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.
Even if women did cover up men who are rapists would still be rapists. Women who wear burkas probably get raped a lot.
Let’s not do the “insane” thing again, there’s been enough of that here lately.
http://www.funcatpictures.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/funny-cats-can-in-crocs.jpg
I heard a man remark that seeing teenage girls tan lines was a distraction in church. I thought, “I wonder how distracting it was for her to be ogled by a grown ass man”. How are women and girls supposed to accomplish anything if all we are allowed to think about is whether or not we are making men happy and avoiding being raped by them every where we go?
But Schrodinger’s Rapist is unfair to men.
If rape is about lust then why are elderly women and children raped? Why do straight dudes rape other dudes in prison?
How ugly do I have to be before I can wear what I want in public? I’m fat and nearly 40. According to MRAssholes I’m unfuckable. So, jogging in a sports bra and short shorts is fine for me, right? No way I’ll be street harassed or raped as retribution for daring to be ugly without giving a rat’s fluffy butt what random creeps think of me, right?
How many scars am I required to have before I’m safe? How deep do the dimples on my ass have to be before men won’t see me as asking for it?
There are places in Africa where mothers burn their daughter’s breasts with hot stones to misshape them in order to prevent men from raping them. It doesn’t work.
There are places where women’s genitals are mutilated to keep them safe from men raping them. It doesn’t work.
Would I be safe from men if I looked like this?
http://www.otherbrothersteve.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/twilight-zone-ugly.jpg
Of course not. Rape is not about sex. It’s about hate, sadism and power.
I’ve never understood the hate for crocs. Like, I didn’t even know what crocs were for the longest time… I thought “crocs” were those tall boots with tufty fur at the top. As for actual crocs, I always considered them to be colorful sandals.
@Lea: Pig-faced nurse is so done with this shit.
@kirbywarp: Tall boots with fur at the top — aren’t those Uggs?
Hmmm… either WordPress ate my comment or I ended up in moderation for excessive links. Testing!
@Falconer:
Hell if I know. Probably.
I’m… not exactly known for my fashion sense.
Well, that worked. I’ll wait and see if my other comment shows up before I end up double-posting.
In the meanwhile – Crocs are both the best and worst of footwear. I am as conflicted on them as I am adamant that this stumbling block stuff is utter hooey.
I may have made the conflation because I thought that the reason people hated crocs was mainly because teenage valley-girl-types wore them.
[Massive TW for WTF]
Hey, MRAs and fundies, what about this creep who raped a six-month-old baby girl and a ONE-DAY-OLD baby boy? Were they “Dressing provocatively”?
http://i.imgur.com/o3ik63h.jpg
@ Falconer
OMG too cute. They are always making the BEST faces! Up to no good 😉 LOL
@SFHC: Okay, I didn’t see your link before I posted my photo, so please, everyone, take my photo as brain bleach provided by providence.
Aren’t those crocs just the cutest?
@fromafar: That photo’s from last September.
The pool opened for Memorial Day Weekend, but I didn’t get any pictures of them in their new swimwear, or paddling around the wading pool. Boo.
This topic always reminds me of when I was in my late teens and horny enough to hump linoleum. I knew that the majority of other young men to whom I was attracted had no interest in reciprocating my desires, and would likely react to them with vigorous indignation. Furthermore, that most people would have considered them entirely in the right to do so. I managed to keep my hands, if not my eyes and mind, under control.
There is no reason why a straight man could NOT do the same. There are reasons why some of them do not feel the need to do the same, which is entirely different.
@Falconer: I just squeaked out loud when I saw the picture of those babies! So adorable…thanks for posting that.
Wedding uggs
http://www.bestbride101.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/97.jpg
My reaction to the concept.
http://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/images/16539.jpg
I can deal with Crocs for babies because they look like kids shoes, but on adults, no.
@A. A. Wils, that picture’s nine months old, give or take.
Here’s a much more recent one:
http://i.imgur.com/iJpjOul.jpg
Oh fuck, I just looked at my little boy and saw Rand Fucking Paul.
Jesus.
@WWTH: Donald Sutherland faces are best faces.
Wedding uggs? Must be nice if your ceremony was on a mountain.
*skips away in merry cluelessness*
rugbyyogi : Oh yes. Provided a male conforms to the narrow social roles allowed, they get a heck of a lot of leeway in what they can get away with.
The contradictions in allowable ‘male’ actions are amazing.
For example they are supposed to be the ‘man in charge’ that make all the decisions because they are more ‘logical’, with greater ‘self control’, and are less ’emotional’ (and endless amounts of tripe rationalisations).
BUT they are allowed to have no sexual control. If they are sexually aroused then anything goes and people will just rationalise it away “boys beng boys”, “you can’t expect them to control themselves” and all that BS.
It is built into the very fabric of many societies, inclding a lot western ones, that males cannot control ther sexual urges. This is absolute nonsense, I was a male for many decades with a strong sex drive and trust me it wasn’t that hard to control, it’s not that strong. And no male I ever knew had any problems whatsover controlling it when they were doing something. No one ever got away with the excuse “I started fixing the car but had to stop half way through because I got horny and needed a root”…..right.
And, of course, it is women who are responsible for mens sexual arousal …… so it is their fault one way or another…
It is unreal how people can twist logic around.
As long as a boy is not ‘girly’ (and that can mean artistic, or intellectual, not just maybe being gay or TG, depending on the cultural class/group they belong to), they can get away with a lot. I cynically posted here on another thread that many parents (yes including the mothers) would prefer their son to be a nasty violent bully than play with dolls, because that conforms to the range of accepted male behaviours. To be fair they might not be that happy with it, but that is nothing compared to the total horror many would feel if their son dressed up as a girl, or painted a picture or sewed……
Taking a simple example: you hear a lot about how many male children (and teenagers) don’t read these days, the reason is simple a heck of a lot of parents (and teachers) discourage it, often strongly….. A boy liking reading…how girly…go and beat someone up and be a man. It is no wonder that so many ‘nerdy’ boys end up as neurotic messes because they get such a hard time of it.
The very foundations of ‘toxic masculinity’ start right from the very beginning.
They are kinda like a modern (and more comfortable) version of jelly sandals, aren’t they?
Except, even those are coming back. And for adults, too.