So a little over a week ago, a drunken idiot in Miami attacked an Uber driver and trashed his car after being refused a ride. A video of the incident quickly went viral on YouTube; so far, it’s racked up more than five million views.
To the denizens of the Men’s Rights subreddit, this is somehow a Men’s Rights issue.
Because, you see, the drunken idiot in question was … a woman! And not just any woman — a young, thin, conventionally attractive woman who happens to be a fourth-year neurology resident a local hospital, and who also, apparently, happens to remind more than a few MRAs of every woman who’s ever turned them down for a date.
The headline given to the Men’s Rights subreddit post on the subject was basically catnip for angry misogynists: “Bratty rich doctor gets drunk and makes a huge fool of herself trashing Uber car, assaulting the driver then gets off when Police arrive.”
Naturally, the Mens Rights Redditors are furious that the woman — who’s been suspended from her job — isn’t going to spend the rest of her life in jail, because the “white knight” Uber driver decided not to press charges.
“Reverse the genders,” one commenter sniffs, “and [the charge] would be attempted murder.”
Actually, if you reverse the gender of the assailant, it would be misdemeanor assault and misdemeanor public intoxication. At least that’s what one drunken man was charged with after his much more violent assault on an Uber driver last November. Video of that assault got less than a tenth of the number of views the “bratty rich doctor” video got.
And that earlier video didn’t inspire anyone to vomit up an angry wall-o-text attack like this:
Welcome to the 21st Century Female indeed.
@ LG & DS
I subscribe to the belief that even though as a WSM I have nothing to lose by feminism succeeding. Nothing gets taken away from me by everyone having the same breaks I get.
But would there be anything wrong in ‘turning the tables’ for a bit to make up for past injustices?
I’m not suggesting women suddenly get a free hand for domestic violence or are encouraged to murder men at the same rate men currently murder women, but what would be the problem with, say, having an all woman Supreme Court for the next hundred years or so?
The fact that people would probably say that such an idea is ridiculous illustrates what’s wrong with the current set up.
@ DS
Like others have said, MRAs and other reactionaries literally can’t brain the notion that anyone actually just wants what’s best for everyone. They’re very invested in the idea that feminists want to turn the tables and they’re scared out of their minds that we’re succeeding. Joke is, of course, on them because that’s not what feminism is about.
As for taking care with wording to avoid MRAs misunderstanding, that’s an exercise in futility. They will misunderstand, misrepresent, and outright lie about anything and everything whenever it serves their interests to do so. These are not good faith interlocutors. Pandering to their dishonesty does nobody any favors.
There’s certainly philosophical frameworks in which this would not be “wrong.” Personally, I don’t think you can “make up for” past injustices. There’s no cosmic scales that can be counterbalanced, so to speak. The only thing we can do is look towards improving the lot of the oppressed in the now and the future.
Certainly, if we happened to have an all woman Supreme Court for many years, it wouldn’t be wrong, but it doesn’t balance things.
sevenofmine wrote:
Yes.
In a vacuum, nothing. But if the reason the SC was all-women for a hundred years was due to systemic inequalities preventing men from being appointed, then that would be a problem. This is the issue with all of the simple role-reversal scenarios the MRAs try to use as “gotchas” – these things don’t happen in a vacuum. For the same reason that Obama becoming president didn’t suddenly mean whites were oppressed, and Trudeau’s 50/50 gender split cabinet didn’t end sexism in Canada. Role-reversal in a single scenario doesn’t mean anything if you ignore the underlying systems.
There are some women who are chronically abusive or violent. Like male abusers, they can’t be identified based on socioeconomic factors or personality or how they present. But there are much fewer of them than chronically abusive men.
So, um, aren’t feminists the people saying that rape and domestic violence laws shouldn’t depend on the gender of the perpetrator or victim? Feminists could’ve kept the status quo that, for example, only men can legally commit rape.
