You remember that big MRA-vs-feminists debate in Vancouver we were talking about the other day? The one later this month? In the car dealership? About whether or not feminism has “gone to too far?” Oh, and which doesn’t, so far, seem to involve any actual feminists?
In case no feminists decide to show up to a debate organized and moderated by MRAs, promoted only on MRA websites, and taking place in a car dealership run by an MRA, one Reddit MRA has a suggestion:
Yep, he really did just suggest that MRAs debate themselves, and then, with no sense of irony, say “Let’s not turn this debate into a MRA circlejerk.”
It’s hard to imagine a more perfect encapsulation of the Men’s Rights movement than this. MRAs are always eager to debate the imaginary feminists that live only in their own heads. Straw feminists are really the only feminists they know.
You might also enjoy TyphonBlue’s heroic special-snowflaking in the Reddit thread.
Those car dealership reviews are my new favorite thing. I like how the owner gradually gets better at writing fake positive reviews for himself. Eventually he figures out that no one is buying the gushing five-star reviews, so he starts writing mildly enthusiastic three-star reviews…which everyone still calls him out on. It’s like a little epistolary novel.
You realize that it’s possible to play devil’s advocate very effectively, yes? Debate teams often do this to keep their skills sharp, and in such instances there is nothing approaching an “echo chamber”- after all, if there were, it wouldn’t be very good practice, you dig? As a matter of fact, I have a degree in Rhetoric, and the principle of devil’s advocate stretches back to Plato’s Republic. It has helped shape modern-day politics, and can provide a framework for the skeptical mind in a homogenous environment.
I have confidence this debate can proceed just fine.
I tried to read Typhon Blue’s article but it made no sense to me. WTF is with MRAs and their boners? It’s all they care about.
The sad thing is that Typhon Blue is a woman. Who apparently worships boners with a zeal that most religions only wish they could get their followers to display towards their god of choice.
Yeah, I know TB is a woman, which just makes her article even more baffling. MRAs are going to let a woman pontificate about their boners? Whatev.
As long as what she’s saying is that boners are the center of the universe, I guess?
Oi, I keep forgetting the level of “intellect” on display here.
Ok then, guys. Assuming that mens rightsers are complete bumbling bigots. Why, then, are feminists so afraid to engage them in front of the public? Why the unbridled fear of letting things out into the open?
Gokkun Gooch wrote:
You mean the book where everyone but Socrates is used as a foil for how right Socrates is?
But hey. There’s nothing wrong with playing devil’s advocate. It’s just that we have zero faith in the Men’s Rights “Movement” to produce an effective understanding of feminism. They basically live off of thinking that their misunderstanding of feminism is the enemy ascendant. Shit, even the self-described former feminist Elly Tams, who now contributes to AVfM, has apparently learned nothing about feminism despite what she claims is a lifetime around it.
Yes, it’s possible. No, it’s not likely.
Why, are you too busy sharing semens? Share some of your brilliant intellect with us instead, Sharon.
lol yeah, why ever would feminists be reluctant to go to a public forum with a bunch of hatebeards who think feminists misandrically rule the world through VAWA and are akin to Solanas? I wouldn’t want to be an acknowledged feminist anywhere near anyone who could comfortably associate with this kind of rhetoric. Futrelle’s debate with Paul Elam over blogs went dysfunctional enough even without the possibility of a virulently hostile crowd/lone vigilante for the cause.
The idea that MRAs represent a group of emotionally detached skeptics when it comes to feminism is making me snicker.
If feminists are in the right, surely it should be easy to prove it in front of an audience, yes?
Or do you all have so little faith in your ideology?
It’ll be just like debate team, in high school! Except they all have a seething grudge against the side they think rules the world and contributes to its destruction.
I dunno, I think my high school debate team would have wiped the floor with these guys.
Have you ever heard of the Gish Gallop? Do you really think any given debate is so cut and dry as “the right side wins”? Your superior intellect is coming up a little short, Mademoiselle Seemins.
..hatebeards.. – Tulgey Logger
For some reason, i’m picturing a guy with a beard made of hornets.
