With a self-professed “pussy grabber” now living in the White House, you’d think the reactionary douchebags at reactionary douchebag central, Return of Kings, would be feeling pretty chuffed.
Not so much. While Trump signs anti-abortion executive orders and talks about gutting the Violence Against Women Act, the fellas at RoK are worried that feminists are coming for their balls. Chemically speaking, that is.
In a recent post, regular RoK contributor Corey Savage takes a wildly paranoid look at what he calls “10 Feminist Fantasies That Could Become A Reality In The Near Future.”
Ignoring standard feminist fantasies like, let’s say, “getting through a day without some dude on the internet threatening to rape you because you won’t agree that rape culture is a myth” or “setting aside a weekend to binge-watch the 4th season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the third time,” Savage decides to treat us to what seems to be a trip through his weirdest fears, some of which might actually be repressed desires.
So what is Savage worried about? Everything from polyandry to “consent forms” for sex. And did I mention chemical castration?
Here are some of the highlights from his list.
Helping women will become a hate crime:
After complaining about a UK law that supposedly bans men from trying to pick up women in public (it doesn’t, actually), Savage warns his readers, based on absolutely nothing, that such laws
might spread to the rest of the West and expand to include other misogynist offenses including: looking at a woman (what feminists call “stare rape”), calling a trans-woman a he (there’s already a similar law in New York), arguing with women online, manspreading, mansplaining, helping a woman, and so on.
Government-Sponsored Feminist Tribunals
It might be a little tough to convict men of such offenses as manspreading or aggravated woman-helping in a regular court. Savage concludes that the government will therefore set up a whole new court system just to screw over men, a system of feminist “tribunals similar to the kangaroo courts in universities and HR departments at workplaces, all in the name of creating a harmonious society free of hate.”
Non-contact Sex
Consider that we already live in a world where walking past some deranged woman will get you accused of sexual assault. In the future, all physical contact with women may become sternly discouraged or even forbidden that more men will retreat to porn and sexbots as alternatives.
I’m pretty sure that quite a few men (and plenty of non-men as well) already use porn and a wide assortment of sex toys. Also phone sex, sexting, their own vivid imaginations, and so on and so on. “Non-contact sex” has been around as long as “contact sex.”
Bachelor taxes:
An old Men’s Rights favorite boogeyman!
With the drop in number of men who are [marrying] that coincides with the rising number of single mothers who need to leech the welfare state, it’s not too unreasonable to expect a push for bachelor tax that will penalize men who refuse to put a ring on an aging, post-slut sow.
Castration:
Well, “castration” of a chemical kind.
[D]ocile and compliant dogs are the ideal that feminists aim for in their efforts to domesticate men.… If all men are violent hooligans and rapists as some feminists claim, then the next logical step is to let the government control men’s testosterone levels to an “acceptable” level.
And then we come to the camps, and not the fun kind.
Feminist Re-Education Camps:
[I]t won’t be long before men who have been found guilty of misogynist hate crimes to end up in re-education camps. We already have sensitivity training in jobs while colleges are adding courses on toxic masculinity to re-define what it is to be a man on feminist terms. It probably won’t be long before “toxic masculinity” is added to DSM as a mental disorder (in place of homosexuality) and treated like a disease in mental health institutions.
I have to admit that I’m pretty impressed with the way he slipped a little gratuitous homophobia into that last sentence.
Now, if men resist all these evil feminist initiatives, Savage warns, they may well find themselves in even worse kinds of camps. Namely, concentration Camps
No man, no problem! If you’re wondering how feminists could even achieve this, know that there is already an army of goons called the police who will gladly do as they’re told to maintain the gynocentric order.
It’s hard not to wonder if Savage and his Manospherean pals actually live in the same reality as the rest of us.
Here for example, is a piciture of Donald Trump signing an executive order imposing a “global gag rule” that will cut off funding to international organizations that evenso much as mention abortion.
I’m having a little trouble finding the “gynocentric order” in this picture.
Oh, hey.
Idaho students sick of ’emasculation’ and ‘degeneracy’ recruited to join white supremacist group
Idaho is suddenly bleeding edge.
@Scildfreja
Fortunately it was on point so udegressing is possible 🙂
@EJ
I’m embarrassed to admit to how rusty I am on Kropotkin, but here goes:
-Conquest of Bread
-Anarchist Morality
-Anarchist Morality
@Ariblester
The word you’re actually looking for is probably meme, despite it’s having been mostly co-opted by captioned pictures of cats.
@Brony
Not sure why. It’s a perfectly accurate description of what’s going on, and I will borrow it for my own use if I may.
