Women are lying when they say they want more dicks on TV, Men’s Rights Redditors explain
Artist Louise Bourgeois also pretended to like dongs.
So for some reason the fellas on the Men’s Rights subreddit are discussing an article by Australian newspaper columnist Clementine Ford in which she expresses her desire to see more dongs on television.
As she notes, there are plenty of boobs on display on HBO shows like Game of Thrones, yet “rarely are we treated to the visual smorgasbord of a well stocked meat platter. ” Ford is sick of it. “So bring on the parade of wangs, willies and woodies!” she demands. “I’m fond of a wand and I’m not ashamed to say it.”
I’m not terribly familiar with the writings of Clementine Ford, but evidently she’s not big on subtlety.
Anyway, the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit aren’t having any of it. Nuh uh. They ain’t buying it, ladies! You may write columns about how you want more wang on TV. You may talk about it with your friends. You may have gigantic collections of peen pics hidden away on your hard drive.
But the MRAs of Reddit know better. It’s all some devious feminist ploy, as Steampunk_Moustache helpfully explains.
Huh. That took an odd twist at the end there.
But it’s our old friend Giegerwasright who provides the real answer, in the form of a wall-o-mansplainin’ so giant that I had to shrink the text to even screencap it.
Huh.
So why exactly are women pretending to be interested in seeing more penises on television? So they can point at them and laugh?
Women are such an enigma, especially if you just assume that nothing they ever say is true and that it’s all part of some weird plot to screw with men’s heads.
(H/t to r/againstmensrights for pointing me to geigerwasright’s lovely comment.)
Posted on August 21, 2013, in antifeminism, boner rage, dozens of upvotes, evil women, mansplaining, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, none dare call it conspiracy, penises, pig ignorance, racism, reddit, the enigma that is ladies, the eternal solipsism of the MRA mind and tagged men's rights, misogyny, MRA, penises, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 409 Comments.
What to say about Piers Anthony… I got hooked on his Xanth series when it first hit the shelves, and I held on all the way through the one that featured the gollum. Last I looked, the title was “the color of her panties” or some such. The man has daughters.
Such a vivid imagination, and such incredibly benighted views of women. Creepcreepcreep.
I did love the Incarnation series, and he did one with split worlds of sci-fi and fantasy.
Now that I think of it, I can’t remember ANY male sci-fi writers who did decent female characterizations. Anyone want to correct me? MALE writers.
Sci-fi only, or fantasy too? Terry Pratchett’s the only name I can come up with immediately (I don’t read much of either genre).
I always bring up Alistair Reynolds here. I’ve read a collection of his short stories, Terminal World and the Revelation Space series. Terminal World was so-so, most of the short stories really good, and I love Revelation Space. Most of his stories has tons of female characters (there’s even a short story which is set in a female-only world - although that’s just an aside, the fact that everyone is a woman doesn’t really affect the plot which is about war and robots becoming sentient) who are just CHARACTERS, not Women with a capital W.
I also read the first part of a fantasy series by Erik Granström (svavelvinter), but I don’t think it has been translated to English (if we extend to fantasy), so can’t recommend it to all the English speakers here. But so far in the book; also lots of female characters who are in the story as characters, not just Women. I also like how the fantasy world where this takes place is sort of like our world, sexism-wise… there is sexism, but at the same time, women can hold all kinds of jobs and positions, they aren’t delegated only to whore/queen/wife.
On the other hand, I couldn’t stand Iain M Banks (whom everyone else loves, and whom everyone recommends to me when I say I like Reynolds) because he can’t write women. Cassandra earlier wrote that he doesn’t seem like a misogynist to her, only someone who doesn’t really get that women are regular people. I agreed at the time, but changed my mind later. Anyone who can write a species like the affront (an entire alien species that just LOOOOOVES to rape, rape is considered perfectly okay on their planet and the more violence you have to use while raping the greater the honour of the rapist once he’s succeeded - and btw they also love to bully and hurt animals and people lower than them on the social ladder as much as possible), and make them seem AFFABLE and make the male hero whom we’re obviously meant to sympathize with LIKE these guys has gotta be a big-time misogynist.
