“Kloo2yoo,” the moderator of Reddit’s Men’s Rights Subreddit, is worried that racists in his subreddit will give Men’s Rights a bad name. So he’s put out a call to some of the more artistic readers of the subreddit to come up with a nice new logo for it, to show how broad-minded and all-inclusive Reddit’s Men’s Rightsers really are. Well, not literally all-inclusive. As Kloo put it in his call for artiistic help:
New logo needed, to emphasize racial and lgbt inclusiveness, but not feminism.
Oh, but even that turned out to be a bit too inclusive for some of the commenters there. Specifically, they objected to the “L” portion of LBGT. And some of the Ts. As white_cloud put it:
I don’t think you need to appeal to the L in LGBT. It is well-known that lesbians are the most radical of all feminists. They will never feel welcome here and we should not go out of our way to make them feel welcome. Male to female trans pretty much the same thing. They’ve already renounced their male gender, they don’t care about male rights
Scott2508 concurred:
ok i am in favour of inclusivness and im not sure if i am going to word this right so stick with me , the one thing i am curious about is how we bring ourself in line with the lesbian [angle] of it all simply due to the hostility that can arise from that community towards men
Kloo replied:
point taken. we can embrace lesbian mras, without embracing lesbian supremacists.
Apparently these are the only types of lesbians in the world.
In any case, despite these design constraints, I have come up with what I think is a very compelling logo that I think will convey just what Kloo would like to convey. What do you think, guys?
At what point will MRAs just start putting plywood clubhouses together and hang signs that say “NO GURLZ ALOWED!”?
Gorgeous!
Although, and stick with the logic train here, if they really wanted to be more inclusive they could just… start seeing women/everyone as people? That’s half the population included right there. Not everyone is an antagonist, though I don’t think they’ll be ok with seeing it that way.
Also, David, I tried setting up an IRC- how do you feel about that? Are you ok with it?
A friend of mine makes BLTs with a chunky guacamole instead of mayo. He calls them GLBTs, I know that this is not a particularly helpful bit of information, but I wanted to share it.
Highy reasonable, IMO. I don’t have a problem with lesbians in the sense of them being homosexual, or MTF transsexuals in the sense of them being, well, trans. But they’re women, and there’s no need for the MRAs to appeal to women, just like how fymynysts like to say over and over and over that feminism “isn’t here to appeal to men”. Well sure, then shut up about this.
I guess a cool logo is a better way to make people feel included than, say, not being racists who hate gay people. Rebranding!
Where are these feminists who are against men. And it depends on how one is using, “appeal”. If by appeal one means, “gives them a warm fuzzy” then no, they oughtn’t be looking to that as being what they are there for.
But it appeal means, “make arguments that persuade” you better believe it. If the MRA community is actively excluding people who don’t agree… they aren’t going to convince many of them to start agreeing.
That’s just stupid politics.
Consider most feminists answer with a sarcastic “waahhh, wahhh, what about teh menz?” when asked to consider men and their issues, yeah, it’s a bit hypocritical to mock these guys for excluding feminists/lesbians/whatever.
Maybe “fymynysts” say that, but feminists understand that feminism is about equality and understand how sexism hurts both sexes, not just women.
The problem with attitudes like yours and the MRAs this blog is about is that you see it as a battle for supremacy instead of equality.
If actual men’s rights advocates want people to take their concerns seriously, it has to start with not painting women as the enemy, to dump the misogyny, to appeal to women. I can tell you that I care a lot more about what someone is going through if they’re spending most of their time making me out to be a hateful caricature.
To effect change, you need allies. You don’t get those by throwing rocks at the people who are willing to help and screaming at them to go away.
Right on, Ion!
Feminism is here to appeal to whoever likes it, regardless of the state of their genitalia/gender identity/presentation/whatever. Some of the people it appeals to are men. Though, you’re going to go on thinking we all despise men, in spite of the many, many anecdata laid before you. I think the MRA is going to have a tough time appealing to people outside of their current narrows scope because they’re xenophobic. I mean, seriously- one of their terms is “thugboy”. I bet African-American men will really appreciate that being thrown around in a movement they might want to belong to. Or all the citing of the rates of single motherhood “in the ghetto” (not that you do that, MRAL, but a lot of other MRAs do).
And I bet that gay men will really appreciate people like those in the last post telling them that they really do want women, not men, because ew, and those ladies just won’t give it up. And I’m sure all varieties of gender non-comformists and gay men and lesbian women will really appreciate the heavy insistence on traditional gender roles and one-man-one-woman marriage ideals.
The MRM isn’t a movement designed to be inclusive.
That Lonnie, he’s such an alpha.
Unless he’s short.
But he still has super hunting privilege.
He could probably bring home some mammoth.
If mammoths weren’t extinct.
Maybe a bear.
Do people eat bear?
Intersectionality is hard.
