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.
Pecunium — “I’m pretty sure he’s fired a gun…” — maybe, idk anything else he’s said, so I can’t really guess, his whole “blow you away” thing just seemed too flippant to be anyone who actually knows jack shit about gun safety. The rest of my immediate family are lifetime NRA members, I grew up around guns, so that bit just read as a lack of respect I can’t see coming from anyone who’s really shot before (paintball doesn’t count here since, at worst, it stings for awhile).
“Aside from which, I challenged PZ to a debate on this very subject, a few weeks ago. He offered no response.” — ya think?! He said he doesn’t do internet debates, wtf makes you so special that he should?
David Marshall: His “retreat” strikes you as disingenuous?
1: When was the last time he engaged in an “internet debate?
2: You challenged him to a debate on this very topic (the utility argument for abusing women to improve society?
2a: Since you say it was to be a debate, I have to assume you were on the same side as VD: why should I think you, “don’t have a problem with women” if you are willing to, at the very least, curtail their active participation in civil life; for some version, “for their own good”?
I repeat my questions:
1: What is VD’s point?
1a: How is it satire.
1b: If none of his other works are to be considered, how can we know it’s satire?
2: How does this batch of over the top points differ from his other writings? (see 1a-1b above as to why this matters, your attempt to dismiss it as irrelevant notwithstanding)
3: What about his “mocking” makes the logical failures, intellectual errors (e.g. the mis-statement of utilitarianism), etc. worth ignoring?
This is your chance to shine. You know PZ Myers reads this blog, show him what a great debater you are.
You’ve been asked direct questions, all you need to do now is answer them.
Argenti: VD is the sort who would go out and make sure he had guns. His family is from Minnesota (and lost a $3 million home, of 30 rooms, in 2003 for failure to pay taxes. Taxes they say they didn’t owe, because they weren’t residents at the time).
But that strain of glibertarian is prone to owning guns. Also prone to loudmouthed declarations of how willing they are to shoot people. I think they assume that poking holes in paper is just like practicing for people shooting back.
In which Manboobz can’t fucking understand satire in which Vox mocks the points of PZ Myers by showing us how if one were to do as what PZ Myers actually says, you would come out with doing really fucking terrible things.
Congratulations on not getting it.
See
“but as will be seen by the answers I provide, by asking some of them, Myers is doing little more than demonstrating the very unscientific attitude of which he is accused! It’s important to understand that one need not find these answers to be absolutely conclusive or even convincing to recognize that they are scientifically valid answers, which is to say that they can be used to generate hypotheses and then subsequently put to the scientific test, at least to the extent that social science can reasonably be considered science.”
Congratulations on not understanding what the author is doing.
This is about 100% more “A Modest Proposal” than the S.C.U.M. Manifesto ever was.
Pecunium — oh, he’s that sort, yeah I know the type. I’m not sure I could even hit a moving target myself, though considering the distance at which I can hit small metal figures I probably could in the “broad side a barn” sense. I don’t really want to find out though, and I guess that’s what was striking me so wrong, who wants to shoot at people? I can’t really wrap my head about “loudmouthed declarations of how willing they are to shoot people” — I grew up with the “don’t point at anything you don’t want to shoot” and “any shot could kill” etc.
Maybe that’s it though, I had gun safety drilled into me young enough and long enough that it is second nature to me — I piss off the former roommate by getting pissed when he’s pointing his “I know it’s unloaded” gun at my fish tank for example — I don’t give a rats ass if you “know” it’s unloaded >.< I guess that principle would be lost on Vox though huh?
And his lack of response makes you now King of Pharyngula by default!
@David YOUR CHALLENGE TO PZ DOES NOT COUNT UNLESS IT IS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT BOARD HIS PIRATE SHIP!!!
clou-di:ah(c)
Maybe that’s it though, I had gun safety drilled into me young enough and long enough that it is second nature to me — I piss off the former roommate by getting pissed when he’s pointing his “I know it’s unloaded” gun at my fish tank for example — I don’t give a rats ass if you “know” it’s unloaded >.< I guess that principle would be lost on Vox though huh?
Probably. Me, I’ll point an unloaded weapon at things in the house, mostly because I can’t get to a range, and dry fire is good practice.
