By David Futrelle
Misogynists really seem to hate women with tattoos. I’ve always assumed that this is because tattooed women don’t exactly fit their fantasy of the demure tradwife hottie who will happily devote her life to making them sandwiches and washing their probably very disgusting underwear. Or maybe, I thought, they’re just intimidated.
But apparently I’m completely wrong about this. Turns out that tattoos on women aren’t a symbol of female agency; they’re a sign that the, er, merchandise has already been sold. To some sort of evil wizard.
That’s the thesis, in any case, of this random dude on the Braincels subreddit, home to Reddit’s increasingly restless “involuntary” celibates.
Well, that makes sense. But wbat about men with tattooes? Sadly, Mr. Concerned-father2 offers no guidance on this subject, so I guess we’ll never know.
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Perhaps the worst thing about this is that the OP is called ‘concerned father’.
Replace the ‘concerned’ with controlling and it is more accurate.
Let me correct that title: “Tattoos on women is a matter of poor choice”.
So, fixed it for ya…
@better safe than sorry
Well its either that or my rapist actual bite mark stays on me for the rest of my life. Also go fuck your self you piece of shit.
So I have five tattoos, done by four people. How much of me does each artist get? Do the newer tattoos supercede the older tattoos? Does size matter? If I brought the design to the artist is it less binding than a design the artist created? One of my tattoos is the red vw microbus from Alice’s Restaurant – does that give Volkswagen a claim on me, or just Arlo Guthrie?
Saw this on Reddit
Well, I’ve got the long straight hair. Maybe I should get a tattoo and piercing just to be safe?
Dammit, that post was supposed to be deleted, since it didn’t work out. Well, you can see it here.
My purchase of a tattoo on my birthday last year is one of the boldest statements of self-ownership I have ever made. I grew up in a subculture where tattooing was absolutely forbidden* because “your body is a temple to God.” Silly analogy, if you ask me–what kind of temple doesn’t have any artwork? It took me a long time to grow from “Tattoos are sinful and horrible” to “tattoos are trashy” to “tattoos can be sort of okay” to “some tattoos are amazing, but I would never get one” to “I wish I were brave enough to get one” to “I’d get one if I knew what picture I wanted” to “I KNOW WHAT PICTURE I WANT.”
(It’s a bee stylized in Celtic knotwork, btw)
* The old white dude in charge had a tat, but that was “different” because “he was in the Navy.” Of course.
I’m smelling some serious cognitive dissonance here.
Either that, or I’m not galaxybraining correctly.
You might think, it’s not even misogyny, it’s lunacy. “Women shouldn’t get tattoos, but men can” is misogyny. “Women who get tattoos are owned by the tattoo artist” is insanity.
But in fact it is mostly misogyny. The assumption is the tattoo artist is male (which most are). Note that *men* who get tattoos are not made slaves. It is *only* women who can be magically made slaves by men.
Personally, I tend to find people with piercings or tattoos more attractive, at least to a point. Also, neo-Nazi tats are right out.
Think that one might be the other way around, i.e. only stupid people wind up in the incel community.
The sort of thinking that goes into this gives me a headache. And if this is at all true, I belong to, in order:
A stoner kid who’s name I can’t remember from high school
An apprentice at my neighborhood tattoo parlor
Freddie Corbin, the owner of that neighborhood tattoo parlor who did a design outside his normal comfort range for me because I always popped in to say hi to them to make them feel welcome when the shop opened up in the neighborhood, so when I decided to get my circuits done (I grew up steeped in cyberpunk as the future I didn’t want, but saw coming towards me) I went to him.
I would not say it’s insanity or lunacy to think that, but more an extreme version of creating a worldview adapted to your opinion instead of using what your sense tell you.
Notice how all thoses fantasy are alway in their favor.
Anonymous, please abide by the comment policy.
As I finally got my long thought about tattoo three weeks ago (and I love it!), this post feels very personal right now.
But their thinking does feel internally contradictory. Women shouldn’t get a tattoo because it marks them as property of the artist. But they already believe women are the property of men, so why would indicating it be a problem? Oh wait, I know, it’s because women are the property of all men, so the artists are stockpiling women for their own nefarious reasons. Presumably that’s where the black magic comes in. And of course when incels think “all men”, they don’t actually mean the dictionary definition. They mean them. Cucks, betas, soyboys; there are an astonishing number of men they don’t include in the category of “all men”.