Yeah, no women ever did any shitty thing before feminism. Right. And men have always behaved so well.
Really, the whole premise of this guy’s message is wrong. He really probably just resents the fact that he cannot boss women around. He watches 1950s sitcoms and mistakes them for documentaries and thinks we would be just like Ward Cleaver ’cause he’s a dude.
I like this whole analysis about women feeling like gods. My guess is this is projection. He feels like he’s better than everyone and should be treated like a god. When he goes in to do his salesman schtick, people treat him like they are all equals and that they have some say over their lives. He mistakes them saying no to him or choosing a meeting time for being better.
I’m a victim of misdemeanor battery committed by another man (a drunk guy grabbed my shoulder). I asked the police not to press charges and to just give him a warning. I know a few other people who decided not to press charges for misdemeanor battery.
Courts really hate it if they know you assumed you’d get away with something because of your race or sex or whatever.
Sorry if I’ve missed something here, but what’s the evidence that this woman is a feminist?
Did they, once again, forget that they’re supposed to pretend as if they don’t mean “all women” when they say “feminists”?
History Nerd: Correct–the feminist position is equality under the law, in society and in politics. We currently do not have that, which is why it’s ‘feminism’ and not merely ‘egalitarianism’ or ‘humanism’.
********
DS: Note that LindsayIrene says that that is what anti-feminists fear, not what the goal of feminism actually is. It’s a double-slam, both against the status quo and against the delusions of the anti-equality position. There are similar role-reversal fears among white supremacists re: PoC’s, and among conservative Christians about atheists. While there will always be some among oppressed groups who wouldn’t object to a little eye-for-an-eye justice (it’s a human failing, after all), it’s not any part of the actual goals, stated or unstated, of the movements themselves.
Wild generalization based on personal prejudice and a single instance rather than actual statistics.
√
It’s interesting (although not surprising) that the general consensus is people here just want equality to start from ‘year zero’ as it were.
No one is asking for a shift in power/opportunity beyond 50/50, even to redress the past imbalance. Feminists are effectively willing to ‘let us off’ for our historic transgressions so long as we play fair from now on.
Does sort of give the lie to the usual MRA accusations that feminists want to take over the world and send us all to the bon bon mines.
“not just any woman — a young, thin, conventionally attractive woman who happens to be a fourth-year neurology resident a local hospital, and who also, apparently, happens to remind more than a few MRAs of every woman who’s ever turned them down for a date”
Guys with IQ’s above room temperature would read this and get it and realize that they’ve dodged bullets galore and that Heaven has smiled on them consistently. MRA’s and PUA’s, OTOH, read and think of how often they’ve been told that crazy women are super hot and super easy and handily attracted by a few super secret decoder ring alpha male phrases, and feel dumped-over and cheated. Therein lies the difference between guys with actual brains and guys who have a grudge plus a really, really old and moldy list of things that women are supposed to like. Let him who already hath understanding, comprehend, and let him who hath no understanding scratch his head, get mad, and post again to Reddit. Amen.
Why do I get the impression that this guy actually has dozens of perfectly normal, even pleasant encounters with women every week?
The dead giveaway was the “high status” phrase he used! Those women who weren’t good looking (aka “high status”) enough never even registered with him, of course.
Just to add to the fact that MRAs are disingenuous fuckballs (since apparently ‘stealing the word balls’ enrages them) the link on reddit leads to a nice little description. Aren’t MRAs always wringing their hands over things being ‘taken out of context’? Strange, they had no problem omitting the context on this one:
Ovendice, meanwhile believes that: “Anytime there is a dispute between a male and a female, the male is INSTANTLY blamed for everything.” So surely when the police arrived, they arrested the Uber driver, aka the male, right?
So much for ‘a man can do nothing to defend himself’ THE DRIVER DID SO SOMETHING, he called the cops! Like any reasonable person would do. And she was almost arrested.
