Oh, Men’s Rights subreddit, will you ever learn? (Probably not.)
Sometimes I ask myself: what is it that I really hope to accomplish with this website, aside from entertaining myself and my readers, and exposing misogynist assholes for who they are. There’s a part of me that still hopes that someday, something I write will cause some misogynist and/or Men’s Rightser out there to develop a modicum of self-awareness, look at what they’ve been saying or doing, and say to themselves, “I’m really kind of a tool, aren’t I? Maybe I should stop.”
When the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the Men’s Rights movement came out, I hoped it might have a similar sort of effect. Or that, even if it didn’t persuade any MRAs out there that they were wrong, it might at least convince a few that they were going about things the wrong way. Nope. On the Men’s Rights subreddit, at least, it seems to have sent many of the regulars into an indignant tizzy, and they have doubled down on their peculiar brand of politics-by-whining-online.
Consider this post:
Yes, that’s right. Some Men’s Rights Redditors seem to think that the best way to convince the world that they’re not part of a hate group is to continue to celebrate a self-admitted child abuser who urged men to firebomb courthouses and police stations and kill people.
Then there’s this post, currently the top post on the subreddit:
Wow, if the Men’s Rights subreddit had anything to do with that, that would indeed be a victory. As one regular put it:
Thing is, I read r/mensrights pretty regularly, and I don’t remember any campaign there to protect the rights of fishermen in New Zealand.
Turns out that’s because the campaign, such as it was, consisted of one post some months back, which got all of 11 upvotes at the time. The current post in which r/mensrights congratulates itself for its “victory” has gotten, last I checked, 120 upvotes, more than ten times that. Simplecosine’s self-congratulatory comment in the new thread has gotten 36 upvotes. The comment in the original thread asking r/mensrightsers to send an email to the US Secretary of State’s office got … one upvote. In other words, only a handful of Men’s Rights Redditors even noticed the original post, much less sent along an email.
Reading one of the linked news articles makes clear the real reason the State Department opened an investigation: a six-month long, three-continent wide investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek revealing abuses in the industry.
The Men’s Rights subreddit: Taking Credit for Shit They Didn’t Do Since 2008.
And then there’s this post:
I’ve got nothing to say about this one — it’s basically self-refuting — except that I’m sort of bemused by the notion that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “semi-women group.” Uh, what is that exactly? A group with some women in it? A group that doesn’t think women are all a bunch of evil bitches? The horror!
Oh, Men’s Rights movement. You’ll never change, will you?
EDITED TO ADD: And speaking of never changing, here’s how one Men’s Rights redditor responded to my comments there suggesting that maybe, just maybe, MRAs should actually denounce and distance themselves from someone calling for terrorism:
Let me just highlight that bit at the end again:
[T]he cost to the establishment to maintain the status quo in regards to divorce, custody, etc. must be made so high that it’s just no longer feasible. If that means instilling abject fear into the hearts of judges, cops and legislators by making them think their careers and/or lives could be forfeit unless they change their attitudes towards men, then so be it.
Trying to instill fear for one’s life in your opponents: that is the very definition of terrorism.
Posted on March 12, 2012, in actual activism, antifeminism, drama, grandiosity, hypocrisy, misogyny, MRA, MRA paradox, oppressed men, reddit, terrorism. Bookmark the permalink. 528 Comments.
Aww, hey EN! How’s it going? Why don’t you hang around a while and reminisce? Haha, oh wait, this is you we’re talking about.
I forgot to say what my womanly day was. It involved watching Labyrinth and sending dirty text messages and starting to tidy my living room, mostly.
My mistake. It contradicts my own principles on gender. Instead of viewing gender as black and white (which includes gray in between) there should be a rainbow of genders. (Laci Green made an amazing video dealing with sex-gender, and this is where the rainbow idea comes from. I love Laci.) It’s like seeing 3 dimensions when there were previously only two.
ZJ is not between Man and Woman, he is beyond Man and Woman! :)
You may want to do a bit of research my overeager little friend. What you think is nature is really a set of your own ideologies, and a very limiting and dogmatic set at that.
Gender is black, white, gray, and rainbow. But some people really are black or white and that’s real too.
Also ZJ describes himself as a guy, so I’d check with him before exuberantly declaring him “beyond Man and Woman.”
But whenever s/he speaks of himself in the third person s/he refers to himself as “she”. (At least as far as I’ve checked.)
Hm. I looked at ZJ’s blog and zie describes zirself as a guy, but that was an old post? Anyway. The point is that zir gender is something zie knows, not something you get to declare is extra-special-magical because zie’s trans or androgynous.
