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More manly man-rock from the men of A Voice for Men!

The manly men at A Voice for Men do love their manly music! You may recall the asskickingly asskicking asskickery of “Go My Own Way,” the A Voice for Men anthem, as performed by Jade Michael and the Fuck Their Shit Up Singers Crew. And the “red pill honesty” of Slumberwall’s emo-folk (but totally not wussy) meditation“The Hatred of Women.”

Now, in a post with the dopily macho title “The weekend’s here. Swagger, brothers. Swagger,” AVFM contributor Skeptic presents a new video from his band Dark Star Disco.

No, it doesn’t quite match the terrible grandeur of either of the earlier MRA anthems. The music is utterly unexceptional testosterone-heavy rock-tronica that sounds like it just escaped from the nineties. And it’s 15 minutes long. But Skeptic is quite proud of it, nonetheless. As he describes it, in phrases as clichéd as the song itself:

We are sonically in your face – wall of sound — chainsaw wailing guitar, piercing electro synth and pounding rock rhythms.

Skeptic contributes the guitar – sorry, the “chainsaw wailing guitar” – to the sound. He apparently prefers guitars to women, as they don’t talk back:

I strut on guitar and love it. Nowhere do I feel more alive. Swagger.

I’ve been playing guitar for many years – self-taught. Swagger.

My guitars have helped me cathart during times of feminist insanity more times than I can recall. I truly don’t know how I would have made it this far without playing guitar. For my guitar doesn’t make maddening “man up” BS demands and treat me with misandry as a disposable utility.

The video, even less original, consists of pilfered stock footage of an assortment of putatively manly things, starting with, yes, a missile. (Oh, hello, Dr. Freud1) Let’s let Skeptic describe his creation:

It’s chock full of images men can relate to – a guided missile, eagle and cheetah hunting, jet aircraft and a high powered motorcycle at full throttle, runway dance swagger, military teamwork and bravery, high tech playfulness, raw wilderness, cutting edge scientific research, urban spaces constructed and running at full tilt and moving at a blistering pace into a future city of lights. It’s what men do. It’s cram packed with stuff feminists shit their pants over – unapologetic swaggering masculinity.

I dig it. It’s ballsy.

Just so you know, the “runway dance swagger” in question refers not to a fashion model shaking his or her stuff in a runway show, but to some dude doing a little victory dance on an runway for, like , airplanes.

Of course, Skeptic is making some assumptions here. We don’t actually know the gender of all those flying the planes (or driving the cars, or riding the motorcycle like an asshole) in the video. For the sake of argument, let’s just assume they are all male.

But the cheetah? Either Skeptic thinks all cheetahs are boy cheetahs, or he thinks that girl cheetahs sit on their fat asses eating cheetah bon bons and living off of Cheetalimony. In fact, of course, both male and female cheetahs hunt for their food. That ballsy swaggering masculine cheetah in his video may well be a gal.

If there are any stray misogynists reading this post who are unwilling to accept that female cheetahs can hunt, skip ahead to 1:30 in the video below to see one cheetah mom chase down a gazelle just like the cheetah in Skeptic’s video.

Here, a female cheetah faces down three hyenas to protect her cubs.

In other words, female cheetahs are badasses. So are male cheetahs.

Skeptic is just a plain old jackass.

If any of you actually listened to Dark Star Disco’s little masterpiece, or any of the other songs I linked to above, and need to clear your ears of all that manly man stuff, might I suggest “Crochet,” by Kathleen Hanna’s side project Julie Ruin?

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captainbathrobe
captainbathrobe
12 years ago

Furthermore, I think the only pants-shitting this buffoon inspires in feminists is pants-shitting laughter, when they notice him at all.

pecunium
pecunium
12 years ago

Ok…. I had to laugh at myself, I read this Aargh the guy next door is out of the apartment and his pipes are making a godawful noise two to three times a minute, and the landlord thinks he can have a plumber over sometime tomorrow or Monday. and thought the guy next door was in the yard practising on bagpipes.

hellkell
hellkell
12 years ago

Rumor has it that Robert Plant lives somewhere in my neighborhood, and if I see him, that squealing you hear from the southwest will be me.

She Wolf of the Midwest
She Wolf of the Midwest
12 years ago

Robert Plant? Big Log is still my favorite song..Just watched the music video again a few days ago, on Youtube.

Creative Writing Student
Creative Writing Student
12 years ago

@pecunium

They weren’t bagpipes? Seriously, I thought it was bagpipes and a separate person with plumbing troubles.