@ Yamara
Idaho’s been in the news for right-wing militia activity for some time, “Aryan Nations”, etc. The state has a lot of un- or sparsley-populated areas, and the militias will find a friendly ear from a lot of the population they do encounter. Plus, there’s a dearth of people of color and of other “types” they find distasteful.
(/s) I was hoping, with the election of the cheeto, the nazi-types would move out of there to more populated areas, and I could pick up a survival compound on the cheap… no such luck.
Interesting discussion about women as the gatekeepers of sex.
I have looked at the attitudes of paedophiles, and one of the reason that many hate feminists is because we have been the ‘gatekeepers’ (ie protectors) against paedophiles when they seek children. I have read many comments where paedophiles have blamed feminism for teaching children that sex with adults is wrong, where we have warned children against predatory behaviour, and all the things that any caring person would do to protect children.
Of course this is BS – warning children against predatory adults is as old as human society. Paedophiles have been around long before feminism.
I am not conflating the attitudes of the average MRA with paedophiles, but there is certainly significant overlap. Most MRA’s look at girls/ very young women as the only viable sex objects – the age of 25 being far too old. I honestly believe that many men who rage against us older women with all the typical insults about our ageing bodies and bitterness against younger women (LOL – if warning them can be interpreted as bitterness – OK!) really do want to find a girl as young as they can possibly get away with.
I wouldn’t identify most of these men as paedophiles, but again so much overlap – adult male power against young inexperienced girl/ woman, more easily controlled etc etc.
Human history has shown that patriarchal society has encouraged, and continues to encourage an older man owning (in marriage) a girl, and this is explicitly for the purpose of gaining control as early as possible. Whilst this is now not part of Western attitudes to relationships, and in many other parts of the world, it is clear that these MRA types really want a return to the ownership of girls – straight from daddy to him – like the bad old days!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pEcvteQo9g
Song at the end.
@Dalillama
It has to do with the experience of it. I’m not sensitive to the subject but can see why that might look strange now. It’s the way the realization of how bad I could be if I wanted to hits me. I think it’s an implicit part of learning any way that people manipulate and cause suffering. It’s complicated in TS. The stuff we habitually think about can become very intense and develop a life of it’s own.
In a form that results in an OCD diagnosis I have known people with Tourette’s Syndrome who experienced very intense and very variable social symptoms. I knew one kid who felt like they were being attacked by a phantom person. Our imaginations can develop lives of their own and they often hurt.
Thanks for that, Dalillama.
(When I wrote that, I thought “it’ll probably be either be Policy of Madness, Dalillama or Black Bloc who responds, depending upon which reads the site first.” I’m consistently amazed by the level of radical scholarship that’s present on this site.)
@Dalillama
Oh! Yes please use the term if you wish. Sorry, it feels strange getting asked that for some reason.
@Brony and @Scildfreja: There is a need for apologies, actually! I am of course just guessing, but I read it as Scildfreja feeling bad that you had posted several good posts, and she had not the time to acknowledge them, and wanted you to know that she had both read and enjoyed your posts, even though she hadn’t addressed them to that point.
It’s one of those things that maintains social connections, I think. It’s thank you cards/calls/facebook posts, passing along something you saw that you know that a friend likes (American skater flashing the JJ style?? <3), offering someone some of the treat that you're eating because you've heard them sighing and can tell that they're sad and you want to let them know that you're thinking of them.
It's all of the little things that let people know that you see them and that you care about them, and how they're feeling.
Sorry if this is 'splainy! I just love the idea of people noticing small things about others, and then using them later to let them know that they are valued.
@Rhuu
I’m not sure what it looked like but to me I realized that feelings of social expectations are complicated when it comes to the issues being discussed in here. I don’t know if there is actually a reason to be sorry in terms of asking Scildfreja something that was actually awkward. But the whole background issue of social dominance and expectations made that a thing that I think I should be more aware of. Maybe I’m overthinking it but I do that a lot.
I appreciate the thought. I hope it did not look too awkward.
@Brony: Nope! Navigating online space is complicated, and we’re still making up the rules as we go along. Text is difficult enough to communicate in, and then you add to it the fact that we’re all coming from different backgrounds/cultures/understandings/etc, it’s a miracle we can communicate at all.
A miracle, or just hard work on everyone’s part!
(Also should have added an apology to Scildfreja for speculating on why things happened, perhaps? Sorry if that was awkward. :S)
Off topic:
There will be a Scientists’ March on Washington. This is ostensibly a non-partisan gesture; while we know which side will be bringing most of the warm bodies, the march is intended to reach across the aisles to those scientists who were Republicans and are now feeling stranded by where their party has ended up.
