By David Futrelle
A quarter of a century ago, in his seminal The Myth of Male Power, Men’s Rights Activist Warren Farrell warned hapless, horny males of the danger of “miniskirt power” — that is, the hypnotizing power of shapely female asses, which devious women can apparently use to have their (financial) way with men who ostensibly have more power than them. Damn those conniving harpies and their short, short skirts!
Today, men — well, horny straight men anyway — face what some consider a far more insidious enemy: Yoga pants, the allegedly comfortable lower-half coverups popular with the devious, man-exploiting harpies of the current age.
Well, the brave souls of the Men Going Their Own Way movement are having none of it. Here is the MGTOW case against yoga pants, based on my perusal of several dozen recent postings on the subject in the MGTOW subreddit.
Make sure not to laugh at any of these, as the threat of yoga pants is very, very serious and not just some ridiculous crap these guys have come up with to make themselves feel like they’re being oppressed by women who won’t date them they REFUSE to date.
Yoga pants are so tight it’s like these sluts are walking around naked and basically it’s sexual harassment because biology makes men perpetually horny.
“Wearing yoga pants to work is sexual harassment,” Baldrbaldr complains.
And the bullshit about “men just needing to control themselves?” Well, it’s bullshit. Men can’t but become seriously distracted when half-naked women prance around them. It’s the way we’re made. It’s biology. So fuck off, you bare assed bitches. We’re working.
“Females are an expensive, unknown distraction,” adds fcb98292, sounding a little bit like Jordan Peterson. “I require segregated offices.”
Actually they make women look better than they look naked, which is somehow worse than looking like they’re naked because it’s a LIE or something.
“You don’t know what they look like naked,” greenleefs informs his fellow MGTOWs. “Those pants lift and squish together.”
Yoga pants enable women to use their ass power to extract wealth from hardworking betas and sex from Chads.
As one [deleted] commenter sees it:
The yoga pants is to show off their ass so that Chad and beta bucks (depending on which they are stalking) will drool on himself while he throws sex and cash at her.
Yoga pants are basically HiDef streaming porn videos.
Raisins3142 explains:
I think in part they are trying to compete with high speed internet + free internet porn.
Sometimes fat ladies wear them and, ew, gross.
As ilikerelish puts it:
There should be limits to where they are worn, and there should be a WEIGHT LIMIT for wearing yoga or legging pants.
Bing_Bang_Bam is similarly outraged that “[e]ven fat cows that have rolls and folds that shouldn’t even be there” wear yoga pants — a true “[c]rime against nature.”
Sometimes skinny old ladies wear them and you’re tricked into thinking that they look hot and this is very confusing
Hegend1999 laments those times “[w]hen you see a good ass in leggings and she turns around then you see that she’s like 70yo…”
Iqbal40862715 is similarly confused that he finds himself attracted to very much older women.
Yoga pants are a net nagative. They make everyone look good and it’s a total mind fuck.
Saw this 80 year old broad in a bathing suit the other day at a pool. She was probably an Elvis groupie in the 50s/legit perfect 10. Now she is cute and in good shape but wrinkly and old.
Goes into a bathroom to change Puts on yoga pants meets up with the grandkids and sure enough looks awesome.
Apparently women in yoga pants can jump right over that mythical wall they’re all supposed to hit at the age of 30 or so.
They’re not actually comfortable
“They aren’t comfortable,” asserts LJHova, “that’s just the excuse they use to convince themselves they aren’t whores.”
.They smell like ass (probably).
“I call them stink butts,” SirLonius explains.
You know women wear them multiple times before washing them and just a thin layer between butthole and the outside world.
They enable women to easily engage in casual workplace frottage with hunky dudes
According to Jcart105,
It’s comfy when Chad grinds his cock separated by the [layer] of his pants and thin layer of her yoga pants in the middle of work.
Er, what?
Seeing women in yoga pants is sort of like seeing attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or something.
