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.
“If the military is portrayed as a man club, then male mooks go along with it. If you can find movies and games where women are presumed to have a large and equal role in the military, yet the men are still the mooks, I think you’d have a good point.”
I can actually think of one thing that’s like this, and that’s the Marines in One Piece. There’s a number of female officers (although still fewer than the men), but only one female at the rank-and-file crew member level is ever shown. I seriously doubt the message of this is “men don’t matter”, especially when, y’know, the MAIN CHARACTER (and 3/4ths of the main crew) are guys. I think it’s more like, as previously stated, the idea that men are some kind of “default”, so the background marines are a bunch of pretty much identical guys in uniforms, while the officers have individual characteristics and personalized clothing.
The pirates generally fall into this too — a handful of female captains/important crew, while all the background pirates are male (except for the specifically all-female Amazons).
You could probably write hundreds of pages of deconstruction of the gender issues in One Piece. It’s even got an entire genderqueer pirate crew, although the treatment of them is kind of all over the place. Nice to be represented somewhere, though!
Again, since I’ve been alive, I disagree with the assumptions being made here. Saturday morning cartoons have plenty of action grrl protagonists. Of course, these are generally stereotypically assertive, powerful women, but the same can be said for the men. No, of course I never aspired to be Batman or Robin or the Red Ranger or even TJ the leader kid from Recess. Why the hell would I? I would have liked to, but I knew there was no way someone like me could be someone like that. I had nothing in common with them.
And this is why we think you are a jerk. This very statement is a complete illustration of it:
Your experiences have shaped you and part of those experiences has caused you to have low self esteem.
But you are so myopically focused on yourself (which some of us think is partly because you are a snot nosed brat of 20) that you cannot possibly even imagine that another person such as a female of any age would have your level of self esteem problems.
Let me tell you something MRAL-I am 32, it took me until I was 29 to finally realise I am not a horrible person. I quite literally thought I should not only kill myself because of how terrible I was, some of the proof of my being horrible was me being too wimpy to finish myself off. A decent person would not have kept herself alive after 12 (which is when I first thought about it.)
Now I am not that great of a person-but I am not so horrible I deserve a death sentence. I thought I did though for seventeen years.
THAT is low self esteem that you cannot even imagine. And yet, I am a woman. I am female. By your logic I should never have felt that way because I happen to be a woman.
I doubt this will break through your little mind shield of “well MY life is X therefore all other existence is irrelevant” that is, again, hopefully from your being an immature 20 year old and not part and parcel of your real person. But it is why you are considered to be a jerk and no one here likes you very much.
Again, no one is arguing with you about how you felt (though I have to say that that really sucks if you spent your whole life feeling that way, and you have my deepest sympathies). We are saying that how YOU felt is not representative of the majority of society. And you would know this if you just took a minute off of thinking how YOU felt and think about who all your male friends, neighbours and classmates related to, and who they pretended to be. Then think of your female neighbours and classmates and who they pretended to be. Also, how many “action grrl” protagonists were there compared to male protagonists?
Personally, when I think of ‘disposable in action flicks,’ I think of Michelle Rodriguez. But that might just be me.
@Elizabeth
Glad to know you got out of that. Hope you were receiving help when you were younger. It’s fucken disgusting how much depression just slips through the cracks
There are more action girls in movies nowadays, but I feel like there’s also been many an example of the audience being told that this woman is strong and awesome, and that being a blatant lie. Take, for example, the female lead from Van Helsing. Did she ever do anything, apart from stabbing one vampire woman and then dying?
Vasquez Always Dies:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VasquezAlwaysDies
Well, I’m not looking for sympathy. That’s just how it was and how it’s always been. I can’t imagine I’m alone here. The protagonists, or the leaders, the heroes and sidekicks, were always powerful men and women (or boys and girls). I am nothing like that, even when I was 9 I knew that. Why the hell would I identify with them? I’m nothing like them.
And I grew up in the very late ’90s and early ’00s, so I think that, especially in kid’s programs, it was honestly a pretty even gender split. Maybe 60/40. There was a lot of grrl power.
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Harley Quinn. I’m not sure how much of that was due to my actual love for the character (She’s funny and hyper and she has pet hyenas! What’s not to love?) and how much of that was due to my sister always wanting to be both Batman AND the Joker when we played Batman. She was also Poison Ivy. And Two-Face. And probably Catwoman too.
Shadow, ironically it was a guy telling me I was a horrible person that made me snap out of it. I yelled at him “NO I AM NOT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE” and just like that, I realised, actually I am not a horrible person.
Still struggle with dysthymia but it is not as bad as it used to be.
Maybe MRAL needs his own Book Of Larning (though it might be giving him too much attention).
And it’s not so much larning as….hmmm………PHILOSOPHY. MRAL’s Philosopfeefees!
1. Nothing in the entire recorded history of humanity, in the whole global world, is as important as what I’ve seen in my lifetime in one place in one of the most privileged countries of all time and space.