I theorize that Ovendice is just pissed that the driver didn’t use this as a pretense to physically assault her in order to ‘get back at her’. MRAs like to project their misogyny onto dudes in these situations, seeing them as ‘pathetic’ for not enacting violent revenge fantasies (that they presumably would if they were in the situation)
It’s also important to emphasize: he took a cash settlement. It’s not like he got nothing out of the deal.
The fact that she apologized and felt guilty for her drunken idiocy also probably had something to do with it. But the concept of empathy is foreign to MRAs. Along with logic apparently.
Amazingly, this is all in link on the MRA subreddit. Meaning Ovendice literally didn’t read the text right underneath the video, or read it and purposefully distorted reality. Either way he can fuck off forever.
Alan
“Am I the only person slightly disappointed that this post turned out not to be about lady assassins?”
Nope! I was hoping it was going to be about lady assassins, too!
Alan:
#4 here. Ditto!
I too was very disappointed that none of this was about Lady Assassins.
Just for that tease, David, I’m going to go watch my copy of Lady Snowblood.
She’s a doctor. In other words, she’s availed herself of the expanded educational and career opportunities now open to women, instead of “choosing” to stay at home like a good little submissive Hausfrau, which is the only kind of woman MRAs will accept as a legitimate feeeeeemale.
Oh yeah, and she got drunk. Which good Little Women also aren’t supposed to do. Therefore, FEMINISM!
“No one is asking for a shift in power/opportunity beyond 50/50, even to redress the past imbalance.”
When it comes down to justice, of course not.
But when it comes to redressing past imbalances in opportunity? Hell yeah. Hell to the yeah.
If I was passed over for promotion multiple times for being a ladytaur, then yes, I should get a better place in line for it now than J Random Dude. If I was left out of something for a long time unfairly because I’m a ladytaur instead of a ladysheep, then yes, I should get a better place in line for it now than J Random Sheeplady.
You can’t say the race is fair if some of the contestants are tied up behind a tree for the first half.
@Hambeast: That was beautifully said.
@Moocow: Thanks for all of the information. I would be perfectly happy with a small cash settlement in such a situation, whether the perpetrator was a man or a woman. But then, I’m also not very into the revenge thing. (Especially not the MRA “an arm, a leg, an ear, and an eye / for an eye” kind.)
[Insert Photoshop poster of Léon: The Professional here]
@ moocow
I’m glad the guy got something out of it, and I admire his easy going attitude about the whole affair. Something does sit a little uneasy with me though.
I think it’s the implication that people, who are in a position to be able to afford to do so, can buy their way out of trouble.
If he was going to be cool about it anyway, and the payment was just an additional ex gratia bonus, then fine. But if the payment was the determining factor I’m not so sure. That introduces a worrying wealth based system of justice.
In my opinion, if the cash payment was a spontaneous proposition from the perpetrator, it’s a good clue she knowed she fucked up and was sincerely sorry. If it’s together with other signs that a lesson was learned, it would sway me from pressing charge to not pressing charge.
The fact she tried to flee the scene isn’t a good sign at all to me however.
I’ve had this professional degree (and have paid the licensure fees) for 10 years. You mean to tell me that I’ve also had a license to hunt the most dangerous game for a decade and I didn’t know it? Why was I not informed!?!?
Welcome to this 21st-century female, MRAs! You’ve got it exactly right. This female–and all other females–consistently insult, harass, and murder men.
The law can’t touch us ’cause reasons: our tricky internal reproductive organs plus our female intuition and we look so good and make you do foolish stuff and how come you can’t get in our pants whenever you want and not feel bad about using us and then there’s lesbians and your ex-wife who won’t talk to you and your daughter sides with her and you love your mother but sometimes you think that she thinks you’re a loser.
And there you are, lying on the sidewalk, murdered by a 21st-century female. Everyone just steps over you. The female will go scot-free. No justice. You’re dead.
Maybe you should cut back on the alcohol.