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.
So Mark, if somebody had the biological urge to fart in your face, would that be all good with you? Biological urge.
Hey, Sparky.
This thread is just rugged, a lot of good points if you ignore Mark but rough going.
I thought I hated the Duggars before this horror show, back when they’re were just run of the mill creepy misogynistic homophobes. Who knew they could kick up their terribleness like this.
@sparky – the myth will never die because a lot of humans want to blame other people for their bad actions. Alas, the responsibility of being a reasonable person and challenging that or accepting when we’ve done it ourselves in other arenas doesn’t go away.
I find my husband incredibly hot in a suit, especially when he takes off the jacket and rolls up his sleeves.
There’s something about manly lower arms peaking out of a dress shirt that legitimately drives me wild.
And, ohgods, there’s this one shirt he has – European styling, I guess…it’s black and cut tight in all the right places…
And, yet, amazingy, I don’t molest him in front of the children whenever the mood strikes.
Oh – and you may also notice that I didn’t include other men in my observations.
This is because I’ve noticed that the act of focusing on someone in an erotic context seems to strengthen the associative (neural? hormonal?) bonds; or, to put it simply, I’ve noticed that when I think about someone (or an act) sexually, I begin to associate them/it with arousal, sex, and orgasm.
Being a human being with a fun assortment of primal urges /paired with/ an advanced (for the animal kingdom) neocortex, I have decided to use the latter (to the best of my ability) to direct the former – even to endeavor to mold the responses of my nervous and endocrine systems through the endlessly fascinating neural plasticity apparently inherent to our species.
I’ve made a conscious decision to mold my attraction so that it’s primarily directed towards one person*.
Even the most dissipated man should be able to control himself enough to not want to hump everything that walks by with a shapely ass and chest.
—
* I’m not asserting that this is necessary for or even something to be desired by everyone. It’s just something that I’ve chosen to do.
@rugbyyogi – this is precisely the kind of complexity that Mark’s (sadly all too common) style of pseudo-argument necessarily rejects in order to oversimplify things so they fit a binary model and yield the kinds of vapid “insights” he’s posted. I have literally never in my life met a man who insists that men are “more logical” than women who doesn’t have this precise definition of “logic”. As @fromafar2013 points out, he’s not reading for comprehension, he’s just being argumentive. It’s not that he hasn’t been informed, it’s that he’s not interested in being informed.
It’s amazing how the framing of this discussion fluctuates. The start: “men have great difficulty preventing themselves from raping women when women dress attractively, so women should dress differently.”
We call bullshit.
Mark leaps in with: “Are you saying there’s no biological component to sexuality,” as if the discussion were merely about what men find attractive rather than how men act on that arousal.
After some back and forth, we now come to “Yeah, I don’t think clothing is related to the incidence of sexual assault. I think certain kinds of clothing might make some people really uncomfortable though.” As if the discussion were ever about merely being “uncomfortable.”
What is it with trying to find some way, any way, to call into question the idea that a person is the only one responsible for the rape they commit? Even if the approach is to agree with the idea, but retreat into abstractions and soft, vague suggestions?
Mark, people in the OP are claiming that arousal cause men to lose the power of their minds and become enslaved to their dicks. They are claiming that dressing a certain way is what causes men to become rapists, murderers, and sadists, going so far as to claim that they themselves feel that urge to rape.
If you are interested in defending these quotes, be explicit about it. If you aren’t, then be explicit about what you believe rather than trying to play a game of Socratic Method (badly).
Thank you.
Rubyyogi,
My appearance is not responsible for your hang ups. It is not my responsibility to look the way you think I should. That attitude is why my husband can’t wear his hair long, why some men are not allowed to wear beards and why my vibrant hair means I can’t even wait tables some places. If you choose to judge people by the way they dress, that’s your problem. It is unrealistic for you to imagine that what happens in your head is a reflection of what’s on my body. Just because “That’s the way it is” does not mean it is the way it should be. Claiming it is my responsibility to adjust myself to your image of what I need to look like is nonsense.
http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr06/2013/5/21/15/anigif_enhanced-buzz-16993-1369165785-3.gif
As Flora’s comment above about the banana hammocks implies (and I’m going to explicitly spell out for you, since it seems likely you might not get it otherwise), the term “others” isn’t some monolithic category. People have different sensitivities about different things.
So whose sensitivities should we all give thought to? And why do those people’s sensitivities get special treatment above the sensitivities of people who feel the exact opposite?
In the end, doesn’t it just make more sense to deal with your own sensitivities yourself, rather than making everyone else tiptoe around your issues – especially when everyone else has no real way of knowing what your particular sensitivities are unless you tell them? You know, while they’re getting dressed in the morning, before they happen to cross your path a few hours later…
This whole “men can’t control their lust” crap is total bullshit. If it weren’t, then high school classrooms would be seething rape-pits as newly-pubescent boys – pretty much the group of males you would think would have the absolute least amount of control over their sexual impulses, given that they haven’t been dealing with them for long – “lost control” every time they looked at an attractive girl or boy. Somehow, miraculously, this doesn’t happen.
So why do these idiots believe grown-ass men are supposed to have less self-control than a bunch of horny teenagers?
