We Hunted The Mammoth
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By David Futrelle
With another month-long-week coming to a close, I thought I would take a few moments to share with you some of the feedback I get from, well, let’s just say these guys aren’t exactly fans.
By David Futrelle
So I recently ran across this perplexing little cartoon — apparently the English version of a Spanish-language original by cartoonist Mimundo Alex — on a MGTOW Facebook page.
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This graphic is the top (unstickied) post on the Men’s Rights subreddit at the moment. Like that Warren Farrell quote I wrote about last week, it’s yet another example of a familiar claim made by misogynistic Men’s Righsers — that men are world’s true heroes, sacrificing themselves for the good of women too lazy or cowardly or whatever to stand up for themselves.
What a year!
The Men’s Rights movement, the most important human rights movement of the 21st century, got 2012 off to a flying start in February with an event in Bozeman, Montana that was quite literally attended by no one. After that, the year was a whirlwind of activity. Let’s go to the timeline:
Is there anything in the world that Paul Elam can’t blame on feminism? Apparently not.
In his latest post on A Voice for Men, Elam reports on a number of health problems he’s been dealing with – or not dealing with – for years. You see, despite chronic troubles with his gall bladder and with his breathing – which led to many ER visits over many years – Elam refused to get his gall bladder removed, or to give up smoking. For a while, he confesses, he was alternating puffs of cigarettes with hits from his Albuterol inhaler. But after numerous health scares, he reports, he’s finally dealing with his underlying issues, getting his gall bladder removed and weaning himself off the cigarettes.
I’m not going to mock him for any of this. Lots of people – especially men – have trouble pushing themselves to get the medical help they need. I’m one of them: the last time I went to the dentist it was because one of my teeth had gotten so rotten that a chunk of it broke off. There are a lot of mostly not-very good reasons I procrastinate about getting proper treatment for my health reasons, from simple denial to lack of funds. (Though, as I have sadly learned, waiting to go to the dentist until your teeth start breaking apart in your mouth does not actually save you money in the long run.)
Lots of guys won’t go to doctors because, as guys, they’ve been raised to believe they should grin and bear whatever pain they face. That’s one of the reasons feminists tend to criticize traditional notions of masculinity.
But for Elam, the problem is … feminism:
We live in a misandric culture, and often times, when we are scared enough or motivated by some other powerful force, we find that the root of the hatred is in the mirror staring back at us and mocking.
We men are raised with a sense of shame for having any needs. We are told, in fact, that we already have everything, and largely don’t deserve even the most basic of our needs for dignity, respect and love. If you look around in medical literature long enough, you will even see them shaming us for not going to the doctor more. Feminists have even used our tendency to neglect ourselves as a good reason to go full steam ahead with the unabashedly pro-female Obamacare.
This last charge is based on an almost completely delusional misreading of Obama’s health care legislation by our dear friend Antony Zarat. Elam continues:
And you can watch many men nod their heads in agreement with this crap. Sure, some of it is just the typical effects of feminist ideology on the brains of obsequious men, but there is something else at play here.
Can you guess what’s coming here? Yep, you got it, the motherfucking Titanic.
What made men willing to stand on the decks of sinking ships where their betters were loaded onto lifeboats? What makes men OK with being singled out for selective service? When is the last time you heard an average man point out to a woman who is whining that her great grandmother could not vote, that even today, unless a man signs an agreement with the government to use his body as cannon fodder, that he still won’t be allowed to vote?
Never mind that “women and children first” has never been official policy, nor even widely practiced. Never mind that feminists,while generally opposed to the draft, have lobbied for women as well as men to be subject to the same requirement to register for the draft. Never mind that the draft has been dead for decades. And never mind that exactly none of this is the fault of feminism.
We often have to point out to morons that being anti-feminist is not the same thing as being anti-woman. I think we would do well to remember from time to time that misandry is often not something done to us, but something we do to ourselves.
It is a monster that can live in any one of us, and often does. I have been doing battle with my own for a while. 25 years of consideration, soul searching and bucking the system and I am just now figuring out to go see a doctor when I have a problem.