But the amount of time I spend checking the chamber, and the fanatic way I make sure I have control of the weapon are part and parcel of that. If, when I am alone in the house, I step away (say to use the toilet), the first thing I do when I retrieve it is to check the chamber.
I also keep the ammo in a separate container, and it doesn’t come out unless I intend to load a weapon. Any weapon kept with ammunition in the well (there aren’t any which are kept with “one up the spout”) is unloaded, and the ammunition secured, before any practice happens.
Moving targets… are harder. Small targets (man-sized) are tricky, and distance makes a huge difference, since a small misjudgment of speed, coupled to a small misjudgement of distance guarantees a miss.
I don’t think VD has any clue, but the violent metaphor pleases him, so he uses it, ignoring what it says to those who don’t already agree with him. He no better as a rhetoritician than he is as a logician.
There are SEVEN BILLION people on this planet! There is absolutely NO reason women need to be baby making machines. Even if all women got college degrees and careers, humans would never be an endagerned species because of it. This guy just wants severe restrictions on women because of his misogyny.
I think that ultimately some moral things are just arbitrary axioms: it is rather hard to persuade someone who doesn’t believe that happy people are a good thing that happy people are a good thing. At least I can’t. I end up sputtering all “but… but… but… happiness!”
That article from Vox Day should be put in a museum somewhere as an example of superficially plausible but actually fallacious logic.
It’s hard to tell because he’s such a bad writer, but I think VD is being, not actually satirical (because he seems to believe what he’s writing), but sort of semi-sarcastic. In his mind, he’s using PZ’s own moral framework against him, because he assumes that PZ, as an atheist, must be an absolute utilitarian with no other moral compass. His argument is that, as a utilitarian, PZ must agree that killing, mutilating, and enslaving women is morally good, because it benefits society. A lot of his post is also based on his confused notion of how evolutionary scientists think, because PZ is a scientist.
In other words, it’s the classic Internet non-argument of “You’re a poopy-head, therefore you have to like poop!”
Does VD support actually killing, mutilating, and enslaving women? Possibly not, although he’s arguing for it enthusiastically enough in the comments. Does he think that killing, mutilating, and enslaving women is generally good for society? Yeah, he does seem to think that.
Even leaving aside the question of whether it’s right or not, I’m not convinced that even in an abstract, Omelas-style situation where one person getting splashed with acid made a lot of people a little bit happier somehow that there would be a total increase in happiness. Surely having the knowledge that you were liable to get splashed with acid would decrease a person’s happiness by enough that any gain would be wiped out?
The problem is that we’re dealing with people who are made happier knowing there’s a child suffering in Omelas.
Shaenon: Does VD support actually killing, mutilating, and enslaving women?
Support? Hard to say. I don’t think (were it the right sort of women, for the right sort of reasons) he’s against it.
Which is where his moral failures crop up. I think you are right in what he was trying to do in re his version of PZ’s need to agree with the argument, but honestly, if someone were to legislate something akin to that, I can’t see VD really opposing it.
Certainly his total work implies he wouldn’t.
PZ Myers is a professor of biology in Minnesota. He’s an outspoken atheist. Here’s his blog.
Probably the thing that put him on the map of most internet fundamentalists is when he pierced a communion wafer and pages from the Quran and On the Origin of Species with a nail, and threw them all in the trash.
Bill Donohue of the All Catholics Are Whiners Like Bill Donohue League hit the roof.
It was in response to a similar roof-hitting earlier the same year when a student at a university in Florida was given a consecrated wafer at a Catholic Mass and did not eat it, but took it with him out of the church. The student got expelled.
He was one of the bloggers stalked for a long time by Dennis Markuze, who was arrested last year for terroristic threatening and harassment and has been through a mental evaluation and apparently some treatment, and has apparently been quiescent ever since.
Oh, and he helped arrange a skeptic’s tour of Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in Kentucky, which apparently didn’t help Ham’s paranoia.
I think I should clarify, the All Catholics Are Whiners Like Bill Donohue League does not actually include all Catholics, and probably not even a whole bunch in real numbers.
