By David Futrelle
I have to say, I expected a bit more from our nation’s Men’s Rights Activists. Yesterday, arkoudaphobic education secretary Betsy DeVos handed MRAs a huge gift, announcing that she would be putting an end to Obama-era policies on campus rape that MRAs and conservatives have been pitching fits about for the past six years.
But the reaction from MRAs has been surprisingly muted so far. On on the Men’s Rights subreddit — the biggest MRA forum there is — the regulars are much more interested in talking about a woman who accused someone of “mansplaining” on Twitter than they are in talking about DeVos’ decision. The topic devoted to the former non-issue has garnered 9640 upvotes and more than 900 comments; the top post on DeVos’ gutting of the Obama administration’s campus rape policy, by contrast, has earned only 153 upvotes and one-sixteenth the number of comments.
And while most of those commenting are happy with DeVos’ move, they aren’t exactly dancing in the streets.
“Welp at least we achieved something with Donald Trumps victory,” writes someone called keonkla.
This is why I voted for trump mainly, He was are best bet in seeing some Lessening of the Gynocentric War on men and masculinity. Looks like its paying off to.
As 5th_Law_of_Robotics sees it, meanwhile, this is “[p]erhaps the only good thing to come from this adminstration.”
In one of the handful of other threads on the subject, a fellow calling himself ISOanexplanation is a bit more spirited in his response:
White-knight gynocentrism has always facilitated the weaponization of women’s unhappiness but feminism has now anonymized it on campus and expanded the definition of sexual assault to such a ridiculous degree that a man’s unwanted word or glance is tantamount to rape. If feminists wanted rape to be taken more seriously their first mistake was calling everything rape. I just wish DeVos’ deputy hadn’t apologized for her statement about most college “rape” being awkward drunk sex.
The most enthusiastic response I found came in yet another thread on the subject, from a fellow who claims the new policy had convinced him that it was safe for him to stay in the United States. Bowaustin begins his comment by complaining that
in the modern age facts don’t matter if your male your a second class citizen and are assumed guilty until proven innocent if the accuser is female.
But DeVos’ announcement has given him new hope.
I had honestly given up hope that this would do anything but get worse and was planning to just move to a country with fairer laws in this regard as soon as I finish college, but now maybe I won’t, if it keeps getting better and we start seeing actual fair and equal treatment being pushed for I may actually stay.
One thing is certain though I will never agree with the feminists and I will never do anything but oppose them at this point they are power drunk border line fascists pushing more and more for special treatment and it is high time that they stop being handled with kiddie gloves. I say this because I am tired of having to live in fear of being persecuted for something I didn’t do because some bitch accused me for personal gain.
Apparently accusing random innocent college dudes of rape is a path to instant riches. Who knew?
Over in the MRA-adjacent Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, meanwhile, the regulars are even less enthusiastic than their MRA brethern.
While one commenter hails DeVos’ move as the “[f]irst tangible rollback of weaponized feminism we’ve seen in nearly 2 decades,” others aren’t so sure. Indeed, one commenter thinks Devos’ move is part of a “gynocentric” plot against men, intended to keep them docile slaves of women. He apparently also thinks DeVos has a stinky vagina.
“That smelly smell,” sneers rtmlex.
Gynocentrism is as strong as ever, this is a siren’s song to get you back to the plantation. “Look, men, we’re doing things for you. Now work.”
So why aren’t MRA’s more enthusiastic in their response? Probably because the overwhelming majority of so-called Men’s Rights Activists aren’t actually activists at all. They’re just guys who like to complain about women endlessly online. So naturally they’re much more interested in kvetching about a random woman on Twitter than they are in talking about government policy — even when they’re handed a policy victory on a silver platter.
Think Betsy DeVos’s gender has anything to do with that?
Can unhappiness be weaponized? How much unhappiness is needed to construct a viable weapon?
“Kiddie gloves,” Mr. Run-On Sentences?
