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.
My position are there are a range of possible dress codes that are reasonable and that I would perhaps personally prefer one that was slightly more conservative than the one we have now, but I’m not especially bothered.
The reaction seems to have been – “We already got a system, dumbass, and anything that isn’t like our system what we have is a gross inconvenience! You don’t like wearing clothes, you get the hell out! You don’t like people wearing clothes get the hell out! Thats how it is here! Dumb ass!”
Which doesn’t strike me as a particularly intelligent response.
I’m just gonna stop now because I don’t know any more celebrities off hand that are attractive–well, no, no I do.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/05/27/article-1281870-09C96F48000005DC-368_468x714.jpg
50 Cent’s bod is pretty tight, yo.
Shorter Mark: “I’m still not reading any of your actual words and YOU’RE ALL MEANIES FOR NOT AGREEING WITH ME!”
@ Gaebolga,
Yeah, I figured that even if he was still serious by the end of Page 2, no reasonable person keeps on gnawing on it like a dog with a chew-toy. He has to be deliberately trolling. Like, nobody on the level gets that invested in whether or not people can wear clothes.
Mark, you wouldn’t know intelligence if it tap danced naked in front of you.
I dress conservatively. It is in my religious beliefs to dress conservatively. It is also in my religious beliefs to take the needs of others into consideration.
Coming from that standpoint, Mark, you are still being really, really unreasonable.
You made an analogy of modesty to staring. You later made an analogy to flashing. Neither of these are good analogies for what women wear, because staring and flashing are both things that one person does *to* another person *on purpose*.
Wearing clothes is something that e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y does. And people do not wear clothes “at” someone, much less “at” random strangers who happen to walk by; they just wear clothes.
You made an analogy to public nudity. This is not a good analogy, because nudity is *objective*. Nude is nude is nude. Part of the reason public nudity is bannable because it is simply the state of not wearing clothes. Conservative dress, on the other hand is *subjective*—it depends wildly on the people observing it, who all have different preferences and who all get distracted by different things, and those selfsame people will have very different reactions to women with different body shapes wearing the exact same clothes.
You made an analogy to bringing stinky food on the subway. This is not a good analogy, because 1) as far as I know, you will not get kicked off of the subway for bringing Brussels sprouts with you; and 2) you do not have a choice to stop smelling the stench lingering in the air, but you absolutely have a choice to look anywhere else besides at a woman whose clothes you don’t like.
Mark, your desire to not get tempted to look at people you don’t care about is not a need, nor is it even a reasonable desire. You live in a society with people and you will have to deal with people who don’t fit your ideal on a pretty regular basis.
While I was teal deering, a whole other page seems to have happened. To catch up:
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/20700000/Colin-Firth-as-Darcy-mr-darcy-20707561-1152-1472.jpg
Katz,
Better yet, the Chernobyl area. There’s still some radiation, but hey, his boner won’t be made uncomfortably happy or sad because the feeemales have long since abandoned the joint.
I love how Mark keeps coming back to saying he actually has no dog in this fight. You know, even after admitting that he does:
Mark, stop leaving the house. All of your problems will be solved, immediately. This is a solution that is completely within your power. If you unplug the TV and are careful on the Internet, you’ll never have to look at another fat woman again.
Ugh, Mark can literally be summed up by that one Sealion comic panel. Again.
The rapists’ position is “Women who might give me a boner shouldn’t be allowed in public or else I’ll rape them!”
Mark’s position is “Women who might give me a boner shouldn’t be allowed in public or else I’ll outlaw them!”
Totally different. Here’s a color-changing cat.
https://instagram.com/p/3UVf3UHqhY/
Mark, ‘certain types of clothing’. That is such a personal thing, what turns on one man (or woman) turns off the other. For one person it is a short skirt, the other tight jeans. A ‘boob man’ likes a top low cut or it being tight, while it does nothing for a ‘leg man’….and so on.
This is the issue woman face, absent a burka just about anything they wear will turn some man on….. then they get attacked for that…..
‘Uncomfortable feelings’, why are they uncomfortable, aren’t they nice? It is a pleasant thing to see someone (male or female) well turned out and looking good, It puts a smile on my face. But uncomfortable? Nope.
Back to this myth of ‘men’s uncontrollable lust’ nonsense. I just ask some basic questions:
(1) Do men have any problems controlling their lust at a meeting at work?
(2) Do men have any problems controlling their lust while doing their work?
(3) Do men have any problems controlling their lust in social situations, such as on at train, or at the cinema?
(4) Do men have any problems controlling their lust while visiting their parents and/or family?
(5) Do men have any problems controlling their lust while doing/watching their favourite sport?
And so on.
Of course not. This is nonsense that men turn into some slavering uncontrollable beast when they get even slightly sexually aroused. I’ve been to many work meetings and never yet seen a man leap across the table to grab a woman because they cannot control their desires.
Yet we are supposed to believe that in some other situations they lose all control of themselves…right.
Mark there are fixes if you are suffering from this, the simplest way to get put on testosterone blockers and that will sort you out in no time.
Or you could buy a chastity device and lock away the key in a time locked safe or something like that.
Maybe even some counselling, to learn self control, to act like an adult instead of a child. After all that is what ‘men’ are supposed to be able to do, control their desires and feelings, unlike all those poor emotional women….
