Some links for Friday night:
Jezebel’s Anna North takes up the question “What Should You Do When Someone You Love Becomes a Men’s Rights Activist?”
North quotes me and Hugo Schwyzer on the topic. Here’s the extended remix of my remarks:
Unfortunately, in most cases, I don’t think it’s possible to talk someone out of a Men’s Rights obsession. For most of them, it seems to be driven not by facts — they’re happy to simply make up facts to fit their worldview — but by feelings, most obviously by rage at women. If they were driven by actual interest in issues, they probably would have accomplished something by now; in reality, only the overlapping but more politically focused Father’s Rights movement has actually had much of an effect on the real world, for better or worse. For most MRAs, the closest they come to activism is leaving angry comments everywhere online — or harassing individual women online in a manner similar to the ways abusers stalk the objects of their obsessions.
The one argument I think you can make to MRAs who are not too far gone is this: it’s not healthy for you to spend so much time stewing in your anger online. Instead of trying to help men work through their personal issues with women, the MRM encourages men to cultivate their rages and hatreds, to remain stuck. That’s not healthy for them, or for society at large.
North’s post was inspired by a recent Dear Prudence question on Slate from a girl whose dad had recently gone all MRA on her. (It’s here, scroll down a bit to the question that starts “Dad-Related Dilemma.:)
The guys at The Spearhead also had a whack at the Dear Prudence question here. Needless to say their perspective is a little different than mine or Hugo’s.
And while I’m doing links, here’s another misogyny-related post on Jezebel: Founder of Possible Sex Tourist Website Creates Elaborate Ad Campaign Telling Men to Beware of Marriage
It’s a lot of the same old shit we’ve seen before from marriage-hating MGTOWers and Western-women-haters. But entertaining nonetheless.
And last but not least: checking my traffic today I discovered that Man Boobz is big in Brazil! By which I mean, a professor at the Federal University of Ceará is a fan, and has started making fun of obnoxious Brazilian misogynists on her blog. Olá Lola!
As far as I can tell from the badly Google-translated version of her blog, the Brazilian versions of Man Boobz (Homens Idiotas?) are pretty much identical to our Man Boobz, right on down to their obsessions with alphas and betas and all that crap.
I am sorry, captain said it, not crumbalievable.
The Spearhead has a female contingent called Shieldmaidens, supposedly. You can read this hilarious letter addressed to them:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/spearhead-forum-misandry.php?page=3
For the longest time I thought “contingent” meant “section” or “division” but I guess I was making that up. Oops.
@Crumbelievable
That letter’s fucken hysterical!! “Dear woman. I know you wish to be good to the men in your life. Unfortunately bitches ain’t shit. Soon men will destroy women’s skynet. Sincerely, Dickhead”:
Out of curiosity, what in the Dear Prudence letter implies that the sender is female? (I may be missing it.) I wonder if The Spearhead would have a different reaction to a male asker.
“Dear woman. I know you want to help, but you and your kind are innately evil. So you may as well not even bother.
Wait, that’s not really going to help my cause, is it? Whoops.”
Crumbelievable:
con·tin·gent/kənˈtinjənt/
Adjective:
Subject to chance.
Noun:
A group of people united by some common feature, forming part of a larger group.
methinks you’re good 😀
@lj4adotcomdan
From all what I’ve gathered on this topic, I’ve heard that some shelters do accept men, while others don’t but will usually will give hotel vouchers to them so they have a place to stay away from the abuse. What I do not understand is why don’t they just get shelters built specifically for men if DV is a huge issue for them? feminists did it for women. MRAs love to talk about how men are the ones who built everything and get shit shit done while women just leech off of men, so why can’t they friggen lobby to get shelters up for men instead of trying to close ones down for women or leech from them? its absolutely infuriating and this is why I don’t consider them a legitimate movement that actually cares about men. I completely support shelters for men, I don’t support closing down shelters for women.
Thanks to everyone who answered my question about what Pavlovian means too. It’s basically like a kneejerk reaction…or shocking someone when they do something wrong so they associate the behavior with pain xD
@crumbelievable
once again I do not understand women who try to get validation from these freaks. Its akin to wearing a sign that says “please oh please tell me how horrible I am” maybe they are masochists.
Ah, the old refrain of “come the Revolution, you bitches will be sorry! Just you wait!” It’s one of the MRM’s most predictable and tiresome.
@Quackers
once again I do not understand women who try to get validation from these freaks. Its akin to wearing a sign that says “please oh please tell me how horrible I am” maybe they are masochists.
I’m reminded of the woman who married Ted Bundy before he was executed, though I don’t think even ol’ Ted was as dismissive of her as these guys are of their “shield maidens.”
you gotta love his arrogant “women are inferior and weak and men are needed to protect you” yet then they turn around and wank about all the horrible women out there beating the living shit out of their boyfriends or husbands.
Hey MRAs? fucking decide already! are women weak and too dumb to really hurt a man physically or not?
and I wish this so called revolution does happen. Regardless of the outcome at least we wont have to listen to them bitch anymore.
