People! Rebecca Watson of Skepchick has just received a most awesome drunken email manifesto from a hard-rockin young MRA by the name of Jimmy Zinn. Here are some selected excerpts, but you’ll want to go read the whole thing.
My name is Jimmy Zinn and I’m a die hard MRA and hard rock fan. I’m 19 years old, and I’m not to happy with the current state of affairs. I’ve decided to dedicate my life to what I’m calling the three revolutions- the hard rock revolution, the Men’s rights revolution, and the life extension revolution …
Two of these are indirectly pointed at people like you- bigoted feminists who marginialize and trivailize* the male gender, promoting sexist and discrimination attitudes, and fighting vivaciously for the very thing you vehemently claim to be so against- gender inequality.
Yes, he did say “fighting vivaciously.”
After a bit more manifestoing he tells Rebecca his (alleged) life story:
Things at home weren’t going particularly well- girls with lower GPAs and poor extra ciriculars were getting scholarships that boys with perfect 4.0s were not, and since I’, one of the poor privileged white males, I couldn’t afford college. Getting a job was tricky to- I was told on more than one occasion “we aren’t hiring white males right now.” … After 23 interviews/applications, I was left still jobless.
I also become of the privileged white males who developed heart problems at age 18, but of course, couldn’t afford a doctor. I was going to go to a free heart screening at a local college, but whoops…. “FEMALES ONLY”, courtesy of the “Women’s radical feminist men hating Heart association of a women-only America”, or whatever it was called.
Yeah, that totally happened.
So he hitched a ride on a freight train (allegedly) and headed to … Hollywood:
Rebecca, I am going to radical alter our society in the next year. I am going to start the greatest hard rock 1986 GNR-esqe band the world has ever seen. There is an army, millions strong, of angry people, and especially young males seething at the lack of justice and outlet for their rage. I fear a violent revolution is near, and I’m not in favor of that idea at all. Instead, why not give them a kick-ass 24/7 rock n roll party, tearing through the country with blistering blues-based rock, finally giving red-blooded masculinity a place in American culture again. I am going to fight the bigoted feminist you propagate, and start the largest social movement since the 60s…the Mens rights revolution.
I’m in hollywood right now, partying, crusin’ down sunset strip, spreading the MRA message …
We’re coming, Rebecca. The walls of mass social delusional, ignorance and apathy will crumble down as justice and non-autotuned music will triumph in the streets. You will fight back, I’m sure, but you will lose, and you will lose badly. In 3 years time, you WILL live in an American of true gender equality, but I’m not sure it’s going to take the direction you expect!
Go to Skepchick to read the rest!
Oh, but didn’t you see? He was going to debunk that whole ‘wage gender gap’ nonsense! Presumably by unmaking reality as it stands and denying every study on the subject ever.
That letter, it’s just comedy gold. He’s going to travel the US and spread the MRM message using the POWER OF ROCK. It sounds like the plot of a Jack Black movie, if Jack Black were an entitled misogynist whiner.
I won’t criticize his taste in music, though. I admit I have some Guns N’ Roses songs on my own mp3 player. I have a lot of musical guilty pleasures, like Rascal Flatts, Brooks and Dunn, Gwen Stefani, Ace of Base, Bon Jovi, and Garth Brooks. I don’t know hardly any music from the last ten years besides Lady Gaga and Katie Perry. So yeah, I have no room to talk here.
I grew up surrounded by exactly these kinds of privileged people, and this is such an accurate description of them. Also, they often feel so naturally entitled to be chosen that they underperform in things like job interviews, whereas other candidates know they have to be well-prepared and at their best.
Look, it’s really quite simple, is there a quota system in place for employment, education, ect? The answer is undeniably yes. By stealing money from the serfs, the state employs a massive 22 million people. Any company wanting to sell food, furniture, clothing or anything to the state must comply.
What’s the difference between hanging a sign saying, “blacks need not apply,” and a government that mandates X amount of women must be hired? The end result is the same, the hatred is the same. Women have lobbied for and endorsed the sign that now reads, “men need not apply.” Unless of course you believe men as a whole thought it’d be a grand idea.
Oh my, is this our first troll? Oh, frabjous day!
First on this entry, I mean. Not his first comment.
@nwo:
… that it’s illegal. Institutions are allowed to take factors like race and sex into account when they make decisions, but actually putting a number on those is illegal.
Go on, what’s the difference?
…
That wasn’t a joke? Oh.
Yeah, see… the difference is that in the first case, an in-power group is discriminating against the disenfranchised, while in the second case an in-power group is trying to make up for a history of discrimination by forcing employers to be more inclusive.
And the second thing is still illegal. Just wanted to make sure you understood that.
The answer is undeniably yes, so he doesn’t bother to support the assertion with any evidence. It’s just that undeniable.
@Tulgey Logger:
I have denied the undeniable. I am either the greatest mortal that has ever lived, or the greatest fool.