I’m not declaring anything. I’m not defining zir gender for zir, I’m just being a little enthusiastic.
I didn’t mean anything…
Being womanly sounds so complicated. How does one even choose from all the ways? It seems there are as many as there are women. Luckily I’m a man, I just be myself to be manly.
I know. There are so many different ways to be manly and womanly, but unfortunately our society approves of only a very few.
I am surprised that FactFinderReview did not seize upon this post as evidence that manboobzers calls all its “dissenters” terrorists. What better proof of a general claim than the first instance in, like, months? But I must say I love /r/mensrights, too, it’s hard to find such high concentrations of the Force (the Force in this continuity being cluelessness).
Do your manly business here!
;)
Apparently the MRA’s are less powerless than they might think:
http://jezebel.com/5892657/lawmaker-says-pregnant-ladies-are-a-lot-like-livestock
Apparently it’s now ok to propose that women should be forced to carry around stillborn fetuses until they almost die of sepsis or “naturally” expel the stillborn.
Also, 99% of superfluous male-based drugs (viagra, etc) are covered almost 100% by most if not all insurances, while women are still fighting to have BASIC HORMONAL BIRTH CONTROL covered even partially on the same plans.
These people won’t learn until each of these MRAs is given his own dictatorship over his home, with his wife as livestock to use as he wishes and his children as fodder to control and beat and intimidate as he pleases. Of course, this will blind him to the larger hierarchy, one of men and men alone that will be put in place to keep them from ever rising from the utter bottom of the pit, but that will be just fine with these MRAs. After all, if he can lord over a woman, make her like a slave, use her like an object, bend her to his will, then he can feel superior knowing that he is better than THOSE WOMEN and forget how deeply fucked he actually is in the scheme of things.
It’s like a cancer on human decency and progress. How can these people NOT SEE that they are willfully supporting a system where they will be shackled in a male-only patriarchal order, and that they are actually suggesting that SLAVERY to higher up males is preferable to having to see women as fellow human beings?!
@Nanasha
There may be a time when MRAs will no longer just be clowns and will pose a real threat to society.
When do we draw that line? Now?
“Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.” – Nietzsche
I could use more laughter instead of vitriolic attacks. Satire and humor will do far more damage to MRAs than my rage.
I think we should all adopt this principle more vigorously.
@BoggiDWurms- The problem isn’t necessarily the MRA’s as much as the fact that their psychological make up is ripe for being used in the Neo-Con patriarchal pyramid plan. When you have a huge population of men who willingly cage themselves in old fashioned masculine gender roles, and who easily accept direction and hierarchy from “higher status” males, you have a very optimal situation for the shitheads at the top (the sociopathic bastards at the top of the pyramid) to enact legislation and social programs to turn women into scapegoats, then slaves, then lower than animals. Using women as the designated objectified scapegoat, each man is forced into a situation where his entire life is relegated to stereotypical 2 dimensional gender roles that focus on violence and obedience to higher authority. He can take out any and all frustrations he may have at his situation NOT on the men above him who have the power to do things (who will tell him that they deserve to be up there after all, they “worked hard” for it), and instead be encouraged to hit, torture, rape, and otherwise abuse his female scapegoat object because after all, it’s all HER fault that she’s not making HIM happy.
As I’ve said before, this is not all men. There are many men who will reject this. These men will be branded “terrorists” or “traitors” and then made examples of. Women will be relegated to breeding/abuse objects, trying to keep their usefulness to these terrifying monsters as long as possible so they don’t get thrown away or killed because they’ve gotten “old” or “used up.”
I mean, seriously, just read a book like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and other books that show extremism when paired with patriarchy and pseudo-religious justification. When a group of people believe that they are gods, they will do their damnedest to make the world one in which they are treated as gods.
I love human beings. I think that we have a capacity for amazing progress and beauty in our advancement as a species. But every time I see groups of people ACTIVELY WORKING TO TURN OUR FUTURE INTO A DYSTOPIAN WASTELAND where sociopaths rule, it makes me want to put on my pith helmet and pick up some heavy artillery. No one is going to turn my daughter, my mother, my grandmother, my best friends, my sister, my aunt, my cousin, myself and all other women, and little girls into a fuck animal/abuse puppets without a fight. And I know that there are plenty of rational, decent and intelligent men who will agree that if it comes down to it, we will fight against those who would plunge our world into a hell of patriarchal, strict-male-gender-roled sociopathic bullshit.
My womanly day consisted of nursing my baby, parenting the older kids & watching Buffy & X-Files. Kind of boring.
@Nanasha
I understand how closely related MRAs and GOP wing nuts are in their ideologies, but this dystopia is a bit far-fetched don’t you think?