Global_MGTOW sheds some tears in the rain:
I’ve seen it all already. I’ve seen women wearing a see through shirt in a very public place with thousands of people, including children, showing off her rocket tits implants. I’ve seen girls wearing mini skirts so small that you can constantly see their panties with zero effort. Seen obese landwhales wearing yoga pants with the words “JUICY” written across the back.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Ok, I added that bit from Blade Runner at the end. Because, you know, these guys aren’t melodramatic enough already — and trying way too hard to convince themselves and each other of the existential horror of, basically, tight sweatpants.
Seriously, dudes? Seriously?
Oh sure, now it works ?
@kupo
How is the link example you provided earlier in the post different from the one that actually posts the video?
Now the same mob is targeting another woman in the industry the same way
https://twitter.com/HazelMonforton/status/1015610099702943745
What makes me have a bit hope, in the recent case, the reactions on twitter are a lot better to read, mostly “We stand with you” and she doesn’t seem to be afraid that her employer will fire her.
The mob will continue to use tactics if they work, so that is one way to first studio made it worse for workers.
@Valkyrine
I used some HTML trickery (escape codes) to male WordPress parse it as text instead of a link, so that I could show what it should look like. 🙂
@WWTH
I was worried about her when I saw this: https://twitter.com/HazelMonforton/status/1015161882204917760?s=19
@kupo
It’s weird, it seems like the video won’t embed when the edit window is still open, even when you do it right.
Embedding video all seems like black magic to me. I can never tell for sure what I’m going to get.
Eh, I was going to make some halfhearted grumbles about men in lycra, and about how in the hot sunny weather that’s happening in my part of the world right now there are a lot of men who are simply topless regardless of their bodyfat percentage, if you can believe that.
J kinda derailed the original plot though, so never mind.
Death doesn’t absolve an asshole of being an asshole. It is also a good time to remind an asshole’s asshole friends that their assholery will not be magically whitewashed away when they, too, shuffle off their mortal coils, and that they might usefully take steps now to ensure that they don’t get remembered for being assholes.
Ghoulish, you say? Presumably you consider tone trolling to be a virtue.
It’s trolling to think that celebrating the death of human beings is a bit macabre. Like, sorry I guess but I wouldn’t even do that if I heard that my own abuser recently passed. Like if dancing on someone’s grave helps someone cope with how that person hurt them then that’s their business.
Darn edit disappeared, but no she shouldn’t have lost her job over that either.
Not everyone responds to abuse in the same way, and tga t doesn’t make someone a bad person to be glad someone abusive has left the world and cannot continue to abuse them. I did celebrate when my abusing grandpa died. Because he abused my grandma, all of their kids, and all of their grandkids. And you use the way someone responded to abuse as an excuse to shit all over her. So regardless of whether you’re trolling (a pointless distinction antway), You’re being really toxic.
And you’re just completely ignoring most of what people have said to you and that’s pretty awful, too. You just expect to be able to move on to a new thread after shitting all over a woman for having the audacity to speak her mind a couple of times. That doesn’t fly here.
What did she say that was so bad? The only thing I’ve seen is something along the lines of “I’m glad Total Biscuit isn’t around to abuse more people.”
I thought the same kind of thing when Anonin Scalia died. Little did I know what would end up going down in the SCOTUS in the future, but at the time I was relieved and although I knew it wasn’t the kindest thought in the world, it was also reasonable based on the information I had.
I mean, if Price had been picketing his funeral or taunting TB’s loved ones, that would be out of line, but I’m just not seeing why the outrage over what she said unless of course the whole point was seeking an excuse to come after a woman in the gaming industry. Am I missing something here?
Nothing? I just said I find that kind of behavior disturbing but she’s free to do it if she finds it fitting.
That’s the core of what I said. I find the behavior (not the woman) to be disturbing. If someone feels justified posting something like that then go for it. It’s not like people need my permission to do so and I don’t have to feel like I’m garbage for not finding pleasure in the death of another.
Like, there is no outrage, like, at all? Unless you’re trying to take me to task for what gamergaters and their sock-puppets do during one of their abuse campaigns. what they did was wrong and extremely pathetic to use sock puppet accounts.
If you’re suggesting that I’m unwelcome then that’s not a big deal. Just say so.
