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.
No, you see them as expendable sex objects. ALL.THE.FUCKING.TIME.
Here’s the actual list that illustrates the point of that site
http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/women.html
@vacuumslayer I share your jealousy. It is why I am mostly a lurker and rarely comment, since I don’t feel as on-the-ball as other commenters (but really enjoy reading their comments).
BTW, after reading Antz comments, I will never look at an envelope the same way again.
Well then what we have here is a fundamental issue of reading comprehension. Because that’s not what the OP was about at all. You might try re-reading it. Slowly. Sound out the words if it helps.
And many posters, right here, have acknowledged that issues like depression, homelessness, suicide, addiction, etc. are very serious problems for men.
VoiP – I have NO problem with you, or anybody discussing things with him. I think people have been awesome to the guy in that regard, and that’s my point. He just throws it back in their faces. But this isn’t a crticism of people who don’t tell him to fuck off. This is about how the people who do tell him to fuck off aren’t meanies commiting terrible ad hominems and persecuting poor MRAL
🙂
I’m sorry, but I immediately thought of one of hubby’s fantasy football teams he plays against when I read this: The Slippery Taints.
OK. However, bear in mind that chivalry doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of a society in which women are consistently discouraged from doing things for themselves, or doing things on their own. We weren’t even allowed to have independent bank accounts until, I think, the 1960s! If every message I get says that I’m weaker, less competent, less brave, then “chivalry” is just another nail in that coffin.
Crum, maybe a legitimate point. But at least the Women in Refrigerators get to be, well, characters, unlike the masses of men killed simply to create a sense of epicness.
(Note: In historical shit, etc., I get this. Men made up the fighting forces, that’s how it was, although if you’re really going all the way you should also show the realities of war rape, interestingly that would probably grab an NC-17).
@Cloudiah, nothin’ wrong with being a man boobz fangirl! I consider myself one!
But, Sniper, they certainly plan to… any day now… maybe… it depends.
I mean, MRAL, you look at this and go: “Women must have it so easy! Men are expendable, and they have to work very hard, and women (if they are rich and white and not disabled and never talk back) get to be taken care of or, if this is an action movie, rescued.” And you’re half right—it is very difficult for one half of the human race to be set up as basically the permanent babysitters of the other half. That’s a lot of effort that, if women could govern themselves, might be more profitably spent elsewhere.
But look at this from our point of view: it might be relaxing to be taken care of, but it is also stifling. It’s less challenging and, since we’re humans just like you, we like challenges, both physical and intellectual. It’s debasing, since we’re dependent on the people (men) who take care of us and therefore have to watch ourselves around them. Being taken care of means being a child all your life.
A much better situation is if both men and women meet as independent equals, with neither “chivalry” nor “expendable men.” This is what feminism is working for. All the things you complain about are problems with patriarchy.
Uhm, usually these women are weak and one-dimensional, and their deaths are merely tools to advance the plot of the much more important male main character.
How is that not being disposable?
I think you actually just touched on it there MRAL. Faceless goons are male because ‘faceless goon’ isn’t the job description, they’re usually soldiers, security forces or gangsters (The three most popular ‘mook’ professions in film and videogame) which are all, traditionally male dominated forms of work.
I’m not actually sure anything can be done about that. If you had a mook army that was evenly split male and female I suspect some would object, not on the grounds that women are valued higher, but because it’s not ‘realistic.
AFK, I need to talk to Financial Aid.
Yeah, that was precisely the point I was trying to make.
Shadow: “In my own experience, women very rarely get physical with men unless they trust the man not to hit them back. This is obviously a problem, but I haven’t found it to be a rampant one so I hardly think their needs to be a movement about it (again this is my experience so anyone more knowledgeable feel free to correct me).”
I believe that there is a perception by society that it is somehow better for a woman to hit a man than it is for a man to hit a woman.
My parents raised me differently. I was told that I should never hit anyone first and that I could always defend myself, regardless of the gender who is attacking me.
However, I was slapped by an ex-girlfriend once. (And by that I mean, she was already an ex girlfriend when she slapped me. She was jealous I had move on to someone else. After verbally confronting her she walked over to me (in the place we both worked at) and gave me a big old smack across the face). When I got home, there was an message on my answering machine that said “don’t think I won’t do it again”. Of of the tires on the car belonging to the new woman I was seeing had a gouge in it as well. I called the cops. They came over to take a statement from me about the incident. When asked if I wanted to pursue the matter I said yes. He told me that if she also says that I slapped her that both of us would go to jail. I said “fine”. We met at the station. The attitude I received at the station was that such a thing was no big deal. They made me feel as if I was less of a man for complaining about a slap that did no permanent damage. I firmly believe that had the roles been reversed and had I walked over to her while we were at work and slapped her right across the face for having moved on that I would have been arrested that night.