Politicians arguing against the pill would have seemed far-fetched until they started doing it. Who knows?
@Magpie
So what do you suggest? Do you think we Manboobzers should take more drastic measures? I know feminism is unpopular on Youtube with a lot of silly videos attacking it. And YouTube is a very large forum. And though plenty of insightful feminists and good refutation videos have been made, that may not be enough.
What do you suggest?
My womanly day consisted of wearing a floral, flouncy top with black pants and bright red flat shoes with a flower on the toe, heading to work to lead my company’s monthly sales and operations meeting, doing spreadsheet analysis, being narky to people on the phine, eating a can of tuna before heading to Zumba class and then wondering if next Tues night I can attend 45mins of Zumba class before zooming to the next suburb for soccer practice….?
“narky to people on the phine,”
I know this is just a typo… but… I really really want to use this, it’s the cutest ever.
It needs to mean something more general.
Being narky on the phine. That’s got to mean something. I’m working on it.
I’m pretty sure it needs to be said in a southern accent and needs to be as cryptic as “the vapors”.
Hard to type on iPhone :)
But I am Australian so it would probably sound like “narky on the phine”to some ears :)
i reckon it’s more of a New Zealander pronounciation, Jill! i’m a Scot in Australia and before i came here i never know the difference between the Australian and the New Zealander accents.
My womanly day continued:
Then I drove home, cuddled 3 German shepherds and watched back to back episodes of The Walking Dead.
Perhaps the aussie version would be “phoine”
:)
I don’t consider myself stereotypically feminine, but I am womanly in that I am a woman. I think that should suffice.
On the topic of “womanly” vs. “manly” things:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/03/does-this-smartphone-make-me-look-stupid-meet-the-ladyphones.ars
Summary: “Many phones “made for women” simply insult us with their case color, dismal hardware, and embarrassing accessories. Designers, you can (and should) do better.”
Some mansplaining and evo-psyching in the comments. The article makes a very good point. I’ve been writing software for the smartphone industry for almost a decade now, and am quite passionate about the field, and improving the quality of the user experience, and to me a mobile phone is just about as gender neutral as an item can possibly be.
I’m sure there are plenty of apps that primarily appeal to one gender or another, but in terms of core functionality, what would an SMS app “for the ladies” look like? Or a “manly” phone dialer? The whole concept of gendering a phone user interface seems doomed to failure, as in the examples in the article, because the concepts of communication that a phone enables are not gendered concepts.
@Jake I work in electronics retail in a very small town so I come across a lot of technophobes. Generally with women it’s cheap first, pink second. Actually the men tend to go with what’s cheapest too. We sell few smartphones and that’s generally to kids who want to use them for Facebook or because they’re “in”. I’d say in a bigger store in a bigger town I’d get more business type people going for functional smartphones.
It must be happened as it is.
And a meme is born.
Meme must becoming viral as it will
Sorry if someone’s already posted this, but Afghanistan has issued a declaration that “men are fundamental, women are secondary,” and calls on men to refrain from teasing, harassing or beating women “without a sharia-compliant reason.”
And Karzai endorsed it.
What did we spill all that blood for?
Because freedom.
RE Mags: get on with your bad self! I approve of your self-liking.
The manly/womanly discussion is interesting to me, mostly because I feel like as a trans guy, I’m banned from those words. Too many fights with people, so the words just put a bad taste in my mouth now. Now I use butch or femme and get into fights with people about how those words aren’t just for lesbians.
So my butch day is work, cartoons, trying to get insurance coverage so I can find out whether I’ll be paying $300 for my meds or not, and catching up on my sleep.
My husband, however, is cis, and would probably claim he’s being quite womanly when he’s in drag. (He’s built like a linebacker.) Or maybe he’d just use the word ‘fabulous.’
I also approve of Mags when she says being womanly is awesome for her.
I can see a little bit of Boggi’s argument, specifically the idea that “manly” and “womanly” are imposed upon us by society, but I think those things come from the worst parts of society and the ideas are not inherent or insurmountable.
My manly day on Saturday involved rehearsing new pieces with my local volunteer orchestra, cooking a veggie casserole, and freaking out one of my best friends in a role-playing session involving a ranch house where the family had been slaughtered by something that a) left tracks that suggested giant spider or insect and b) cleaned up after itself. So I was pretty happy that I was able to evoke tension around the table and end the session with a bit of a cliffhanger.
And this brings me back (kind of) to Boggi, because I wasn’t being a jock on Saturday, I was being a nerd, and happy with it.
“teasing, harassing or beating women “without a sharia-compliant reason.””
