Sometimes I ask myself: what is it that I really hope to accomplish with this website, aside from entertaining myself and my readers, and exposing misogynist assholes for who they are. There’s a part of me that still hopes that someday, something I write will cause some misogynist and/or Men’s Rightser out there to develop a modicum of self-awareness, look at what they’ve been saying or doing, and say to themselves, “I’m really kind of a tool, aren’t I? Maybe I should stop.”
When the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the Men’s Rights movement came out, I hoped it might have a similar sort of effect. Or that, even if it didn’t persuade any MRAs out there that they were wrong, it might at least convince a few that they were going about things the wrong way. Nope. On the Men’s Rights subreddit, at least, it seems to have sent many of the regulars into an indignant tizzy, and they have doubled down on their peculiar brand of politics-by-whining-online.
Consider this post:
Yes, that’s right. Some Men’s Rights Redditors seem to think that the best way to convince the world that they’re not part of a hate group is to continue to celebrate a self-admitted child abuser who urged men to firebomb courthouses and police stations and kill people.
Then there’s this post, currently the top post on the subreddit:
Wow, if the Men’s Rights subreddit had anything to do with that, that would indeed be a victory. As one regular put it:
Thing is, I read r/mensrights pretty regularly, and I don’t remember any campaign there to protect the rights of fishermen in New Zealand.
Turns out that’s because the campaign, such as it was, consisted of one post some months back, which got all of 11 upvotes at the time. The current post in which r/mensrights congratulates itself for its “victory” has gotten, last I checked, 120 upvotes, more than ten times that. Simplecosine’s self-congratulatory comment in the new thread has gotten 36 upvotes. The comment in the original thread asking r/mensrightsers to send an email to the US Secretary of State’s office got … one upvote. In other words, only a handful of Men’s Rights Redditors even noticed the original post, much less sent along an email.
Reading one of the linked news articles makes clear the real reason the State Department opened an investigation: a six-month long, three-continent wide investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek revealing abuses in the industry.
The Men’s Rights subreddit: Taking Credit for Shit They Didn’t Do Since 2008.
And then there’s this post:
I’ve got nothing to say about this one — it’s basically self-refuting — except that I’m sort of bemused by the notion that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “semi-women group.” Uh, what is that exactly? A group with some women in it? A group that doesn’t think women are all a bunch of evil bitches? The horror!
Oh, Men’s Rights movement. You’ll never change, will you?
EDITED TO ADD: And speaking of never changing, here’s how one Men’s Rights redditor responded to my comments there suggesting that maybe, just maybe, MRAs should actually denounce and distance themselves from someone calling for terrorism:
Let me just highlight that bit at the end again:
[T]he cost to the establishment to maintain the status quo in regards to divorce, custody, etc. must be made so high that it’s just no longer feasible. If that means instilling abject fear into the hearts of judges, cops and legislators by making them think their careers and/or lives could be forfeit unless they change their attitudes towards men, then so be it.
Trying to instill fear for one’s life in your opponents: that is the very definition of terrorism.
My womanly day consisted of nursing my baby, parenting the older kids & watching Buffy & X-Files. Kind of boring.
@Nanasha
I understand how closely related MRAs and GOP wing nuts are in their ideologies, but this dystopia is a bit far-fetched don’t you think?
Politicians arguing against the pill would have seemed far-fetched until they started doing it. Who knows?
@Magpie
So what do you suggest? Do you think we Manboobzers should take more drastic measures? I know feminism is unpopular on Youtube with a lot of silly videos attacking it. And YouTube is a very large forum. And though plenty of insightful feminists and good refutation videos have been made, that may not be enough.
What do you suggest?
My womanly day consisted of wearing a floral, flouncy top with black pants and bright red flat shoes with a flower on the toe, heading to work to lead my company’s monthly sales and operations meeting, doing spreadsheet analysis, being narky to people on the phine, eating a can of tuna before heading to Zumba class and then wondering if next Tues night I can attend 45mins of Zumba class before zooming to the next suburb for soccer practice….?
“narky to people on the phine,”
I know this is just a typo… but… I really really want to use this, it’s the cutest ever.
It needs to mean something more general.
Being narky on the phine. That’s got to mean something. I’m working on it.
I’m pretty sure it needs to be said in a southern accent and needs to be as cryptic as “the vapors”.
Hard to type on iPhone 🙂
But I am Australian so it would probably sound like “narky on the phine”to some ears 🙂
i reckon it’s more of a New Zealander pronounciation, Jill! i’m a Scot in Australia and before i came here i never know the difference between the Australian and the New Zealander accents.
My womanly day continued:
Then I drove home, cuddled 3 German shepherds and watched back to back episodes of The Walking Dead.
Perhaps the aussie version would be “phoine”
🙂
I don’t consider myself stereotypically feminine, but I am womanly in that I am a woman. I think that should suffice.
On the topic of “womanly” vs. “manly” things:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/03/does-this-smartphone-make-me-look-stupid-meet-the-ladyphones.ars
Summary: “Many phones “made for women” simply insult us with their case color, dismal hardware, and embarrassing accessories. Designers, you can (and should) do better.”
Some mansplaining and evo-psyching in the comments. The article makes a very good point. I’ve been writing software for the smartphone industry for almost a decade now, and am quite passionate about the field, and improving the quality of the user experience, and to me a mobile phone is just about as gender neutral as an item can possibly be.
I’m sure there are plenty of apps that primarily appeal to one gender or another, but in terms of core functionality, what would an SMS app “for the ladies” look like? Or a “manly” phone dialer? The whole concept of gendering a phone user interface seems doomed to failure, as in the examples in the article, because the concepts of communication that a phone enables are not gendered concepts.