Do you think that college administrators put on very small gloves when they deal with women who say they’ve been raped?
@ Policy of Madness
LOL.
Another example in the Trump Administration’s Official motto:
“Regardless if its popular, good, or even if we don’t even have an a plan to replace it, if Obama did it, we’re not! #MAGA”
Wait a minute, I get the pattern now:
1. Bad thing happens and everyone forgets about the last bad thing
2. Trump says and/or does something horrible and/or stupid
3. Trump backpedals
4. Trump backpedals on his backpedals, reveling he was forced to apologize and his original reaction is his real thoughts
5. Arguing ensues, but nothing actually changes
6. Goto step 1
We’re on step 1 right now, so I eagerly await Trump’s tweet:
“Men never rape. Alot of people say that rape is fake and Lib women lie and the mainstream media lies! SAD!”
Good thing that we’re not actually doing that.
MRAs however, do that when they call paying child support or alimony “divorce rape” or compare buying a woman a drink and not getting laid for it to rape.
From the comments highlighted, it would seem that MRAs are currently dropping the pretense that they care about male victims?
“at this point they are power drunk border line fascists”
if he’s actually concerned about these “border line fascists” i have some bad news for him about the actual LITERAL fascists who are running around in public these days… but no okay keep whining about women on reddit, bro.
OT — but way to go, unbreakable little girl!
Bail doubled for man charged with throwing girl from bridge
WESTBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — A judge has doubled bail for a Massachusetts man accused of kidnapping his friend’s 7-year-old daughter and throwing her off a bridge into a lake.
An additional $1 million bail was set for Joshua Hubert at his arraignment Tuesday on an attempted murder charge in Westborough District Court. The case was continued to Oct. 25.
Authorities say Hubert took the girl from her grandparents’ Worcester home at about 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 27, choked her and threw her off the Interstate 290 overpass into Lake Quinsigamond (kwin-SIG’-uh-mund).
She swam about 100 yards (91 meters) to shore and knocked on the door of a waterfront home in Shrewsbury at 4 a.m. She had minor injuries.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Bail-set-for-man-charged-with-throwing-girl-from-12174010.php#photo-14050675
OT: More on the unbreakable little girl — from the woman whose door she knocked on
Afraid but calm, a 7-year-old girl figured out how to survive the unthinkable
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/08/30/afraid-but-calm-little-girl-figured-out-how-survive-unthinkable/bNtPmpbE3q0IJcmOLesAYP/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article
@weirwoodtreehugger
Ach, yeah. The number of times I’ve seen them declare that [X] isn’t sexual assault and only feminists say it is, and that isn’t that ridiculous of feminists, as though they almost expect agreement, when [X] is in fact something that clearly fits the legal definition of sexual assault. It’s horrifying. It’s hard to tell sometimes if they really don’t know it’s assault or are just pretending not to, in order to get away with it easier. Or maybe they think everyone does it, because they do, and therefore it ‘doesn’t count’ in their minds. I suppose either way, it doesn’t make much difference what their thinking is, they get away with it by trying to create doubt, which DeVos just added to, because this will be taken as though campus sexual assault wasn’t really a major issue.
@ Heirloom Roses
If I remember Ranma 1/2 correctly, the answers are “yes” and “depends.”
…currently debating whether living in a world where being oppressed could unlock ki blasts would be the best or worst thing ever.
I was having a discussion about this kind of thing recently with a philosophy professor. The thing he seemed bent out of shape about was how unrealistic it was to expect people to make sure their partners were drunk before having sex. When I told him that I MYSELF have stopped with someone when it was getting heavy and I started suspecting she was drunk, he almost seemed mad. “Oh, well ok, you’re PERFECT, but not everyone is.”
I don’t want to cast him as a bad guy… he does a lot of work to explicitly help women (especially WoC) in his field, and it was a private context where devil’s advocating wasn’t super inappropriate. But it still shocked me that people can see this very basic standard as somehow out of line.
