Forget the reported suicides and all the ruined lives; the real tragedy of Ashley Madison is that men had to use the site in order to find women to cheat with, when all women have to do to get laid is to exist.
At least that’s the consensus of Men’s Rights Redditors in a recent thread.
The Reddit post in question links to an article in The Week asking “Why are we denying that women used Ashley Madison?” But the assembled MRAs are much more interested in discussing what they see as the real issue: how unfair it is that men have to sign up for dating sites to get laid while women, allegedly, can just fall into bed with whatever random dude is nearest to them.
The male tears flow freely as the Redditors set forth their case.
It’s MISANDRY, I tells ya!
![Globalization101 9 points 6 hours ago This is the real story that no one is touching. It's the WOW effect, women are wonderful men are duchebags. Most of all the women I've slept with in my adult life where almost all married or in a relationship. They didn't need to use this service to get what they wanted. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]jb_trp 9 points 5 hours ago It's the WOW effect, women are wonderful men are douchebags When a woman discusses the horrible things that men can do society calls it "insight, empowerment, and a step towards equality." When a man discusses the horrible things that women can do society calls it "sexism, misogyny, and mansplaining" (i.e. "shut up you whiny fucking loser!"). Men eventually got the message: Society doesn't care about your feelings. Hence, the women are wonderful and men are douchebags trope. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]BigOldNerd 1 point an hour ago Can confirm that my ex-wife didn't need a service. She hit the jackpot on her 1st outing.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/realstory.png?resize=492%2C495&ssl=1)
As Palidin327 sees it, women not only don’t have to sign up for Ashley Madison; they can have sex delivered right to the door for free — without even bothering to order it in the first place.
If this is true, why aren’t horny men lining up around the block for jobs as mailmen and poolboys?
Meanwhile, Spolio repeats a familiar talking point:
Dudes, here’s the thing: YOU are also the gatekeepers of sex. You can also say no! Just because your standards are lower, or because you have standards you’re unaware of because you only really notice the women that you do want to have sex with and not those you dismiss as fatties and uggoes, doesn’t mean that (heterosexual) sex is always the woman’s choice, not the man’s.
You’re also forgetting that women don’t only screen guys for attractiveness, compatibility, or lack of ear hair; they screen for safety because, you know, men are afraid women will laugh at them, and women are afraid that men will kill them.
If women don’t want to sleep with you, maybe it’s because you’re a creepy, whiny, entitled Men’s Rights Activist.
Oh. I think I responded to lightcastle with the wrong movie in mind. Whoops!
There’s a lot of xenophobia in Eli Roth movies. It’s kind of hard to buy the defense if you’ve seen Hostel and Aftershock.
“No Escape has a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes,” I say, trying to find the trailer and being unsure if that’s the same movie or not.
“Because no men ever cheated before the internet.” FTFY.
And no, you weren’t the only one who saw the trailer for No Escape and thought it was racist as hell, I did too. It didn’t sit right with me when I first saw it, because it smacked of American Sniper’s issue of “White Male Victim”.
There’s a lot of xenophobia in Eli Roth movies. It’s kind of hard to buy the defense if you’ve seen Hostel and Aftershock.
Which is the main reason I think people aren’t buying the defense. He doesn’t have a lot of good faith to fall back on.
What the hell is happening in this movie? Is there a civil war going on or something? What is this?
The Green Inferno can’t be a real thing.
Is Will Farrel in the cast? It might be something like “The Spoils of Babylon.”
The picture that it’s frozen on before it plays looks like something out of “The Spoils…”
My brain won’t let me believe that that’s an actual, meant to be taken seriously, movie.
I’m going to choose to believe that The Green Inferno trailer is one for a bait-and-switch comedy film that features the well-meaning but incredibly ignorant white college kids crashing their plane in the jungle and getting their asses yanked out of the fire by a passing native tribe, who took them in to provide medical care. But since the white kids can’t speak anything other than English, they have no idea what is going on and are freaking the hell out completely unneccesarily.
“OH GOD WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO US?!?!” They scream as their rescuers pop dislocated joints back into place and start setting bones before strapping the idiot kids down to some hastily-made stretchers. They would normally not be so rude but these people seem very insistent on trying to run into the jungle alone without any necessary supplies to get hopelessly lost and likely killed by something. Just hold on until we can get you to a hospital, okay? Jeez, they just won’t stop screaming.
Wow, the Green Inferno trailer was just, wow. But I guess having a bunch of privileged white 20somethings just run afoul of law enforcement of the country they’re “saving” or giving a real anti-Colonialist message just wouldn’t be as good cinema as having them eaten by savage indigenous cannibals. Ugh. Such a bullshit reason to have such a regressive plot.
@Catalpa I would love that movie! That sounds like such a good movie, and it would be genuinely funny, too.
So, it’s the plot of Wicked kind of?
The book that is. I haven’t seen the musical.
I’ve got you beat, because I have never read the book OR seen the musical!
I might pick it up if that’s the plot though,
One) The Spoils of Babylon was great.
Two) The Green Inferno HAS to be bait and switch. There’s no why they’re play it up as the most terrifying movie. And the Amazonian tribe didn’t seem that scary? I mean, if they were gonna make them scary, they’d go all the fuck out and make them seem terrifying, right? That’s what trailers do.
And The Green Inferno is a stupid name. What the fuck does that even mean?
I will be pissed if it’s genuinely a scary movie.
@Catapla
Yeah, would pay to see that. And I usually just wait for DVDs to show up free at the library.
@ColeYote
Yeah, but you see, if the married women weren’t *sluts*, then he’d never have slept with them, so it’s all their fault, really.
@Pandapool
I swear to god that I saw this episode of south park a long time ago.
Maybe Parker and Stone will get it pulled for copyright infringement.
