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UK Political Donor Demetri Marchessini: Women In Trousers Are Destroying Western Civilization
Marlene Dietrich oppressing man with her trousers.
Demetri Marchessini is a retired Greek business tycoon, living in London, and has been a major donor to the right-wing, anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP). He also has some, let’s say, eccentric views about gay people, black people, women, and trousers, views so, er, eccentric that the folks in UKIP are a little embarrassed to be associated with him. Given that UKIP is filled with bigots in all varieties, that’s quite something.
In an interview last week with Britain’s Channel 4, Marchessini expounded at length on some of his more colorful views. He told interviewer Michael Crick that marital rape was impossible, because “you can’t have rape if you make love on Friday and make love on Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape. Once the woman accepts, she accepts.”
He argued that there is no such thing as homosexual love, only lust, because “they go out at nights and they pick up 5, 10, 15 different partners in one night.” Even gays in committed relationships are basically just roommates who still cruise for anonymous sex partners.
And he suggested that black slaves were better off as slaves in America than they would have been living in Africa, because if they survived the passage they lived longer.
But let’s just talk about the trouser thing. Marchessini thinks women should be banned from wearing trousers, because otherwise they just might bring about the end of western civilization.
AVFM asks: Was the Fort Hood shooting the fault of same-sex marriage and the “Lesbo Circle of Doom?”
Harmful to males? One AVFM writer thinks so.
On April 2, Army Specialist Ivan Lopez shot and killed three people on the Fort Hood military base in Texas, before turning his gun on himself; 16 others were injured. It’s not clear what caused Lopez’ killing spree, though the incident seems to have been triggered by the difficulties he encountered trying to get a 24-hour pass to attend his mother’s funeral.
But a writer for A Voice for Men, , has a novel explanation for the tragedy: the military’s excessive niceness towards lesbians and gays.
In a post entitled “What role has feminism played in the shooting at Fort Hood and its aftermath?” Conzachi sets forth his thesis:
Numerous directives from the Pentagon and the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), of which some in the military refer to the group as the “Super-Feminists” or jokingly, the “Lesbo Circle of Doom,” allow for and promote an immediate leave period of five days for same sex military couples to marry. …
How is it that a large contingent of feminist dominated military and Pentagon leadership enacts policies that favor, prioritize, and give expanded benefits for same sex couples; yet Specialist Lopez apparently was only allowed two days to bury his mother?
If that was you, and you could only get two days to attend to your mother’s death, and you see same sex military couples being allowed five days immediate leave to marry; wouldn’t that bother you a little, regardless of what your opinions are of gay and same sex couples? Where is the equality?
Yep. An unhinged man murders his fellow soldiers in cold blood. Let’s blame it on same-sex marriage and the “Lesbo Circle of Doom.”
At least Conzachi admits that his theory is only a theory, and that “whether or not we will ever learn [the shooter's] true motives is unknown.”
Setting aside the absurdity, and offensiveness, of Conzachi’s argument for a moment, he’s wrong to suggest that same-sex couples are somehow being coddled by “Lesbo” brass. Straight couples can also get marriage leaves of up to 3 days, and the reason the military gives extra time to same-sex couples is that many of them have to travel long distances to get married, since same-sex marriage is only legal in 17 states. The military has been slow to actually implement the new policies, and many same-sex couples have simply been denied leave to get married. Soldiers, regardless of sexual orientation, also have 30 days of earned leave each year they can use to get married.
Coznachi spends the rest of his post tearing down the female officer who confronted Lopez and brought an end to his killing spree.
He ends with this question — a question that he seems to have already answered to his own satisfaction:
Are the military’s priorities of same sex couple, gay, and women in combat issues harmful to males in general?
A number of those who are associated with A Voice for Men — most notably “managing editor ” Dean Esmay and “contributing editor” Karen Straughan — profess to be great Friends of the Gays; indeed Straughan describes herself as a “genderqueer, bisexual … woman”).
I can only wonder why they would want to associate themselves with a site that publishes articles suggesting that supporting the rights of same sex couples in the military to marry is “harmful to males in general.”
Warren Farrell on Date Rape: Defending the Indefensible
George Orwell, meet Warren Farrell
Men’s Rights Activists tend to be fairly blunt; when they express a noxious opinion – and oh so many of their opinions are noxious – they do it in the most obnoxious possible way. It isn’t enough for Paul Elam of A Voice for Men to blame victims of rape; he also has to call them “STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH[es]” wearing the equivalent of PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign[s] glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.”
