Above, the unintentionally ironic MRA meme of the week, courtesy of A Voice for Men’s Facebook page, their main distribution center for unintentionally ironic and otherwise terrible memes. I’m not sure what specific week this is the ironic meme for, given that Emma Watson’s speech to the UN took place last September and this meme was posted on Facebook only this week, but just roll with it, people!
So what exactly makes this meme ironic? Well, for starters, Watson didn’t actually say the words in question or otherwise order men to talk to women about their feelings.
What she said was a good deal more subtle. She started by saying that one of the things that led her to embrace feminism was her realization, at age 18, that “my male friends were unable to express their feelings.” Then she went on to talk in more detail about the ways breaking down gender stereotypes helps to free, well, everyone.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.
If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.
If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
The big irony here? This is exactly what a real Men’s Rights movement should be promoting, not raging against.
Adding to the irony, whoever made this meme made clear that they aren’t just unwilling to listen to women’s feelings; they’re unwilling to listen to a woman’s logical argument. Which is why they simplified her comments and distorted their meaning.
But what wins this meme the grand prize for irony this week is meme maker’s assertion that “WE DON’T NEED OR WANT TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT OUR FEELINGS.”
Really? Because in fact MRA dudes and MGTOWs and the rest of their ilk talk about their feelings constantly, and loudly — with anyone willing to listen and some who aren’t.
Sure, it’s true that most MRA dudes and their ideological soulmates don’t like to talk about their feelings of sadness or anxiety or insecurity or doubt. You know, the sorts of feelings it would be good for most of these guys to explore and understand and, when possible, get past.
But they love, just love, to talk about how angry they are, how angry they think other men are, and how much feminists, and the women of the world generally, are going to suffer if they refuse to listen to angry men and do what they say. Hell, the so-called “father” of Men’s Rights in the UK? A guy who calls himself Angry Harry. (And he more than lives up to the name.)
The cherry on top of this Irony Sundae: the memester’s decision to use a picture of a homeless man to represent a man oppressed by demanding women.
Men don’t become homeless because some evil woman asked them to talk about their feelings. Indeed, given how many homeless people are mentally ill, most homeless men (and women) would benefit from having the opportunity to talk to a trained professional about their feelings and from better mental health services generally. (Not to mention better services for veterans suffering from PTSD and other war-related maladies.)
In the US, many homeless people who are mentally ill were dumped onto the streets by facilities that didn’t have the money to properly care for them; some of the facilities were and are so bad that their former inhabitants actually prefer the streets.
Oh, and one of the main reasons mental health services are so shitty in the US — and why, in particular, so many men are so poorly served? The old-fashioned notion that men “DON’T NEED OR WANT TO TALK … ABOUT OUR FEELINGS.”
So I award AVFM this week’s IRONY AWARD in MEMING, for once again promoting ideas that actually make the world worse for men!
And apparently they so completely forget that all these women they hate so damn much, all have male relatives. They all have brothers, fathers, nephews, and cousins and husbands that they love. Many of these,me they love are not in sexual relationships with them and yet they love them anyway.
They have perspective on nothing. They so thoroughly lack perspective that it’s impossible to hold a meaningful conversation on any topic. Their minds are so narrow and blinkered it’s any wonder they know what planet they’re on. Everything in the entire world is seen through the lens of whether or not it pleases their boners.
Everything.
I never get over how utterly fu****ng baffling I find that sort of thinking. It’s like living in a tiny cardboard box and believing it’s the entire world.
I know I’ve posted this here before but it bears reminding again. A very accurate rundown of how these men think about women:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html
In addition to the projected authoritarian emotions, I think there’s also an element of fear. Notice how ‘feelings’ is put in quotes? I have a theory. Toxic masculinity Commandment #Penis states: Thou show not do anything feminine, or thou shall be stripped of all manliness and banish-ed from the boyz club foreva!
‘feelings’ to them is ‘feminine’ and so to admit they even have emotions is simply too scary for them. That’s why they put it in quotes. They want to believe themselves devoid of feelings.
