By David Futrelle
Apparently the sorts of dudes I write about on this blog are just out there in the real world, some of them dating women who have no idea about the fetid misogynistic notions rattling around in their boyfriends’ heads.
Take, for example the perplexed woman (or the extremely convincing perplexed-woman-impersonator) who turned to the Relationship Advice subreddit for help the other day after discovering that her boyfriend of five years doesn’t think women should be allowed to vote.
Because somehow this has become an issue for some men in the last several years.
“I’m so confused, I don’t know what to think” began the women, calling herself randomaccount1775.
I’m not even sure if this is the proper sub but I just feel that I need some advice.
In the time I have known him, my boyfriend has always fell politically independent, or so I thought. Politics was never an issue between us at all.
But then things took a little bit of a turn.
However he just admitted to me that over the past year he’s grown more and more extreme in his views, to the point that he believes women have ruined the country (we are American) and that they should not be allowed to vote.
This is basically the political equivalent of learning that your beloved is one of those dudes who smears his own feces on the walls in public bathrooms just for fun.
He says he did not feel comfortable telling me about this sooner because he thought he would lose me.
And hopefully he will.
I’m upset and I can’t tell if I’m wrong to be upset about this because I know that everyone is entitled to have their own views, but now I just feel as though he doesn’t even value my own input/views.
How fucked is it that she’s the one questioning herself over his terrible opinions.
He has assured me that he still thinks that I should be allowed to vote but that women in general should not.
Repeal the 19th Amendment! Except for my girlfriend, who might get mad and dump me like the garbage I am!
This is a person I have been with for almost 5 years.
SUNK COST FALLACY.
We’ve talked about marriage. I don’t know what to think. In all other aspects he is the perfect, most amazing partner, and I can’t imagine my life without him in it.
Start imagining.
But this suddenly has me rethinking about a lot.
Keep rethinking as you throw out this entire man.
Amazingly, she still worried that she was the one who was acting weird here.
Am I wrong to be questioning our relationship over his new beliefs? As his girlfriend am I supposed to be tolerant and respectful of his views even though I may (strongly) disagree? I can’t tell if I’m overreacting to this or not. The whole situation has made me feel terrible and I’m so confused.
Happily, enough people on Reddit assured the woman that she wasn’t the one in the wrong here that she decided — as she explained in an update — that she would “confront my boyfriend later this evening.”
There’s been no update since then; hopefully the confrontation ended (or will end) with him being shown the door. Or the window.
H/T — Twitter’s relationships.txt
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Okay, this is dumb. To Pyxxxie if he/she isn’t banned before reading this, and to any wannabe trolls/sealions who might be lurking:
While I cannot speak for certain for every last regular and semi-regular poster, essentially all of us have our views challenged in our daily life, and some of us frequently. Many of us grew up holding different views which were forced on us by the people in our lives, but were never comfortable with. Regardless, we’ve heard all the arguments many, many times… and rejected them.
You are not exposing us to new ideas. Your “truth bombs” display a laughably bad understanding of our views and ways of thinking. Some of the regulars will mock you and use you as a chew toy for a few days if you prove entertaining. And then comes the banhammer. We would expect no less, and in some cases worse, if we were to do the same in a site dedicated to views very different than our own.
We’re here to keep track of those we consider terrible, and mock their antics. We’re here to have conversations about subjects which would be difficult and time-consuming to have elsewhere, because they’re 301 level in subjects where most people are 101 level or even completely ignorant. Some of us are here to get some measure of respite from having our views constantly challenged – the occasional trolls/sealions can be ignored as idiots, and the regulars have no reason to do that.
So… fair warning. ⚠️
So Pyxxxie, having a well-established pattern of violating the comments policy and doubling down when called out on it, now reveals themselves as right-wing enabling libertarian.
What a shock.
Yeah, I’m joining the call for the banhammer.
I am a civil libertarian. That’s not equivalent to a laissez-faire capitalist. Chew on me I’m a jawbreaker!
??????
Peace/Out
Pyxxxie
You sure you don’t want to make a homophobic joke on your way out there buddy?
OK, that last gif just got to me. Do you jerks have any idea how much a window pane of that size COSTS?! And there was a double door RIGHT THERE!!!
Ahem. Excuse me. I need to take some deep breaths and a hot bath to relax. It’s just that waste of that magnitude really bothers me. You know these guys aren’t footing the bill.
Defenestration may be very satisfying, and definitely makes a good point, but it also makes a huge mess (glass shards everywhere! Who knows who might get injured should they step on it with thin-soled shoes, or God forbid, trip and fall right into the mess!), and it costs a lot to repair!
And there was a double door right next to that window! They could have either asked for someone to hold the doors open, while they tossed, or else each held a door with one hand, while they pushed him through with the other.
