Sometimes MRAs are infuriating; sometimes they are hilarious. And once in a long, long while they are simply adorable. Consider xavan512 (not his real name), a Redditor who thinks it’s high time that MRAs launched a PR campaign to defend themselves against the mean things said about them by “radical feminist blog’s or other ignorant people” who think that:
“Oh those MRA’s just need to get laid” “They are a bunch of lonely neckbeards” “They are just bitter” “They are probably forever alone’s” “They hate women” “Misogynists” ect.
Basically they are trying to make our concerns appear illegitimate because we must be whiny losers. Or because we “hate” women since we don’t adhere to the feminist dogma.
Ok, you say, so far he’s just being sort of irritating. But here is where the “adorable” part comes in. You see, whenever feminist meanies suggest that MRAs are woman-hating losers, xavan512 proposes, MRAs should respond with “hard evidence” to counter this perception. No, not penis pictures. Something even better: pictures of themselves with actual, smiling girlfriends.
Xavan512 started by posting the picture in the top right. Yep, that’s xavan512 and his actual girlfriend, standing in a field, dressed to the nines (or at least the high sixes or sevens). He’s looking dapper in his suit, accented with a bold red tie, and she of course looks lovely in a totally cute dress with an utterly adorable tiny pink purse. I’m not sure if they’re on their way to a prom, or a wedding, of if they just like posing in outdoor settings.
By the way – I didn’t scribble over the faces on the picture. Xavan512 did that himself, because, he insists, “being publicly MRA is socially taboo.”
After posting this photo, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that xavan512 thinks highly enough of at least one human female that he is willing to stand next to her long enough to get a picture taken, this newly self-appointed MR PR guru urged his fellow MRAs “to post a picture of yourself or mention if you have a girlfriend/wife.”
Alas, xavan512’s plan met a certain degree of resistance from fellow Reddit MRAs.
OThomson complained:
Why post a picture of ourselves with our girlfriends, we do not need the Validation of a Women to make our cause just, i’ll freely admit i’m single and looking for the right person because looking for non-crazy, non-privileged, non-annoyance is a genuine trouble these days, i don’t resent Women for that (Ok i slightly resent their position as sexual selectors for our species because it gives them so much power over men) but on the whole i’m an MRA because i want to defend my rights and the rights of all Men.
Francomaistre was even more cutting in his criticism:
I’m sure you propose this with the best of intentions, but I’m with OThomson on this. Trying to engineer some kind of phoney boloney PR campaign with cherry picked images of smiling couples professionally photographed in semi-formal dress in pastoral settings seems like a pretty dramatic mischaracterization of many MRA’s experiences and subtly subverts the movement and concerns that drives many of us to be MRA’s in the first place.
Maybe it’s a separation or divorce situation, maybe we’ve been subject to a false rape or domestic violence accusation, maybe we’re sick of being stereotyped by the media as dim-witted psycho-violent timebombs just waiting to be tripped, or are just generally sick of being treated by second-class citizens by “empowered women” who can judge our sexuality, shame us, and even inflict physical violence on us almost entirely without consequence.
Someone woke up cranky today!
Here’s the thing: the adorableness of xavan512’s picture aside, if MRAs are tired of people calling them misogynists, there’s a much more direct way to challenge this perception – and that is to challenge the rampant misogyny in the MRM. You want examples? Check the archives here. I’m kind of a lazy bastard, and I don’t like doing any more research than I have to, yet over the relatively brief lifetime of this blog I’ve managed to post literally hundreds of pretty outrageous examples of misogyny from the mouths of (or, rather, the keyboards of) MRAs. And that’s only scratching the surface. I don’t read every MRA blog every day. And I only post a tiny, tiny fraction of the misogyny I run across. It is everywhere in the MRM.
If you’re an MRA, and you’re NOT a flaming misogynist, and you want your issues to be taken seriously, don’t post pictures of yourself with your smiling girlfriend. Challenge the misogyny that surrounds you. Get together with other MRAs, and drum the misogynists out of the movement. Build bridges with feminists working on men’s rights issues. Just say no to the douchebags.
Meller: You are an MRA.
You think women should be replaced with sexbots and uterine replicators.