I read that as Hatebreed. Must stop listening to music while reading blogs.
Well, it’s like a regular beard, but hatred! I guess. I do find the image of a hornet hatebeard unreasonably amusing and I hope this is a thing.
The problem with a debate like this isn’t the title- “This House Believes That…” is commonly used to begin debate titles. Nor is it the playing of Devil’s advocate- as others have mentioned, that is common practice in debating societies. The problem is that debates, even when held between senior academics and at institutions with house rules, can often still turn very ugly and can even feel unsafe. I’ve seen this at a debate on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) which was held at King’s College London- the details were posted up on a lot of alternative medicine blogs and forums, and a lot of CAM supporters turned up to (literally) shout down their opponents. At the end I had wanted to talk to one of them, the physicist and writer SImon Singh, but I couldn’t because a woman was standing between us and literally screaming at him about her claims that her mother had died of cancer because the NHS denied her homeopathic treatment, as if Dr Singh had killed her himself.
MRAs remind me a lot of CAM supporters in that their arguments are always very emotionally charged, they take all criticism very personally, and they actively misrepresent their opponents. While I say that playing Devil’s advocate in itself isn’t wrong, there is a problem with MRAs doing it in they wouldn’t be representing feminism, they’d be representing their own warped idea of what they’ve convinced themselves it is. Just as CAM supporters argue that all practitioners of evidence-based/Western medicine know cancer can be cured with nutrition alone but want to withhold THE TRUTH because pharmaceutical companies are bribing them to, and because governments are bribing them to keep schtum so cancer can be used as a means of population control, MRAs argue that feminists are fighting for their right to avoid having careers and to be given free houses, clothes and trinkets by men. Both the CAM supporters and the MRAs are wrong but they’re so blinded by emotion that they see the worst in their opponents and eventually get paranoid and start developing conspiracy theories about them.
The clue here is in the suggested slogan “the notion that women are adults”. Of course feminists are fighting *against* being infantilised, from technology companies deciding women won’t buy their products unless they make them in Barbie-pink, to being treated like they need a man to change tyres, rescue them from spiders, and of course provide everything for them. I can just see an MRA speaking against the motion, with something along the lines of “Feminism hasn’t gone too far because my husband still hasn’t bought me a pink convertible even after months of asking him pretty please and crying and stamping my little feet and refusing to make him sandwiches” in a mocking high-pitched voice.
So many MRA arguments contradict themselves- when they don’t even understand their own aims and objectives, can anyone honestly expect them to fully understand anyone else’s?
>If feminists are in the right, surely it should be easy to prove it in front of an audience, yes?
Uh… it’s sorta like sending a Psychiatrists into a congregation of Scientologists.
If feminists are in the right, surely it should be easy to prove it in front of an audience, yes?
We’re already engaging with you on the internet, the most public forum of all. And here, pants are optional. I’m not willing to put in any more effort than that.
There are places one has to wear pants? No way I’m going there. Not unless there’s hornet beards to see, and maybe a giant twine ball.
Why wouldn’t a woman go to the world’s shadiest car dealership to talk in front of a crowd who thinks it should be legal to rape her?
Some mysteries solve themselves.
Rape and child abuse are wrong. Bam! Proved. And I didn’t need to be shouted at by a crowd for several hours to prove it.
@ The Stepford Knife
You have eloquently and wonderfully described MRAs and the futility of debating with them.
Muchos Kudos to you.
A wonderful day to you and yours.
<blockquoteIf feminists are in the right, surely it should be easy to prove it in front of an audience, yes?
Or do you all have so little faith in your ideology?
I believe feminism has already gone in front of an audience…it’s called decades of scholarly articles, books, essays, and conference talks in fields like sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and others. (yeah, I am in the social sciences, so I’m not all that well-informed on feminism in the physical sciences).
Various views on feminism have been peer-reviewed, critiqued up one side and down the other, and explored new directions for decades in academia. MRAs are too busy beating the Valerie Solanis drum and ignoring thousands of in-depth discussions of feminist ideologies.
And why won’t these people come out of their ivory tower? For the same reason that archaeologists ignore Erich van Daniken.