Men’s Rights activists — or a good portion of them, anyway — seem to suffer from what we might call “Male Responsibility Bypass Syndrome.” Whatever terrible things a man (or a group of men) has been shown to have done, MRAs have a remarkable ability to find a woman to blame for it.
Nowhere is this clearer than when it comes to excusing violence. If a man is violent, MRAs tend to argue, it’s because he was provoked by a woman unaware that “equal rights mean equal lefts.” Or it’s the fault of his mother for not raising him right. Or the fault of his female ancestors for “choosing” violent men to “mate” with.
And if a stepfather abuses a child, it’s the fault of the mother for inviting him into the home. Take this generously upvoted comment from DavidByron2 in the Men’s Rights subreddit, who attempts to give a “scientific” — that is, an Evo Psych — excuse for the abuse:
In a later comment, Byron explains that he wasn’t really “blaming” the “females” in question, just saying that “the female is causal. She/it makes the decision to get a new mate or not.”
Oh, yeah, that’s much better.
But it’s that last bit, borrowed from Evo Psych, that’s even more remarkable, based as it is on the notion that male violence isn’t really violence if someone somewhere has come up with a genetic explanation for it.
Really? Animals need to survive in order to propagate their genes and “maximize genetic transfer to the next generation,” and they need to eat to survive. But I’m pretty sure that if I went to the middle-eastern restaurant on the corner, punched a customer in the head, and ran off with their Lamb Kabob entrée the cops wouldn’t be very sympathetic to my evolutionary argument. Biology doesn’t excuse bad behavior.
In the part of Byron’s comment I left out of the screencap, he links to summaries of the research of evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, who’ve written a good deal about what’s come to be called the “Cinderella effect,” that is, the fact that child abuse seems to be many times more prevalent in homes with stepparents than in those without.
While empirically this is true — though often overstated, and more complicated than “evil stepfather” theories would have it, given that studies often include other men, including uncles and grandfathers, in the same category as stepfathers — we still don’t actually know why this is. Are human males really just wired like male lions, who kill cubs fathered by other lions when they link up with new mates? Or is it that, say, men inclined to abuse children target vulnerable single mothers in order to get access to their kids?
Or could it be that child abuse and neglect — which takes many different forms, from emotional abuse to sexual abuse to physical violence — is a complicated and messy subject that can’t be reduced to a single explanation?
I’m guessing the latter, but leave it to the MRAs to jump on an explanation that gives them an excuse to absolve men of responsibility for their actions BECAUSE GENES.
h/t to LieBaron on Reddit.
Is it dropping-random-links-without-explanation time already?
randomposter, say what you’re linking to and how it’s relevant, if you want anyone to read it.
well, I’ve got some terribly important* links to drop too!
terribly important gif.
other much important thing.
most important.
*not
I have a very, very important video to share: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssh71hePR8Q
My goodness gracious, can’t anyone read the links themselves? And can no one keep track of the replies to posts anymore? You wanted real life citations, I give you Googles top hits proving my point.
Shut up and watch Ronald McDonald creepily dancing to Touhou music while making bizarre sounds instead.
omgidodas;lk thats hilarious.
“googles top hits” to prove your point XD
that’s not very scientific XD
This video will tell you all that you need to know about how women, represented here by the cat, oppress poor unfortunate betas like RP (represented by the duck).
@cassandra
D”awww it’s the cat dressed as a shark riding a roomba chasing a duck video! : D
(I mostly had to type that cuz it’s so fun to type. Best video ever tho.)
…That’s how we oppress men? I would’ve thought the feminist hivemind would’ve had a little more direction.
RandomPest: Once more, you miss the point.
Peer reviewed studies. Not news stories about a single case, here and there. Single cases prove nothing. You can find a couple cases of people doing almost anything, that doesn’t prove that there is a trend. I’m not even sure what you’re trying to prove at this point. That there are men out there that father many children? Yes, that is a thing that can happen.
It doesn’t prove that “rednecks” and people from the “ghetto” are more virile or fertile. It doesn’t that those people “broke” Britain or are destroying “western civilization.”
wow.. much citation
a news article talking about men sleeping with women and having children
*clearly* this proves that all women want men who treat them badly. a couple examples prove this.
I also want to link to documented proof providing that men love to stick impractical things up their butts and then going to the ER.
http://researchonmedical.com/2013/02/20-objects-found-stuck-in-a-rectum-in-an-er/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/shocking-x-ray-image-shows-bottle-man-rammed-buttocks-article-1.1575538
Hey, Random Poster, “and can no one keep track of the replies to posts anymore? You wanted real life citations, I give you Googles top hits proving my point.”
This is funny for two reasons, 1) you never responded to most of the posters who actually took the time to refute the ‘points’ you brought up in your first ridiculous screed & 2) three links about three men and their numerous children with different women proves nothing about men or women in general
Saw this quote, needed to post here mostly in relation to the racist ‘primitive violence’ bull shit.
“The high status of women in Native societies did not escape the notice of white women either. White women often looked to the Native societies as models of equality from which the white society should base itself, often to the dismay of white men. Even in war, European women were often surprised to find that they went unmolested by their Indian captors. Mary Rowlandson said of her experience: “I have been in the midst of roaring Lions, and Savage Bears, that feared neither God, nor Man, nor the Devil … and yet not one of them ever offered the least abuse of unchastity to me in word or action” (Rowlandson 1974, 108–109). Between 1675 and 1763, almost 40 percent of women who were taken captive by Native people in New England chose to remain with their captors (Namias 1993, 25).3
— Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples ANDREA SMITH
So it’s no wonder our trolls and men like them feel the need to tear down and smear the reputations and histories of POC and their indigenous ancestors. They are a threat to white male supremacy because women will get a new context within which to call them on their hateful shit.
Yes Fox New really paid people to comment on websites.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/20/fox-news-reportedly-used-fake-commenter-account/196509
@weirdwoodtreehugger
Wow. That’s really weird.
I’m dying to know what Random thinks his last link has to do with the subject:
AAAAUGH he’s the serial killer from Dollhouse!
I’m beginning to wonder if RP is a real person or some bot programmed to post random words and links. If artificial intelligence is a thing, why not artificial stupidity?
He’s proof that an AI still can’t pass the Turing test, isn’t he? I knew there had to be some reason for his existence.
katz,
At least he didn’t say, “Okey-dokey”.
http://popgoestheweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/500full.jpg
I still say that RandomPoster is totally performing right now. Nobody can be that smug AND stupid at the same time.
“Man chooses to father dozens of children. It’s everyone else’s fault.”
You did just read the other thread, right?
@emilygoddess
that paraphrasing had me cracking up. XD
You’re babbling incoherently after being handed your ass. Don’t you ever stop? Or, failing that, listen to how idiotic you sound? Because, trust me…you are an idiot on all counts. Why don’t you just fuck off? Nobody’s interested in your self-centred whinings, anyway.