By David Futrelle
You’ve got to give Reddit’s Men Going Their Own Way credit for one thing: They are constantly coming up with inventive new ways to hate women.
On the front page of the MGTOW subreddit today, with 146 upvotes and counting, we find the “shower thoughts” of one fellow who is evidently outraged that women keep causing a commotion in his pants by parading their bodies around in public without adequate shielding.
Aside from the fact that “microaggressions” are actually, you know, small-scale aggressions, while wearing a scoop neck top is not actually a form of sex work, he’s hit the nail right on the head!
Naturally, Reddit’s MGTOWs offer their own little improvements to yellow_black’s hypothesis.
I guarantee that if this guy were sent back in a time machine to the 1950s, he’d be losing his shit over women in tight sweaters. There’s pretty much no way to win with MGTOWs.
@IgnoreSandra
The New Jedi Order of the Star Wars EU is a successful equal opportunity thing. The prequels just happen to suck on every level…
As for the Federation… they tried. But Gene was always a complete weirdo (read some notes on what he wanted to Ferengi to be like… he made graphic explanations of how big their dicks were and what sexual positions they used) and then came Berman and Brager and killed every hope Star Trek had.
@Danel
Thanks for the boner update, I guess?
I’m enjoying how they were trying to discredit the idea of microagressions by comparing them to something they consider to be equally ridiculous, but then they clearly believe their own point that they made up for effect. “Microagressions, pah! Like those are real. That’s like if I said microprostitution was real! Which it is.”
So, I should wear a goose-down parka instead of a tank top and shorts in 90 degree weather? Thanks, MGTOWs. You helped me check myself before I wrecked myself. /s
I like the idea of what MGTOWs usually post being filled with characters, each of which is another microstupid. Taken together, they become macrostupid, easily seen with the eye.
@Troubelle, good luck! Let us know how it goes!
Everyone down in the gulf, you take care of yourselves, my ducks. Hopefully you are actual ducks, they will probably do okay in all of this!
As for the MGTOWs in the OP… lol. Microprostitutions.
I propose that as the unit of measure for misandry, the mPt. One-one-thousandth of a standardized MGTOW feverish outrage. Adjusted for SATP, of course.
EDIT: I heard that, while FEMA lacks a permanent director and other disaster services have had staffing and budget problems, ICE is in fine form in the area and is patrolling during the storm, to catch any immigrants fleeing the path of the storm. I can scarcely think of a more evil use of a disaster.
@Scildfreja
I can only hope that ICE takes the full force of the storm.
Okay, this is annoying me. Why do these sex-obsessed assholes hates prostitution? you would think, simplistically, that they would like the ability to offer something other than emotional support and effort and mutual like and respect and other relationship stuff. I think what’s going on here that they object to is that sometimes women benefit from sex work – either by money or by self respect or whatever. It’s really all about hurting women.
Ah, the ol’ “harvesting the male gaze” gambit.
Still not a thing, dudes.
… are we allowed to do that??
goes to check the going rate for black market eyeballs
I remember that incident. There’s some serious tug-of-war going inside the heads of some guys, where they really like their dirty pictures, but at the same time never want to see the women performing being too proud of herself as something other than catering to the pleasure of men. It explains a lot about the industry when you think about it that way.
I’ve gotten harassed while wearing a goose-down parka that reached mid-calf and had the hood pulled up and a was wearing a winter hat and a scarf that was partially covering my face. I’m pretty sure that going outside in public while female is microprostitution.
When you think that any woman you meet is just an object to be graded by boner feels, being a woman is microprostitution, yeah.
Is it microprostitution when guys wear clothes that compliment their bodies in an effort to look good? What about when men post pictures of themselves on instagram after carefully getting the lighting and angle right so as to look as good as possible?
Perhaps I ought to think of an example that probably rings a few more bells in the MGTOW community…what about when PUAs dress in an intentionally asinine way so as to attract attention to themselves? If dressing in a provocative, attention-grabbing, manner is “microprostitution,” do these examples qualify? Why/why not?
What a fascinating theory they’ve come up with. Looks to be one of their best ones yet IMO.
If you put these guys on an island of all men they’d still be complaining about women and angry there aren’t any women for them to abuse there.
