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.
Look, again, this is not a unique position, even some feminists hold it. I also don’t think it’s incompatible with elements of what you’re saying, misogyny directed at females. But you attempt to ENTIRELY deny any level of misandry, male disposability, etc., to erase it. It’s a reality, I think.
Just. Stop. Posting.
I’m not trying to shut down your views. I’m telling you, as someone who has given you the benefit of the doubt time and time again, that you are not doing anyone a favor by continuing to post in this thread, and least of all yourself.
MRAL: Occams razor indeed.
Look at the movie called the expendables. Some of those men chosen to be kick ass are damned ugly. Had all sorts of different men in that group of expendable people. Was the reason that they had no women in that group mean that only men are “expendable”? Or does it mean that only men get hired for those jobs because women are seen as not being capable of performing in them.
In MRAL’s case it’s more like Occam’s Pretzel. If at first it doesn’t make sense, keep twisting until it does.
Priceless. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.
For the record, you guys can of course say whatever you want and MRAL has 100% earned it even if he didn’t earn it this second, and yes, his comments in this thread are still mind-bogglingly self-centered. I would totally go for a MRAL rule that he can’t mention himself in any of his posts, like we did with that other guy.
MRAL, you would still be depressed and have poor self-esteem if you were a girl, because you’d still be completely solipsistic and notice every potential slight against yourself while being oblivious of those against others.
MRAL, once again Joss Whedon is full of win:
Xander from Buffy
Giles from Buffy
Oz from Buffy
Wesley from Buffy/Angel
Any of the male characters from Firefly (except maybe Jayne and Mal)
Victor from Dollhouse*
How are any of these characters “useless Lilith men”?
The thing about these shows is that there’s a scooby gang. They aren’t about people going their own way, they’re about how people work in groups and how we all, even the most badass of loner superheroes, rely on the people around around us. Buffy would never have made it if weren’t for Giles. Willow would have destroyed the world without Xander. Spike ends up being the voice of reason.
Whedon is the antidote to the idiocy that is Ayn Rand’s “self-made man”, whether that man is male or not. And his heroes, except Mal maybe, all are pretty much really boring. Buffy and Angel were both a couple of yawners. The side-kicks made everything a lot more interesting, human and fun.
*And speaking of Dollhouse and one degree of separation, have you seen Battlestar Galactica?
“I loved Harry Potter at first because Hermione was described as smart instead of pretty, but then the movies came out and it turned out she was pretty as well. I hated those movies for years because I was so disappointed. It felt like being an ugly girl made me completely worthless.”
Now this is actually a valid point of media criticism. What would have happened if movie Hermione had been ugly, or even just sort of nondescript? People would have complained. Male fans would have been annoyed, because they deserve eye candy, dammit. It might have made female fans happy, but it’s assumed that female fans will quietly accept stuff like that even if it does upset them, whereas male fans will not. I remember when Spiderman came out – there were tons of guys bitching about how Kirsten Dunst wasn’t pretty enough. And Dunst isn’t ugly in the slightest, she’s just not 100% flawless.
Male heroes are allowed to be ugly, or just sort of average looking. Women have to be beautiful to qualify for the position of heroine even if they have other traits that would be enough to qualify a man as a hero.
This is why nobody has any patience with the “but mooks!” argument, because there is no way to pretend that it’s not much, much worse for women without erasing the existence of any women who are not beautiful. In movies random male mooks sometimes get killed. Non-beautiful women simply don’t exist at all unless they’re evil or someone’s mother (and sometimes not even then – remember the absurdity of Angelina Jolie as Colin Farrel’s mother?).
When I watch Dr Who, I identify most of the time with the Doctor and sometime with the companion, not anonymous cyberman 893268. And that’s despite being young, female, white, not English, from Earth, not brave at all, and depressed.
Wait.
“ worthless useless Lilith men”
What?
Man I go offline for ONE evening of dinner with the Spousal Unit and making stuff for an upcoming con and I come back to a gem like “useless Lilith men”.
I’m resisting reading back for context because the phrase is so freakin’ funny and context would just make it stupid.
I tried to explain the ‘women only fuck 6 foot tall Brad Pitt types’ to the Spousal Unit tonight over dinner. He laughed and said “I’m six feet tall? When did that happen?”
He’s 5’8″.
I said, “According to this theory, you’ve been six feet tall for the last twenty five years.” Then we laughed hysterically and went on to discuss the Civil War, patient confidentiality policies, what time he wanted to go riding tomorrow, and how to field dress a sheep.