Oh for pity’s sake.
@Lainy
Thank you for sharing your story. I’m so sorry that happened to you. You are an inspiration for how you’ve recovered and reclaimed your body and its beauty as your own. *Applause*
@Karalora
That sounds lovely. My design also includes a bee!
And here I thought incel was supposed to mean “involuntarily celibate”
@LindsayIrene
Apparently, if you have a long straight hair, it means you are a witch. ? What kind of hair are women supposed to have, that would be considered appropriate by these dudes, exactly?
@Valkyrine
Naturally wavy golden tresses falling just past her shoulders, obvi. 🙂
Long enough to get their hands on it. 🙁
@Valkyrine
It’s almost like when they go on and on about how they should be getting sex from women, what they really mean is they should own women.
@ Lainy, do you know about Spin Pins? I swear by them. Like little metal DNA-helixes for your hair. ?
https://www.amazon.ca/Goody-Simple-Styles-Assorted-Colors/dp/B003FVDNO6
Oh my God, if you don’t mind me barging into your conversation, I looooove spin pins! I wear a French twist maybe one day out of three, and it takes like two minutes, and I am terrible at hair. So great. Seconding that recommendation.
@Bookworm in hijab and Viscaria
I did not know about spin pins actually! that looks really helpful. See my mama has short hair so she didn’t really know a lot of styles to put it up with. She didn’t have a lot to teach me about hair or make up because she didn’t wear or do much with either. Which is fine, I don’t mind. That was good for me because I think it helped me not have the same insecurity about my face like it did other girls when I was growing up. Nothing wrong with makeup. But I just knew a lot of girls that would actually feel bad about themselves if they left the house without makeup on like there was something wrong about their face as it is.
Anyways so I was taught how to put it up by another dancer who used this tool called perfect bun. I recommended it to anyone that has trouble because it makes it so easy for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJJvQzJdgWY
@Weatherwax
Thank you for saying that. I find it easier to talk about some things because it helps a lot of people when I do. I have a flower on my arm near my wrist for my grandma, who I looked up to and loved very much. I’ve got a blue and black butter fly on my side that I drew myself. It’s got two little circles on the wing with a dime and penny on either side which is something special for me and mama, and it says unbreakable will in tiny letters under it. Then on my thigh it’s a little rose and says Matthew 5:30, which is a bible passage that helped me a lot as I dealt with the healing process.
“and if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee. That one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
I took that to mean ( since it is a sins to get tattoos but hey a lot of things are sins.) that since my scars are causing me such pain and that’s leading me down a path of distress and causing me to do other horrible things to myself. Like cutting myself, self medicating with drugs and alcohol. Which in turn was hurting the people that love me so much, it’s better to take steps to get ride of them then it is to just deal with. And I’m sorry about the long comment I just wanted to talk about it.
So… if I get a tattoo, I become the property of the artist— so why do I also have to pay them money for their work?
@Catalpa:
That’d be either a rental/lease situation, or possibly an indentureship. Make sure you read the fine print first.
I just asked my wife if she could remember who did her tattoos, and all she could recall was that he was Scottish.
So if anyone comes to the door with a Scottish accent saying that she’s his property, I’ll just have to meekly agree and hand her over.
Incidentally, she got her tats very soon after splitting up from her first husband.
I’ve been wanting two specific tattoos for years, but because of reasons, I probably won’t ever be getting them.
It makes me sad, because I was also raised in the ‘tattoos are for bikers and criminals!’ culture, and the ‘but what will you think when you are old and wrinkled?’
It took a long time to work through that, but I’ve decided that my skin is my skin, I can do with it what I will. I get scars from little cuts, and no one minds, why can’t I get something that I actually want?
Also, when I’m old, I’ll be wrinkly all over. Society tells me that by that point I’ll be useless, so I might as well have some cool stories to talk about.
I don’t see me ever being a person who would choose flash off of the wall (but maybe, who knows). I think I’m too afraid of not liking the end result to do that. I need to think about something for a long time. Then, even if ‘the reason I got it’ isn’t true any more, it will be a reminder of who I was at the time.
(this might also be something where I’m going “YEAH I’D TOTALLY DO THAT!!!” and then the reason stopping me is removed and I’m suddenly less sure hahaha. Oh dear.)