuck that you think women should dress more conservatively, you aren't worthy of consideration.
That’s a sign that you need to shut up and put some thought into it. Not a sign that you need to go harass randoms on the Internet with your now-admittedly-described poorly-thought-out bullshit.
That’s because you began with the assumption that if straight white men are bothered by something, that thing is objectively bothersome and needs to be controlled, but things that bother people who are not straight white men are NBD. And you have yet to deviate from this.
If you were at all consistent about your thesis that people need to not make others sexually uncomfortable, you would take into consideration what bothers women, what bothers gay men, what bothers people who are of some other gender or no gender, what bothers trans people, and you would privilege all of these things equally with those things that give straight men a boner. And then you would have gigantic pile of rules that everyone must follow, and nobody would have any clothes they could wear, and you’d realize that the entire business proceeds, in some way, from bullshit. Then you might inquire more deeply into your thesis and figure out where it goes wrong.
But instead you just assert that what is privileged should continue to be privileged, without providing (for yourself or anyone else) any reason why those things ought to be privileged. That is a non-thinker’s way of arguing.
Mark wants people to be considerate of others, yet refuses to be considerate of the thoughts and feelings of people losing their freedom of choice under his ridiculous “dress code”. Apparently when Mark says he wants us to be considerate to others he only means men, because he sure as hell isn’t being considerate to women.
No “apparently” about it. In a moment of editorial fatigue, he said that outright:
I take that as a flounce. Good.
Can we talk about bread now? I’ve been experimenting with ciabatta and for the life of me I can’t get it to set into anything with a consistency softer than that of the earth’s mantle. Does anyone here bake ciabatta that can tell me what I’m doing wrong?
@POM, oh I missed that one. Yep Mark is only considerate of the feelings of men.
@EJ
Have you tried shutting off the oven or taking the bread out of the oven for the last 5-10 minutes?