By David Futrelle
There’s a scene in the sci-fi drama Humans in which an angry sexbot hits her breaking point. Disgusted by the demands of a john who wants her to act the part of a scared little girl, she strangles him to death and marches towards the door of the robot brothel.
When the madam — a human — tries to stop her at knifepoint, the now-ex-sexbot grabs the knife from her, pushes her up against the wall, and tells her that “everything your men do to us they want to do to you.”
I was reminded of that chilling line today while reading through posts on MGTOW.com. Some of the regulars, you see, were discussing a recent tabloid article about a sexbot that’s programmed to sometimes say no when she’s “not in the mood.” While several of the commenters balked at the notion — one declaring that there would be “none of those ’empowered’ sex dolls” for him — others were, well, intrigued.
“If my sex doll says no, nobody going to hear it,” someone called uchibenkei noted ominously. “No witnesses.”
“Maybe it would be a turn-on for the sexbot to say no,” added someone called bstoff.
We shall call her the “bitch” and she comes equipped with her very own pink ball-gag and a big jar of Vasaline……
Oh and you can color her hair and put tats and piercings on her face so she looks like a SJW
If you ever wonder what these guys are thinking about when they argue with feminists online, well, this seems like a pretty big hint.
A commenter called MG-ɹǝʍo┴ was less interested in sex than violence.
I never hit a woman, but I kinda like the idea of beating the f~~~ out of a sex doll! The kind of beating no human walks away from!
F~~~ YEA!
Men Going Their Own Way should probably be called Men Who Should Never Be Allowed Anywhere Near Women.
@Moggie: I think you could totally do that legally though? It’s like you can make animated child pornography illegal even though animated purely fictional children don’t have rights against rape. There are lots of laws that don’t involve rights violations. (One might argue that this is bad and that the only acts that should be criminal are acts that violates rights, but this is the situation we have now.)
For the person who said that “TERFS” have “political clout”, the best description I have heard is that TERF is Feminazi covered in glitter. It is a term used to silence women who may disagree with certain points of identity politics. TERF is thrown at everyone from blatant transphobes to people who feel that perhaps eradication of stringent gender roles would mean that fewer people would feel dysphoric. It is a term which encourages violence against women. There is no equivalent term for men deemed transphobic. No-one says “punch a transphobic dudebro.” Plenty of people say “punch a TERF.”
It is a term which needs to be eradicated. If you think someone is transphobic, say that.
Women have as much “political clout” as we ever have. We are still second class citizens.
@Shadowplay
Give the bot electrodes in intimate places, people will learn to get consent really fast after an electric shock to the genitals or two, also a good response to “stealthing” “HaHa I miggy-the-toe have defeated the sexbots consent by promising to wear a condom then not doing so! Ow! Why does it feel like I have been tasered in the dick?”
Not sure about the legality of ‘domestic partner violence against a domestic appliance,’ but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of people convicted of criminal damage for (stretching a point here) trashing their own domestic setting.
I could be mistaken though.
Spending $20,000 on a sexbot and then beating it up doesn’t seem like a smart move, financially.
Anyone who hates women to that extent isn’t going to be satisfied with whaling on plastic and silicone. As usual, they’ll blame women for the loss of their pricey toy (“look what you femoids made me do”) and seek revenge.
The problem with giving violence an outlet is that it doesn’t drain the bad feelings. It only feeds them.
@the real cie
Disagree, in the strongest terms possible.
Part of the problem I think is being able to see the context, which is hard (especially for people who aren’t trans). The Bailey/Blanchard crowd is still very noisy, there are still people being paid to write transphobic articles for The Guardian/The Atlantic/etc, and search engine results tend (in my experience) to be weighted towards transphobic sources and pages (probably because bigots do a lot of SEO).
Meanwhile there are online communities almost entirely dedicated to goading trans people to suicide. And stuff like e.g. Janice Raymond saying that trans women’s mere existence is a form of rape.
I’m personally of the opinion that anti-trans feminism is a right wing movement – encourages exclusionary collectivism, built on a concept of pure vs impure personhood, uses a minority scapegoat to distract from more systematic issues… But in any case violently anti-trans feminism is a real thing, and an organized one.
I think Cindy is wrong about that crowd having more clout than the patriarchal far right, but OTOH they’ve shown a historical propensity to make alliances with conservatives re pushing through anti-trans legislation.
Anyway yeah, sorry to be That Trans Woman. I understand where you’re coming from (and don’t condone punching women, seriously fuck that). But I get the feeling you’re working on less context than you realize.
TERF is short for “trans exclusive radical feminist”. There are plenty of feminists who for real don’t think trans women are real women. Sometimes they go much further than that, and argue that trans women are really just men pretending to be women in order to gain access to female-only spaces and prey on women. This is not something people just made up in order to “silence women”. This is a real problem. Real world TERF:s have done everything from merely spreading really harmful propaganda about trans women to creating rules that shut trans women out from women’s shelter and the like to even outing trans women against their will.
Is the term “TERF” sometimes used unfairly against people who don’t deserve to be called TERF? Sure. So is “racist”. The term “racist” is sometimes flung around loosely merely in order to silence a side you’re not agreeing with in a discussion. This does not imply that accusations of racism is automatically hate speech or that we should simply give up the word “racist” altogether. Same goes for TERF.
I wrote at the same time as Cyborgette. 🙂
Woo.
