So WF Price and the rest of the fellas over on The Spearhead are doing a little bit of armchair psychoanalysis of the dreaded “male feminist” in general, and me in particular. It is fairly amusing stuff.
If you observe genuinely feminist men, there’s something a bit off about them, and it’s tempting to chalk their feminism up to a result of some flaw or aberration in their character. Normal men (aside from those whose paycheck depends on it such as politicians and men who work for feminist-dominated institutions) simply don’t go in for feminism unless it gets them sexual gratification, but those days are pretty much over, so the remnants tend to be an assortment of freaks and guys who have a chip on their shoulder.
“But those days are pretty much over?” Evidently, Price thinks there was a time during which women were obligated to reward feminist men with “sexual gratification,” but that this is no longer the case. So “normal men” have stopped being feminists, or at least stopped pretending to be feminists.
So what are these freakish feminist men of today really getting out of it?
Longtime Friend of Man Boobz Ozy Frantz, cofounder of the No Seriously What About teh Menz blog, is writing a book with fellow NSWATMer Noah Brand about men and feminism titled, naturally, What About the Men. The first chapter, written by Ozy, is up on the Good Men Project web site, NSWATM’s (sort of) new home. It’s even got footnotes, and illustrations by Barry Deutsch!
Ozy explains the book’s central aim:
We live in a sexist society, one where gender programming starts at birth (though the advent of the sonogram has allowed parents to get a head start by painting the nursery pink or blue and stocking up in advance on gendered toys and clothes) and is so pervasive as to be inescapable. Feminism has done an excellent job analyzing and challenging the ways that these assigned and enforced gender roles damage and deform the lives of women. The same tools of analysis can be applied to the damage and deformation that men suffer. And that damage, sad to say, is severe.
Yes, that says “CLICK TO HIT HER!”
Meanwhile, over on The New Statesman, Helen Lewis looks at the continuing harassment of Anita Sarkeesian, the women who dared to ask people to donate money for a video series on sexism in video games and thereby unleashed a misogynistic shitstorm.
One of the most disturbing examples of harassment: an online game in which players are invited to “beat up Anita Sarkeesian.” Lewis censors some of the images, but not others, so let me just put a TRIGGER WARNING for depictions of violence against women, including a grotesquely photoshopped “beaten up” Sarkeesian. Anyone who thinks Sarkeesian and her supporters were making too big a deal of the harassment needs to go look at these images in Lewis’ article here. (The game itself, posted on Newgrounds.com, has now been removed.)
Again, this is all because Sarkeesian asked people to donate for a video project. If they felt like it was worthwhile. That’s all she did. And this is what she got in return: someone so angry that Sarkeesian was pointing out sexism in video games that he literally sat down and made a game inviting angry internetters to “beat this bitch up.” Irony doesn’t even begin to cover it.
[A]nyone who thinks that feminists who push back hard against online harassment are being oversensitive needs to understand that we’re all trying to keep ourselves from becoming Anita Sarkeesians. No matter how strong you are, and no matter how much support you have, this kind of concentrated campaign of harassment affects the targets of it. And the goal of these campaigns is to terrorize people into silence. It’s not disagreement. It’s not creative trolling. It’s deployment of a weapon.
But it’s just as important to point out that Sarkeesian wasn’t silenced; in addition to helping her raise much more money than she had originally asked for, those who attacked her simply reinforced (and helped to further publicize) the argument she was making — in the case of the “beat up Anita Sarkeesian” game, quite directly indeed. The cowards and assholes who try to shut down feminists online with this sort of harassment are not only losers — they’re losing.
Sorry to return so quickly to the fetid mind of MRA blabologist JohnTheOther, but, well, you’ll see why I have.
Here is Mr. TheOther in AskReddit, responding to the question “Women of Reddit, how do you feel about cumshots?” (No, he is not strictly speaking a “woman of Reddit,” not like that’s going to stop him.) Enjoy the irony of the A Voice for Men second banana rehashing, apparently with utter sincerity, an argument once set forth, rather infamously, by a feminist fellow named Hugo Schwyzer. And enjoy the also-very-special response from fellow MRA SuicideBanana, whom we met earlier in the week.
I know Mr. TheOther is concerned about people “quote mining” comments, and presenting them out of context, but in this case, there is no further context. His comment, which I have presented unedited in screenshot form, isn’t in response to any other comment; it’s simply an answer to the question I alluded to above. Mr. TheOther does respond to SuicideBanana’s remarks about him being an advocate and facilitator of violence, as you can see if you clicky click here, but sheds no more light on the issue of porno cumshots as a “pseudo-mystical representation of the sexuality of the viewer.”
