So somebody, and I honestly don’t know who, tried a little experiment last night on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit: claiming to be a “long time lurker and closet-convert to the MRM [with] some thoughts to share that I’ve been working on for a long time,” the (ostensibly male) prankster cut-and-pasted the excerpts of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto that I highlighted in my last post and presented them to the Men’s Rightsers as if they were his own writings. The prankster also pretended to be posting on a throwaway account because his “GF has a reddit account and I’m not ready to open that bag of worms yet.” (All of the excerpts in question were from posts from far-right blogger Fjordman that Breivik had incorporated into his “manifesto.”)
So how did Breivik/Fjordman’s views (not identified as such) go over on r/MensRights? Pretty well, it turns out, with the post receiving (when last I checked) about twice as many upvotes as downvotes from the locals. “Nice post man.,” wrote darkamir in a comment. To FascistOrigami, meanwhile,
The beautiful thing about this post (beyond the fact that it hits all the major issues): every feminist on reddit whose bf is also on reddit will be wondering if the OP is her guy.
The biggest bone of contention? That the (fictional) OP felt he had to hide his views from his (fictional) girlfriend. “If you have a girlfriend who you have to hide things from, she should not be your girlfriend,” wrote one commenter. Others worried that the OP might be in an abusive relationship if “he” felt he couldn’t speak his mind. Tomek77, in perhaps the most ironic comment of the bunch, warned the OP that he might get a violent reaction if he revealed his views to his “GF.”
Just a piece of advice: I would be very careful about sharing your thoughts with your gf (if you care about your relationship).
For some reason that still escapes my understanding, many women go absolutely bat-shit crazy when they are faced with the reality of gender relations in the west.
To this day, I remember one of my ex-gf literally entering crazy-mode, screaming, yelling and physically shaking after I mentioned that it doesn’t make sense for men to get married under the current law. I swear, I was expecting to see foam coming from her mouth at any moment – and we have only been dating for a week!!
Even in more casual social settings, I have seen many women react very violently and irrationally when men’s issues were mentioned in the conversation. So proceed with caution..
Several hours after the original post, one of the regulars figured out what was going on. And posted a link to my post here on Breivik. Needless to say, my ideas got a much harsher reception than Breivik/Fjordman’s did, though judging from the comments very few of the regulars actually bothered to read my post before arriving at their conclusions about it.
Ya gotta work on that vocab a little….. it’s “sammich”.
I just realised, in all the time I’ve been posting here, I’ve never been called a Mangina. I feel a little hurt, quite frankly.
spearhafoc, you’re a Mangina.
…wait, does that make me an MRA?
Pecunium- I noted earlier that they weren’t embarrassed/upset that they unwittingly liked what ended up being the rhetoric of a serial killer outside the context of shooting dozens of people. They were embarrassed it was a prank and they got *caught*, and now they look like they agree with him. Because they do.
I should clarify: I’ve never been called a Mangina by anyone who wasn’t a feminist and/or fellow Mangina. Jesting doesn’t count.
I apparently don’t inspire rage in these people. That scares me. What am I doing wrong?
But Spearhafoc! You *have* been called a grammar Nazi. You’re responsible for many instances of Godwinning in these threads!
You’re from Soviet Canuckistan, so being a feminist is the least of your problems.
You’re from Soviet Canuckistan
yeah, even the whackaloons in the MRA movement can’t get irate at Canadianoids. Unless they use emoticons, of course.
The point isn’t that Breivik was an MRA (I certainly hope we’re not exporting something so embarrassing), but that a crazy murderers inspirations and thought process are so in line with MRA reasoning that they can’t distinguish the two.
That is a poor argument. Let me demonstrate. I am sure that you would agree with this statement:
Go ahead and look up who wrote it. Are you appalled that your views are so in line with that person’s that you cannot distinguish the two?
What you and so many feminists engaged in is a sweeping generalization. You ignore the exception in place of making a gross generalization so you can resort to guilt by association. Just because one person who did a deplorable thing expressed similar views as another group does not mean that his views came from that group or that the group bears any responsibility for his actions. It is very easy to take a comment out of context and find that people agree with it. If the feminist had posted the manifesto in context and some men’s rights activists agreed with it, that would have proved the point. The deception only shows how low feminists will and must go to discredit men’s groups.
Toysoldier – The difference is that these quotes are in themselves hateful.
I agree with Timothy McVeigh–in this regard. Because the quotes you’ve pulled are unobjectionable.
The quotes the MRAs are agreeing with are not nearly so innocuous.
lol. can you give me a better example than an ex-post facto justification by a convicted mass murderer trying to rehabilitate his image? or should we just go ahead and crown you the new king of bad-faith arguments?
The whole point of that passage is to sound reasonable. He’s trying to make what he did sound like something a reasonable person would do, given the circumstances. He’s selling you on a product called Timothy McVeigh. The Breivik Manifesto… not so much. Apples and oranges.
Yeah, Timothy McVeigh. I remember this from college.
