So the New Statesman — a rough UK equivalent of The Nation here in the US — has published an awesomely snarky yet utterly accurate piece on the Men’s Rights movement, such as it is, including references to Man Boobz favorites Tom Martin and A Voice for Men. Read it! Some excerpts:
Like your arse, men’s rights are massive right now. Of course, this has been “a thing” since the Fathers4Justice superheroes first scaled a public building, reiterating in one fell swoop that irresponsible, life-endangering behaviour and silly costumes are not only newspaper-friendly, but are also not qualities many women look for in a potential birthing partner. Then we had Tom Martin suing the London School of Economics’ gender studies programme for sexism, one of his complaints being that the chairs they sat on were too hard and not suitable for the comfortable positioning of his goolies. Poor Tom.
…
A Voice for Men is essentially the EDL [that is, the Islamophobic English Defence League –DF] of the mens’ rights movement, positing as it does such statements as “a single mother is a woman who in most cases chose to have, or to raise a child without a father. This demonstrates terrible, selfish values”, and “fake boobs are a sexual advertisement. If your wife or GF wants them that means she’s seeking to attract heightened male attention.” It’s extremist, bitter, and encourages men to “not get fucked” by taping every conversation that they have with a woman, like a troop of paranoid angry, ninja spies.
Naturally, MRAs are up in arms about this horribly unfair completely accurate (and if anything rather understated) description of their “movement.” I added some thoughts of my own to the discussion on Reddit here. Here’s one of the responses:
Keep digging that hole!
EDITED TO ADD: The New Statesmen is going to have a whole week of stuff on Men’s issues. So stay tuned!
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: On the Men’s Rights subreddit, the battle rages on, but alas I can contribute no more, having just been banned from there, apparently for mentioning The Spearhead too many times, or something. Separate post on that in a second. But in the meantime, here’s my favorite comment from the whole thread, from someone who apparently didn’t enjoy the New Statesman piece as much as I did:
If anyone knows of any sorority newsletter that reads like that New Statesman piece, please let me know, as I would like to subscribe to that newsletter and/or join that sorority, if my status as a mangina qualifies me for membership.
In the meantime, I have added The Vagenda, the online home of Rhiannon and Holly, the authors of the NS piece, to the “Antidotes to Boobery” sidebar.
Wow, I only just noticed the title of this post calls it the “Statesmen.”
Since Glorious Leader said it, naturally the name of the publication must immediately be changed to reflect the higher reality of Futrelle.
/minioning
A. For the record, I am not in favor of chicken fucking unless it is fully consensual for all parties involved.
B. This is for Vorpale/antimanboobz: http://qkme.me/3pdz5y
C. Tulgey, is this you? http://qkme.me/3pdyji
Erin Pizzey, that takes me back. About 4 years ago I ran into a religious mens rights patriarch who went on and on about how Erin had let the cat out of the bag as to who was really the violent sex, and the cause of all domestic violence, etc.etc. He also insisted that Jesus was actually insulting the foreign woman and calling her a dog (in Mark 7) and thus putting all women in their proper place.
Tulgey, if Dear Leader wants to change the name, let it be so.
It’s really hard to type while synchophantically dick-tugging.
I’ve only made this one recently, cloudiah:
http://m.quickmeme.com/meme/3pdz9b/
*votes for Ron Paul*
@hellkell
I’m usually using an itouch, which isn’t exactly the best way to type anyway, so I figure as long as I’m doing both…
Look I get that some of you come here with the express desire to have an argument. That’s clear and that’s fine. But I’m not interested. I’m not going to defend myself regarding my stance on perpetuating videos that depict animal cruelty. I expressed my opinion on the video. Presumably I’m allowed to fucking do that in an open fucking forum. I am wondering however how you would have reacted had it been a video of a man trying to hump a drunk woman, or a disabled person falling down stairs with ***TRIGGER WARNINGS*** attached of course. Nobody actually gets hurt in the videos! It happens in the wild all the time! It’s all good! The person perpetuating the video doesn’t have to take responsibility because they’ve “warned” everyone first.
And Jumbofish I don’t know what the fuck you are going on about when you say I am pro eugenics. I am not. You don’t know me. Don’t spread bullshit about me. That’s fucking offensive too.
@cloudiah – C. Tulgey, is this you? http://qkme.me/3pdyji
That one’s me
Look I get that some of you come here with the express desire to have an argument. That’s clear and that’s fine. But I’m not interested
You lie poorly.