Actually, I would love it if the genders were changed for all movie roles without scripts being changed. That would make our current box office top ten (1) a multiple murdering man rumored to be possessed by Satan and his whiny son (2) a female mission impossible star fighting a slew of villains and doing action stunts (3) a cynical female detective anti-hero named Sherlock Holmes and her also female doctor sidekick, Dr. Watson (4) a movie about a female journalist investigating the brutal rapes and murders of a bunch of men with the help of a male hacker (the “misandrist” Girl with a Dragon Tatoo) (5) a woman looking after a bunch of mischevious female chipmunks (6) a story of a female horse and her mostly female human friends (7) the story of a woman buying and running a zoo (8) the story of a girl and her dog (female), Tintin, going on adventures (9) the complex machinations of groups of female spies during the coldwar, with a side plot about how one of the women is estranged from her husband and (10) a mixed gender group of children battling aliens.
“(4) a movie about a female journalist investigating the brutal rapes and murders of a bunch of men with the help of a male hacker ”
This one would a lost, as there are already plenty of male hackers and female journalists.
It’s taken me hours to wade through all these comments – and all I can say is that you ALL watch far too many movies!
Off the couch with you MRAL, step away from ALL of your electronic screens and go and do something positive for someone else. Volunteer at a men’s shelter, cook a homeless person a meal, DO something, anything. Please.
MRAL, perhaps the parallel to the disposable mook men you’ve mentioned is the interchangeable dancing sexy laydeez in, like, every music video in existence.
Seconding a Brandon Challenge for MRAL, where he can’t write anything about his white boy first world problems, women, bitches, feminists, etc.
Most tellingly, this is true even of movies where according to the story, the heroine is supposed to be plain. All those Jane Eyre movies are a prime example. In the novel, Bronte makes the point again and again that Jane is not pretty, repeat, not pretty. And yet, every movie version makes Jane Eyre at least passingly attractive (and there is definitely a trend towards prettier and prettier Janes).
Or take Smilla’s Sense of Snow. According to the novel, Smilla is a middle-aged Inuit woman not particularly noted for her beauty. But in the movie, she is white (half-Inuit, she says at one point, but come on) and played by Julia fucking Ormond. Seriously?
It’s an absolute cinematic convention that the female heroine (especially if she becomes someone’s love interest) MUST be attractive — in actuality if not according to the script. If the script calls for a “plain” woman, the most that will be done is cast an obviously beautiful actress and make her ritualistically “plain” with nondescript hair style, puritanical clothes and lighter makeup.
I don’t have the time or energy to engage with the whole of this thread now, but please have some Strong Female Characterss, everyone:
http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311
Sarcasm courtesy of Kate Beaton. 🙂
@MRAL: Frodo did not fail. He suceeded: he brought the Ring to Mt. Doom without being corrupted, and his act of mercy to Gollum meant that the Ring was destroyed. Nobody could have destroyed the Ring consciously–a huge part of Tolkien’s work is questioning the HEROIC male model of the world, starting with Bilbo (Thorin on on his deathbed after his lust for Arkenstone/glory ended up killing a lot of people, telling Bilbo the world would probably be better if more people were like Bilbo!). Sam is also a differently heroic figure: he’s a gardener, and he was able to resist the Ring as well (granted, he did not bear it for long). Boromir the epitome of the manly manly man was tempted (he redeemed himself and died protecting the hobbits), but overall as a number of excellent scholarly articles have pointed out, the foundational values of Tolkien’s storyverse (esp. if you look at the Silmarillion) are that “masculine” and “feminine” need to be in cooperation (either in married couples, or family members, or even in a character–i.e. Aragorn’s healing skills PLUS his swordly skills make him the King). Even Morgoth and Ungoliant are more powerful together, synergistically, then acting alone, although they can only cooperate a short while before coming into conflict. The Legendarium is full of examples where unchecked macho male range (Feanor anyone) causes disaster.
“In MRAL’s case it’s more like Occam’s Pretzel. If at first it doesn’t make sense, keep twisting until it does.”
I may have to steal that.
Look, again, this is not a unique position, even some feminists hold it.
Many feminists including myself critique certain constructions of masculinity (esp. HEROICMALE, who is almost always WHITE STRAIGHT MUSCLEBOUND). Many feminists understand that kyriarchal (and you refuse to acknowledge either patriarchy or kyriarchy as terms, instead saying “society”–why?) constructions of masculinity are toxic to men in many ways (especially men of color, and/or GBT men, working class men, who do not have a lot of the privilege associated with the dominant masculinity–white, straight, middle-class).
BUT the difference is that feminists do not “blame” women and/or feminists for it, and do not claim that women are doing just fine, thank you, no self esteem problems (for one thing, most feminists are concerned with a whole range of things and not just self esteem which in some ways during the last few decades has become incredibly poisonous in itself–i.e. “must give everybody high self esteem based on nothing but theory that they need self esteem), and that MEN are oppressed.