It is something that exists in culture. A male portrayed on screen as striking a woman, even with an open hand, is viewed as an abuser. A woman portrayed on screen as slapping a man is typically a woman who was wounded in some way and that the man deserved it. Hell, this weeks episode of NCIS had such a scene.
Now, I saw all that to ultimately make a point. You would likely agree that such things are bad and that it is wrong to hit anyone and that the ultimate goal of feminism would be to make such double standards do not exist. I would agree with you.
People like MRAL and others in the MRM would likely (and incorrectly) use this example in culture as “proof” that we do not live in a patriarchy and that the pendulum has swung back the other way too far. Because that is what they do. They take a small problem in our society, blow it up 100x and then represent the blown up size as the actual size. It is like they look at life via the side view mirrors and think everything is larger than it appears.
@vacuumslayer
Season two of Bob’s Burgers!! As far as the women revenge flicks, it’s definitely becoming more prominent in Western cinema. It’s also been more prominent in HK cinema for a while, though nowhere near as common as having a male protagonist.
Feminist koala spotted on Twitter:
MRAL: “Pretty young WHITE women missing, that’s fucking news, goddamit. ”
Fixed that for you. Pretty white girls go missing and Nancy Grace has an aneurism for months (between gushing about her twins). Minorities or other women who are not what society deems as attractive go missing, and they get no media coverage at all.
Is this because we live in a feminist dominated society? Of course not. This is because society places a higher value on pretty white girls than it does on other women who are missing. That is evidence of a patriarchy, not of radical feminism run amok.
MRAL: “The goons get to not matter, and (obviously) increasingly there are women in active roles, yet interestingly, you never see women in roles as expendable extras.”
Maybe it is because the directors feel that society wouldn’t buy a hit squad of women. What you are viewing as misandrist is actually misogyny.
LJ, no, the media places a higher value on pretty white females than black females, white men, and black men. Racism is a part of it, but not the whole story.
Secondly, I maintain I’d rather be an “expendable sex object” with some level of character and a level of meaning something, than an extra. Not to mention that I do not think women are confined to said roles, certainly not these days. Look at that really annoying feminist screenwriter who wrote Juno. She gets work.
I also just checked Prosecutorial District Number 7, Maine and Ms Kellett is still with the office.
That is because you still have the option of one day being something other then the Red Shirt guy on Star Trek. The sex object generally does not because she is there quite literally to be killed as a plot device. And nothing more.
A Red Shirt can start out as disposable and change to something important later.
MRAL, I don’t disagree with you that a world in which Faceless Goon #7 in pop culture is just as likely to be a woman as a man (and no one thinks this is a particularly big deal) would be a better world – but I think it’s highly disingenuous to point to the fact that Faceless Goon #7 is virtually always male as an example of men being seen as expendable without noting that Hero is also virtually always male. As is Sidekick. As is Comic Relief Character. As is Wise Mentor Character. As is, in fact, pretty much every character except for the romantic interest, who will generally just sit around looking pretty and probably need to be rescued by a dude. (Occasionally there’s also a femme fatale, who will generally just stand around looking sexy and STILL probably need to be rescued and/or killed by a dude.)
Heck, to pick a movie in which there were vast, vast quantities of Faceless Goons who appeared to be male, let’s look at the original Star Wars trilogy. A lot of expendable men died, and no expendable women did. You know why? Because the entire list of female characters I can remember at all from all three movie is as follows:
– Leia
– That Rebel woman who has the line about the many Bothans.
– Luke’s aunt
– Some dancing slavegirls
Given the choice between “the gender which has 99% of the roles in this movie, and thus has 99% of the deaths” and “the gender which basically doesn’t exist in this movie in the first place” which one do you honestly think is being portrayed as “expendable”?
(And Star Wars is just the first example that sprang to mind – I invite you to go look at the cast list for any movie that angers you by showing a lot of wanton male death. Count the number of women and men in the cast. If you can find more than a very, very few such movies in which the women outnumber the men, I’ll be very surprised indeed. And if you feel like getting advanced about it, try to see if the movies pass the Bechdel test. Again, if you can find more than a tiny number that do, I’ll be very surprised. If women aren’t seen as being characters worth watching in the first place, who’s really “expendable” here?)
Well, that’s you. Other people, especially women, may feel differently. I’d rather be an extra whose face is panned across in a battle scene than a dead woman. And Diablo Cody gets work because her screenplay did well not because she’s a woman or a feminist.