2. What I’ve seen in my lifetime of 19 whole years in one place in one of the most privileged countries of all time and space is that Girls have it better than me.
3. The entire purpose of society is to make me feel bad about myself.
4. Nobody creates any text in the mass media or popular culture in which the HEro is exactly like me so that means I cannot take any enjoyment in any text created in the mass media or popular culture because I cannot move out of my own massive sense of entitlement/privilege to immerse myself in any other perspective or experience.
5. Nothing that anybody else of any age, gender, or sexuality has experienced has anything to do with me so there is no reason for me to listen to any of them or pay attention to what any of them say, unless, of course, they are talking about me or to me.
6. Any situation where men and women are perceived as or treated differently is due to misandry because ME.
7. MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMEMEMEMMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEME!
I never had any of the physical traits of the characters I admired, beyond skin color/hair color/gender (and none of those were a given, either). It was always their personalities and goals that I identified with. No, I could never be Batgirl, but I could still help people.
@PfkaE
Sorry, just realised I referred to you as Elizabeth.
@MRAL
I’m only a couple of years older than you, and immature as shit, so I was probably watching cartoons at the same time as you. The only action female protagonists that I remember from cartoons were the Powerpuff Girls. There were definitely a lot better parts for women, and a lot better female roles in cartoons including in action cartoons (one of my favorites was American Maid from The Tick), but I can’t remember a lot of non-stereotypical female protagonists (i.e. not girls doing “girl shit” a la strawberry shortcake). The same is actually true for male protagonists (not too many that just loved to cook, or were uninterested in sports and fighting etc), however, stereotypically male characters are portrayed as making shit happen and stereotypically female characters are portrayed as having shit happen to them. Right now, I think Dora and shit is an awesome step forward.
Lauralot, I’m not talking about physical traits, they’re cartoons. I just couldn’t aspire to be like them, you know, leaders, heroes, or whatever. Again, I don’t think I’m the only one here.
@PfkaE
Greatest FUCK YOU ever. *high five/props*
MRAL, women are only treated as more “special” than the hordes of male goons because as everyone has said, being a woman in fiction is treated as its own trope or character trait. Being a woman makes the 1-3 women characters in action-y types of fiction special and essential to the story only because in these fictional worlds, being female instead of male is a trait that sticks out like a red thumb. Which it shouldn’t, because obviously women make up slightly more than 50% of the population as a whole, and it’s not like there hasn’t been female spies, agents, soldiers, cops, warriors, political figures etc. throughout history.
Women are the “marked” gender in these fictional worlds not because they’re the privileged ones and they’re forcing all the worthless dudes to die for them, but because women aren’t taken seriously enough to allow them to participate in other roles. Having all the goons be men is only misandrous insofar as patriarchal culture expects men and only men to prove their masculinity through violence. (The flip side of this is that women aren’t permitted into Dudely Violence Land, lest they feminize the place. And women aren’t permitted to “prove” their worth in any way– they just have to sit around and hope they’re pretty enough to catch a guy’s attention.)
Also I am going to second, third, fourth, whatever that you go (back?) into therapy. You clearly have low self esteem and are bitter about a lot of things. You keep bringing up men’s depression which makes me think that maybe you have it, or at least that you suspect that you have it. Please get help before you get worse. Trust me, you don’t have to feel this way. I get extremely bitter and envious sometimes, but it took me years to realize that this was a symptom of my depression as it happens to personally affect me, and not something that reflected facts about the actual world. When I start getting mad at happy couples and start wondering whether my friends all hate me, I know my mental health is getting worse and that it’s time to seek help. Please think about that– if it sounds familiar to you, go get treatment.
You go to BU, right? Here’s your college’s behavioral health information: http://www.bu.edu/shs/behavioral/index.shtml . It’s free. Please call the number and make an appointment. This is one men’s issue you can easily fix.
MRAL, dude, seriously, who is telling you that you can’t relate to the most developed characters? Who is putting limits on your imagination, that you couldn’t possibly imagine yourself as anything more than one of the disposable faceless mooks?
Here’s a few hints: It’s not feminism, it’s not other women, it’s not even other men.
I am (was) just being realistic. I’m not one of the leaders and heroes. Some people are. I know for a fact I’m not.
Dude, *I’m* no fucking hero and I still thought Aladdin was cool as hell as a kid.
@Cloudiah:
My apologies as well. After hearing from guys like NWO, I can’t tell joking posts from regular MRA drivel.
But not all characters, even on action/super hero shows, were leaders. I mean, any show with a team dynamic tends to have one leader.
So, instead, you decidd to be a villain. And by villain, annoying guy on misogyny mocking blog that WON’T. GO. AWAY?
Do you have a mask? XD
I wasn’t anyone with any level of competence or likability or worth. That’s what I’m saying.
mral, I suffer from depression too, but this is not your therapy zone, and it’s not misandry that the world “made” you feel that way.