Once that is done a few may be kept, for the “elite” men, as sex slaves. The rest should be killed.
I don’t think it would be possible to make your views look any more repulsive than they are. There is no need to distort them to make them look disgusting. They are disgusting.
If I were a woman, and saw a person advocating for that, damn straight I’d say that person/group was an enemy of mine.
Magdelyn: The people here (the one’s you challenged to challenge someone we don’t know about how they dealt with Thomas Ball [it would look better for you, if you actually named him. We do]) challenged the people here (you know the one’s we actually see) when they were callous about his death.
So, peddle your papers someplace else, where they might believe the silly tripe in that trope.
David K. Meller
You sir are an excellent example of mental illness that runs amok in the mra community. Paranoia, conspiracy theories. in general the world is out to get you.
You however have a life choice to make,
You can continue in the way you have which will lead you in a few ways:
Found dead in a rooming house six days later.
If you have funds the family will hire a nurse because they feel they should, not because they want to, or in a nursing home or hospital with no one at your side.
Either way you are fucked. You’ve publicly stated that no one loves or cares about you. Either you decide to change or that is the outcome of your life.
WHy don’t you try being someone that people would care about instead of a carcass?
“Well, MRA’s are losers? Maybe. I’m an MRA. Let me go ask my spouse.”
Magdelyn, if you’re an MRA, why are you married? Isn’t there an imbalance between you and someone that has all the cultural power? What if she decides to divorce you?
HA!
I KNEW the so-called ‘Manboobz Troll Strike’ (or should that be ‘Stryke’) would not last for long!
And do tell, Mr. Meller, precisely which quotes have been misquoted. Specific examples, please.
Maggie, if you’re going to get outraged at us on the behalf of the people Kia Abdullah mocked, you’d probably honor their memory better if you actually remembered who they were. She said nothing about the Ball suicide. What she did was to make some incredibly assholish remarks about three students who died in Thailand (I guess her excuse is that she assumed they were sex tourists, but that doesn’t actually excuse her remarks). I had never heard of her before this, and I don’t think that anyone is defending her.
Seriously, DKM, if I’ve quoted someone so that it sounds like they’re saying the POLAR OPPOSITE of what they really said, I’d like to know the details. I would be delighted to learn that the people I’m quoting have great love and respect for women as well as men.
Oh, is that who Kia Abdullah is? She was an asshole. but it looked more like she was being pissy about class than gender.
“My apologies to any offended porcupines! You all are still prettier, and more adorable than pushy, opinionated, over-educated, and just plain disgusting feminists!”
There’s such a thing as being “over-educated?” I wasn’t aware there should be a limitation as to how much we should educate ourselves. I guess we should all just be ignorant (like, you know, MRAs). ;p
He’s said the over-educated thing before.. he means that we have degrees beyond what we SHOULD have b/c we’re women and were granted them/slept our way to them. xD He doesn’t mean that we’re over-educated as in “over-qualified” he means it like “promoted beyond their expertise” xD
If it helps the feminist cause, I can produce any number of photos of faceless men standing next to faceless women.
I wonder, of these guys who have female partners, how many of them actually talk about their views? I always get the impression that MRA-dom is an opinion held only on the Internet, and not something you bring up around the dinner table. You just sort of silently seethe against the women in your life.
This may be optimistic of me.
@Johnny/Molly
Magdelyn isn’t a new troll she is a very old one. She used to comment here a lot back when manboobz was young and yes Magdelyn is a female if recall right. I have no idea what the gender of her spouse is though.
Uh, welcome back Maggie?
“I KNEW the so-called ‘Manboobz Troll Strike’ (or should that be ‘Stryke’) would not last for long! ”
Look at the bright side, ion is gone for awhile maybe even forever. 😀
I see, so given there is an absence of rampant misogyny on r/mr you print this article and insinuate there is instead while giving misandry a free pass. I notice that “teh menz” are being educated about sexist, misandrist White knights David, tick tock!
Look at the bright side, ion is gone for awhile maybe even forever.
But if you say my name three times I’ll appear! 😛
You do realize that this proves my point. When you’ve got no new targets to attack, you spend your time talking about the ones you used to attack.
