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| MRAs: Bigger Drama Queens than Batman |
Drama queens: so annoying, but so, so entertaining. Tammy Wynette, singing about failing marriages with that little choked-up quiver in her voice. Chris Crocker, begging us to “leave Britney alone!” Emo kids whining about whatever it is they’re always whining about. Cats, being cats.
And, of course, Men’s Rights activists, seriously in the running for biggest drama queens of all.
Over on A Voice For Men, guest blogger “Tom Snark” recently wrote about a little incident in his life in which he heard the woman who lived next door to him yell at her husband because she didn’t like the way he was trimming some branches.
Not much of a story, you’d think. But Snark, showing considerable ingenuity, stretched it out into a 1200 word post. The woman didn’t just yell; she “yapp[ed] at him like a menopausal Chihuahua.” The man wasn’t just embarrassed to have a neighbor overhear the exchange; he
know[s] that their facade of marital bliss was now forever shattered in my mind. … Is this his terrible secret, hidden from the world: that he is continually disrespected behind closed doors, by the very woman who said to him “I do”?
Needless to say, Snark answered this question with a resounding “yes.” And then decided that all marriages are like this — ultimately concluding that the women of the world are quite literally nagging their hubbies to death:
One needlessly stressful incident after another is sure to raise the blood pressure. But actually living with a person who does this, combined with the stress of full-time work five days a week? The origin of the life expectancy gap [between men and women] becomes clear.
Never mind that married men actually live longer than unmarried men, as approximately two seconds of Googling will show. Snark was just getting going:
marriage has no benefit at all for men. It is not even a stretch to say that, in this day and age, marriage is systematically abusive for men. While women can up and leave at any time they like, with minimal resistance from the law, family courts, or society as a whole (we continue to suffer from Eat, Prey, Love syndrome) – men cannot leave women without paying the price.
Yes, he did say “prey,” not “pray.” But wait, there’s more:
Married men are literally trapped, stuck supporting the poisonous predators that will eventually kill them. Plenty of women know this; perhaps this is why they are so keen on the idea. A little legal tweaking was all it took for feminists to remake marriage in their own image: men are now the dehumanised tools for women’s personal use. Sex roles have not simply been reversed, because men continue to do most of the work. What has changed is that the paycheque is now handed directly over to the wife, and his time at home will be spent completing endless ‘honey-do’ lists.
Oh, the terrible tyranny of the “honey-do” list! Hitler had nothing on these foul shrews and their endless branch-trimming demands!
Now, I don’t mean to make light of verbal abuse. It happens, and it’s real abuse. I once had a neighbor, an elderly Italian man, who was continually yelling at his wife. Most of it was in Italian, so I don’t know exactly what he was saying, but every sentence or two was punctuated by what was evidently his favorite English word, “asshole,” a word he delivered with so much contempt it was chilling. In between these verbal barrages, I could hear his wife softly responding, trying to placate him. I don’t think he physically abused her – he was in a wheelchair – but this verbal abuse was constant. I doubt there was a single day I didn’t hear it. Had I known then what I know now, I would have called the police.
But not every overheard argument is a sign of abuse. Snark has heard one nasty exchange in the ten years he’s lived next to this couple – and he’s concluded from this one data point not only that his neighbor is being abused but that virtually all married men are prisoners to “poisonous predators [who] will eventually kill them.”
Naturally, the regular commenters on A Voice For Men found this conclusion eminently reasonable. Indeed, in one heavily upvoted comment, Barbarossaaa managed to out-queen Snark’s already impressive drama queenery:
All one has to do is to observe these married men, i mean really look at them… dont let them catch you looking, observe the married man is his natural habitat, and if you look close you can see the dulled eyes of a man simply waiting to die.
he is the fly caught in the spider web, that has accepted its fate and stopped struggling. he now waits for the black widow to climb down and consume him slowly but surely…this is not freedom it’s subtle servitude … you are dancing her dance, she is the initiator you are the reactor, and SHE decides whether you pass or fail she is in complete control.
