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.
Maybe you mean that hating women is not something that is solely the purview of the MRM Toysoldier.
Hating and blaming women does have an incredibly long history after all.
It’s sort of weird that you conflate McVeigh expressing his problems with the US’s policy toward WMD’s with a man in Norway saying that women ought to have access to birth control eliminated, access to jobs and higher education eliminated, and be turned into baby machines to fix the declining population of Europe. They are definitely not the same thing.
It’s ok for me, or McVeigh, to disagree with some of the United States’ foreign policy- it’s not really targeting any group and denying them rights to bodily autonomy. Plus, it’s covered under the First Amendment- I can criticize the government. That’s not to say I agree with everything he said. but for the sake of argument.
What’s not ok is that this guy was like “Yeah, Women suck! Women ruined our continent! Let’s take away their rights!”, and the guys on reddit were like “Yeah! Right on!”. That is, until they realized who it came from, and that they’d been pranked, not to mention that they’d been agreeing with a mass murderer.
While you might think your methods were similar (and they only sort of are, kind of), what we’re really more concerned with here is content. Like Nobby said- it’s only apples to apples if you get us to agree with hateful, violent rhetoric about restricting someone’s rights. As yet, no troll has gotten us to do that, in spite of many valiant efforts. Ask Mark or Ion or NWO or AWS if they’re around.
They are not incidentally similar. Again, we’re comparing hateful parts, parts that say that women should lose rights and should be reduced to breeding stock, with similar views in the MRM. These are not incidental, these are views often espoused by the MRM, along with violent rhetoric. Again, if you want to bring up vile and hateful writing against men, saying that they should be be kept out of schools and the government should work to reduce their rights as much as possible in order to increase their breeding ability, and we agreed, you would have an analogy. But saying Hitler said ‘water is wet’ is not an analogy.
And I have yet to see a redditer say “I’m an MRM and I don’t agree with him, his views on women are wrong”. Which we have all said about, say, the SCUM Manifesto.
LinXtioW: The not a true scotsman works the other way. You say no MRA would do such a horrible thing, and when it’s pointed out that one did, he stops being an MRA.
What we are looking at is different. We are looking for MRAs who say such things. Absent knowing what you agree with, or what you don’t, we can’t say if you are reasonable. But we will take you at your word that you are an MRA.
Whether they will, is an open question.
I think Hiroshima was justifed, Nagasaki was questionable and Dresden a War Crime. I also don’t think that any of that justifies bombing innocent people. That McVeigh’s arguments have some validity doesn’t make what he does with them legitimate.
Which isn’t the parallel anyone here is drawing. What is the actual conclusion McVeigh is trying to persuade others of? Does it follow from the premises? Is it moral?
More to the point… I don’t care if McVeigh made the argument, so long as it’s a good argument. The folks at Reddit do. Finding out that Brievik made it they are suddenly all a-twitter saying, “of course we don’t agree with what he did, just with his basic premises”.
Well those premises include the idea that violence is the only way to solve the problem. Since a lot of other MRAs have said the same thing (go back and look at the dialogue after Thomas Ball killed himself. There were MRAs saying if that wasn’t enough then killing judges and cops was in order).
Look at the Mellers, who say that women need to be wiped out.
The violence Brievik performed is something members of the MRA community have advocated.
That you think we have said he was an MRA is either blindness, or dishonesty. What has been said is his views track with MRA views. There are MRAs who share his rhetoric.
When presented with evidence of that you say the parallels aren’t real.
Here’s some analysis, from a non-“feminist” source.
On the Oslo Terrorist’s Ideology
To be fair, the excerpts posted to Reddit did NOT include the stuff about reducing women to breeding stock. But they were blatantly misogynistic and Islamophobic.
People, don’t you know? If you can use the same words to describe two different situations, it must mean they are the same thing! Didn’t you get the memo? Context and content don’t matter any more! Wheeee!
“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.”
