Hot on the heels of my recent discovery of Men’s Rights Bronies, a new controversy about My Little Pony has erupted in the Men’s Rights subreddit. Though, to be honest, I might have provoked most of the actual controversy there by wading into the muck and pointing out a few facts.
The discussion centers around a rather obtuse post by Kathleen Richter on the Ms. Blog from two years ago accusing the show’s creators of racism and homophobia, among other things. The post couldn’t be more wrong about everything, and, unsurprisingly, was torn apart by commenters on the site – and by Lauren Faust, then the show’s “creative steward” and executive producer, who was given the opportunity to write a rebuttal on the Ms. Blog.
So why are the dudes on the Men’s Rights subreddit getting worked up by this dead controversy today? Because an MRA who calls himself ThePigman – we took a look at one of his terrible, terrible comic strips here – decided to post Richter’s original post (but not Faust’s rebuttal) to r/mensrights under the title “My Little Pony FIM attacked by nuts at Ms Magazine Blog. NOT, repeat, NOT a satire.”
Perhaps inadvisedly, I posted a comment pointing out that the Richter’s blog post had not exactly been well-received. And this happened. (Click on the pic for a full-sized version.)
The whole discussion is rather surreal. Some highlights.
ThePigman responding to a rather straightforward and factual comment of mine with:
You are a disgusting animal. Go and talk to someone else, just having you on the same planet makes me want to puke.
Ullere repeatedly misrepresenting my recent post on Men’s Rights Bronies.
The dude who regularly posts on r/mensrights as “Manzboobz” makes an appearance.
And this barely coherent little masterpiece of sarcasm from our old friend Eoghan (who posts on r/mensrights as Sigil1):
As someone who speaks fluent Eoghan, let me translate: he is suggesting that the women discussing the issue of MLP on the Ms. Blog are all a bunch of layabouts living off of their hard-working husbands. He’s also making a snide reference to feminism as being an “astro-turf” movement (rather than a true grassroots movement) because, in his mind, feminism is all a big plot created and funded by the CIA and the evil elitists who run the world.
Eoghan aside, this whole episode suggests how difficult it is for a feminist to have any kind of discussion with MRAs even on the Men’s Rights subreddit, probably the most moderate MRA forum out there. (Several other people posted references to Faust’s rebuttal, but weren’t downvoted, because they aren’t the dreaded, more-evil-than-evil-itself “manboobz.”)
A couple of days ago, one poster to r/mr asked “Why are there not more feminists here” debating the issues with MRAs. Here’s your answer.
EDITED TO ADD: ThePigman has responded to this and my previous Brony post in his typically calm and reasonable manner on his blog. By which I mean he spewed forth a bunch of angry nonsense.
@ozymandias42
How about the fact that the cows are enslaved in the Ponyville barn and are “raped” for their milk in the Trixie episode? And that all of them are stereotypical representations of Midwestern white folks complete with “hokey” accent and herd mentality?
Basically everyone but the ponies are treated as the best, and even the unicorns are considered “better” than the pegasi or the earth ponies because they tend to be royalty/rich while the earth ponies are stuck tending to the earth and the pegasi are basically stuck caring for the sky, but at least the pegasi can fly. Basically the hierarchy for the pony universe seems to be Alicorns > unicorns > pegasi > earth ponies > zebras > donkeys > buffalo > cows
But then again, thinking about all this shit makes my brain hurt- I just try to watch the nice ponies and enjoy the story without thinking about it too much because otherwise, I’m just going to smash my TV.
Antz: The same thing happens to me if I don’t get eough sleep, and try to write something coherent.
Is this a confession that you are chronically underslept?
Don’t you see? All the radical MRAs are just TROLLS trying to make MRAs look bad. But all off color comments by feminists are proof that all feminists really think that way and are EVIL I tell you, EVIL!
To be honest, reading all of the discussion of MLP does ruin the show for me. I mean, on one hand, there are episodes like “Mmmmystery on the Friendship Express” which is funny AND has a nice aesop…on the other hand, Zecora REALLY bothers me, and I haven’t even watched that episode…or any of the other episodes mentioned here. I’ve been on and off of the show while I’ve been probing for other, older stuff on Boomerang/The Hub.
It’s disappointing that such a colorful show gets so…fucked. Maybe that’s a consequence of having a show worked on by multiple people instead of being helmed by a single creator like, say, Babylon 5 or Avatar: The Last Airbender (mostly).
Nanasha: Um, they’re cows. For all we know they’re really happy to live in the barn, you know? I mean, humans wouldn’t want to live in a barn, but maybe the cows love it. And for all we know they’re employees! It’s a bit much to say they’re necessarily enslaved, given that we have no textual evidence of such.
Fair about the caste system of Equestria, though…
FTR, I’m not sure MLP does worse than most kids shows. We’re just actually watching it.
ThePigman has responded to this post on his blog:
http://thepigmancometh.com/2012/05/10/manboobz-i-mock-him/
RE: darksidecat
THAT ANNOYS ME SO MUCH. Enough that I’ve started writing a fantasy story where there are literally powers of dark and light that are COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO MORALITY. The light witch tries to use is to claim she’s morally superior, when really she and the darkness witch are actually as equally dangerous.
And then the gray girl kicks everyone’s ass, because pure light and darkness are actually extremely rare while shades of gray are everywhere.
It doesn’t make up for the sheer amount of obnoxious light-white-good, black-dark-bad, but at least it helps vent my damned spleen.
Manjabber the Lame is my brother*, and he was born with the limp. I get that this Pig guy gets his jollies by…doing whatever it is he does (I wouldn’t call it trolling; trolling is supposed to be lulzy and I think he might actually be serious) but it’s still a little outrageous to me that he’s apparently okay with mocking and using slurs against disabled people.
* Sometimes Amazons give birth to boys, and in the past few centuries we’ve evolved beyond leaving them on non-Amazon doorsteps. They take care of household tasks while we go about our women’s work.
Yeah, coding black or darker as evil or inferior and white or lighter as good or superior is really, really common, and it is racist and does reinforce racist idealogies. I mean, as a fantasy fan, I didn’t realize just how pervasive it was to use ‘black’ to mean evil and ‘white’ to mean good until I started paying attention to it. While it’s not the overt ‘black people are evil”, hearing “black=evil, white=good” five million times growing up does reinforce white supremacy.
…that’s kind of reaching. I’m pretty sure those associations go back way further than the concept of “race”.
seriously, is there a single fucking mra who can actually write?
I like how MRAs keep trying to appropriate feminist theory and terminology. And failing miserably, as they haven’t bothered to learn what any of the theory actually means.
“…that’s kind of reaching. I’m pretty sure those associations go back way further than the concept of “race”.”
Pecunium will be able to confirm this, but I’m pretty sure the Greeks and Romans thought of each other as difference races…unless you’d like to claim that the light/good dark/evil thing predates Christianity?
The answer to “why are there not more feminists here?” is far simpler than that. “We have better things to do and don’t give a small furry mammal’s hindquarters about your self-centered obsessive failure to look beyond your own noses.”
It’s not hard to understand. I have 0 desire to “argue” about whether some dude’s fear of being accused of rape is more important than people who are actually raped, given that the odds of a given man being a rapist are between 6% and 13% while the chance of them being convicted of a sex crime is 0.14%. The only thing that can happen is that they get super-defensive because I don’t care about their deep and totally unfounded fear, and I can despair for the universe that their lives are so easy they have time to obsess over self-centered crap.
Happy Canadian thanksgiving, Schtick!!