Strange Discovery of the Day: Men’s Rights Bronies

Yep. They may be rarer than unicorns, but Men’s Rights Bronies (MRBs) do indeed exist. For proof, see this post on the Men’s Rights subreddit, in which an MR Brony calling himself Bullywar tries to convince fellow MRAs (and MRBs) that the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic season two finale (of which the video above is an excerpt) is some sort of grand antifeminist statement from the show’s creators. (Oh, SPOILER ALERT for everything that follows.)

You don’t have to be a brony, or even care for MLP at all to get this – just hear me out. If you don’t care to watch the 44 minute episode, I’ll summarize: an impostor shapeshifting queen disposes of a bride to be in a high-profile wedding and plans to use the groom’s magic against him in a lust for power. The linked song will pretty much get the whole episode’s plot across succinctly enough.

The song juxtaposes the heroine’s desire to complement her groom, and the villain’s desire to subjugate him; even though that (until the climax of the episode) everyone sees the latter as the former. It even references one of feminism’s battle cries for the last lyric in the reprise. Watch the whole episode on Youtube to get a closer look.

To see a wildly popular show aimed at girls, conceived and written by a woman, giving such a message to young girls today strikes me as nothing less than resounding vindication for our cause.

Because feminists are all about marrying dudes and exploiting them?

Happily, other Bronies with less of an ax to grind came along and put Bullywar straight.

CrawdaddyJoe, a critic of MRAs who usually gets downvoted on r/mensrights, garnered himself a few upvotes by noting that

Um…. feminists aren’t plotting to marry you and take your money. That’s not even remotely what feminism is about, and most feminists would find such behavior abhorrent and demeaning. Don’t be a paranoid twit.

Drinkthebleach, an actual MR Brony and Pokemon fan, asked:

Isn’t Lauren Faust [the show’s original Executive Producer] a pretty outspoken feminist? Also you left out the part where they talk about how important it is to have a male influence in your life, when she talks about how much she loves/misses/needs her brother.

RotoSequence, who doesn’t seem to regularly post in r/mensrights, offered a more nuanced analysis of the episode:

This is a ridiculous argument. The entire point of This Day was to illustrate that Chrysalis only wanted posession of Shining Armor because by manipulating his emotions, it gave Chrysalis tremendous power. Cadance and Shining Armor, on the other hand, love each other so much that they want to start a family together while the manipulative, evil Queen plans to take that away from them as collateral damage so that Chrysalis can conquer a land that isn’t hers. If anything, the lesson to take home from the finale is “we’re stronger together than we are apart,” and the corny stalwart “love conquers all.”

At least I assume that’s a more nuanced interpretation. As a non-Brony, I really have no idea.