I was going to continue adding posts to this series when I saw the following photo David Gendron has posted on my Facebook wall:
Immediately, a female relative of mine from Ukraine responded, “Well, what’s wrong with that?”
And you know what? The guy holding the poster doesn’t bother me in the least. Just look at him. He is a miserable, unkempt, ugly loser who has no other way of connecting with women emotionally than to try to annoy them with his stupid poster. He has no idea how to inscribe himself into modernity and knows that he is nothing but sad old flotsam and jetsam of a dead world.
The reaction of my relative, however, does bug me to no end. This is a woman who would not know how to be submissive to anybody to save her life. She never got married and never took care of any children. She has been completely self-sufficient her entire life. As a fully Soviet person, she cannot have any knowledge of or interest in the Bible. And all of the men of her generation in Ukraine are now dead precisely because of the idiotic gender stereotypes she swoons over on Facebook.
I have seen so many women who never even get anything from stupidly and irreflectively parroting these gender stereotypes yet who keep doing so. I’m not talking right now about women who exploit these stereotypes to gain something for themselves. Such women are trying to benefit themselves which, at least, is rational. I don’t approve, of course, but they don’t make me nearly as rabid as the unthinking chirpers.
There is no feminism without intensive and ongoing education. People need to realize that the moment they succumb to the desire to simplify reality by saying anything about “all women” or “all men”, they contribute to promoting gender stereotypes that will continue thwarting their lives.
Clarissa's Blog 
Is it purely ignorance that leads Ukrainian women to accepting these stereotypes, even if they resemble nothing from their lives at all? I can’t think of any other reason.
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People feel comforted by repeating things they heard and said many times before. It’s just easier to repeat silly platitudes than say something meaningful. I often observe people getting together and exchanging series of such unthinking banalities. It’s like a social ritual of sorts. What they forget is that words always end up shaping reality.
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I feel as if the majority of social interaction is unthinking banalities and platitudes and noise. It’s a like a series of fairytales of suckitude. The content almost doesn’t matter; it’s the tone and the ritual. “How’s the weather, hello, goodbye, I love [slur], blah blah blah, celebrity gossip, blah, work, blah.” (Why yes, I’m down on people today.)
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It must be easy for you, since you’re so adverse to these inane social rituals. But sometimes I worry how much of what I believe is just these silly platitudes. I’ve fallen for “rape is not about sex” and “trans people should be happy with who they are” before.
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@ Benoni: “I’ve fallen for “rape is not about sex” and “trans people should be happy with who they are” before.”
Am I misunderstanding you? Or do you think that rape IS about sexual desire and that transpeople should NOT be happy with themselves? I hope I misread you here because rape is most certainly not about desire (it’s about power and control) and transpeople (like all people) deserve to be happy!
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Evelina
Trans people should absolutely feel happy with their trans identity, but that’s not what the platitude means. When I fell for it I took it to mean that they ought to conform to a cis identity, because that’s who I thought they were. This is a very common turn of phrase among those who oppose transgenderism.
Rape may not be about desire, but it is a sexual thing because one of ways a rape victim suffers is from having their sexual control taken from them. I used to think it was just an act of violence and sex didn’t have much to do with it.
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Would it bother you more if the poster holder was a young handsome, stylishly dressed man?
Maybe your relative doesn’t include herself in the group “women”? Queen Bee syndrome and compartmentalization is alive and well for many women. How else do you explain Phyllis Schafly?
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An attractive loser would probably have better ways of getting a woman’s attention and wouldn’t have to resort to that sign.
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But that attractive men who held those beliefs would still hold those beliefs even if he didn’t put them on a big sign. I do think that’s a part of the problem. It’s not like the guy holding that poster looks the way he does because of those horrible beliefs.
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No, it’s the other way round. He holds these beliefs because he is ugly and unwanted.
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Good to know that misogyny is really just code for being unattractive to women. This means that those of us in the bottom 80% of attractiveness to women should just hate women. Clarissa, you have made it clear that us men who women deem physically unattractive derive no benefit from not hating women.
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Why leave comments if all you have to say is something this stupid?
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Why shouldn’t he hate women? Guys like him are unwanted and given zero affection or warmth my women throughout their lives, and they have to sit and watch as better looking and/or higher status men than themselves clean up. Unattractive men aren’t morally responsible for being (almost totally, anyway) unattractive, so why should they suffer a HUGE welfare disadvantage as a result? That’s basically the same moral intuition that explains to us why racism is wrong – a black person isn’t morally responsible for being black, so it’s unjust to treat them any worse because of it? It is understandable and condoneable that unattractive men hate women, because women are perpetrating an enormous injustice against them. We should feel bad as human beings that this injustice is happening in the world today. Whatever happened to moral equality, Clarisse?
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“Why shouldn’t he hate women?”
– To avoid poisoning his own life to spite people who don’t care if he’s dead or alive. Currently he is poking his eye out to spite the mirror, and that is self-defeating.
“Guys like him are unwanted and given zero affection or warmth my women throughout their lives, and they have to sit and watch as better looking and/or higher status men than themselves clean up.”
– What’s preventing him or anybody else from solving their psychological problems and becoming attractive to everybody?
“Unattractive men aren’t morally responsible for being (almost totally, anyway) unattractive, so why should they suffer a HUGE welfare disadvantage as a result?”
– Here is a detailed explanation of what makes people unattractive: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/10/07/the-reasons-people-are-romantically-and-sexually-unsuccessful/
“Whatever happened to moral equality, Clarisse?”
