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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!
Wow, Catalpa, you actually did that? I’m a civil engineer, but never did the Iron Ring thing, only read about it. And for those of you who haven’t seen it yet:
http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/920/
[Insert witty reply noting that the bible also says horrible “such and such”, and that if that’s your guide to a moral compass, maybe it’s time to go out and get a new one]
The saddest thing about these people is that they’re so insecure in their own beliefs they will just spin on a dime if it suits the next misogynist bs they spout.
In this instance, it’s -men’s- failings that women supposedly act badly. Another time they will say (and it has been said, a lot) that women are 100% responsible for their own actions.
What makes one mature (i.e. a man, not a boy) is the realisation that -all- dichotomies are false dichotomies. Nuance is a fact of nature, and getting a deeper understanding of that leads to a less stressed life of always putting blame on one party or another.
We’ve got hacktivism and slacktovism, how can we can combine activism with endless talking shit about women on web sites full of circle jerkers?
Carptovism? Actowhingism?
@Guest
Yup, that was a part of the Iron Ring ceremony, or at least the one that I had. (I left out the name because we’re sort of customarily not supposed to talk about what happened during it.) I’m not sure if the whole poem got read out, but definitely part of it was.
Ugh. Takes me back to a sort of theological fad that I heard about from Evangelical Christian friends back in the 80s. http://www.gotquestions.org/dominion-theology.html
Some things need to stay in the past.
The quotes, I suppose, are not too far off considering how these abuse advocates would define “bad behavior in women,” and “the truth.”
*Dons theology nerd hat* (feel free to skip if theology nerdery is not your thing)
Something else to keep in mind with Titus: Paul is writing to the leader of a church in Crete. Paul starts this letter off by quoting one of Crete’s own poets, who described the people of Crete as being lazy, gluttonous liars—and was apparently right. Basically, Paul’s trying to get the entire church to get their act together, to actually work, be responsible, and take care of their household affairs. And yep, his instructions conformed to the gender roles of his day, because he wasn’t really trying to revolutionize the cultural hierarchy as much as he was trying to get the Christian community (men and women both) to act like grownups.
Paul’s relationship with his culture was a complex one. Besides his status as a Roman citizen, Paul was a Jew who ended up working largely with Gentiles, and he had to navigate those different cultural spheres with grace. There are places where he pushed back really hard against the culture of the day—especially when it came to the idea that cultural practices, such as keeping the Sabbath, circumcision, new moons, feasts, etc., had any bearing on one’s standing before God. He even chewed out the Apostle Peter over it (Gal 2:11). He declared that there was no more meaningful distinction between Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free in Christ (Gal 3:28). All people were of equal standing before God, and he would fight tooth and nail against anyone who tried to impose their own culture on another in the name of spirituality.
But on the other hand, he speaks of being “all things to all people” (1Cor 9:22), accommodating Jewish and Gentile sensibilities while he was with them, in order to not cause needless offense. When in Jerusalem, Paul made offerings and paid vows in the temple to demonstrate that he was still an observant Jew and was not trying to destroy Judaism. When among Gentiles, Paul hung out with them and ate with them freely, without getting weird about their non-Kosher ways. His priority was to introduce people to Christ, and he was willing to make all kinds of concessions to the culture he was in to facilitate that message.
Also, the writing of Titus was shortly after Paul had been released from his first imprisonment, and shortly before Nero began seriously persecuting Christians en masse. Things were politically precarious for the church at that time, and Paul was eager to not give the Roman authorities any reason to think ill of the young movement. Calling for an upending of the explicitly patriarchal Roman family structure could have easily been seen as sedition. @chaltab summed this up well in their comment above.
I have deleted a bunch of teal deers already, so I should probably stop. But this stuff is my jam.
*doffs theology nerd hat*
tl;dr – The MRA above is (unsurprisingly) spectacularly missing the point of this passage.
“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’m an atheist, but this shit drives me crazy. We have a contradiction, right? Two different verses in two different books have different things to say about women’s role in society.
One of them is supposed to be FROM JESUS HIMSELF and the other is a letter supposedly written by Paul. And evangelicals take PAUL’S version seriously. We have God incarnate’s own words or… some guy who never even met Jesus? Who cares what Paul wrote?!
