Men’s Rights Activists generally like to pretend that the world is some kind of feministy dystopian hellscape for men. No so the gentle MRA philosopher who calls himself Cooter Bee. In a recent post on A Voice for Men, he admits frankly that
In absolute terms, men have never had it better. Our lives are longer than ever before. Especially in the western world, we are not nearly as plagued by violence and disease as our grandfathers. Never in history have we had as much economic opportunity or as much latitude to choose our own careers and our ultimate station in life.
Well golly. Sounds like life is pretty good for us dudes.
We are clearly neglected and abused relative to women, but is that really a legitimate comparison? Is that any more meaningful than measuring how we are doing compared to squirrels or dolphins? There are a few men who do cross-over and become women but I never heard of even one who did it to gain access to all the goodies that go with being an entitlement skank. I know of few men who would be anything else despite the supposed unfairness.
So what is the beef? Could it be that even though men are doing better than ever that the level of ingratitude is also disproportionately high?
Uh oh. Do I smell some “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” coming up?
Let’s face it. Men are and always have been where it’s at when it comes to sustaining this world. In former days, men used to get some credit for it. Not now. Scorn, vitriol and blame are the thanks we get for making this world livable. Biting the hand that feeds you was always a no-no. Perhaps that’s what eats me.
Hmm. Given that most women work, and that women make up roughly half the work force, it seems to me that most women are actually feeding themselves. Statistics on all this are readily available.
I am starting to tire of all the stats and data.
Statistics? We don’t need no stinkin’ statistics!
Isn’t the fact that we don’t like what is going on enough reason to change it?
So you’d rather fight against imagined ingratitude than real injustices?
Ironically, after acknowledging that he’s primarily motivated by feelings, not fact, Mr. Bee accuses women of not being able to deal with gender issues rationally:
Talking equity among men is useful because men are capable of equity. Exceptionally few women are capable. Talking about equity to a typical woman is like talking particle physics to a baboon.
We want it the way we want it and so it should be done. No other justification is significant.. We have it good but want it to be better still.
Well, at least he’s being honest about it, I guess.
EDITED TO ADD: The comments on this post on AVfM are, of course, a treat. Here are some choice excerpts from my favorite one, posted by a fella calling himself DruidV:
[D]id any of you ever stop to consider the very first expendables in this gendercidal war against us?
You know, those accomodating Men of the sixties and seventies who were just trying to do the “right” thing. Those Men, who reluctantly but dejectedly gave up their lives and livelihoods so that millions of poor, oppressed wimmin could enter the work force (and completely FUBAR it, btw) in the name of ekwality.
Was there ever any kind of token memorial statue erected by the wimmin, to honor these displaced Men who were forced to hand it all over to their future political enemies? Was there even ONE?
Ever?
My grandFather just happened to be one of these very first Men to be displaced from his job by a woman, at the hands of the government. He never fully recovered from the loss, to be sure. But hey, who gives a shit right? As long as some loud-mouthed, 1960′s hatchett wounds could feel “liberated”, umm sorry-I meant to say “Empowered(tm)”, it made no difference how many Men were sacrificed…
So, yeah, let’s get working on that memorial, folks! I wonder if we could get Maya Lin to design it?
Yes, Arks, dear, we all know how much you hate ladies and how you’d hate to be one of them. Run along now.
You do realize that JSM was a feminist, right?
You can’t get everything right. For issues of women, I defer to Schopenhauer.
Ami, I love my Magyc card! Thank you!
“For issues of women, I defer to Schopenhauer.”
*eyeroll*
Schopenhauer wasn’t even that deep of a thinker, man. Some (if not most) if his thinking was conditioned by the culture of his time. He was even a racist at one point, though he took back that position after doing some actual research on Blacks.
Plus, he was a huge pessimist. Are you sure you want to rally your fight with the words of some guy who declared (and I quote), “Life is suffering.” Yeah, not exactly a rousing battle cry, there.
Arks, do you often pop up on feminist blogs just to say how glad you are to have a dick and how that make you a superior being? You really does not sound like a happy person.
Okay, I can’t dispute part of that women = dogs thing — one of my friends in high school gave the all-time BEST headscritches ever and it would just bliss me right out, like that owl video. 🙂
“Arks, do you often pop up on feminist blogs just to say how glad you are to have a dick and how that make you a superior being? You really does not sound like a happy person.”
He established a long time ago that’s he here just to rouse people…why I respond, well, it’s a combination of boredom + my work schedule being a little thin.
I LOVE that JS Mill quote! Arks is a satisfied pig, all right!
Note that the MRAs are all dissatisfied, and not able to find the pleasures life affords. I don’t envy them at all.
I, however much I might think the world is worse than it could be, enjoy my life very much.
So do the feminists I know.
So that quotation seems more apt than not, but not so ept.