Warren Farrell is different. He takes a softer approach. He would never call a woman a bitch or a whore or a cunt. When he speaks, he manages to sound gentle and caring. He talks about the importance of listening to others. He sometimes even manages to give the impression that he cares as much about women as he does about men.
And yet his ideas are as noxious as Elam’s. He is as much of a victim blamer as any slur-spouting MGTOWer complaining about “stuck-up cunts” on an internet message board.
It’s just that he does his victim blaming with such carefully evasive language that he’s able to hide the noxiousness of his ideas – and to avoid taking responsibility for them when he’s challenged on them.
White Men’s Rights Redditors agree: “Men are the new n*ggers.”
Paula Deen: Role model for MRAs?
So why are so many white dudes so desperate for an excuse to use the n-word? Consider this white dude, who recently posted this bit of, er, wisdom in the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Is this going to become a new slogan for the Men’s Rights movement? It certainly seems to be popular amongst Men’s Rights Redditors, sporting a couple of dozen upvotes and no criticism (at least at the time I wrote this) from other MRAs. (There were a few critical comments from opponents of the Men’s Rights movement, however.)
Bear in mind that the Men’s Rights subreddit is 86% white, which is a good deal whiter than the United States as a whole, and only 1.5% black, which is way less black, according to a recent survey of its members. I’m pretty sure none of the white dudes upvoting this little slogan have obtained the proper n-word privileges. (Note: The survey in question was spammed with a number of identical responses, BUT the percentages I’m giving are based on the survey data with all the spammed entries removed, thanks to the industrious Angelica Field; see here for details.)
It’s hardly surprising that black men haven’t exactly flocked to the Men’s Rights movement, given the overt racism of a significant number of MRAs and other Manospherians. And even those MRAs who aren’t so obvious about their racism tend to be dismissive of issues that disproportionately affect men of color: MRAs almost never talk about the drug war that has put so many black men behind bars (two thirds of all those in prison for drug offenses are people of color. mostly men), nor have they ever attempted to organize or even offer any real support to campaigns against prison rape (60% of all prisoners are people of color).
This slogan isn’t likely to help the Men’s Rights movement with what the politicians like to call “minority outreach.” It might help reach a different sort of audience, however — an audience already quite fond of the n-word. When I did a Google search for the phrase “men are the new niggers,” the first result was a discussion on the Vanguard News Network Forum. I won’t link to it, because the Vanguard News Network is a virulently antisemitic, white supremacist website that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “gutturally racist.” The site’s motto: “No Jews. Just Right.”
Of course, the notion of describing men as “the new nigger” didn’t originate with white supremacists. It was clearly inspired, in a backwards way, by the John Lennon song “Woman is the Nigger of the World,” a feminist attack on misogynistic hypocrisy. While Lennon wrote the lyrics, the titular phrase originated with Yoko Ono, who deliberately used the racial slur in what was evidently an attempt to shock people into recognizing the ways in which women, like black people, were dispossessed.
It was a bad idea. Even though Ono and Lennon didn’t mean to reinforce racism by using the slur, it’s not a word that they had any cultural right to appropriate for their own purposes; not only that, but Ono’s slogan seems to implicitly define all “niggers” as men and to ignore black women, who don’t need John or Yoko to remind them that many people already see them as “niggers.” In the end the title ended up undercutting the message of the song. It can’t listen to it; it makes me cringe.
But glancing over the lyrics again, which aside from the title are essentially about the hypocritical messages sent to women by sexist society, one line in particular stands out to me, because it so deftly captures a certain kind of sexism — and even though it was written years before Warren Farrell first started going on about “disposable men,” it also captures pretty well the MRA tendency to view gender relations upside down:
While putting her down, we pretend that she’s above us
Yep, that’s what the Men’s Rights movement does, all day, every day.
And it’s that kind of delusional thinking that leads some of them to conclude not only that they are the “new niggers,” but also that using the n-word is somehow an appropriate thing for their almost all-white movement to do.
Upvote, downvote: Men’s Rights Redditors on the evils of “p*ssy privilege” and women being encouraged to go into tech
Many Men’s Rights Redditors see themselves as fighting a noble fight against genuinely evil, misandrist radical feminists on the internet. One of their most powerful weapons: the deadly downvote.
Reading through one old thread on Men’s Rights last night, I noticed how some Men’s Rights Redditors had deftly deployed their downvotes to fight off the evil feminist misandry lurking in this comment:
Outrageous! A statement that could have been ripped straight from Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto!
Kudos to the brave Redditors who saw this vile misandry for what it was.