Men’s Rights Activists regularly complain that it is mostly men who serve in the armed forces, and that it is mostly male soldiers who are killed and injured in service to their country in wartime. MRAs also complain that, in the United States, only men have to sign up for the draft – though this is more of a formality than anything else, as the draft has been dead for decades and there is virtually no chance of it being resurrected any time soon.
MRAs love to cite the dominance of men in the armed forces as a prime example of what they call “male disposability,” and somehow manage to blame feminists for it all.
But it’s not feminists who are trying to keep women from becoming soldiers, or serving in combat. While some MRAs support the idea of women serving in the army, and having to register for the draft the same as men do, many others scoff at the very notion of women as soldiers, mocking their alleged female “weakness” and in some cases denigrating the service of women now in the armed forces as being equivalent to attending “day care camp.” (Not exactly.) These MRAs may complain that men bear the brunt of the costs of war. But they don’t actually want women to serve.
Not that it makes much of a difference, because the MRAs who do supposedly want women to share the same responsibilities as men aren’t doing shit about it. You know who is? Feminists. The National Organization for Women, while opposing the draft, has long argued that if registration is required of men, it should also be required of women. NOW has also opposed the ban on female soliders serving in combat. (Not that it’s easy to draw a clear line between combat and non-combat positions on the contemporary battlefields.)
Do you want to know who is opposing them – aside from the Pentagon’s lawyers? Take a look at some of the comments posted in response to a Los Angeles Times article on the lawsuit. Note: The quotes below are pretty egregious; some deal with military rape in a really offensive way. (Thanks to Pecunium for pointing me to them.)
These aren’t “cherry-picked” from hundreds of comments; these are the bulk of the comments that were left on the article.
Are any of these commenters MRAs? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly their misogynistic “logic” is virtually identical to that I’ve seen from misogynist MRAs opposed to women serving in combat. One thing they are clearly not is feminist.
If MRAs, or at least some of them, truly want a world in which men and women share equally in the responsibilities of military service (and both have equal opportunties for military leadership), they need to challenge the misogynists — within their movement and without — who argue that women simply aren’t fit for the battlefield. And they need to support the feminists who are actually trying to make a difference — instead of standing on the sidelines crying foul.
I don’t hold out much hope that this will ever happen. MRAs are much too enamored with their fantasies of male martyrhood.
Just a little heads up for any of you in the Chicago area: I’ll be speaking at Northwestern University on Monday, as part of its annual “Sex Week.”
My topic? “How to hate women and have terrible sex: Misogynistic sex myths, and how they ruin sex for everyone.” Nice Guys, Friend Zones, and the Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel will all make appearances.
The talk will be at 8 PM in Room G02 of Annenberg Hall on the Northwestern Campus in Evanston.
Sex week is sponsored by the College Feminists; I’m talking at the invitation of Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault.
I’ll be writing the lecture over the weekend, so please feel free to offer suggestions as to which misogynistic sex myths I should talk about.
EDITED TO ADD: The Spearhead has discovered that I’m doing this talk. W. F. Price writes about it with his usual objectivity, by which I mean that his piece is filled with lies and weird projection.
I’m not even sure if I’ll be putting up a tree next year.
That said, Martha Marcy May Marlene is an awesome movie. You should rent it and eat cupcakes.
In the meantime, let’s celebrate International Women’s Day the right way. With a gif of Maude Lebowski saying “vagina.”
EDITED TO ADD: In case anyone is wondering, I have no idea who did that graphic; it’s floating around on tumblr. I found it courtesy of unknowable woman.
Reddit, in a nutshell. An example of the sort of hilarity you will find on the brand-new Man Boobz on Tumblr!
The Man Boobz Empire is expanding into new territory. Namely, Tumblr, with the grand opening of Man Boobz on Tumblr! I will be using the new platform to plug posts here, to blog and reblog about interesting stuff beyond what I write about here, and of course to post more pics. Like the one here, which is a fairly accurate summary of way too many discussions on Reddit and elsewhere on the internets. Will there also be pics of kitties? Yes, yes there will.
There’s a big social justice/feminist contingent on Tumblr, and this will help to reach them, and also to relay some of what they’re talking about to you all. It’ll also allow me to respond to stuff that’s going on a lot more quickly.
Also, while we’re talking about Tumblr: Alexander Ryking, that misogynist Tumblr dude we were talking about the other day? He’s been removed as a politics editor on Tumblr. Ta da!
