I’ve been following the Men’s Rights Movement for some time, and I’ve never been quite sure exactly what the major injustices faced by men are. I haven’t really noticed much to speak of in my own life, but evidently there are some and they are really, really bad.
Luckily, in recent days A Voice for Men has begun to clarify the issue for me. For example, AVfM Radio’s new theme song points out two of the worst injustices of all:
- Men having to hold doors open for ladies.
- Ladies wanting to marry us.
But these are not the only important men’s issues out there. In a recent post titled “A hard rains gonna fall: how hard is up to you” (clearly a reference to the famous song by Carly Simon), AVfM head dude Paul Elam spells out the most important issues of all in a set of bullet points. To save the beleaguered men of the world some important man-time I will summarize them for you here. Bullet-time!
- Thomas Ball’s suicide isn’t mentioned on Wikipedia because feminism.
- The Obama administration urged colleges to use the same standard of proof used in most non-criminal cases in their non-criminal disciplinary proceedings dealing with rape cases. Because feminism.
- Australia. Something about Australia. Ok, here’s the deal: Australia is very, very far away from me, like literally on the other side of the planet, and my eyes sometimes glaze over when reading about it. I’m sure whatever Elam is mad about is really bad. It might involve Koalas. Feminist Koalas. But that’s just speculation on my part.
- In India, where women are routinely harassed in public and groped on train cars, there are a tiny number of women-only train cars set up to cut down on the groping.
- In Sweden, a small group of feminists did a theatrical production based on/dealing with the writings of Valarie Solanas. It was performed in some schools.
- “Men constitute the lion’s share of combat deaths[11], workplace deaths[12], suicide deaths[13], and are afflicted with almost every known human malady and disease more frequently and more severely than women.” Obviously, the feminists are to blame, for their staunch opposition to women serving in the armed forces, and for their secret program of giving men girl germs.
- There are agencies dealing with women’s health issues. Clearly, men need to have just as many of their own agencies to deal with such male health issues as not being pregnant.
I hope my summary of these issues has been fair. As Elam has pointed out on a number of occasions, I am fat, so really nothing I do or say has any value. Plus, of course, I am a mangina. Just, you know, FYI.
In any case, these injustices have Elam plenty mad:
I am truly curious as to what festering, morally atrophied deviation of humanity could look at anything approaching this level of discrimination and suffering without becoming angry.
So mad that his metaphors all get up in each other’s business:
Whether it becomes a wave of social change, or a violent tempest of indignation and fury, the pendulum will continue to swing.
So there you have it. Naturally, Elam’s readers are grateful for his efforts to bring justice to the world by yelling about it online and trying to get people really, really mad at certain specific ladies without explicitly advocating violence against them. That’s pretty much how Martin Luther King did it, only with fewer references to “bitches” and “cunts” and not so many threaty remarks.
As Alfred E puts it:
Well said Mr Elam. May the harpies finally get a clue about their complete lack of compassion for men and boys all the while living in a gold box carted around by the prince.
Justice and compassion for all, except you harpies in your gold boxes! And also the rest of the bitches, cunts and manginas.
NOTE: That bit about Carly Simon above was a joke. Obviously the song in question was written by The Bangles.
Yaay! My quote got fixed!
I’ve got to go, but MRAL, it frustrates me how much you hate the things patriarchy does while continuing to blame women for it. We’re all oppressed and you’re envying our chains because they have Hello Kitty stickers on them? False consciousness, you haz it.
Yes, yes, MRAL, you’re a courageous hero for not changing the diapers of the imaginary women in your head.
Turn off the fucking computer. Go outside. Talk to real human women. Come on, you’re missing the “Viking Fighting Moves: Fiction vs. Fact” panel at Arisia.
Could be worse-you could be Tom Cruise.
Also, it is awesome that my name is so common that I get the same name as cool characters.
@MRAL: Bad analogy, AGAIN.
DSC, I see chivalry more as a butler/employer relationship. Are the butlers more important than the employers? I think not.
Butlers are paid by their employers.
Men are not paid by women.
Employers control much of what employees (butlers) can and cannot do.
Women do not control much what men can and cannot do (as classes, as social groups, despite the MRM lies).
ANALOGY FAIL.
And an employer can fire a butler. Women cannot, alas, fire men.
All right, MRAL. From now on, all faceless mooks in movies will be gender indeterminate ninjas. Of course, a lot of people will still code gender indeterminate as male, but there’s only so much you can do.
Personally I’d rather do away with the army of goons mechanism altogether in favour of a smaller group of slightly better developed baddies. Which assuming they’re more competent than than the average Stormtrooper should provide the same level of threat.
Yup, MRAL. Women matter so much, female goons in movies PRACTICALLY DON’T EXIST.
