>
 |
| 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:
—
If you enjoyed this post, would you kindly use the “Share This” or one of the other buttons below to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or wherever else you want. I appreciate it.
>Truly this thread is a surreal read with Discount's posts deleted. (But I get the idea.)
>Sandy, you have a good point. I know that anger is a normal human emotion, and that it is unhealthy to suppress it. I like how you differentiate between expressing anger from verbal abuse. I think it all depends on the situation of the disagreement. I think a person usually communicates better when they express ideas calmly rather than in a raging mad outburst. Likewise, if someone makes spiteful insults in a gentle, meek tone they being verbally abusive. Sorry I'm probably rambling but I think there is a gray area overlapping angry arguments and verbal abuse.Captain Bathrobe also made some excellent points. Thank you for putting it so well. Criticize the action, not the person.
>"Ion said… Gotta love the smug, dismissive language here, so typical of feminists. Whenever a man has a concern, he's "whining" or is a "drama queen"."Hurray! And another MRA pick up the torch to continue the Douche Olympics marathon!
>I got a little giggle out of asking Discount if he had a rapist mouse in his pocket. Still do, now, thinking back on it…For Ion: anti-racist activists and POC often do accuse white people of whining about being accused of racism. And the fact is that we pale-faces do tend to whine a lot when racism is brought up. And the whining sounds very similar to the MRAs. "Oh, but racism is in the past, there's no more legal discrimination, and anyway it's not MY fault, and how come YOU get to have all that awesome affirmative action??" So, what now? And why come you qualified your state with "A black guy" as in one SINGLE black guy, whereas you're perfectly content generalizing about a whole mass of unrelated people who happen to share an interest in feminism? Don't answer, it's a rhetorical question.
>Cynickal: Too bad you and your friends have grabbed all the gold medals so far :)SallyStrange: I honestly didn't even think about that. If I could edit posts, I would change it to "black people" because I care deeply for your happiness, but I can't. And isn't affirmative action just reverse discrimination anyway? Or are you one of those self-flagellating liberals endlessly bemoaning the evils of the white man (and woman) and wallowing in guilt over what your ancestors did a couple of hundred years ago?As for "generalizing about a whole mass of unrelated people who happen to share an interest in feminism", here's the thing: when you all act the same, speak the same, use the same lame insults and shaming language, have the same attitude, and show the same confounding lack of even the merest glimmer of intelligence, wit or originality, I'm gonna treat you all the same. So that's that.
>Hey, I told you it was a fucking rhetorical question! Yes, obviously you'd be perfectly willing to jump down the throat of any given person of color, or generalize about black people, if you thought they were being too loud or annoying in complaining about racism. You're just one of those guys–inveterate racist, sexist, stuck in the old way of thinking, has a sort of subconscious awareness of being a dinosaur but doesn't really understand why, and lashes out at people who should be his allies because he doesn't understand who his true enemies are. It's not like that was in question, but your comments about affirmative action and reverse racism just confirmed it even more. (I mean, for one thing, there's plenty of guilt-wallowing to be done about what happened a mere 40-50 years ago, let alone 200 years ago.)
>To be honest, I haven't yet heard a coherent argument against my position, just insults and vague accusations. Seems like that's what you do best, eh? I didn't even want to bring race into the discussion, it was you and ginmar who did that, and made a big deal out of it. But as long as you did, thank you for proving my suspicion of your naive, simplistic world views. Given that the IQs of all the so-called feminists I've seen here so far don't quite add up to room temperature, I can't say it surprises me.
>Against what position, exactly? What argument are you making? So far it's mostly been that feminists suck. That's not a position, it's a petulant kid throwing a tantrum. You present a cogent argument for a coherent position, along with evidence, and I'll be happy to evaluate it, disagree or agree with it, and provide reasons for my agreement or disagreement, AND provide some evidence for those reasons. Until then, it's insults for you. People who barge into a room, insult people, and fail to make cogent arguments don't deserve anything more.
>OK, so his position is:when you all act the same, speak the same, use the same lame insults and shaming language, have the same attitude, and show the same confounding lack of even the merest glimmer of intelligence, wit or originality, I'm gonna treat you all the same.…and he's wondering why we aren't rebutting it. Admittedly "You guys are all the same" is a hard thing to rebut, since I think only agreeing with him would convince him that we were in fact distinct entities.
>@ Cboye – Yeah, that can all be summarized as "You guys all SUCK!" There's no "there" there.
>@Ion"Gotta love the smug, dismissive language here, so typical of feminists." Hard not to be smug when your life rocks. Of course verbal abuse is bad, but it's not as bad as physical abuse is it not? And when MRAs are making out male abuse to be on the same level as female abuse, alarm bells ring. In quantity alone women are subjected to a whole level of different abuse. In return most cases of violence back at men are from abused women in self defence. The few that aren't are not treated well admittedly, HOWEVER the MRAs are not arguing for the 5-10% who need it but the remainder. Nagging is a failure of communication and a sign that there are unresolved issues. Nagging rarely occurs in a balanced relationship where men do their share of the heavy lifting. The MRAs actively think of going back to the "good olde days" as seen in many blogs where the epitomise culture of the early 20s and 30s where women were more subservient. To them sinking with the titanic was brave and a symbol of manliness not a symbol of someone not bringing enough life jackets. And in any case their statements of chivalry are similar to the anti liberal stance of "If there was a war on, I would be out there with the rest of the lads". Usually it's just a statement with no way to back it up. As for glimmer's of intelligence. Hey it's your movement that has a deep streak of racism. The MRAs strongly link immigration and miscegenation as to the cause of their lack of skills with the ladies. Not the fact that they are giant racists. A lot of the attitude to women in the movement is that nothing is the MRA's fault. It's a highly delusional state. They wish to go back to the days women would be impressed by slick cars and muscles rather than us having to do any real work on having a personality. Hence they have the Pick Up Artist ideology. The so called "Scientific Method of Convincing Women to Sleep With You". It's less work than trying to develop a personality with any meaning.
