misogyny – Page 290 – We Hunted The Mammoth

Q: How many Men’s Rights Activists does it take to screw a Fleshlight?

A: That’s not funny!

So what emotion did you feel when Christine O’Donnell’s bizarre anti-masturbation video first started popping up on cable news and the intertubes? (If you haven’t seen it yet, pop over here and return when you’re done.) Did you feel amused, annoyed, befuddled, perhaps concerned that someone so wacky could possibly be voted into office? Did it make you horny, baby?

For the men’s rights blogger behind the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech blog, there was nothing funny about the video. “They’re Afraid of Men Masturbating,” he wrote in a piece also published on the The Spearhead, warning fellow men to beware the dark specter of the mysterious “they” — he never quite specifies who this is — trying to get between men and their hands.

Watch the youtube video and take note of the end. Except for a token guy, it’s a group of women. O’Donnell even says about her presumably future husband masturbating, “If he already knows what pleases him, and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?” This quote exposes the undercurrent behind anti-masturbation attitudes. It’s not so much anti-masturbation but anti men masturbating. People against masturbation have a fear that men might actually have an alternative to women. …

When it comes to a woman who … is planning on trying to control a man through providing a minimum of sex, then she has a lot to worry about when it comes to men realizing that their hand will do more for them than a woman will.

And how will the evil “they” control men? Not by clamping their hapless partners’ junk in a stylish new CB-6000 Male Chastity Device. Not by drawing litlte moustaches on all the pictures in their porn stashes. But sneakily, insidiously, through “shaming language.” Religious conservatives like O’Donnell will open up their Bibles and start talking about Onan. Others will smirk and call men losers.

“When women use vibrators they are praised for taking control of their sexuality,” he complains. “When a man uses a fleshlight he is attacked for being a loser who can’t get laid.” The ultimate goal? “[T]o protect the pussy cartel from competition” in the form of fleshlights, virtual reality sex, and the comforts of their own hands and a bottle of lotion.

Yes, he did just use the phrase “pussy cartel.”

So, yeah. Here’s the thing. The reason the sex-positive feminists and the Samantha Jones’ of the world describe female masturbation as liberating is because, for many women, masturbation is still a source of deep, deep shame, so much so that many are too skittish or uneasy to even try it. While getting reliable info about sexuality is difficult, most studies of the subject indicate that men masturbate far more than women. (No duh.) One 2007 survey found that 95% of men had masturbated at least once in their lives, while only 71% of women had. More than half of men surveyed had masturbated in the week prior to taking the survey; only 18% of women had. Heck, I jacked it twice while writing this paragraph. I’m not afraid!

And here’s the other thing. When people call you a loser for shacking up with your fleshlight instead of a warm, living, flesh-and-blood woman, they’re not really making fun of the masturbating.

No, they’re making fun of you for being so wholly objectionable to any sane woman that you’re left alone with only your hands and your sex toys. They’re making fun of you for being the sort of person who uses the phrase “pussy cartel.” They’re making fun of you for being such a crazy misogynist creepazoid that you’ve actually managed to convince yourself, at least for the amount of time it takes to write a blog post, that your “hand will do more for [you] than a woman will.”

Is that shaming language? I suppose it it. That blog post was, well, pretty shameful.

EDIT: Some less-than-careful readers of this piece have somehow concluded that it is anti-masturbation, or at least anti-male-masturbation. It is not. Guys, masturbate all you want. In your bedroom, in the living room, in front of your pets, wearing a hat, wearing a dress. I don’t care. Masturbation is healthy, normal, and oftentimes highly entertaining. I have been known to masturbate myself. My critique was not of masturbation but of guys who actually think that Christine O’Donnell’s loopy remarks, which even she is backtracking on, mean that a “pussy cartel” is trying to stop men from touching their wieners.

EDIT 2: The target of this piece offers a response that suggests, among other things, that he really can’t read very well. But he assures us that he actually is getting laid, so yay for him on that.

Hey, fellas! Let’s just take away their right to vote!

Oh dear. The Men’s Rights movement often seems like a giant He Man Woman Haters Club. But generally the cleverer of the MRAs go out of their way to deny outright misogyny. Oh, we don’t hate women, just feminists. We don’t want to take away the legitimate rights of women; we just want equality, with neither side getting special rights at the expense of the other.

But then there’s this dude. In a recent post on the popular men’s rights blog The Spearhead, a guy calling himself ramzpaul argues, with utmost seriousness and sincerity, that women should be denied the right to vote. Let me repeat that: he argues that women should be denied the right to vote.