– Are you seriously seeing this peddler of hate who is too lazy to take charge of his own life and prefers to stand around stupidly with idiotic posters (like that solves any problem) as MORAL? Seriously?
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For some reason, you think male sexual attractiveness is (i) psychological in nature and (ii) firmly within the agent’s own control (“What’s preventing him or anybody else from solving their psychological problems and becoming attractive to everybody?”). You support these with a link to another post of yours outlining ‘why people are sexually unsuccessful’. From these premises you derive the conclusion that men who are unattractive are “too lazy to take charge of [their own lives]”.
My argument is that we should not be worse off in terms of welfare for things we’re not morally responsible for; that we are not morally responsible for things which happen that we have no control over, and that we have very little control over how sexually attractive we are (as men, but I’d say it’s not to the same extent for every man). Therefore, significant differences in men’s welfare are unjust because they punish certain (less attractive) men for things they can’t control.
So here’s why my argument is right, and yours is wrong:
1. We share moral intuitions about fairness (that we shouldn’t be worse off in welfare because of things we’re not morally responsible (control) for) – if we didn’t, you wouldn’t be appealing to the fact that people can control their attractiveness levels to argue against me.
2. Given that we share moral intuitions, our main disagreement here is on how much control we have over our own attractiveness (if we are men). I say we have very little, you say we have a lot. Your post you linked to makes a lot of claims about how a “happy, exuberant sexuality” (I assume within one’s control to obtain) makes people attractive to others, but you basically have no evidence for this (aside from two anecdotes). A cursory glance at wikipedia(!) or a Google search for ‘male attractiveness study’ would tell you that empirical research into what women as a group tend to find sexually appealing in men has shown a lot of factors beyond one’s control (see: height, facial symmetry, and yes, penis size) have an enormous influence here. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness#Male_physical_attractiveness (check the footnotes for many of the relevant studies), and this is a study from the first page of my Google search http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19139985. When you make empirical claims, you MUST substantiate them with evidence. If you can’t, they ought not to be taken seriously.
3. But EVEN IF you were right in saying that we have control over our attractiveness levels to an enormous extent – exercising this control doesn’t come for free in terms of welfare. Some must work harder than others in order to access the same levels of welfare in terms of ‘relationship and sexual goods’. The charming male model with an enormous inheritance from his rich family will have to work far less than the lower-income-background quasimodo with Asperger’s Syndrome. If we calculate the NET welfare gains/losses – we can see that some are still disadvantaged due to factors beyond their control, even if it is within everyone’s control to be romantically successful.
To conclude, your slight on unattractive men as ‘lazy’ is unwarranted. And this is absolutely a MORAL issue. Holding someone to disadvantage (lack of affection, ‘romantic goods’, etc. that I elaborated on in my previous comment) for things they are not morally responsible for is unjust, and women ARE holding them to disadvantage, so the blame for this lays squarely with them. This means that unattractive men are justified in blaming women for this injustice, and the hatred which results. Characterizing these men as lazy is totally heartless.
Finally I’d like
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“My argument is that we should not be worse off in terms of welfare for things we’re not morally responsible for”
– This is extremely childish. But what can one expect from a person who quotes Wikipedia as a serious source of knowledge.
“The charming male model with an enormous inheritance from his rich family will have to work far less than the lower-income-background quasimodo with Asperger’s Syndrome. ”
– I’m sure it’s comforting to think that. But this claim has no basis in reality. It only has basis in your envy, immaturity, and lack of logical skills.
“And this is absolutely a MORAL issue. Holding someone to disadvantage (lack of affection, ‘romantic goods’, etc. that I elaborated on in my previous comment) for things they are not morally responsible for is unjust”
– You want a just distribution of affection? 🙂 🙂 What are you, 11? THis is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
“Characterizing these men as lazy is totally heartless.”
– Go to your Mommy and complain to her. Maybe she will comfort you in this realization that the world has no patience for immature, ugly, lazy slobs like you who think then world’s wisdom is contained in Wikipedia. Alternatively, you can clean the snot off your face and stop being a loser. The choice is yours.
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Come on, he is just another Christian telling it like the bible says. Afterall, in the good ole USA you have freedom of religion, lmao. 😉
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My first impression was that it is a woman holding the sign.
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I’m not entirely sure it’s not.
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That guy holding a sign never wore ironed clothes in his life – he’s strictly polyester-ville. Ironing is sooooo ’60s. Even Brooks Brothers’ $150.00 businessman’s shirts are no-ironing-needed cotton now.
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Now I’m not trying to defend that poster but I wonder how you got “unkept” and “ugly” out of this?
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It’s my aesthetic judgment. Of course, it’s is everybody’s right to see him as beautiful and polished.
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I didn’t mean to sound confrontational. Im starting to lose my comfort with the practice of commenting on someone’s appearance when commenting on their stances/views. Like disagreeing with a woman politicians stance on a topic but throwing in a “she’s ugly”.
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There are gratuitous references to appearance and there are ones that make sense in a context.
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I do not hate women, but I do believe the bible is the word of God. Regarding marriage roles, women should submit to the husbands lead and husbands should love their wives. This is a matter of faith in God for me. Perhaps that man who you ladies find unattractive shares the same motivation for his belief as I??
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You are entitled to your belief system. And I’m entitled to despise it. As long as neither one of us tries to force the other to adopt their system of belief, we are all good.
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“Perhaps that man who you ladies find unattractive shares the same motivation for his belief as I??”
–I would say so.
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