Uh oh! I just discovered this, currently the top story over on the Men’s Rights subreddit:
Yes, my sisters (and honorary mangina man-sisters), Russell Brand has dealt a severe blow to Operation Alimony, which (as you well know, at least if you’ve been attending the meetings) is our dastardly Feminazi plot to destroy the patriarchy by getting pretty ladies to marry and divorce rich dudes and take all their money.
You may remember our wild revelry when we heard that comrade-ess Heather Mills had walked off (no jokes please) with £24.3 million of Paul McCartney’s man money. And the joyful tears we shed when we heard that Mel Gibson’s ex-wife had (reportedly) scored a cool $425 million in her divorce settlement.
But today, we shed only the bitterest of tears. We have not only been thwarted, but we’ve also been exposed! Damn those Men’s Rights Redditors and their evil allies at the Daily Mail!
The comments in the r/mensrights thread show that they understand our evil plans all too well. How can we respond to Aetheralloy’s withering critique?
Feminists see the absurdity of their own pushed polices?
LOL no. No they won’t. I’d sooner expect scientologists to ask their psychiatrist if they are in a cult.
But ladies! Do not despair! Russell Brand may have set back our efforts, but he, and his Reddit allies, shall not defeat us!
Ladies, you know what to do. Get yourself all prettied up, hit the town, and snag yourself some rich dudes! Let’s see how many of these guys we can have married off by the end of the year.
Marrying (and divorcing) rich dudes: it’s the feminist way!
I had a
I haven’t seen it no. Usually I never bother with live action anime movies because I assume they’ll be crap lol. If I ever do watch it though (out of boredom or something) I will let you know! and that’s really cool that you met the guys who wrote the music 😀
I usually don’t bother either, but the Nana one was suprisingly good, partly because they hired a real rock star to play the rocker Nana (which was my reason for seeing it – research for when she eventually decides to tour here!), and some really good actors.
@David – Huh, wierd. In that case the sudden transformation from regular commenter into troll remains baffling.
-.-
………..leni?
O_O
Why do youuuuu make thatttt faceeee?
Cause he kinda posted that I was alphalady. Then corrected it without really clarifying the error. Even though he knew the IPs were different,
Hence the non-plussed face.
What’s a faceeeee?
I think it’s safe to say there’s been a little bit of crossed wires.
However, it is interesting that meowvelous’ gravatar profile reads as a direct cribbing from David’s Twitter by-line…
I come (back) after the battle, but alphalady, in case you’re still reading, it’s pretty obvious nobody hates you for being happy or married, not more than we despise B___don for not being married.
But we, or at least I, resent the fact that you’re thinking that having self-image issues or depression mean you should cut from all romantic relationships, because they’re never gonna be healthy. It’s as extreme and dumb as the statement that romantic relationships fix all those problems.
I resent that you think than being happy, or married, or having a friend that’s a psy and agree with you makes a better person, or that you have the solution to all our problems. Especially when your solution is some pseudo-religious crap that implies we’re so stupid we’ve never tried to be positive. Here is something that your friend should be able to confirm: being positive IS NOT the cure for depression, not more that praising hiking cure broken legs.
Cassandra: I love the “always look on the bright side of life” song. In all of the absurdity that makes those movies so great, nobody pretends that being positive will make Brian any less stuck on his cross and about to die. Just more cheerful. And obviously it can only work when the problem is outside of your mind: you can be joyful while being poor, sick, stuck on a cross or whatever (but it’s hard and not a solution) but you can’t be joyful while hating yourself, being depressed or suicidal. It just won’t work.
But you can still compartmentalize, and/or fake it. The first allow me to keep my life running, while I recently and gradually gave up (with my friends and some close relatives), after years of “successfully” doing it. The idea I should ditch the moral support that is my boyfriend just because I’m depressed would be laughable is I was in a better mood.
Oh sorry I didn’t see that. I can see why you would be annoyed.
