Most women, it is fair to say, don’t want to be deprived of education; they don’t want to be considered little more than baby-making machines; and they don’t want “independent” women to be maimed or murdered.
But according to the influential manosphere blogger Vox Day, women who object to any of this just don’t know what’s good for them. In one of the most repellant manosphere rants I’ve run across yet, Vox attempts to rebut PZ Myers’ critiques of evolutionary psychology with a series of bizarre and hateful assertions about women, offering his own “scientific” rationales for keeping women down. Is this all somehow satire on his part? He certainly seems sincere.
TRIGGER WARNING for all that follows; Vox explicitly defends the maiming and murder of women.
Vox starts out by arguing that depriving women of education makes solid evolutionary sense:
[E]ducating women is strongly correlated with reducing their disposition and ability to reproduce themselves. Educating them tends to make them evolutionary dead ends. … 40% of German women with college degrees are childless. Does PZ seriously wish to claim that not reproducing is intrinsically beneficial to women?
Instead of being educated, Vox goes on to argue, girls should be married off young so they can start popping out babies:
[R]aising girls with the expectation that their purpose in life is to bear children allows them to pursue marriage at the age of their peak fertility, increase the wage rates of their prospective marital partners, and live in stable, low-crime, homogenous societies that are not demographically dying. It also grants them privileged status, as they alone are able to ensure the continued survival of the society and the species alike. Women are not needed in any profession or occupation except that of child-bearer and child-rearer, and even in the case of the latter, they are only superior, they are not absolutely required.
Next, he defends the practice of throwing acid in the face of “independent” women:
[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.
He moves on to honor killings, arguing that they too are good for women, because
female promiscuity and divorce are strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills, from low birth and marriage rates to high levels of illegitimacy.
He offers a similar rationale for female genital mutilation, before launching into this bizarre racist attack on abortion rights:
[F]ar more women are aborted than die as a result of their pregnancies going awry. The very idea that letting a few women die is worse than killing literally millions of unborn women shows that PZ not only isn’t thinking like a scientist, he’s quite clearly not thinking rationally at all. If PZ is going to be intellectually consistent here, then he should be quite willing to support the abortion of all black fetuses, since blacks disproportionately commit murder and 17x more people could be saved by aborting black fetuses than permitting the use of abortion to save the life of a mother. 466 American women die in pregnancy every year whereas 8,012 people died at the hands of black murderers in 2010.
Vox wants “girls” – presumably teenagers — to be married off young and start popping out babies. Yet in his mind female fetuses are “unborn women.”
Despite Vox Day’s repellent ideas about women – and his proud racism – he’s an influential figure in the manosphere, mentioned approvingly and regularly cited by others who present themselves as more moderate voices. It may not be a shock that the reactionary antifeminist blogger Dalrock includes Vox in his blogroll, and cites his work with approval (see here and here for examples). But, astoundingly, he’s also regularly cited approvingly by antifeminist “relationship expert” Susan Walsh of Hooking Up Smart (see here, here, and here). And she has even written at least one guest post on Vox’s “game blog” Alpha Game.
At this point I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by any of this. But I still am.
katz: He’s not VD, the level of reasonable discourse is too great. I’ve seen VD appear when he’s being talked about. He’s got his failings, but the need to sock isn’t one of them.
He figures his words are too logical, and pure and persuasive; also it lets him insult people.
“I’ll just say one more time, VD’s only point was that Myers doesn’t approach religion from a scientific point of view. ”
And we’ll continue to repeat that whether something is moral or not (the basis of judging religion, generally) cannot be empirically determined. It cannot be a scientific question, ever, actually scientific questions about religion:
How many followers does [religion] have?
Are followers of [religion] more likely to do [thing] than followers of [religion]?
Do followers of [religion] see [thing] as moral or immoral? (this question assumes [religion] has a concept of morality)
Do people, in general, see [thing] as moral/ethical? What percentage? Is there a significant difference across [variable(s)]?
Questions that would get you laughed out of science: Is religion, itself, not any specific religion, moral? — It’s inherently a philosophical question.
(All words in brackets are placeholders for specific examples, eg [religion] is a placeholder for Christianity, Islam, etc)
It is pretty clear from Vox Days writings that he does support murder, acid attacks and killing black babies. He is not very good at disguising his glee.
