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.
Wilson, well, in all fairness one of the redditors thinks society as a whole does not care about men’s feelings and sees all men as douchebags. They often blame society, not just women. They see society as always catering to women.
@Kirbywarp,
the flaw in that hilarious scenario is that you show the redpillian actually engaging in a dialogue, in reality they would just start hurling slurs the moment you questioned them.
@Peristyle,
yeah, I’ve mentioned the Roosh petition here a couple of times, I’m glad it’s gaining momentum, Roosh has been whining about it. However I don’t hold out much hope for it. A couple of years ago some people tried to get Amazon to remove ‘To Train Up a Child’, which is basically a child abuse manual written by fundie Christians. That book is still on sale, if Amazon will sell a book that has led to the deaths of at least three children, I doubt they’re troubled by Rapey Roosh.
@Terrabeau,
I’d rather see all the public scrutiny be on the site than the users.
Just to set out my experience of using a similar site. Married people DO set out to have affairs and they use these websites so that people are 1) outside their own social/work circle 2) you don’t have to take the risk of propositioning someone who will castigate you for wanting an affair 3) there’s balance in the relationship, people who are equally married, equally invested in children and mortgages and careers have the same amount to lose and are less likely to expect more than you can give or cause “Fatal Attraction” type scenes. Saying that these things ‘just happen’ implies that humans aren’t in control of these things. Everyone who has an affair makes a choice to go into an affair. But some people do decide that this is what they want to do before they meet anyone in particular.
The reasons why they wish to have affairs are many – but my experience of why men seem to want affairs fall into the following categories:
1) No sex (or very little sex) at home. People who fall into the technical category of sexless marriages – having sex fewer than 10 times a year. Many were having sex a whole lot less than that – a couple of times a year or not at all. Most of these men were unwillingly in sexless relationships – but some of them, a small minority I reckon, were the cause of the sexless relationship – no longer desiring their partners, for a whole range of reasons.
2) The “first flush of love” seeker – men who enjoy the chase, the first excitement of a new relationship, which obviously goes once you’ve been in a relationship for a while. Some of these men report they have pretty good sex lives at home.
3) The kink seeker: those men who had particular fantasies which weren’t getting met at home – and this includes men whose ‘kink’ is having sex with different women, which obviously can’t be met at home.
4) the experience seeker – having an affair is like jumping out of an airplane, something they just want to check off the bucket list.
Some men hit more than one category, and the above probably isn’t exhaustive.
I know why I chose to seek sex outside my marriage, but can’t speak for other women, because I didn’t chat to them. For me, I knew I didn’t want to live my life without sex anymore, and I honestly thought that this would improve my relationship because I wouldn’t be seeking from my husband that which he would not or could not give. And I can remember vividly the moment I decided to pursue (or at least investigate) having an affair.
Many of these men were otherwise apparently very happy in their relationships, but a good proportion of them were also enduring the misery of an unhappy relationship. Some of them COULD have got out of their relationships, but many of them felt completely stuck. Some of them are rogues, some feel this is their only chance to have any kind of physical or emotional intimacy with the opposite sex, some feel incredible guilt – there are a LOT of mixed feelings. My first affair partner, who I am still in touch with from time to time, felt incredible guilt, loved his wife, but was in a sexless relationship which caused him a great deal of misery.
No one “needed” Ashley Madison to have affairs. Plenty of men use social media and the bar scene to do the same thing.
Why is that site called Ashley Madison anyway? Is it supposed to be some kind of John Doe type deal?
Pandapool, Inferno is a fancy Latin word for Hell. Tropical rainforest areas have been historically described as “Green Inferno” because they were generally unsuitable for white colonial settlement and unpleasant for white explorers and traders who visited there.
Both those movies are real WTF material.
“don’t need the internet to meet the maillman/poolboy”
Well, there’s someone who obviously has gotten all his ideas about sex and women from ’70s porn.
@ Artic Ape
Literally it means ‘underneath’ hence the Hades connection. It’s the same root as ‘inferior’
[Latin nerd: off]
@ Andreja
70s porn gives people unrealistic expectations as to how quickly you can get someone to come round to fix a boiler.
@Alan
And unreasonable expectations as to how easy it is to get free pizza.
… How likely do you think it is that the apparent peruvian cannibals are all actors in blackface?
Ant it’s not a joke movie. It’s already been out outside of the US. Apparently the main “theme” of the movie is that a bunch of slacktivist white kids want to stage a viral protest to save the rainforest, but they end up getting caught by native cannibals. They get punished for not actually being interested in really helping! Isn’t that so progressive you guise?