@ Delphi & Kootiepatra
As you peeps will know there were essentially 3 models of proto-Christianity. That of James, Peter and Paul. Paul’s brand had more universal appeal. It was nice and easy, you didn’t have to do any of the silly diet stuff or get circumcised and it was politically non threatening to the established order.
In those circumstances, it’s perhaps not surprising that Paul’s version ‘won’ as it were.
@Kat:
Welp, if it happened today… “Hey folks, come and give a hand. You, John, could you set the table, Luke, bread is that way, be a dear and slice it, and Jesus, get the wine out… Afterward, we’ll do dishes together.”
@scarlettpipstrelle — I’m sad to say but Dominionism is alive and well and sort of growing too.
Dining out is the obvious solution; but than can prove expensive. It could cost up to 30 pieces of silver at a decent restaurant, and where’s a bunch of fishermen expected to get that sort of cash?
@Snorkmaiden: Jacktoivsm (or Jackdoffvism)?
@Bina
Certainly a lack of actual women, Gizmodo’s data analysis shows there were perhaps a few thousand women to millions of men.
http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-women-in-the-ashley-madison-database-1725558944
“Then, three data fields changed everything. The first field, called mail_last_time, contained a timestamp indicating the last time a member checked the messages in their Ashley Madison inbox. If a person never checked their inbox, the field was blank. But even if they’d checked their messages only once, the field contained a date and time. About two-thirds of the men, or 20.2 million of them, had checked the messages in their accounts at least once. But only 1,492 women had ever checked their messages. It was a serious anomaly.”
@ Mortarius,
I like ‘jackofftivism’, that sums up what these guys do very well.
Am I the only one who thinks Jesus was just being a narcissistic cult-leader dickhead when he was all, “Spiritual development is more important for women! But not for you, Martha. You keep making us food. By yourself.” Sort of showing who was and wasn’t in his favor at the moment, as cult leaders do…
Typical manospherian poster: “Womenz sux (bunch of juvenile pejoratives).”
Female poster: “Hi.”
Typical manospherian retort: “YOU SUCK DIX!! Can’t foool me b*tches. Haw haw haw.”
Female poster:”Why do you think women don’t like you?”
Typical manospherian retort: “Isn’t it obivious?!? BECAUSE I’M TOO NICE stoopid b*tch!!”
I like “jackofftivism” too, or how about “setbacktivism”?
Hmmm…kind of seems to me like “jackofftivism” implies, specifically, acts that are basically self-pleasuring while “setbacktivism” is more appropriate for bigoted, reactionary acts.
@catalpa–did you go to school in Canada? ISTR that is more Canadian than US thing, for some reason.
This is some funny dialogue, just read at TRM:
“But why the disgust and insults?”
Can I take a stab at answering that?
It’s to scare the pussies away. It’s masculine talk.”
Yes indeed. I can envision it now.
Leonardo da Vinci: “You stupid f*ckers won’t get no puzzy that way! These b*tches need to know they are fungible else they’ll give you no respect. That gets those puzzies wet, you dumb mudder f*ckers.”
(wash, rinse, repeat for Plato, Mozart, Newton…)
Beware the dire, repetitive internet obscenities. Those overused…five or so words are the “manly” way to scare people away.
I am the first person to encourage the CONSTRUCTIVE criticism of some women’s behaviour. I was in a relationship with a woman who was violent and abusive in every other way, and that broke the silence to some extent that many lesbians around me had maintained about abusive women.
But there is no comparison to this attitude. There is nothing constructive about it – and it is certainly not about encouraging an equal relationship.
@Guest
I was born, graduated, and currently live in Canada, yes. I don’t know if many/any non-Canadian universities do an Iron Ring Ceremony.
Didn’t Da Vinci have gay lovers?
Hugs, Ellesar. Having the courage to break the silence over something like that is badass as fuck. Consider yourself duly adulated.
@Kootiepatra:
Your theology teal dearing is really interesting. I’d be interested in hearing more. One of the things I’ve been reading recently has been Richard Carrier’s work comparing the Petrine and Pauline early churches and their influence upon the various thinkers who eventually went on to formulate the Nicene Creed. It’s a fascinating bit of history that’s comparatively understudied considering how important its effects were.