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The good folks at A Voice for Men have long made it clear that, as far at they’re concerned, yelling at feminists (and women in general) on the internet is their activism. Forget building shelters or setting up hotlines for men with the hundreds of thousands of dollars they claim to have raised over the years; talking shit about women is how, in their minds, they help men.
Now reactionary Manosphere blogger Dalrock has done them one better. As he sees it, talking shit about women is how he and his commenters help women.
Recently, a new commenter to his site — a woman — asked him a simple question:
I know this blog is about the destructive and weak behavior of women in their relationships with men. However, I was wondering if you can think of any comparable examples of behavior exhibited by men in their relationships with women.
Dalrock responded by telling her that, as far as he’s concerned, the biggest problem with male behavior is that men are insufficiently critical of women.
Men are failing women terribly by refusing to speak the truth about bad behavior of women. Calling out bad behavior of women is difficult and feels uncomfortable, and men are taking the easy feel good path. This hurts the very women men are refusing to speak the truth about.
Oh, and talking shit about women is the best way women can help women as well.
But there is another way that men’s failure here is hurting women. Not all women are protective of a push to debauch the culture. While all women (just like all men) face temptation to sin, some women are actively trying to push for better standards of behavior by women. In a properly functioning society, much if not most of the day to day policing of female behavior is done by women, and this is a biblical role.
So whenever you hear someone ranting about how women are a bunch of dirty whores, just remember: they’re only trying to help!
“In a properly functioning society, much if not most of the day to day policing of female behavior is done by women, and this is a biblical role.”
This is a sentence a real human being wrote. I mean… Is it bad that this made me laugh? Because it did… because it’s just so ridiculous.
How do the people that WRITE this take this seriously enough to hit the publish button on this?
And I know it’s MORE than just ridiculous. It’s scary, too, when you think about the people that take these ideas further and do this stuff irl. But sometimes I’m just hit by the ridiculous way it sounds and I just… I go in to lolwut mode. (And maybe losing a little bit of faith in humanity. But sometimes laughing is more fun.)
“I am only trying to help”
When did bigotry become this passive aggressive?
This, completely devoid of context, is actually a good idea. Calling out people for being shitty people helps those people grow and learn from their experiences by challenging them to look at how their actions effect others. And yeah, sometimes it’s hard to call people out, and yeah, women sometimes reinforce the idea of toxic masculinity and this does hurt men.
With the context however, I’d like to point out that “women won’t fuck me”, “women are bitches to me because they won’t fuck me”, “women are gold-digging whores”, “women are only good for sex and making babies”, or any variation of MRA policy on women, is not a failing of women, but rather your own damn fault for believing this drivel and being a shitty person in general.
So…
Calling women out on perceived “bad behaviors” (i.e. anything not pertaining to satisfying men’s boners) is “helpful”…
Yet calling assholes out on actual bad behavior (like, say, calling women all kinds of slurs just because they want nothing to do with said assholes) is “misandry”.
Makes perfect sense. /s
Wait, the shittiest thing men do in relationships is not be shitty enough? What?
Ah yes, the part where Jesus instructed everybody to slut-shame each other. He was big on people judging one another. And hypocrisy.
“See, honey, when I berate you in front of your friends and treat you like a petulant child, I’m really only doing it because you won’t behave! I’m really doing you a favor.” Classic abuser mindset, right there.
Divide and rule tactics.
Also, I’d like him to give a chapter-and-verse citation on that “biblical role” claim.
I translate part of this article as saying :
“If only women would slut shame each other, then we men wouldn’t have to! Think of all the free man time we’d be havin’!”
I don’t know if it’s biblical for “women to police other women.” But it’s a huge part of patriarchy. So much easier for the men to get women to keep each other pure and in line with the important skill set of man pleasing and serving.
I have been told by MRA boys, more than once, that women willing participated in the early patriarchy, back when we weren’t allowed education, ownership of property, etc. To which I reply DUH! What choice did we have, since, by law, we were property, owned and controlled by a father, husband, or other male relative?
Participating by force is not the same as choosing to participate. But, they have never been able to understand the simple concept that is consent.
Cassie, FWIW, he does cite a specific passage:
“3 Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus+2
Of course he leaves out a bunch:
“Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. 7 In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness 8 and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.
“9 Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, 10 and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
I get the strangest feeling it’s only a matter of time before Dalrock’s little Ashley Madison account comes to light. It’s positively striking how many of these woman-criticizing purity culturists have accounts with that sinful, debauched* place.
