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.
MRAL, what are you trying to prove by carrying on using the spelling “wimmin”? Since you know full well that most people round here rank it somewhere on a scale between “irritating” and “offensive”, you’re clearly doing it to be annoying, but to what end?
I genuinely don’t understand this: on the one hand you’re constantly complaining about regular posters attacking you, and on the other hand you deliberately go out of your way to goad them. Why? What possible benefit do you get from coming across as a colossally insensitive asshole? Is this an example of “negging”?
I doubt the “average MAN” (why can’t you say WOMEN, average WOMEN, or average WOMAN, you asshole) can win fights against everybody. The issue is training, preparedness, and not some innate ability.
Seriously, MARL really, really hates women in general. That keeps coming through even on his “reasonable” posts, where he is not yelling directly at people. The whole misspelling of women is just his tell.
The fact that he hates himself just as much does not make the hatred of women better, or justified.
MRAL, I’m not taller than you, but I *am* heavier. Unless you’ve had more training than I have, I could just sit on you. 😛
“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?”
Not to minimise the issue of Hollywood whitewashing- but in the book, Smilla is half Greenlandic, half-Danish (she talks a lot about her Danish father and how she doesn’t feel he treated her native Greenlandic mother very well). She does very much consider herself to be culturally Greenlandic, though.
I also don’t remember her being explicitly middle-aged- I seem to recall her being a few years out from her PhD, so she’s not exactly a teenager, but I think I assumed she was in her thirties or something.
I agree that she’s not particularly noted for her beauty- although she is a big fan of fashion (both the commercial European and the traditional Greenlandic variety).
MRAL: 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.
Been in a lot of fights where someone attacked you when you weren’t expecting it and you rallied and beat the shit out of them, right?
Seen someone take a hot cup of coffee to the face and immediately cold-cock the person?
Watched someone slammed to the wall and head-butted before they gave someone two-fast body blows and then knocked them down and kicked them senseless?
In the real world, not the movies?
Because every one of the situations I’ve described, ended with the person doing the attacking getting the best of it.
So unless Maine has some seriously different rules of combat than East LA (Where I spent my middle youth), or San Francisco, Las Vegas, or Knoxville, Tennessee, or New York City, Kiev, and all those guys who start the fight before the other guy was ready lose… you are talking out your inexperienced ass (all places I’ve seen/been in fights).
Seriously, this is something I’m really familiar with. I’ve been in a lot of violent places. I’ve worked in jobs where being professionally violent was the order of the day (not just the regular sort of Army stuff, but personal protection details, and bouncer). If someone makes an attack on someone who isn’t expecting it,and they are committed to it, the attacker almost always wins. Big, small; male female. Initiative usually equals victory.
Get jumped, get thumped; it really is that simple.
“Wimmin” or “females.” He never even considers the whole women are people thing feminists keep harping on.
Because MRAL… I’ve spent a lot more time in the “real world” of violence than you have. I’ve been doing it since well before you were born.
Grow up, learn that there are people who have experience; and try (just try) to listen when they talk. If you want to disagree, do it on some other basis than sloppy appeals to “common sense”.
So am I to understand from this that if action movies stopped using male mooks–say, if they went to story formats that avoided the Mook trope altogether–and thus male and female characters were presented similarly, you would suddenly start identifying with Brad Pitt and feel better about yourself? Because somehow I doubt it.
I beg your pardon? “Females” (For fuck’s sake, just say “women”! It won’t kill you!) like me very much are ignored. That was my entire point.
The message you get from the movies: The only place in the world for guys like me is right in front of the hero when he opens fire.
The message I get from the movies: There is no place in the world for gals like me.
Frankly, I think we’re both being poorly served. I’m sure you’ll insist that you’re worse off, though I can’t imagine what you get out of it.
It’s pretty hilarious to see someone who apparently thinks that an unexpected shovel to the temple can be overcome with The Power of Awesome Punching lecture people about what the real world is like.
Much as I like to be appropriately respected for my abilities, sometimes I do think there’s something to be said for folks who are not entirely sane and have a large bucket full of resentment towards women persisting in the notion that women are, by definition, entirely defenseless.
Being as it’s a lot easier to whack someone in the face if they are not doing anything to prevent being whacked in the face, e.g. if they are spending the travel time of the incoming elbow busily denying that said elbow could actually in fact be incoming.
Er. I mean it would be easier to whack someone in the face, if I could do so. Which I can’t. Nope, not at all.
Dracula: To be fair, he’s arguing that if a woman were to attack a man, barehanded; and by surprise, that the odds are she will lose.