I can’t even… no words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5OdQGbVNa4
The bit about, “forced to serve in the military” showed British Soldiers. No draft, no draft registration.
And that was one of the better moments.
“Isn’t the fact that we don’t like what is going on enough reason to change it?”
Oh yeah? Well I don’t like it when I step on an upturned plug! Who’s gonna build a memorial for me? Huh?
“Isn’t the fact that we don’t like what is going on enough reason to change it?”
I can’t say that I much care for the fact that the MRM produces vast quantities of toxic sexism, some of which increasingly seems to be spilling over into actual violence. However, since I am a reasonable adult and I respect the right of other people to say what they wish, I don’t believe that I have the right to make the entire movement vanish, or harm the people who participate in it. I don’t even have any wish to see them harmed, unpleasant as they may be, because that’s just not how I roll. Curiously enough, most MRAs do not seem to share this sense of restraint when it comes to anyone or anything they don’t like.
You guys just keep on throwing your giant collective tantrum about the fact that the mean ladies refuse to do what you tell them to. The grown ups will be over here, not threatening to stalk people who disagree with us or fantasizing about them being beaten up.
(Speaking of which, did Meller ever explain why he’s added zhinxy to the list of women who deserve to be beaten up, not by him or course, but by golly he wouldn’t blame some guy if they did? Lovely thing to say to a domestic abuse victim, that was. He’s a real humanitarian, that one.)
Affirmative action. I got to ask these hysterical men if they got a problem with programs designed to help out minorities too, or is it just a problem when it comes to affirmative action for women. The entire reason for programs to encourage progress with minorities and women is that the dang Government themselves recognize a need for it. Women were encouraged to enter college and so weren’t minorities and the government done what it did to help get that disparity to end. If there wasn’t a reason for it, it wouldn’t be there.
Displaced anger from a few of misogynists. That kind of propaganda gets laughed at by the rest of us. Plain and simple.
Crap… I forget what post this was for: trigger warning, discusses forced oral sex,and ways of dealing with it.
<b<Molly, et al: re forced oral sex.
Don’t bite down. Grab the testicles, twist, squeeze and pull.
You can hang on a lot better, with less chance of injury (to yourself, I don’t care about him; in this circumstance), than biting down.
I shall refrain from all the things that can go wrong for you if you bite down, but it’s much better to do something else if possible.
Some pearls of wisdom from reddit: “So what we’re seeing here is women gambling and losing big in the dating game as they age post divorce. Women are more likely to date in their 40s than later on, but this shouldn’t really surprise anyone. As women age their attractiveness falls and there are just less men to go around. This isn’t rocket science. Plus in their 40s women generally have SOME SMV left in them. What I suspect is happening though is that women who are divorcing later in life are grossly overestimating their SMV and over the first 10 years post-divorce they find they cannot remarry, and then the attention nosedives leaving them alone and without someone to even hug them on occasion. That’s the reality this all adds up to. Men of /MR, if you’re facing divorce don’t fret, the odds are you’ll fare much better than your ex. Take solace in the fact the odds are on your side. “
This “scientifically proves” that men have it s much better than women, especially as they age. Dudes have their pick of hot young ‘uns while the delusional “unattractive” old broads will just have to settle for spending the rest of their miserable existences sleeping with their cats. What these guys don’t get is that this beats sleeping with them by several hundred miles…a scientific fact!
I like how, when someone points out how well women are doing the retort is often, “But women were oppressed for thousands of years!” I think a similar argument applies here. Yes, women do make up half the work force now. But for thousands of years men have been sacrificing their lives and well being for the greater good of societal health. There used to be societal rewards for that kind of trade off. Capice?
What were these “societal rewards”? Pussy for men, bonbons for women?
Citation badly fucking needed.
“Above all, a female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted right, andis considered under a moral obligation, to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife: however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained to — though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him — he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations. While she is held in this worst description of slavery as to her own person, what is her position in regard to the children in whom sheand her master have a joint interest? They are by law his children. He alone has any legal rights over them. Not one act can she do towards or in relation to them, except by delegation from him. Even after he is dead she is not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so.”
“Not a word can be said for despotism in the family which cannot be said for political despotism. Every absolute king does not sit at his window to enjoy the groans of his tortured subjects, nor strips them of their last rag and turns them out to shiver in the road The despotism of Louis XVI was not the despotism of Philippe le Bel, or of Nadir Shah, or of Caligula; but it was bad enough to justify the French Revolution, and to palliate even its horrors. If an appeal be made to the intense attachments which exist between wives and their husbands, exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery. It was quite an ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit to death by torture rather than betray their masters. In the proscriptions of the Roman civil wars it was remarked that wives and slaves were heroically faithful, sons very commonly treacherous. Yet we know how cruelly many Romans treated their slaves. But in truth these intense individual feelings nowhere rise to such a luxuriant height as under the most atrocious institutions.”
–JS Mill