Plus, they just opened themselves up to multiple criminal charges, including assault and battery and property damage, and quite possibly wrongful injury of a passerby who has an accident involving glass.
I’ll bet these jerks are the same guys who think it’s fun to drop things off high balconies without looking to see if the sidewalk below them is clear.
Oh, yeah, and this woman definitely deserves a better boyfriend. She should DTMFA and find someone else. Even being alone is better than being with a misogynistic gaslighter (you know why she’s confused), who does the “oh, but I don’t mean YOU. You’re not like other women,” routine that is even more objectifying than lumping her in with all the other feeeeemales.
@Delurking
‘Bout $500 for that one.
@Pyxxie
You are a blithering ninny.
Civil libertarians and laizzes-faire* capitalists are not the same thing, true. However, civil libertarians, with their focus on ‘individual freedoms’, frequently enable laissez-faire capitalism. I just had to get that out. I’d say more but I’m totally exhausted and I’m not sure it would make any sense.
*my autocorrect keeps changing it to laissez-fairy. That would be so much more awesome.
@pyxxxie: I’m not so sanguine.
No, most authoritarians don’t want to live in North Korea. Or mid-40s Germany.
They want to live in Pinochet’s Chile. Or Suharto’s Indonesia. Or 30s Germany.
They want a fictional authoritarianism where the powerful “They” only come for the trade unionists and the Jews. Where it works.
This is actually a deep part of American conservatism. From how the Pauls and Larouche courted white supremacy on to how people on the alt-right flit effortlessly from libertarianism to anti-feminism to ethno-nationalism. (But never to liberalism).
One way of thinking about it is to look at how people behave, not at how they should behave if they had logically coherent worldviews. On paper, fascism and Randianism are utterly opposed. In practice, though, the right wing always has a constellation of ideas, from resisting the progress of women (whether that be by opposing anti-discrimination law on putatively libertarian grounds or just wanting to ban the franchise) to gun rights onward. There must be a psychological reason people tend to cluster their issues.
And there is. It is real simple when you think about it.
What does the Randian want? The few great men to dominate. What does the fascist want? The same thing. The story of the Randian ubermensch who has no empathy doesn’t end with their successful business. They’re not going to just stop at the point where they make voluntary exchange. They will become kings or Presidents or run little fiefdoms. They buy a private island and run it as a dictator.
Every right wing idea is an ad hoc rationalization to keep safety and power. Right-wing Libertarians are useful because they can justify not spending money on the poor. But when it’s time for Der Trumpuhrer to bomb a country? We can ignore CATO.
And we can test this. If you were right that most conservatives just want small government or something, then Trump would have turned them off day one.
Instead he won the primaries. And the Presidency. And even as Trumpism remains an ongoing joke and monstrosity simultaneously, FOX falls in line.
If you were right, then of the less than half of the population that is conservative, the majority of them (say, 60%) would have staunchly left him. That would be 30% of the population, enough to have a whole new party that would run someone like a new Reagan or Eisenhower or Nixon.
But… that isn’t happening. Trump never has 10% approval ratings. He can insult veterans, play at isolationist, effectively promise Medicare for All, build a huge wall, and sleep with porn stars. None of that costs him the base.
Because he’s an anti-liberal, like Gingrich put it. He’s obviously not a conservative.
It’s time to face the facts that low taxes and small government were never real things that conservatives wanted. Welfare opposition is best predicted by how racist you are. These are rationalizations to keep the status quo. And Trump removed the rationalizations and made naked identity politics okay.
The biggest white supremacist mouthpiece in the country is a former MSNBC correspondent named Tucker.
I agree there are principled conservatives out there. They aren’t the majority. They actually effectively do not matter. And if they do not vote Dem, Green or Lib this year, they remain fascist collaborators.
Civil Libertarian: One who goes on and on about individual freedoms, then votes a straight Republican ticket because taxes.
@Frederic Christie
He most absolutely is. He wants rich white men to keep running everything, or, in other words, to conserve present patterns of inequality and oppression. That’s what conservatives are, that’s what the word means.
@Delurking:
You do realize that that glass-breaking gif, if it was taken from a movie or television show, was most likely made of spun sugar–not *actual* glass.
So, no very little chance of injury…unless a person gets some in the eye (where the sugar melts)…or is diabetic–as I am
(and, yes, the very last part was snark, if I wasn’t obvious).
As to cost, not sure what the going rate 4 a piece of edible glass (another 1 of its names) that size would run. Dalillama might’ve called it right on the nose.
@ObSidJag
These days the pros use a kind of polymer instead, but I did check the prices.
@ObSidJag
The scene in that gif is from Beverly Hills Cop 2, just fyi.