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.
What would happen if there were female mooks? Would the men in the audience go, “OMG, you can’t hit women because they are SACRED!” or would it all be about how unrealistic it was because no woman is strong enough to lift that much armor AND a gun?
zhinxy: The appellate court overturned the decision, but said there was no misconduct.
The evidence was sufficient to justify a prosecution.
Antz (the “lets split the world in half and keep all the men on one side, all the women on the other and jerk off to internet porn; so everyone will be happy” dude), is pretending that a, purported, lack of DV cases in which Kellet is prosecuting att’y is because she’s afraid of another jihad by the AVFM crowd.
I think comics have been recently decent (compared to earlier) about women being higher up in the organizations. Granted there aren’t enough women at the very top, but as far as lieutenants go I can think of Storm, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Black Widow, Mystique. I also think Fable does an amazing job of creating strong but universally relatable women.
@molly
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Stormtrooper
the more you know…
Look, I’m tired of this shit. Read the TV Tropes page, they make a good case for it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender
I think it’ll probably be a 55-45 or 60-40 split in favor of “OMG so unrealistic”
Aw. 🙁 *fantasy of all the Storm Troopers being genderqueer fades away*
In all seriousness, scrolling past Antz and his repetitive boilerplate and MRALs usual nonsense – are there any MRAs actually working on the issue of prison rape? Because that’s a huge injustice that mostly affects men right there, and one that’s theoretically fixable if there was just enough public will brought to bear on it, and pressure put on the appropriate authorities. Unlike many of the vague issues that they ramble on about, this is one that they can actually do something about, right now!
So, are they? Because I’ve yet to see any sign of it.
Molly, I really don’t think it would be a big deal, but Hollywood doesn’t THINK the mainstream audience would like it. This is institutional misandry. In fact, I really don’t think individuals are this misandric… as is often the case, people are more evolved that institutions.
From the TV Tropes page MRAL linked:
Thinking women aren’t strong/fierce enough to be mercs, even incompetent ones = hatred of men. Got it.
It gets in the way of hating women and feminists CassandraSays.
If they had to choose between magically able to stop prison rape by say, putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle or spending the time that it would take to put together the giant jigsaw puzzle ranting about how there is a woman on the jigsaw puzzle…they would pick the latter.
Messing with MRAL’s mind:
hey, did you know that most of the Riding Rohirrim in LOTR were played by women in their forties, fifties, and sixties, because when they put out a call for extras that had their own horses, that’s who turned up? Because a lot of women ride?
Hey, did you know that most of the MORIA orcs were played by women stuntplayers because they wanted them smaller than the other orcs?
Hey, did you know the honking big men in the Inn at Bree whose faces we never saw were stuntwomen on stilts!
Hey did you know a bunch of the elves who marched to defend Rohan were played by stuntwomen because they had problems getting tall slender Elven looking extras?
WOMEN.
Once or twice I’ve told that to guy fans, and they’ve told me I ROONED the movie for them
I laughed my evil feminist Medusa laugh and went off to write slash.
I don’t understand why you’re so fucking convinced that nameless men dying is an example of “women not being able to be incompetent”. Occam’s razor.
Men are disposable. That’s why you can’t make a movie without a million of them. Or something.
Because you are myopic. I am hoping you grow out of it and do not become Brandon.
Ithiliana, I don’t give a shit, except to note that they insisted on keeping the women’s faces hidden. More misandry- they can’t have women as mooks or extras.
Molly, why did you quote the TV Tropes article? They’re siding with me.
They (presumably the people in charge of creating the film) cannot have women as mooks or extras and that means it is anti male?
Uh no. What it means is that women are not allowed into all roles. Including the Red Shirts.
And all the male orcs were totally BARE FACE NO MAKEUP.
MANY of the extras in that film did not have their faces show (hobbits had probably the least make up or prosthetics).
Amazingly enough I have thought that refusing to give women equal access to roles equalled mksogyny. I agree with the others: only you are special enough to see a pattern of gender discrimination as being AGAINST MEN.
I assume yo’ll be rushing to see RED TAILS to see teh fantastic WWII movie about the black fighter pilots (which George Lucas took 23 years to make, and had to fund himself, because TPTB wouldn’t fund a film in which ALL THE MAJOR CHARACTERS are black men).
Right?
Because keep in mind that most of those diposable mooks are white men.
But that just shows how racist Hollywood is against white men?
Good lord, you’re pathetic.
If the Redundant Array of Incompetents isn’t sellable as a threat (albeit a hypothetical one) then the trope in question goes from “Look how badass our heroes are, they are defeating many enemies in combat!” to “Look at what a bunch of cowardly losers our, uhm, heroes are, they are slaughtering a bunch of innocents who could never harm anyone!” Hence the lack of toddlers. That there’s also generally a lack of women ain’t exactly a compliment.
In more exciting news, I’m contemplating the prospect of changing my own oil for the first time this weekend. This might or might not have something to do with the fact that the oil being targeted hasn’t been changed for at least a year and I’m mildly embarrassed.
Hey, I’m all for female mooks, and I bet most feminists and MRAs alike are. I suppose the rest is semantics.
You’d think MRAL would be able to read “More misandry- they can’t have women as mooks or extras” and go “Waaaaait a minute–this means no one realized women were extras! The women might as well not have existed!”
This is especially funny because it’s LOTR, which has… what, 3 explicitly female characters in a cast of thousands.
Oh, and MRAL: I see you Expandable Men TV Trope and top you with Girls in refrigerators
Nope, firebee, because even in film with a female action protagonist, the mooks are still all men (sometimes there’s a female boss). Why? Misandry.