The post is titled “How Female Suffrage Destroyed Western Civilization,” and, yep, he means it. (He’s also got a version of the rant up on You Tube. He sort of reminds me a bit of Stephen Merchant, if Stephen Merchant were an insane American reactionary woman-hating freak.)

It’s a weird, rambling diatribe, but after some swipes at Cultural Marxism and Google (which offended his sensibilities by mentioning the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment on its home page), ramzpaul gets to the heart of his, er, argument. Borrowing some odd notions from a 19th-century anti-suffragette Madeline Dahlgren, he argues that allowing women to vote divides the sexes, creates discord in the family, and destroys marriage. He wraps it all up thusly:

The people opposed to female suffrage proved to be right beyond their wildest predictions. As Google was celebrating the 19th amendment, a British newspaper detailed the boasting of a 26 year old woman who claims to have had sex with 5,000 different men. If Madeline Dahlgren were alive today, I am sure she would have understood the connection between female suffrage in the West and the decline of civilization.

Single mothers, rampant divorce, abortion and falling birth rates are part of the cancer that is destroying what is left of Western Civilization. But very few people (even conservatives) fail to realize that the inception of this cancer can be found in the passage of the 19th amendment.

I’m not even going to bother to refute any of this, which is so mindbogglingly stupid it refutes itself.

But what’s even creepier than this little essay is the response it got on the Spearhead: 191 comments, at last count, mostly offering enthusiastic assent. Yep. Almost everyone there agreed with every word of this nonsense. Here are a few of the choicest nuggets, all of which were massively upvoted by the denizens of The Spearhead:

Womens’ suffrage, unbound by corresponding responsibility has helped the west to become what it is today. Bankrupt and heading into ruin.

For the first few hundred years of this country men held the top wrung of political authority. They discussed with their wives what would be in their best interest as a family, not what was in the best interest of a giant socialist goal. The government was subordinant to them. Now a days the government holds all the power, the women answer to Big Daddy Guv and men are subordinant and accountable to everyone. Women’s sufferage has not improved anyone’s lot in life.

Women have been given too much power. And what have they done with they squander it. Create unnecessary laws. If women didn’t vote, the country would be different. There wouldn’t have been same sex marriage. Men wouldn’t be cheated out of their own homes and children. There would have been a lot more native born people here. No abortion.

But it isn’t all the fault of the evil wimmenz:

While feminism and women are largely responsible for the collapse of the West, men had a role to play as well. Feminism would have never taken root and grown if it weren’t for the scores of beta males who just gave in to the demands of women and feminists. We men should have put our foots down and said “No”, but we gave in to the pussy power. Thanks to that, we have the situation we’re in now.

Another commenter made the same point a little more, er, bluntly:

It is amazing how men become manginas where some pussy is present. When you discuss some topic about the relationship between sexes and you try to introduce MRA arguments, you have the women AND THE MEN against you. … This is the problem of the West: there are no men anymore, only little babies that are scared of Mommy getting angry with them. Feminism has revealed the true nature of women: “ME!ME!ME” and the true nature of men “PUSSY!PUSSY!PUSSY!”

Amazingly, a few women actually agreed with the article as well:

A repeal of suffrage would appeal to those “very few responsible women” the most. It wouldn’t shock them, as they are already discussing it seriously. I’d be grateful to give up the vote if all of the Girl Power types had to give up theirs, as well.

And again, from the same woman:

Here’s the practical reason why female suffrage doesn’t make good sense: When men vote in favor of their own economic interests, the women attached to them benefit. When women vote in favor of their own economic interests, they are more inclined to divorce their husband, so the men do not similarly benefit. Money should flow primarily through the husband, then everyone gets enough and the marriages are stable.

Oh, a tiny handful challenged this craziness, but they were downvoted into oblivion. I had to click a little link to see this comment, from someone calling himself barsin:

This is the laughable lunatic fringe of the far-far right wing that unfortunately always tries to attach itself like a disgusting parasite to any movement for men’s rights, eventually killing it. No reasonable human being even a conservative would touch this poisonous shit you’re spewing with a ten foot pole.

Yeah, what he said. At least that last bit. I’m rather in favor of the Men’s Rights Movement self-destructing through its own idiocy and insanity.

EDIT: Just to point this out to anyone who doesn’t get it: By talking about a particular bunch of MRAs who think that women shouldn’t be allowed the right to vote, I am not suggesting that every single MRA, or even most of them, believe this. But the response to the Spearhead article does pretty clearly indicate that there are way too many of them who do believe it.

There are several discussions of this article now taking place on Reddit. Check them out.

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