Over on The Spearhead, W.F. Price celebrates the harassment directed at Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes Against Women video project as a sign of a powerful new backlash against the evils of feminism, a backlash he’s proud to be a part of. Dudes being obnoxious to a woman on the internet: Men’s Rights at its finest.
Oh, sure, Price acknowledges, some of the attacks on her were “juvenile” – and thus not as effective as they might otherwise have been — and the controversy did enable Sarkeesian to raise more than $130,000 for her project, but Price even sees this as a victory of sorts:
As for Sarkeesian’s success, we should be happy about it, because I can’t think of a more worthless way to spend over a hundred thousand dollars than in finger-wagging over video games. For one thing, it’s sure to piss even more guys off, and the game industry is very competitive, so her documentary (now expanded to 12 parts!) will likely have zero effect on production and consumption of this form of entertainment. The feminists are simply pissing all the money away, and that’s fine, because this time they’re paying for it themselves.
No question about it: those grapes were definitely sour.
Naturally, the Spearhead regulars were overjoyed by these new signs of, er, progress. Here are some highlights from the discussion that followed; lest I be accused once again of cherry-picking outliers, each and every one of the comments I quote below got literally dozens of net upvotes. This is what these guys really think.
Mojo offers a sort of backlash manifesto:
Feminists will never understand that it is -they- who are the oppressors. They cling to their delusion that they are the ‘underdog’ against the system, even as they control the system.
Revolution requires an enemy class to attack … this is seen as justified when the enemy class controls the system. But feminism is perpetual revolution. So what happens when they gain control over the system? They continue to attack the enemy class, i.e. men, thinking they are striking the next blow against the patriarchy, when what they are doing is more like a pogrom.
Yep, he went there.
Now -they- are the system, they are able and more than willing to intimidate, humiliate, expropriate. It will get indefinitely worse if they have their way. Liberal feminism leads -necessarily- to radical feminism.
Still, we don’t need feminists to ‘understand’ that they are the persecutors (I imagine some of them know this full well and are just misandrist sadists, little Eichmanns). It doesn’t matter what they think or know or understand. What matters is what -we- think, know and understand, and how we are going to act on it.
So … like the swivel-eyed feminist lunatics progressing from attempted assassinations to laying the foundations for institutional and legal abuse … I ask you – what are we going to DO with this knowledge and awareness beyond changing online discourse? …
Thinking like a leftist, though: why not attach ourselves to the GOP in order to subvert its gender politics and radicalize it in the MRA direction? That kind of approach has worked wonders for leftists and their infiltrations into public institutions …
Huh. Reactionary anti-feminists attaching themselves to the Republican Party? No one’s ever thought of that before.
Keyster offers some equally, er, innovative thinking:
Feminism has failed because women as a group adopted the notion of “equality” with men, while stubbornly clinging to their sexual/reproductive power over men. Had feminism truly helped women “realize their greatness”, there’d be far more great women. Instead there’s just more feminists. It’s run it’s course over 3 generations and it’s out of time to prove itself righteous.
The original “male chauvanist pigs” of the early 70′s, were right all along. Women are biologically and chemically ill-equipped to be men. If the Creator had meant women to be more like men, he wouldn’t have given them the ability to bring forth life from their bodies.
Ryu not only embraces the backlash, but seems perfectly fine with the notion that the Men’s Rights movement is a hate movement:
Good. Hatred and anger are power. Whenever you hear someone say “stop the hate”, it is a call to throw down your greatest weapons.
Young Guy purports to speak for all young guys (manginas presumably excepted):
If feminists think men, especially young men, are angry, they don’t know the half of it. As a 26 year-old male, I have seen this society bend over backwards to accommodate women all the time.
The school curriculums are geared toward female success. Schools have countless women’s programs. Female teachers can be as hateful as they want towards male students without facing consequences. People cheer when girls succeed in school, but jeer when boys succeed in school. Even though females have every advantage in the education system, they somehow still have the audacity to complain. They take fluff majors but don’t realize anyone with less than half a brain could pass classes in the humanities and social sciences.
What makes so many MRAs such proud yahoos?.