There are no shelters for men. There are no resources for abused or homeless men. All charities favour women because no one gives to charities for men. I posted a link to a story about men being excluded from food aid after the Haiti Earthquake and the trollops accused me of wanting to deny food to women.
Facts:
http://keddycsi.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/abandoning-men_-jill-gets-welfare.pdf
Hello, David! Nice to meet you. I’m your fan from Brazil. To tell you the truth, I’ve only recently discovered your blog. I’ve known the MRA movement in the States for much longer, at least since the creation of my blog, four years ago. Today my blog, I’m happy to say, is one of the most visited feminist blogs in Brazil. I think it was in 2009 that I was introduced to a kind of MRA movement in my country. They call themselves masculinists (which I shorten for comic effect to mascus), and they mostly copy the American bloggers, going as far as using the same terms (mangina, matrix, feminazi, gaystapo etc). There is one big difference, though. They follow a guru called Nessahan Alita (pseudonym, of course – they all use pseudonyms, usually superhero avatars). A few years back, Alita wrote a bunch of crap. It’s difficult to summarize what he said. I tried writing a post about it: http://escrevalolaescreva.blogspot.com/2011/12/essas-unioes-carmicas-sao-maior.html Bottom line is, a while later he disappeared. Nobody knows if he was making fun of those frustrated men or speaking seriously. Needless to say, mascus follow him like the bible. The rest is the same as always: misogynists who can’t really write very well. Naturally, some of them are more extremist than others. Last year in April we had an unusual attack in Rio. A young man went to the school were he used to be a student and killed ten girls and three boys. He was aiming at girls. There were some connections between him and masculinist groups, just as there were connections in the case of the Oslo shooter, George Sordini, and so many others. Some of these extremists have been sending me (and a few celebrities) some death threats. They started last year, when I began mocking them. I still think humor and irony are the best weapons to stop these groups from growing. Let’s keep in touch!
“I wonder if The Spearhead would have a different reaction to a male asker.”
They’d just call him a mangina.
Quackers: From what I have seen, it wouldn’t matter to them if men had a place to go to escape DV that was men’s only. The fact that the shelter is women’s only is enough to start the drool a drippin.
Anti feminism is not actually women hatred. Because of feminism is not representing the femininity of women. Anti feminists are real progressive people, they can build up a successful society. Feminism can destroy well established cultures, but it cannot build up any culture.
I think Explore Nature is my favourite new troll because of his drive-by word salad method of posting.
Yes yes, that’s nice. Now go make yourself a sandwich.
@CassandraSays
I think I may actually envy you your association with Ullere seeing as I have to deal with THIS shit.
I swear people, gender relations are pretty conservative in Sri Lanka, but nowhere near bad enough for this dude’s opinions to be common!!
Really? ‘Cause I’m pretty such entire subcultures have built up around feminism.
@ Shadow
I’m really hoping that Ullere is from out in the Hebrides and his first language is Gaelic, because otherwise I am so embarrassed about the state of my nation’s school system.
The letter doesn’t go into a lot of detail about why the wife left the husband other than it was for another man, but I like how the MRAssholes automatically assume it’s all 100% her fault. When is the husband at fault for divorce according to the MRAssholes? Never.
When the husband leaves the wife, it’s her fault because she’s either a frigid bitch and doesn’t satisfy him or she’s a harpy that drove him away with her nagging or repulsive weight gain.
When the wife leaves the husband, it’s her fault because she’s a slutty bitch who cheated on him and didn’t appreciate him because she just married him for his money. Even if she leaves because he’s a violent controlling jerk, it’s her fault for making him mad enough to set him off and abuse her.
Umm..there are homeless shelters for men Buttman. Yes there needs to be more, especially DV shelters and I support those services. I don’t support taking away services from women just because MRAs don’t want to do the work and sit on the internet all day bashing feminism and women. Feminists were the ones who brought DV into the public light. Feminists did it themselves, so why can’t they? they have the bigger, rational and productive manly brains afterall!
@Lola
In Montreal in the 80s, a man named Mark Lepine killed a bunch of female engineering students. He said in his suicide note that feminism ruined his life and those women were taking future jobs from men. I have yet to see a self proclaimed feminist target and kill men simply for being male. And here is another self proclaimed anti-feminist condoning his actions http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/03/31/13429581-qmi.html
And before any MRAs come in and screech at me about Valerie Solanas, she did not shoot Warhol for feminist causes, she shot him because he lost her movie script and turned her away from The Factory- Warhol’s studio. I’m not saying it’s right, obviously she was nuts, but it wasn’t for feminist reasons.
@ScrappyB
our good ol’ troll pal NWOSlave likes to pretend feminism is about man=bad, woman=good. It’s more like the opposite for MRAs. Man=good, woman=bad
@ScrappyB
The letter writer states that her mother left her father for another man. This grey area that you are inventing to bash the man does not exist.