Elam, dude: Despite your overweening narcissism, I have no trouble believing that on some level you hate yourself. Narcissism is often driven by insecurity, and no one who responds to even mild criticism with the level of rage that you do could be anything other than deeply insecure. But what you feel isn’t “misandry,” and feminists aren’t to blame. All that rage isn’t healthy for you. You should really get it checked out. And I’m not even joking.
Here’s Sleater-Kinney with “Call the Doctor,” though really only the title of the song is appropriate to the situation here.
Paul Elam, head ranter at A Voice for Men, has a new video out called “You want privilege? You got it!” The thesis: if women really did have the so-called privileges that men have, they’d hate it and want men to take them all back. Because all of these so-called privileges are really giant burdens. Or, as Elam puts it, somewhat more melodramatically, these privileges have “begun to more resemble an anchor around your neck than the helm of a great ship that everyone tells you that you are captaining.”
Here’s the video.
Well, all right, that’s not really Paul Elam. But that little clip does capture pretty well the tone of his latest post, which is indeed about how male privilege is really a terrible burden.
I mean, this is his opener:
I swear by everything holy that the next time I hear some fembot caterwaul about “male privilege,” I am going to find something to break, turn it into shards, and drag the broken pieces across my chest just to distract me from the pain of their increasing stupidity. Just picture me like Martin Sheen, collapsed in a heap of bloody, tearful insanity on the floor of a cheap hotel in Saigon.
Heck, compared to that, Mr. McDuck’s reaction to the news about his “ice cream” was, if anything, rather restrained.
The rest of Elam’s post is, as is typical for him, a rather trite recitation of a number of standard Men’s Rights talking points about male “disposability” written in some of the most ridiculously overblown prose ever seen outside of an Ayn Rand novel.
Elam complains that he hasn’t seen much benefit from his privileges:
Mind you I still don’t know what that privilege is. One time when I was young and very poor I was late on my light bill. I showed the electric company my balls, but they cut my power off anyway. …
Yeah, as someone who’s also had his power cut off, I’m pretty sure they do that with everyone. I’m also pretty sure that no feminist has ever or will ever argue that male privilege means you won’t get your power cut off for nonpayment.
Here’s Elam addressing women as if they’ve traded place with men:
With your privilege comes the right to work on crab boats, drive trucks, work on electric lines, walk into burning buildings and sink into the bowels of the earth digging out coal and other things people find useful.
Apparently having greater occupational choices is scary and bad.
When a ship goes down, or any other life threatening disaster strikes, you have two choices. Be a real woman and die, or treat your life like it has value and have the world shit on you as a coward who refused to perish on cue. There is also the possibility of third option, either die from the disaster so that men can live, or have another woman blow a fucking hole in your face with a pistol because you tried to save yourself.
Yeah, I believe we may have addressed this earlier. Oh, but there’s more:
Like noticing the emperor has no clothes, it may hit you one day when you decide not to offer your seat to a man; when the stares at you from all around seem to come down people’s noses. …
You must learn not to say a word. Not to anyone else, not even to yourself. You must learn to see flames, coal dust, icy saltwater, death and sacrifice for the trappings of power that the world around you thinks them to be.
Says a dude typing out his manifestos on an expensive laptop he conned nagged his followers into buying for him.
And you must be willing to hang your head in shame over that power, even as the world chews you up, spits you out, and gets ready to take its turn with your daughter.
Elam’s rousing conclusion:
So, that is it, ladies. You want my privilege, it is yours. I will gladly hand it over to you this very minute. I am just waiting for you to meet the pre-requisites of disposibilty and an utter lack of self-value. I am waiting for you to woman up to the job, take off your fucking make up and be ready to bleed, blah blah blah look at me I’m mad!
I paraphrased a little at the end there. But, yes, the world champion at seeing male “disposability” everywhere did in fact misspell the word “disposability.” That was all him. And so, believe it or not, is the following:
I, like a Jew gone weary of being called a chosen one, am completely ready for anyone else, and in particular, you, to be chosen.
