By David Futrelle
I thought I’d take a moment this Friday evening to signal-boost a very important tweet from film producer Keith Calder on the subject of dudes so wrapped up in their own supposed machoness that they can’t “poop properly” or, even worse, clean up afterwards.
Here’s the tweet.
https://twitter.com/keithcalder/status/918598272243126272
Let us consider each of the three screenshots in turn.
The first one is almost poignant in its innocence, from a Reddit dude who’s been perching on the toilet rim to poop his whole life because he somehow grew up believing that toilet seats are meant only for girls.
The other two (also from Reddit) are a little more disturbing — and disgusting — partly because they involve massive failures in butt hygiene and partly because they feature posts from women who have apparently been putting up with these massive butt hygiene failures from their dudes for a long time.
Also both of the dudes in question refuse to change their ways.
Brace yourself!
I have a number of questions here, not least: how exactly did the author of this post not realize this unpleasant fact about her angry stinky dude BEFORE THEY GOT MARRIED? I’m not trying to blame the victim here but I simply don’t understand how this would even be possible.
Also I hope she has managed to get this abusive shitstain out of her life.
The next story is similarly puzzling:
YES IT IS YES YES AND AGAIN YES.
I can only hope that at least one of these posts is a troll job, if not all of them, but given what I have learned about my fellow men in my years writing this blog I have to admit that they could very well all be true.
DUDES, WIPE YOUR DAMN ASSES.
H/T — Thanks to @RemingtonWild on Twitter for alerting me to Calder’s tweet
@ExSexWorker
I’m not sure why you feel that bashing feminists contributes to the discussion. I was actually paying close attention to what you were saying, but then you decided to tell me what I think about it and I stopped caring.
Regardless of your street cred, you don’t actually get to instruct me on what I think and what my opinion is of sex work. So, if that’s all you came here to do, your voice will certainly not be missed by me.
The person who apparently doesn’t know what a TERF is described herself as an “actual woman”
Just saying
@Axe
To be fair, she might mean actual woman as opposed to the sockpuppets we get with female-coded names.
@kupo
Point taken. Still…
Tho, in fairness, she does, in fact, say she knows what TERFs and SWERFs are. She just rejects the labels. My B. Still…
I’m one of those “Sex-Positive” feminists that ExSexWorker’s leery of.
Concerning Sex Work; I believe in REFORM not banning.
I agree that a lot of today’s porn is gross and brutal. However; There is also a lot of woman-friendly and “feminist porn” being made.
I don’t think sex stuff should be suppressed. Suppression causes more problems. It’s better to make it legal but heavily regulate and reform it so everyone is safe and healthy.
Porn and Prostitution should require licenses, regulations, ethical guidelines, legal protections for the participants, frequent medical checkups and other safeguards.
Instead of tossing the baby out with the bathwater, get some fresh clean bathwater.
********
That said; I wish ExSexWorker well and hope she finds the healing she needs. Hopefully; with plenty of regulation and safeguards, others won’t experience what ExSexWorker experienced.
What about amateur porn? If producing that required a license most of it would likely disappear. Perhaps a license should only be needed for commercial production (as defined, say, by the actors being paid employees), and the rules for amateur porn don’t raise a barrier to entry (if no-one’s underage, and everyone consented to distribution of the tape, then no problem).
If it’s the commercial stuff that tends to be exploitative, that would regulate it, increase its costs/barriers to entry, and avoid discouraging its free competition.
@Ambassador Kat
Boy, I wish the feminist government in exile really existed. As for the dramatic change that took place once I was married. Yes, now I know that it was a sign of abuse – along with many other things I experienced – gaslighting, triangulation, rage meltdowns around me if not necessarily always directed at me that included screaming and banging on furniture and vitriol. When I complained I was told that I shouldn’t have a problem because those “weren’t about me” – but I was usually the only one there to absorb the poison. So, yes, I have learned a lot about the tactics of manipulation and psychological abuse. What I wish is that there was some way to teach these to young women – they are the ones who need them so badly – and to somehow get across the subtleties and confusion that all of this brings too. So, thank you for pointing it out – this is something that we aren’t taught, along with so many other things.
