“Pregnancy is No Excuse For Misandry” and other pithy, baffling slogans from the Men’s Rights propaganda squad
A real Mens Rights poster from deviantART
Pity the poor Men’s Rights activists. The real civil rights movements that MRAs like to compare their, er, “struggle” to may have faced many obstacles that MRAs haven’t — from legal prohibitions on voting to fire bombings and assassinations — but at least they haven’t had a hard time explaining just what it was, and is, that they’re seeking redress for.
When Martin Luther King so famously dreamt of a world in which “my four little children will … not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” he was not only speaking eloquently; he was expressing an idea that was, well, pretty easy to understand.
And that’s where the trouble comes for the MRAs. It’s a bit harder to explain your alleged anti-oppression movement to the general public when the people on whose behalf you’re fighting aren’t actually, you know, oppressed. So is it any wonder that MRAs have such a hard time explaining themselves to the public?
I mean, all the Suffragettes had to put on their posters was “Votes for Women.” MRAs are stuck. Men already have votes. They already have civil rights. Heck, men already run most companies and hold most political offices and control most of the world’s wealth.
And so MRA propaganda tends to be muddled, a weird mixture of misogyny and special pleading and stuff that just doesn’t make any sort of sense no matter how you slice it. In earlier posts we’ve looked at baffling and/or offensive posters from A Voice for Men and associated sites, as well as at some of the awful graphics that sometimes make their appearance on Reddit.
Today, a quick stroll through the MRA underground on deviantART.
The graphic at the top of the post is from someone calling himself awesomeninja; for his propaganda work, he specializes in somewhat baffling text-based graphics in basic colors. Apparently he has convinced himself that “feminazis use child-bearing all the time to defend their sexist views,” and feels it is necessary to respond to this in giant letters in several colors with a black background.
He is also responsible for this similarly befuddling contribution to political art:
Wait, is this a trick question?
Dude, have you actually met any Men’s Rights Activists?
Oh, wait, you are one. Oops.
But wait, there’s more:
Of course, awesomeninja isn’t the only one spreading the MRA message of love on deviantART. Here are a few other graphics I found by searching for “men’s rights” and related tags on the site.
This lovely “stamp” from loqutor, who has convinced himself he is “debunking an ages-old feminist myth” with it.
A meme from Userbruiser, who apparently thinks that if a woman has alcohol in her system, it’s ok to rape her:
This bizarre castration fantasy from the same lovely fellow:
This rant posted by themodsquad, who also enjoys jokes about pedophilia and bestiality.
There’s some question about whether or not themodsquad came up with that all by himself, but this uglier and worse-written sequel seems pretty authentic to me:
Is he a “real” MRA or just a troll? I don’t know, but he does seem to be an authentic misogynistic asshole attention-seeker, and I’ve seen virtually every “argument” in the first graphic rehashed many times on assorted MRA sites; it’s pretty much standard-issue “we hunted the mammoth to feed you.”
Let’s close with several graphics from an aspiring Man Going His Own Way. millenia89 is proud of his own reproductive organs:
But he doesn’t seem to think too highly of most of his fellow male-identified penis-havers. Indeed, he believes most of his fellow men are like lemmings marching off a cliff — except for a tiny percentage of MGTOW like the two tiny fellows at the bottom right of the graphic below.
I know it seems confusing, but trust me, the MGTOW in this picture aren’t the ones going over the cliff, really. They’re the ones facing the other direction, underneath that little MGTOW sign. No, not under the big MGTOW sign, under the little one. Just trust me on this one.
millenia89 is especially unimpressed with men who step in to “save a hoe,” like this fellow, whom he sees as a handy “personification” of the sort of “manipulated tool” who, I guess, apparently likes women enough to help them out. I’m not quite sure I get it. Apparently this picture is inherently hilarious because it’s a picture of a black guy with an odd smile in a weirdly inaccurate superman costume. Heck, even the font is wacky.
Millenia89 may not think much of most of his fellow men, but at least he doesn’t want to render them obsolete. Women, well, that’s another issue entirely, as this utopian paean to the glories of artificial wombs suggests:
So awesomeninja thinks that “pregnancy is no excuse for misandry.” Millenia89 evidently hopes that in the future there will be no excuse for pregnancy itself.
This is how the Men’s Rights movement tries to explain itself to the world.
And MRAs wonder why their little movement has the reputation it does.
–
I was inspired to check out deviantART’s MRA community by some of the commenters here. Check out the comments in the “Feminist anti-obedience school” thread starting here to see some homegrown parodies of awesomeninja’s graphic works.
