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.
@Ithiliana
I think a corollary to that is that the Hermione character would not have been as popular if it had been a guy because it does rely a lot on the mothering voice of reason that the general North American public (and I think Brtish public as well) would not have accepted as readily
^would not have accepted as readily from a male character.
MRAL: Being human is to be, “disposable”. I was int the Army. Soldiers are expendable. Male or female, straight, or gay, privates to generals.
The thing is (and the greatest part of why people disagree with your conclusions/solutions to your perceptions) women, in fiction, are seen as both disposable, and invisible. When they show up in a story it’s usually to do something with the male hero.
That, or be a convenient plot device, e.g. the body in the bathtub. Have a strange woman show up in the scene with the villain and she is either his lover; present so he can explain the plan to the audience, or soon to be dead.
Julia Roberts in Hook was there to be the lifelong love who sacrifices her happiness for Peter Pan. Bob Hoskins was there to provide comic relief for Hook.
It’s not that we don’t think you feel the way you do, it’s that we don’t think the reason is based on a realistic interpretation of the justifications you give.Its like the MRM saying False Rape Accusations are a huge problem because of Duke; or that the reason the case proceeded as far as it did is because women can do anything they want (as opposed to issues of race, and the history of sports teams at college parties).
CassandraSays:
Absolutely. I spent my teens and early twenties setting my heart on a particular creative profession, and spent a couple of years living with someone with similar ambitions. And I still remember the epiphany I had when I worked on one of his projects and thought “this guy has a natural talent for this, and I don’t”. True, George Lucas thought the same thing about Steven Spielberg, and he nonetheless did OK, but it was at that point that I realized that I’d probably do better in life if I stopped concentrating on something where I’d never be better than mediocre and start working hard at things that I was actually good at.
And from that moment, my life improved beyond all recognition. For the first time in my life, things started to go right. It may have been a coincidence that I got a genuinely cool girlfriend shortly afterwards for the first time (I wasn’t a virgin when I met her by any means, but I might as well have been), but I suspect my attitude shift played a part. And while I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I suspect my whole personality probably did change quite dramatically: I was no longer frustrated with trying to pull off the impossible, I was concentrating on goals that, while ambitious, were eminently achievable.
I’m not remotely a natural leader – in fact, the one time I worked in management (not through choice: it was a by-product of unavoidable downsizing), I was so terrible that I prayed to be fired or demoted every day. But that doesn’t matter: I know I’m shit at some things, but I also know that I’m good at what I do, which means that if someone contacts me and asks for a particular job to be done at a particular time with the flair and distinctiveness that my reputation hopefully suggests I can bring off, I’m only too happy to let them do all the organizing and string-pulling.
And right now I couldn’t be happier.
Incidentally, my former roommate went on to become a very successful TV director, and he now has two feature films to his name. Good for him: I saw first hand how hard he worked to get there in the crucial early stages, and although we’ve lost touch since then I genuinely wish him every success. It seems to me that the only rational justification for jealousy is if you sincerely think that you could do a better job in someone else’s position – if you know you couldn’t, there’s no point in letting the green-eyed monster lead you astray. And there’s absolutely no point in being jealous of people because of factors over which you have no control – height, gender, perceived attractiveness, etc. Just focus on your own positives: it’s vanishingly unlikely that you don’t have any.
In fact, in MRAL’s case, there’s a genuine talent for wordspinning there, which is more obvious on his blog than his posts here. One of the biggest ego-boosts I’ve ever had in my life was when I worked with an artist of world-class ability whose work I’d admired for a quarter century (I was still at the stage when I was pinching myself that I was even allowed to be in the same room), and he told me that he was jealous of my writing ability. And it’s true: writing wasn’t his strong point (much though I always enjoyed his idiosyncratically punctuated emails and scrawled postcards), but I never imagined that he’d be bothered by it, given that he was a bona fide visual genius in many other spheres. Which just demonstrates that everyone worries about their perceived lack of talent or ability at some point.
