The “cuckolding” obsession that has engulfed the nazi-lite alt right now seems to be spreading into Men’s Rights territory as well. In a recent post on the Men’s Rights subreddit that won dozens of upvotes, one anonymous cuck theorist explained his theory that “[w]e live in a cuckolding culture much more than a rape culture.”
How so, you ask?
After a rape: Most everyone are up in arms about it. All men are terrible and need to stop doing this heinous act.
After cheating/cuckolding: That was just being mean at best and you need to let it go; no shaming or calling it out, that’s misogyny against women basically just having sex.
I’ll have “Things No One Has Ever Said About Cheating or Cuckolding” for $500, Alex.
And when was the last time you heard anyone talking seriously about cuckolding outside of the manosphere (or perhaps on fetish porn sites, if you’re into that sort of thing)?
Any acknowledgement that it’s bad is sure to be explained with that male culture has set it up so that women are trapped in unnatural situations and forced to live out their natural and healthy desires in this way.
Yeah, this isn’t happening anywhere outside of your own fevered imagination, dude.
Quite often you’ll see cheating/cuckolding being touted as empowerment or liberation by feminists.
Wait, what? There was that one article in New York magazine in which a man wrote about how being in an open relationship — one that was open for both partners, incidentally — made him a better feminist. Polyamory is not the same as “cheating,” and outside of internet nazi circles no one defines a consensual open relationship as “cuckolding.”
Where is this for rape?
You’re seriously asking why no one is celebrating rape as “as empowerment or liberation?”
Thankfully it’s still an extreme, but it has often garnered support among feminists: Men who discover they have been successfully conned by a woman into raising a child as their own are castigated for leaving the situation in resentment.
I’m pretty sure most people would understand if the man in question were furious at the woman who deceived him in this way. But deserting a child you’ve raised as your own? That’s hideously cruel to the child, who is not to blame for the mother’s deception..
There’s this underlying understanding among feminists that women should be the sole arbiter of when a man is a father, irrespective of biology.
Wait, are you honestly suggesting that men should control whether or not women get pregnant?
Marital rape used to not be considered rape. Now it’s rape. Yet another rape culture indicator removed.
What a terrible tragedy!
No matter how you look at it all things rape are on the way out, but that can’t be said for cuckolding and cheating culture which, by all accounts, seem to be on the rise.
Only in your own mind, dude.
In the comments, a fellow calling himself thegrimraeper does the OP one better, complaining that
I don’t know what marital rape is and I probably will never know; they keep broadening the definition. as of the latest, it’s when you “beg for sex.” which leads me to believe that probably every couple that’s been together for an extended period of time has at least one party guilty of marital rape, if not both.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure none of that is true.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
@WWTH:
I always like to say that MRAs and their ilk must inhabit Bizarro World from the Superman comics…
Since we’re talking about movies involving infidelity, I’ll bring up an egregious case of a male character being excused for cheating: Fatal Attraction. Which happens to star Anne Archer, Frank Reynolds’ “hoore wife” from It’s Always Sunny, as mentioned by AsAboveSoBelow!
It’s bad enough Michael Douglas’ character decides to cheat on his wife simply because she left for the weekend and he couldn’t keep it in his pants, but that they have to excuse it by making the woman he has an affair with be mentally unstable and threaten his family. It’d be one thing if it was a stranger he met at some bar – but this is a professional business partner, who is only shown to be unstable right after he starts their affair. As if all professional businesswomen only appear like a well-balanced individual until you get to know them.
Even after he admits to his wife this is all happening because he cheated on her, he doesn’t pay the price for his actions and his wife seems weirdly understandable about it – as if it was entirely the mistress’, not Douglas’, fault.
…Except nothing in the film would’ve happened the way it did, if he just waited for his wife to come back home after a few days…
@dhag
I’m so sorry. Hugs if you want them.
http://56.media.tumblr.com/12a3873066a8c0e7f6d9c5e6ea5e80d8/tumblr_nxf7gtdBbA1rpu8e5o1_500.png
Oh, trust me, Germans don’t need a dictionary; they’re just as machista, but slightly less immediately violent about it. They’d rather take more time barking cold insults first, and THEN graduate to a fight.
BTW, on a note related to cuckoldry, there’s a German slang term for children conceived with fathers not the woman’s lawfully-wedded husband: Kuckuckskinder. Literally, “cuckoos’ children”, based on the fact that cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, and never raise their own young — they trick the other bird into doing it. And since a young cuckoo tends to hatch before the other bird’s legitimate offspring, and tends to be bigger to boot, they crowd them out of the nest or hog all the food, unless the other bird has evolved some kind of anti-cuckoo strategy, such as building extra layers in its nest and laying another clutch of eggs over top of the first one (as some warblers do with cowbirds, who have the same annoying reproductive habit).
