Chris Brown, who’s convinced that he’s apologized enough for what he calls his “mishap.”
Over on his little chateau, otherwise known as a blog, the pick-up Heartiste Formerly Known as Roissy suggests a rather unusual role model for young and not-so-young men hoping to impress women with their alphaness: Chris Brown. Not for being a charismatic singer, but for that time he nearly beat Rihanna to death.
Oh, you don’t have to literally beat up women to be an alpha. Just work on making them uncomfortable and insecure.
Maxim #19: Making a woman feel a little emotional pain will reward you a thousandfold in returned physical pleasure.
You don’t have to be fists-of-fury Chris Brown to pick up a Rihanna and make her fall in deep, profound love with you, but don’t let the lesson of their relationship be lost on you. If you are a beta male — and odds are you are — you can superglue your relationship bond by instilling in your woman a calculated level of discomfort and insecurity. You won’t feel bad about this, because you will know that the discomfort you create is subconsciously DESIRED by your girl. Despite her outward appearance of frustration and timorous appeasement, you will know that inside, she is lit up like a vagina tree, with a squirting orgasm shooting out of the star on top.
In addition to everything else that is horribly wrong with this quote, let me just say that “lit up like a vagina tree” is not a phrase that I hope works its way into the vernacular.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, mgriff2k4 is angry that the picture to the right here showed up on his computer screen. Sorry, make that fucking angry. “Did this really just fucking pop up on my news feed?” he asks in the title of his post, adding in a comment: “sorry about the word “fucking” but im really pissed off about this.”
Why is he angry? Presumably, he assumes the statistic is untrue, and that it unfairly paints men as evil murderers.
Luckily, in this Age of the Internet it is trivially easy to find out whether statistics like this are true. It involves something called “Google.” mgriff2k4 did not bother to avail himself of this easy-to-use research tool.
But I did. In less than 5 minutes, I confirmed that this factoid is indeed true, at least according to the most recent figures on gender and homicide found on the Department of Justice’s web site, drawn from FBI data covering the years from 1976-2005. According to the FBI, 30% of women who are murdered are murdered by “intimates.” Roughly 20% are killed by husbands or ex-husbands; 10% by boyfriends or girlfriends. (In the overwhelming majority of cases the murderers are boyfriends, not girlfriends; men are ten times more likely to commit murder than women.)
While four times as many men are murdered than women, only 5% of murdered men are killed by “intimates.” Men kill women more than twice as often as women kill men. Women suffer far more serious injuries from domestic violence than men do; so it is not altogether unexpected that they are also far more likely to be murdered by intimates.
If you want to see what this means on a human level, I suggest you take a look at the excellent if depressing web site Domestic Violence Crime Watch, which links to stories in which men are the perpetrators, and in which men are the victims. There are far more of those in the former category than in the latter.
I should note that (as of this writing) one commenter in the thread also found his way to the DOJ site, and noted that men were more likely to be killed by strangers or acquaintances. But he didn’t bother to tell mkgriff2k4 that the sign in the picture was in fact accurate.
So the other day some of the fellas on the Men’s Rights subreddit were having a strange little conversation. One Men’s Rights Redditor posted a clip from Bill Burr, in which the comedian complained that when his girlfriend hit him, he couldn’t hit her back without getting himself into a lot of trouble.
Yep, that’s right. He wants to date other men so, if the need arises, he can punch them.
Naturally, this being Reddit, other straight dudes jumped in with their own fantasies about how much easier life would be if they were gay. After all, jacKofKats pointed out, dating a guy would mean you could play video games with the very same person you have sex with, something obviously impossible in heterosexual relationships.
Oneiorosgrip agreed with the original poster that life would be much simpler and easier if guys could hit their mates:
Dolanduckeroo expressed envy towards his gay friends, who apparently lead lives of ease and endless zipless fucks, all the while being appreciated for who they truly are.
A few actual gay men wandered into the discussion, hoping to inject a bit of realism, pointing out (among other things) that gay men actually face something called “homophobia” — look it up if you haven’t heard of it — pretty much every day of their lives. Naturally, they got fewer upvotes than the “wish I were gay” fantasizers.
You may have heard of, if you haven’t already seen, the stupefyingly terrible film The Room. The film is so bafflingly inept and nonsensical that you’re hardly surprised to learn that writer, director, and star Tommy Wiseau had never made a film before; indeed, you might find yourself wondering if he’d ever even seen a film before.
The Room (released, barely, in 2003 and available on DVD) is a mawkishly melodramatic, and deadly serious, drama about a man betrayed by his fiancee, which Wiseau has been trying to market as a quirky comedy because no one can watch the film without laughing at his hero’s travails. Rent The Room if you want to stare dumbfounded at your TV for an hour and a half some night. Seriously, rent it.
Seeing it for myself the first time not long ago, I was struck by the manosphere-style misogyny that pervades almost every frame of the movie. It’s not an MRA film, and Wiseau is no MRA, but somehow he manages to encapsulate every terrible stereotype about men and women that most MRAs seem to believe.
The film tells the sad story of Johnny (played by Wiseau), a good-hearted, long-haired banker with an unclassifiable accent who is betrayed at work (he doesn’t get his expected promotion) and, more importantly, by his “future wife” Lisa, who blithely cheats on him with his best friend.
Lisa is portrayed like the evil bitch villain in nearly every MRA urban legend: she’s a self-absorbed twit who, in addition to cheating on Johnny, falsely accuses him of domestic violence and fakes a pregnancy just to fuck with him.
Johnny, meanwhile, is supposed to be seen as a loyal, helpful, compassionate man who cares deeply about his friends and treats his adored “future wife” Lisa like the princess he tells her she is.