@IgnoreSandra
Thank you for sharing your insights into the show (you’re right, the other gals where often nice role models) and your story. I think what makes this sort of hollow success story terrifying for non-men folk is the lack of unconditional societal approval. One of the things that really struck me on my initial step from guy to girl was how much of the things that I could take for granted before (being considered intelligent, worthy of praise, support, being able to majorly mess up without eternal grudges etc) suddenly had to be earned. It was like I had fiddled with the character settings to get around some game breaking bug and inadvertently also turned the game from lighthearted rpg to hard mode pvp where the players where all cynics and you could only gain support by either excelling or performing the role of overly dramatic victim.
Metaphors aside, what really helped me trough the initial turmoil was to reach some saturation point regarding my skills and build a support network of likeminded people (mostly other trans or otherwise “odd” women). Somehow this slowed things down to the point where tedious investments in long term stuff became viable again. I dunno if any of that helps, just thought I’d share.
True, I really loved that device.
I believe (or hope?) that it’s more ideology, lazyness and mass appeal. Most shows are based on strife and verisimilitude, not innovative fantasy. I must admit that I fail to come up with a feminist utopia that is not also either completely arcane, transhumanistic or so much anti-status-quo that it would probably be flagged as propaganda. Maybe that last part is really the problem and we collectively decided that the search for alternatives was over back when capitalism won.
Double-logic (like double standards but sciencier) aside, I think the MGTOWers do have some sort of historic point as sex work is hard to trace and often the dressing-way-too-sexy-part was the only tangible proof anyone had, which is problematic, given the obvious problems to even define sex work in a world where most people do not simply bed each other without noting the respective wealth levels and where non-men folk working is still sorta new.
Probably not because men are above the sphere of humiliating economics and merely choose to hunt for the prey of their lust in a cunning if stunning manner. I imagine they would probably also find a way to keep up that logic if a dominant lady would treat them with the willing condescence that those sort of men usualy reserve for pretty women.
@Lyzzy
Not true at all, even of you specify ‘outside the home’, although for most of history most people did pretty much all their work in the near vicinity of their homes. Farmwives helped sow and bring in the crops, butcher the stock, mind thwcalving and the lambing, shear, skin, etc. livestock, not to mention churning butter, making cheese, and other domestic tasks. Alewives brewed and sold beer, fishwives made nets and sold the catch at market. Many folk of all genders got jobs as servants for the better off. Women dug coal snd hurried full carts, they wove and spun for market, and when the industrial revolution began the worked in the dark satanic mills alongside men and indeed children. Not to mention shopclerks, nurses, and a dozen other trades. The whole idea of women staying home while the man takes care of money is an invention of the late Victorian upper middle clasd, which social climbers have been poorly aping for a century and change.
Thanks for that, Dalilama.
The living memory of my family disputes that idea. My mother was born over 90 years ago and never had any expectation that she would not work outside as well as inside the home.
She and her sisters had working class parents who made sure they went to school so that they could get into vocational training – teaching and nursing in their cases.
My father and his brothers had no sisters, but those who married, married working women, also mainly teachers or nurses.
Not all of the girls my mother and aunts went to school with entered those two more middle class professions that would let girl-folk in, but they pretty much all held jobs before, during, and after marriage and child bearing, unless they were compulsorily sacked on pregnancy as used to be the case when my mother was pregnant.
My grandmother on one side was a seamstress (not in the Terry Pratchett sense) before and throughout her marriage. My grandmother on the other side was a shop girl before she became a farm wife. They and my grandfathers (a railwayman and a butcher) could not have supported their families without them working outside and inside their homes.
Aside: it bends my mind from time to time to remember that grandparents are, to many folk here, people who were born back in the 1950s, whereas to me some of them were people who were born not last century but the century before. And I’m far from being the oldest commenter here.
Dear Jeebus, save me – these dudes are complete idiots.
The word “microaggression”, in the context of racist or sexist discrimination & related bad behavior, has actually been in use since the 1970s.
I learned that today learning about racism in practicing therapists in APA literature.
Somebody send this moron back to school.
I’m not sure how much more I can take.
Are men who swan about shirtless showing off their abs and nipple studs also guilty of micro prostitution? Or just women? I’m thinking of those 80’s Diet Coke ads and the Levi’s one with Nick Kamen stripping off in the launderette – doesn’t that count as well?