It’s kind of a poor metaphor really, since (a) people aren’t birds, (b) it’s female cuckoos that do the egg-laying in other birds’ nests, and (c) women who have extramarital affairs aren’t doing it just to trick their husbands into raising someone else’s kid, but usually end up doing the bulk of the child-rearing themselves — especially if their husbands find out about the affair and divorce them over it. (Assuming they don’t try to kill them first, that is.)
We should make that latter one come back. “Queen” is having a moment in slang right now anyway (and in reference to women, rather than gay men who like to dress in drag, too).
Also, if a certain ex-boyfriend’s boasts are anything to go by, I’ve been a cuckquean several times over. (He was literally impotent with me, so I honestly don’t know how he managed THAT feat anywhere but in his own mind.)
I LOL’d.
Of course, for them to actually DO that would require a certain measure of self-awareness, as well as awareness of irony and their own pompous twittitude. I don’t hold out much hope for that.
Slight correction: BIG black men. Being racist, they just ASSume that black men are much better endowed than white ones. I was once cussed out by a rabid racist who hoped I’d be raped by a “pipe-hung” black man. Classy!
Having seen my share of black schlongs outside of porn, though, I can honestly attest that they’re all within the same basic size range as white ones, and most are very…average. (Also, the largest penis on record belongs to a rather ordinary looking white dude, so.)
And as for sexual talent, well…that depends on the man, not his coloration. Or his penis size.
The marital rape in Gone with the Wind — a book that is chockablock with racism and sexism — has been mentioned a few times. I read the book when I was 12. That scene was supposed to be sexy and romantic, but I hated it.
Years later, I came across this article about Margaret Mitchell, author of GWTW:
http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/1997spring/sp97_GAGE.php
It turns out that Margaret Mitchell was very much like spunky Scarlett O’Hara. And she married her very own Rhett Butler, a dashing bootlegger. After they married, he beat and raped her. And, the article says, she couldn’t tell her story truthfully in those days. So she told her story in a way that would be accepted:
Margaret Mitchell divorced her first husband. And she slept with a gun under her pillow for years, until he committed suicide by leaping from a window.
@ kat
Ooh, must confess my first thought on seeing that was “Suicide. Hmm?,
I don’t want to breach the comments policy, so I’ll avoid sharing my thoughts on that any further.
Also, @dhag — so sad to hear about your kitty. Cancer can go step on all the Legos.
Will Maru help?
@dhag, my sympathies. Losing a beloved cat is hard.
This reminds me I need to put up an open thread for personal stuff, will go do that.
Well, maybe I can offer a little good news!
For those keeping up with this story, Daniel Holtzclaw has been sentenced to the full 263 years. The judge did make the distinction that this was not an LEO that was a rapist. He was a rapist masquerading as an LEO.
Now for the salt ‘n’ sugar:
These sort of cop convictions only ever seem to happen to PoC. If the cop is a man of color, he’s much more likely to be convicted of wrongdoing. White cops get away with it.
@Alan Robertshaw
I think it really was suicide. He died many years after their divorce. He was a vagrant alcoholic, and he jumped out the window of a flophouse (cheap rooming house for poor people).
Also, I misstated what he did. He attempted to rape Margaret Mitchell but did not succeed. She fought him off.
@ kat
Cheers for the info. A sad tale all round really; although my sympathies are primarily for his wife. I wonder if he ever felt remorse over what he did and whether that was a factor in the path his life took.
The only place I see it nowadays other than MRA rants is Dan Savage’s advice column. And that’s people asking for help on indulging their own cuckold fetish or enabling their partner’s one
Thank you so much, everyone. 🙂
The kitty is in pain no more.
@dhag85
I’m glad the cat is no longer suffering. In my theology, the cat is in Kitty Cat Heaven. Rolling fields of catnip, as far as the eye can see. And everyone the cat has ever loved is there to groom and play with the cat. (Food? Water? I haven’t worked that out yet.)
Erm, because raising one child that isn’t biologically yours means you magically can’t father any other children?
How does that work, exactly?
(And by the way, men cheat too, fellas.)
I first came across the word at sixteen reading Shakespeare. Me and my brothers would playfully exclaim: “you knaverly cuckold! I bite my thumb at you!” Later I learnt what the terms meant. Embarrassing!
Hello.
Always rejecting the fault on the woman, hmm ? To cheat on someone, you need to be at least two, and in hetero couples (i wonder if they sometimes think about homo couples, but i fear they are not), it implies at least one man.