@ExSexWorker –
I’ve been thinking about you and your response all week. It has haunted me a bit in fact. First, thank you for not jumping all over me for not spouting the third wave feminist line. Somehow, in a twisted, subtle way the rhetoric of ‘choice’ has been coopted by those who wish to harm us and used as a weapon against us – and not just in relation to sex work. In relation to reproductive rights and freedoms that in actual fact include a lot more than the right and ability to terminate a pregnancy. As the great feminist Marilyn French said “Women’s state, status and freedom cannot be addressed unless the fact of her reproductive capacity and all the implications over the course of her life are acknowledged.” Paraphrase rather than absolute quote, but that was more than the gist.
When the ‘choice’ argument has been presented to me, I can sort of acknowledge it intellectually but I have never been able to square it with my heart or my ethics. I have had friends who were sex workers. A couple strippers, a couple escorts and a dominatrix. None of them were unscarred by the experience and none had other choices when they went into sex work. I think the dominatrix thought that this would keep her away from the literal sex and from trauma, but it turned out to be just the opposite. Like you, I am pretty certain that she suffered from ptsd for a long time.
I wish I had something incredibly wise or comforting to say, other than I am here. I am listening. I thought about you all week. This is making me more determined than ever to figure out a way to first understand how choice has somehow been turned into a weapon that seems to mean – well, you chose it so you deserved it. Sorry, but few of us know we are choosing abuse and trauma when we are going in. Than I want to mount a defense that untwists the horrible way this something that was originally a step in the right direction has been turned on women as yet another weapon of shame.
Which brings me finally to the Me too Movement. This has been hitting me hard all week too. Reading other women’s accounts and thinking of my own experience has led me to conclusions and implications that are genuinely disturbing:
1. Many, perhaps even most women report a consistent, pervasive pattern of low level sexual harassment and abuse starting in childhood and continuing across the span of their lives.
2. With these kind of numbers, it is clear that Men We Know and Love are doing this. Maybe most men are careful not to do it to women within their immediate social networks where consequences might find them, but it has to be at least some of the men we know. (People qualified to draw conclusions from the statistics are saying it looks like something like 80 to 90% of women have had at least one instance of sexual assault, abuse, harassment or intimidation.) How do I even begin to look at the men around me? How aware are they? When abusing slightly outside of their social circles, is this a service to other men? The target is softened up for the horror of betrayal by someone we trust to at least observe the social contract?
And with this, how can any woman have self-esteem, self worth, make good choices, even glimpse what her potential might actually be? Honestly this looks like just one arrow in the quiver that systematically breaks women and it has frightened and upset me more than I can tell you. This is another reason why I have been thinking about the things you said all week – because they apply here.
The ROK fools are so certain that women hate men or feminists hate men – but it is so not true. When we have negative feelings it isn’t hate so much as fear and bewilderment.
So, all of this has been swirling around in my head this week with special emphasis on the ‘choices’ of sex work and the people I have known personally. Thank you for your bravery and openness in posting – even if it is behind a pseudonym – no reason to put yourself out there for further abuse. Now I am determined to figure out just how something good – women owning and having choices in reproductive matters – has been twisted into the usual weapon of ‘it’s all your fault and you deserve whatever bad things have happened to you’. I am determined to try and find a way to neutralize that poison.
@AuntieMameRedux
It’s real. It’s just me and my girl cat — the brains behind the operation — but we have high hopes for the future.
My girl cat was my late mother’s cat. After my mother died, the cat lived with one of my brothers for a while. Our father was an MRA before there was an MRA, as was my brother — who is now dead but who was, in addition to being a proto-MRA, also an alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job and lived with my parents for 20+ years.
By the time I took the girl cat off my brother’s hands, she would try to be stoic but, for her first few years with me, was afraid of lots of things. Crinkly things. Rolled-up magazines. The ironing board. The vacuum cleaner. Etc. Depending on the source of her terror, she would either howl, slash, and run — or just run.
She was also a raging feminist. When my boyfriend would start an argument, she would place herself between the two of us. When I would start an argument, she would leave us alone. Once, when the boy cat got really loud, she swiped and swatted at him: Be quiet! Nowadays, she knows that she doesn’t have to concern herself with our arguments (or most of her other, early sources of fear), so she doesn’t bother, but her politics are still strong.
The feminist government in exile says the future is female. Allies are also welcome.
@SpukiKitty
Thank you for the list of links! I am going through them and reading them. Like I said, I promised myself that I can’t just stay idle or only do a little and it is a promise I want to keep.