You knew the trend was that Happy had been dickish, and you came in, both barrels blazing to tell us how bankrupt our morals were for not jumping all over cloudiah for being a terrible person, even as you misrepresented what we said.
So were interested; you just didn’t think it through, and now that you’ve had your ass handed to you you will pretend you were above the fray all the while, before you meltdown into false equivalencies, and inane analogies.
Keep fucking that chicken.
It was a dog humping a chicken….
It was a dog trying to hump a chicken….
No one said you had no right to complain about a dog humping a chicken…
Maybe I am mistaken but I recall you saying mra’s should be bred out of existence in a recent thread.
yo jf, are you sure you wanna risk the pokemon avatar. you know that’s only gonna make you illegitimate in varpole’s eyes…
thats assuming I care what he thinks of me sharculese XD
That Nature show on PBS is always showing videos of wolves murdering elk, lions murdering zebras, snakes murdering rodents, etc. Those sick fucks don’t even put trigger warnings on that shit. Worse than Hitler, they are.
Ok, I was willing to let the comparison between a kitten and adult hen go because that was close enough (adult cat would be a more appropriate comparison, and the cat would win, with risk of actual injury to the dog, and that wouldn’t be MEH anymore) — but this?
“I am wondering however how you would have reacted had it been a video of a man trying to hump a drunk woman, or a disabled person falling down stairs with ***TRIGGER WARNINGS*** attached of course.”
Humans fucking know better, dogs don’t (which is ignoring that animals don’t generally have consensual sex in the first place, though that should be within their own species in any case)
How in the fuck is failing down the stairs not going to result in injuries? I’m taking it you’ve never had the displeasure (and I was nearly down when I tripped, I was still bruised for over a week) — more like “how would you react to someone’s hair being pulled?” => “you should probably stop that”
I really cannot believe we’re having a debate over a dog ineffectively humping a chicken. I’m hoping the people who are so upset just didn’t watch the video and don’t realize the chicken is bigger than the dog. Either that or they’re vegetarians, you can’t really call that animal cruelty if you eat chicken…
@jumbofish — I’m pretty sure that was Sandra, though I’m not sure it was pro-eugenics and not just pro not fucking them.
@cloudiah — seriously, I don’t need to channel surf into a lion eating a gazelle. At least the chicken will go cluck about it for a bit, smooth her feathers, and be fine.
Uh oh… is my wordpress avatar that randomly looks like a snowflake so I kept it going to make me look illegitimate in the eyes of random mras? OH NOES!!!
@Sir Bodsworth, That was lovely!
Well, Mr. threatening dude, I hope something slightly unpleasant happens to you. Like an onion falling on your head.
@Cliff, yeah, I’m thinking that’s their logic too. It’s like, Tom Martin is really a truly open minded guy cause I mean, he concedes that ALL women aren’t whores. Just most (and women penguins of course).
It’s like they figure being only somewhat terrible somehow absolves you of whatever terrible shit you do. Yeah no. If you steal my cereal, I’m not going to be swayed by a “I only took your cereal. I could have taken it and poured it down your shirt” argument. You are still going to be the asshole who stole my cereal (odd comparison probably, but it’s late for me, and I think it works).
I see Sandra’s totally in favor of trigger warnings. /sarcasm
I haven’t watched the chicken video, but having seen chimpanzees cannibalizing each other on film and not being much bothered by it, I’m guessing it’s not going to bother me. Human on human violence, though, would provoke a strong reaction.
@sharculese You mean that not only does Varpole misrepresent Futrelle and the commenters here on a regular basis, but he doesn’t like Pokémon either? HOW LOW CAN ONE MAN GO?!
TheCatFromOuterSpace: I wish he becomes a feminist and a nice person and feels fully ashamed of all the bad shit he’s said. 😀
Seriously, I would’t even wish the current monster blister I have on my foot right now on a rock I didn’t like. Cause damnit, it hurts and I’m not someone who wants more hurt in the world.
ostara321 — Tom Martin said female penguins are whores? Does anyone have a citation on that? I could use the laugh, I mean, they’re penguins.
TBH I was also disturbed by that video and don’t feel like there was any reason to post it here. I think we all know what fucking a chicken would look like hypothetically. I don’t need to see it literally and I don’t need to have a giant picture of it as the video preview embedded into this thread. If it wasn’t supposed to be “funny” I don’t understand why the heck it was posted. “Ew, look what I found???” Why the heck did you go looking for it and why did you feel the need to share it in this thread? I’m just super weirded out right now. ):