>I can't believe Ion wants to play oppression Oympics about racism. There you have it, folks: the MRA in full bloom.
>"I can't believe Ion wants to play oppression Oympics about racism."I don't even know what that means, you dingbat. Spare me your feminist buzzwords. I'm also not an MRA, and have never been one. I'm more of an outside observer. :)Avicenna: Here's something I've been wondering. The pickup artist community (PUA) gets a lot of flak in feminist circles for being dishonest, being a way to 'trick' women into having sex, and so on. "Those guys are losers!" the feminists yell. "Those tricks would never work on me or my smarty-brain friends!" they smugly crow. But then, why all the concern? If they're losers and their tricks don't work anyway, why bother about them at all? It sounds to me like people are trying to convince themselves that those guys are ineffectual fools, despite evidence to the contrary. Because if you claim their techniques don't work, and yet you see evidence of them working on quite a lot of women, maybe it just means that quite a lot of women aren't as smart as you think… something to ponder, anyway.
>It demeans the rest of us men and gives the rest of us a bad name. It encourages young children to treat women like vaginas not individuals. And quite frankly it's insulting to men. There are incredibly insecure women out there and this methodology merely encourages them to be incredibly insecure about men. The reason the MRAs and PUAs are miserable is due to The Game. It attracts specifically one kind of woman. And results in specifically one kind of outcome. The one where you guys complain about women. You aren't attracting emotionally mature people, you are attracting damaged goods. A
>But then, why all the concern? If they're losers and their tricks don't work anyway, why bother about them at all?Because there's some "tricks" that are actually harassment. Take the concept of "negs", for example. Few women like to insulted outright. And it's creepy to trade verbal barbs "in jest" with someone you hardly know – the person that is doing that is faking an intimacy that doesn't currently exist. People with those kind of boundary issues are not charming.and yet you see evidence of them working on quite a lot of women, maybe it just means that quite a lot of women aren't as smart as you thinkJust because someone has low self-esteem, doesn't mean that they are not smart. I've known plenty of brilliant people who have low self-esteem. Many of the "tricks" involve preying upon people with low self-esteem – someone who is desperate for attention will take any attention, even it's negative. That's a recipe for disaster.
>Absinthe:In addition, when PUAs like Roissy offer advice on how to treat your actual girlfriend, the advice basically boils down to "be abusive." So yeah, it seems clear to me that PUAs are deliberately encouraging men to be abusers, but dressing it up in "but we're the victims here!" language. Disgusting.
>Trip…It's because being abusive works. The ultimate joke in responding to a case of abuse is to watch the abused individual (they often get more violent than the abuser) because at heart the abuser is an individual who dominates by violence because they have no redeeming qualities and often has poor self esteem. When you show up you are in a state of power over the abuser since you are appearing with the auspice of the law.However the abusee thinks that if you don't save them that the abuser will teach them a lesson. One of my friends got a knife through her arm while responding to a case of domestic abuse because she turned away from the woman to talk to the man and the woman just lashed out.It's really pathetic.
>They often get more violent than the abuser? Bullshit. Somebody's buying into MRA bullshit.
>Yeah, Ion keeps proving me right over and over and over again. It's not even funny any more.
>Were you spraying spittle at your monitor while typing that?
>Ginmar, they don't want to be helped in case you fail and the abuse will get worse. They would rather fight 3 cops than get beaten by their abusive spouse. It's why women often defend their abusers.It's also why the often completely snap and simply kill the douchebag using whatever comes to hand. It's normal human behaviour. Think of it as being similar to slavery where quite a few slaves "were happy" with being slaves because not being happy meant more beatings.
>Pull the string! Pull the string!
>Avicenna, then why didn't you state that instead of the MRA-style sentence you used? Battered women have to face the fact that the cops who respond to any 911 call might be wife-abusers themselves, protected by that thick blue line that protects cops. Even if they're not, cops often have the same mythical 'good victim' in their head that the general population does, and a battered woman who's not neat, who may be angry and upset, crying in a way the cop doesn't like…he's not going to be sympathetic. Neither are judges, who are often conservative older white guys. Ask Tracy Thurman, for example, how well the cops protected her. Cops often say that DV cases are the most dangerous calls they take. Well, then, if they're so dangerous to cops, how dangerous are they to women? And cops seem to take a certain glee in arresting women, often on the say so of the guy who just punched his aggression out on her. Bros before hos, after all.
>It's true that abuse victims will often side with their abusers. Many times, if a neighbor made the call rather than the victim, the victim will defend the abuser to the police.It's not just because of the fear of more violence if the police don't arrest the abuser (though that's no doubt part of it). It's because the abuser has worn down the victim to the point that s/he feels like s/he deserves the abuse. Abusers don't just abuse physically, they destroy the victim's self-esteem and self-worth.
>So yeah, I mean, abuse works in that sense. PUAs, or more accurately the dupes who listen to them, look up to abusers. They all want to be that (supposedly) strong, powerful man who commands respect from "his" woman. They're assholes who want to feel the thrill of wielding total power over another human being.