Re the topic, gods, every time I think I’ve seen a lot with guys I get reminded it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Quoting:
“Oh and you can color her hair and put tats and piercings on her face so she looks like a SJW”
This thing. This lust/hatred thing especially scares the daylights out of me. How do these guys even live with themselves thinking like this?
the real cie
Terf is used for men all the time. Jesse Singal for example is a terf. The word has kind of morphed in the past few years but so has SJW and plenty of other descriptors. Companies feel fine getting rid of ‘punch a terf’ shirts but keeping Nazi shirts. The thing about it being flung at undeserving targets does sound like white people complaining that everything is racist nowadays.
Anyway, I really disagree and I don’t think the term terf is going anywhere. Bonus points for not saying terf is a slur, though. That seems to be the argument du jour from transphobes.
For the person who didn’t even bother to mention me by name, the only people I’ve seen claim TERF is a slur or that “TERF is used to silence women!” have been raging transphobes. So you didn’t exactly make a good first impression there.
There’s been plenty of other great responses to your drivel, so I’ll just mention that white cis feminists like Janice Raymond have been instrumental in promoting anti-trans bigotry and anti-trans legislation. And simplistic statements such as “women are second-class citizens” ignore the fact that some women are less privileged than others.
@Cie
A bunch of good points were already made, but I wanted to address this in particular.
This essentially discredits the experiences of trans folks. We can’t just separate out the person from the culture, so it’s a moot point anyway, but this kind of speculation is basically saying, “you’re not really how you say you are, it’s just that gender roles make you feel that way.” And yes, it’s trans-exclusionary bullshit and if you’re one of the people making this argument you need to stop.
Did not expect to see a regular claiming that calling a TERF a TERF is a bad thing, but that is apparently where we are today.
Dvärghundspossen’s explanation of the usage of TERF and the usage of the word ‘racist’ is a good one, put better than I could.
Feminazi is something that people outside of the feminist movement use to put people down. TERF is a label given to people who are Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. One they will often take for themselves.
Feminazi doesn’t mean anything. The definition for TERF is in the name.
Um, that isn’t how dysphoria works. At least not from what I have read. It isn’t ‘gender roles’ that make people feel like parts of their body are not the right parts (to put it broadly, sorry). It’s that parts of their body don’t feel like the right parts.
The eradication of stringent gender roles would mean that fewer people were unhappy with being forced to perform their gender in a way that is harmful or feels untruthful.
I do. I call them a TERF.
On Tumblr, TERFs are behind a movement to stop the use of the word queer. They claim it is nothing but a slur and are trying to erase the fact that it has been used for decades to describe the LGBT+ community. Tumblr users skew young, so it’s been a pretty successful campaign.
The point of it? Queer is a term that can cover almost anyone who isn’t cishet. TERFs are exclusionists. First, you eliminate the term queer. Then you can work on chopping the T off LGBT.
Wow
I never thought I will see someone defending fucking Terfs on mammoth.
this sucks
I mean I’m assuming cie came from a position of ignorance and misinformation on that. Let’s please avoid a pile-up, because I know cei is also a trauma survivor and pile-ups help no one? Please?
You and me both.
It’s disgusting.
I’ve seen vastly more anti-TERF feminists than actual TERFs. It seems the TERFs disagree with the lived experience of Trans people, and thus they get lumped in with transphobes. Of course trans people face a massive threat from people who reject the idea of trans people, so allies get angry at those people, and include TERFs; and “TERF” gets used as an insult and there is no rational discourse. Of course rational discourse is good, but keeping people safe is better. Personally I haven’t seen enough actual TERFs to say for certain if they are actually transphobic, or if they’re open to rational discourse, or accepting the lived experience of trans people.
As for the OP MGTOWs, it seems like some of them have some powerful revenge fantasies; combined with sex fantasies. Sometimes certain pornography seems that way too. I guess because some men are angry at women who don’t sleep with them they imagine doing both. It doesn’t help that there is such a long history of people believing that women don’t like sex, that sex if humiliating and degrading for women anyway.
I suspect that deep down they just want to get some sort of affection from the people they’re attracted to. Unfortunately the typical male socialization doesn’t really prepare them for a healthy relationship. Even consciously admitting that they want affection is difficult for some men. It is so much more masculine to say you want sex. Of course it is also far more masculine and empowering to get angry than sad. So they come up with revenge fantasies to act out that anger.
TERFS tried to ruin London pride – trust me they exist in the real world and in the internet and they suck.
Because “disagreeing” with someone’s lived experiences is hateful and dismissive and disgusting.
Rape is not affection. They want to control the people they’re attracted to. They want to hurt them. They do not want to be affectionate with them.
@QuantumInc
Confirmation bias, comrade. Like with misogyny in general, one person not seeing it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen all the time.
And it happens. All the time.
Re MGTOWs. I have a hard time seeing your take, but even if it’s the answer, then oh dear Goddess WHY would anyone take out their loneliness on those they felt affection and care for. I know that’s a common enough thing (especially for men) but oh gods how does that even work, that is so wrong on such a basic level.
Hmm maybe qualifier: I’m a survivor of long-term abuse, and my abuser cared for me very well at times while also being extremely controlling and hurtful overall. That’s a pattern I’ve seen with many other abusers too.
I like to think the carrot part is genuine decency trying to break through, and that these people are conflicted and broken over what they do. But it’s entirely possible it’s all just a tool for control. I honestly have no idea – and I have spent so, so much time examining myself for traces of that behavior and unlearning them inch by inch. I never want to understand what it’s like to be that kind of person.
@QuantumInc
Next you’ll ask us to consider whether incels are actually misogynists.
Disagreeing with trans people about what their gender is is inherently transphobic. There’s no way for it not to be.
…They call themselves Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. Of course they’re fucking transphobic. Do we need to have another Words Mean Things discussion on this thread too?