By David Futrelle
Today’s bit of weirdness comes from the online cringe warehouse known as the Am I the Asshole (AITA) subreddit. It’s a post from a woman who says her boyfriend threw a tantrum because she told him she wouldn’t (hypothetically) trade her vagina in for a penis.
Because this is the sort of thing some people argue about, I guess.
He’s obsessed with Jung, you say? You know who else is obsessed with Jung? Jordan Peterson. I’d bet anything that Mr. Boyfriend is a secret Peterson stan. (I mean, assuming he’s real; this is Reddit, after all.)
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@Naglfar the whole reason anyone has heard of Peterson is his public stance on Canadian Bill C16, which added gender expression and gender identity as protected grounds to the Human Rights Act, and to Criminal Code provisions dealing with hate propaganda, incitement to genocide, and aggravating factors in sentencing. Peterson claimed the bill would force him to do things like use people’s preferred gender pronouns or risk hate speech charges, and this got press attention. This led to a bunch of people deciding to pay a lot of attention to a previously obscure psychology professor. Legal experts stated that his claim was nonsense.
He is offended because he wants others to envy him, because he considers his dick to be the most important part of him. He is undoubtedly correct, girlfriend. Tell him whoop-ti-doo, most men have one, then go on your way and don’t look back.
While I have seen one or two pretty dicks in my life time, I much rather prefer my vagina. That’s my cis privilege though by being lucky enough that everything matches up with my gender identity.
Hmm. I think either he was fishing for a compliment of his dick or he was hoping she’d offer to make use of his somehow, is my guess, and he felt like he was treated rudely when she didn’t fill the expectation.
while we’re on the subject with everyone sharing how they feel about their privates, on one hand I’d happily trade my bits for a dick and balls if I could, because trans. But also I have an ugly feeling, given my upbringing by a couple of staunch religious conservatives, that I might easily have wound up being one of the featured entitled “galaxy brained” bellends on this site, so…
Well that’s just weird.
Kick him in the nuts, and then ask the question again.
One of John Varley’s characters in the Titan series is raised in a lesbian space colony, but after experimenting decides even if it’s queer, she likes men. Observing her male lover , she wonders what it would be like having your organs all exposed and vulnerable like that, and concludes she’d probably spend her life bent over in a defensive crouch (it’s set in a rather hostile environment).
In the 2006 movie “She’s the Man” Amanda Byrnes plays a girl pretending to be a boy so she can play on the school soccer team. In one scene she gets drilled in the genitals by a soccer ball, and the players all wince , then gaze in wonder as she is relatively unaffected. She remembers who she is supposed to be , and dramatically falls writhing to the ground, while the others look on in sympathy.
@ galanx
Always found a football strike (yes, I’m British) in the solar plexus more immediately disabling than in the nuts during school sports.
Obviously the BF thinks peen > vag and is upset that his GF doesn’t agree. Vaginas are terrible and flawed, but don’t you DARE suggest his penis is anything less than 100% perfect.
It’s not that he literally wants her to have a dick, it’s that he wants her to envy his and acknowledge it as inherently superior. That’s red flag #1. Red flag #2 is him storming off and patronizingly leaving her to “think about” why he’s right and she’s wrong, on something that’s purely a matter of opinion. As if he’s her father.
Maybe it’s just me, but personally I wouldn’t want to be with someone who didn’t have a sense of humor about their genitals. Sure, they can be awesome, but let’s face it, they can also be weird and annoying and sometimes embarrassing. It’s a little pretentious to demand they be treated as the mighty emperor of the universe.
I’m with Buttercup. I think he’s offended that she won’t agree he’s superior.
Being grossed out by periods and vaginas is horribly normalized in our culture. The one time I asked my brother to pick up some tampons for me he freaked out and apparently nearly died of embarassment. Boohoo… Anyway, as many others, I grew up with constant negativity about my “interior plumbing”. But cis men aren’t used to this kind of body shaming, so when someone suggests that having a penis might be uncomfortable and undesirable, it’s a huge shock to their male ego.
The alt-right is going after journalists now:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/07/neo-nazi-swatters-target-dozens-of-journalists/
Great. We now have a Cyber SA acting as street enforcers for the regime. The fascism clock just moved another minute closer to midnight.
Anyone want to lay odds that the first name on the CNN list is Acosta?
@Nina:
Does your brother also freak out about buying toilet paper? Because that’s for a purpose almost universally agreed to be gross.
Sounds like he expected his GF to jump on his misogyny train and hate on menstruation and vagina/uterus havers and was shocked when his planned little joyride backfired.
@ David
Sorry, could you delete my post on this thread please, I didn’t mean to put an email address there.
@Moggie
One would think so, but since men also do it, it’s apparently no problem.
Seconding @Buttercup on this score:
Seriously, you kinda have to have a sense of humour about it. Being a bigger guy, I can certainly attest to how toxic body insecurity can be. But you remember that we’re all different shapes and sizes and that’s totally okay.
Incidentally, I have a book called Dick For A Day: What Would You Do If You Had One?, a literary anthology where numerous feminists seem to make the assumption that if you have a dick, you’re automatically down to fuck or just want to pee standing up (the means of getting said appendage vary, from magic to an operation that grafts a dick over what is already there). I’m really not sure what the book is trying to say.
Also one of the short stories is a story where an amorous dog rapes and kills his owner. From the point of view of the dog. Just…what?
@Nina:
Well. You know your brother and I don’t, and your judgement of him is undoubtedly correct, but the impression I have from other men is that the problem they have with shopping for tampons is not so much about being grossed out, more a combination of the “unmanliness” of buying feminine products and general cluelessness (“what if I buy the wrong thing, and she makes me feel like an idiot?”). In other words, you’d get much the same result asking a guy to shop for cosmetics.
@Ikarikid:
That… how does that even make sense in terms of canine behavior? I mean, animal mating doesn’t usually end in death, certainly not for the partner that’s likely to go on to birth offspring. And dogs are pretty social and affectionate creatures.
@Ikarikid the Dumb:
Umm… Do the writers self-identify as feminists in the book? Because that is a really weird strand of feminism.
How can you not. I mean, just LOOK at the damned thing! If that’s not worth a laugh or two, I don’t know what is.
@Ikarikid
Not to judge your reading habits or anything but… why do you own that book?
In case anyone is interested in purchasing the book that has been discussed (no judgement), it can be bought in paperback form for $11 US on Amazon. It has 4 stars, so evidently people enjoyed it.
https://www.amazon.com/Dick-Day-What-Would-You/dp/0679773533#mediaMatrix_secondary_view_div_1564416064097
A quick Google search also reveals a lot of discussions online about this very topic, including a number of Reddit threads and online surveys.