If you’re a scientist and/or you live near DC, please attend and/or signal-boost.
*cough*canadian*cough*
(Sorry, it’s just so obvious.)
(Shit. I just did it myself didn’t I? Sorry about that.)
I’m a scientist, but I live in Europe. If there are any sister marches here, I’ll join for sure.
hahaha! I was about to comment that I’m just Canadian and saying sorry is about as reflexive as blinking, but numerobis beat me to it! Sorry about that numerobis, you’ve got it 😉
Rhuu’s got the actual reason right, though. Social unguent, and all that.
@Ariblester, Dalillama, EJ, etc.;
I was actually gonna comment on that general thread of conversation – I’d use the terms meme and memeplex for that sort of thing. Memes (a.k.a. ideas with group traction) tend to coalesce and migrate around in groups – memeplexes. Individual memes can be part of multiple memeplexes simultaneously, facilitating the transmission of new memeplexes through a population by dint of the weight of their connections.
None of this is really technical, incidentally – just sorta how it works in my head. I really ought to hit the literature and see whether there’s a better framework out there, because I bet a book could be written on it if not. Lots of interesting studies could be had on memetic clustering and transmission, though.
Super pedantic, all that, and semantic-by-definition, but there you go. Memes in memeplexes, floating about the population like flu viruses. suuuper dorky.
@Dave
http://media.giphy.com/media/3oriOcKVNgWTilLhuw/giphy.gif
@Scildfreja
I had to think about this for a bit.
I feel very strongly about this and had to stop and think before responding to this part. I’m glad that you find it helpful. I just had a delay here. There are connections between my sense of these things, the research, and this community that very often require me to stop and introspect later while interacting with other things.
You are right that there is a difference and that puts breaks in my mind. I’ve read research that connects female people with TS to increased gender dysphoria (I’m on a phone and can link it later if anyone wants), and there tends to be a small but signficant increase in OCD in female people with it where there is an increase in physical tics in male people.
I would be very interested in hearing what you think. No matter what the angle.
Late to the discussion, but I agree with Scildfreja. It’s why when discussing the denial of the “right” to get laid, misogynists so easily reduce women to body parts. I.e. pussyconomics or the pussy cartel. A vagina isn’t a body part belonging to a human, it’s a thing being denied to them.
Even outside the manosphere this is how women are viewed. Female sexuality is commonly depicted in popular culture as being about attracting the male gaze. Not our actual sexual desires. Incels and pick up artists just take popular views about women and our existence as purely decoration to logical extreme.
I just saw someone on Tumblr who was yelling that they’d warned us all about Amanda Marcotte, Phil Sandifer and … David Futrelle.
I was too afraid to ask why they thought any of this group needed warning against, so I don’t know what they have against David, but they said Marcotte orchestrated a harassment campaign, so it’s probably not very substantive.
Falconer, it’s probably that puppy-eating incident a couple of years ago.
@Dave
http://i.imgur.com/8RryewW.jpg
@Scildfreja
There is such a book (although there’s room for many, many more, and I’d love to read one if you write it), called The Meme Machine, by Susan Blackmore (Pretty sure I’ve recommended it here before, possibly to you?), and that’s pretty much how she frames it, yes.
Not sure if this is a good place for this, but I just posted this meme on FB and got a “friend” attacking me for being too rude and hurting people’s feelings.
He went so far as to compare it to removing cancer, in that you have to be careful not to damage the healthy tissue or the patient will die. I lost a partner to cancer. The “friend” and I worked together at the time.
I’ve been polite, kind, patient, and understanding. I don’t argue back at people who don’t share my opinion. I share factual stories from verified sources. I don’t share posts that are mean-spirited. One goddamned snark meme and I’m told I need to shut up and a disease that caused a lot of hurt to me used against me. I’m shaking right now I’m so upset. He gets to go about his day like nothing happened and tell me whatever, he’s done talking about politics now.
@Christina Nordlander:
I sometimes wonder if I really am, though – because I still have my bad moments. I try to not to double- or triple-down on them and generally realize I was in the wrong and feel bad about it, to learn and avoid it in the future…but it’s almost like I can’t help it at times and I hate that.
It’s certainly not a “biotruth” thing – it’s largely about social conditioning. I’d like to think I’m a bit more self-aware and can realize how many rationalizations for toxic behavior are just self-serving bullshit, but I’m not special or anything – I still occasionally succumb to that conditioning and don’t realize until after the fact.