Oh, and just look at the workplace. Sexual harassment laws give women freedom to dress slutty and still have the nerve to complain when men sneak a peek. If you are a man who has a female co-worker, you have to walk on eggshells everyday or else you can get fired because the twat in the other room got her panties in a bunch over something minor you said. You can be a man who has busted his ass everyday to succeed in your chosen profession, only to see it mean nothing because some woman who was nothing more than an affirmative action hire. If this isn’t bad enough, you get these useless women who are subpar, yet they still never shut up about breaking through the mythical glass-ceiling that they didn’t break and didn’t exist in the first place.
Working men, forever cursed by subpar women.
Also, I have really had enough of women dragging this country down with their dead-weight. Female soldiers, police officers, and firefighters are liabilities. No, all you ladies in these jobs, you aren’t heroes. I am going to go insane if I hear one more female soldier, police officer, or firefighter cry about not getting the respect she thinks she deserves. She doesn’t get respect because she doesn’t deserve respect. The military, law enforcement, and firefighters would be A LOT better off if women stopped lowering the bar to astronomical proportions.
“Lowering the bar to astronomical proportions?” Young Guy here has clearly not yet mastered the fine art of metaphor.
He blabs on a bit longer before wrapping up with:
The backlash is not only real, but it is well-deserved. Apologies won’t erase the damage which has been done. Acting like what happened because of feminism either didn’t happen or was minor is a slap in the face. Saying women have suffered from feminism just as much as men is like spitting in the faces of all the men who have suffered ten lifetimes of pain because of feminism.
Not one, not two, not five, but ten lifetimes of pain? MRAs really are the world’s greatest drama kings.
Andrew S., meanwhile, seems a little confused as to what feminists would like to see happening in the video game industry:
It will be interesting to see if feminists can ruin the gaming industry like they ruin pretty much everything else. There is a lot of money being made off “gamers,” and even guys like me who play the occasional game but aren’t hardcore contribute a lot of money to the industry.
I doubt there are a lot of young guys and men out there who are going to want to play games that involve a bunch of screaming feminists, and where the object of the game is to destroy the “evil patriarchy.” The truth is guys who play games want their female characters to be either hot, large breasted, ass kicking types, or sexy non-feminist types that you save. If the gaming industry changes this dynamic to much due to Feminist/liberal pressure they will destroy a cash cow. And feminism will have yet another “victory.”
Unrestricted and uncriticized access to giant tittied video game ladies: a sacred men’s right!
Kevin evidently speaks for many when he says he wants video games to remain a boys club:
Video games are pretty much the only place that feminism can’t invade unless the principle consumers of them want it. You don’t have to play with girls, or listen to girls, or do other pansy shit. You probably can’t leave a football team and join a different one that has no women, you sure as hell can do that online. Don’t like all the teamwork talk? Play by yourself.
Feminists don’t like video games because; they can’t make them, they can’t force you to buy them or play them even if they did, they couldn’t ruin the experience for you unless you wanted them to.
You can do anything feminists don’t want you to do, and best of all you’re rewarded for it.
Anonymous Age 70 doesn’t even play video games, but he was pleased to learn that you can shoot ladies in them:
Speaking of video games, I am reminded of my son 8 or 10 years ago. I visited him, and he had some kind of shoot-em-up video game. He was partnered with a dearie, and the instant the game started, he always put a bullet in the middle of her forehead. Then, he’d laugh as if it were the funniest thing ever.
I told him he was a sick man, but I was also laughing as if it were the funniest thing ever.
Seriously, he told me he performed better with her dead than needing to be protected.
A great analogy for marriage 2.0, yes?
Women, can’t live them, can’t shoot them in the head. Except in video games!
Criticizing video games is misandry!
I think RPGs will always be at the forefront of changes in the game’s industry, because when it comes to stuff like inclusive/reasonable/realistic characters (and player characters too, but that’s easier to do since you can just have a blank slate for the player to do whatever with), RPGs are all about that sort of detail and character development/backstory. It just needs the right kind of minds behind the project. That’s not to say RPGs are perfect, and some are obviously better than others amongst the massive variety that there are, but they’re definitely at the top of the list.