MRAL: NO, it’s the sentiment which was expressed in this quotation (Which I forgot to post my response to)
True, the reality of the situation is that women are, generally and relatively speaking, so weak that they usually cannot inflict any level of damage whatsoever without a weapon,
This is true of pretty much everyone.
Seriously. Flailing like mad with one’s fists… not all that good at inflicting damage. Training… works for everyone who takes it.
Weapons… equal opportunity equalisers.
Me, I’m pretty good with my hands/arms and I’m so-so with my feet (I never saw the point in disciplines that used kicking; the moves are slow and large, and require warming up to avoid things like groin pulls).
Given a choice, I’ll reach for a club, a stick, a sword or a gun.
Because I’m not stupid.
But the audience believes that shit. They think that women can’t pull a slide back, or that firing a gun is some super-manly thing that ordinary women can’t do.
Which isn’t misandry. It’s not even any sort of especially awful misogyny; it’s just garden variety dismissal of women, coupled with a lot of stupid.
I’m not a great leader… I don’t have the personal charisma for it. I am a great number two/section head.
I’m a dab hand with words. I have some talent for descriptive language. One of the biggest pieces of ego-boo I got was Neil Gaiman writing that he understood his father’s experience in WW2 better from a piece I did about being in Kuwait, waiting to invade Iraq. It was a “mook’s eye view” of things.
As I said, everyone is disposable. The big lie in stories is that someone is special.
and out of my hotel room and into Arisia.
MRAL, you said you don’t matter. Well that’s because you don’t. You don’t do anything to make yourself matter to anyone. What have you done other than wallow in your own self pity? Make yourself matter. You have that high IQ thing. Use it. Go on! Go be awesome! And don’t give me shit that you don’t have it in you cos that’s a load of crap.
Re: leadership issues.
I will also say that having been immersed in the academic “bureaucratic” language of leadership for years that I think it’s another concept that’s horrendously debased — and one that has little to do with the action adventure movies that so many people think are about heroes/leaders.
Look at the “leaders” in the political, corporate, and economic powerhouses of this country–white men (mostly) in suits.
If you move outside action movies, then the issue of ‘leadership’ is incredibly fraught, and I’m with the people who prefer ensemble casts and collaboration and cooperation–and, really, that’s mostly how change comes about. We have a heroic narrative that identifies the individuals we think are major leaders, but important history shows that they’re not the lone superstars that our narrative has imposed on them–they’re part of a group.
Indeed – and it’s so commonplace as to be almost a cliché that the person who’s really in charge is lurking somewhere in the background. Largely because they’re intelligent enough to recognize the downside of having a high profile – the leader may be the most famous and therefore overtly ‘heroic’ figure, but they’re also more likely to be targeted both verbally and sometimes physically.
You know, speaking of ridiculously gorgeous female leads in movies, that’s one of the things I liked about My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Even after the makeover, Toula never looked like a gorgeous model. She looked like a reasonably attractive thirty year-old, and for once, the pre-makeover look wasn’t just a ponytail and glasses.
I also like Sarah Jessica Parker, because she gets so many leading roles without being conventionally “Hollywood” attractive.
Conventional notions of physical attractiveness have always been a red herring to me. I recently stumbled upon a photo of my first properly cool girlfriend, and with the benefit of decades of hindsight I can see that she wasn’t in any way extraordinary-looking – but the photo didn’t come close to conveying the sheer force of her personality. She could walk into a room full of complete strangers and dominate it in a matter of seconds.
In fact, that was one reason I found it surprisingly easy to hook up with her: most men in our social circle were terrified of her, and clearly assumed from the start that she’d only be satisfied with some kind of mega-alpha male, so they didn’t dare make a move. But all it actually took was a number of common interests and a shared sense of humor.
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).