Yes, married men are all dead-eyed puppets in the hands of their evil wives. When I read this last bit, I couldn’t help but think of this little scene in Ed Wood’s perplexing bad-movie masterpiece Glen or Glenda, in which Bela Lugosi, himself a drama queen of considerable ability, shouts out “pull the string!” for no apparent reason:
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>"You're a man? Now your reasonable tone makes sense." Yeah, MRAs don't hate women at all. Why don't you guys just fuck each other? I mean, for all the bitching that these assholes do about women, it's clear marriage is no bargain for women—-waste your life on some asshole who expects you to cook, clean up after his hateful ass, have kids, wait on them, while he belches on the couch and bitches to his buddies, then claims he did fifty of the child care during the divorce? Divorced MRAs act like they fired the ex and kids so why in hell are they asking for money now? In their little pea brains, women have obligations to men, not the other way around.
>men are now the dehumanised tools for women’s personal useYet another installment in Projection: Not Just a Technology For Mass Viewing of Visual Art
>I missed out on that little statement. And apparently I wasn't being very reasonable either.
>This is the first time I have heard such things from a woman. Translation: Discount hasn't been paying attention. Like, AT ALL.
>I just saw an article in the NYTimes about how women in China refuse to marry a guy without his own home.I expect that will cause a few rants over in MRA land.
>I just saw an article in the NYTimes about how women in China refuse to marry a guy without his own home.I expect that will cause a few rants over in MRA land.
>No doubt, Elizabeth, without any discussion of sex-specific abortion in China leading to a surplus of men relative to women, which is of course related not so much to Chinese 1-child policy but to sexist cultural values that lead families to prefer sons over daughters.
>I just saw an article in the NYTimes about how women in China refuse to marry a guy without his own home.Absent any considerations of Chinese cultural issues, this isn't a totally unreasonable position to take. It's not something *I* consider a priority, but it's hard to blame someone who does.But more relevantly, what SallyStrange said.
>Discount is like the "not even wrong" category of arguments, personified. Men are just now beginning to be considered as human beings? Gosh, what were they before–demigods? It'd be hilarious if it weren't so infuriating.
>Men are just now beginning to be considered as human beings?The majority of monarchs in human history have been male, but that's just another example of how men are oppressed… somehow…
>Indeed Trip. And I don't suppose we should mention the laws of primogeniture which assured succession to the firstborn male and transference of inherited wealth and property to same.
>Ain't it great how Discount can say to people, "I can't find this information anywhere." but he has no problem tossing out shit like, "Considering men as human beings is not yet the norm." and "I follow all the feminist news feeds and they are definitively against men and children having fathers." without a single shred of information to back it up. We're supposed to accept all of his horror-story anecdotes as chiseled-in-stone truth, but anything that contradicts him is either instantly suspect or outright false. Because he says so. This is what happens when you've all ready decided on a conclusion; you just exclude anything that disproves it and twist what you can to support it.
>No of course not, because they have yet to consider the context of why women act in anyway.
>Considering men as human beings is not yet the norm. It is a new idea.Is that what's causing MRAs to get their panties in a bunch, that as feminists have fought to raise the status of women to that of human being the status of men is now starting to be lowered to that of human being?
>I follow all the feminist news feedsThis just strikes me as being exactly like Sarah Palin's comment about how she reads all the newspapers.I don't follow all the feminist news feeds, and I'm a feminist. Who has that much time in their day?
>"The majority of monarchs in human history have been male, but that's just another example of how men are oppressed… somehow…" Take a look below the glass floor it might cause an uncomfortable crick in your neck but its worth a shot. Men have bared the worst aspect of the toils and suffering of the human condition which women have been largely spared from. Men have been treated as the disposable workhorses of civilization. Our welfare, feelings, safety, health and our very lives not valued as much as yours and you know it.
>"And I don't suppose we should mention the laws of primogeniture which assured succession to the firstborn male and transference of inherited wealth and property to same." All to be ever more worthy of you. Men know what women require in order to be loved. Unlike you we are not attractive nor desired by the opposite sex for the simple fact that we exist. Giving your wealth and resources to your son will give him a fighting chance to be worthy of women. How's that for oppression.