@proxieme:
And, yet, amazingy, I don’t molest him in front of the children whenever the mood strikes.
Butbutbut it’s different for men: their lusty boners are sacred and must be obeyed.
Honestly, I don’t care if people dress at all so long as I never have to sit in their ass sweat and they keep their junk well away from the produce in the grocery store. I draw the line at pubes in my raspberries. That’s sanitation, not image.
@SFHC
That’s just silly, plus I’m usually too busy stealing food from children’s plates when I’m really hungry, because I need food and they’re too physically weak to stop me. No judging because biology, right Mark?
“Wouldn’t it make sense to have some thought for the sensitivities of others with regard to clothing etc. in public?”
I’m tempted to agree re folks wearing crocs and loud plaid shorts in Times Square -but upon sober review no.
*looks suspiciously at the raspberries in my salad*
I have an urge to slap the taste out of rape apologists mouths. Biological imperative, yo. Keeps the rapists away from my vag and out of the gene pool. Can’t control it. Evolution. Rape apologists should wear hockey masks if they don’t want me to go all wack-a-mole on their faces. God and/or Darwin command it.
If women are the hypersexual ones, why is it men aren’t the ones who should cover up? MRAsses make it sound as if women would hump a mailbox if you sprayed it down with Axe. What gives?
@Mark:
Dear Mark,
I’m going to start ignoring you now because you remind me too much of myself at 22, and that isn’t a compliment. I choose not to engage with that mixture of bad faith, contempt and determination to be right at all costs; especially from someone who’s evidently as intelligent and articulate as you are. I expect better.
You will be unignored when you take the time to work out what the other people above – particularly WWTH and Falconer – are actually saying and respond to it properly, rather than just flinging words at them to make them go away like an innocent civilian trying to ward off a zombie.
Everyone else:
@Sparky: Hi Sparky!
@davidknewton: For me personally, a “I love Ayn Rand” t-shirt would be enough to quell even the most ardent lusts. Even if she wore glasses and was reading Umberto Eco that t-shirt would be a total buzzkill.
@Lea:
It has been remarked upon that in all times and in all places, the will of God always happens to coincide with what is advantageous to the people in power. Funny, that.
@Mark,
Oh, hey, are we playing pick-n-mix with our comments now? Can we do that?
If I’m going to respond to something you wrote, I’ll generally blockquote it first.
And anyway, it’s a bit rich, you playing the “I never said that” game, Mr. Are-we-saying-sex-isn’t-biological.
“FFS my dog has the common sense, self control and courtesy to not pop a squat in the house every time nature calls, why is this a difficult concept for MRA’s et al?”
Many of these idiots proclaim to be elites, kings, supreme alphas, or whatever. They wish that they had the right to take whatever they want, whenever they want, solely on the basis of being superior to everyone else. Their idea of an ideal society is one in which everyone and everything is there for the taking by those of Supreme Strength and Intellect (which is what some extreme forms of libertarianism boil down to in the end). Your dog has no such sense of entitlement, and is a vastly superior being compared to such fuckwads.
Last time I saw my sister, she was wearing neon purple Crocs and neon orange skin-tight cargo shorts.
I’m not kidding.
If there was ever a reason for the fashion police…
EJ,
Do what I do to feel better. Claim you were never young. Sure, the lie will give away the fact you never really grew up, but…
Nevermind.
,blockquote>
Last time I saw my sister, she was wearing neon purple Crocs and neon orange skin-tight cargo shorts.
I’d previously been of the opinion that women can wear what the flip they want; but I’m suddenly revising my views on compulsory burkas. 🙂
I saw a young woman in a lime green skirt and bright orange crocs a few years ago. She was the living embodiment of Kate Beaton’s “Ain’t give a damn.”
http://41.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2t4xk0OKd1qznybeo1_500.png
Shit, I thought my teal/green skinny jeans that I make a point of pairing only with neutrals were risque. I need to get out more! I’m not ever wearing crocs though. NOT EVER
@fifthinterval – yes, I know you’re right. At the same time I don’t want them to be able to say. but you know it’s more complex than that. I shouldn’t worry though, should I?
@proxieme – I know EXACTLY what you mean. That rolled up shirt thing… yep.
@lea – yeah, whatever – you’re clearly looking to pick a fight with me. Hangups? You don’t know what’s in my head. Please do tell me what my hangups are. You’re personalising your discussion with me in an inappropriate way. I live with this shit every day with my verbally abusive husband. I know what you’re doing and I’m gonna call you out for trolling.
As it happens, I actually don’t usually much care what people wear and would prefer it if people didn’t care what I wore as I’m inclined to be a pretty haphazard dresser (other than shoes, I got good taste in shoes). But I also know that me dressing haphazardly signals to people that I’m haphazard or maybe don’t care what other people think which they may interpret as simply not caring. That’s not an image I want to project in some circumstances. And over the years I’ve come to be more aware of what people may be trying to communicate with the way that they present themselves.
If I could ban something, I would ban those horrific Juicy Couture sweat suits from ever coming back in style. Same goes for Ed Hardy shirts.
Now for something off topic: if you need another reason to love Tom Hardy, skip to the 9:45 mark.
https://youtu.be/tI6k_8tomRE