Categories
a woman is always to blame antifeminism creepy elliot rodger empathy deficit entitled babies evil sexy ladies excusing abuse imaginary backwards land imaginary oppression men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny MRA rape culture reactionary bullshit sex sexualization slut shaming unsolicited penis updates warren farrell

Check Out the Stumbling Block on Her: How the Duggars (and some MRAs) blame women’s bodies for men’s actions

How women secretly run the world
How women secretly run the world

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). 

defraud

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.

1.1K Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
kirbywarp
kirbywarp
9 years ago

@GhostBird:

Or, like was suggested many many times before, how about Mark just *looks away* from the temptation? I mean, it might be inconvenient to have to look away from sights that make you feel feelings you don’t like, but that inconvenience pales in comparison to making 150 million people change their life-style and clothing choice.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
9 years ago

@PoM

How about just pictures of sexy guys? Lots and lots of sexy, shirtless guys with tone bodies and cute butts? Can we spam that?

sevenofmine
9 years ago

Attitude re Mark-ish trolls is feed them til they burst. I think his style of argumentation is pretty damn common. He defines himself as rational and so everything he believes is rational by definition. Therefor argumentation, for people like Mark, actually consists of simply narrating their thought process. When people disagree, they just reword it because they actually think the problem is that others didn’t get their meaning. I suspect there are lurkers who find it helpful to see people pick apart Mark’s posts and expose the flaws in his thinking.

Others’ mileage may vary, of course regarding whether any particular troll is worth their time and energy to engage.

isidore13
isidore13
9 years ago

OMG he’s finally admitting it!

Mark, why should anyone else give a shit what you don’t want to look at?

katz
9 years ago

Sometimes, there is a stimulus that you are not especially interested, might even find irritating, but that is difficult to ignore. That is how I feel.

So it’s like a mosquito bite? That’s the saddest description of sexual attraction I’ve ever heard.

Mark
Mark
9 years ago

Alan,
I don’t want to have my attention drawn to people who I’m not interested in getting to know.

fromafar2013
fromafar2013
9 years ago

@ Mark

The thread has moved on, but I wrote this teal deer, so here.

I’ll quote some comments from that article, because they said it well.

“I read the meta-survey. All the response studies are self-reports and some of them are pretty old. To ask Indian schoolgirls and schoolboys about masturbation or sex is going to be tremendously affected by what kind of behavior is expected from girls and boys in that culture. Girls are expected to keep themselves virginal until marriage, pretty much, so girls are fairly unlikely to give honest answers to questions about sexual desire or sexual experiences should they happen to have those.

This is a problem more generally, and the authors do not address it. If the societal norms reward men for being “studs” and call women who behave similarly “sluts”, then we are unlikely to get comparable answers from men and women. I’m not at all convinced that there’s no such pressure left in the United States. But it certainly exists in many other countries.”

also

“This is my favourite topic in the world! The reasons for the differences in sexual desire are simple: ‘sex’ is usually considered to be vaginal penetration by the penis until the man orgasms, the woman’s is either irrelevant or a distant second in importance. This fact is highlighted by the fact that the world’s biggest study that you refer to never asked women about their orgasms (I have looked into this study). If a woman’s orgasm was considered to be the ultimate goal of sex like a man’s currently is, I’m sure you’d see a HUGE difference in the above statistics.

Furthermore, women who have a low sexual desire is generally because they’re being approached for sex, or asked if they want sex, when they’re not aroused. Again, this study did not ask if the women were ever aroused, they only asked if they had a desire for sex – which is implied to mean penetration. Ask the men if they want to be penetrated by a cucumber when they’re not aroused and see what the statistics reflect. NO-ONE wants to be penetrated when they’re not aroused!”

and

The thing is, these studies don’t prove that the gap is innate to the male brain/body. It doesn’t address the possibility that this is learned behavior owing to the fact that we are inundated with images of women as objects for sexual consumption by men. The key word in that sentence wasn’t “greater”, it was “inherent”.

“Socio-sexual whatever” affects the sex drive of men and women differently because of patriarchy. My point was that socialization can affect self reports of sexual attitudes and sexual desire. Culture, one aspect of socialization, clearly in the study did affect self reported sexual attitudes (not broken down by gender, just attitudes about sex in general) and affected the gap between men and women. It did not show an affect on self reported sex drives because there is another component, gendered socialization, that the study could not control for because all of the societies in it are patriarchal. In different cultures, how people feel about sex in general varies, but even in more ‘gender equal’ cultures, men and women are still held to widely different sexual expectations, roles, and risks, and the extent to which this can affect self reports of sexual desire was not accounted for (which is why there was no affect).

