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.
“It’s not about men being violent”. I mean, I’m saying that it’s mostly men doing this and that the behavior we’re discussing is violent, but it’s not about men being violent!
(I know NAMALT, but how can you sit there and say “men will totes kill another man’s children” and then claim you didn’t just connect a violent behavior to men?)
Ooh, is that a thing? It sounds really interesting.
JJ, I’m sorry you were triggered by this. It’s really awful 🙁
David, there’s a recent study in Aus where they found
55.6% experienced abuse from their father/stepfather and 25.9% experienced abuse from their mother/stepmother.
Neglect was more common from mothers and sexual abuse is overwhelmingly a male crime.
Lol Elam did a vid with Stefan Molyneaux where he reduced rape and woman hatred to moms who abuse boys.
Right? MRAs are always complaining about airlines not placing unaccompanied minors next to adult men. They need to make up their minds. Are they naturally predisposed to violence towards unrelated children or is it in outrage to fear men might commit violence against children?
@J. J.
*offers hugs, cookies, and/or hot drink of choice, if wanted*
It’s also “natural” to poop in your pants and never brush your teeth. Just because animals do a thing, doesn’t mean we should do it too. Isn’t transcending animal nature kind of the goal of being human?
And how do they explain the fact that the lowest rates of abuse occur among adoptive parents? Or that if a man abuses/harms/neglects his stepchildren, he risks losing sexual access to his wife and thus the chance to procreate?
Do the Cinderella studies account for the personality types of the stepparents? Maybe violent, abusive men are more likely to remarry multiple times and end up in stepfamily situations. Maybe it’s a way of abusing their wife by proxy: target what’s most precious to her. Maybe, as David suggested, abusers are attracted to vulnerable single mothers, many of whom are in financial straits. There’s plenty of Occam’s Razor explanations that don’t rely on bullshit from the animal kingdom.
What are the misters complaining about, anyway? Nobody’s forcing these guys to marry women with children from a previous relationship. Don’t want to waste your precious resources on “protecting another man’s offspring”? Then don’t marry into a stepfamily. There’s plenty of childless single women out there. (But don’t count on those women being willing to waste THEIR precious resources on violent idiots with crassly reductive views of family life that amount to genetic propagation and lions. Women can be just as fiercely protective of their genes.)
Funny how all these guys excuse their most unevolved behavior claiming it’s an evolutionary adaptation, survival of the fittest, blah blah. NO IT FUCKING IS NOT. And claiming it’s all right for people do it just because other animals do it is a fallacy. It’s shitty logic and excuse-making for the inexcusable. Human society and evolution depend on co-operation, not competition, for survival. Reducing the gene pool makes no evolutionary sense. Killing some other man’s kid(s) because you’re now schtupping their mother and are hoping to knock her up with your own offspring isn’t just illegal and immoral, it’s maladaptive, too. Those same African lions who are killing other lions’ cubs are actually hurting their own chances of survival, unknowingly, by thinning out genetic diversity and ending up inbreeding.
‘Course, you’d never hear about that from these dudes.
J.J.: Hugs, if wanted.
Also,
some_cute_&_funny_kitties.
Sure, my cat can poop in the neighbor’s yard, but when I do the exact same thing, suddenly it’s a problem.
Humans are, factually, animals, so there’s that. And from the standpoint of logic, biology, AND evolution, you really can’t make comparisons across species without hitting upon a massive fail. Heck, you can’t even compare various primate groups to each other without hitting upon a massive fail.
Of course that’s not the purpose of this crap. The sole purpose of MRAs is to excuse anything men do by blaming women.
I too start a countdown whenever anyone starts to use EvoPsych bullshit to make a point and see how long it takes to reveal themselves as a terrible human being. And I too have never made the count into double digits.
I never did that but sounds like a interesting test. I’ll try it and get back with the results 😀
Do you count “one one thousand, two one thousand” or do you just straight-up count “one, two, three?”
I think it’s that men are naturally predisposed to violence against unrelated children, but it’s an outrage to suggest that they ought to be in any way restricted due to that predisposition.
So, um, okay, let’s let the naturalistic fallacy pass; let’s just ignore the just-so-story problem; let’s just gloss over the apparently belief that species-wide trends would somehow be present in someone’s intentions.
Here’s my issue: Um…. how exactly does abusing another person’s kids pass on your genetic material to the next generation?
Coincidentally, I was just arguing with this guy. He is very intense and illogical, in a way that makes me wonder if he is rage-drunk posting most of the time.
Evo. Psychology, the eugenics of the 21 st century. a “science” tailor made for whatever evil thing you did or are still doing and need to justify the act. it;s one of science’s worst sins and need to be stopped.
I am so sorry DavidByron2 triggered flashbacks for you, J.J. Child abuse apologists are awful.
Instead of legos, I think he should be cursed to step on d4s instead. >:-D
*accepts hugs from emilygoddess, sparky, and jayemgriffin* Thanks. Makes me feel better.
Also, a cat putting itself in a trash bin is always funny. Along with my dog chewing on pennies. (Anyone else’s pet like to jingle change in their mouths?)
I’m less surprised now that the majority (anyone remember the percentage?) of these guys are, what, under the age of 25? It explains the ME ME ME ME entitlement and the inability to accept responsibility for anything. But yeah, these guys can still go take their fallacies and go live on a deserted island where they can circle jerk and go their own way until they have to resort to cannibalism, which will still be a woman’s fault somehow.
*dredges up memories from bio-anthro*
So, when lions and certain moneys do it, it’s because lactating females usually can’t get pregnant, and killing the babies stops lactation and makes her fertile again.
When I’ve heard people argue that infanticide is beneficial in humans, the argument usually has to do with not wanting to waste one’s resources raising another man’s offspring.
You could also argue that, if human women have as much drive to pass on their genes as human men, killing their existing children would force them to have more in order to pass on their genes (and I guess if they’re partnered with you they’ll have to use your sperm to do it? IDEK)
I feel really gross now.
Ooh, yes. Caltrop D4s.
Emilygoddess – first, you’d have to persuade them (the misters) that ‘human women’ is not a null set. They seem to adhere to the mindset described by de Beauvoir as ‘there are two kinds of people – human beings and women ‘.
I suspect that one of the OP’s fantasies is the man standing over an injured child, raging at the child’s mother “look what you made me do!”
May DavidByron2 trip and fall and trip and fall on various assorted broken Legos, forever and ever. He is THAT despicable.
@J.J.: I am so, SO, sorry to hear that. Lots of virtual hugs from me, if you want them.
@Leum – Thanks for the link. I went, I read and I was greatly impressed. I am not, myself, an atheist, but at all other points he touched on I found agreement.
I think that the mra-types ARE religious, though. Their religion is just not recognized as such. They do seem to have a great deal of faith and “religious” zeal when pontificating about their “superiority” and entitlement.
Without a male or female “mommy” to take care of their needs? Probably, and hopefully, not long….
@ Lili Fugit – Reading this, I suddenly remembered how psychiatrists and pediatritions used to blame everything on mom. Women who nursed their babes were turning them into “pansies,” if you picked up your baby when s/he cried you were spoiling the little darling, and mom was always responsible when little Jimmy grew up loving boys.
I am really curious about the phenomenon of making women responsible for everything, including actions taken by their adult male children. I find it strange…