It’s sort of reassuring how bad Men’s Rightsers are at communicating with those outside their tiny movement. I should amend that: how bad they are at communicating what they want to communicate — that is, that they are the 21st-century version of the heroic and in many ways successful civil rights movements of the late 20th century. What they tend to communicate instead is what they’d rather the world not see: how blinkered and reactionary and hateful so many of them really are.
Browsing through the Men’s Rights subreddit last night, I ran across a batch of graphics one MRA had prepared for other MRAs to freely use, whether as online graphics, dorm room decoration, or posters to wheatpaste on the nearest family courts building. While avoiding the hysterical misogyny of so many of the graphics up on the Artistry Against Misandry website we looked at recently, CAGeorge’s posters reveal a bit more about himself and the MRM than he perhaps intends them to. Take this poster, ostensibly a call to “resist feminist bullying.” How exactly do you resist such bullying? Apparently, with a giant fist.
Huh. Your movement is known for its violent rhetoric, for downplaying and whitewashing domestic violence against women by pretending that DV affects men and women equally, for promulgating a sort of false-rape-allegation hysteria in no way proportionate to the actual extent of false-rape allegations. In some circles, it’s labeled, fairly or unfairly, as “the abusers lobby.” Do you really think putting this fist on this poster is going to help?
Apparently not. Apparently that fist ISN’T GIGANTIC ENOUGH. Meet MEGA FIST:
So, yeah. Also, FYI, that particular version of the old clenched-fist graphic has been used by the far-left International Socialist Organization (ISO) for several decades. Take a look at the little ISO fist to the right here. Same fist. You may want to switch that out, dudes, lest you inadvertently convert potential MRAs to Trotskyism.
And while I have to give CAGeorge a few points for avoiding the crass misogyny of Artistry Against Misandry, he doesn’t do quite as well avoiding racism and homophobia. Hence this poster, apparently an attempt to scare potential false accusers by suggesting they could end up sharing a cell with a scary and probably dark-skinned dyke.
Naturally, CAGeorge’s artisty won mostly plaudits from the Men’s Rights redditors who stopped by to look and comment.
EDITED TO ADD: Woah. Strike that last sentence. Returning to r/menrights I see that a real, critical discussion of the flyers has erupted. Many of the regulars are unhappy with various aspects of CAGeorge’s choices. Numerous commenters are critical of the fist imagery, including ignatiusloyola, one of the subreddit’s mods, who objects in one highly upvoted comment. One person even mentions the ISO!
Our old pal Sigil1 (a.k.a. the legendary banned Man Boobz commenter Eoghan) is especially critical of the “roommate” poster, and for a good reason: that it essentially threatens prison rape for false accusers. (He doesn’t mention the racism or homophobia.) But he still can’t help but blame the posters on a conspiracy of evil “false flag” feminists trying to make the MRM look bad.
Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, naturally, thinks the posters are fine and dandy.
CAGeorge, meanwhile, defends his poor choices. Here he is dealing with criticism of the “roommate” poster:
The bit about “nullification” is of course a reference to Elam’s infamous suggestion that MRAs should undermine the legal system by voting “not guilty” in trials involving men charged with rape, “even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.”
Still, this is a real discussion. If the Men’s Rights movement has any chance at all of transforming itself into something really resembling a real progressive movement, it’s going to need to have a lot more discussions like this — and those who really do want to improved the lives of men instead of simply demonizing women will need to make clear that Elam and his ideological comrades are no longer welcome in the movement.
EDITED TO ADD, PART 2: Now the legendarily cloddish MRA videoblogger Bernard Chapin has made a video attacking the posters and the dude who made them. He’s not worried about the violent imagery, or the racism, or the homophobia — as I pointed out recently, he is himself a bit of a homophobe. Nope. He’s mad about the use of evil leftist imagery, and accuses the maker of the posters of being a sneaky Marxist infiltrator trying to co-opt the MRM with evil Marxist symbolism.
Gosh. Paul Elam said he liked the graphics. Is he a secret Marxist infiltrator too?
At the rate Mr. Fisty, the MRM fist, is growing, it will soon be the size of Michigan. And then it will shake hands with Michigan and the MRM will finally win.
Maybe they’re trying to make reference to the feminist fist symbol?
http://www.thatreligiousstudieswebsite.com/images_trsw/Ethics/feminism_fist.jpg
The upraised fist is a common symbol of protest; the problem is that it’s a symbol of fighting back against an oppressor, and men? Not actually systematically oppressed by women.
So in this context it just comes off as another case of MRAs not understanding the difference between “hitting back” and “just hitting people you’re angry at.”
So, the Abusers’ Lobby and the Plagiarists! Friendly folk, aren’t they?
Seriously, stealing a big angry fist logo sends no other message than violence and a certain hapless ignorance of the actual world and copyright law.
Like children who use drugs, the MRAs learned it by watching you. Progressives, including feminists, used the raised fist for decades, and they were pretty successfuls as activists, so MRAs thought they could be activists, too, the poor, naive fools.
Please, conservatives. You cannot wield it. None of us can. Conservatives can’t be activists because “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Activism only works in one direction, in service of the inevitable march of history toward perdition.
And maybe a little wishful thinking about “growing” in a phallic way. So, nuance!
That’s the great thing about MRAs. They’re so rabid, venomous and incapable of rational thought that they are of no threat to anyone. An MRA threatening to tear down the current establishment is like a field mouse threatening to tear down a brick wall.