Basically, if cultural socialization can affect self reports of sexual attitudes, then gendered socialization can too and that makes self reports on sexual desire useless when trying to determine some biological component, because the confounding variable, patriarchy, was never removed. Besides, my original point stands; gender is not an accurate predictor of sexual desire or actual sexual drive in individual people.

Still don’t know what that has to do with dress codes. And we’ve moved on anyway, so I’m going to go have a beer on my front porch.

Snuffy
Snuffy
9 years ago

Yes Mark it is an inconvenience that you want to outlaw most of my summer wardrobe. Yes it is inconvenient that you want me to dress more conservatively even if it’s really fucking hot out and that is uncomfortable to me. Yes it is inconvenient that you want me to not wear my favourite outfits to please your boner. Stop trying to control women Mark. The world doesn’t revolve around you fuckwit.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
9 years ago

Sometimes, there is a stimulus that you are not especially interested, might even find irritating, but that is difficult to ignore. That is how I feel.

So the problem is that Mark doesn’t like looking at fat women, and wishes they would cover themselves so he doesn’t have to be irritated by seeing them.

kirbywarp
kirbywarp
9 years ago

I don’t think that is unreasonable – I live in a city – I want to be able to ignore the people I don’t know.

O_________________________________O

You…

You don’t get to control what other people do. You don’t get to force other people to cater to your desires. You don’t get to force other people to become unnoticeable to you simply because you don’t want to notice them. That’s not how society works.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
9 years ago

How about just pictures of sexy guys? Lots and lots of sexy, shirtless guys with tone bodies and cute butts? Can we spam that?

As long as those dudes consented to having their images in public, go for it.

sevenofmine
9 years ago

Mark

I don’t want to have my attention drawn to people who I’m not interested in getting to know.

What was that you said about being considerate of others’ feelings, Mark? Because right now, you are, in actual fact, drawing people’s attention to someone (i.e. you) they don’t want to get to know.

fromafar2013
fromafar2013
9 years ago

@PoM

How about just pictures of sexy guys? Lots and lots of sexy, shirtless guys with tone bodies and cute butts? Can we spam that?

Yes, please.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
9 years ago
katz
9 years ago

I don’t think that is unreasonable – I live in a city – I want to be able to ignore the people I don’t know.

You literally think everyone else in the world is imposing on you by existing.

Go be a hermit. In the meantime, here’s Jason Momoa with a surfboard.

http://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/jason.jpg?w=700

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
9 years ago

It seems to me like the easiest solution would be for Mark to stop leaving the house. Not only is it morally fine, it would be simple for Mark to implement and solve his problem instantly.

Myriad
Myriad
9 years ago

Has anyone heard from Dave? I’m kind of getting worried about him. It is not like him to be MIA like this when trolls are around, unless he is quite busy or getting some shut-eye (which is totally understandable).

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
9 years ago
AltoFronto
AltoFronto
9 years ago

Screw it, then. I’ll add my 2 cents and then probably go to bed.

Here’s a “dress code” for you, Mark – Everyone in public space, has to wear, at an absolute minimum, clothing that covers the same area as the skimpiest bikini. That is to say that the genitals, anus and (female) nipples are all covered.
Unless it’s a specifically designated area for Nudism, but that would fall under “private space”.

Everyone can wear more than that, and they should make it context-appropriate to:
The climate, their personal comfort, their planned activities, their personal taste, their personal religious beliefs.

At no point must anyone feel the need to appease Some Asshole, and if you find something personally distracting, you should turn your eyes to the floor, or your coffee cup, or to you work, or some fascinating detail literally anywhere except the direction of the person distracting you and you should concentrate really hard on getting the fuck over it.

The Wearer gets to decide what is “modest” if they choose to be modest, and everyone else can Eat A Raw Potato if it bothers them so much.

http://www.larknews.com/archives/217

isidore13
isidore13
9 years ago

@Myriad, I think he is usually less available on Saturdays.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
9 years ago
Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
9 years ago

I don’t want to have my attention drawn to people who I’m not interested in getting to know.

Then ignore them.

It’s a pretty simple process that most people manage everyday.

1. What’s that?
2. Assess
3. If not interested; dismiss from thoughts and move on.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

Cities are full of people. That’s what a city is; a place with a high concentration of people. When there are lots of people in one place, it is inevitable that they will irritate each other. If looking at people is unbearable to you, live in a rural area. In the US there’s still a ton of sparsely populated and conservative areas. Cities are diverse and liberal. If you’re going to live in one, you have to deal with it.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
9 years ago

@WWTH

Or, he could just stop leaving the house.

Myriad
Myriad
9 years ago

@isidore13

Oh, okay. That’s a load off my mind. Everyone does need a day off.

1 31 32 33 34 35 43