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.
Not to mention being rich and white and a whole host of other privileges contribute to how pretty you’re perceived to be.
Yeah, and rich, handsome black men still get to eat the shit sandwich that is racism. All the privileges intersect and interact with each other, but they tend not to cancel each other out.
There is also a dominant cultural narrative that when a straight white man makes it big, it’s his own individual success (based on merit); when anybody else makes it, it’s to satisfy a quota, or because of appearance/manipulation/etc.
This is BULLshit. I am the victim here, and I have dealt with so much shit your pampered mind couldn’t even cope. Goes for all of you.
Hmm. Is AVT posting from a real place, David?
I thought it was a little sketchy when he went full hate-on the moment Cassandra said something.
@Viscaria
yep yep
@LBT
That’s funny because I was going to say that Obama’s a good looking, rich black man, the motherfucking President, and he STILL gets to eat the shit sandwich of racism
I don’t know if it’d be worse to find out that this is just another incarnation of MRAL, or to find out that we just attracted another one.
RE: AVT
Really? You don’t know me at all, but you believe, with absolutely all certainty, you have dealt with more shit than me?
Part of me wants to take that bet, but most of me is just too sad.
@AVT: people here have answered your question, just as my original post does (relatively less privilege does not mean no privilege). In short, you’d do a lot better analyzing your own privilege than claiming that women have it, etc.
But, no, I see you’re now claiming you are the victim, and we’re all pampered–which, again, shows how fucking little you know about people here.
True colors: Troll.
I’m done here — you’re not worth spending time on, and you clearly do not want to discuss anything except how much you personally have suffered, and how much women have privilege
Fuck off, TrollDude.
I don’t even get it. Of COURSE women have privilege. EVERYONE has privilege, because the only people without privilege are DEAD. I thought everybody knew that.
Is AVT mad because some classes of people have different kind of privileges, or feeling that by having privilege invalidates any suffering he’s suffered or what? O_o
An attractive woman still has opportunities that unattractive women don’t have. Can you explain to me how this is not a privilege?
Because it’s a tradeoff. Attractive women are assumed to be less intelligent and don’t get taken as seriously as plain women. There’s no corresponding disadvantage for attractive men.
Dammit, this conversation is going way too fast. I’m going to go give a shelter dog a bath.
MRAL’s getting better at faking, but I’ll never understand why he bothers. Either he doesn’t get to say stuff that he really believes–in which case why bother?–or he says stuff that he believes and everyone disagrees with him.
He seems to think that there must be SOME secret way to get us to admit that men who don’t get laid are the REAL victims. He’s not good with “no means AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN,” this kid.
There is also a dominant cultural narrative that when a straight white man makes it big, it’s his own individual success (based on merit); when anybody else makes it, it’s to satisfy a quota, or because of appearance/manipulation/etc.
This is BULLshit. I am the victim here, and I have dealt with so much shit your pampered mind couldn’t even cope. Goes for all of you.
Funny thing about this is, it looks to me like you’re claiming no one dismisses women’s struggle to succeed by… dismissing women’s struggle to succeed.
@Shadow: Yep, I’m just waiting for the “I’m so ugly women spit on me,” or the “I am a short many therefore OPPRESSED,’ rhetoric to come out. Nothing new here, but he did actually name some feminists that most people don’t know about, even though he doesn’t appear to have learned much from reading them (or what he read of them).
But other than that, typical Troll (aka: “I want to discuss feminism with you all as long as you’ll admit I the white man am the TWUE victim here.)
@Shadow, I hope he’s new, because every time MRAL shows up, it makes us all more paranoid that he’ll show up again. I’d love it if he’d stay away long enough that we stop worrying about him. I’d rather have 10 new AVT-types, frankly.
I am the victim here, and I have dealt with so much shit your pampered mind couldn’t even cope.
*Facepalm*
David, you’re supposed to be screening these people.
He did jump into the “Cassandra is privileged princess!” routine fairly early on in the conversation, I noticed.
@Holly: Hmm, usually MRAL and his socks never talk to me — so I didn’t think it was him. But the focus on Cassandra, and the “pampered” (not princess but still) do ring a faint MRAL-ish type of bell. Will be interesting to see what David says about his location.
AVT has posted from several IPs that are, well, pretty distant from one another. One of them is a little suspicious; several other commenters here have also posted from IPs in the same town and it is pretty much completely impossible that this blog would have three separate commenters posting from this town. One of them was a troll, the other a perfectly reasonable person. My guess is that they’re all using the same anonymizer, at least some of the time.
It’s funny though, in the process of his idiot persistence MRAL’s learned a lot of social justice terminology and concepts. Way more than the average “privilege means all men are rich!” troll. But he sees these concepts just as tools to use to manipulate us.
It’s a shame, because he could to so much with that knowledge.
Any bets on the “I don’t know MRAL but have read some of his posts on X and he seems perfectly reasonable” post coming from AVT, or do you think he learned his lesson the last time he tried that?
Also: AVT?
A Veritable Troll?
Also, the “I’m the victim here” line is exactly the same as one that MRAL used on Pharygula or however you spell that.
And also also, the previous troll posting from the same mysterious town also reminded a lot of people here of MRAL.
I’m putting AVT on moderation until he can give me an explanation that makes sense.
Sociology class?
If it’s MRAL he has definitely stepped up his game (except for some of the recent comments, which might be his way of revealing the man behind the curtain).
I can’t think of any other explanation that won’t cause my mind to fry! If this isn’t MRAL, then we literally have no back story here to even compare ours to, so that breakdown would just be bizarre