Though I realise for me, there’s also a lot of privilege-bound-compartmentalisation when it comes to games. In addition to being a massive RPG fan, I also love FPS games (if you asked me what my favourite genre was, i’d say FPS/RPG hybrid), which is a genre not exactly known for its inclusivity or reasonableness when it comes to realistic 3d characters of any gender… least of all female ones. I still play them and have a lot of fun regardless, and I do feel bad when I realise that the areas where they’re lacking is pushing people away from games they might otherwise have a lot of fun with.
A massive example of this would be the STALKER series. Amazing games, if you like challenging post-apocolyptic style FPS games with a few RPG elements thrown in.. but there’s no female characters in them at all.
In general though, things are certainly better than they were, so as long as people keep pushing things can only get better.
I generally don’t like FPS because it seems like they’re mostly war games and those just don’t interest me. The closest I’ve come is the new Fallout games and Mass Effect, and that’s because I’m drawn to the open world play style that allows me to do whatever I want — they just happen to also make me shoot guns. I tend to be a button-masher and do better at the hack ‘n slash games.
Hi there. I’m ACLAF, formerly “A Canadian Liberal Against Feminism.” Now it’s “A Canadian Libertarian Against Feminism.” I’m a lapsed MRA, and I’ve been lurking for about a month or two.
You know, I don’t know what you experience David, but me, I’ve percieved hatred directed against me, and felt shamed for my male body, and male gender for most of my life. Popular culture was quite keen in the 90’s to try to convince me that I would be fine, if only I’d be less manly, and more emotional, more efeminate. Then I married a wonderful woman who expected me to be something that I realized I didn’t know how to be: a man. She’s always been stridently anti-feminist, and always expressed the desire to stay home and raise our children. Fortunately for me, my wife, and my children, I’m getting better day by day.
Now, perhaps it’s misguided, or wrong, but this blog certainly hasn’t caused me to doubt the following conclusion, that the socio-cultural force, the impulse that created bumbling, stupid, negative male role-models, like Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson, and Tim Taylor was feminism. Thanks to feminism, no longer could we, or would we tolerate positive, strong men in our popular culture without ridiculing or deriding them for their primitive and overt masculinity. At the same time, I remember being inundated with the message that men were a problem for society. I remember the 1 in 4 statistic quoted repeatedly, and I keenly remember being shamed, and talked-down to in highschool by University students who tried to guilt-trip us into going on a march for violence against women. The message that I got, repeated over and over again, was that overt masculinity was a strictly primitive impulse, and that we in the west had outgrown the need for men. That I was dangerous, trouble, a “problem.”
I’ve always WANTED to be masculin, manly, powerful, strong, smart, fast etc. Thanks to feminism, I turned against that impulse, and stayed that way, thinking quite naively that I’d be okay. That was a colossal mistake, and has cost me maybe five years of life that I can never get back.
Naturally, I’m quite angry about it because if I’d just followed my natural instinct, things might be better.
And I guess what bugs me, what gets to me, is that you don’t seem to want to understand this David. For a guy who spends all his time ragging on the MRM, you don’t seem to know what it’s like to feel hated, and reviled every time you turn on the television, for your whole life. And worse, it seems like you don’t care, or worse, you don’t WANT to care.
Well, I’m tired of feeling like I’m hated and reviled just for having the audacity to be born with external genetalia.
I’ll go back to lurking and enjoying the decline now. It’s just too bad that you just don’t get it, nor will you, nor can you.
I don’t like games where the gameplay mechanic is “everything’s trying to kill you; you need to kill everything.” Not because of any particular moral or even taste objection–it’s just so played out. There’s so much more potential for variety and innovation in games that make you build structures or solve puzzles or manage complex systems.
I don’t think simulated destruction is evil, I just think it’s less interesting than simulated construction.
Re: female firefighters/policemen/soldiers
I can’t speak to the soldiers and policemen. I’m not one of them, and have no firsthand knowledge there.
I am a firefighter, and I have worked/still work/plan to continue working with female firefighters.
And if the male firefighters I work with were half so dedicated as them, the fire services would be a much better place.
So, yeah, thanks for talking out your butt on that one, kiddo. Walk the walk for a while and see if you can maintain that lie. Even the die-hard misogynists I know have just quietly dropped that line since actually seeing a female firefighter in action.
Liabilities? Pfah.