Posted on September 24, 2013, in a voice for men, all about the menz, antifeminism, are these guys 12 years old?, artistry, crackpottery, drama kings, entitled babies, evil women, grandiosity, gross incompetence, hypocrisy, imaginary oppression, mansplaining, men invented everything, men who should not ever be with women ever, MGTOW, misogyny, MRA, oppressed white men, pedophiles oh sorry ephebophiles, penises, playing the victim, racism, rape, rape culture, straw feminists, the c-word, we hunted the mammoth and tagged antifeminism, men's rights, mgtow, misogyny, MRA, racism, rape culture. Bookmark the permalink. 705 Comments.
See artificial wombs sound great to me but I don’t think for the reasons that MRA’s do.
I mean for me I would love kids of my own but pregnancy freaks me out so I’d love artificial wombs.
They’d make life for infertile couples much easier as well, no more expensive IVF!
And for GSM couples who want to have kids but can’t naturally
And for people for whom pregnancy would have severe health consequences or be life threatening.
I mean that all sounds pretty great, but I’m fairly certain that MRA’s like the idea of artificial wombs because they seem to think that they would render women obsolete.
Like they could program them to only produce male babies and create some kind of male-only utopia. Or just use the threat of doing that to hold over women’s heads.
Ok, so I get that this guy fancies nibbles afterwards & has a whole rage thing going on if he doesn’t get them but the “men on the phone” bit? WTF?
One of the tells I can pretty reliably count on to show me a misogynist is the use of “a women”.
“artificial wombs” — Why are all those babies white? Is it a creepy glimpse into their racially pure fantasy.
BREVITY
Demotivators need it.
“You’ve never been forced to die in war.” Oh yes we have, bub, in nearly every war since the beginning of time. The only difference is that we weren’t given access to weapons or any training in how best to use them, most of the time. Do they not realize that wars take place in actual COUNTRIES with PEOPLE living in them and everything? (That is a rhetorical question; I know they think wars are things that take place in mythical lands filled with brown … bipeds that they don’t consider to be human.)
@Feminist Bees:
Nah, everybody knows the foetus painters are never there when they say they will be.
@cloudiah: And that one time that war actually happened to people like them, it was a TERRIBLE TRAGEDY and the
losersvictims have to be FOREVER ROMANTICIZED.oh, i saw the so you think you’re superior poster on tumblr!
It was horrible
I saw someone refuting it in a reblog, then I re-reblogged it and added pointless commentary. here if anyone wants to read it.
“women are r*tarded when it comes to empathy”
THROUGH IN SOME ABLEISM WITH YOUR SEXISM BIGOTRY IS ALWAYS BETTER WHEN IT COMES IN TWOS
then you like him whining about women not getting him a bowl of cereal after sex because it’s not that hard.
dude, you can get your own damn bowl of cereal. You said yourself it’s not that hard.
Is that why I can write complete, coherent sentences, and am a licensed attorney?
And you, sir, clearly are the paragon of all that is intelligent and erudite in the world.
I’m all for artificial wombs. Given that they work as well as a “natural” one, of course.
I thought the mgtow poster was about how we should feel bad for them at first since not having sex = jumping off a cliff. Then I saw the other 2 dudes. Wtf are they coming from?
And the 2 posters with the girl in the corner… Christ wtf. Women have never invented anything? Never lead? Sure it is significantly less than men, but it’s not hard to understand why.
And “men on the phone is like having sex with a woman who won’t get you cereal. Seriously it’s just a bowl of cereal. What the fuck? It’s not that hard to get. It’s not like you harvested the wheat yourself”.
I have no idea what they fuck men on the phone has to do with this. And the cereal part is just stupid. If it’s that easy then why couldn’t he have gotten it himself, instead of going on the internet and whining about how women won’t bring him the super easy cereal. Hell it would have made it easier had he gone and done it.
On the castration one, like wtf? I have heard men say that, and the reactions are more like “what a douche” rather than “LETS GO CASTRATE”.
The “drunk sex” one, oh god, FFS. Drunk sex isn’t rape, but that doesn’t mean a woman who is drunk cannot be raped. And even that misses the point, it’s drunk to the point of not being able to consent.
The “dear cunt” one sounds like some passive aggressive, attention needing 14 year old. Oh wait…
The “proud white straight dude” one is just… Who told you you couldn’t be proud of those things in the first place? Society already praise them more, most protagonists are straight white dudes in movies. We have ways you can appreciate your “white” heritage, like being into English or German history.
But of course, none of these things count as pride. It’s only when you oppress others.
I’m thinking our friend is not a student of history. Queen Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria, anyone?
“Your entire ladybrain function is tied to your second X Chromosome” is possibly my favorite line of MRM “reasoning”.