I say “supposed to” because Johnny is hardly the great guy Wiseau thinks he is. For one thing, everything he does and says is bit … off, as if his body has been taken over by a space alien who’s learned everything he knows about women (and human interaction in general) by reading comments on Reddit and watching Christopher Walken as “The Continental” on Saturday Night Live without getting the joke.
For another, he’s a rage-filled narcissist with a bad case of “nice guy” entitlement and absolutely no self-awareness. When his friend Mark tells him about a woman beaten so badly she ends up in the hospital, he responds with a hearty laugh. (“What a story, Mark!”) And when he confronts Lisa about her false accusations of domestic violence (“You are lying! I never hit you!”), he angrily shoves her down onto a couch. It doesn’t seem to occur to Johnny (or to Wiseau) that this too is a form of domestic violence.
When, after learning of Lisa’s betrayal, he trashes their apartment and [SPOILER ALERT] kills himself with a conveniently located pistol, Wiseau presents it as the ultimate comeuppance to the cruel Lisa.
While you have to see the whole film to truly appreciate its epic badness, the following clips will give you some idea of what I’ve been talking about.
First, the trailer, which tries its best to cover up the film’s true weirdness:
The infamous “roof scene” in which Johnny tells Mark (the guy Lisa is sleeping with) about Lisa’s accusations of domestic violence:
A compilation of some of Johnny’s best (i.e. worst) moments:
This one (ignore the misleading title) gives you some idea of Lisa’s oblivious evilness:
Here’s Hitler reacting to the film. (Note: Not the real Hitler.)
And here, if you dare, is the whole damn movie in its entirely. (If you’re pressed for time, you may want to fast forward through the film’s five completely unerotic sex scenes, set to the worst slow jams ever recorded.)
EDITED TO ADD: Oh, and here’s the scene the gif above is from. Johnny is the most efficient flower buyer and pug-petter in the world.
I wanted to reveal just how twisted these men can be in the pursuit of their agenda so I came up with a story they could not resist. …
The spermjacker trope is irresistible to “men’s rights” activists because they believe they are perfect Darwinian examples of masculinity and as a result are irresistible to the hormonally irrational schemers that make up womankind. Narcissism and misogyny collide to make a toxic brew.
Oh, and I added the twist that this man punched his girlfriend so hard in the stomach that she bruised. Surely such fierce proponents of “gender equality” would not support violence against women. Right?
Well, we all know how that turned out. Ineedhelpnow1234/the blogger Eschatology continued:
The “men’s rights” movement is morally bankrupt. It is made up of people who support hitting women. It is made up of people who refuse to say it is wrong to hit women. It is made up of people who are so paranoid of women that they think people actually talk like this:
You fucking bastard, how dare you punch me for what I’m entitled to! Call me the minute you get this god damn message or I’ll call the fucking police and end your future. CALL MEEEE.
Attention MRA’s: You have all exposed yourselves as rotten human beings and you have discredited your movement (again). …
I wrote this story by stitching together nearly every cliche I have ever come across in the “men’s rights” movement. I tried to see if the MRAs had any line they would not cross. Apparently they do not. Looks like the SPLC made a good call.
He panicked and hit her. Sure he should have just have restrained her and took the condom out of her hands but we’re human and its not like he continually beat her into a pulp.
Yep, no big deal, “its not like he continually beat her into a pulp.”
The comment containing that line got 11 upvotes, and zero downvotes.
The Men’s Rights Movement, beyond the pale — but also beyond parody.
EDITED TO ADD: The Men’s Rights regulars respond to the big reveal here. They are apparently determined to learn absolutely nothing from the whole episode. At the moment this is the most highly upvoted comment:
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: Ineedhelpnow1234/Eschatology posted about this in the TwoXChromosomes subreddit, Naturally, a small horde of r/mensrightsers invaded the thread and pooped all over it.
Oh, boy. So that almost certainly imaginary “dude punching his spermjacking girlfriend” story in the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day? The one that inspired all those Men’s Rights Redditors to totally defend the (alleged) puncher?
Well, now Jezebel has weighed in on the subject as well. Erin Gloria Ryan raises a few questions about ineedhelpnow1234’s implausible tale, and about the dudes who not only believed it but got all enraged at the imaginary punched girlfriend:
Where does this legend of the sperm swiping madwoman come from? And why won’t it die? Why are men’s rights activists so willing to believe that in a world practically dripping with sperm, women specifically want theirs so they can be pregnant and possibly farty for 9 months, stretch their skin out, and go through childbirth in order to control the men in their lives?
Apparently, at least one Men’s Rights Redditor is a reader of Jezebel, because he went and posted a link, explaining that
I normally try to stay neutral as best I can in matters relating to the men’s rights/feminism debate, but this has me grinding my teeth.
So this is what feminists think about one of our most pressing issues.
Presumably he is referring to the extremely pressing issue of girlfriends who flee the bedroom after sex, clutching used condoms and shouting that “I’m finally going to get the baby I deserve,” and how they totally deserve to be punched in the stomach so hard it leaves a bruise.
YadaYadaYada2 certainly has a flair for the dramatic, doesn’t he?
Men’s Rights Activists, so emotional!
EDITED TO ADD: I sort of started arguing with the regulars in the comments there, and Glarfugus set me straight on the nature of my sins against the Men’s Rights subreddit:
You quoted accurately, the problem lies where you quote perfectly sound posts and talk about them like they’re ridiculous. You address punching a woman in the stomach as though it’s something of high crime. I’m not saying it’s something that’s right, but punching someone in the stomach in a panicked situation where you have a risk of being fucked by the court system for the next 18 years? Reasonable action.
I put my favorite part in bold. The stuff about punching women is pretty special too.