You know, we’ve said the exact same thing of Brievick multiple times. That he shares similar views to the MRM does not make him an MRA. But McVeigh’s position was not a feminist one. Brievick’s (at least a portion of it) was an MRA one. They don’t just incidentally share similar views, they share similar views that are sadly far too common amongst MRAs, namely violence or oppression towards women.
David, I apologize for the hyperbole. I know that the term breeding stock wasn’t really used and that kind of misrepresentation isn’t really helpful to these kinds of discussions.
What can I say?
I happen to belong one of the invisible groups of women in the U.S., and no one cares if we don’t reproduce. Some people would probably prefer it. And, yeah, this current expansion of anti-Islam and virulent xenophobia, not only scares me, but seems to have an awful lot of “White women need to have more babies” subtext that disgusts me.
But I did address what I felt was insinuated and generally, I prefer to stick with what’s stated explicitly.
Ah, I’m sorry David. Okay, replace breeding stock with “equalizing the sexes has led to a crippling feminisation of Western society”
or “Equalizing the sexes has led to crippling masciulization of western society”
“but seems to have an awful lot of “White women need to have more babies” subtext that disgusts me.”
Oh, if only it was only subtext.
As a white woman of European descent, I’m positively thrilled that I piss off the Breiviks of the world by not breeding. I’m a way from menopause, but let’s just say there is a near-zero chance of a pregnancy in my future (unless I am raped, in which case any pregnancy would be ended swiftly).
Of course pissing off these women-as-breeding-stock advocates is just an incidental benefit of my choice not to spawn, which I made for other reasons. But that choice is precisely why I am and will always remain an unrelenting advocate for feminism.
Nobinayamu, I think “breeding stock” is an absolutely accurate way to describe how Breivik thinks of women. He states pretty clearly that he thinks white women need to start popping out babies to fight against the supposed Islamic menace.
My point was just that the things I quoted from him on that issue weren’t included in the excerpts that were posted to Reddit.
David, I get it. And, again, you’re right. I’m mixing up the posts.
@Nobby: kirby him/herself said the mentioned/linked to feminists at the beginning werent “real” feminists, but radicals, and that radicaly dont reflect the opinion of the majority. Considering the most ignorant people are often the most vocal, especially on the internet (anonymous ignorance is bliss) i would afford those reddit users the benefit of being idiots.
@Sharculese: What i mean is i personally feel that feminism has gotten its biggest boulders up the hill and isn’t “fun” anymore. “Fun” as in full of controversy and reasons for dispute, which normally fosters critical thinking and engages the mind. I’m done with the religion debate (as in i’ve seen all sides and made up my mind) and felt i should engage the next big discussion topic on teh internetz. And since in my experience its hard to get sane people to disagree about giving women equal rights, mens rights is more my thing since the topics it deals with are more ambigious, less black and white.
Until i started reading manboobz and other blogs from all sides of the spectrum i didn’t even know about PUAs and alpha and beta existed or that ppl actually have a problem with women having equal rights.
@Pam: I think the 10% would probably be the things mentioned on Wikipedia and the topics of Warren Farrells books.
@Blogpost: I feel its worth mentioning that there are only 25 comments on reddit. Also, two (stupid) posters were cited. One could just as well have cited the following two, painting a much more pleasant picture of MRAs:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/iytoo/throwaway_account_long_time_lurker_and/c27syw8
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/iytoo/throwaway_account_long_time_lurker_and/c27uyew
Especially the second one seems very reasonable and respectable compared to those cited in the blog post.
@LinXioW I’ll admit Kirby’s wording in the first post wasn’t great, since he said “radical feminists” and “feminists”, implying different groups. However, I think that he will agree with me if I clarify: radical feminists are feminists, however they do not define the movement, and are widely criticized when expressing, say, misandrist opinions. Again, you’d be hard pressed to find many feminists at all, much less well-liked ones, that would say the SCUM Manifesto is great. However, serious opposition to misogynie is rare in MRA spaces that we’ve seen. I still don’t see anyone beyond your one post saying that it’s not not good, or denouncing the other posters who say it is.