Then why bring it up in a conversation about how she shouldn’t have been fired? I’m genuinely curious why you’re in here, on a feminist blog, calling a woman’s rather mild comment about something that has nothing to do with you, ghoulish.
I’m suggesting that you shouldn’t say a bunch of crap, ignore getting called out on it, and then continue on like nothing happened.
It was just a comment made in passing about a subject that was brought up. I mean, I’ll try to be mindful in the future that there are good reasons for people to celebrate a death and not say anything. I won’t be sorry for my feelings on it though.
And, if I may just be totally frank. you keep saying that I’m ignoring what people have to say here and I get all up in my feelings because it’s all just embarrassing.
The thing is, in when a woman gets harassed out of her job by an angry mob and she’s in an industry which is known for angry mobs targeting women, coming into a conversation about that and criticizing the woman, especially using words like “petulant” and “ghoulish” come off as harassment apologia. You may not have intended that, but that’s the effect because people who do engage in apologia for harassment will bring up the victim’s real or perceived character flaws to excuse it.
I would really suggest you search the gamergate tag on this site and read not only David’s posts on this subject, but the comments as well. We had a seemingly endless parade of GG trolls who did this very thing. A lot. Like, really, really a lot.
I think I kinda understand where you’re coming from. I should have been more aware of what people have to deal with here. Ugh, I don’t really have a defense at all on that one.
Maybe you’d feel better if you actually addressed the things that we’ve said. Otherwise, don’t expect us to be nice or friendly or give you the benefit of the doubt because you’ve very clearly shown that a) you don’t view women as fully human and b) you don’t care what kind of harm you’re doing when you waltz into a conversation and vomit your opinions all over it.
On the subject of responding to deaths, I have found myself conflicted over the recent passing of Steve Ditko.
On the one hand, he co-created Spider-Man, one of my favorite superheroes and an influence on my personal philosophy. (“Witch great power comes great responsibility,” or as I put it “Capability equals obligation.”
But he was also an Objectivist who created characters (like Mr. A and the Question) to act as mouthpieces for his Objectivism. And Objectivism is a philosophy that regards people like me as “parasites” that should be left to die… and the people influenced by that philosophy are in positions of power. So Ditko’s Objectivist evangelizing has hurt, and probably will continue to hurt, many people.
And yet I feel like there is something wrong with my not mourning him the way I have other comics creators whose work influenced me.
@ allendrel
Rorschach in Watchmen is Alan Moore’s take on Ditko.
How can you possibly be so meaaan to j when he has said such heartfelt, apologetic, and totally not halfassed statements like:
(I’m a bit curious about how one “kinda totally” does anything, though.)
Not to mention how he definitely thinks that while he personally finds celebrating a person’s death to be distasteful, it’s totally their own business and doesn’t mean that the person deserves to be harassed or fired and how it’s totally a comment he just made in passing and totally isn’t used to justify anything, as he makes clear in this statement:
@Allandrel, Alan:
I will give Ditko at least some benefit in that he was one of those rare beasts of being a fairly honest Objectivist. He took an inherently incoherent ‘philosophy’ and actually tried to make it coherent and live by it.
This is the guy who refused the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award after Canadian publisher Deni Loubert (who had earlier published collections of his work through Renegade Press) had accepted the award, saying “Awards bleed the artist and make us compete against each other. They are the most horrible things in the world. How dare you accept this on my behalf.”
He was at least significantly less hypocritical than most Objectivists, including Rand herself. Granted, that’s damning with faint praise.
I thought Objectivism (and libertarianism) were supposed to put everyone into dog-eat-dog competition with everyone?
@Allandrel:
That is a dificult situation.
I will be not said if some people, who I think are a danger to a lot of lives, die. Nobody should feal bad about that.
I also love Spider-Man.
So Ditko was one of the creators I didn’t research much about. I know and sometimes liked the Question (but more of the Justice Leaguecartoon and some DCComicsversions, which aren’t so extrem I heared)
There is also the fact that you have to devide creator and creation sometime if you can. (Lovecraft for another example, who inspired some great writers, has a lot of influence and was problematic as hell)
I liked Dixons Batman (and Family) comics but won’t buy anythink he writes ever again.