TW for cruelty to animals (even if fictional)
Was Iain M Banks the one who had the alien race play a form of tennis where they used a bat-like creature instead of a ball & he describes the game in horrible detail, including how the increasing injuries to the poor whimpering creature made its flight more unpredictable? My brother gave me a book of his once, containing this scene, I was disgusted (particularly as the supposed hero was fairly ok with the whole thing) & swore never to read another book by such a person.
@Titianblue: Yeah, it’s the very same alien race that loves to rape, and the same book (they’ve even genetically manipulated the women of their race to become less horny and to experience sex as painful, because they totally prefer rape to consensual sex! I’m not making this shit up!).
@Argenti
I saved that in case he ever shows up again, here you go:
http://manboobz.com/2012/02/09/alcuin-and-out-or-the-kkk-with-tits/comment-page-8/#comment-123827
I think William Gibson writes women characters quite well, especially in his more recent work.
@markb
Idk, I’m a lesbian, but I don’t find penises (on anyone) gross. I mean, it’s just part of someone’s body.
Yeah, but you haven’t seen our trolls
When I started lurking here, I thought lots of trolls were just (regular posters? non trolls?) being sarcastic because I couldn’t imagine anyone saying ‘x’ without irony. And I was wrong.
@LBT
DItto. And there are lots of guys I think are pretty I wouldn’t want to fuck/ have romantic relationships with. (And I’m on a whole role of ‘have I mentioned I’m a lesbian today…).
@youllneverguess
I feel really unhelpful here because like 75% of the sci fi I read is just star wars expanded universe books. (…don’t judge me!)
@Marie we all have our guilty pleasures *pushes F&F5 dvd out of sight before visitors come around*
RE: M Dubz
at least let them be over the top trolls of magic and wonder.
To paraphrase my friend, if they must suck, let them suck EXUBERANTLY.
RE: yaoi huntress earth
Let’s not forget he also wrote a story with a five-year-old girl and her adult lover. I think her name was also Nymph.
AAAAAAH WHY WOULD YOU REMIND ME OF THAT AAAAAAAAH
If you want me, I’ll be in my happy place.
RE: katz
…The story was about the adult lover getting arrested and going to jail, right?
Right?
…sort of. (WARNING IT IS THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY YOU CAN BE RIGHT.)
RE: YoullNeverGuess
Now that I think of it, I can’t remember ANY male sci-fi writers who did decent female characterizations. Anyone want to correct me?
Spider Robinson! Bruce Coville! If you also accept sci-fi comics, I love the female characters in Tim Eldred’s Grease Monkey, and Mark Crilley’s Akiko is great kiddie sci-fi. Jasper Fforde actually did a pretty good job too, though whether you count Thursday Next as sci-fi is up to debate.
Thanks Myoo
It should be obvious to any right-thinking person that the only thing that’s erotic is two or more svelte nymphs making tender, passionate love to each other.
From a dude who says: Female pudenda I just barely tolerate. (nota bene, pundendae
Seems we have some cognitive dissonance.
That, or too stupid to keep it consistent.
Argh I emailed you about him! Sarcasm, not troll!
@ Katz and CassandraSays : That’s the one I’m talking about. The book is called, Firefly.
RE: yaoi huntress earth
WHY WOULD YOU REMIND ME OF THAT BOOK? AUGH.
Also, this is an odd question, but your name is very familiar to me. Were you by chance someone well-known on LJ or DA at one point? I’m trying to figure out where the hell I’ve heard of you from…
“Idk, I’m a lesbian, but I don’t find penises (on anyone) gross. I mean, it’s just part of someone’s body.”