That is where YOU and the MRA connect–can you even read the OP and see how much your rhetoric sounds like the MRA dudes. You just THINK you’d have less of a self esteem problem if you were “female.”
HAH.
If you were actually interested in deconstructing masculinitity, there’s be people here to talk with you all over the place.
But I don’t think you are. And I’m not inclined to excuse you because of depression (I have had depression all my life, more or less controlled now, thank heavens), and depression doesn’t get you forgiveness for calling women elitist bitch cunts who make too much of a fuss over being raped or abused because it’s not really that bad.
What you are is pissed that you don’t have what you think you should have, and you blame women for it.
There are many texts out there (many by women, and many books) that work to deconstruction heroic masculinity. But I doubt you are interested in reading any of them.
@AMused: re “plain” women in media. Don’t forget the GLASSES.
I remember the hilarity of casting Keira Knightley as the “plain” sensible character in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA.
You know what your problem is, MRAL? You know why you’re getting this wrong? You know what you’re doing?
Let’s use Mr. and Mrs. Smith as an example. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it works perfectly for our purposes. You watch a movie like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and in the scenes where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are gunning down dozens of male mooks, to you, Angelina Jolie represents All Women, while Brad Pitt only represents Brad Pitt, and the mooks represent All Other Men.
Think about that.
Now try to imagine your female equivalent–a little on the short side, dumpy, not very good-looking. And depressed. How is she going to feel, watching that movie? Do you think she’s going to see Angelina Jolie kicking ass and go “Yep, that’s me! As a woman, I rock!” If your reflexive answer is yes, then you have a real problem realizing that not everyone lives in your head. To you, Angelina Jolie represents All Women and is a declaration that Women Are Awesome. But to most women, Angelina Jolie is just Angelina Jolie, someone on a level of hotness and awesomeness that they can never hope to achieve because they didn’t win the genetic lottery.
Kinda like Brad Pitt is to you.
So you watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith and see yourself as an expendable mook without even a name to your…um, name…but a woman in your position watches it and doesn’t see herself at all. Talk about worthless! This movie is declaring that she doesn’t even exist! Yikes! Ouch!
And here’s another thing you’re doing that’s off-putting, and why people here are hemorrhaging patience and sympathy for you with every post you make on the subject: You’re noting that the use of expendable male mooks in action movies makes you, as a non-heroic man (as you see yourself) feel worthless. Your proposed solution is to put expendable female mooks in action movies. That would even things out, you say, and make you feel better. But don’t you think that would have the same effect on all the lady-MRALs out there that the current situation has on you? What you seem to be implying is that movies make you feel worthless, so the only fair thing to do is for them to make women feel worthless too.
That’s not going to help anyone! That’s just going to dip the spoon back in the jar o’ misery and spread it on more people! And if it would genuinely make you feel better to see other people feeling worse, what does that say about you? Is that really a personality trait you want to cultivate?
There are all sorts of good arguments in favor of female mooks in action films. They’ve pretty much been expounded upon by the other posters here. The idea that women need a dose of the same “Look how much you suck” that men already supposedly suffer? Is not one of them. That’s a bad argument. That’s an MRA argument.
Come on, kid. You can do better than that. You can think of better solutions to your grievance that the typical action hero doesn’t represent you. And you can do it without pitting men against women. Because really, we all get hammered by the Hollywood Role Model Machine. I’m not Angelina Jolie any more than you’re Brad Pitt, and yes, I feel down on myself sometimes for it. But I don’t want to make men feel bad about themselves to even the score.
“You just THINK you’d have less of a self esteem problem if you were “female.” ”
The idea that a man one of whose major complaints is that he thinks he’s ugly thinks he’d feel better about himself if he was a woman is so absurd that it’s kind of mind-boggling.
MRAL, you know that thing where you keep imagining women are sneering at you because you’re ugly? If you were a woman it would happen for real. If you were a woman you would occasionally get random dudes yelling it at you out of passing cars, accompanied by mooing noises if you were fat. And you would have no sympathy for that hypothetical female version of yourself (Twihards suck because some of them are fat!), but you expect everyone to fall all over themselves offering sympathy to you.
Not only are you delusional about how gender works in society, you’re also a hypocrite.
Shorter MRAL: “my feelings are hurt, therefore you’re oppressing me!”
Yeah, right, yawn, old hat by now.
Random Harry Potter comment: I did love Hermione at the start, but hated how the narrative arc treated her (ditto: Tonks) (LUNA!).
I wish to hell that Rowling could have seen her way to making Hermione the protagonist (like Dane Duane’s YOUNG WIZARDS series!). Not that it would have been the ball busting global smash of course–because the “girls will read boys books, but boys shouldn’t have to read girl’s books” is endemic to USian culture and education.