As far as reddit, keep in mind that the first quote at least has some serious upvotes, nearly three times as many as your first one (which only really says ‘I can’t read this’), and your second one only has 2 right now, as opposed to 16. It is good to see some positive opinion, but even David doesn’t deny that this reddit isn’t completely full of idiots.
As far as your choice of men’s rights vs women’s rights, that sounds legitimate to me. Some may argue a few points in there but for me it comes down to personal choice, and working with the topics you find most interesting is hardly a bad thing.
*misogyny. Too used to an edit button…
“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..”
What is it with MRAs and the usage of the word “irrational” to describe women?
Also, if you’ve only been dating someone for a week, they’re not your girlfriend/boyfriend. Unless, of course, you’ve both decided to go steady immediately. Oh, but wait…I thought MRAs didn’t like the prospect of being changed to an irrational, emotional, PMSing beast. It seems that MRAs don’t know what the hell they want.
*”Chained,” not “changed. Ugh. Damn lack of edit button!
“Since some of you think I am being abused..its more like I don’t care to have this discussion with my GF because its not a serious relationship and I’m getting what I want (sex) and so is she. I’m not going to be with this girl in 5 years, so really, who cares what she thinks of my political/moral beliefs.”
So…he considers her his girlfriend, yet also claims it’s not a “serious” relationship and that they’re both only it in for sex? I thought the word for that was “friends with benefits” or “fuck buddies.” If he’s so sure that he’s not going to be with her in 5 years, why the hell is he so afraid to reveal his silly little MRA alignment? Perhaps he knows most self-respecting women won’t put up with MRA bullshit, and he still wants to keep the woman around for sex? Yeah, that sounds about right,
Psst, Arielle, that last thing you quoted was from the poe, so not exactly a real MRA opinion >><
*>.<
damn lack of edit button, indeed.
What is it with MRAs and the usage of the word “irrational” to describe women?
These guys believe that women are irrational because women don’t want them.
——————————————–
“Since some of you think I am being abused..its more like I don’t care to have this discussion with my GF because its not a serious relationship and I’m getting what I want (sex) and so is she. I’m not going to be with this girl in 5 years, so really, who cares what she thinks of my political/moral beliefs.”
So…he considers her his girlfriend, yet also claims it’s not a “serious” relationship and that they’re both only it in for sex? I thought the word for that was “friends with benefits” or “fuck buddies.” If he’s so sure that he’s not going to be with her in 5 years, why the hell is he so afraid to reveal his silly little MRA alignment? Perhaps he knows most self-respecting women won’t put up with MRA bullshit, and he still wants to keep the woman around for sex? Yeah, that sounds about right,
Psst, Arielle, that last thing you quoted was from the poe, so not exactly a real MRA opinion
All MRAs brag about having these types of relationships with women, relationships were they only have sex with a dumb woman (and many claims to live in a harem) but I’m highly skeptical of that, they are constantly confusing girlfriends, friends with benefits and one-night-stands. I think they have imaginary girlfriends. So the poe was making a good MRA imitation.
Eh, it is still not from a real MRA. May just be me, but tearing down the opinions of a poe seems a little silly. You can say it reflects MRAs (and I wouldn’t disagree), but it’s still disingenuous to say it was an MRA that said it. There’s more then enough real such quotes to go by.
I didn’t say it was an an actual MRA that said it, I said the poe was making a good MRA imitation (read Roissy and they all say they live in a harem). He probably said it to increase its credibility. If the poe had said that he was an jobless angry 40 years old virgin that weight 450 pounds and lives with his mother, they probably would not have believed him.
Oh my freaking god it’s you again, here to tell us that intellectual influence is just coincidence if the person on the receiving end does something unwholesome, and any attempt to argue other wise is fallacious.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/us/25debate.html?_r=1
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/24/norway-massacre-anders-breivik-s-deadly-attack-fueled-by-hatred-of-women.html
Incidental my ass.
LinXitoW, actually, I couldn’t have quoted either of those comments, as they had not yet been posted when I wrote my post.
But, yeah, there are some people in r/mr who are not misogynsits, and some who actually speak out against misogyny. In this particular case, just a couple, with some gentle criticism.