So does this mean that MRAs are campaigning in favour of increasing women’s lifetime earnings to be equal to those of men, so that women are not financially dependent on their partners? Does this mean that MRAs are campaigning for girls to be taught to be independent and capable of taking care of their own shit? Does this mean that MRAs are campaigning for a more equal burden of care for child-rearing, and therefore women being allowed to do paid work instead of unpaid?
Oh wait, of course not. That would be activism, and they’re just about talking. That’s it. Just talking.
Except not the kind Watson wants them to do. Because having feelings is for fags, not manly manly men like them.
@Olive O’Sudden:
Ferkakte is a magnificent world. I’m stealing it. Which language am I stealing it from?
I think ferkakte is Yiddish for basically, bullshit.
Ooooh, THAT’S how you spell that word.
It’s like a substitute for fuckin’, I think I remember a bunch of cartoons using it in the 90s. Maybe from Grandpa Pickles a couple of times but i don’t remember off hand. Lots of 90s cartoons used Yiddish as a substitute back then until people got wise lol.
@Kryst-hla
You still wonder? I thought it was obvious which one was true. 😉 But yeah, I totally agree with your points.
@Moocow
Ding ding ding, I think you hit it right on the head! And really it goes to show why misogyny is the root problem: Patriarchy depends on a hierarchy of men over women, and on policing gender roles so those lines don’t get blurred. Hence, the denigration of the designated “feminine” characteristics as inferior. This not only sucks for women, whether they conform to feminine gender roles or not, and it sucks for men because they, too, lose either way. Men either fail to conform and are bullied and invalidated, or they do conform, and deprive themselves of so much that is good and worthwhile about life while destroying themselves and others (“Who killed the world?”). There is no winning the game of kyriarchy.
Am I the only one who thinks that you can’t tell from the photo if that homeless person is a man or a woman and the creator of the meme apparently just assumes there are no homeless women?
There’s a really good — but really long — piece in the The Economist about this. It also reinforces the argument that the burning hatred against feminists/women is really a misdirection or displacement for genuine political grievances about economic failures and industrial and political pressures on working class, less educated men.
More importantly, they point out how men who find themselves unable to support a family are self-defeating because they only want a Leave it to Beaver style dad-earns-all-the-money family or nothing at all.
http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21649050-badly-educated-men-rich-countries-have-not-adapted-well-trade-technology-or-feminism?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/menadrift
I’ve given up trying to select quotes. It’ll turn into a copypasta teal deer.
I’m not sure it’s as simple as men all-of-a-sudden deciding to stop bottling things up. The few instances I expressed despondency or emotional stress to closer friends, I got this incredulous, glazed-over stare response that told me I was being a bore and endangering the relationship in the process.
All men have mothers, all women have fathers. I know that’s a simple thing to say, but I would think that the relations between the genders might be less…shitty if we all remembered that. I know that I’m probably just a part of the problem from the manosphere’s point of view, but I do try and treat people as people first and foremost. And as for the whole “no talking about feelings, me manly man” thing, well I had a pretty fulfilling and emotional discussion with a good friend of mine, and one of the most emotional topics we touched on was how hearing a certain Bruce Springsteen song always makes me want to cry. But yeah, real men don’t talk about emotions…
@Bryce. No it’s not as simple as individual men being encouraged discuss their feelings openly, it’s also about society at large being okay with that and not mocking or dismissing them for it. So in your case it’s your friends who needed to let their guards down and offered you a bit of support.
*offer
Must. Proof. Read.
Not only that, they also achieved everything prior to now, such as the invention of everything, building everything, hunting the mammoth, etc. At least you’d assume so based on how they talk about that stuff.