So, butt sex. In a recent posting on Jezebel, Hugo Schwyzer notes that heterosexual anal sex is now more popular – or at least more prevalent — than ever. According to one study he cites, some 40% of women age 20-24 report that they’ve tried it.
Obviously, many women love love love it – check out Toni Bentley’s engaging if possibly a little too enthusiastic buttsex memoir The Surrender if you don’t believe me. But Hugo wonders if some women are getting pressured into it. And it’s a reasonable concern, especially now that more straight guys have come to expect anal sex as a regular part of sexual relationships. Indeed, Hugo quotes a couple of young women who say that, yes, guys are constantly trying to cajole them into going to “5th base.”
Fending off anal sex? Really? Are we as men to believe that? If truth be known it is often and still remains the prerogative of women who she will have sex with (as much as a man may attempt to influence her decision) let alone anal sex. That a woman is somehow forced to accede to this demand strikes me as presumptuous and lacking in the understanding that as much as men often control the financial shots of a relationship (but that too is changing) it is often women who decide if and what type of sex will occur or not (otherwise it would be rape).
Uh, yes, I would hope that women always, not just often, would decide who they have sex with, and what kinds of sex they have. Same for men. That’s the way consensual sex works: everyone involved in it gets veto power. Otherwise, it would indeed be rape.
Scallywag, I would recommend that you go back and read the basic rules of sex before engaging in any more of it, much less something as advanced as anal.
As for Hugo, well, after asking that good question, he wanders off into some weird paternalist nonsense about anal sex being
yet another manifestation of the pressure on young women to focus on performance rather than on their own pleasure. … Perhaps the greatest incentive to do anal is the chance to prove the all-important capacity to endure pain. … [F]or most (certainly not all) young women, pleasure doesn’t seem to be the point.
Also, some people enjoy pain as a part of their sex life, at least when it’s inflicted safely and consensually. Sex is a messy and complicated thing, and you’re not going to get very far in understanding it if you project your own preferences and assumptions onto others with rather different preferences and assumptions about sex.
Hugo goes on to complain further about what he sees as the “sheer physical hurting that young women are expected to endure in order to meet the contemporary cultural ideal.” Somehow in his mind this includes not just painful waxing and the model-thin beauty ideal (a real issue, obviously) but also … sports:
Girls play more sports (and suffer more overuse injuries) than they did two decades ago. … On the soccer field or in the beauty salon, this generation is expected to prove its toughness as none before … .
Really? Maybe girls and women are getting more involved in sports these days because they, er, want to? And because they have more opportunities to get involved in sports these days because of, you know, feminism?
It’s one thing to worry about people – male and female – being pressured into conforming to social ideals or into sex or specific sex acts they don’t want. But it’s another to assume that girls’ and women’s choices are never really choices because patriarchy! Assuming that girls and women are playing more soccer, or going to “5th base,” mostly because they’re being pressured to is really kind of, well, assy.
On that note, enjoy this song about butts and coconuts.
WARNING: Do not actually put coconuts up your butt. For safe anal play, only use objects with a flared base. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown fame has a great piece up at In These Times on the ways in which the Internet has helped to highlight virulent and violent misogyny — and inspire effective feminist pushback. It’s actually kind of … inspiring? (That’s a word I don’t use often!) Here’s the opening:
When a history of 21st-century feminist activism is someday written, 2011 may be labeled Year Rape Broke. Sexual assault and harassment have, of course, always been key feminist concerns. But in 2011, sexual violence, exploitation, or intimidation were part of nearly every major story that fell under the heading of “women’s issues”–and the activism against it has been particularly widespread, focused and effective.
As we enter this renaissance of sexual assault awareness, it’s worth considering the ways in which new media has informed it–and, indeed, perhaps even made it possible. …
The other day Holly Pervocracy, a friend of Man Boobz with her own awesome and sometimes NSFW blog, drew the picture above, which is her best rendering of what the world apparently looks like to one of this blog’s resident trolls, a rather untraditional traditionalist named David K. Meller. On the left, an example of a fine, upstanding traditional woman, dressed in a proper ladylike manner and concerned with ladylike things (e.g., cooking and kitties); on the right, a foul feminist.
This got me thinking: are there any videos online that depict both cats and bats? This being the internet, the answer was of course yes. So I present to you a kitty snatching a bat from the air. Kitties are fucking amazing.
Here’s another video, involving a cat and a different kind of bat.
EDITED TO ADD: Bat cat!!!! (Thanks, Katz, in the comments.)