Polliwog
12 years ago

Ok…. I had to laugh at myself, I read this Aargh the guy next door is out of the apartment and his pipes are making a godawful noise two to three times a minute, and the landlord thinks he can have a plumber over sometime tomorrow or Monday. and thought the guy next door was in the yard practising on bagpipes.

I totally read it that way too at first! Heh.

lowquacks
lowquacks
12 years ago

Yeah, I read “pipes” as “bagpipes” too, but only because I’ve been that neighbour and felt bad about it.

So this is what this Seoul music I’ve heard so much about sounds like, then? A :wumpscut: edi and remix of the worst parts of a Turbo-era Judas Priest jam from an off day?

pecunium
pecunium
12 years ago

I’m getting ready to undertake the pipes. About $200 to get a practice chanter; and drain valve, as well as a tutor and a secondary tutor/w CDs. Then, when I’ve worked through the tutor some, I can look at getting an instructor.

lowquacks
lowquacks
12 years ago

@pecunium

Is there a pipe band near you? I don’t know how it is where you are, but lots of Aussie pipe bands will give free training and lend out their stuff because the whole scene’s dying out. There’s nothing like having someone there to show you just how you’re not bringing out the low note in your D-throws or correcting hand positions or things you probably wouldn’t notice yourself.

aworldanonymous
12 years ago

I wouldn’t even call it a wall of sound, it’s more just plain bad.

katz
12 years ago

Yo aworldanon, how’s college treating you?

lowquacks
lowquacks
12 years ago

@aworldanonymous

Yeah, “wall of sound” has come to mean several very different things these days.

Tulgey Logger
Tulgey Logger
12 years ago

It’s a wall of sound in that it is about as interesting as staring at a brick one.

Sara
Sara
12 years ago

All those painfully cliched images of masculinity are supposed to be what ALL men can relate to? Not exactly challenging the status quo by celebrating ultra traditional male roles and keeping men stuffed in that tiny box of machismo. Nice work activists! I would say this is the equivalent of feminists celebrating images of women using appliances and ballet dancing and doing needlepoint or some shit.

BlackBloc (@XBlackBlocX)

Ugh. This sounds like a bad soundtrack for a third tier cyberpunk game circa 1992, some knockoff of Shadowrun or something like that. I have a hard time listening to instrumental tracks even when they *don’t* have horrible synth on them, and then he thought his shit was so interesting it needed to last 11 minutes and a half?

Here’s a REAL wall of sound, and at least if you think it’s crap, it only lasts one minute.

BlackBloc (@XBlackBlocX)

And yes, I chose A Disease Called Man because MISANDRY!

katz
12 years ago

The video clips reminded me, of course, of Romantic Film.

Sarah Dalton
Sarah Dalton
12 years ago

I think it’s time for

(100 words you could say instead of swag)

Sarah Dalton
Sarah Dalton
12 years ago

Oh, and I should acknowledge that at the end of that video, he suggests using the word swagger- my bad, I forgot about that, since in the studio version the line is “there’s options- just say he’s got watsky”

The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
The Kittehs' Unpaid Help
12 years ago

Well, I’ve no intention of listening to it. “Ballsy”? Yeah, only in the sense of “MRAs’ testicles are bigger than their brains.” Which isn’t news.

Am I the only person who’s really, really tired of the constant “testicles = brave” association? I’ve had it up to here with that crap.

lowquacks
lowquacks
12 years ago

@Sarah Dalton

Eh, “swag” probably isn’t the problem here. Swag-bashing tends to come from a place of not liking the people who might say “swag” (i.e., young tumblrcore types/young PoC), which isn’t to say that “swag” can’t be criticised in a way that doesn’t bring that up. The word as it stands today in youth usage has a lot of nuance. Now, “swagger” for “men being manly man men”? Yeah, that’s lazy.

Besides, you can’t yell “watsky” on the backbeat of your #based cloud-rap track and make it sound right.

aworldanonymous
12 years ago

@Katz

There’s a party going on in the second floor lounge of my dorm, and I’m more the type who wants to be a party facilitator than a party participant.

heidihi
heidihi
12 years ago

@Aworld good to see you, i was wondering after you as well 🙂 hoping you’re having fun 🙂

Guy Noir
Guy Noir
12 years ago

That drum intro is from “Painkiller,” Judas Priest:

“Faster than a bullet
Terrifying scream
Enraged and full of anger
Hes half man and half machine. . .”

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
12 years ago

So, like Priest, but crap, and with synths. Oh well, it’s not as bad as the last emo-fest. Still pretty terrible, though.