Tell that to the Queen!
Damn, ninja’d by Carswell.
What about queen Elizabeth? She was pretty good with military. And physical strength doesn’t matter in leading a military anyways… Even it did, there are strong women.
Or you could keep a box of cheerios under the bed! It’s like, there are so many solutions to this problem yet he chose moaning on the internet.
If physical strength did matter in leadership, then why was America’s greatest and longest leading president in a wheel chair?
“How is eyebrow tweeting any different than a boob job”
…
Tweezing*
If physical strength matter in military leadership, how is it that the UK’s greatest admiral had lost an eye and an arm?
I tell you now, if eyebrow tweezing involved a general anaesthetic & the surgeon’s knife, I’d be going mono-brow.
Only a truly shitty person could take the statistic that 72% of rape victims were intoxicated, add scare quotes and a picture of cleavage, and act like it’s evidence of oppression of men.
Also shopping is dumb because there’s no philosophy to it apparently.
And men who love fashion and women who don’t care apparently have never existed.
Also I wouldn’t be shocked if this guy would froth at the mouth if he saw a woman whining about how her husband does the same thing in manly stores.
“Hitler was raised by a single mother, that single handedly proves that men are better at raising kids than women”.
Hitller was a man, that single handedly proves that all men are brutes.
MRA logic. It’s just a gender swapped version of their straw feminist logic.
This. Civilians die in war. A lot.
The difference between a misogynist fuckwad who sincerely believes all this shit, and a troll who uses misogynistic language, is pretty much nil on the misogyny scale. If anything, the troll is worse–it’s possible, with the right circumstances, to get through to a ‘true believer’, but the troll is just a waste of time and energy.
“Ability to not get your ass kicked every day for saying all kinda of fruity things”
(From the TLDR poster, referring to raising a girl)
I can’t tell if he’s referring to his own ass being kicked, or the girls. First of all, why the fuck would you kick your sons ass for saying fruity things??? You would make an awful father.
Aren’t MRAs the ones who supposedly care about boys being told to “man up”? Not surprisingly, they never actually do anything about it, until it involves insulting women.
Second, if being fruity is so awful, then why aren’t you punishing your daughter for it? You do this and then wonder why adult women act fruity. Reap what you sow dude. (I’m referring to fruity as if it were an actually bad thing, like bullying or stealing).
“Is he a “real” MRA or just a troll? I don’t know, but he does seem to be an authentic misogynistic asshole attention-seeker, and I’ve seen virtually every “argument” in the first graphic rehashed many times on assorted MRA sites; it’s pretty much standard-issue “we hunted the mammoth to feed you.””
The problem with this thought is that MRAs aren’t really known for doing anything else.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I love it when MRAs get their inventing history wrong. MRAs wouldn’t have Wi-fi, Blu-tooth, or other wireless technologies without Ms. Heydy Lamarr. The dishwasher? Invented by a lady named Josephine Cocharane. I mentioned that the person who built the first compiler was Grace Hopper. Etc.
Stupid MRAs. *shakes head*.
“You have never ruled the world”
Have they sent a memo to Catherine the Great about this? (You know, absolute ruler of the largest country in human history which became that large during her reign*)
* Okay, so she was a size queen.
Feminists have an even more difficult time defending their views. That is why you guys resort to personal attacks and insults.
Good, that is the most random thing. It wasn’t even vaguely related to the rest of the thread. If you’re going to troll, please do it in a relatively coherent manner so it’s easier to call your bullshit out.
@Good
Nobody expects the Feminist Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise…surprise and fear…fear and surprise…. our two weapons are fear and surprise…and ruthless efficiency…. Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency…and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope…. Our four…no… amongst our weapons…. amongst our weaponry…are such elements as fear, surprise…. I’ll come in again
I almost want to create a nym named Miss Andry for these days.
The castration one is totally off. Those are good fabric shears. No woman alive is going to dull her good fabric shears by using them on anything other than fabric. And I’m a little jealous she owns two pairs of shears. But, really, castration anxiety? Dude’s been reading way too much Freud.
“…lack the enough…” No. You’ve just made whatever point you were trying to make moot.
And I don’t know how a man on the phone is like having sex with a woman who won’t get you cereal. It’s like he suddenly went off on this weird tangent about cereal.
Also, when my dad fixed my bike, I don’t remember feeling bad for the bike being taken away from its friends. What woman actually does this? No really, I cannot picture a woman doing that. Maybe a 5 year old girl getting her teddy bear taken away to get a patch or something. But that’s like any 5 year old.