Indeed. This is the actress who most recently played Jane, a character whom the author explicitly describes as being mousy and plain – and, even more importantly, whom she envisioned specifically as an attack on the convention of the romantic heroine necessarily being beautiful, and an argument that a woman who was plain and poor and seemingly ordinary could be just as interesting and romantic:
http://mia-wasikowska.net/photos/albums/photoshoots/outtakes/003/normal_Mia_Wasikowska_001.jpg
Hey MRAL, if you think you feel invisible based on pop culture, imagine how invisible the average girl or and woman feels when that is Hollywood’s idea of a completely plain, ordinary, unbeautiful woman. I know it certainly didn’t make me feel great when I saw the movie poster for the most recent version of Jane Eyre and “plain” Jane looked like her.
I’ve certainly done a fair bit of “leading from the background”. Being in charge in Basic Training is a surefire way to get more shit piled on you. Being the guy the sqd ldr loks to for direction gets you the ability to shape things, and none of the hassles which come of other people screwing up when one is responsible.
Yeah, no. If there’s only females that matter in a movie, I’m led to believe that yes, these females are representative of all females (and there’s usually more than one female, come on). Whereas with men, you’ve got the hero(es), who do matter, and then the hordes of men who don’t. Thus, the message is that only a very select amount of men matter, and they sure as fuck aren’t me. This is not a convoluted interpretation.
And I’d rather be ignored than told explicitly I am disposable (even though females are not ignored).
THose who are ignored, as a social group/class are DISPOSABLE in the minds of TPTB.
Get a grip on reality, MRAL.
It bites for all of us.
Also, Pecunium, I’m sorry, but most men can cause damage with their fists, especially if it (hypothetically) came to women, because women are weaker by an almost expoential amount. You really think guns have served as a great equalizer? Why do we still have domestic violence, then?
The female equivalent of the “hordes of men who don’t [matter]” are the hordes of women who don’t (and thus probably shouldn’t) even exist. How much more disposable can you get than if you can’t/don’t meet the conventional beauty standards of the one (maybe two) females that matter, you’re non-existent.
So… that all the other women in the world are completely ignored means all women are important.
That’s daft man.
And I believe this has been mentioned already, but actresses generally have a much harder time than actors when it comes to sustaining a career – once they reach a certain age, usually in their thirties, their perceived market value plunges through the floor as they’re considered to be past their prime and therefore disposable.
In fact, I’d argue that in that profession it arguably helps if you’re comparatively plain-looking. Neither Maggie Smith nor Judi Dench was ever a head-turning beauty, but because they were never regarded as such, they managed to skip the alleged luster-losing stage, and were much bigger stars in their second half-century than they ever were in their first.
MRAL: For fuck’s sake, how many times do we have to point out that strong =/= winner, especially in an unarmed fight? Speed, fighting experience, willingness to fight ‘dirty,’ and general athletic ability all factor in – the strongest man in the world can’t do shit unless he can hit what he’s swinging at.
MRAL: No, most people can cause damage with their fists. The secret to winning most fights isn’t being the biggest/strongest, but the first, and more aggressive.
I’m 120 lbs. I win fights. I win them because I don’t them them start unprepared. But if I get jumped, I get thumped.
This is the reason most DV is male initiated. Most women are socialised to not initiate physical violence.
This is another area where your lack of experience is again leading you astray.
Oh, not just important, but ,VALUABLE
If we’re talking in generalities, then I agree that men tend to be stronger and bigger than women. Of course there are exceptions to this, and training to be a good fighter can make up for the size and strength advantages. Most of the MRA’s try to portray the issue of DV as 50/50 when it really isn’t. They want people to believe that women are stronger than men and batter men just as often as men batter women. If that were true, though, women wouldn’t suffer severe injuries at a much higher rate than men (in heterosexual relationships). I think that acknowledging that men generally tend to be stronger than women is important to be able to refute the MRA claim that DV is 50/50.
If you think that the average female/wimmin can win fights with men by “getting the drop on them”, well, I’d invite you to join me in reality.