Apparently it’s trying to follow in the footseps of Cannibal Holocaust.
I think “The Green Inferno” is either a reference to CH, or it’s the name of the video the kids are trying to make in the movie… something like that.
@Alan
Ooh, does that mean I can call my basement “the infernal pit”?
“Hey can you go grab the clothes out of the dryer?”
“For you, my beloved, I will venture into the infernal pit and brave all its horrors to bring you back your prize! Farewell, and wish me luck!”
@Kirby:
I would pay good money to see a film in which the makers of Cannibal Holocaust were eaten by Peruvian tribesmen. Chortle? I nearly guffawed.
@spacelawn – They picked two popular girls’ names for the name of the site, which (as EJ pointed out) suggests that they knew all along their main customer would be straight men.
I have to say, the choice of “Madison” is pretty gross, since “Madison” didn’t gain popularity as a girls’ name until relatively recently. All the Madisons I know are under 10 (except for one who’s 20).
It is a weird name for a cheating site. I always thought “Ashley Madison” sounded like a vaguely upscale, country-inspired designer. “And in the living room, we’ll have mason jars, distressed wood, and Ashley Madison curtains…”
@dsrt
Yeah, it’s not like they’re rejecting tons of women every time they post a fat-shaming meme or yet another spittle-flecked rant about how repulsive short hair, single mothers, and tattoos are. Those women are several levels below the HB10 level of non-human, so of course they can’t possibly experience rejection or hurt the way these special snowflakes do.
When it comes to self-esteem, there’s no practical difference between passive and active rejection. A person doesn’t have to hear the word “no” face to face to feel unworthy and unlovable. They can absorb that message in a thousand other ways.
MRAs have such a huge blind spot for the fact that for women, rejection is baked right into the “men approach, women wait’ model. Men get to assess, evaluate, and choose up front, before they’ve even approached someone – which means they’re rejecting all the other women in the room. I don’t have much sympathy for the “waah waah, only men experience rejection” trope. It comes from a place of utter self-absorption. Do they think women aren’t putting themselves out there as well?
When sexists go on about how men get friendzoned and turned down all the time, and women can get all the sex they want… I wonder, if they saw “Spy” (which I saw quite recently in the theater) and saw the scene in the beginning where Melissa McCarthy’s character is so obviously in love with Jude Law’s character, but he only treats her as a buddy and is completely oblivious to the way she feels… That is, he friendzones her big time… Do they regard this scene as utterly unrealistic? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltijEmlyqlg
Or this movie.
https://youtu.be/rBvwueGobMk
I think many women can relate to the Janeane Garafolo character despite the movie’s flaws.
@Kirby warp
They’re right, of course. Silly SJW kids, trying to save a bunch of trees that aren’t even in their own backyard! Someday they’ll grow up and realize that the only way to save the rain forest is to push down all the trees, bulldoze those annoying animals, and put up McDonald’s and Nike factories for the locals to work at. That is, if the scary foreigners don’t kill them first with their scary voodoo ways. /s
Also, the fact that Janeane Garafalo is popular culture’s idea of fat and unattractive should tell these whiny dudes something. Apparently, if you’re not drop dead gorgeous, you’re a hideous and unlovable monster.
See also this movie that Paradoxy posted the poster for in a different thread recently
https://youtu.be/0tbRlEXrysU
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
There is also a crop of Madisons from the days of Splash, the movie with Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah. The mermaid names herself Madison.
I like to think that once a week Ashley Madison, Uncle Ben and Aunt Bessie all meet up for coffee.
Is there any data on women vs. men ratio on Ashley Madison?
@Chie – The odd thing is that the name Madison didn’t go viral till almost a decade after Splash came out. It started to take off in popularity around the mid-90s (it finally cracked the top 100 in 1993, according to the US Social Security site) and peaked at #2 in 2001 and 2002. It’s stayed in the top 10 ever since.
Admittedly, my sample size is biased since I only recently had kids and started hanging out with lots more under-5s. My sons’ daycare alone has three Madisons.
Anyway, it’s a non-traditional name that skews young, which is doubtless why they chose it. They weren’t going to name the site Doris Gertrude. 😀
@Aelfscyne
Yep. 86% men, and the vast majority of the remainder are fake (site admins trying to entice men, spambots, women signed up without their knowledge as revenge, etc).
“Most of all the women I’ve slept with in my adult life where almost all married or in a relationship”
You’re really bad at grammar and empathy, congratulations!
@ Catapalta
It’s a little known fact that Beatrice just asked Dante to bring up those old boxes from the cellar and when he was telling his mates down the pub things got out of hand. But you know how blokes like to exaggerate about chores.