It’s really stupid when people say that “c*nt” and “dick” are just as bigoted. The former is used in a misogynistic way very often, whereas the latter has an almost gender-neutral usage that basically means “asshole”, which is another word that, despite often being used for men, isn’t actually bigoted against men. And only “c*nt” can be used to demean both men and women because of its connotation of female inferiority.
No, Good, we insult you because you’re fucking stupid.
Pecunium:
You notice too? This particular misuse train is never late.
See, Good got confused. He saw ‘you have no coherent message’ and what he heard was ‘you guys are violent ideologues who can’t hide your bigotry.’
And his kneejerk response ‘you’re more violent and bigotted, nyah!’
Because that’s all he has.
Of course, actual citations and stuff would be too hard. So we definitely won’t get that.
Howard: we’ll get citations, they’ll just be 20 years and completely fucking wrong.
^20 years out of date
The shopping one makes me laugh. I went with my dad and my brother to a hunting and fishing store over the weekend. We spent 2 hours looking at archery equipment and my dad ended up buying a very expensive new bow despite not being in the market for one (we had gone to get new arrows and a few other things). Going in to a store for one thing and coming out with something else entirely is not gender specific at all. I’m just as guilty, I didn’t intend to buy a new sight for my bow but I got one anyway.
And women’s participation in advancements were largely ignored or suppressed. It was a woman who provided Ely Whitney with the final inspiration to figure out how to get the seeds out of the cotton, but he gets credit for the invention. Watson and Crick used a woman’s research to discover the structure of DNA, but they’re the ones who will forever get credit for it.
Deny women access to the institutions that will allow them to succeed, and suppress/ignore the few who are able to surpass these hurdles. And then pretend that women are simply incapable of these achievements, not that they are actively held back.
@hellkell: And they’ll actually be completely unrelated to the original question…
“Feminists have an even more difficult time defending their views. That is why you guys resort to personal attacks and insults.”
This pretty much sums up the MRM. When a MRA does something terrible, it’s never “I am sorry you guys have to deal with these guys” or “what a terrible person”. It’s almost always “WELL FEMINISTS ARE BAD TOO” with no evidence.
Same with any other arguments from them. “Men have higher suicide rates, BUT WE ONLY CARE ABOUT WOMEN”, rather than “men have higher suicide rates because they’re less likely to seek help, or are taught to be more violent and choose more violent methods” or “people should solve men’s issues by looking at how feminists solved women’s”.
You people treat men and women, feminism and the MRM like some kind of seesaw. When men have an issue, it only matters because it can be used to spam women’s issues, rather than it mattering because it’s unjust.
So, is the MGTOW logo supposed to look like someone standing with an erection in profile view? Deep questions.
Here’s my personal favorite piece of MRA deviant “Art”:
http://alexlartwork22.deviantart.com/art/EFFCTS-OF-FEMINISM-328889918
Joel Houghton invented the dishwasher. L.A. Alexander expanded on it and Cocharane improved on both to create the modern version. William Howard Livens then improved on her design.
Heydy Lamarr’s co-invented/developed frequency hopping with George Antheil and both received the patent.
And Mozart’s sister was also a musical prodigy and went on tour, often receiving top billing above her brother. But once she reached a certain age she lost all familial support in advancing her career, because it was time for her to be a wife and mother instead.
Like “we need to stop rape culture” never gets “let’s make sure to include trans* and male victims” from the MRM, it’s almost always “STFU MEN GET RAPED TOO” or “FALSE ACCUSATIONS NEGATE THOSE THINGS”(look at Edmonton).
Of course, actual citations and stuff would be too hard. So we definitely won’t get that
I give that all of the time. The responses are 90% personal insults. Feminists have little bases for argument so when you accuse MRAs of the same, you are being hypocrites.
Have they sent a memo to Catherine the Great about this? (You know, absolute ruler of the largest country in human history which became that large during her reign*)
So the “patriarchy” is a myth.
“Joel Houghton invented the dishwasher. L.A. Alexander expanded on it and Cocharane improved on both to create the modern version. William Howard Livens then improved on her design.
Heydy Lamarr’s co-invented/developed frequency hopping with George Antheil and both received the patent.”
Therefore women never invented anything because they’re too stupid?
MRA Poster contribution part 2: http://i.imgur.com/Ov2yhwK.png
I was bored. I think this came out better than the first one. For one thing, the colors are more varied, and the font looks better.
Logic according to Good:
If a woman was ruler of a country once, there is no such thing as patriarchy. It doesn’t matter that men are much more often in charge. It only has to happen once and then the patriarchy is a myth!
Except don’t disagree with him on this, because then it’s a personal attack.