The problem with not talking about emotions is that, well, emotions don’t go away if you ignore them. They become putrid, and produce unhealthy attitudes, and sink to the subconscious and become even harder to tease out and express. I think that the MRM is actually an example of what happens if men don’t talk about their feelings. OK, so you had a messy divorce, and you feel like you’ve been blindsided off your feet and heartbroken in one go, but the answer is not to hold it in and eventually come to the conclusion that she left you because women as a whole are awful…
I think the reaction against Emma Watson has a particularly nasty and creepy aspect which is missing from reactions to feminist statements by, say, Charlize Theron, due to Watson’s former status as a child star. As she mentioned herself in that September UN speech, many men have been openly discussing her boner-pleasing qualities since she was just fourteen years old. I think that, for a lot of these guys, the realisation that she’s now a smart and opinionated adult feels almost like a betrayal. How can they sustain pedo fantasies about her now? We don’t want to talk to you about our adult feels, Emma, because we want you to be too young to understand! Now shut up and put on this school uniform!
“Talking about feelings” is often meme/TV trope shorthand for “discussing our relationship”, aka “being held accountable for the negative feelings your actions may have produced in your partner”. MRAs are deathly allergic to anything resembling a mom telling them to shape up. It ruins the illusion of BEING KING to have to justify to someone (a lowly woman, of all people) why they cheat on them, denigrate them, brush off their needs, isolate them, body-shame them, neg them, and other immature behaviors; as a result of which possibly…HORRORS…they might have to apologize and try to change said behaviors. Most MRAs would rather be pulled over carpet tacks and dipped in rubbing alcohol than ever, ever, ever own up to their behavior.
I also can’t get over the contradiction in “Women should be totally dependent on us/not have a job” and “Women need to stop using us as cash machines!” Dudes, if you’re going to deny women agency and treat them like children, then you don’t get to evade financial responsibility for their upkeep. Heck, even a fleshlight costs money, and needs new batteries occasionally.
Or you could, y’know…support women in the workforce, and enjoy greater financial freedom.
@Buttercup
I just wish MRAs would give us a solid answer on that. Submissive SAHMs or women in the workplace? WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Or would they try and give some convoluted answer to include both?
@sunnysombrera,
I tried asking some MGTOWs about that on a red pill blog. They were whining about divorce settlements and declaring that women were utterly useless, can’t get jobs, stealing our jobs, all parasites, etc, etc,
I suggested that if women were so useless and unable to support themselves, then why did they have a problem supporting them, given that apparently women would all starve to death otherwise. (Facetious, yes)
The only answer I could get was that women were too dreadful for men to willingly support them anymore. Then another commenter called me a deluded bitch for questioning his assertion that 90% of women don’t work and 80% of women don’t pay tax. Then the blog owner said no one there wanted to have sex with me and I should go find a Stephanie Meyers forum, then threw a mantrum when I suggested he was projecting.
TL;DR, trying to have a sensible discussion with MGTOWs is a waste of time.
Sick
I was listening to old Backstory podcasts a while back, and one story illustrated nicely that some men have always been trying to find a way around this little dilemma. The episode about the history of the middle class in the United States featured a segment about Elizabeth Pratt, who had been a widowed shopkeeper in 18th century Rhode Island. She had accumulated most of her property after her husband died. Her two sons-in-law managed to successfully petition the courts to take possession of her shop and her home (who cares that she earned it all, it was rightfully a man’s wealth). Then they sued each other over who had to support the now-destitute woman (darned freeloader, she should have still managed to be self-sufficient after they took all her stuff).
Crappy dudes: trying to have it all ways since at least the 1700’s, and probably since the beginning of time.
[In case anybody’s interested, the episode in question is here. The Elizabeth Pratt story is in the On the Edge segment.
Bonus: a story about mammoths.]
I wonder if deep down some of these MRA’s actually agree with what Watson said but they’re to far into this now they are unwilling to let go of their ideologies. I know that feeling.
@snorkmaiden
I’ve revved up the analytical side of my mind (the side that people keep telling me not to use and it’s SO ANNOYING when they do that) and am legit trying to find a way for all their contradictory ideals to work. So far the conclusion I’ve come to is that the only way MGTOWs would be happy is if…women didn’t exist.
Surprise.
Actually no, because then there’d be no women for them to sex. Grargh. Back to the drawing board.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgLPF3t9TUs
An illustration of this, but you get to listen to Maiden’s music 🙂
(OK, I adore Iron Maiden)