This really isn’t a way to handle something WITH a Sharia complaint, reason.
Anyway, I never understood mistreating someone because you perceived yourself superior. I always wondered why, on those tv shows that had racists on why they would go on and on about how inferior this or that group is. So why hate an inferior group? They’re getting consistent here. Come on fellas, weaker sex over here, get with the program.
Of course some use this conservatism to argue that it must be wrong some how because of the reasoning behind it. No, people should treat each other decently. The forward reasons help us be better thinkers and understand the world for what it is, the backwards reasons, we just hope will pass.
I’m no Islamaphobe by any stretch, but the culture of women there is the only time I wonder if something is wrong with men genes. Is there any place that popped up, any society where they just got it right? No, it’s the human condition. Humans suck.
Ok, someone make a joke, this is a funny blog.
What did the Cleric say to the Heretic?
Ah we found common ground, you hold her down, and I’ll beat her.
Wait that was not funny AT all. :(
I hope South Park, Matt and Trey find the mens rights movement and do something side splittingly silly.
I liked your joke, boomboom! :p
Today my womanly day is starting off with carpooling, wearing a skirt I made, drinking a smoothie, and tutoring (all fairly society’s-idea-of-woman-compliant) but then will veer towards the society’s-view-of-manly because I will be tutoring SCIENCE and ride a bus UNACCOMPANIED and maybe later there will be PORN …not related to the previous stuff… and I’ll think about FINANCES and very probably teach a child how to loudly fake-burp. So really I’m just honey-badgering this “being womanly” thing, yanno?
The feminist religion is quite bizarre. Let me clarify human sexuality grounded in reality. There are two genders, and one sexuality. All sex/sexuality is tied to reproduction. The only reason sex/sexuality exists is because of reproduction. If sex weren’t necessary for reproduction, sexuality or genders wouldn’t exist. Everyone would simply clone themselves, there would be no sex or genders.
There is no such thing as transexual, homosexual or any other, (haha) rainbow shades of grey. The feminist religion is a delusion of narcissisim. A solopsistic faith based on womens feelings that run contrary to reality. The feminist religion promotes queer theory as if it is an actual sexuality, instead of a perversion of nature and/or God.
If someone has sex with a fruit bearing tree are they angiospermsexual? If someone has sex with birds, are they now considered aviansexual?
The only reason anyone has a sexual drive is explicitly due to your drive to reproduce. The feminist religion will conjure “theories” out of thin air like a charlatan scorceress. Being the bad man, I’m erasing all the queer experiences. As if anyones experience has an actual bearing on human sexuality.
Feminists, in all their wisdom, will claim we now have birth control which disproves that sex is directly related to the reproductive drive. As if balloons, (condoms) negates the very basis of the human sexual drive.
Are women so solopsistic that they believe whatever they feel is reality? Do women actually believe the dogma taught in schools or do they just parrot the words? Or are women so weak minded that they’re easily manipulated?
My ‘womanly’ day so far is taking apart a fence for my dad, moving stuff into my parents’ attic, and hanging out with my sister while she swears at her math homework.
My womanly day has consisted of not wanting to get up in the morning, my hair going “Ha!” at my attempts to style it, writing articles, finding a stapler, and maybe seeing some elephants later.
My womanly day involved installing a lot of software so I can properly type LaTeX on my new computer, rejoicing that the cease-fire means the semester can finally start (plus no more rockets, hooray!), and (TMI?) menstruating.
My womanly day only started about two hours ago, because I was up until 4 in the womanly morning with the baby. Other than that it resembles Skyal’s day. Only without the older children.
My womanly day has all been database engineering so far. There may be a turkey sandwich in the future.
If men are to blame for oppressing women then women are also to blame for complicity accepting that oppression.
I wonder if we’ll ever “get off the ground” as a species, since so many people (both men and women) don’t question anything, including all of these ideas about gender. No. They just accept all of these attitudes and say it is either from “God” or “Nature”. Both “God” and “Nature” are human fantasies tagged on things as an authority to silence questioning.
My womanly day involved some not nice things. Some nice things and a bottle of Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi.
Boggi, how many times do people need to tell you to go fuck yourself?
WTF?
So, is that true for other kind of oppression, or just one? Why not say that slaves are also to blame for accepting their state?
I don’t mean no woman is sexist, or that no woman participate in maintaining patriarchy. And maybe it’s just a formulation issue, but frankly, “victims of oppression are to blame for complicity accepting that oppression” doesn’t sound anything like “people are to blame when they contribute to the oppression” to me.
Fuck off.
Glad I’m offensive to everyone!