*and strangely devoid of actual women
Ugh, yeah. The author of the Titus and Timothy epistles had issues. He’s not the only one but, good golly.
Thanks for the clarification!
Hahahaha fuck this guy. Go shove a bible up your urethra.
“10 and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”
Just out of curiosity, does this mean “teach your slaves not to steal from you, so they’ll become trustworthy, and be better at helping you proselytize” or “don’t steal from your slaves, so they’ll trust you, and they’ll be easier to convert”? The grammar’s a bit wonky and this translation seems like it could go either way.
Then there’s Luke 10:38-42, where Jesus explicitly says that for women, spiritual development is much more important and lasting than keeping house.
I agree with PI, outside of the context of this awful thing, encouraging people to communicate with their partners and other people in their lives is a good idea. Being able to express when something upsets you and working through the issue with the related people to come to an agreeable conclusion is a highly valuable skill to have.
Hell, I’d even encourage shitbuckets like this to clearly communicate their asshattery, too, so that all decent people can identify them quickly and avoid them like the plague.
This is my own particular favorite. Such roundabout, passive, obscurely censorious wording!
How’s this, Dalrock?
Not all women try to corrupt our culture.
OR
Not all women enable others who try to corrupt our culture.
Too straightforward for you? Afraid that women will get mad at you? Hey, stand up for what you believe!
And I’d like to second Buttercup Q. Skullpants’s opinion:
In fact, Martha does police Mary’s behavior. She complains to Jesus that Mary won’t help her in the kitchen when Jesus and some disciples show up at Martha and Mary’s house. Jesus kindly tells Martha that Mary chose more wisely by sitting and listening to Jesus talk.
I’ve actually always felt sympathetic toward Martha because she was working hard in the kitchen. How about a solution that works for everyone?
@Snowberry – Since passage 10 is a continuation of the sentence started in passage 9, I believe the “them” refers to the slave’s master. How this will help with the proselytizing, I am not sure. I am not a biblical scholar however so I could be completely wrong.
When he talks about women policing other women within a Biblical context, I can’t help but think back to A Handmaid’s Tale. Perhaps Dalrock didn’t understand that Atwood’s novel was not historical fiction?
I read 2 Titus 9:10 as being directed towards the slaves, and is intended as a way to get slaves to be more effective at preaching to their masters. The idea seems to be that if a master owns multiple slaves but one of them is entirely obedient, trustworthy and never steals at all, then the master might be willing to listen to that slave when they talk to them about religion.
It makes sense in the context of the section, which is all about “be a fine upstanding person so that you can evangelise more effectively and so Christianity gets a good image.”
“In a properly functioning society, much if not most of the day to day policing of female behavior is done by women, and this is a biblical role.”
Guess he thought The Handmaid’s Tale was a utopia…
There’s a lot of context lost in the past 1900+ years, but with a lot of these sorts of passages you have to keep in mind the situation of the first and second centuries. Roman polytheism was still the dominant religion, and even when Christians weren’t being outright persecuted, there was a lot of bad-mouthing and malicious rumors being spread.
Christians were often seen as deviants and threats to the Roman way of life, which was extremely patriarchal and hierarchical. So while doctrinally, Christians were taught that all people were equal in Christ, socially, they were instructed to obey the letter of Roman social norms so that the Church would not be seen as obscene or shameful.
Of course now patriarchal Christians act like these recommendations for avoiding scandal and persecution were meant to be immutable laws of human interaction that we should continue to follow more than 1500 years after Roman polytheism fell. I don’t think any species is as good at missing the point as humanity.
@Kat – yep, I struggled with that one, too – and with the faithful child who had to sit around and watch the celebrations when the prodigal son returned (I just knew prodigal boy was gonna backslide). And how about a “Hey, thanks Martha for making a nice meal. Without your work, we wouldn’t have been able to sit around and discuss spiritual things. Peter and Bartholomew are gonna do all the washing up.”?
You wanna talk Biblical, Dalrock? Bitch please.
1 Timothy 5 verse 2: Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
http://media.giphy.com/media/XOQmDUMyfzVza/giphy.gif
RE: the story of Martha
During the engineering initiation ceremony thing that I went through near the end of my degree, we got told about the story of Martha and Mary and about how engineers have considered themselves “children of Martha”, in that we’re here to get the baseline shit accomplished. It’s our job to design, implement, and maintain all the mundane physical trappings of civilization, to give non-engineers/’children of Mary’ the opportunity to tackle the more philosophical/theoretical issues that crop up.
I found it an interesting outlook, if nothing else.