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.
Oh darn. Mark flounced before I could ask him if black people should be forbidden from going outside if it makes white people who are racist uncomfortable to see them.
Or maybe Republican paraphernalia should be illegal in my liberal city because we’re uncomfortable with conservative politics.
@EJ
How experienced are you with making bread in general? The most common mistake with breadmaking is over-kneading. I have to admit that I had to look up ciabatta, but it looks like a bread that would be very vulnerable to excessive kneading.
@EJ:
I’ve baked bread before, though not specifically ciabatta… What specifically is going on? Is it getting too crusty, or is the crumb too dense?
@Policy of Madness:
I’m happy to hear that that’s true. Nearly every tutorial I’ve seen on kneading by hand is that it is near impossible to over-knead, so for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why my bread was turning out so crusty. I was also wondering why it was taking me thirty minutes or more straight of kneading without getting the right dough consistency.
Then I realized that you could basically roll bread dough around for a bit and massage it and it would form a loaf, and that it didn’t take much force at all.
@Kirby
I know it’s not bread related, but I wonder if that’s what’s up with my mantou dough?
Mark, simple question. Why in the world should it make you feel uncomfortable to be sexually attracted to someone? Furthermore, why should it make you want to rape someone? Why should it do more than make you somewhat intersted in having consensual sex with them, and why should it make you angry if you can’t have sex with them unless you feel entitled to that person’s body? That’s where the sociological component comes in. It’s not men being attracted to women that’s sociological. It’s men feeling rage towards the women to whom they are attracted if those women won’t have sex with them that’s sociological.
@kirby
Some kneading is required if you want your bread to rise properly. Kneading aligns and connects the gluten in flour to make a net that captures the CO2 from the yeast. Without that net, the bread doesn’t rise correctly. Over-kneading turns the net into iron bars that can’t flex properly. Over-kneaded dough also doesn’t rise properly, and it forms a dense, chewy crumb. Under-kneaded dough is usually delightful to eat, even though you have to pull it apart with your fingers because it doesn’t cut well, but over-kneaded dough is … ugh.
It’s too crusty. I end up with an outside like plate steel and an inside which is more air pocket than bread. I mean, ciabatta is supposed to have a very honeycomb texture anyway, but it’s just getting silly.
As for breadmaking generally, I’m sadly not that experienced. I can make a pretty good naan, but naan bread is easy and (I imagine) lets me get away with a lot of bad habits.
@ WWTH
Asked that; no response.
@pandapool:
Maybe!
@Policy of Madness:
Well, yeah, sure, but I severely over-estimated the amount of kneading required. Pretty sure I kneaded so vigorously that it tightened the dough to the point where it would break on every fold. Then it would just be a consistently sticky mess.
Another problem I’ve had is taking the bread out too early, just when the crust was starting to darken, and the internals would be a bit soggy or (in the case of the fermented doughs I used to use) alcoholic. With the size of loafs I make in the ovens I use, I’ve found that leaving the loaf until the crust nearly blackens makes for a much better crumb.
@EJ
After making myself an expert by glancing over a few recipes*, I have to ask what you’re doing with it between risings.
*Not actually an expert
Hah hah! I’ve done that! And then, not understanding what I’d done, I went ahead and baked it, and wondered why it tasted so … ugh.
Another thing I did once: forget to add the salt. When I checked my dough after an hour, it was crawling out of the bowl.
@EJ – They did ciabatta once as a challenge on The Great British Bakeoff. Maybe watching the trial and error baking and hearing the expert commentary might help. Let me see if I can find it on Youtube.
Here it is! The ciabatta segment starts at 21:35.
@EJ:
How are you kneading? If you’re using a mixer, I suppose you’d just reduce the time. If you’re hand-kneading, there are a couple techniques (like stretch-and-fold) that might make things easier if you aren’t already using them.
It’s so weird that Mark thinks it’s more reasonable for an entire 50% of society to dress according to his standards, rather than just keeping his eyes to himself.
Y’know, even in Hypothetical Mark Land where women wear burqas and men don’t rape women wearing burqas, misogynists would still complain, because how dare women go outside without dressing to please their boners? Females’ only worth is as eye candy, damnit! Harumph!
@Flying Mouse:
Thanks for the link! I’m in bed on my phone right now so shall check it out later, but I’ll look forward to it.
@kirbywarp:
I’m hand-kneading (I don’t own a mixer and also hand kneading is immense fun.) The recipe I’m going by advises me to fold rather than punch it, since apparently it’s easy to overdo that with ciabatta, which thinking about it and looking at the above advice may be exactly the problem.
@PoM:
I’m covering it with a cloth and leaving it to rise for three hours, re-folding after each hour.
Mark doesn’t seem to understand that context FUCKING MATTERS.
If he went onto a news article about some person who was running up to people and exposing their genitals to them, and THEN talked about how there should be standards for dressing and covering up and we should take into consideration other people’s comfort in our dress standards, I highly doubt he would get much/any pushback.
(Well, that was, until he shifted the topic from “People shouldn’t expose their junk in public!” to “Women shouldn’t have their breasts out to feed their children, and also shouldn’t show off ‘too much’ skin!”. But that’s on him.)
But coming onto a topic that there are RAPISTS saying that seeing women dressed ‘provacatively’ (which could really mean anything under the sun) makes them want to do MORE raping, and saying “Hey, we should be considerate of other people’s comfort when it comes to dress stardards” is a fucking asshole move. And yes, Mark, it’s rape apologia, no matter how much you go “well, yeah, okay, it’s not alright to rape people BUT DAMMIT WOMEN COVER UP. MY BONER IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR COMFORT”
I would use a little crockpot to help when I was making my bread; I’d set it on the ‘warm’ setting and let the dough rise in that so that it happened faster than just letting it sit on the counter.
On the subject of cooking, I’ve successfully set both a microwave wheat bag and a bowl of water on fire.
…
I am not a good cook.
Bugger it! I’m not going to read any more of your tedious twaddle just to check that someone else hasn’t expressed the same thought as mine.
Why would a woman or man dressed in an appealing/ attractive/ skimpy/ revealing manner cause anyone “discomfort”? When I see people dressed or groomed in a way that makes me think they’re out on the town I tend to smile to myself. Looks like someone’s out for a good time is not the same thing as demanding attention from that person for yourself. The default presumption is that people going out are on their way to meet one or more other people. It’s just nice to see people taking the trouble to dress for a dinner/ date/ lunch/ evening out with friends or one special friend. It shouldn’t be a cause for discomfort, it should promote a kind of second-hand, muted happiness that other people are intending to have a good time.
Same thing goes when people look as though they’re off work or on holiday or dressed for hot weather or a picnic or on their way to or from the pool or the beach or for jogging. Shorts, sarongs, singlet tops, yoga or sweatpants, dresses or tops with straps are just things that you wear in some circumstances and/or for some activities.
Some people might be a bit wistful that they’ve never learned to dance or swim or play tennis or that they have to work while others look to be on holidays or on a fun night out.
Why on earth should it make anyone uncomfortable to see anyone dressed in that way?
“I really dislike the word nuanced” is definitely quotable.
@EJ
Flying Mouse’s link implies that that may be too much handling. It looks like you should mix it up, let it rise slowly at room temp, then cut into loaves and let rise again (again, slowly at room temp) and handle it as little as possible. Folding it once an hour might be the issue.
Nuance is misandry!!!
@SFHC
Was…was there something in the water? Because, um, water isn’t flammable?