@Jake I work in electronics retail in a very small town so I come across a lot of technophobes. Generally with women it’s cheap first, pink second. Actually the men tend to go with what’s cheapest too. We sell few smartphones and that’s generally to kids who want to use them for Facebook or because they’re “in”. I’d say in a bigger store in a bigger town I’d get more business type people going for functional smartphones.
It must be happened as it is.
And a meme is born.
Meme must becoming viral as it will
Sorry if someone’s already posted this, but Afghanistan has issued a declaration that “men are fundamental, women are secondary,” and calls on men to refrain from teasing, harassing or beating women “without a sharia-compliant reason.”
And Karzai endorsed it.
What did we spill all that blood for?
Because freedom.
RE Mags: get on with your bad self! I approve of your self-liking.
The manly/womanly discussion is interesting to me, mostly because I feel like as a trans guy, I’m banned from those words. Too many fights with people, so the words just put a bad taste in my mouth now. Now I use butch or femme and get into fights with people about how those words aren’t just for lesbians.
So my butch day is work, cartoons, trying to get insurance coverage so I can find out whether I’ll be paying $300 for my meds or not, and catching up on my sleep.
My husband, however, is cis, and would probably claim he’s being quite womanly when he’s in drag. (He’s built like a linebacker.) Or maybe he’d just use the word ‘fabulous.’
I also approve of Mags when she says being womanly is awesome for her.
I can see a little bit of Boggi’s argument, specifically the idea that “manly” and “womanly” are imposed upon us by society, but I think those things come from the worst parts of society and the ideas are not inherent or insurmountable.
My manly day on Saturday involved rehearsing new pieces with my local volunteer orchestra, cooking a veggie casserole, and freaking out one of my best friends in a role-playing session involving a ranch house where the family had been slaughtered by something that a) left tracks that suggested giant spider or insect and b) cleaned up after itself. So I was pretty happy that I was able to evoke tension around the table and end the session with a bit of a cliffhanger.
And this brings me back (kind of) to Boggi, because I wasn’t being a jock on Saturday, I was being a nerd, and happy with it.
“teasing, harassing or beating women “without a sharia-compliant reason.””
This really isn’t a way to handle something WITH a Sharia complaint, reason.
Anyway, I never understood mistreating someone because you perceived yourself superior. I always wondered why, on those tv shows that had racists on why they would go on and on about how inferior this or that group is. So why hate an inferior group? They’re getting consistent here. Come on fellas, weaker sex over here, get with the program.
Of course some use this conservatism to argue that it must be wrong some how because of the reasoning behind it. No, people should treat each other decently. The forward reasons help us be better thinkers and understand the world for what it is, the backwards reasons, we just hope will pass.
I’m no Islamaphobe by any stretch, but the culture of women there is the only time I wonder if something is wrong with men genes. Is there any place that popped up, any society where they just got it right? No, it’s the human condition. Humans suck.
Ok, someone make a joke, this is a funny blog.
What did the Cleric say to the Heretic?
Ah we found common ground, you hold her down, and I’ll beat her.
Wait that was not funny AT all. 🙁
I hope South Park, Matt and Trey find the mens rights movement and do something side splittingly silly.
I liked your joke, boomboom! :p
Today my womanly day is starting off with carpooling, wearing a skirt I made, drinking a smoothie, and tutoring (all fairly society’s-idea-of-woman-compliant) but then will veer towards the society’s-view-of-manly because I will be tutoring SCIENCE and ride a bus UNACCOMPANIED and maybe later there will be PORN …not related to the previous stuff… and I’ll think about FINANCES and very probably teach a child how to loudly fake-burp. So really I’m just honey-badgering this “being womanly” thing, yanno?
The feminist religion is quite bizarre. Let me clarify human sexuality grounded in reality. There are two genders, and one sexuality. All sex/sexuality is tied to reproduction. The only reason sex/sexuality exists is because of reproduction. If sex weren’t necessary for reproduction, sexuality or genders wouldn’t exist. Everyone would simply clone themselves, there would be no sex or genders.
There is no such thing as transexual, homosexual or any other, (haha) rainbow shades of grey. The feminist religion is a delusion of narcissisim. A solopsistic faith based on womens feelings that run contrary to reality. The feminist religion promotes queer theory as if it is an actual sexuality, instead of a perversion of nature and/or God.
If someone has sex with a fruit bearing tree are they angiospermsexual? If someone has sex with birds, are they now considered aviansexual?
The only reason anyone has a sexual drive is explicitly due to your drive to reproduce. The feminist religion will conjure “theories” out of thin air like a charlatan scorceress. Being the bad man, I’m erasing all the queer experiences. As if anyones experience has an actual bearing on human sexuality.
Feminists, in all their wisdom, will claim we now have birth control which disproves that sex is directly related to the reproductive drive. As if balloons, (condoms) negates the very basis of the human sexual drive.
Are women so solopsistic that they believe whatever they feel is reality? Do women actually believe the dogma taught in schools or do they just parrot the words? Or are women so weak minded that they’re easily manipulated?
My ‘womanly’ day so far is taking apart a fence for my dad, moving stuff into my parents’ attic, and hanging out with my sister while she swears at her math homework.
My womanly day has consisted of not wanting to get up in the morning, my hair going “Ha!” at my attempts to style it, writing articles, finding a stapler, and maybe seeing some elephants later.
My womanly day involved installing a lot of software so I can properly type LaTeX on my new computer, rejoicing that the cease-fire means the semester can finally start (plus no more rockets, hooray!), and (TMI?) menstruating.