As far as I know there is no reason to suspect that Cochrane built on the previous dishwashers since neither worked very well or gained any sort of widespread use. So the existence of previous designs does not negate that she invented the first dishwasher that actually washed dishes effectively.
And Mozart’s sister was also a musical prodigy and went on tour, often receiving top billing above her brother. But once she reached a certain age she lost all familial support in advancing her career, because it was time for her to be a wife and mother instead.
Is this not accurate?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Anna_Mozart
“In contrast to her brother, who quarreled with their father and eventually disobeyed his wishes with respect to career path and choice of spouse, Marianne remained entirely subordinate to her father. She fell in love with Franz d’Ippold, who was a captain and private tutor, but was forced by her father to turn down his marriage proposal. Wolfgang attempted, in vain, to get Marianne to stand up for her own preference.”
Good, no one should ask you for citations of any kind, because you don’t bother looking through sources before you toss them out. You’re wasting everyone’s time and you’re dull while you clog up the thread with your drivel.
Chie – the woman you’re referring to is Rosalind Franklin. She was the woman who found out that DNA was a double helix with X-rays. Later on she did work on the tobacco mosaic virus and others, before dying of cancer at the age of 37.
Crick and James got the Nobel Prize and all of the credit for discovering the structure of DNA and other nucleotide work for years. She died prior to that ceremony, so she never got it, and her contribution was never cited till at least twenty five years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin
Therefore women never invented anything because they’re too stupid?
No one said that. But that person was criticizing alleged historical inaccuracies while promoting inaccuracies his/herself.
“I give that all of the time. The responses are 90% personal insults. Feminists have little bases for argument so when you accuse MRAs of the same, you are being hypocrites.”
First sentence doesn’t make sense.
These insults aren’t justified? Dude, look at the posters.
So the MRM is baseless and stupid… Why would feminists be relevant? That’s like saying white priders are justified because “insert bad thing black rights activist supposedly did”.
“So the “patriarchy” is a myth.”
Just like W. E. B. Dubois means racism never happened.
Also some more quick research shows that Livens’ improvements were 40 years after Cochrane invented her dishwasher and took advantage in the rise in indoor plumbing. I would certainly expect improvement in any device in 40 years, especially in a device that uses water but was invented prior to widespread indoor plumbing. That is the nature of technological progress and does not diminish the original invention.
…see, you fundamentally don’t understand the basis for our complaints about these posters. You think that our problem is that they’re insults? No. They are just insults, but they are profoundly lacking in anything of substance, because there is no substance.
NONE. ZERO.
Also, I did a Google search for “inventor of the dishwasher”. Even Google itself states that Ms. Cochrane was the inventor of the dishwasher.
Good, it’s not our fault you’re too stupid to realize why the responses to you are insults.
I’m so glad to learn that women don’t face discrimination based on their sex and gender. Because of Catherine the Great. But women are also all completely stupid, weak, worthless, lying, castrating c–ts; which are all totally true, well-reasoned, logical arguments and not at all ad hoc personal attacks and/or hatred directed at women because of their sex/gender. Not at all.
An Dr. Getrude Elion:
You MRAs argue that women are incapable of great achievements. That argument is expressed in the examples provided in the post above. We are pointing out that women historically have been actively denied the same privileges that men have taken for granted. It is not a question of ability but a question of access and a refusal to even recognize the abilities of women. Mozart’s sister is a perfect illustration of this. She was just as capable as her famous brother, but as soon as she reached maturity she was forced to abandon any career aspirations and start a family instead. Ask ten people if they know that Mozart’s sister was a musical prodigy. The majority of them will not.
Good demonstrates his usually ability to read for comprehension.
Good, read the original post, you moron.
…see, you fundamentally don’t understand the basis for our complaints about these posters. You think that our problem is that they’re insults? No. They are just insults, but they are profoundly lacking in anything of substance, because there is no substance.
You fundamentally don’t understand the point. I was speaking of me. When I make a point, even if I provide the coveted citations, the responses from posters here are 90% personal attacks and insults (fueled by internet anonymity) directed at me and my points are rarely addressed.
“No one said that. But that person was criticizing alleged historical inaccuracies while promoting inaccuracies his/herself.”
Meanwhile, on the top of the page…
“Remember when you weren’t allowed to vote? It’s because you lack the enough(not my typo) logical reasoning skills to make decisions in a sound manner.”
“You have never invented anything worth mentioning in the last thousands of years in recorded human history”
I’m not going to type the other poster but literally every paragraph says women lack intelligence and logical reasoning.
Dude, you don’t have a point.
Good, I highly doubt you are spewing your stupid under your real name.
Your citations and links are wrong and show you don’t or can’t think critically before you drop them.