When a woman discusses the horrible things that men can do society calls it “insight, empowerment, and a step towards equality.” When a man discusses the horrible things that women can do society calls it “sexism, misogyny, and mansplaining” (i.e. “shut up you whiny fucking loser!”).
What is even the horrible thing women are doing here? Not using Ashley Madison? Sorry. I was busy having sex with my husband.
It’s always fascinating when these guys make up fake quotes insulting them, and then make up faker quotes of the even more insulting things those fake quotes would secretly mean if they weren’t fake.
I’ve now read the Cracked article about No Escape. I think my main takeaway was “But… but that idea has so much potential!” As in, clueless Western tourist finds himself caught in a foreign country during a revolution; has absolutely no idea of what’s going on or why. Oh God the panic.
Clearly, they didn’t go for that.
Let us note that I would dearly like to see a movie with that scenario where it’s a Japanese person stuck in ex-Yugoslavia in the 90s, or African person stuck in Tibet when the Chinese move in, or very confused Mongolian in 1960s Mississipi.
PLEASE YES
… I want that movie so bad.
So bad.
Me want.
Catalpa,
Wicked is a dark and gritty type prequel to The Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West isn’t actually evil but the Wizard and Glinda tell Dorothy and friends she is and they believe it because, hey, she’s all green skinned and ugly. Misunderstandings ensue. The Flying Monkey’s were sent to help them but are interpreted as hostile for example. I didn’t actually like the book very much, but it was pretty popular.
I’m a lifelong fan of the Oz books and I kind of hate the idea of a dark retelling of Oz. The story was meant to be a fairy tale that wasn’t dark and scary like all the popular children’s stories were at the time. A dark adaptation can’t be done because it entirely misses the point of the series. I’m in no way opposed to dark stories. I’m a fan of horror. Game of Thrones is my favorite show and I love the books too. But, you can have substance without being dark and the Oz series did. There was a lot of pro socialism symbolism. Baum mocked the military brass and he mocked popular culture. And he did it all while still keeping his stories kid friendly.
So I’m probably not the best judge of Wicked. I just have too much invested in the original story and I’m a little touchy about adaptations. Even the 1939 movie, which I love, gets some criticism from me. Mostly due to the poor handling of the female characters. Baum was pro feminist and his characters often reflected that. The movie turned Dorothy into a simpering whiner when in the books she was tough, smart, and optimistic. Their adaptation of Glinda was even worse. Book series Glinda was similar to Galadriel. She was stately, imposing, elegant. Not a sentient bolt of pink tulle like in the movie. Glinda was also both the wisest and most powerful being in all of Oz. That doesn’t come through in the movie.
Now I’m in serious teal deer territory. Sorry about that! Once I get going on this topic, it’s hard to stop. And I’ve had wine.
http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l140/jkarbowiak/Tealdeer.gif
The musical was pretty upbeat IMO. I never read the books.
And Defying Gravity is a very kickass song.
So many men seem to miss this. They could be having all the sex they want, as it’s almost 100% guaranteed that they could find women who would be more than willing to participate. But of course, they dismiss these women as being beneath them for various reasons (too ugly, too fat, et fucking cetera).
They never seem to want to turn it around; maybe the reason they don’t get sex from the women they DO want to have sex with is because they themselves are too ugly or fat or whatever.
The most frustrating thing about MRAs, I find, is their insistence on being wrong even when they’re right.
Ashley Madison, for example, was a company whose business model involved taking advantage of sexually dissatisfied married men. This is objectively as close as we’ll ever come to a real-life case of “beta bucks.” Well done, MRAs, you found a case where your philosophy actually applies. You win.
However, in the case of Ashley Madison, the people taking these “beta bucks” weren’t the nebulous concept of “teh wimminz.” It was the staff and shareholders of Ashley Madison. I am not acquainted with their gender divide but I would be surprised to hear that they’re entirely female, and even more surprised to hear that it in any way played into the rest of the MRA narrative.
Yes, men got exploited. Someone spotted a way to make money off male unhappiness. But somehow the MRAs lose interest in this if it doesn’t help them to hate women.
Not much to add to all of the excellent points that have been made in this comment thread, except for one thing that struck me.
So, supposedly, the premise is that men “have to work harder to cheat”, i.e. using sites like AM and actually paying money and going to a lot of trouble, and women don’t have to do all that and can just wink and smile, or “just use facebook” or “just walk into a bar”, etc….
The implication seems to be that women who cheat are horrible evil sluts BECAUSE of the above. That it’s the (supposed) disparity in the level of difficulty to successfully cheat that makes it okay when men do it, but not okay when women do it.
Logic!(?)
This would all be hilarious if it weren’t sad and disturbing. Okay, it still is kind of hilarious while also being sad and disturbing, really.
In hindsight, my plot of “benevolent but unconventional people are deeply misunderstood by dumb college kids, resulting in a comedic inversion of a horror movie trope” sort of already happened in Tucker and Dale VS Evil, though that one features hillbillies instead of tribespeople.
I hadn’t heard of No Escape until I read Cracked’s article yesterday, and I was seriously fucking surprised it turned out to not be by Eli Roth – like, “Everything I know is wrong!” levels of surprised – so your mention of The Green Inferno (which I also hadn’t heard of yet) put my world back in order. A good thing for my understanding of Hollywood, a bad thing for humanity in general. =P
@kirbywarp – nicely laid out, sure does sound ridiculous when you try and jam together all the conflicting beliefs.
@EJ – yeah, that’s something that really does make me sad – that focus on negativity against women consuming and tainting all the valid men’s issues that they could be talking about instead. I mean, if you’re feeling down and in a tough place I could totally understand the odd misguided rant about the unfairness of the world in general, but singling out a whole gender and blaming individual people rather than society as a whole is just vile.