Okay, I ran out of celebrities I knew out right were sexy or I found attractive, so I tried to find some models and I found Rain Dove and I am just wow. Just wow. She’s amazing.
http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2015-03/25/15/enhanced/webdr15/enhanced-buzz-wide-24751-1427311730-28.jpg
http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2015-03/31/15/enhanced/webdr07/grid-cell-30545-1427831171-5.jpg
http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2015-03/25/15/enhanced/webdr02/enhanced-buzz-wide-26013-1427312434-7.jpg
http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2015-03/25/15/enhanced/webdr15/enhanced-buzz-wide-24455-1427311732-21.jpg
And then I checked out more androgynous models and wow, fucking wow, they are fucking gorgeous.
I hope I won’t be giving anyone an unpleasant mosquito-bite-like response if I post Isaiah Mustafa.
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.966470!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/gallery_1200/isaiah-mustafa.jpg
@PoM:
I know, right? He’s basing his entire argument for creating a conservative dress code on his personal desires, demanding we explain to him why such a thing is so terrible, and yet repeatedly insists that his personal desires aren’t that strong and don’t really matter.
I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a person that was such a perfect example of blind solipsism.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/such-beauty-much-handsome#.ag24Zl5LD
Personally, I think the bare legal minimum that should be covered in a public place is one’s genitals and asshole. It seems generally acceptable to me to have coverings for the areas that tend to contain mucous membranes and that people excrete waste from, if only for hygenic purposes. Having a double standard for nipples between men and women is a bit odd, imo.
Cultural norms, social agreements, and personal preference should be able to be used determine what people wear beyond that bare minimum; clothing is something personal and unless it is something that is being used to actively harm other people, it’s not for the law to decide what should and should not be worn.
@katz:
Thanks for the cat; that was cute!
And thank you for explaining the subtleties of Mark’s position. I see now that I was wrong to think that he was just being a willfully obtuse troll, when in fact he actually had a rock-solid point. My bad.
Would you kill me if I nominated you for the position of WHTH’s Official Mark Translator?
😉
@ Lisa
You raise an interesting point. In my experience, not only can most men control their lust, they can even control their interest.
To give a couple of examples:
When I’m teaching the self defence stuff I often end up grappling around with women. I find it pretty easy to effectively “switch off” any hint of seeing the women as sexual beings at that moment (it’s only fair, and I think women would pick up if you were using the situation for any nefarious purposes).
It’s rather like how I can not swear when i do live radio. It’s like your brain just knows to close down certain channels at any given time.
Actually, we could have a nice discussion about men seeing women as property if I point out that it’s a common thing for guys to adopt a “Don’t even think it” attitude about their mate’s girlfriends.
@ Catalpa
Nose knickers? A step too far I think.
Here’s Peter Hinwood as Rocky
But then I’d have to read his posts!
@Lisa
“Uncomfortable feelings’, why are they uncomfortable, aren’t they nice? It is a pleasant thing to see someone (male or female) well turned out and looking good, It puts a smile on my face. But uncomfortable? Nope.”
OK, for example, lets say I’m walking down the street and I see Rain Dove, (the model that pandapool posted) as in picture 2, topless. Now, of course I’m going to be able to refrain from looking at her, but it is going to play on my mind, and cause a distraction to me that I’m just not interested in. I don’t know her, I don’t want to be thinking about her. Now let’s imagine she’s dressed like in the next picture with the hat. Much better. I can go on about my business without having to think about her at all.
That is why it is uncomfortable, because there is an urge to look at someone who you don’t actually have any interest in talking to and don’t want to get to know. It is irritating.
And I’m not saying that because I feel this way the rest of society *must* obey my dictates -I’m perfectly happy to go along with what everyone else wants within reason and endure minor irritations – I am saying that there wouldn’t be anything particularly unreasonable about a society where in most public places people were encouraged to dress like Rain Dove is with her hat.
@Mark
HOLY FUCK WHAT ARE YOUR RULES. All you’ve said is ‘I just want it more conservative’? How!? Do you require pants at all times? Is a bikini acceptable? Is there a rule on what colors are ok? How transparent is a garmet allowed to be? Are we allowed more or less than 3.14 inches of skin allowed? Are visible undies acceptable?
You insist that the current standards might not be to your personal liking. Lets skip the fact that such a position is unreasonable (since you obviously can’t be reasoned with) and instead please give specific rules by which you expect society to function. It’s time to cut the bullshit and stop hiding behind such purposefully vague statements.
My personal policy is cover the crotch and ass. If I can walk around with my nipples on display, I don’t see why women should not.
@Pandapool
Nice to see such a diverse range of sexy! I’m far from ‘traditionally masculine’ in appearance so I’m glad I can still be sexy without the chiseled torso 😀
Late to the hot guy party, but here’s some Lee Byung-Hun for all you forearm lovers
http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/21500000/Lee-Byung-Hun4-byung-hun-lee-21552809-320-480.jpg
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau for GoT/Scandinavian hunk fans
http://www.designscene.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Nikolaj-Coster-Waldau-Hasse-Nielsen-Cover-Men-03.jpg
Tom Hardy for anyone who is into cool feminist friendly guys who like puppies.
http://i.imgur.com/5wifJUH.jpg
Idris Elba for pretty much anyone who finds men attractive.
http://swirleytime.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/yum.jpg
@Moocow
Well, yeah. I don’t think there’s one universal sexy standard, just what society and corporations try to sell as sexy. Everyone is sexy.