VD in his own words:
What, he’s not convinced of his own intellectual and moral superiority? He later says he’s not a utilitarian, but that’s about as far as he backs away from supporting throwing acid in women’s faces… The part where neither he nor his supporters question the premise that throwing acid in women’s faces would be good for the common good of the collective., yeah, that’s not problematic at all.
Also, why do people like VD, Paul Elam, John the Other, and others feel the need to cultivate a community of fawning sycophants? It’s amazing how similar the commenting culture is between VD’s blog and AVfM. Most of the comments amount to “oh you’re so smart.” If one person says “you have completely demolished your opposition,” someone else will say, “Demolished? He annihilated them!”
In addition to what others have pointed out already, I have to say I am completely blown away by Dan’s use of words “science” and “logic” interchangeably. Clearly, Dan, you don’t understand what either of them means.
Also: If the idea that women should be treated as human beings fails because it lacks scientific support, so does the idea that men should be treated as human beings. Surely, given your steely control of emotions and your equally firm grasp of logic, you wouldn’t mind being stripped of the right to vote and having acid thrown in your face. After all, it’s not like those things affect anything other than your feelings.
“If one person says “you have completely demolished your opposition,” someone else will say, “Demolished? He annihilated them!””
Sean: You are so on the team! Next week we’ve got the Crown & Anchor. We’re going to annihilate them!
The Doctor: [suddenly in Sean’s face] Annihilate? No! No violence, do you understand me? Not while I’m around, not today, not ever. I’m the Doctor. The Oncoming Storm. And you basically meant beat them in a football match, didn’t you?
Totally off-topic, but this nonsense needs a humor injection.
VD’s grand point seems to be the tired old “atheistic morality leads to an immoral society (because god is the only constraint on what’s really moral)” — we’ve all heard it a million times Dan (and VD if he’s lurking). The failure to examine whether utilitarianism actually support acid attacks, honor killings, etc is where any GOTCHA! argument falls apart.
Well, it must have stung to type that, then.
It is Corrente that has long said that their use of the F-bomb is a guarantee that the content of their blog is not government or corporate propaganda.
The same could be said of the posters here who drop the bomb.
Of course Myers approaches religion from a scientific point of view. Hypothesis: there is a God. Evidence collected does not show that there is a God. Conclusion: no God, until further evidence is shown.
In this case, however, he was approaching it from a moral point of view. Morals can be studied scientifically (i.e. the evolution of the moral sense) but they are not themselves scientific. Science doesn’t tell you what SHOULD happen; it just tells you what IS HAPPENING. You can’t do an experiment to find out whether throwing acid on girls’ faces is morally right. (You can study whether it’s effective to reach a particular goal, but that’s completely different.)
Cloudiah: His words, in that quotation, belie the portion you bolded.
If/then. So if one can show, to the satisfaction of VD that throwing acid in women’s faces is suitably beneficial (it need not be on a purely utilitarian basis) he will support it.
Which is in keeping with my statement; he might not actively support it (in the sense that he will pursue it as a policy aim), but he’s not guaranteed to be against it, given the right sort of legislation.
Amused: Yeah, the examples people use in their hypotheticals are often telling. If this was a one off, ok, it’s just him rambling.
But it’s not a one off. The list of ills he claims are consistent across time. This is just an extreme (even for VD) remedy.
I just want to leave one more VD quote responding to a commenter (commenter in bold):
So VD isn’t saying he supports throwing acid in women’s faces for the collective good of society, he’s just saying it’s a hypothesis that is worth testing and observation. He’s a scientist, you see!
After that, I definitely need brain bleach. Here’s a Shiba Inu puppy live cam:
http://www.ustream.tv/sfshiba
Right now, there’s one lying on it’s back with it’s little feet twitching in the air. So cute.
@pecunium I may have introduced some confusion. In that quote I posted on the previous page, the bolded portion is someone else’s comment that VD is responding to.
No they don’t. The best studies I know show a percentage point decline in happiness for women over the past couple decades, which could easily be attributable to things OTHER than feminism.
Every survey. He ignored one which another commenter linked to. Since he made a universal claim (hello Abnoy), a single example demolishes, no, annihilates the premise, ergo he’s wrong.
It’s a scientific fact.