HAHAHAHAAHA! Oh man, I always miss out on the fun. Can we talk about bras again? Also, I can’t seem to pinpoint where Alphalady upset everyone. Can anyone fill me in? =D
This movie needs a title:
Manboobz on Fire
The Manboobz with Two Brains
The Wicker Manboobz
Demolition Manboobz
Marathon Manboobz
Last Manboobz Standing
Manboobzhattan
etc.
Allow me to recap : Alphalady posted here –
http://manboobz.com/2012/01/02/russell-brand-deals-the-feminist-conspiracy-a-serious-setback-but-operation-alimony-will-prevail/comment-page-4/#comment-106304
Money quote, that she didn’t know ANYBODY with low self esteem who was in a healthy relationship.
Also, she had a friend who was a psychologist –
I have a close friend who is a psychologist and she totally agrees. How one sees oneself makes all of the difference in life, for better or worse. And beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
…
Polliwog points out that it’s great to be positive and learn to love yourself, but saying healthy relationships are only for the properly-self-esteeming is kind of messed up
http://manboobz.com/2012/01/02/russell-brand-deals-the-feminist-conspiracy-a-serious-setback-but-operation-alimony-will-prevail/comment-page-4/#comment-106315
Alphalady defends her point, and then adds that she strongly believes in “The Laws of The Universe” for lack of a better term – Then wonders what on earth she did to get such a strong reaction, despite the fact that we’ve all barely BEGUN to be OFFENDED! 😉
http://manboobz.com/2012/01/02/russell-brand-deals-the-feminist-conspiracy-a-serious-setback-but-operation-alimony-will-prevail/comment-page-4/#comment-106321
Dracula calls such the Just World Fallacy, and notes that it’s a lie
http://manboobz.com/2012/01/02/russell-brand-deals-the-feminist-conspiracy-a-serious-setback-but-operation-alimony-will-prevail/comment-page-4/#comment-106322
I, Zhinxy, noble creature that I am, decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, and explain how “power of positive thinking/ laws of attraction” type stuff has a shaky history when it comes to people who have been abused, people with mental illness, etc. (I leave out that Zhinxy’s buddhist leanings also have a bone to pick with oversimplification and appropriation of kharma and dharma concepts, but I think I mention that later)
http://manboobz.com/2012/01/02/russell-brand-deals-the-feminist-conspiracy-a-serious-setback-but-operation-alimony-will-prevail/comment-page-4/#comment-106328
Alphalady then comes up with the hardcore I WAS JUST TRYING TO HELP! WOW, WHAT IS WITH YOU PEOPLE, I REALLY STRUCK A NERVE! I DO BELIEVE IN THE JUST WORLD FALLACY, IF THAT’S WHAT YOU WANNA CALL IT!
http://manboobz.com/2012/01/02/russell-brand-deals-the-feminist-conspiracy-a-serious-setback-but-operation-alimony-will-prevail/comment-page-4/#comment-106333
And, yeah, you can basically follow it from there… :p
Joanna, I have a recap of what happened with alphalady, but it’s in moderation. Too many links, I think. Bah!
But when it’s unmodded, you have a recap! just for you! It’s like the movie had an intermission and then a “what just happened” reel, or something!
Also, here’s where alphalady comes back and whines that she’s not going to validate our poor self esteem, which must be why we’re angry. A can’t miss –
http://manboobz.com/2012/01/02/russell-brand-deals-the-feminist-conspiracy-a-serious-setback-but-operation-alimony-will-prevail/comment-page-6/#comment-106507
Man, let a girl go have fondue and wine and movies and sleep and exercise and she misses a lot! So, before heading off to Manboobz-less work, I just wanted to say that alphalady kinda reminds me of my current favorite book:
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/brightsided.htm
(The following para may mean nothing to those living outside the UK.)
