‘Cause now I’ve got the pill
By David Futrelle
So I’ve been poking around the BlackPillScience subreddit, where the regulars discuss the latest scientific research that proves ugly dudes have it harder than non-ugly dudes in life and love. And they do, to some extent, but then again there are plenty of ugly dudes who have great lives and get laid on a regular basis, “black pill” be damned.
Anyway, actual scientists do research on this shit and these guys discuss it. But let’s just say that the discussions are a little less scientific than the papers under discussion.
Take this little comment-cum-manifesto posted in a topic discussing arranged marriages among current-day hunter-gatherers.
Listen carefully, women were never meant to control their own reproduction. It’s entirely unnatural and has adverse consequences on culture and the foundations of civilization.
But of course birth control is a-OK if men want to use it.
If a man does not wish to impregnate a woman then all he has to do is wear a condom or pull out at the appropriate time (or both). But at all times it should remain his choice, not hers.
What’s not good for the goose is good for the gander.
People in ancient civilizations used to watch the calendar and only had sex when appropriate. This system successfully facilitated humanity’s rise for literally thousands of years. When a woman has control over her own biology it opens up far too many options that adversely affect us all in immeasurable ways.
If you want to reject all medical technology invented since the ancient Egyptians, feel free to go right ahead, dude.
When women control their own reproduction it facilitates promiscuity, hypergamy, feminism, labor market disruptions, housing inflation, and beta male exclusion.
“Beta male exclusion?” Dude, birth control makes it less risky to have heterosexual sex. This benefits everyone who likes to have heterosexual sex, including so-called beta males.
Beta males are not inferior, they are in essence what builds civilizations and enables the privileges that both men and women currently take for granted.
It would be rather difficult to maintain civilization without the work of women. But yes, the majority of men do the majority of the work that men do.
It is only by forcing an equitable distribution of women among men than this thing we call civilization is maintained in the long run.
Well this is just a tiny bit chilling, huh — even though it’s only a smidgen blunter than Jordan Peterson’s “enforced monogamy.” How exactly would one go about “forcing an equitable distribution of women among men?” You can’t treat women like they’re government cheese.
Here’s Loretta Lynn offering a rebuttal on behalf of married women tired of having no control over their reproductive lives. I’ll take the Loretta pill over the black pill any day.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
@ Ohlmann:
Point(s) taken, and I stand corrected. I was really only considering the other side, I.e. no sexual animal can reproduce without the other… which is also untrue now. I’ll just retire gracefully from this argument 😉
I see the word “unnatural” alongside a moral dictate and my eyeballs instantly roll so hard they fly out of my skull and I have to retrieve them.
There was an infamous early member of the online incel community called Government Gets Girlfriends. He posted here for a little while several years ago, but I think he got banned. He had a plan for this.
A government program would pay poor and/or unemployed women to be the girlfriends of incels. Needless to say, he did not understand why there’s an element of coercion to such a plan.
This guy (who still has a blog but under a different name that I’m forgetting at the moment) admitted at one point that he blackmailed a young women into having sex with him. So, yeah. Charming fellow.
Sadly, incels have gotten so much more horrible in recent years that GGG seems almost moderate. I’m sure most of these guys who are pro distribution of women wouldn’t allow it to be an ostensibly voluntary program.
I just hope he no longer obsessively googles himself and shows up in the comments. That were sad, in a way – his very first post was always a variant of “Does this site allow free speech?” Nothing good ever comes from that.
Oddly I bumped into an old thread on another site where he were putting forth his bullshit (and attempting to defend demanding sex from his mother) yesterday. Hadn’t thought of him in years.
@Threp
Nothing good comes of that either. Do I want to know what his defense was?
What the actual.
@Naglfar
You really don’t. 🙂
He used the lobsterboi’s favorite cry of “CONTEXT!!!!!” on this particular thread – without explaining in which part of the multiverse there’s any acceptable context for a human being demanding sex from their mother.
Hell, even Oedipus didn’t do that.
Gotta admire a doofus who complains about a thing being unnatural and adds how bad it is for culture and civilization.
I assume that women had absolutely nothing to do with this and men were in possession of all the calendars so that women couldn’t keep track of what was what? Probably a good idea to mandate that all women wear visors or something to keep them from seeing what phase the moon is at, and you should always shout random numbers at a woman if you suspect she’s counting the days from her last period or something.
All this talk about ancient contraception reminds me of an online discussion where a dude said that it always irks him to read fantasy novels (set in historical environs) where a man and a woman have sex and there’s no mention of how the woman is preventing pregnancy. I suppose we’re reading different kinds of books because I don’t really remember reading a lot of sex scenes where the goings-on are described in such detail that you know beyond doubt that pregnancy is a possible result. Not to mention that the man might also have a vested interest in preventing a pregnancy, or that the woman might have taken care of the matter somehow without his knowledge, and whether it should be mentioned perhaps depends on who’s point-of-view we’re getting it from.