That last one is particularly impressive, implicitly threatening those who make false rape accusations with… well, rape. This is typical MRA: we live in a culture that loves to joke about men getting raped in prison, that loves to speak approvingly of men getting raped in prison, that appears to be okay with our government running, as they imagine it, rape camps for men. That is goddamned offensive to anyone who cares about men’s issues, obviously. The MRA solution? Don’t threaten men with prison rape less, threaten women with prison rape more.
This is a very consistent pattern with MRAs, to the point where I take it as diagnostic. When presented with a problem facing men in our society, does he want to fix things for men and ameliorate the problem, or does he want to somehow make things worse for women? If the latter… you got an MRA there.
I honestly can’t tell what side scrapemind is on.
It took a while to figure out what the last poster was threatening me with. Chicks in white wifebeaters aren’t usually a punishment for me.
Ha, I just noticed the first one has GirlWritesWhat’s YouTube URL. My eyes can’t roll hard enough.
Yeah, this seems to be a common theme for MRAs. More women should die in shipwrecks! More women should succeed in committing suicide! Women should be killed on the job at the same rate as men! Fair is fair!
/sarcasm
And scrapemind’s exact position is unclear to me too.
i’ll hang this up next to my avfm suicide sticks and ‘feminists are like flies’ mspaint printout
Scrapemind said:
Activism only works in one direction, in service of the inevitable march of history toward perdition
I didn’t know what perdition meant so I googled it. The result: “Noun:
(in Christian theology) A state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unpenitent person passes after death.
Synonyms:
ruin – bane – ruination – doom – damnation – undoing”
So he’s anti-activism. Or pro-damnation? Or possibly being sarcastic.
…suicide sticks?
Or just a really bad writer.
I was about to point out the hypocrisy of protesting rape affecting men in prison and making jokes about men being raped in prison on one hand, while using the threat of rape in prison against women on the other, but I see noahbrand’s said it a lot more eloquently than me. Absolutely agree with every word of your post, Noah.
Just to go off topic into blatant history nerdery for a moment, I’m pretty sure the iconic raised, clenched fist graphic originated as the symbol of the Red Front-Fighter’s League, the Communist paramilitary group in pre-Nazi 1920s Weimar Germany. So it’s been around for a lot longer than the 1960s, anyway.
More on topic, I’m really hoping the next MRM appropriation of leftist iconography is the classic Che Guevara picture with the caption “DO NOT CREEP-SHAME HIS PENIS, FEMINISTS!” or something.
@tulgey
typo. that was supposed to be stickers
Now I can’t stop imagining what Suicide Sticks would be.
@uncognitive—
Men of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but women’s rights!
Here’s hoping SyFy picks up the movie rights to “Mega-Fist Vs. Giant Snarktopus”.
I see this one has discovered UrbanFonts.
Back when I still tried to talk to MRAs (instead of avoiding them), I mentioned that nobody, feminist or non-feminist, wanted men to die in industrial accidents. Naturally they responded with “Yeah prove it!” So I talked about things like OSHA regulations and government mandated standards and that these were created for the specific purpose of preventing workplace deaths and mitigating unavoidable hazards.
What followed was a bizarre, angry, and Randian tirade about how the evil government is trying to take away freedoms and how government regulations stifle free enterprise and how OSHA regulations and standards weren’t helping anyway because (apparently) men were dropping like flies in the workplace. Like flies, I tell you!
Finally I just asked, “So if you don’t want standards and regulations in industrial workplaces, then how do you suggest creating and maintaining an environment of safety for men?”
Because we all know how well deregulation works, amirite.
His response was just to tell me to stfu and stop pretending I care anything about men in dangerous jobs.
Seriously though, considering a lot of these guys identify as Libertarians (& getting it completely wrong) and/or Randroids, they really display a disconnect from their own ideology.
Either that or, like most of us suspect, they don’t give a shit about men and just want to punish women for [fill in the blank].
On the one hand, poor Scrapemind, imagining history as one long slow march to doom.
On the other hand, pro-slavery, pro-genocide, pro-Inquisition, pro-autocracy, pro-every terrible thing that has ever happened in history…
I suddenly want a scented candle.
@Lady Zombie – oh, absolutely. I’ve also come across MRAs complaining that health and safety regulations brought in to prevent workplace casualties and deaths are actually ‘feminizing’ the workplace and paving the way to make it safer for women who don’t want to get dirt on their pretty clothes or break any nails or whatever other nonsense to enter the workplace.
You can often find a lot of blustering in the right-wing press here in the UK about how “Health and safety’s gone mad!!1!” often proven by ridiculous stories about children having to wear safety equipment in order to play conkers and so on. A lot of these stories are myths, and it got so bad at one point that the Health and Safety Executive here in the UK had to set up a myth busters section on their website – http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index.htm
Anyway, there was a documentary about local council health and safety officers (often characterised as party-pooping busybodies) on the BBC a number of years ago, examining whether such stereotypes and myths have any truth to them. One officer they spoke to was a middle-aged man who remembered what it was like to work in factories and workshops before such legislation, when asked whether he thought health and safety had gone too far and such laws should be repealed. He said absolutely not and spoke quite movingly about the dreadful accidents and deaths he’d witnessed when working in factories.
It was interesting, as I have noticed that a lot of health and safety officials I’ve met in my time have indeed been men old enough to remember what it was like to work in unsafe places before such legislation came in and they’re often passionate about ensuring that the things they would have seen never happen again. They’re also targeting the right culprits – greedy, incompetent employers and businesses who would rather cut corners and save money than ensure they safety and wellbeing of their employees. No wild, ridiculous conspiracies about women and big government, blah, blah blah – just practical solutions.