@Alan: And Moore was pised that people saw Rorschach as the hero of Watchmen, he completly hates him.
@Surplus to requirements:
I thought Objectivism (and libertarianism) were supposed to put everyone into dog-eat-dog competition with everyone?
This is what I’ve always thought about Objectivism and its philosophical and political offshoots too. I mean, didn’t we already cover this with Hobbes? Nobody has yet been able to explain to me why this was a good idea. For starters, even if you are young, strong, healthy, in the talented tenth and in the correct racial, religious, ethnic, gender and social orientation ‘norm’ combinations, not to mention born fortuitously in addition to all of that, many of these things can be taken away with any one of a number of strokes of bad luck. This is a philosophy that says life is only for the lucky and the strong and we can clearly see where this is getting us.
@weirwood
Yet I’m on a feminist blog having to explain why it’s not cool for yet another woman to be harassed out of her job in the gaming industry because she was accused of misandry.
The following actually happened to me and if anyone here knows what I should have done to combat this years ago, please don’t stay silent.
I worked for a European pharma company that has a large presence in the US. About halfway through our fiscal year, my European boss came to me and said that a colleague was drowning under too much work and would I help. Of course. The colleague was male, European, in the main office and second in command. Not that it even occurred to me, but no probably wasn’t an option in terms of response.
I got my work and my colleagues work done too and had a cost avoidance of hundreds of millions of dollars and had the studies running efficiently. The fiscal year ended and the department assistant was doing the performance metrics for the year. The first draft of the report showed all of my work as mine. The second draft didn’t. I of course asked the assistant what was going on and she told me that out boss told her to move the studies in question from my completed list to my colleagues. I tried to argue with the boss, but it was clear that this was the way it had to be. I was given a nonsense explanation that European contracts had to be counted in Europe – even though this wasn’t true across the board.
Then, insult to injury, some weeks later there was a big meeting via video conference for both departments. At the end of the meeting it was announced that my colleague was getting a ten thousand Euro bonus for his fabulous work and the WORK I DID was specifically referenced! I live in a glass face and I am sure my shock showed even though I tried to hide it. (Oh and I checked, my initials as the worker of record? yep, still on all of the hard copy and computer files.)
Within half an hour of the meeting ending, I had gotten semi-panicked visits from my two American bosses and a call from my European boss trying to figure out just how upset I was and explaining why what had happened was really all right.
Then came my review a few days after that and there was the whole “areas of improvement” thing and it was all both ridiculous and ugly. Even with those studies removed? I’d still out worked everyone in the department. And it was intimated that if I didn’t play nice that I might be fired. One of the things that was said to me over and over was that the European colleague was a man and had responsibilities and a family so I had to be understanding. Accusations of misandry weren’t explicit but they were definitely there, couched more as women have forgotten that men support other people.
Then a few months after that, I was diagnosed with cancer and that ended all of this. So, women being harassed out of their jobs, accused of misandry, doing other people’s work and not getting credit and the ever popular mansplaining to a woman who is more expert and experienced in whatever it is? This is a place where I have complied many times but it has left residual resentment.
Do I even have to comment that my colleague whose work I was doing was, as another colleague put it “as useless as tits on a boar hog”? And somehow I was considered the expendable cog?
To challenge this at the time, I would have had to either make a formal complaint with HR, dicey at best or go to the head of Research and Development for the entire corporation, a man I hesitated to approach directly because even when I was sixteen years younger and more naive, this man lit up every intuitive sensor I had and I felt I would need a platoon of long spoons to survive any direct dealings with him. I did nothing and then it no longer mattered but it still burns me. The same way reading about this woman being fired burns me.
So, if anyone is still reading this, what could or should I have done?
@Skildfreya is right. Internalized misogyny is a part of all of us. It is and has been incredibly painful (but also healing and liberating) to examine my own. I just resent that I have reactions and opinions that really weren’t chosen but were more akin to programmed.