And I’m pretty sure nature is very real and I’m very sure many people (biologists and the such) would disagree it silences questioning.
Actually, theologists would probably also disagree that the idea of god silences questioning.
Why Boggi, was it your goal?
Boggi, are you seriously trolling us?
Do you really think this will end well?
I’m glad you’re glad, Boggi. Was this your intent from the beginning? It’s not like you haven’t said problematic things before.
Boggi- I wish, in my womanly way, you would stop and think before you type something so offensive.
Er, individual men are not to blame for oppressing women, and I’m not interested in anyone who says they are. The patriarchy is supported by both men and women, though men (in most cases, and all else being equal) wield more power and thus it is mostly men that serve as the patriarchy’s primary enforcers.
I mean, this is not a complicated concept. Really.
@katz
When my “God” and “Nature” comment I didn’t mean to some asshole atheist (even though I am one).
What I meant was to show how people use such ideas as authorities to dictate how something “must be” or “essentially is” so and so.
Men and women are like this and/or must be like this because God said so!
Men and women are like this blah blah blah because Nature! SCIENCE! (Yes, atheists too use this bullshit reasoning to “justify” their sexism. Do you think I’m not aware of that?)
And so forth and so forth.
@hellkell
My whole “women allowed themselves to be oppressed” was bad. I now realize how that was fallacious.
This is what I really meant to say. Men aren’t the only ones to, as you put it, support the patriarchy. Women who do that are also contributing to oppression.
Like one of our good friends cristy0misty, a woman “turned out well”.
Well, I’m glad you’re smarter than like 98% of the human race. How did you get that way? Figure it was luck?
In this one thread, you’ve:
1) Used “bitch” as an insult
2) Said that being womanly is bad
3) Said you have some sort of bizarre spiritual theory of gender
4) Said that trans/androgynous people are magical snowflakes who transcend gender for your personal enlightenment
5) Said women let themselves be oppressed (you did back down on that one, thanks)
6) Acted like now you’re the mega-enlightened one here?
Oh really? What made you see the light? You sound just like MRAL backpedaling there.
Are you saying I’m really a chauvinist asshole while not realizing it?
What the fuck? Are you fucking serious? Internalized oppression isn’t the same fucking thing as the privileged oppressing the oppressed. If we beat you down so far you hate yourself too, the hatred is your fault?
This is also crap. First, the fact that we all take part in oppressive systems does not take away the individual responsibility for oppression. While I leave open for the moment the question of individual responsibility for privileged status per se, the day to day acts of oppression the privileged engage in should not fucking be considered absolved. Secondly, equivocating internalized oppression with the oppression? That’s total and absolute fucking bullshit. You think a queer kid sitting in their room hating themselves is as bad as the hetero kids that beat them while shouting out slurs? That they are “enforcing” homophobia in ways that are in any way, shape, or form comparable?
Well, that depends whether you realize it.
*gets popcorn*
I explained myself already! In response to your other quote:
This is what I really meant to say. Men aren’t the only ones to, as you put it, support the patriarchy. Women who do that are also contributing to oppression.
Like one of our good friends cristy0misty, a woman “turned out well”.
Bullshit. You said God is a human fantasy, and that’s exactly what you meant. Now you’re just trying to handwave it because people are calling you out, like Rush Limbaugh. You do this exact same thing every time:
1. Say some deliberately offensive thing.
2. Double down and defend it.
3. Backtrack and pretend that wasn’t what you really meant.
4. Apologize, say that you were totally wrong and realize that now, and try to change the subject.
We are very patient here, but if you keep acting like MRAL, you’re going to get treated like him.
Perhaps I’ve just internalized a lot of sexism, and I’m fighting to destroy it. At least I never lie about what I really feel.
@DSC- It’s not crap. You’re right, obviously men can choose to engage in an oppressive manner, and many do. But I was speaking toward individual responsibility for the system as a whole.
Secondly, women’s participation in the patriarchy need not involve internal self-loathing; actually, that’s a non-sequitur because it has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. And I think you know that.
@katz
I’m not trying to “backpedal” or anything. There was a deliberate misunderstanding, and I communicated my ideas very poorly. When I said “God is a fantasy” I didn’t mean “There is no God and religious people are stupid.”
I mean that concepts people use to justify sexism like “God” and “Nature” are constructs and ideals people make up, and that gives them bias and prevents them from seeing things objectively.
“a deliberate misunderstanding”
???
Are you really that clueless?
When I speak of “God” I don’t mean the deity of the Christian faith. I mean an ideal like a mandate on what men and women “ought” and “ought not” to be, and what is “natural” and “unnatural”.