Like, oh, say, all the backlash from ragemongers on the intarwebs.
I srsly tried to read Faludi’s Backlash and the sheer assholery she reports in it made me all HULK SMASH SEXIST ASSHOLES. I honestly couldn’t get through it, all the evidence she cited made me so mad.
(Not at her, you understand, but at all the assholes.)
“…living in a less equalitarian society 40 years ago” — Um…40 years ago was 1972, that’s smack in the middle of second wave feminism, VD really has no clue wtf he’s talking about.
“…which could easily be attributable to things OTHER than feminism.” — yeah I’d imagine the threat of nuclear war probably had some affect (on everyone) but I’m a bit young to really remember the cold war. That’s just to pull another possible variable out of my ass, because correlation is not causation.
“This is just an extreme (even for VD) remedy.” — this is the problem with focusing on the acid attacks question PZ posed, it is extreme. Some of the other questions, and VD’s answers, are more common positions, in general society, and thus nearly impossible to take as satire — eg his suggestion that letting women die in labor is better than “killing literally millions of unborn women”. Do I think he sees female fetuses as unborn women? No, probably not. Do I think he puts more value in an unborn life than a woman’s life? Yes, that would be consistent with what little I know about him.
Folks, please scroll (or click? whatever) back to This is going to sound terribly PI’s post. It’s epic.
Some of Vox Day’s older satire, no doubt:
He’s such a brilliant satirist of the MRM. For a minute there I thought his satire of PZ failed because he was ascribing his own racism and lack of concern for women as human beings to PZ’s utilitarianism, but now I see it is a smashing success—just not against the target we all thought.
How wrong I was!
This is fucking brilliant
It’s like a slap in the face with a wet mackerel.
Tulgey: That’s the sort of thing which makes me say that VD doesn’t really not mean it.
Scented. Fucking. Candles.
Fucking brilliant is right.
+1 internet to This is going to sound terribly PI — for being a substantially better writer than VD
Seconding “fucking brilliant.” Katz, was that you?
What will VD think of this.
JC Penny Fathers’ Day Ad
I was responding to someone’s question of whether I was offended by the use of the word fuck
Yeah, I can see where that was more hurtful than the stuff about throwing acid in women’s faces and eugenically eliminating black people. There really needed to be a trigger warning there.
” ” @Blackbloc: We need ethics because there are countless situations where we must make up our minds about what to do, and we must find some way to live together. I’d say that’s enough to justify doing ethics. ”
I’d say that’s an empirical justification.
Observations:
We are sharing the planet with others.
Countless examples of failed ways of living together that resulted in the annihilation of one or both parties.
Hypothesis: There is some methodology by which to ensure people can live together in harmony.
More observations to demonstrate.”
Well, you’re empirical argument presupposes that killing each other is bad and living together without killing each other is good. That’s not an empirical claim, since empirics don’t deal in normative claims about “bad” and “good”. So empirics TOGETHER with some normative assumptions can justify morality, yes, but not pure empirics.
“The problem is that, strictly speaking, you’ve demonstrated a need for *politics* (in the larger sense of the term, not just electoral politics), not ethics.”
I’d say “being able to live together” include stuff that’s normally considered part of ethics; like being able to rely on each other, keeping promises etc. Such issues as those Thomas discusses on the Yes Means Yes blog about keeping abuse out of the BDSM circles are also problems that arise because we’re living together with other people who have different desires and aims from ourselves. But if you wanna call all that politics I’m not gonna argue about words.
” “And one can argue rationally about ethics even if the arguments don’t look like “X is right because SCIENCE”.
You can’t argue rationally about *anything* without empiricism. There is a limit to pure reason, i.e. the atomic axiom problem. Any discussion that does not include any form of observation of facts is mental wankery. It’s interesting, it can sometimes later be brought back into something useful if we later observe that the axioms we arbitrarily chose actually can be demonstrated to be true (see: a lot of purely theoretical math work in number theory, and so forth), but it’s wankery just the same.
Science is just one particular (institutionalized) form of empiricism.”
Well, empiricism has its limits just like rationalism. First we have the well-known problem of induction, but even if we disregard that, empiricism as a basis for ethics must deny Hume’s law.
That’s why we’re probably stuck with the reflective equilibrium approach to ethics, and I don’t consider that irrational.