Personally, I have had about all the privilege I can stand.
Yep. He went there.
Also, I don’t know if you all knew this, but when women serve in the military these days it’s “like a day care camp for them.”
Also, not to pat myself on the back or anything, but my headline is much better than his. Maybe he should get me to write all the headlines on A Voice for Angry Duck Plutocrats Men.
Discuss.
The Titanic sank 100 years ago today, and Men’s Rights Activists are still pissed off about it.
They’re not really pissed off that it sank. They’re pissed off that the men on board were more likely to go down with the ship than the women. You know, that whole “women and children first” thing.
Some MRAs were so pissed off about this that they were planning to march on Washington on this very day in an attempt, as they put it, to “Sink Misandry.”
You don’t know how much I would have loved to see this, a dozen angry dudes marching in circles on the National Mall carrying signs protesting the sinking of the Titanic and demanding that in all future sinkings of the Titanic that women and men be equally likely to drown in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. For that would be justice at last!
But, alas, due to unspecified logistical problems this march was cancelled some months back, and so misandry remains unsunk.
Or does it?
For you see, it turns out that the whole “women and children first” thing was not really a thing. Oh, on The Titanic it was. But women unfortunate enough to be passengers on sinking ships that weren’t the Titanic (or the HMS Birkenhead, which sunk off the coast of South Africa in 1852) weren’t able to push ahead to the front of the line. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new Swedish study (link is to a pdf of it).
The chivalrous code “women and children first” appears to have sunk with the Titanic 100 years ago.
Long believed to be the golden standard of conduct in a shipwreck, the noble edict is in fact “a myth that has been nourished by the Titanic disaster,” economist Mikael Elinder of Uppsala University, Sweden, told Discovery News.
Elinder and colleague Oscar Erixson analyzed a database of 18 peace-time shipwrecks over the period 1852–2011 in a new study into survival advantages at sea disasters.
Looking at the fate of over 15,000 people of more than 30 nationalities, the researchers found that more women and children die than men in maritime disasters, while captains and crew have a greater chance of survival than any passengers.
Being a woman was an advantage on only two ships: on the Birkenhead in 1852 and on the Titanic in 1912.
The notion of “women and children first” may have captured the popular imagination, but it’s never been an official policy for ship evacuations. It wouldn’t be fair, nor would it be an efficient way to get as many people as possible to safety.
Nor was “women and children” strictly enforced even on the Titanic. True, my great-grandfather, the mystery writer Jacques Futrelle, was one of those who went down with the ship, while his wife and my great-grandmother, writer Lily May Futrelle made it off safely (in the last lifeboat). But there were many men who survived, and many women who died.
If you want to get mad about the sinking of the Titanic all those years ago, get mad at the White Star Line for not bothering to equip the ship with lifeboats enough for everyone on it. Blame the captain, for ordering the ship to continue plowing ahead on a dark, foggy night into an area of the Atlantic where numerous icebergs had just been sighted by a number of other ships. Blame the crew for botching the evacuation – for the strange lack of urgency after the ship hit the iceberg, for the lifeboats leaving the sinking ship with half as many passengers as they could fit.
Much like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Elinder and Erixson’s research has poked a giant hole in the “women and children first” myth. Of course, MRAs aren’t interested in historical accuracy. They’re looking for excuses to demonize women and feminists. So I imagine we’ll be hearing about the Titanic from them for years to come.
Here’s another tragic sinking, of yet another ship without a sufficient number of lifeboats:
EDIT: I added a couple of relevant links and fixed a somewhat egregious typo.
Most of the coverage of the Costa Concordia disaster at the moment seems to be focusing on the Italian cruise ship’s captain and his douchey behavior, which involved not only running the ship aground but also abandoning ship prestissimo while passengers remained trapped on board.
MRAs, by contrast, are using the tragedy as an excuse to rail against the notion of “women and children first” and, of course, to make jokes about women drowning.