Not heroes? You diminish yourself when you insult heroes like that.
Not deserving of your respect? You forfeit any future respect from me. Will you be putting your life on the line any time soon for the good of the rest of us?
Better off without them? No, I think not.
But if anyone can pass humanities and social science courses, then why do people fail?
Not feminist enough! They need their brain washed thoroughly. 😉 lol
It always cracks me up when MRA shows the Simpson as a prime example of misandry. Sure, Homer is not very bright, but does anyone really think that Marge is a feminist role model? Lol. All the Simpsons are deeply flawed characters, although they all have (Homer included) their shining moments.
If the fact that not all men on TV are super hero all the time is your proof of the existence of misandry, no wonder you feel oppressed for being a man, ACLAF. The world doesn’t bow to you in respect for being male? Oh yes, you really know pain and oppression.
Kyrie – You’re going to hold up Marge Simpson, and ignore Lisa Simpson… How thorough, and honest of you.
You know, it’s not as if I couldn’t take a few bad male apples. What I said was that I can’t recall having seen a single good one. They’ve all been bad apples as far as I can remember. And you’ve just announced that you think that’s perfectly acceptable.
Well done, and THANK you for reinforcing all of my biases…
I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing at the notion that the problem with “Family Guy” is that it’s just too feminist.
We’ve talked about this on other threads. The “bumbling father figure” has been a comedic trope for a very long time, longer than feminism as a movement has had any social traction. Try again, duder.*
And seriously, get a new schtick. You guys make the same arguments every time. It’s pathetic, really.
*I’ve shamelessly stolen “duder” from someone here. You posted it on a previous thread and I think it’s hilarious.
No, we reject your theory that feminism is the root of it. Reading comprehension, learn it.
Right, stuff like the Conan movies NEVER HAPPENED WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP. Or Die Hard. Or any action movie ever. Nope, it was all the Simpsons! There was just no Rocky movies out there, no Schwarzanegger vehicles like Kindergarten Cop where he brought masculinity to a feminine pursuit and suddenly was better at it than women who’d trained their whole life for it. And, hahahaha–certainly it would be foolish for me to suggest that there was ever any misogyny in film! HA!
….How thorough, and honest of you.
Yeah, because there were obviously no incompetent male characters before feminism. The Three Stooges are part of the Feminist Conspiracy!
Yeah, well, I saw with my own eyes women in the National Guard help check houses and dig people out of rubble. My friend is a nurse at Freeman, and I know she helped save a lot of lives after the tornado. One of her friends from work is an EMT and he went out to dig people out and give them first aid. He was working alongside a woman with trained dogs who can sniff out human DNA, so rescuers can recover their bodies or rescue them. He got too shook up, though, after finding the bodies of a woman and baby buried under a church, so he ended up having to take a break from it all.
My point here is that rescue work is hard for everyone. Women want to help just like men, and they will if given the opportunity to do so. They’re not dead weight; they are heroes. Anyone who says differently can go fuck right off.
I wonder what any of those high and mighty MRA’s have done that’s so special, that they think they can belittle the work done by female soldiers, police officers, and fire fighters. I bet you anything most of them haven’t done jack shit.
My personal feeling – not sure how many of the commenters here share it, but I’d imagine a lot, given the blogs that link to and are linked from here – is that being conventionally masculine is fine, except where it leads one to get at other people for not being conventionally masculine.
That sentence also holds with ‘masculine’ replaced with ‘feminine’ and/or with strategically placed ‘not’s. The problem is that society has had this force pushing people into the conventional holes, and I do believe something should be done about that.
It’s quite possible that some misguided feminist action has gone the wrong way and started trying to replace those conventions with different ones. I feel quite happy to say that’s a bad thing and to be avoided- but that’s not going to make me abandon feminism and working towards a freer society where your gender doesn’t force anything on anyone. It’s something we need to pay attention and avoid, not a reason to give up what I think is an important goal.
Really, ACLAF? You can’t think of a single positive portrayal of a traditionally masculine male character on television? Not one? No instances of a male protagonist being butch and stoic and action-oriented and being rewarded for it by the narrative compared to less macho characters?
Do you even watch television?
