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.
shadow: Modern beer is too froofy for real men, and modern sports… with the padding, the protective gear, the trainers… WTF. It’s not like the good old days when you could go to The Garden and see 15 rounds while the air was thick with cigars and the Pabst was being served in paper cups.
Shit… nowadays the rounds are 2 minutes, and they rarely agree to more than 10. Don’t even talk to me about hockey. The goalies these days still have some teeth when they retire.
Oh, that sounds good. Yum.
@Pecunium
Loll I tip my hat to you sah. Sadly I was one of those selfish dicks that started getting pissed at all the new regs in hockey, though half of the irritation was with the haphazard way the league was calling the penalties. Btw, did beer actually get more frou frou?
Seriously…Thank god for modern (by which I mean the past… fuck, it’s going on 30 years now) “craft” movement. Bud, and it’s ilk, is all too thin for me. I like hops, and malt, and a dark-red roast (as well as lambics, and bitter, and stouts, and saison). It’s not that it’s “froufy”, it’s that it’s not all bland.
Thank God for Anchor Steam, and the West Coast (even if they are too fond of too much Cascade hops).
I am glad that boxing (which I did, briefly, in school) has gotten less brutal; though there are problems with it (gloves make blood less common, and there are fewer broken bones, but more fatalities, and head trauma).
Hockey… I’m all for gear, I just wish the league would make up it’s mind on fighting, and be more consistent with penalties.
Baseball… is as good as it has ever been (even with the abomination that is “interleague play”).
So yeah, I guess I like sports and beer.
@pecunium: the magret of duck is the name of the breast cut, not the mode of preparation. Though your pan sauce sounds nice! We have tons of cheap duck here in Montreal, BTW.
@Pecunium
My thoughts exactly. It feels like they’re trying to make it a speedier game, which would be fine if it didn’t come at the expense of grinding, blue-collar type play. I mean, I’m thankful that the teams I’m a fan of have seemed to adjust well, but I’d still like to see a little more leeway for physical play.
CB: Of course not. There is also bacon.
Currently, 100% of the men in my house care strongly about Skyrim, what to eat for supper, and whether my day is going well. Seriously though, leaving video games off the list was a definite oversight.
BobbyJo are you trying to win the award for biggest Mangina??? There are plenty of women who can kick your ass and there are plenty of women who could kick my ass. Besides, it’s not the fact that women are “weaker”. Men are taught they have to take the abuse from a woman. They’re not allowed to be afraid or hurt. That’s the biggest obstacle in DV against men.
“They’re not allowed to be afraid or hurt”
What do you think causes men to fell that way, Buttman?
If you guessed the Patriarchy, you get a cookie.
If you guessed feminism, you also get a cookie, from MRAs. But I must warn you, they probably spit on it in case a woman would get her hand on it.