Pecunium — the former roommate keeps his handgun loaded (he’s got viable reasons to carry it for self-defense) but then tries the “I cleared the chamber!” as an excuse why I shouldn’t care he’s pointing it at my glass fish tank. I might care less if the gun were really fully empty >.<
I think you're right that VD just enjoys he violent metaphor though.
"In his mind, he’s using PZ’s own moral framework against him, because he assumes that PZ, as an atheist, must be an absolute utilitarian with no other moral compass."
He's certainly not the first to claim that atheists have no morals because morals come from fear of god punishing you — it's about the weakest claim ever, do they really think Christians (and other religious people) only refrain from violence because of fear of punishment? If so, wtf sense of moral superiority is that?! That's basically saying "I'd kill you but my god might punish me, so I'll spare you", that's nothing like more moral than "I'd kill you, but killing is wrong because no one wants to be killed" ARGH!
Off topic but WHAT?
“It was in response to a similar roof-hitting earlier the same year when a student at a university in Florida was given a consecrated wafer at a Catholic Mass and did not eat it, but took it with him out of the church. The student got expelled.”
Correct me if I’m wrong but the university of Florida would be a state school right? So where the fuck do they get off giving a shit about religion?
Hahaha! “Trigger warning” – yet more evidence that women are too weak and emotional to be trusted with the vote.
Nice ‘arguments’, Futrelle. “Oooh, Vox Day was being mean.” You could say the same thing about other corrective norms, such as prison or fines.
And yes, it was satire; he was demonstrating how easy it is to defend Islam, he wasn’t advocating it. I doubt he wants a society where women have acid thrown in their faces, he was just explaining the rationalization behind it. Perhaps you could provide some examples of University educated women who A) Make a net contribution to society (if their husbands repay the loans, then they’re a net drain) who are engaged in a productive endeavour – government work doesn’t count, and B) who wind up having children at some point at a replacement rate.
For every single woman you find that qualifies to those criteria, I can find 99 who have a useless degree, are employed in government/HR make work, or who just used their degree to meet a husband to mooch off of.
Oh, regarding the above – Trigger Warning!
RE: Falconer
Oh wait, this is the guy who does Pharyngula? Okay! Gotcha.
Also WTF is with this idea that atheism = amoral? I am a bit of a moral relativist, but I still am equipped with such basic provincial notions that one should be kind to people, avoid hurting folks, and so on.
Argenti: I don’t think it was the University of Florida, I think it was just a university that happened to be in Florida.
Shaenon: As far as I can tell, he believes that acid attacks are actually good for society, and we know his Godly, non-consequentalist ethics are better because he’s against acid attacks even though they’re good for society. Or something.
ozy — in, not of, I can read >.<
I think you're right in your reply to Shaenon, I've encountered this "atheists are amoral" attitude before, and it really does seem to hinge on "I want to do horrible things but don't BECAUSE GOD!!"
Aurini — wtf defines “net contribution to society”? Neither van Gogh nor O’Keefe had children, does only the former’s art count or something?
“Oh, regarding the above – Trigger Warning!” — oh go fuck yourself. Ever had anyone you care about commit suicide? Guessing not if you think “trigger warning: suicide” is proof how “weak and emotional” women are — you know there are plenty of men who support warning people before going into sensitive topics in depth too right?
“You could say the same thing about other corrective norms, such as prison or fines.” — so a parking ticket is the same as having acid thrown on you? Yeah, you can definitely go fuck yourself.
I hear something similar, i.e. if I didn’t believe in God then I would be r**ing and stealing and murdering. The way I hear it all the time, it lacks the I would want to do horrible things aspect, like horrible things are just in our nature.
Probably they do think that horrible things are just in our nature. Some of them think a real woman ate a literal apple and then things started dying.
Aurini: For every single woman you find that qualifies to those criteria, I can find 99 who have a useless degree, are employed in government/HR make work, or who just used their degree to meet a husband to mooch off of.
http://img33.glitterfy.com/12117/glitterfy2193958T831D30.gifCare to back that up?
And “showing how easy it is to defend Islam” isn’t the definition of satire.
Again, from looking at his other writing, over the course of years, I don’t see this as being a break from his usual theses, which further hinders the facile defense of, “it was satire” (which is the more affected way of saying, “Can’t you take a joke”).