Well, as far as I’m concerned it belongs on the inside with the gall bladder and the duodenum. Which would, I concede, impede its functionality somewhat.
Re: SF writers and female characters, most of my (contemporary) SF reading is from Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and off the top of my head I would say James Patrick Kelley, although in general I think SF (especially in short story form) focuses more on ideas and not so much on characters. I just looked at my stack of magazines and the story “Plus or Minus” by JPK features a teenage heroine who comes up with a solution to save her shipmates from death after a malfunction on board their ship (spoiler: it doesn’t work, but it’s not her fault.)
Not science fiction, but I really love P.G. Wodehouse’s female characters. You have to allow for him being from a different generation, but most of his female characters are independent, courageous and witty. “The Old Reliable”, although not his best book, features a middle-aged woman with a rapier wit as the protagonist. She is a professional (screenwriter), she thinks on her feet and she is the one her friends go to when they’re in trouble. She also has the firm intention of marrying the man she loves, who is (as she is well aware) not really on her level, and in the end she brings him around, so she also takes on the male role of the “wooer”. Pretty hot stuff for 1951.
Cool, now I have a bunch of new authors to check out. You guys are terrific!
@Marie: consider yourself JUDGED!
No, not really.
I never considered Iain Banks a misogynist so much as he is fascinated with torture. Which, uh. Yeah, I stopped reading his stuff because I felt like he was adding false impression of depth to his fiction with pornographic cruelty. So his cruelty is pretentious, oddly enough. However, the first thing I ever read by him was ‘The Wasp Factory’, and I think that’s a pretty good examination of gender. I remember another one of his books where people could switch genders, and one planet had hermaphrodites. I think he fell into some basic traps there, like the main character was an oddity because he’d never lived as a woman, which seemed to be a futuristic version of the Marlboro man. On the other hand, the same character goes head to head with a six-year-old girl in a game of intergalactic significance.
OMG, I flove Wodehouse! (swoon)
@markb
Um….ok? I’m not really getting you :/
@youllneverguess
XD half the reason I’m all worried bout being judged is lots of them…well, weren’t very good. I gave the worst two out of three away to half price, all of them being the ones ‘too bad to finish’ but kept one cuz it was at the end of the series I used to like. And I’ve only re-read a couple, I’m afraid when I re-read ones I used to like I’ll realize they aren’t very good ;P One I loved so much I read it almost whenever I could, and it only lasted two days, but was dreadfully boring when I picked it up later. I’ve decided just to let my memories go untarnished.
that was kinda rambly but I was explaining my fear XD
I’m a big believer in liking what you like and letting other people do the same. So many people seem to think their taste defines them. Everyone brings their own unique experience to any piece of art, and the interplay between the two is extremely personal, by definition.
Like all those Sweet Valley High books I read as a teenager. Not ashamed of that at all. Okay, fine,I’m ashamed, but also very defensive about it. You don’t know me!
I love Sweet Valley High! Have you seen 1bruce1? It’s a riot!
http://1bruce1.livejournal.com/profile
Bah, I’m sour. I can’t really turn my critical brain off too far, these days, so between all the moves and transience and me being a constant snark/MSTer, the only books I own that are BAD are Book Twinkies 1 and 2, and a couple Piers Anthony books that hold the dubious distinction of being absolute shit, and yet hold such nostalgic sway over us, we can’t quite bear to get rid of them.
I never read Banks’ sci-fi since the first book I tried bored the crap out of me. Ew, everything everyone is saying here. Now I’m glad that I didn’t dig any further.
@LBT
I’m still on DA and post on the Comics Casserole LJ and on the Comics Curmudgeon.
@You’llNeverGuess -
Does Banks ever direct his sexualised violence at men? Because that whole rape-culture-with-hero’s-approval story sounds like he’s got a screaming case of misogyny. He seems to have taken the idea of FGM and put it at a genetic level.