>Men have bared the worst aspect of the toils and suffering of the human condition which women have been largely spared from. Men have been treated as the disposable workhorses of civilization. Our welfare, feelings, safety, health and our very lives not valued as much as yours and you know it. Translation: "I am in denial about the fact that every economic class has both women and men in it."
>I don't follow all the feminist news feeds, and I'm a feminist. Who has that much time in their day? Try an RSS reader..it will save you the time.
>"Translation: "I am in denial about the fact that every economic class has both women and men in it."" Translation, I am unaware that my very comfort and standard of living is due to men toiling to keep my home warm, build my house, lay my roads and suffered in shit filled filth holes in the ground to gather the materials that built the computer I am using. I am unaware that it is male toil and suffering to allow us all to live in comfort that lead to the invention of the internet itself.
>All to be ever more worthy of you. Translation: "I am in denial about the fact that women were not permitted to earn money for themselves for millennia."Men know what women require in order to be loved. Translation: "I have no idea what it is like to be loved."Unlike you we are not attractive nor desired by the opposite sex for the simple fact that we exist.Translation: "I have been told that women don't like sex with men, and I believe this. Also, because I do not regard pregnancy, childbirth, and childraising as valuable things, I am incapable of recognizing that women were not valued, historically speaking, for existing, but rather for providing reproductive services–that is, being baby factories."Giving your wealth and resources to your son will give him a fighting chance to be worthy of women. How's that for oppression. Translation: "I have no idea what I'm talking about. Argle bargle blargh blargh. I'm oppressed. Men are more oppressed than women. Why? Because I said so." Well, I did my best folks, but really, speaking "Discount" is very difficult, mostly because of that basic problem with incoherence–i.e. the "not even wrong" problem I mentioned before. In order for an argument to be wrong, it has to first make a modicum of sense. Discount's blather fails at even that.
>"All to be ever more worthy of you." -"Translation: "I am in denial about the fact that women were not permitted to earn money for themselves for millennia."Translation, no matter how much women have I am unaware that it does not preclude us from looking for the same driving forces in men we have always looked for and lead to their obsession over territory and resources to begin with for which as a woman I am the only gender who is able to freely benefit by for the simple fact that I am a woman and I exist.
>"Translation: "I have been told that women don't like sex with men, and I believe this. Also, because I do not regard pregnancy, childbirth, and childraising as valuable things, I am incapable of recognizing that women were not valued, historically speaking, for existing, but rather for providing reproductive services–that is, being baby factories." Get out of here. You know our roles WERE complimentary and necessary.
>Translation, I am unaware that my very comfort and standard of living is due to men toiling to keep my home warm, build my house, lay my roads and suffered in shit filled filth holes in the ground to gather the materials that built the computer I am using. I am unaware that it is male toil and suffering to allow us all to live in comfort that lead to the invention of the internet itself. First of all, the translation schtick is my thing. You need translating because you can't write coherently. Second, how did you find out that there were no women whatsoever involved in building the roads I drive on, the computer I work on, and the houses I've lived in? Was it through that magical feminist RSS feed? Clearly, in the modern era, there are SOME women involved in those industries. Previously, they were banned from participating. Since the ban has been lifted, more and more women are participating. I myself have built several houses as part of a carpentry team, and roofed a few more. So my question to you, Discount (not that I anticipate you'll even understand anything that's going on here, much less try to answer honestly), is: aren't you GLAD that women are working more now? It means that they don't need men to provide them with money, so no more wage slavery for the poor men who need money in order to persuade sex-hating women to have sex with them. That's a good thing right? I mean, assuming you don't like sex. I suppose, if you think that women all hate sex, but you still like sex, and the only way to get to have sex with a woman is to bribe her with the means of physical survival and be the only bulwark between her and starvation, that might be a bad thing. But you don't seem like the type who particularly enjoys sex.
>But of course at a societal scale they are now in bitter conflict and the results are evident. Go your own way..have fun..men are. Don't hate it, embrace it. Men need women like a fish needs a bicycle. Isn't that how it goes.