Hmm…
I love NWO’s logic here…
1. The government has instantiated a policy of “men need not apply.”
2. Either men or women must have lobbied extensively for this to occur.
3. Men writing this law? What a stupid idea.
4. Women lobbied extensively for this law (from 1, 2, and 3)
I guess NWO didn’t really work out exactly who women were lobbying. If they have to be lobbying to pass policy, then it follows that they aren’t the ones writing policy. Which means men are writing the policy. Which means men were convinced that it would be a good policy. Which means “men as a whole thought it’d be a grand idea.”
Nwoslave – what the hell are you on about?
Oh! I know! The former actually happened, and the latter is another of your paranoid delusions.
@kirby:
Indubitably!
Are we playing the “make up things that are laws” game? Ooh, fun!
It’s a law in all US states that men must wear clown noses outdoors at all times. (That’s not bad grammar; men aren’t allowed indoors.) Granted, it’s rarely enforced, but it can be called upon at any time to put any man in jail indefinitely.
The only ways for men to be safe are to stand outside with a clown nose, or to troll feminist blogs until the law is repealed.
It’s a REAL LAW and you’re a misandrist if you ask which one.
Oh, dear. NWO has lost touch with reality. Again. Or is that he’s still completely and utterly out of touch? I can never keep track.
This one’s for NWO: http://qkme.me/3pg6py
I have grown to hate music snobs too. I used to be one! But then I realised how obnoxious I was being, and decided to knock it off. There are a few ways in which you can say that a piece of music is objectively bad. In fact, I once had a long conversation with someone about how off-key is an actual thing and yes your favorite singer being off-key is objectively a flaw in his performance, even though in his case it’s because he has hearing problems and can’t hear himself well enough to correct it when performing live – still objectively a flaw, not a stylistic choice that’s super mega awesome. Even in that case, though, I wouldn’t say “this singer is crap”, I’d just say that he has an obvious problem in terms of live shows that it isn’t really possible to fix, so either you can live with that or you can’t in terms of going to the shows. But in terms of stuff that’s just “I don’t like this band and I think this genre is uncool, therefore it’s crap”, I have very little patience with that. There are entire genres that I despise, but so what? Doesn’t mean that sneering at people who like them makes me super cool and awesome, doing that would just make me kind of mean.
I think what started the process of un-snobbifying me was the realization of the patterns in which music that’s mostly popular with women is always looked down upon by music snobs, as is anything pop. But the Beatles were a pop band, and people love them, so it’s not even as if these things are consistently applied. There are some pretty obvious social dynamics at work there.
On the “everything was better in the old days” stuff, it really is a demonstration of the 90% of everything is crap rule. If you look at old stuff that’s still known about, it tends to be the 10% that was actually good, and if you didn’t live through the time period in question you probably won’t be aware of the 90% that was crap, so you’re not getting a realistic picture.
I was an enormous music snob in high school, and have sort of gotten progressively less snobby over the years.
But I am still a little snobby.
I think feeling the “ugh this crap is terrible, why would you listen to that?” response is fine, it’s just running around trying to make other people feel embarrassed about their taste in music that’s a bit obnoxious.
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I can’t figure out what the image at the top of this post is. It looks to me like the shrunken head of Mystery.
As for music snobbery, I feel like there are definitely singers who are objectively bad (and if you like them, then your taste is certainly in question). But if it’s a stylistic issue, then that’s something else entirely. If you like screamy death metal and I don’t, that’s a taste issue. The singer might be very good at screamy “singing.” If the singer is totally off-key or uses a weirdly inconsistent vibrato or requires a lot of auto-tuning to even be listenable, then … that’s where things get objective.
Something weird I noticed is that the vocalist is the one role where someone can be absolute shit and still have fans. If you were a shitty drummer or a shitty guitarist, people wouldn’t let that fly. Shitty singer? Could still have loads of fans. Kind of like shitty authors-who-shall-remain-nameless. (I once had someone make the argument that because something I didn’t like was a bestseller it must be good. The discussion got broken up before I could shout, “BUT WHAT ABOUT TWILIGHT???”)
I think it’s partly because people do think of a lot of vocal flaws as stylistic issues. I’ve had that “no, this person really is off key” or “no, really, he’s singing way out of his range and it sounds thin and strained” conversation many times.
If we’re talking specific examples – Vince Neil. Regardless of whether or not you like Motley Cure, on a technical level there’s no question that Neil is an awful singer.
Crue, not Cure. Maybe Motley Cure would be Motley Crue with a singer who doesn’t sound like he’s straining to hit even the easiest notes.
I would think someone with a 4.0 GPA could spell “extracurricular”.
I bet Slash would toooootally back me on that point.
Oh, my bad. I hadn’t clicked through to the full letter to realize that he was “completely smashed on 100% California Night Train” when he wrote that. BITCHIN!!!!!!!
Wait, wasn’t Slash a Wild Turkey man?