Now, the Titanic aside, “women and children first” isn’t now, and hasn’t ever really been, the standard way to evacuate those on a sinking ship, though many in the public — including some of those who were on board the Costa Concordia – seem to believe that it is. (See here for more details on how evacuations are typically handled these days; generally only those with mobility problems are given special treatment.)
In the case of this particular evacuation, some on board apparently tried to enforce an informal “women and children” policy, but many men weren’t willing to wait.
What’s got some MRAs in a snit is that some people, in the media and online, are calling these dudes cowards. In The Daily Mail, a right-wing British tabloid, A N Wilson wrote:
[I]n our day, with the advent of feminism and the professional woman, chivalry and manners are considered stuffy and old-fashioned.
As the father of three daughters, I do not, with a single fibre of my being, wish to go back to a time when women could not have the vote or get a university degree. Nor do I, surrounded by extremely strong-charactered and intelligent women in my family and among my friends, feel tempted to regard women as the frail sex.
But the fact remains that there is a longing among most men to protect women and children, and chivalry is simply a manifestation of that longing.
And whatever transpires about the reason for the Costa Concordia disaster, the disappearance of a chivalric code is a sorry reflection on society today.
This is not what you’d call a feminist argument; it’s a traditionalist argument, published in a tabloid rag that’s generally quite hostile to feminism.
Nonetheless, some MRAs are using the Costa Concordia disaster as an opportunity to deliver a big “told you so!” to the … imaginary feminists who live in their head.
Over on The Spearhead, where one familiar commenter actually described Wilson’s Daily Mail article as “feminist,” guest poster Lyn87 wrote:
The MRM is getting more vocal, and a lot of guys are now saying, “You wanted equality. This is what it looks like.” And they are saying it aloud and in public. Even a few women chimed in, saying that men have no obligation to die for women if women want equality. (Somehow I suspect there wasn’t much, “I am woman, hear me roar, watch me drown” on the Costa Concordia itself, but hey, it’s a start.)
MRAs: Always up-to-the-minute with their pop culture references!
This post was helpfully illustrated with a stock photo of a woman drowning.
Commenters got in their digs as well.
Keyster riffed on Lyn87’s incredibly au courant Helen Reddy reference:
I am woman hear me…blurp….rah…gurgle…raha…ffftt…orr…roar…gurgle…help me…somebody…fffft…please…blurp…help…help me please!
Aharon told both ladies and fish what’s what:
I eat fish. Fish don’t eat me. My life is too precious to sacrifice it so some spoiled bitch can have a pussy pass into the life boats.
Anti Idiocy got all hypothetical-cruise-ship tough guy on us:
Anyone who attempts to keep me on a sinking ship because of the genitals with which I was born is attempting to murder me. I have the right to respond accordingly.
And Thomas Tell-truth kicked chivalry – not to mention basic human decency — to the ocean floor:
Equality means that when the ship is going down and you are a woman, you had better get out of my way or you are going to drown with my footprints on your back.
Apparently Thomas Tell-truth is actually George Costanza:
Jeb, meanwhile, offered a more scientific rationalization for being a complete douchenozzle:
As far as I’ve heard, the one and only sport in which women naturally out-do men is endurance swimming. Women are also more bouyant, and as survivalists will explain, women float easiest on their backs (making it easy to breathe while expending minimal energy) whereas men float easiest in “the dead man’s float” (ie. face down, head in the water) and must expend more energy to stay alive. Furthermore, women have more body-fat than men which insulates them better against aquatic dangers such as hypothermia.
Given all these factors it is quite rational for men to pick women up by the seat of their pants and toss them overboard to make way for men and children to safely be rowed ashore on the lifeboats.
It’s all about doing the right thing and saving lives, after all.
MRA humor is very sophisticated indeed.
EDITED TO ADD: The Spearhead has put up a followup post, once again taking aim at imaginary “lifeboat feminists,” though the only person the post cites lamenting the end of “women and children” is Rich Lowry from the National Review (not a feminist publication).