Now for something different… since everyone is tired of talking about the elevator thing, how about this lovely story? I predict it’s only a matter of time before the feminists claim this woman was probably abused and turn the whole thing into an indictment of men and patriarchy…
I love that this guy thought he could smuggle in a boast about how a woman will let him touch her with this audience. Jesus H. Christ, it’s like going on a Richard Simmons cruise and bragging about how you can just eat and eat and never gain an ounce.
darn, spoke too soon. Your like bloody mary. Hey Ami I have an idea for ions card…
So how was your two day strike ion?
You couldn’t resist posting could you. 😉 Oh and your strike didn’t work, plenty of trolls still posted and you yourself broke it in two days (better go tell t4t you were joking he thought you were serious and said he would be leaving for a week). No one was really talking about you unless you count the afterthoughts and the several jokes of people after you flounced. Its only been two days man, give it a week and I promise no ones gonna give a shit if you don’t post.
Your “ha I knew it” comment seems to be an afterthought that wasn’t your point for leaving stop pretending it was:
This place might look like there’s a lot of activity, but if you look closer you’ll realize there’s really only about a dozen self-important nerds who practically live here and write 80% of the comments. They thrive on collectively mocking and attacking anyone who disagrees with them, because it gives them a sense of superiority they never achieved in real life.
Just leave them alone. Stop paying attention to them, stop giving them ammo and watch the blog die as they run out of targets to pick on. Leave them to their little circle-jerk of agreeing with each other and posting pictures of cats. That’s what I’m doing from now on, and I hope you’ll take my example.
You told them to stop posting here and the blog would die. You were wrong so you changed your hypothesis and said “Ha I knew it you all can’t resist talking about me”. Don’t play dumb ion, flounce for a longer amount of time, give it at least week and stop moving the goalposts.
Ion didn’t stick the strike. I haz a sad.
gah quote fail: I don’t know why it didn’t quote(the tags didn’t even apear weird). For anyone reading the fourth paragraph is what ion originaly posted.
Don’t worry johnny t4t supposedly on strike. Maybe one day Ion will truly strike *pats dog on head and stares wistfully into the distance* Perhaps one day……
“You told them to stop posting here and the blog would die. You were wrong so you changed your hypothesis and said “Ha I knew it you all can’t resist talking about me”.”
I said the blog would die without trolls. When there aren’t any around, you still talk about the ones who used to be. Where was I wrong?
3x post
This isn’t on subject at all but arks is a pretty cool guy. I got mad at him once but I forgave him cause I can’t resist his bad boy charm. I guess he is funny too but that’s just a minor thing.
Yeah you were, the point of this blog is to mock misogyny and misogynists so why would we not? When a misogynist posts misogyny here we are going to mock it as well. I know you don’t like the purpose of this blog but that has nothing to do with the blogs success.
If this blog were to die would there be little to no comments and no posts. Isn’t that what a dead blog is? This blog is booming, its doing incredibly well for a blog so I have no idea what your talking about. I’m guessing our definitions of a dead blog are different.
“LOL, go away, we’ll do just fine without trolls! Yeah!”
“Hey, look, he’s gone! LOL FLOUNCE FLOUNCE look I said flounce I’m so witty!”
“hey wasn’t that troll stupid! Yeah, such a stupid lame troll!”
“hey, remember when that troll was around? LOL, yeah, wasn’t he something!”
“I sure hope he doesn’t come back! Me too!”
“Hey, remember when he said x, y and z? that was pretty stupid! Sure was!”
“Boy, I’m sure glad the trolls are gone! Yeah! Hey, let’s talk about them some more!”
😛
If this blog were to die would there be little to no comments and no posts. Isn’t that what a dead blog is? This blog is booming, its doing incredibly well for a blog so I have no idea what your talking about.
Come on now, I can’t believe you’d be that dense. It’s “booming” because everyone is ganging up on the trolls. And when they don’t show up, you keep going by talking about them. Actually, this might be a bit unfair – considering this whole blog’s purpose is to mock and criticize a segment of the population, the commenters’ behavior could be seen as a natural growth of that.
So, how about that woman who drugged her husband, cut off his penis and threw it in the garbage disposal? Guy probably had it coming and she was a victim of patriarchal society, amirite?