I wish there was a way to band incels from the internet.
There is.
Ban anonymity and incels, trolls, channers, and other assorted pests of opportunity go the way of the passenger pigeon.
The downside is too big though. Not that I’m biased in any way by my preference to remain anonymous … 😛
Or indeed by the need for many people to have an online social outlet that isn’t connected to RL – as in many people here, who have a certain need for obscurity.
@Threp
That might get rid of some, but I see quite a few on Twitter that do use their real names and photos as avatars, so others might not be deterred.
@ Masse_Mysteria:
I once wrote a fic with a historical setting and decided I couldn’t write an outdoor sex scene until I figured out what the characters were using to repel mosquitoes, so I kind of sympathize with that reader.
@Masse_Mysteria
I rather liked how this was handled in the Liavek stories. There was an herbal contraceptive known as Worrynot, which could be made as a tea or you could just chew the leaves if needed. I wonder if this was a fantasy version of silphium?
Last bit I wrote on my newest – it’s post apoc – the MC had just started her period. 😛 That took a fair amount of thought and research.
I mean, you can’t expect consistency, but I thought the incel mantra was that only a small proportion of all the men that have ever lived have got to pass on their genes? Iron proof, in their eyes, of women’s terrible chadlust – which was only remedied for a brief period in the 1950s when every single man got a wife. Wouldn’t that suggest in their alternative universe that women have always called the reproductive shots through cuckcolding and alpha chasing and the like?
I just want them to have a coherent narrative to their belief structure, dammit!
@LollyPop
I’m not sure exactly what they believe these days, as it changes whenever the wind blows, but I thought their claim was that “Western civilization” has historically been like the 1950s, rather than that being an aberration. Anyway, regardless they are inconsistent.
O/T: In case anyone is still interested, this is an interesting piece about JK Rowling and her work in light of recent events.
Sex scenes in R-rated action films don’t bother to indicate whether there’s any sort of contraception involved – they just have sex. Then again, R-rated action films tend to be unrealistic to the point where they could be considered a sub-genre of “fantasy” anyway. ?
I don’t read much fantasy, and so far none with any sex scenes, but I would imagine that charms and cantrips take care of that, mostly.
Piers Anthony never explained contraception in Xanth as far as I can recall, but that’s nowhere near the worst problem with his depictions of sex.
@Moon Custafer
History the usual answer is either a nice smoky fire, being in an area with few mosquitoes, or nothing, you just count it as one of the hazards of outdoor sex, like grass burns and thistles.
@Snowberry
Pretty much this; in any setting where magical effects are commonplace, there will be reliable contraception. Quite a lot of fantasy settings in fact specify this, but usually when dealing with a midwife or other medical professional/herbalist/hedge witch/etc. than at the point of any implied or described sex; such people are usually mentioned to have access to contraceptives and/or abortifascients. Indeed, the same applies historically. Silphium was quite a good one, but there are other means that have been used in various places and times. Not as convenient or efficacious as the Pill, but definitely extant.
@Naglfar
Not just depictions. He’s literally a pedophile – he has a history of sexually harassing and pursuing teenage girls. I know at least one person who was harassed by him as a minor.
(Sorry to jump in with this, I just feel it’s important to mention because the sick fuck is still somehow a popular author.)
That were fairly obvious by the third or fourth Xanth book. And while I adore puns (fortunately, I’ve still got the Myth Inc books for that particular fix!), it creeped me out enough to drop the series and author right then and there.
Do still think his “Of Man and Manta” series is one of the greatest new wave sci-fi written though. I miss re-reading that.
(Quoting Dalillama, responding mainly to Masse Mysteria)
I recall this trope briefly came up in the Finnish youth fantasy series Vuorileijonan Varjo (by Taru and Tarmo Väyrynen), which has only a few magic effects in a “bronze age Mediterranean” type setting. The herbalist was a young guy supplying contraceptives to his own girlfriend.
Vinegar in a vaginal sponge is sometimes mentioned in Finnish historical novels by Kaari Utrio (a well known historian and feminist, as well as bestselling novelist).
@Masse_Mysteria
The book The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, which is set in an alternate 1855 where steam-powered computers existed, actually had a scene involving a man getting cleaned-up sheep guts to use as a condom.
@ObSidJag, Victorious Parasol:
Rabbits being able to do that was actually a (minor) plot point in Watership Down.
@Cyborgette
Yes, I recall discussing him and his pedophilia in another thread. He also defended and published a short story by a convicted child molester. I am definitely not trying to defend him.
@Naglfar
I didn’t think you were trying to defend him! Just that you might not know about his history of abusive behavior. I’d forgotten about the prior conversation, sorry about that!