Elsewhere in the same thread, I happily noticed, Men’s Rights Redditors were helpfully upvoting the reasonable and uplifting sentiments of decent fellows, like the Men’s Rights Redditor who goes by the name theboners, who offered a sensibly critical take on the always controversial question of whether or not it was a good idea for men to give in to “pussy privilege” and let ladies have the vote:
Oh you irresponsible women! Why do we let you do anything?
I mean, aside from letting GirlWritesWhat make YouTube videos; that’s ok.
-
It might be time for that blinking
gif to remind possibly literal-minded readers that I do not actually agree with theboners or think SweetieKat is a reincarnation of Valerie Solanas.
Hugo-nominated Vox Day: Even worse than you think
Strike up the band! Vox Day has been nominated for a Hugo!
So our old friend Vox Day – the proudly bigoted science fiction/fantasy writer and self-professed expert on all things “Alpha” – is in the news again. This time, it’s not for declaring most date rape imaginary or writing a racist diatribe against a fellow author. Nope! It’s because another of his literary efforts, a novelette entitled Opera Vita Aeterna, just got nominated for a Hugo award.
In other news, apparently it’s not that hard to get nominated for a Hugo if you have a coterie of hard-core fans who are perhaps still pissed that you got kicked out of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and you suggest on your blog beforehand that it would be cool if they voted to nominate you.
Anyway, there’s already plenty of discussion of the news amongst the science-fiction set, most of them understandably displeased that a racist, misogynistic, homophobic asshole got a nomination. Here’s a bit more about the racist attack on black fantasy writer NK Jemisin (and misuse of the SFWA Twitter account) that got him tossed from the organization. If you’ve never seen what he wrote about Jemisin, I’ll just quote some of the more memorable passages again here, because, wow. I’ve bolded the best — that is, worst — bits:
How Melody Hensley is putting the bullies to shame
Yesterday, a message arrived in my email inbox with the title “Are you happy to die a virgin,” a somewhat unusual question, I felt, not just because of its faulty premise but also because of its lack of the conventional question mark at the end. The email itself was equally blunt and illiterate:
You sound like a 40 y/o FAT VIRGIN living in a basement rotting away. Is manboobz.com your way of hide behind your own internal issues u refuse to face? Father issues???
Ah, here’s where the missing question mark went, along with some friends.
The sender appended a photo of an extremely obese Asian man at least 20 years my junior, mostly if not completely nude, along with the question (and I quote verbatim) “This this photo you??”
MRAs post secret recording of non-secret event, confuse feminism with the complete opposite of feminism
Secret Squirrel: Much better at this than MRAs
If you’re a feminist holding an event, and you don’t want to have recordings of that event posted online without your permission by MRAs, it looks like your only option is to ban anyone and everyone associated with A Voice for Men from the premises. AVFM “activism director” Attila Vinczer has made that very clear.
Earlier this month, you see, Jaclyn Friedman – feminist writer, speaker, founder of Women, Action & The Media (WAM!) – gave a talk at Queens University in Kingston, Canada, followed by a panel discussion.
A number of Men’s Rights Activists associated with everyone’s favorite hate site A Voice for Men showed up with cameras and other recording devices, as they do.
8 Men’s Rights Memes From A Voice for Men That Make No Damn Sense
Yesterday, we looked at 6 memes from A Voice for Men’s “meme team” and decoded what they really meant. Today, some memes from AVFM’s Pinterest page that are a bit harder to decode, because they really make no sense at all. I’ll do my best to try to sort them out.
1) TALK TO THE HAND
What might it mean? “Ha ha girls talk too much, well joke’s on you because I’m GOING MY OWN WAY and later I’ll go home and make a poster about how I imagined I might I totally really did put that bitch in her place.”
I mean, that is what this poster is saying, right? It’s illustrating the notion that men and women should listen to one another by depicting a dude just up and leaving because he’s tired of listening?
How exactly does this advance any “men’s rights” other than the right of men to act like petulant children?
6 Memes from A Voice for Men, and What They Really Mean
Memes, memes everywhere, and not a drop of sense.
A Voice for Men seems to have gone a bit meme-crazy. The site’s official Pinterest page, which seems to be fairly new, is loaded up with 374 memes on such subjects as Sexual Politics, False Accusations, MGTOW, and of course Feminism.
It’s not clear how many of these memes were created by the AVFM “Meme Team” and how many were simply grabbed from the internet. But a number of the memes are emblazoned with the A Voice for Men name and/or logo, so I think it’s fair to say that these, at least, are “official” AVFM memes.
Going through these memes, one thing about them becomes clear very quickly: most of them seem to convey messages that are often considerably different than those their creators seem to have intended.
So here, without further ado, here are 6 AVFM memes and what they really mean.