I’m arguing that if she’s actually attacking him with intent; and she gets the drop on him, he’s more likely than not to lose. I’m also arguing that, culturally, men being told they should be physically aggressive, and women being told the opposite, is why fewer women than men engage in that kind of abuse.
And his view, that the victim of such an attack can get their wits about them and mount an effective counter-attack is part of the, “she should have fought back” trope that suffuses a lot of things like the derision that so many rape victims get, “why didn’t you fight back?”
Well the answer is that fighting back isn’t really a viable option much of the time. Initiative in a fight is a big part of winning, and unless you can figure out what is happening, disengage enough to get settled, and make an effective counter-attack, it’s not so likely that you will recover from being blindsided.
It’s why people who live a life where violence is a steady presence seem to be a bit paranoid. They know they need to see it coming, or they will get clobbered.
Okay, substitute “shovel to the temple” with “fist to the windpipe” or similar.
“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.”
When I was 12 I entered my first fencing competition (my all girls school against an all boys school). 12-year old, barely over 5 feet tall me won my first bout, against a 17 year old boy who was much bigger and stronger than me. Why did I win? I was faster, better trained, and MUCH more aggressive. In fact when the match was over he was still standing there looking startled, and he wandered off muttering “she’s so aggressive!”.
Thinking that someone is incapable of hurting you is a great way of getting hurt. Art of War, idiot – never underestimate your opponent.
“If women are invisible that means they’re important and valued!” is, however, even more stupid than the aformentioned foolishness about underestimating an opponent.
“Seriously, MARL really, really hates women in general. That keeps coming through even on his “reasonable” posts, where he is not yelling directly at people. The whole misspelling of women is just his tell.”
MRAL’s dilemma in a nutshell is “I really hate and resent women, those arrogant entitled bitches! Why won’t those elitist fucks have sex with me? It must be because I’m not a tall handsome leader like Brad Pitt in Troy. Yeah, that’s it – fuck you, elitist bitches!”.
At one point we all felt kind of sorry for him because it’s so obvious exactly how he’s messing up his own life. That point has now passed.
Cassandra: I just did a longsword workshop. One of the most aggressive people in it was a young woman, from Ukraine. Some really good photos of her cleaning some of her opponents clocks. She, as is common with most good female fencers, is quick.
I think it’s because, even with a pretty impressive bust, she has a lower CG than the guys she’s fighting (she’s about 5’6″). But there wasn’t anything reticent in her attacks. She was going into it with intent to kill.
If Toysoldier got banned, I think that pretty much half of the commenters in this thread should be likewise banned for constantly misrepresented me and putting mean words in my mouth and generally making strawmrals and saying hurtful things to me. I never said I hated women, and I don’t, I said as a manboy I feel of less worth than women. Isn’t the vice versa what feminists say all the time? Well, you’re not the only ones allowed to have an opinion. Try checking your fucking privilege and looking at it from a perspective that’s not all about ME ME ME.
MRAL: If I still fenced, I’d invite you to join me on the list, because I can almost fucking guarantee that I would kick your arse from one end to the other. As it stands, I can currently barely walk since it started snowing, so I’ll leave you with this:
I’m not making any statement about me, I’m uncoordinated with horrible depth perception and I am also a pussy. But I’m talking about average men.
Pecunium: There’s an excellent book on women and fighting (though it’s very SCA-centric, I’ve been told that most of it applies to other forms of fighting) called The Armored Rose. It’s almost bloody impossible to find nowadays, but it’s an excellent resource.
http://amzn.to/AExY6Y
Fighting of any kind generally takes skill. Yeah, a big tough guy can whale on the skinny ones, but as soon as he comes up against someone who has the slightest fucking clue (for example, of how to turn an opponent’s momentum against them), he will get his ass handed to him. Smart and fast almost always win the fight.
eh, should have said, “Smart and fast almost always wins the fight, or at least gets out of it with minimal injury.” Because sometimes you don’t really care about winning, just getting away.
“Try checking your fucking privilege and looking at it from a perspective that’s not all about ME ME ME.”
Can we nominate this comment for entry into the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (the new illustrated web edition, which I just invented) under “irony”?
MARL, you do not explicitly state you hate women, but you cannot even type the word women most of the time. You express resentment of women at every opportunity. You express contempt the rest of the time.
You hate women in general and it shows. Even if you could stop typing misspellings of the word women (and I do not think you are even capable of that) the hate and contempt you feel will come through.
@ Pecunium – I always felt like being short kind of helped me in fencing, even though it means I have less reach. Big often goes along with slow, which definitely isn’t an advantage.
Thinking that size is all you need will get you hurt. Former kung fu instructor used to have his cute little teenage daughter knock macho beginners on their ass just to teach them that lesson – smart guy, he was.