Tell you what, despite the fact that pages and pages of this thread have discussed in great detail the difference between Breivak’s murders and manifesto, and what dovetails with some of the rhetoric intrinsic to the MRM…
Despite the fact that so many posters have made it perfectly clear that they aren’t generalizing this man’s act of terrorism to the entirety of the MRM…
How about you acknowledge that he was anti-feminism, and a misogynist, and that what he did was horrifying and utterly without justification?
Yeah, this isn’t the same thing as quoting Hitler saying “water is wet” and then going “haw haw, you just agreed with Hitler.”
This is MRAs agreeing with specifically misogynistic portions of Breivik’s manifesto.
@Toysoldier:
You know, I don’t think I do agree with that statement. Just because a nation fights a war doesn’t mean they are in the same boat as someone who takes part in the genocide of his own people, etc.
Eh, doesn’t matter though.
Like Holly said, the statements are innocuous. Most of the serial killers in the world also thought the sky was blue. Charles Manson liked art. They are all people, unfortunately, which makes them suceptable to having a lot of opinions about everything. What I and others don’t is a love/desire for a violent rampage, for all of our enemies to be wiped out. The MRAs talk about violence all the damn time. And it is this violence that is carried out by violent men. Sure, suicide bombers, serial murderers, and crazed gunmen may believe that water is wet, but they also believe that killing innocent people will terrorize people into believing them (or they just want death). That is something we do not share.
There is a distinct difference between someone agreeing with the Unabomber trying to sound reasonable, and a bunch of people agreeing with rhetoric that is hateful and suggesting taking away women’s rights to bump up the fertility rate of the “right” kind of people, or saying that The West is crumbling due to feminists thinking men and women are equal.
Although i’d like to think of myself as a egalitarian, i’m probably more of an MRA. Yet, i think 90% of what the more “extreme” MRAs spew is utter BS. The other 10% is where i feel my “duty” as MRA lies.
So what am I? An exception? Not a real MRA? Not a true scotsman?
Heres the link for anyone that didnt get the hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Probably an exception. Do you have a blog? Because the manboobz challenge is still unanswered.
LinXitoW – “Egalitarian” may be the word. Or “masculist”–it’s been used by MRAs but it’s go a better track record.
Have you checked out http://noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com/ ? It’s a non-MRA-like blog about men’s issues, and although it’s definitely having various growing pains (there can be a bit of a tug-of-war between feminists and “that kind” of MRAs in the comments) it’s a good place to talk about men’s rights without getting into Men’s Rights. If you know what I mean.
What is some of the spew that you think is utter BS, and what is the 10% where you feel your “duty” as MRA lies?
To expand on that: You may very well be a decent MRA. We have found, to date, no self-identified MRA with a platform that wasn’t problematic in some way, re: the challenge. This doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and we’d be glad to hear that some do. Holly has even offered to blog about any MRA that meets the challenge, as a way of getting traffic to a good part of the movement.
But we have found that they are, at best, extremely rare.
And not sure where the scotsman comment is aimed. I’m just not parsing that. If we said you weren’t an MRA then scotsmanning would come in.
And that’s totally a real word >.>
My views on Nagasaki and Hiroshima are not in line with McVeigh’s. I know why the bombs were dropped and I agree with them. I do not like that it killed thousands of innocent children who had nothing to do with the decision to go to war like the Japanese did.
Regardless, the disagreement or not with his statements of any kind-maybe he said he likes warm freshly baked muffins once, it does not mean I cannot look at the other stuff he said and see how it is similar to other types of rhetoric that are like this Breivik’s manifesto and the MRM.
Although i’d like to think of myself as a egalitarian, i’m probably more of an MRA.
Okay, I can see two ways to read this, and I’m curious, which (if either) is closest to your meaning. Are you saying that you believe in gender equality, but realistically are more interested in the ways you see men as disadvantaged, or do you mean that ideally you’d like to be egalitarian, but you know when it comes down to it you’re always going to preference the rights of men?
There does seem to be an odd disconnect in these discussions. We have us, saying:
“Direct, hateful parts of his manifesto are accepted and/or echoed by the MRAs”.
MRAs are saying “I can find a non-offensive thing some offensive person said once, and you may agree with it! So you’re wrong!”
Not the same thing, people. Not the same thing at all.
I mean, if they were to find parts of the SCUM manifesto that advocate killing men or destroying their rights as people and we agreed, then sure, they’d have a point. But that’s not what they’re doing.
@Holly — I find McVeigh’s comments to be pretty hateful. Perhaps the reason you do not is because you agree with them. But that ignores my point: that you agree with McVeigh’s position does not make McVeigh a feminist or mean that feminism influenced his actions. You and he incidentally share similar views. That is it. The same applies to men’s rights activists.
@Nobby — They are the same thing. You are comparing two separate people’s incidentally similar arguments and claiming that because one man committed a violent act anyone who shares those views contributed to, caused, or is responsible for that man’s actions. When presented with counter examples of this, the feminist response is to claim that it does not count in any other circumstance except where it applies to men’s groups. That is absurd.