In France, the victim of the adultery is said to be “cocu”. I do not know from where it comes. It applies to both gender, and it is often mocked in songs, books and plays (and probably movies too, but i do not watch movies a lot). It is also obviously present in joke, but it is sadly often really oriented (on “men” being cheated by “women”, as you may have guess). Oh, and it is also present in theo/mythologies : just think about Zeus…
Some (sometimes fictionnal) cocus are quite famous : Hera, King Arthur, Louis XV (in the Three Musketeers), Napoleon (this one is historical, but he had done the same on his first wife), some First Ladies (in America and France, at least).
There are also famous cocu-makers : Casanova, Don Giovanni, the main characters of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, Berlusconi, Strauss-Kahn, and the like.
Oh, and do not forget our dear PUA, who think that is just another proof they are so “alfa” to successfully seduce a woman who is in a couple with someone else.
And now, out of nowhere, it becomes a great fear, a great symbol of society decadency ? Marivaud may do loopings in his grave.
And on the fear of “black cuckolding” and black men stealing white women from white men, are not the same persons who complain that white women are too feminists and do not deserve to be loved and married ? Are not the same persons advocating to go for asian women rather than white western women ? Can the asian men complaining about white cuckolding in this case ?
Have a nice day (and week-end, by the way).
It is telling that the Red Piller did not equate female cheating with male cheating. No, he equated it with *rape*. To him, rape is nothing worse than infidelity. That alone tells us everything we need to know. But more, that rape and infidelity are not equated is somehow anti-male, which also tells us in particular how lowly he views men to be.
Monzach:
Duh, I was thinking about it and still didn’t remember this word existed. Most Finns probably haven’t even heard it.
Grammatically speaking, forming a verb from the noun “aisankannattaja” seems a non-trivial and highly hypothetical exercise. Maybe “aisankannatuttaa”?
The term “cuckold” does absolutely come from the cuckoo bird and its tendencies.
As far as the “cuckquean” thing goes, that generally refers in modern terms to the fetish thing where a submissive woman watches her dominant male partner fuck other women.
Like others here, I’d previously seen the term “cuckold” in old literature and plays, because bloody half of Early Modern drama is about it. Endless puns about horns and such. But I am also somewhat involved in kink stuff and have seen the term there a lot. My only experience with someone into it ended with my PTSD and saying if he approached me ever again, I’d call the cops. He had massive, massive issues with women (I IDed as one at the time) that seem more or less identical to those I see in the manosphere these days. While I’m polite, and friendly with people I meet in the kink scene who are into it, I will admit I find myself somewhat wary, between my own experience and the strong streak of racism that’s often in the kink itself.
@ Alan
Yes indeed – degrees in Eng Lit so I’ve ploughed through “The Rape of the Lock” and more cuckolding references than I can count.
(Also helped edit an Italian edition of “underground British writing” from the 18th century – which involved explaining to the Italian professor who was lead editor what a merkin was: she didn’t believe me. That was before Google, when anyone can find that stuff out).
@ Bina – yes, the English cuckold and the French cocu I believe all derive from the word cuckoo. As you say, the zoological base is dodgy.
Cuckquean though – by the Tudor/Stuart period in England it meant a shrew, one who dominated her husband (and with a strong implication she also slept with other men). Classically depicted in woodcuts as beating him with a ladle, and even, in some cases, forcing him to cook meals, spin and even rock his own baby in the cradle. Can you picture the indignity?
Historians often associate it with the social anxiety of “the world turned upside down” – but I notice it coincides with a movement to close down women’s guilds and bring their economic activities into male control, like with the London silkworkers, a women’s monopoly where women were “masters” and took apprentices – until 1547, when it became a male monopoly. (And you start finding that women who kept apprentices accused of brothel keeping…)
So I’m beginning to wonder what uses the cuckquean motif served (and also, what happened to the silk women when they lost their right to work at their trade…).
@ dhag
I am so sorry. Virtual hugs to you, and peace to the kitty who has gone on.
@ bluecat
Oh, that’s one of my favourite phrases from one of my favourite historical periods.
Here’s some friends’ take on all that….
http://youtu.be/1L_LC6gl1h4
ETA: he, merkin 🙂
BTW the word ‘quean’ on its own is not at all positive for women – but is reclaimable I guess!
David Futrelle,
These people live in a in a parallel universe much like the religious right. It seems MRAs become more and more divorced from reality, the more desperate they become to argue that we live in a matriarchy. I think we both know why that is.
So why does this guy think the law regards rape as a crime but not cheating on a partner? Maybe because betraying someone isn’t equivalent to overriding their basic human rights (?) Most 8 year-old’s could distinguish the two conceptually, but apparently a grown man, and going by the tone it’s an adult, isn’t able to.
So why does this guy think the law regards rape as a crime but not cheating on a partner? Maybe because betraying someone isn’t equivalent to overriding their basic human rights (?) Apparently a grown man -going by the tone it’s an adult- isn’t able see any distinction.