RE: yaoihuntressearth
Ah yes! Your DA icon is familiar to me, and you’ve been on about as long as I have. I guess I just saw you around back in ’04 or something, on the forums maybe. What an odd coincidence!
Yaoi huntress, you should join our DA group.
So the thing about these stories where little girls Totally Want It and are initiating it and the older guy is just doing what they want: There are so many problems, but I think the biggest is that that’s always the narrative. Rapists who abuse little girls always say that she was asking for it, she was into it, she’s a slut, she liked it, etc. And by writing a story where the five-year-old really did want to have sex, he’s actively feeding the narrative and making things harder for real little girls.
Not to mention the part where all she knew when she “consented” was that adult do it and it feels good. So do a couple of shots of [insert booze of choice here] (ymmv) but we don’t let kids drink (analogy sucks, I realize)
He even seems to understand, at least a little, what small kids are like. She cooperates with the police because she doesn’t understand what the repercussions are going to be. But sex? She knew what she was getting into!
Piers Anthony seems to think he’s being cutting-edge with this shit. (This is giving him the benefit of the doubt.) Horrible as it is, I feel like this is some weird generational thing; there seem to be quite a few writers who came of age in the 60s who got far enough into the sexual revolution to see that society has fucked-up views about sex, but not far enough to realize that, uh, actually, some taboos make perfect sense-like child molestation. So you get a bunch of this creepy pedopologia where there are these ideas that it’s purely the oppressive views of society that make child-molestation bad.
It’s very tempting to believe, if you haven’t been molested yourself and you only remember being a horny kid.
I’m reading stuff about PA at the moment and there does seem to be a question about whether he’s a pedophile or not. He’s corresponded with them and it seems a pedophile wrote something in Firefly … urgh. He may not be a criminal but he’s sure as hell sympathetic to them.
Yeah, Piers Anthony has some VERY skeezy ideas about sex. I still prefer to believe that he’s a skeezy but generally decent person who would never actually harm a child in his life. LET ME KEEP MY ILLUSIONS OKAY.
The thread I’m reading about his other stuff is just horrific. I can give a link if anyone wants, but it comes with a lot of trigger warnings. I’m finding it hard to believe that anyone who’s spent a lifetime churning out this stuff could be called decent even if they’ve never physically hurt anyone. Keep yer skeevy rape/pedophilia/torture fantasies private, don’t trot ‘em out as novels, kthnx.
The pedophilia thing is definitely cause for concern. The rest, meh. I’ve written a bit of erotic horror myself, so I tend to give other writers the benefit of the doubt. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to think *I’m* a dangerous pervert, based solely on what I’ve written.
I’ve written erotic horror too, but I totally side-eye a man who mixes those with his pedophilia fantasies and publishes them as mainstream fantasy/sf.
MordsithJ — the key word there may be horror, from what I’ve seen of his stuff, it isn’t presented as horror, but rather as children’s lit. Which is a bit different than writing erotica, of any sort, for those old enough to buy porn.
LBT // someone — please tell me I’m wrong and that shit about the small child wanted sex wasn’t children // young adult lit.
There’s also the little point that he wrote a looong author’s note at the end of Firefly defending pedophilia and saying adults should be acknowledging that children are sexual by having sex with them. Oh, and he corresponds with pedophiles in prison.
Yeah, “just” a bit of fiction, just him playing with ideas, my arse. He’s no better than the MRAs and their dire rape fantasies.
Yes, at least twice in the one book of his I read.
Male sciffy writers who write women well enough that I’m not jarred out of the narrative going ‘hey, wait a minute?’ Charlie Stross, but I’ve only read a handful of his books.