I, for one, would be really bloody happy to see as many “disposable” female stock characters as male, instead of just one female character. This is why it’s so much easier for me to watch, say, British TV: even characters who aren’t the main character are sometimes fat, female, or black. You don’t realize what you’ve been missing until you see it!
@MRAL: You see, feminists don’t expect you to do anything of the sort (diapers? chewing food? infantilizing women much?)
But this lack of expectation, which is what I think gets to you, also extends to women not having to have sex with men who ask them, or date men who ask them out, or have a man to survive.
Shorter version: fucking quite blaming women AND/oR feminists for YOUR problems in the world.
@Crumbelieveable
I think Cloudiah was mocking AntZ. She said “Ack! Channeling Antz briefly there. A shattering experience, shattering.”
MRAL, please don’t hold doors for women if it just feeds your resentment. In general, don’t do “favors” that you resent, and that are really excuses to have things to hold over people’s heads. That’s not a good way to live. Also, no one gives a shit about the damn doors.
And who in this century follows the men-walk-on-the-right-side-of-the-street rule? That’s like a thing people would do in Dickens novels if they weren’t busy dying of consumption and spontaneous human combusting.
Does MRAL *only* watch action movies?
Personally I’d rather do away with the army of goons mechanism altogether in favour of a smaller group of slightly better developed baddies. Which assuming they’re more competent than than the average Stormtrooper should provide the same level of threat.
I think we should go back to the rules of 1980s action movies, and have characters fight ethnically-diverse street gangs that include at least one (1) black guy with a mohawk.
Now I am trying desperately to think of *any* movie with female goons and, except for MRAL’s Kill Bill example, I can’t.
Dammit, MRAL. Now I won’t be able to watch action movies again without seeing if any of the goons are female! It’s like the action movie version of the Bechdel Test!
My father actually does follow the street rule. Granted, he was raised by an abusive father who probably beat etiquette into him, and he’s a horrible person himself, so not the best example.
It seems like MRAL’s big complaint is that the one token female character in a “mainstream” movie (i.e. not targeted at women) gets a line or two. What a massive fucking injustice.
(It is, of course, but not in the way he means.)
Re: the street rule: I once read a girl’s blog entry about how her date did that and it made her feel protected and romantic. My first thought was, “Won’t he get splashed by cars as they go by?”
MRAL, until you can recognize that it is not women, and most especially not feminists, who are making these rules, then frankly, there’s no hope for you.
The thing about the Mary Kellett case is that it’s win-win for people like Elam. If she ends up being disciplined, then it will be a Glorious Victory Over Feminism. Of no action is taken, then it will be proof positive of the Evil Feminist Domination of the legal system. Either way, Elam and his minions will never stop taking about it.
“And who in this century follows the men-walk-on-the-right-side-of-the-street rule? That’s like a thing people would do in Dickens novels if they weren’t busy dying of consumption and spontaneous human combusting.”
My grandfather got me to walk that way with him on the street, in the last century. There’s an entire procedure for crossing the street and switching sides. But then, he’s also the person who thought my degree in Women’s Studies involved the domestic sciences, and was *horrified* when I explained what classes I was taking. He was also a British civil servant, literally an enforcer of colonial powers and the patriarchy.
Why does Paul Elam write with such an “angsty teen poetry” style? Is it because he is desperately trying to add weight to weak arguments through grandiose speeches? Or is he actually an angsty teen who just happens to look like a 50(?) year old man?
Right, Molly, and this thing with no female goons, it’s misandry, like the male version of the Bechdel Test.
The ‘walking on one side of the street’ thing probably goes back to when swords were carried. You’d want to have your dominant hand free to draw if you had to. Gods only know what lefties did – probably learn to fight right handed to avoid being accused of witchcraft.
MRAL, you think that having no female goons = hating men? How is not allowing the entire female gender not to be something against *men*? It’s based on the assumption that women *can’t* be warriors, even incompetent ones.
And t’s not like men don’t get to play all the *other* parts in movies *as well* as be the goons…
No, it’s based on the assumption that men are expendable and no one cares if they die.
Usually I think I’ve seen the Door Thing expressed as the reverse of this — not “Men have to open doors for women, tears flow” but rather “I WILL open the door for you. The door. I will open it. Even if you give me a dirty look! And a woman did give me a dirty look once, because feminists give men dirty looks when they open doors. But, defiantly, I will open the door anyway. Because that is what men are supposed to do for women, and I am a man, and you are a woman. So, even if you give me a REALLY dirty look, THE DOOR WILL BE OPENED FOR YOU. BY ME. WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. Also, if you care about that, it indicates how silly you are because it’s really a trivial matter.”