GOOD NEWS! It's impossible for a man to rape his wife

[debrand]

MRA's are such....idiots. They have a lot in common with fundies, too. Both groups would probably be horrified by that, but deep down, their philosophies all boil down to pretty much the same thing: women are what's wrong with the world and need to be controlled.

Personally, I wish both groups could be sent off in a rocket somewhere, but the children don't deserve it.

manboobz.blogspot.com records and mocks numerous bits of MRA fuckery, if anyone needs another internet time sink.

On some of the MRA sites there are women who seem desperate for those men's approval. I don't understand why. Women will never do anything correct. If they sleep with the men, they are whores. If they don't sleep with the man than they either hate men or are playing some sort of game.

The entire alpha beta man thing is weird too. Men used to be told that they should sow their oats and sleep with several women before they married. Women were separated into 'whores' and "ladies'. By the MRA logic, weren't the 'whores' actually alpha women and the 'ladies' just betas?

[hywelis]

His commentators rushed in to support him. One called anonymous wrote:

It's also said a man can get sex outside of marriage. Some, perhaps even many, can. But sex outside marriage can be fleeting and transient, and ultimately unpredictable and unreliable. It's also not morally acceptable for the Christian man.

This is why up until the middle part of the 20th century most US states had no laws outlawing marital rape. A woman under those laws was held to give standing consent to sex to her husband. He was entitled to sex from his wife, and she was required to provide it to him.

Now, we have told men that they are not entitled even to the most fundamental building block of marriage, its raison d'etre for a man, and its sine qua non for a man -- sex. We've told men that they can't expect sex from a wife at reasonable intervals. So even this one thing, this one benefit, that a man gets from marriage, he is now being told he has no right to it.

Bolding mine.

So that's the building block of marriage for a man? The reason why marriage exists, from a male point of view? What a disgustingly reductive idea of marriage and men this person has. I'd be offended to share my gender with this person, if I were a man.

Hywelis

[hywelis]

I find it very disturbing that we're in the year 2013 and we're still having to discuss this crap. :oops:

This. So much this. It's disturbing and depressing.

Hywelis

[RachelB]

I refuse to look at the actual site, sine I want to sleep tonight, but the only point with any truth is that the law used to permit marital rape. "Used to", though, is the operative term. I know the law in Canada changed in 1983.

He reminds me of my Creepiest Client Ever. At one point, the man said to me, "...I've been a good Christian husband and have kept my wedding vows since the separation, and it's been hard. Please tell [estranged wife] that I'm willing to drop the whole case if she'll have one last night with me, as husband and wife." At that point, I was speechless from shock and disgust. The next day, I called and told him that I couldn't do this - if she wanted to have sex with him, they could have sex, but I couldn't link it to a court case. "But that's the problem" he replied, "she won't sleep with me without this as an incentive". Now, this case had been particularly nasty [he was willing to do anything to take away the kids or get her locked up], so sex under that condition would have amounted to rape. I couldn't get over the fact that this creep was trying to impress me with his "good Christian" act while asking me to extort sex from his wife.

It's disturbing how late the laws changed in Canada and the U.S., no?

I've seen a persuasive argument (Carole Pateman, who works in contract law) that looks at contract within the writing of Locke, Hobbes, et al-- all the people whose writing was the supposed basis for the U.S. justice system-- and sees that these writers treated women as incomplete human beings, incapable of engaging in public life or owning property, including the property constituted by their own bodies. Honestly, I think that's where all the fights about who gets to use women's bodies, and how, come from.

[alba]

It's disturbing how late the laws changed in Canada and the U.S., no?

I've seen a persuasive argument (Carole Pateman, who works in contract law) that looks at contract within the writing of Locke, Hobbes, et al-- all the people whose writing was the supposed basis for the U.S. justice system-- and sees that these writers treated women as incomplete human beings, incapable of engaging in public life or owning property, including the property constituted by their own bodies. Honestly, I think that's where all the fights about who gets to use women's bodies, and how, come from.

Are you familiar with the concept of coverture? Under British law, for many centuries, a married woman became "covered" by her husband and was legally the same entity. This meant that a woman couldn't seek a divorce, or refuse to share her earnings with her estranged drunk of a husband (there's a scene in Mary Wollstonecraft's Wrongs of Woman in which a character's husband finds her and literally takes the bed out from under her), because you can't DO that to yourself, and they were legally a part of their husband, with all their property belonging to him.