@titianblue
High five!!!! I’m just coming off a F&F marathon myself. I always say Paul Walker’s the shittiest actor to entertain me since Arnold
@kittehs- re: Terry Pratchett. I LOVE him, but he also does this thing where he writes Severe Snarky Uptight Ladies who are Totally Hot as a stereotyped subset of his female character range (off the top of my head, Spike and Susan fit that bill, and there are others). I put him in the same category as Joss Whedon. He writes a variety of well-rounded female characters, but he also writes his personal wank stereotype into a lot of his work (in Joss’s case, it’s Ass Kicking Brunettes with Serious Issues).
M Dubz - good point. I didn’t really get that impression with Susan, but wossname from Going Postal, totally. She was probably the most annoying character I’ve read in his books, though that’s partly because she’s a chain smoker.
I’ve written some crazy stuff as well so I shouldn’t be too harsh, but you have to wonder with some writers.
Not to mention Broken Birds forced into prostitution.
@shadow High five!! Although I admit I watch F&F cos Vin Deisel’s voice curls my toes. In a good way. A very good way.
@titianblue
For me, it’s listening to Paul Walker stumble and bumble his way through slang. I swear, hearing him say “Ride or die” made my life
RE: Argenti
Fear not. Firefly wasn’t for children. Thank god.
But yes, a LOT of Anthony’s work is marketed to young people. We read his Xanth novels from the ages of eight to fourteen, and the very first book LITERALLY says the female love interest has no better purpose than rape.
Since Anthony was the first (and for a looong time, ONLY) time we heard of rape, I admit to nursing some bitterness. Pretty sure part of how we got into our rapey situation was because we believed the shit he wrote about.
Even the way he wrote about Imbri being in season in Night Mare was very rapey. Hello, mares do NOT automatically submit to any stallion that happens to be around.
“Now that I think of it, I can’t remember ANY male sci-fi writers who did decent female characterizations. Anyone want to correct me? MALE writers.”
Frank Herbert’s original Dune series had some freaking AMAZING female characters. Lady Jessica was the shit. Her brain was like fire, and she scorched quite a few people with it before all was said and done. Bene Gesserit Kung-Fu? Check. The power of Voice? Check. She was elegantly defiant too.
I never managed to get through Dune. For me it was terminally boring and I couldn’t stand any of the characters.
Gaiman’s female characters are usually good. Even when they are sometimes in stock roles they usually handle those roles in a more realistic manner than most.
Same here re: Dune. I managed to get through the first book after two tries, read the second book and quit. What mostly bothered me was that the religion of the Fremen seemed like it was central to the plot, but after two books I still couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be. Except that it had something to do with the sand worms. I think.
And again, not SF, but is anyone here familiar with the Modesty Blaise comic strips?
RE: Kittehserf
Even the way he wrote about Imbri being in season in Night Mare was very rapey. Hello, mares do NOT automatically submit to any stallion that happens to be around.
AAAAAAH I THOUGHT I’D REPRESSED THAT OH GOD WHY
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
LBT — that makes it SLIGHTLY less disturbing then I guess. At least this isn’t being given to kids with no idea that it isn’t remotely appropriate.
markb - I used to read Modesty Blaise when she was in the papers back in the 70s!
Cool! Would you agree that she is way ahead of her time, as far as gender politics go? (Disclaimer: I am not trying to present myself as some kind of super-feminist man. I just like my badass female characters to be real badasses, as I think do many male geeks. Much as I like “The Avengers”, I think Emma Peel spent more time being trussed up and having to be rescued by Mr. Steed than she did fighting bad guys.)
RE: Argenti
LBT — that makes it SLIGHTLY less disturbing then I guess. At least this isn’t being given to kids with no idea that it isn’t remotely appropriate.
Yeah, well, fear not, he had PLENTY of creepy child-molesting rape stuff in his books for young people do. (As an ex-Xanth fan, I could tell you, but we’d be here all night.)
markb - alas, I don’t really remember well enough to say! I was only in my early teens at most when reading the strip, and not in the least aware of such things.
I loved Emma Peel when I was younger still, but that was because 1) hair and 2) jumpsuit.