For me, Alphalady is rendered even more hilarious by the fact that I’ve just been listening to the audiobook of I, Partridge, the Alan Partridge autobiography, specifically the part where he sets up a motivational speaking company. Combine that with the ‘Cosmic Ordering’ (‘I Can Make The Universe Give Me Stuff’) horseshit and I can’t help but imagine Alphalady as a combination of Partridge, Noel Edmonds and David Brent in female form, bedecked in a pant suit and ear mic, strutting around on a motivational speaking stage.
And I’d think that if her psychologist friend was any good (or at least better than the charlatan she linked to who couldn’t be bothered to use punctuation or caps on his advice page), he/she might warn Alphalady that her need to constantly bang on about her own high self-esteem really just makes it look like the foundations of said self-esteem are about as solid as a house of cards balanced on the head of a pin.
It reminds me a bit of someone talking about weight loss: “I lost a bunch of weight on Plan X and you can too, it will solve all your weight problems!” And people respond by explaining that they can’t do Plan X because of food allergies, or they’ve done Plan X and it didn’t work, or their weight is impacted by thyroid problems and changing their diet won’t fix it, or they already have a very healthy diet and they exercise a lot and are still heavy, or they’ve decided to focus on loving their body as it is instead of worrying about weight. And the original commenter is like LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU MAGIC BULLET MAGIC BULLET.
It all comes off as condescending because the person in question is acting as though their individual experience makes them more of an expert on other people’s experiences than those people are themselves. And it perpetuates the shame that other people might be feeling that they haven’t been able to magically fix whatever it is about themselves that they think needs fixing, because there aren’t ever any universal solutions and it’s rude (at minimum) to pretend there are.
I myself have, in the last year, seen a radical and unprecedented transformation in my dating life. It’s possible that it’s somewhat relevant to what was originally being discussed. I haven’t been offering it as an illustrative example, in part because it seems overbearing for a newbie, but mostly because I don’t actually know what changed. Some of it is probably due to changes in self-confidence, but I wasn’t aware of the improvement as it happened and I don’t know what I can attribute it to. It certainly isn’t the case that I one day magically fixed myself, and whatever combination of factors worked for me is unlikely to be applicable to other people.
Niki – hah! I recd that to her when I was still giving her the benefit of the doubt! It’s fabulous, isn’t it?
Indeed. It’s like boasting about one’s IQ mid-argument, as though that somehow clinched everything.
Not that anyone round here would actually do anything that crass: it was just a hypothetical example.
I see a new class of students has come to manboobz for the spring semester. Looks like the alphalady class is learning about self esteem…
Shit, I go to bed and miss Alphalady really showing her ass, and corset talk.
Well, I’m home all day after more dental work, so let’s see where this movie goes now!
I don’t like to play this card, but I happen to, you know, actually be a professional therapist, and the notion that people with low self-esteem can’t have healthy relationships is utterly false. In fact I’m quite suspicious of very idea of “healthy” vs. “not healthy” relationships; to frame the issue that way is a gross oversimplification. Relationships, like people, are complicated. Aside from obvious red-flag issues (i.e., abuse) I try to be very careful about judging people’s relationships. What works for me may not work for them and vice versa.
You know that worst way to help someone feel better about themselves? Tell them how great your self-esteem is and if they only acted like you they would feel better about themselves.
Growing up as a teenager while all my privileged classmates were doing what they do I was hanging around my gay uncle and his friends. I certainly didn’t feel like one of the gang at school and was often teased because of it (that and I dressed differently then anyone else, my own way which tended towards a cross between goth and punk). I’m not sure if I ever had real low self-esteem (if I did I’d think I’d have made an effort to fit in) but as a young adult in the business world no matter what I was wearing I felt that I didn’t fit in.
My husband has always suffered from mild depression. Yet the two of us are happy and healthy together.
Also I agree that someone who has to tell you they have great self esteem probably is hiding a shit-load of unhappy
For some reason I thought Alphalady was HINDU. I guess not if the IPs don’t match.