You know what? FUCK YOU. Seriously, every thread is the same. You tired little whiners come in and completely derail it from the actual topic to start whining about the same two or three fucking topics, and it’s beyond tiresome. Go piss in someone else’s sandbox for awhile. You aren’t here to have a discussion, you’re here to troll and derail. So GO THE FUCK AWAY.
There are no TV and movie role models for white guys!
Indiana Jones
Marty McFly
Luke Skywalker
Han Solo
Peter Parker
Clark Kent
Bruce Wayne
Jack Sparrow
Will Turner
Neo (Thomas Anderson)
John Connor
Captain Kirk
Captain Picard
Oh no, it’s misandry!
Haha.. if anyone is using anything by Seth MacFarlane as role-model material, they’re pretty much missing the point entirely (hint: he’s not giving you something to aspire to, it’s the opposite).
GOOD MALE APPLES, A LIST FROM WORKS OZY IS A FAN OF
–Captain America
–Iron Man
–Bruce Banner
–Hawkeye
–Spider-man
–Han Solo
–Jack Harkness
–The Doctor
–Rory
–Jack Sparrow
–Sam Vimes
–Carrot
–Mal Reynolds
–James T. Kirk
–Jean-Luc Picard
–Aang
–Kermit the Frog
–Guy Montag
–Winston Smith
–Finnick
–Big Macintosh
–The love interests in most Meg Cabot novels
–Tom and Carl from Young Wizards
–Anthony Crowley
–Aziraphale
–Adam Young
Well, considering that within the context of the show Lisa is often ridiculed for her “crazy ideas,” I don’t see your argument holding much weight there ACLAF.
ACLAF: The media criticizing traditional masculinity as an imperfect model for all men and showing some men as flawed characters IS NOT MISANDRY. Especially when you are ignoring the existence and popularity of characters like James Bond, Indiana Jones, John McClane, Tony Stark, Jethro Gibbs, Jack Bauer, etc.
BTW, you want more sitcoms with female characters the source of comedy? Then call out men like Adam Corolla who say that women aren’t funny and make it harder for women to succeed in comedy. Most sitcoms have a basic formula that is very old, the double act where you have the comic and the straight man (or woman). The comic does the jokes and plays off the fact that the other person is more serious. If the comic is male and the sitcom takes place at home who do you think is the logical person to play the “straight man” role?
You know what is actually bad for men? Being told that being manly tough men is the only valid option, that showing emotions is a weakness that only women have. I’ve only seen my dad cry three times in my entire life: when my grandfather died, when my uncle (his older brother) died, and when my brother was deployed to Iraq. All those other lesser griefs, frustrations, and sadness in his life he’s had to bottle up, to be tough, to be manly, and he knows it’s wrong. He always told both me and my brother that it’s okay to show emotion even though he isn’t very good at it. Having the message out there that having emotions is okay IS NOT A BAD THING.
Oh, man, forgot Cinna from the Hunger Games, I was going to put him in.
I have no problem with masculine men, as long as they don’t harm everyone else. But not every man is masculine!
@ACLAF
“That the socio-cultural force, the impulse that created bumbling, stupid, negative male role-models, like Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson, and Tim Taylor was feminism.”
Number of episodes of Family Guy written by men: 187
Number of episodes of Family Guy written by women: 1
Number of episodes of Family Guy lauded by feminists: 0
Seriously, every single anti-feminist dodges this question, but what is the mechanic by which feminists have managed to somehow mind control dozens of nonfeminist writers into doing their bidding?
Also, can you name one single modern major feminist website that has ever endorsed the idea that men are naturally stupid or mean. Seriously, just try for one.
Also, as a man who has had the opposite problem, being policed all his life for not being masculine enough, how would I fit into your worldview? I am not naturally manly, strong, powerful or fast. Actually, undiagnosed asthma made pretty much all intensive physical activity painful for me for several years as a child, but everyone who I talked to to say that jogging a block made my lungs hurt and made me cough for hours thought I was just lazy.
So, if not all men feel this need to conform to traditional masculinity, or are even physically able to do so, maybe there’s more than one way to “be a man?” If only there was a philosophy that advocated for wider interpretations of gender roles and more inclusive gender definitions. Oh wait, there is.