These are people who can easily see themselves doing the same thing, and perhaps they already have done the same thing. They believe themselves to be good people, and rapists are bad people, QED that thing they did/thought about doing that one time isn’t rape.
They’re not safe people.
I want to know more about these “kiddie gloves.”
I assume that, like kid gloves are made of kid leather, kiddie gloves are made from… the leather from children?
@tedthefed
Wait wait wait. He thinks it’s difficult to tell whether someone is drunk? Someone he’s in the process of getting physical with? I’m typically pretty oblivious to what’s going on with other people but I’ve never had an issue telling if someone else is drunk.
Edit: oh, wait, he doesn’t think it’s difficult to tell if the other person is drunk, he thinks it’s unfair to expect anyone not to take advantage of that. Is that it?
This poor soul and his economic anxiety…
TW/OT/OMG
Florida Republican refuses to resign after gruesomely violent past uncovered
Broward County GOP board member was once charged with attempted murder for splitting a female classmate’s head open
http://www.salon.com/2017/09/08/florida-republican-refuses-to-resign-after-gruesomely-violent-past-uncovered/
Of course he’s a Trumpublican. Of course.
@kupo I couldn’t really tell. I think he thought both? I think it was, it takes a degree of self-control to put an eye to whether someone is drunk in the heat of the moment. He wasn’t saying that controlling yourself to stop was beyond the pale, I think?
The main thing for me was how he was so nonplussed and irritated that I thought it wasn’t hard.
@tedthefred
I don’t think someone who thinks the self-control needed to stop is a difficult thing ought to be having sex at all. This is hypothetically before it’s even begun, as well, what if a partner says ‘stop’ during sex? Definitely someone I wouldn’t regard as safe/trustworthy, not if he suggested you were ‘perfect’ for wanting to avoid raping someone. I wouldn’t be that inclined to think his work with WoC places him above suspicion, either, would not be the first time an ally turned out to be an abuser.
@Leo I can’t prove he’s not an abuser, but there’s no evidence for it. I mean, without getting into defending a point of view I strongly disagree with, the context is that he’s a professional philosopher and a super consequentialist, so he was trying to be descriptive rather than prescriptive? “People won’t stop” rather than “people shouldn’t have to stop”? I don’t know. There’s a culture of just blue-skying and devil’s advocating, which is why I do give him credit for trying to elevate women’s voices, because the contrast is the shitty “free speech, you have to debate me about everything!” shit you see on reddit.
I’m presenting this as worse than it was; my point was just bewilderment at how “Just don’t have sex maybe” is considered this bizarre thing to say.
@tedthefed
I present as evidence your quotations of his words. That’s a massive fucking red flag right there.
@ Heirloom Roses
If the unhappy person has access to a team of engineers and some kind of fissile material, yes.
Just look at Kim-Jong Un, he managed to weaponize his unhappiness.
As for how much, I’d say inversely proportional with the unhappy person’s power over said team of engineers.
@Kat, ambassador of the feminist government in exile
The US (heck, the whole world) should really invest in some medical research for a cure for affluenza.
Had this Tarsey fellow been born poor (or middle class) he’d have gotten a well deserved and much harsher sentence (juvenile + prison after 18).
Like I said, a really bad case of affluenza.
@Heritage Roses
I am very unhappy with the resurgence of white supremacy, and it makes me want dearly to punch Nazis in the dick. So, I think the answer is ‘very unhappy’.
@Chris
Affluenza: those who contract this awful sickness usually enjoy it.
It’s the rest of us who suffer.
tedthefed
Here is a quick & dirty “Drunk Test”:
Would you hand them your car keys or your wallet?
If you don’t know them well enough or think they are sober enough to be be trusted with items you value, perhaps you should NOT be putting your dick into their hands and/or bodily orifices. Or have them put their dick into your hands and/or bodily orifices.
Just sayin’……..