MRA writer Amy Alkon has her boxers in a twist over the Skepchick-Dawkins thingy.
You pretty much know how her piece is going to go down after reading the title:
"When Women Confuse Being Asked Out With Being Raped In An Elevator At Knifepoint"
Here are the facts on the ground: At 4 a.m. in an elevator, a man asked Skepchick out, while she was a single woman in a foreign country after she had just spoken about sexism in the skeptic community. In a video blog, she then advised men not to do that because it makes her uncomfortable.
So yeah.
Clearly the only ones suffering from confusion here are those who think Skepchich was accusing the man who asked her out of rape. That is clearly not the case. Although, I do think it's interesting to note how quickly critics of Skepchick are to conflate the two. I'm not sure what the disconnect is when men make that conflation, but I think it could be evidence of their shoddy view of male nature. For, watch how this alleged men's rights commentator characterizes men. Alkon claims:
"Men 'sexualize' women. Ladies, they want to have sex with you, your sister, your sister's friend, your sister's friend's friend, the cashier, the waitress, the lady with the big luscious ass who's crossing the street, and her sister and her sister's friend. If men weren't like this, the planet would be filled with plants and cockroaches instead of human beings."
As opposed to our current reality, where the world is populated by plants, cockroaches, human beings, and the sexually violent wildebeests known as "men," amIrite?
Seriously though, why is it that Teh Feminazi Cabal gets, like 1000% more shit for supposedly framing All Men As Sexual Aggressors, than do the people like Alkon, who are, instead, given editorial space in an MRA magazine to put forth that All Men Are Sexual Aggressors?
Also, what's interesting is how quickly Alkon goes from Skepchick's argument (Hey guys, don't ask me out when I'm alone with you in an elevator at 4 a.m., k?) to OMG the Earth Will Be Nothing But Roaches, Twinkies, and Tumbleweed if men stop asking women out in elevators at 4 am!!
I mean, seriously? It's all just so ironic that it's Teh Feminists who are framed as being over-the-top about all of this.
If you remember, prominent atheist Richard Dawkins got involved in the conversation by comparing Skepchick's complaint to the complaints of a hypothetical woman "Muslima," who, unlike Skepchick, apparently has Actual Serious And Legitimate Grievances. Yawn. That's about the oldest trick in the Trivializing Women's Concerns Handbook.
What is interesting is when we compare Dawkins' statement to Alkon's own suggestion to the ladies:
"If it is troubling to you to be sexualized, stay home, or only leave the house in a big black burka."
Of course.
Like I've said before. The situation in some fundamentalist religious cultures is a difference of degree, not of substance, with respect to the gender essentialism at play in some secular and atheist cultures. According to alleged commonsensical truth, men are hypersexual and unable to control their (sometimes violent) sexual impulses and, as a result, if women do not want to experience this male sexuality, women must restrict their own lives, freedoms, clothing, choices, and careers because it's just too gosh darn much to ask men to restrict their sexual entitlement.
Maybe one day MRAs will come to think better of man than his current definition as a being who cannot physically fathom women as anything other than penis receptables. Maybe one day, MRAs will stop their all-out attack not only on the feminists and women, but on men as well.
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