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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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altered to the point Handmaid's Tale conditions

I never watched (or read) it and only know it through cultural osmosis, but why it is such a strong symbol for western misogynistic dystopia?

What I heard sounds like a rather implausible society, certainly not a stable one with everyone being sterile or miserable. Is more behind it than just the stylish production design with the read robes and white hats?

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/464243-photographer-defends-wedding-photo-with-handmaids-tale-theme/

I mean, we have real misogynistic dystopia at home! (Or rather abroad)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68634700

It’s easy to forget that when the large majority of men suck, the large majority of women are unhappy. If you think it’s tough being a shitty loser man in a low-sex marriage, imagine being his wife and having to fuck him every month. Having to muster up the willpower to, essentially, let a man that you don’t want to fuck – that every fiber in your body is screaming at you to run away from – rape you, because you don’t want to break apart your family or lose your stability.

Many wives and girlfriends, simply put, do not want to fuck their loser men. But the alternative is worse. Breaking families apart, losing financial stability and all of the labor their men provide, turning their lives upside down – these women essentially feel like their lives are being held at gunpoint. They don’t want to have sex, but the men in their lives have power over them, and because these men have power over them, they allow these men to rape them. They don’t love their men – at least not in a sexual way – and are simply allowing themselves to be used for sexual release by someone who has power over them.

Women who are married to or involved with loser men feel like handmaids, from the TV show. No respect, no love, just monthly rapes because the alternative is worse. And this is why The Handmaids Tale speaks to so many women.

Like most fictional novels, The Handmaid’s Tale caters to its audience. Not too long into the book, the evil oppressor man who owns the female protagonist starts to become interested in her for more than just her handmaid duties. And, of course, there’s another man that she eagerly wants to fuck in between forced fuckings, who loves her back because, as we all know from Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, and other such books, men always fall left and right an average woman for absolutely no reason whatsoever simply because there’s something so darn indescribably special about her. The book quickly turns from its dystopian commentary about America’s dark future into a tale of this woman’s hopes, dreams, and attempts to escape to a better life with a better man – directly speaking to its target audience of unhappy wives.

Remember, the majority of men are losers. Well, not really. They’re average guys. But in the eyes of women, that makes them losers. Most women are not happy with most men. They’re just whoring themselves out for money, labor, and stability. Meanwhile, they dream of an escape to a better life with a better man. And over time, these feelings take a toll. The Handmaid’s Tale speaks to modern women because modern women literally feel oppressed by their men. On some level, deep down inside, they feel powerless, used, and raped by the men who love them.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/6dyf0y/why_women_are_so_entranced_by_the_handmaids_tale/

Man, that post is a blackpilled take completely divorced from reality.

Margaret Atwood and The Handmaid's Tale was not "unknown" to Western women until the TV series. It's been a very well known book since it was first published. Sure, very few women have ever actually read it, but even fewer men have - that line about how women "don’t give a flying fuck about books or literary concepts unless they see them on a screen" is doubly true of men. Seriously, it is a statistical fact that women read and buy more books than men. (Yes, the majority of books bought are romances, but even in other genres, except perhaps SF and non-fiction, women are bigger readers than men.)

It's weird seeing this poster take the old radfem line that all sex in a patriarchy is rape and women only pretend to love their men, and switch it around to say this is essentially true but it's because all women lust to be owned by an alpha. Horseshoe theory strikes again, I guess. Something something Hlynka?

The appeal of 50 Shades of Grey and similar stories is that yeah, a lot of women really do get turned on by the idea of being dominated, and some part of them wants a 6/6/6 alpha the same way some part of most men want a barely-legal bikini model, even if they love their wives. But the tonal and thematic differences between stories like 50 Shades (or John Norman's Gor series, which has some female fans as well though it's mostly aimed at men) and The Handmaid's Tale are pretty dramatic. I haven't seen the TV show, but no part of the book makes it sexy or appealing even to men who like the idea of dominating women or women who like the idea of a domineering man. The sex is constantly depicted as gross and degrading, they are all living in literal dystopian conditions (impoverished, deprived of basic necessities), and Atwood famously was inspired more by the Taliban than by Christian Dominionists. I can't say I can speak for Afghani women but let's say I have grave doubts about Dread Jim's belief that those women and ISIS brides are actually living in sexually satisfied bliss being literally owned by men who treat them as chattel. The women who are really into Christian Gray imagine a billionaire giving them his undivided attention and care - the point of the fantasy is that even if he's rough and controlling, he only has eyes for plain little ol' her, and they have super-hot sex, but then she's allowed to continue living her life as the cherished object of a rich man who's actually devoted to her happiness, not a religious fanatic who will beat her if she lets another man see her elbow.

The appeal of 50 Shades of Grey and similar stories is that yeah, a lot of women really do get turned on by the idea of being dominated, and some part of them wants a 6/6/6 alpha the same way some part of most men want a barely-legal bikini model, even if they love their wives.

It is important to note that the female fantasy is to replace their husband with the 6/6/6 alpha, while the male fantasy is to add the barely-legal bikini model to a harem with their wives. Men are polygamous, women are serially monogamous, because a woman can only be pregnant by one man at a time, while a man can get multiple women pregnant at the same time.

Women's sexual desires are fundamentally evil in a way that men's sexual preferences aren't.

What makes wanting an attractive and successful husband evil?

That part is normal and (according to the red-or-darker-pill view being expressed here) even biologically imperative. Presumably the evil part is the part where (again, according to that specific view) they're prepared to dump their existing husbands on a dime for him.

I don't think I'm anywhere near to fully agreeing with this, but I have seen a lot of media geared to women that treats female cheating very casually or sometimes even as virtuous, while this is rarely the case for male cheating in media aimed at men, and it's bothered me before.

Pretty much no woman who is already married with children (having entered the marriage childless) is going to be able to ‘date up’ after divorce unless she picked a truly terrible husband. At best she’ll date sideways, most likely down.

Perfectly true, but media aimed at women such Eat, Pray, Love continues to sell them the fantasy that they will do better after a divorce, lots of women believe it, and destroy their husband's lives, their children's lives, and their own lives chasing Chad, not realizing that if Chad didn't want to settle down with them when they were young and childness, he definitely is not going to want to settle down with them now that they are old single mothers.

Do you have any actual statistics to back this up? I see y'all in the manosphere claiming this a lot, that it's just a typical woman thing to dump a good husband on a whim because she thinks she can do better. Women be dumping their loving, devoted husbands right and left, abandoning their kids, doing it all with no warning or justification, because a passing chad gave her tingles. Daily, hourly! And they're such stupid delusional cows, they have no idea that Chad Thundercock is not going to wife their newly divorced ass up!

It sure is a story y'all like to tell. And no doubt it's happened a time or two. But for every story like that, women have a story about the husband who left his good and faithful but aging, sagging, graying wife for a younger, fitter lass with boobs that still kiss the sun.

Whose story is more truthy? Which actually happens more often?

The reality is that most people don't casually derail their lives on a whim just because someone cuter winked at them (and if you married someone like that, your vetting instincts really need an upgrade). The man who dumps his wife for a younger model probably has his own version of the story, and so do the wives of the men who claim their wives just "destroyed their lives and their children's lives chasing Chad."

People can be shitty to each other, they can make bad choices in love, and they can be emotionally immature and irresponsible. What do you have besides resentment and just-so-stories to justify the assertion that women are more guilty of this?

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