@Kat – So funny about your girl kitty. I have a household of traumatized cats (they seem to just show up in my backyard sick, injured and desperate) so I know of the fears of cats who have been terrorized – but a lot of them get better with patient care. Cats can be very protective too.
*long post, apologies in advance*
@AuntieMameRedux
In your response to Ex Sex-Worker, you’ve said a few things that I find troubling, and you seem to be arguing against something/someone without actually specifying up-front.
Given Ex Sex-Worker’s stated opposition to third-wave feminism, I’m not sure why you felt the need to thank them for this. Plus, “spouting the third wave feminist line” is a disparaging way to put it, to say the least.
(followed up with Marilyn French quote that implies “woman” = reproductive capacity). Hm.
Why are there scare quotes around ‘choices’? Choosing something doesn’t mean your choice is perfect, you know. I chose sex work. I chose addiction. I also chose to have my son, and to do my PhD. I chose to legally marry my partner – partly so he could get permanent residency. These choices are complicated and they have differing degrees of ‘bad’ and ‘good’. I’m fairly sure most feminists, including these ‘awful’ third-wave ones, understand this.
Again, who are you talking about here?
Honouring women’s choices doesn’t mean suspending critical judgement (and this includes examining our own choices). And it certainly doesn’t mean “you chose this, therefore whatever happens is on you.”
I’ve seen that view among certain conservatives and alt-righters, but I don’t think that’s who you’re referring to.
(now I’ve typed “choice” and “chose” so many times the words look totally weird dammit)
@AuntieMameRedux
Blessings upon you & your kitties.
@ Mish, boomerang “thank you, fellow countryperson” for pointing out to AuntieMameRedux that if she truly believes ExSexWorker was railing against anti Third Wavers, she should re-read what ESW actually said.
AMR, since ESW seems to have withdrawn, could you at least point us in the general direction of these (straw?) sex-positive ho-blaming feminists who are dominating the discourse?
That is not how the language of “choice” has ever been presented in my experience before. “Choice feminism” is a term that has always referred to a type of feminism that holds that any choice a woman makes is automatically feminist. “I choose my choice” is the typical way it is (disparagingly) described. It is in this sense that sex work is presented as being feminist, because it is mainly a female profession, and a not-insignificant number of women enter the profession by ostensibly choosing to do so.
There are a lot of problems with this, the most significant of which is the fact that few women (and few people period) make employment decisions in an environment of complete freedom of choice. It’s troubling enough when folks “choose” minimum-wage jobs that are hard on their bodies and minds because no other realistic option exists. It is even more troubling when that “choice” is sex work, which can be orders of magnitude more damaging than flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
There is a robust debate around women’s choices and whether they are presumed feminist, or can/should be criticized. I’m not going to go deeply into it, but I will say that your characterization of that debate is … nonstandard. Who are these people who have said to you that a woman chose sex work and therefore deserves what she gets? That is just-world fallacy nonsense, which is common in the world but not very common amongst feminists in my experience.
@Croquembouche,
This whole thing is just weird…
@Policy of Madness,
Exactly. Well put.
There was one of them over on Pharyngula the other day but I would argue they’re not a feminist.
These dudebro troglodytes need to learn to hold themselves to the standard of cleanliness set by public women’s restrooms.
There are a lot of problems with this, the most significant of which is the fact that few women (and few people period) make employment decisions in an environment of complete freedom of choice. It’s troubling enough when folks “choose” minimum-wage jobs that are hard on their bodies and minds because no other realistic option exists. It is even more troubling when that “choice” is sex work, which can be orders of magnitude more damaging than flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
This is what I mean – and I hear it a lot both reading and anecdotally – talking to people that I meet in various contexts. I don’t agree that making a choice means that you should both have other choices available and have a reasonable degree of certainty what the consequences of that choice are. It is the consequences where I have problems. A lot of the choices that women make, in a place of no reasonable other options, no real idea of what the actual consequences are then get loaded onto their back as their fault when things go badly. Sex work is one of those places, but not the only one by a long shot. Nor is it just women either – people with low cultural capital get blamed for the consequences of their so called choices all of the time. A horrible example, look what the president said recently “He knew what he was signing up for.” And no, I don’t just hear conservatives and that ilk saying this kind of thing. ON the other end of the spectrum the illusion of choice is often treated as if it is actual choice. It is wrong and it bothers me.