Fuck Lonnie. (Or don’t based on your own personal preferences.)
Ion, I do see that sarcasm quite often. But you know where I see it? In blog posts and news articles about women’s issues. When men keep derailing comment threads to make it about them, then yeah, “what about Teh Menz?!?”
If items about GBLTQ rights kept getting derailed by heterosexuals bringing up issues concerning them, you’d also keep seeing “what about Teh Straightz?!?”
Ion, did you not read Ozy’s “No, really, what about the menz?” post? I agree with a lot of what she says in it. I know other feminists who do, too. It’s just that not all of us want to ego stroke every dude who comes along who wants us to drop all of our (actually, very important) issues to talk about child support, the idea of false rape accusations(bullharkey), or paper abortions, for example. In that vein, I, personally, would love to see men being ridiculed less for being Stay-at-homers, and generally good, loving, emotionally bonded fathers. I mean, look at the feminists who write for The Good Men Project.
It’s just that you don’t agree with our goals, and you don’t like that we want to advance women and men together in this process, so you discount it.
The gay thing was just speculation. It’s not blaming gay men for their actions at all, whatever they want is fine with the MRM, a highly INclusive movement. But a movement that bans harmless speculation (done in a highly respectful manner) is starting to sound totalitarian (much like feminism).
Secondly, “thug” doesn’t specifically refer to a black man, the dictionary backs me up there. I’ve literally never heard someone take offense to the word.
It’s nice to have a like-minded individual that shares my politics, Ion. Stick around.
Dang it, Futrelle! How did I end up on moderation again?!?
Paper abortions- Very reasonable proposal, ultimately impractical but I totally understand the issue. In this sense it’s much like feminists and their “rape is men’s problem” fucking stupid manifesto. It’s not, because it affects hardly any men, so it’s illogical and not helpful in solving any problem. However, I can see how it gets people THINKING about the rape issue. Even if paper abortions are not practical it gets people THINKING about men’s rights
I can say I personally would not appreciate someone speculating on my sexual preferences/the causes thereof. Especially without my input. I’d say it’s harmful, cause it’s not really paying attention to all those gay dudes who are like “But no really, I think men are pretty”, and it’s instead saying “NOPE, YOU LIKE THEM BECAUSE OF THIS REASON WE THOUGHT UP WITHOUT YOUR INPUT”.
Even still, the MRM seems to think rigid, traditional, binary gender roles are the way to go, and LGBTQ people are really probably not invested in those in any way, because those roles exclude them so completely.
I said MOST. Ozy’s an exception. As for the rest of it, you are still dismissing and discounting men’s issues. It’s like, their issues aren’t important unless you say they are, because you’re… superior beings or something? Anyway, that’s not what I’m arguing about, I just pointed out the hypocrisy of smugly pointing fingers at those who exclude others, when feminists have been doing it quite happily for decades.
I’ve always felt that the L and T should be removed from LGBT in general, though for different reasons than Kloo, that being that they simply seem incongruous with the rest. For one, trans isn’t really a sexuality, since you get straight and gay trans people. It’s related, but a seperate phenomena. Lesbianism also technically isn’t a sexuality since there’s no real sex involved, given that the act is biologically impossible between two females. The extended foreplay between two ‘gay’ females is a far cry from the real sex experienced by a man or a woman or a man and a man, and therefore calling it a legitimate sexuality is a stretch.
Really I think GBQ works better as a more succinct and consistent acronym for alternate-sexuality based communities.
Dude, even if we go with your “MOST”, with only Ozy and myself, and the other commenters here? It’s more than the MRM can claim. Many posters on these forums advocate violence against women who step outside of the lines these dudes want to define for them. There are also people (David K Meller, anyone?) in this movement, at present, who think that women never mature past adolescence, intelligence wise. Who say we deserve the violation of rape. Et cetera. Is feminism the most inclusive club out there? Not necessarily, and not all the time. We’re human, we err. But the feminism I practice is pretty damn inclusive.
Are men’s issues important? Depends on the issue. In relation to the violence/discrimination/erasing/indifference carried out against other groups? In my mind, no. Hypothetically: In my opinion, the dude who thinks custody isn’t fair, can get in line behind the trans* kids who get beat up, the women who get raped and taunted by the police, The DV victims of both genders, and the dudes who perform toxic masculinity to be accepted. As the beginning of a long list of examples.
Arksibalt, I can’t even start to unpack that. What I can say is that, unless you’re a member of that community, you don’t get to define it. The members of the community reserve that right.
Arksibalt, you seem to be saying the sex requires a penis. Is that your contention?
Arksibalt:
That is completely true if you are comfortable with defining sex solely based on what happens to penises. But that disappears everyone who has intimate relationships but does not have a penis, and disappears men whose penises don’t work as well as they would like or as well as they used to.
What is the upside of defining sex that way? What is the downside of a more inclusive definition?
Sex needs a penis like a fish needs water.